The Riches of Mercy (39 page)

"Come on, walk with me. Let's see how many steps it takes to do the whole thing."

"I don't know."

"Are you busy?"

"I don't want the letter to be over too quickly." Meredith got up.

They walked, without speaking, around the entire perimeter of the fence, tracing buildings, darting through alcoves. When they returned to the bench, Meredith took a look around, 360 degrees.

"I lost track somewhere in the 300s," Robin said.

"Counting is about repetition."

"So, it's not just a lark?"

Meredith shook her head. "Nothing's ever just a lark."

Robin snorted.

Services let out and they watched the crowd of women walk out of one warehouse-shaped building toward another.

"Lunch," Meredith said.

"Let's join them."

They fell into step with the crowd, and were for moments anonymous women, herded through institution doors. Then they were settled at Burdette's table.

Burdette grunted.

Meredith forced herself to eat three bites of scrambled eggs and one bite of biscuit before she pulled out her letter.

Robin had been trying to engage Burdette in conversation. Burdette was about to toy with her, as a spider might its prey, but she reached for the letters.

"Pictures."

"Angel said he forgot he couldn't just email them to me. Not to prison. So he went to Walmart and printed them out. They're from the last party they held with the swear jar money."

"You kept a swear jar?" Robin asked.

"Doesn't everyone?"

"No." Burdette shook her head. She considered the picture and then passed it to Robin. "So, this is how other people live."

"They look happy." Robin took another picture. "They got 'Thank you, Merry' on the cake. Did you swear the most?"

Meredith laughed.

"Did she swear the most? Have you met her?" Burdette asked.

"This morning I sweared more than she did."

"She's a fucking saint," Burdette said.

"They don't have to thank me for anything." Meredith smiled, though, as her eyes filled with tears, and she took another bite of biscuit.

"Think there's a correlation between people who admit to their crimes, and good people?" Robin asked.

"No," Burdette said. "And I don't like you."

Robin grinned.

Meredith swallowed. "I don't think people are good or bad."

Burdette rolled her eyes.

"And I don't think prison will change a thing about us."

"Hear hear," Robin said.

"She doesn't even curse. She clearly has no idea what she's talking about."

"I don't care what she says," Robin said, jerking her head toward Burdette. "I like her."

"Great. Don’t pay attention to Merry. She just got laid."

Meredith blushed and opened her milk carton.

"It makes anyone insufferable," Burdette said.

"Funny. I thought the glow was holy light."

"I'm getting new friends," Meredith said.

"You go ahead. Because we sure ain't getting you a cake, Merry," Burdette said.

Robin watched them thoughtfully, and then tried the eggs.

A mistake.

#

Merritt ran up to Natalie and held aloft a
Transformers
backpack.

"No," she said.

"Why not?"

"First of all, you know how your mother feels about violence."

Anthony Jameison, standing beside her at the cart, snorted.

"Second of all," she gave him a warning glare, "
Transformers
? I know you think they're a little passe. I mean, I watched them when I was a kid. Don't you want to be cool?"

Merritt scowled.

"Pokemon?" Natalie suggested.

Merritt's scowl got bigger. He slunk back to where Beau and Irene were at the backpacks.

"What's the difference between
Transformers
and
Pokemon
?" Anthony asked.

"Guns, mostly. And realism."

"I don't know if it matters."

"Probably not. But Merry made her feelings clear."

An awkward silence fell between them. Beau showed Irene a plain brown backpack covered in pockets and buckles. Natalie crossed her fingers.

"Thanks for doing this," Natalie said, for the fourth time.

"Our grandkids will only get one first day of school. We want it to be special."

Natalie nodded.

Merritt ran up with a red backpack.

"What's the logo?" Natalie asked.

"
Digimon
."

"Maybe," Natalie said.

Merritt pouted.

"Have you seen them all yet?" Natalie asked.

Merritt shook his head.

"What if the perfect one is buried? What if there's something better and you haven't seen it yet?"

Merritt ran back to the backpacks.

"Do you often trick the children?"

"Often," Natalie said.

"They seem happy."

"I guess."

"We thought this transition would be more difficult."

"Would it have been, if they weren't in the same house, surrounded by their things, their neighbors, reminders of their mom?" Natalie asked.

"If there weren't reminders, maybe they would miss them less."

"They would just be confused, having feelings and no place to anchor them."

"What do you know about child psychology?"

"I've been reading. What do you know?"

"I raised a good man. He made beautiful children."

Natalie squeezed the bridge of her nose.

"We probed them, you know," Anthony said.

"You did what to those boys?"

"I mean, we questioned them. About what goes on at your place. About food, playtime. Arguments. Nothing about when they lived with Meredith--we can use our own imagination--but how exactly they're being treated. Are they hurt? Or, on the flip side, are they spoiled?"

Natalie wondered if all of Walmart could feel her rage.

Anthony went on. "They weren't evasive. They were confused. They bragged about, 'Getting to write mommy.' They don't like it when you have to go to work. Beau says he can write his name because you're a lawyer."

"Merry taught them." Natalie massaged her forehead.

"They seem to be doing okay. I don't know we would have done a better job," Anthony said.

Natalie nodded, squeezing her eyes shut.

"But we love them more. We're family."

"We're a family. We want to be a family."

"Why?"

Natalie opened her eyes. "Why?"

"You seem like a decent woman, Ms. Ivans."

"Thanks."

"Why Meredith?"

Natalie watched Beau and Merritt traipse up and down the aisles, backpacks on their backs. Next would be lunchboxes. Another battle. Natalie and Anthony were supposed to be tackling the less glamorous stuff on the kindergarden list. Crayons. Paper. Kleenex. Glue sticks. She tried to imagine why they needed so many glue sticks.

"Why Meredith? Because I love her?"

"That's not an answer."

"It was good enough for you. What do you want me to say? She's smart, she's funny, she's solid. She's faithful. She's generous."

"She's not perfect. She--"

"I know. She gets depressed. More easily than she'd ever admit. She eats horrible things. She's not intellectually curious. She feels way too much. She lives in her own world despite what the rest of us say."

Anthony said nothing.

"Do you want a list of my faults, too?" Natalie asked. Her anger wasn't fading, but radiating through her, even as Irene waved at them and they loyally pushed the cart after her to the next section.

"She married our boy. She made a family. And then when she found out he was--he was." Anthony hesitated and took a deep breath. "She got jealous and took him away from us. Rather than divorcing him or even making it a public scandal. She had options. Even if he betrayed her. We would have helped him."

"Wait," Natalie said. She put her hand on the cart to stop their momentum.

Anthony turned to her.

Natalie closed her eyes briefly. This was going to be hard. This was so not her responsibility. She met his gaze and said, "Meredith knew Vincent was gay before she married him."

"She what?"

"She did. Those boys are not--They got help. With the conception. They wanted a family."

"To be a facade?"

"No. A real family."

"But Meredith found out about Vincent's friend in the war. He was going to take his boys and leave her."

"You know, Mr. Jameison, I just thought you didn't actually believe that. I thought you were just punishing her."

"And I think you're a moron for believing they lived some fairy tale," he said.

Her grip tightened on the cart.

"Ms. Ivans," he said.

"You have noticed who Meredith's with now, haven't you? Did you ever consider Meredith and Vincent had an arrangement?"

Anthony's eyes widened. Natalie could see he never, in fact, considered what she and Meredith did together. And he was imagining it now, in vivid color. She winced, but was still furious enough to ask, "What, you thought we were sisters?"

"Or you were after the boys."

Revulsion hit her like the roof collapsing. She leaned on the cart.

Anthony tried to change the subject. "Meredith just seemed so happy. You know. With Vince."

"She was." Natalie gasped, trying to take in air.

"I'm sorry. We did ask the boys. Obliquely, of course. This explains why Beau said, 'No, she's mommy's friend.'"

"I didn't ask to come to Tarpley. I just ended up here."

"So you have no personal responsibility at all."

"To Beau and Merritt. To Merry. Not to anyone or anything else, Mr. Jameison."

Anthony shook his head. "I got no problem with how people live their lives. As long as it doesn't affect the kids. And they seem all right."

"If you knew, why did you let it go on?"

He frowned.

"About Vincent, I mean." Saying his name felt sacrilegious, but he was a part of her life now.

"I guess Merry was a distraction. We thought if she weren't around so much, he could meet someone else. He always had such good buddies. Like Jake. I know he babysits sometimes. I mean, he was popular. We thought the guys would set him straight." He chuckled bitterly.

Natalie opened her mouth.

"Why didn't he just tell us?"

She closed her mouth.

"Why not just come out? Both of them? We didn't raise him in a hateful environment. We didn't tell him to go hating gay people or anything like that. But he went and joined the army. For God's sake, why would he do that if he was--That confused us so much."

"Meredith said--" But she stopped herself. She wouldn't do that. Those were Vincent's most private feelings. The kind of man he was--only Meredith knew. And Jake. Now her. Maybe one day, the kids. But not his parents. Vincent's feelings were none of their business. So instead of telling them truths about the war, she made guesses about his sexuality.

"It's hard enough in the city. Where meeting someone is just going down to the 'arts' district and finding a coffee shop. Maybe going to a film festival. Or going to a school where there are two thousand students, so a good twenty of them are in the Gay Straight Alliance. Growing up in Tarpley? Vince probably only knew one or two people like him. Even in the Army, the way it is, I'm sure there were more."

"Obviously," Anthony said, snorting.

"Maybe settling with Meredith meant he didn't have to leave home. She's--"

"She's poor white trash," Anthony said.

Natalie hadn't expected those words to come out of his mouth, but the hard expression told her he was serious.

"She went to college," she said, lamely, unprepared to defend Meredith's reputation this way. Murder, religion, sexuality, sure. But the rural ways of North Carolina were still a mystery. Like learning a foreign language, she felt like she needed to go to the bathroom and could only remember the word for "bus station."

"Yeah, who do you think paid for it?"

Natalie didn't know much about Meredith's parents. They were still alive, somewhere in western North Carolina, which might have been another continent. Meredith didn't talk about them much but she seemed to like them all right, and Natalie assumed they were marginally better than the Jameisons.

"And look who's paying now," Anthony said. "She upgraded."

The hate, Natalie realized, was something she would never be able to relieve or talk them out of. The boys could go to Harvard, Meredith could save their lives at the hospital, she could bake cookies or fix parking tickets or pray for them, but their hatred of Meredith would remain absolute. It was a fact of Natalie's life, like air and water. And love.

Beau came up to them, proudly holding aloft his box of 64 Crayolas. Natalie knelt and asked him what his favorite color was and watched him pry open the box until the crayon smell, waxy and rubbery and childhood, filled her senses. She put her hand on Beau's back, listening to him talk, resisting the urge to take Beau in her arms and shelter him from the world swirling around them.

# #

Chapter Forty-Four

The alarm woke Natalie early. Sunlight taunted from outside her window. She'd been getting the boys up at seven every morning for the week before school started, timing breakfast and dressing before the bus was due to arrive at 7:45. She wanted to drive them to school. She saw no good reason not to. But Meredith insisted they embrace their independence.

Natalie took them on a couple of dry runs to their classroom, met their teacher, pointed out repeatedly which bus number to ride. The alarm clock read 6:02 before she finally moved enough to turn it off. The bed was too big--a sea of empty space to traverse. She rolled onto her back. "You should be here," she thought to Meredith.

Next to the clock was a picture of Meredith and Vincent, arm in arm, taken on the porch the day they'd moved in. The boys were already two years old by then, and Meredith was working at the hospital. The newest nurse on the block.

"You should be here, too," Natalie said to Vincent.

Natalie wasn't quite sure when she'd started praying with Vincent in her thoughts. She still felt like an interloper in this house, with the boys, while their parents were absent. But she felt inside their realm, invader or not.