13
WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS
Grace moved quietly around the kitchen making
coffee, almost as if she were performing a pantomime. A noisy
summer storm had blown in just past midnight. Then, after it had
died down, late into the night the sounds of Horowitz playing
Beethoven sonatas had drifted down the hallway from her father’s
bedroom to hers. She would be surprised if her father had managed
to get to sleep at all before dawn.
Lou had always been an early bird, but
now later mornings were becoming a pattern for him. What did he
think about at night as he played his CDs, or even just listened to
the wind in the trees outside his window?
Following the initial diagnosis, her
father had spoken of doing things just the same as always. That had
been back when Lou was pestering her to return to Portland.
Everything had changed with the fire. The fire had given the
diagnosis teeth.
She’d spent the following week
arranging to get the Sheetrock above the stove replaced. After
that, the kitchen had needed repainting, which she had done
herself. A new stove was going to be delivered the next day—an
electric stove, so they could hook up an automatic shut-off device
that Steven had found on the Internet.
She had been busy, but not so busy that
she hadn’t noticed the change in her father. He’d stopped griping
at her to leave and didn’t fuss at her for doing things. He never
spoke of his worries, but she sensed them
nevertheless.
After all her efforts to be so quiet
this morning, the knock at the front door struck her nerves like a
gong. She glanced at the old kitchen clock as Iago exploded in a
series of yodeling barks that lifted his front paws off the ground.
It was still just after seven, a little before the time Dominic
usually made it over. But Dominic rarely came to the front door. He
was at home enough now to traipse around the side yard and bang on
the kitchen door. If no one answered, he knew the hiding place for
the spare key.
Iago finally worked up enough steam to
launch himself into a lumbering run. Grace was then forced to
wrestle past him to wedge the front door open.
Ray, Dominic’s dad, was waiting, his
expression impatient. The step down the porch put him just slightly
above eye level to her.
“What are we going to do?” he
asked.
Alarm gripped her. “Has something
happened to Dominic?”
He looked as if the name jarred a
distant memory. “Dominic?”
“Your son.”
“I know, but . . .” He stopped,
confused. “Haven’t you seen your tree?” He angled to one side,
making way for her to join him on the porch.
At once the problem became clear. The
storm had taken out a massive branch from the elm tree, which now
bisected Lou’s front yard and half of Ray’s, too. By some miracle,
Ray’s car hadn’t been demolished; the limb had missed his vehicle
by inches. Unfortunately, his Prius was now trapped between the
branch and the garage.
No wonder he was
perturbed.
“We’ve got to move it,” he
said.
We? The branch
was big, it was heavy, and it was still attached to the tree by a
sinew of bark. She could no more move it than she could have picked
up his Toyota and carried it to the street.
“I need to get to work,” Ray said. “I
have meetings.”
“I’ll have to call a tree company,”
Grace said. “I’ll try to get someone out as soon as possible, but
after a storm like this . . .”
Ray gave the branch the evil eye, as if
hoping to move it through sheer willpower.
Didn’t his office accept acts of God as
an excuse for absenteeism? She’d never seen someone seem so
mournful at the idea of missing business meetings, but she
shouldn’t have been surprised. From what she could gather, he
certainly wasn’t throwing himself into his home life. Dominic made
it sound as if Ray spent most of his evenings at home hibernating
in his den.
At a loss for what else to say or do,
she and Ray ambled over to the tree, stopping where the fallen
branch seemed its thickest and most immovable. The elm had been
there as long as Grace could remember. Would they have to chop it
down now? She hoped not. But it was frightening that something so
solid looking could just come crashing down without
warning.
“I’m glad no one got hurt,” she
said.
Ray toed the branch a couple of times,
testing it, and glanced back at her. “Hurt?”
“It could have fallen on
someone.”
“It was the middle of the
night.”
“I know, but if it had happened during
the daytime . . .”
“Oh, I see,” he said, apparently not
interested in following her train of thought.
Maybe he’d had enough of real tragedy
to know better than to go looking for the hypothetical
kind.
The screen door to Wyatt Carter’s house
banged opened, and Wyatt’s teenaged son came out and jogged around
to their garage. He yanked open the manual garage door, rooted
around for a bit, and finally emerged with a pair of protective
goggles around his neck and a chain saw in his hand.
“I can clear it out for you,” he said.
“A hundred dollars. And the firewood.”
Grace frowned.
“That’s not too much, is it?” the boy
asked.
“No, but . . .” She shook her head. She
barely knew this kid. “It’s Crawford, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“I’m sure a hundred dollars is a lot
less than what a tree guy would ask,” she said. A
damn sight less. “But I’m not so sure you should be out here
wielding a chain saw. Is that your dad’s?”
“Dad won’t care.”
“I would care if something happened to
you. You’re fifteen, right?”
“Practically sixteen,” he
said.
She tossed a questioning glance at Ray.
“What do you think? Is practically-sixteen chain-sawing
age?”
“I wouldn’t let my sixteen-year-old
anywhere near a chain saw,” Ray said, arguing against his own
interests. “For the safety of the community.”
Crawford shifted back to Grace. “You
can ask my dad, if you want. I’ve done this kind of work a lot. My
granddad has a Christmas tree farm. I’m very
responsible.”
“Okay, I’ll ask him.” Grace looked at
her watch. “But I’m not sure he’ll be up at this hour.” On his days
off, Wyatt usually stumbled out in his robe to retrieve the
Statesman sometime around ten.
“Oh, he’s up,” Crawford assured her,
beckoning her toward his house.
Just as they reached the porch, the
door crashed open and a blonde in a maroon uniform jacket and skirt
hurtled out the door. “Bastard!”
The woman nearly plowed into Ray, who
jumped back, embarrassed and confused.
“Not you,” she
assured him in an irritated voice, thumping her compact wheelie
suitcase down the porch steps. She stopped, eyed them all, and
gulped in a breath. “Do any of y’all know where there’s a bus
stop?”
All together, they pointed mutely
toward the corner. The blonde rolled her eyes and let out a huff.
“How often does it come by?”
“About every twenty minutes?” Grace
guessed.
At that moment, a bus could be heard
trundling down the street.
“Crap on a stick!” The woman took off
running.
Wyatt appeared at the door in a red
robe, a cup of coffee crooked in one hand. “Enjoy Albuquerque,
Susan!”
“Go to hell!” she hollered without a
backward glance.
They all turned back to Wyatt, who was
smiling appreciatively after her. “You should see her on an
airplane. Woman wields a drink cart like a weapon.”
“Lucky for you she didn’t have a weapon
handy this morning,” Grace observed.
He shrugged. “My day off, and she
expects me to drive her all the way out to the airport. Go
figure.”
Crawford cleared his throat. “Dad, will
you tell them it’s okay for me to use the chain saw so I can get
the branch out of the driveway?”
Puzzled, Wyatt glanced left, finally
noticing the world beyond his own front porch. “Holy
Moses!”
“They’re afraid I’m going to saw my leg
off or something.”
“He won’t saw his leg off,” Wyatt said,
stepping gingerly by them in his bare feet to take a closer look at
the damage. “Damn!” He took a slurp of coffee. “What were you
trying to do, Grace? Get yourself a chip for the other
shoulder?”
Ignoring the father, Grace turned to
the son. “One hundred dollars and firewood. And please be careful.
If you could start by clearing the West driveway, that would be
best. Ray has to get to work.”
“Sure!” Crawford said, eager
beavery.
She turned to Ray. “Okay?”
He nodded and then pushed his glasses
up to the bridge of his nose, studying her. “Were you over at my
house one day?”
She laughed. “Evidently I made a big
impression.”
“I had forgotten,” he
explained.
Wyatt chortled. “Way to turn a woman’s
head, West!”
Ray looked at him, confused, and then,
as realization dawned he turned back to Grace with a mortified
expression. But she could tell it wasn’t just mortified on her
behalf. He seemed equally stunned by the idea that someone would
think that turning a woman’s head was anywhere on his
agenda.
“Don’t worry,” she reassured him. “I
have that effect on people. Remarkably unmemorable.”
Whatever Ray intended to say was
swallowed by the earsplitting whine of the chain saw.
Since the incident at the Salt Lick,
Uncle Truman had been avoiding the house almost as assiduously as
Peggy had been. But a fallen branch was too much for him. He
knocked on the door and barged in past Grace.
She was as relieved to see him as she
was irked. It would have been bad if her losing her temper had cost
her father the companionship of his brother, geriatric old coot
though he was.
“You have a branch down,” Truman
announced.
The town crier of the blatantly
obvious.
“I know.” Her father had barely managed
to make it out to the living room assisted by his cane. His cast
was gone, but he still treated the leg with distrust.
“I don’t know why it decided to fall
like that,” Truman wondered. “Storm wasn’t that bad. Are you going
to chop down the elm? It’s a big’un.”
“Not as big as it was last night,”
Grace muttered. The absence of the one branch had exposed one patch
of yard to the sun for the first time in decades.
Lou sat down in his chair. “I hope we
don’t have to chop it down.”
“Are you feeling all right today?”
Truman asked, his brow crinkling. Grace could read his thoughts.
My brother’s going downhill fast. And he’s five
years younger.
“Of course I am.”
Truman sat down next to him. “That boy
out in your yard looks like he’s doing an okay job. I watched him
for a good long while.”
“Grace hired him,” Lou said. “A
neighbor boy.”
Truman darted a nervous glance at
her.
“Do you want something to drink, Uncle
Truman?” Grace asked.
“No, thank you.”
“Well, what do you want?” Lou
asked.
Truman pivoted. “Pardon?”
“What are you doing here? You surely
didn’t come by just to tell me that the elm tree had lost a branch.
I had that all figured out on my own.”
“I just happened to see it, was all,”
Truman explained.
“How did you happen to see it this
early in the morning?” Lou tightened his grip on the foam handle of
his cane. “Coming by to see if I’d fallen apart yet?”
Truman looked
shell-shocked.
Grace stepped forward. “Are you sure
you don’t want something to drink, Uncle Truman?”
“I’m not going to suddenly go
catatonic, you know,” Lou continued. “That’s not the way it
happens. I do have some time. Not that we’ve seen too much of you
since I was diagnosed.”
Her uncle looked so stricken, even
Grace felt sorry for him. And guilty. It was probably her fault he
hadn’t wanted to come over. “I don’t think that’s why Uncle Truman
was in the neighborhood, Dad.”
“Well then, why?”
“I was over at Peggy’s.”
“What were you doing over there at this
hour?” Lou asked.
Truman darted an uncertain glance over
at Grace.
“Also, I think there’s still some
banana bread left,” she said, “if anyone would care for a piece.
I’ll go check.”
She fled to the kitchen just as
Dominic, Iago, and Crawford were filing in for a break through the
side door. Iago trotted toward the living room, while the boys
beelined it for the fridge.
It hadn’t taken Crawford long to figure
out the routine, Grace thought.
“Are you out of root beer?” Dominic
asked, put out.
“Uh . . . yes. There’s ginger ale,
though. And orange juice.”
Both boys reached for cans of ginger
ale and flopped into chairs at the table.
“How did it go?” Grace
asked.
Crawford looked exhausted, and perhaps
Dominic had exhausted himself through osmosis because he let out a
sigh and said, “There’s a lot of wood out there now! It’ll make a
huuuge pile. What’re you going to do with it all?”
“That’s up to Crawford. It’s
his.”
“I’m gonna sell it.” Crawford looked up
at Grace. “You should take some first, though. Y’all have a
fireplace, right?”
Her first instinct was to say that they
really didn’t need to be setting fires on purpose. But then she
realized how crazy that was. Life couldn’t stop. Her dad had always
loved having fires in the winter, especially during the holidays.
“Yeah, we do. That would be great.”
“I hate the thought of winter,” Dominic
said. “I don’t want to even think about having to go back to school
in a few days, and starting sixth grade.”
“Sixth grade!” Crawford laughed. “Come
on. Sixth grade is, like, no
pressure.”
“I hate my school,” Dominic said. “I
wish I could go to public school, but my parents went to this
school, and so all of us are supposed to go there until high
school. We have to wear uniforms, and all mine are gonna be too
small.”
“There’s a solution to that problem,”
Grace said. “It’s called new uniforms.”
“Yeah, but then I have to ask someone
to take me to buy them.”
“Wouldn’t your dad take you? Or
Jordan?”
Dominic’s eyes were huge. “My sister?
Are you joking? I don’t want my sister buying my
clothes!”
“Just to drive you there,” Grace
explained. “She wouldn’t have to follow you into the dressing
room.”
“Jordan doesn’t drive,” Dominic
said.
“Your sister, the girl with the blue
hair?” Crawford asked. “How old is she?”
“Sixteen,” Dominic said.
Crawford slammed his ginger ale down on
the table so hard that a little fountain of pop spurted out. “She’s
sixteen and she doesn’t know how to drive? Why didn’t she take
driver’s ed?”
“She did. But she never
drives.”
“As soon as I can,” Crawford said, “I’m
going to get a license, then a car, then a job, then an apartment.”
He ducked his head. “I mean, after I graduate, I’ll get an
apartment. Then I won’t have to ask anyone’s permission for
anything, or be shuttled from house to house.”
“I hear that,” Grace said.
Crawford looked surprised. “Were your
parents divorced?”
She nodded. “When I was really little.
And then my mom moved to Oregon and I had to go with her, even
though I wanted to stay here with my brothers.”
“See?” Crawford said. “That sucks
yangers.”
Dominic nearly spat out his ginger ale.
“You shouldn’t say yangers in front of Grace!”
“Sorry,” Crawford said.
“No, you were right,” she said. “It
sucked. Yangers.”
The front door shut, and Grace left the
boys for a moment. In the living room, she found her dad alone,
intently scratching Iago’s ears.
“What happened to Uncle Truman?” she
asked him.
“He left. He told me he and Peggy plan
to get married.”
She flopped into her usual chair.
“They’re nuts.”
“So you knew.” He frowned. “Did you
tell me about their engagement already?”
“No, I didn’t. I don’t know why. I
guess I didn’t want to upset you.”
His head snapped up and his eyes
suddenly focused on her like laser beams. “Why? Why shouldn’t they?
They’re not getting any younger.”
“Why should
they? What’s the matter with the way things are?”
“They’re lonely.”
“Okay, but do they have to suddenly
become simpering lovebirds? Cooing at each other in restaurants and
exchanging rings?”
“What are you talking
about?”
Oops. She had
just assumed that Truman had spilled all the beans about that
incident. “When I was with Wyatt at the Salt Lick, I saw Uncle
Truman give Peggy a ring.”
“Did you congratulate
them?”
She shrugged. “After a
fashion.”
“You should have told me,” he
said.
She should have, she saw that now. But
that had been the night of the fire. The ring incident hadn’t
seemed too important after that.
For a moment she thought her father was
going to go upstairs to be alone. He was putting on a brave face,
but she knew that deep down he really had to care about what he’d
just heard. Instead of leaving, however, he lifted his head and
called out, “Who’s up for a game of chess?”
Lickety-split, Dominic appeared and
settled himself in the martyr’s chair. “Today I’m going to win,” he
said.
Lou chuckled. “Just keep telling
yourself that, son.”
Crawford drifted in and pulled up a
stray dining room chair to observe the game for a bit. Grace put on
a record, and after that the only sounds were Mozart and Dominic’s
anguished groans until a light knock sounded at the
door.
“I wanted to bring your plate back,”
Lily said when Grace opened the door. “From when you gave me the
cookies.”
Grace reached out and took the flimsy
plastic platter she’d bought at the dollar store, which hadn’t even
cost a dollar. “Thanks. You didn’t have to trouble
yourself.”
“I know.”
Lily stayed rooted to the welcome mat,
her arms held tightly at her sides. There was something different
about her. Finally, Grace pinpointed what it was: lip gloss. And
instead of a ponytail, her hair was brushed straight and ornamented
with a red headband. She peered around Grace’s side to check out
the scene inside and then gazed pointedly at Grace.
“Would you like to come in?” Grace
asked.
“Well . . . okay,” Lily replied, as if
Grace had talked her into it.