The New Elvis (7 page)

Zella shuddered, took a deep breath, and knocked. The music stopped. Inside his room, still decorated like Ariel the mermaid’s fantasy pad, Ryan fell silent. Zella tried the door handle.

“Just a minute, Mom.”

She heard the bedsprings creak as Ryan got up. He opened the door a crack and peered out at her. “What’s up?”

Ryan was now sixteen, a junior in high school, dealing with an emotionally absent father and friends who were into drugs.

“Can I come in?”

He opened the door wide enough for her to pass through. She took a seat at his desk and turned to face him as he flopped down onto his bed and nudged his guitar with his foot so it was out of the way. He grew more handsome as each year passed, his dark hair thick and wavy, his skin unblemished, his eyes the clearest blue, his nose as classic as that of Michelangelo’s David, his jaw strong, his bottom lip so full it looked Botoxed.

“I heard you’re going out with your father to see a house after school tomorrow to see how he works, what he does.”

“Yeah. We’ve been arguing. I’m going to see if we can reach common ground.”

“That’s very mature of you. Sounds like something a parent would say. Have you been talking to Mr. Edwin?”

Ryan closed his eyes. He hadn’t had a good, long talk with the Edwins since the night Bea kissed Kincaid. It was as if the closeness they once shared was as insignificant now as the dust motes floating between the open slats on his shuttered bedroom windows. Neither had he been over to their house, despite its proximity to his own, though he did see the Edwins in their yard from time to time, and his mother was right—it was Mr. Edwin who had told him to make an effort with his dad before things became irreparable. Mrs. Edwin still asked him to dinner whenever she spotted him outside, but Ryan always declined. Instead, he spent his free time with three buddies who liked to get high, listen to music, and use fake IDs so they could get into nightclubs on weekends.

“Was that a new song you wrote?”

Despite the fact he was lying down, Ryan managed to shrug. “I’m not so sure about writing songs anymore. I haven’t been inspired for a long time now.”

“But you’re a natural performer,” Zella protested. “Just like me.”

Ryan sat up. “You had fun, huh?”

“Did you know I still have a trunkful of magic stuff I never showed you? It’s in the rafters over the workbench. Come on, come outside with me and help me pull it down.”

Curious, Ryan got up and followed his mom out of his room, down the stairs, and out to the garage. Using a ladder, he brought down the dusty silver trunk she specified, and together, they dragged it into the backyard, past Nana, fast asleep by the pool, next to her water bowl. Facing each other, they took lawn chairs at opposite ends of the latched trunk, and Ryan took a deep breath. Then Zella unfastened the lid, threw it back, and they both peered inside.

Things were going downhill fast at the Lockhart home. In full avoidance mode, Jarrod spent more time away, chroming bumpers and selling drugs, only coming home to see if his wife and son were alive—if miserable—and had a few dollars to spend before he headed out again. Bagging drifts of accumulated goods like fallen leaves and putting them out at the curb had backfired. That week, Ramona hauled a Hefty bag back inside, dumped it out, and began to scream as she held up a plastic container of baby powder.

She shook the container for emphasis, and it rattled. “Do you see this?”

Jarrod’s hands were in fists at his hips, and his face was haggard. “What?”

She sat on the edge of a set of Rubbermaid drawers and unscrewed the lid to the container, dumping the contents into her pudgy open palm. “Look!”

Costume jewelry and rings with synthetic stones she had bought on QVC filled her hand and spilled over onto a pile of magazines stacked on the rug. She looked like a pirate sifting through gold doubloons. “This one I got last year, this one I got when MawMaw died, and this one I got just last month.”

She held up a ring embedded with tourmaline chips, and Jarrod took it from her.

“What is that, green bottle glass?”

She screamed and snatched it away. “No!”

“Who keeps their jewelry in an old baby powder container?”

“I do! What if someone broke in and robbed us?”

A vein throbbed on Jarrod’s forehead. “They’d never find it in this landfill!”

“That’s right! Because everything precious is hidden in something unexpected! The first thing burglars would look for is a jewelry box!”

Jarrod willed himself to calm down. Then, as though a switch had been flipped, he shrugged and walked to the door, looking wasted, thin, and as dirty as his son.

“I gotta go.”

He cast a rueful look at Logan, who stood there in gray long johns, holding a dog-eared issue of Spider-Man. On the cover, against a yellow sky, Spider-Man traversed between buildings, his right foot forward. The comic was ripped in the corner. The superhero was missing his non-web shooting hand that should have been in the upper right-hand corner.

As Jarrod went out the front door, he let the screen door bang.

Ramona dumped her jewelry back into the powder canister.

“Logan, go latch that.”

Dutifully, Logan did as told. Then, he had an idea. “Mom, you know how MawMaw’s room is the only place in the house that’s clean?”

Ramona scoffed. “I don’t keep a dirty house.”

Logan took her by the hand. “Come with me.”

The door to MawMaw’s room creaked on its hinges when he pushed it inward. The room smelled of musty flowers and Vicks VapoRub, which Ramona had slathered on her mother’s chest, arms, and legs when she complained of everything from congestion to sore muscles. Of course, it never helped the cancer. It was her daughter’s ministrations that made MawMaw feel better. Her painkillers were kept in a side table, and a fresh pitcher of ice water was replenished three times a day. Logan could still picture her propped up in bed with four pillows beneath her head and back, a scarf on her grayed head, bundled in her robe, even though she was beneath two blankets. The window stood open, and a breeze blew the sheer curtains embroidered with sunflowers at the hemline. She didn’t read or watch TV. Instead, she played solitaire with an old deck of cards adorned with Chester the Cheetah, the big-faced cat in sunglasses, a promotional item given away at the grocery store at a time when Ramona was going through a family-size bag of Cheetos every day.

When Logan would visit MawMaw in her room, he’d sit at the end of the bed, and she’d have him guess whether the card she was holding was red or black. Once, he got four out of five correct. They had all been black. One time he told her he thought, instead of the Kings, Queens, and Jacks, the artist should have put Chester’s face on the royalty, and MawMaw threw her head back into the pillows and laughed ‘til she gasped for air. She was missing teeth in the back of her mouth instead of the front, like many old people with infrequent dental care, and he wondered if she’d swallowed them. After she died, Logan went into her room, took a jar of the mentholated rub from her side table drawer, and looked in her dresser. Weeks after the funeral, all of her belongings were still neatly folded in the drawers, the right amount in each one, none on them overfilled. Logan touched the nylons and garter belts, girdles and bras she must have worn years ago. There was even a box of maxi pads that looked like diapers, which didn’t embarrass him as much as he thought it might. They were more a curiosity, the big pads with a set of instructions that showed a woman fitting a pad into clips on an elastic belt that made her look like she was wearing the letter “Y” below her waist. The dresses in the closet were all size nine, and many had rhinestone buttons, lacy collars, and large pockets. There was a carton of Camel Lights on the high shelf, shoeboxes with tissue sticking out from under the lids, scrapbooks, and a large, stuffed Steiff bear Grandpa had given her after they met. The only things Ramona had taken from the room that had belonged to her mother were the Elvis albums and the small tabletop stereo with tinny speakers. They were now in an unused room in the four-bedroom house, a catchall room where Ramona liked to listen to music and reminisce back to when MawMaw was alive and life was good.

Logan sat his mom down on the side of the bed and told her to stay put. Then, he went and got a single Rubbermaid container that wasn’t too heavy to drag and brought it into the room.

“Let’s pretend, OK?”

Ramona sighed deeply. “Is this going to take long? Go get my cigarettes.”

Logan found an unopened pack, a lighter, and an ashtray, and brought them to her. Instead of arguing with him that she already had an open pack and didn’t want them to go stale, she unwrapped the cellophane on the fresh pack of cigarettes, tapped one out, and lit it.

Logan took that as a good sign she just might listen.

Once Zella unlatched the trunk and threw back the lid, she moved aside so Ryan could look inside. He was dressed in a blue T-shirt and jeans, his image reflected back on the inside mirrored lid as he reached in and brought things out.

Dressed in overall shorts and a form-fitting, ribbed white tee, Zella sat on the lawn, her elbows on her raised knees. Her feet were bare, and her lustrous hair was clipped up. Between her youthful demeanor and the fact she was keeping her looks as she aged, she seemed more like her son’s older sister than his mother.

Ryan pulled out a clear bag containing a stainless steel sheathed blade, a circular base, and a set of Styrofoam cups. “What’s this?”

Zella jumped up with the grace of a young athlete and nearly skipped over to the picnic table near the pool. “Come over here.”

A few feet from the table, Nana woke, gave her head a shake, and barked once.

“You can be our audience, girl,” Ryan told her. He sat down across from his mother and handed her the bag. Zella removed the blade, unsheathed it, and placed it on the flat wooden table, weatherproofed the previous spring in lacquer the shade of cinnamon. A sudden gust of wind caused the Styrofoam cups to skitter off the table and roll across the lawn. Nana barked again and rose to chase them with Ryan.

He returned with them, winded. “Maybe we should go inside.”

“No, this will just take a minute.”

He watched as she inserted the blade straight up into a circular base and covered it with one of the cups. Then she placed the other two cups upside down beside it and turned around on the bench. “OK, mix them up.”

Ryan rearranged them and stood up. He examined the cups from different angles to see if he could detect any differences between them and couldn’t.

“OK, you can turn around.”

Zella whipped around on the bench, her eyes gleaming. She stood up and studied the cups, then slammed her palm down on the first one, crushing it.

Ryan was horrified. “Mom!”

“It’s OK, it’s OK.” She walked around the table, then back to her side. She crushed the middle cup with her fist next.

“Oh, my God!”

Zella wore a mischievous expression. “What?”

Ryan lifted the third cup off the table. The stainless steel blade glinted in the afternoon sunlight. “How did you know where the knife was?”

Zella lifted up the base and turned it over. Four inches of fishing line had been taped across the bottom so an inch stuck out from beneath the base. The line was so thin it was difficult to see, even when one looked closely.

“You look for that little bit of fishing line.”

Ryan was amazed. “I didn’t even see it.”

“Go get something else.”

Feeling enthusiatic, Ryan went over to the trunk and picked out a bag containing a pair of shackles and a key. He returned to the table and started to hand it to her, but she waved him off. “You can take them out.”

Ryan removed the handcuffs and key and looked at his mom expectantly. She came over to him and put her hands behind her back. “Cuff me.”

He hesitated. “Are you sure?”

Held against his mother’s delicate wrists, the cuffs looked heavy. Reluctantly, he snapped them on her. They looked like bright bracelets.

“Lock them.”

Ryan fit the key in the tiny lock and turned it.

“Test that they’re locked.”

Ryan tugged. They were secure.

Zella turned around, her back to him. “OK, sing me a song.”

“What?”

“Something happy. I’m tired of your teenage angst.”

Ryan broke into a grin, and Zella thought he must be the handsomest young man in the world. Their eyes locked, blue on blue. He sang the opening lines to “On the Street Where You Live”, then stopped and looked at her expectantly.

“‘My Fair Lady’. Makes me think of you and Bea.”

A shadow crossed Ryan’s face. Mr. Prescott had them do that musical in fifth grade. Ryan wondered what he was doing now, if he was still teaching. “Harry Connick Jr. did a jazzed up version of that song,” he said.

“You don’t want to talk about Bea, do you?”

Ryan scowled. “Not much.” She had been the only one for him, and her interest in Kincaid had been an abrupt wake-up call.

“Because of how sick she’s been?”

“What do you mean?”

Zella was stunned. “You don’t know?” She turned her back to him to show she was free of the handcuffs and handed them to him.

The blood had drained from Ryan’s face. He needed to sit down.

Logan sat in his backyard fort, defeated, and stared through the chain-link fence separating the Lockharts’ yard from the Henns’ property. The neighboring house was quiet, and it was early evening. He had given up on his mother after trying for hours to get her to sort through her possessions piece by piece, his reasoning being that if she was mad at his dad for discarding boxes without examining the contents, perhaps this careful approach would work better. Everything he showed her, though, was something she wanted to keep: moldy Q-Tips that would never—should never—be used, a candy dish shaped like a basket with a cracked handle, empty L’Eggs pantyhose containers, chipped mugs, dried tubes of paint, stained dishtowels, rag dolls with no arms, an incomplete set of dominoes. It all had to be saved because it meant something to her.