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Monday, December 30th, in the afternoon
I’m beginning to hate this place. Once again, she was at Elmhurst County Hospital. Charlotte made her way to Gani’s room, and identified herself to the guard posted outside of it. Barnes had told him to expect her, and she was allowed to go in.
Gani looked terrible, all bruises and cuts and bandages, yet a lot better than Charlotte feared he would.
“That was a close one, huh?”
He shook his head sadly. “Too close.”
She decided to plunge in and see what kind of response she would get. “I know about the tunnels.”
His eyes gave him away before he said anything, and he knew it.
“Charlotte, forget about them. Stay away from them. Don’t say anything about them. It might cost you your life.”
“Oh, I’m already aware of that, Gani. Thanks to whoever took those pictures on the night of the cross-burning, I’m now tied far more deeply to whatever’s going on than I ever intended. Just knowing you and Alexa is enough. I’m looking over my shoulder, having my Jeep checked out before I can drive it, and unable to feel safe walking around my own neighborhood or having my daughter stay with me because of the threat from whatever element is involved in Alonzo’s murder and everything that’s happened to you.
“Here I am, with one friend who lied to me in order to use me for an alibi in a murder she couldn’t have committed, and another friend who couldn’t have committed it either, but won’t tell me what’s really going on, so that I have the stress and fear of the unknown and no support from either friend involved with it. So now I’m pissed off. It is time for you to tell me what is going on in that lab, or I’m going to find a way to turn the place upside down in order to find out myself. And I know it has to do with those tunnels.”
She looked him straight in the eye, and imitated her old friend Honorine. “Spill it. Now.”
He sighed, then nodded in agreement.
“One of our colleagues in Physics had cancer. He used marijuana to help with chemo and such, and grew a few plants, but they weren’t doing all that well. I offered to take them to the lab greenhouse to see if they would do better. The buckeye plants almost looked like cannabis, anyway, and Alonzo didn’t have a problem with it. We made sure the plants and their growing medium met protocols, and tucked them in with the buckeyes, where they did fairly well.
“Alonzo and I were in the lounge one afternoon, and we kept hearing these noises, like there was a squirrel under the floor. We took up a section of the flooring and we saw Hewey down there in what looked like a tunnel.
“Alonzo laughed, and said he’d forgotten all about the tunnel, which ran to one of the outbuildings, and said that Eddie Corton, Janice’s grandfather, told him there was a bigger tunnel that once ran all the way to Bishop Hall, up there on the hill. It was used in the 1920s for bootlegging. But then Alonzo seemed to think about it for a minute, like he was remembering something, and told Hewey to leave the tunnel alone, the big one was blocked and probably dangerous.
“But he kept talking about it, especially after a few beers, reminiscing about Eddie Corton, what a great guy he was, and how he promised him that he would always look after Janice. Corton told him explicitly that he didn’t care what Alonzo did on the side, only that Janice would be looked after, since he had very little faith in Janice’s ability to look after herself financially or in any other way. In fact, he knew that Alonzo and Janice had married before she brought him home and announced it, because there was someone in her Peace Corp group that was actually there to keep an eye on her. She’d gotten into some kind of trouble here, and Corton wanted to get her out of town for a while. He told Alonzo right out that he’d had him looked into after reports of his romantic involvement with Janice, and unearthed details about his life and childhood that even Alonzo didn’t know, or at least wasn’t sure about. I got the impression that Corton and Alonzo met their match in one another, and a great respect and friendship grew from it. They were realists. Two of a kind.”
“Maybe that’s what attracted Janice to him—he was like a younger version of her grandfather, who she says she adored.”
Gani shrugged. “Could be. But Alonzo had had enough of it after a few years. He told me that as he got older, and especially after Alexa was born, he just wanted Janice to stop romanticizing him like a young girl would, to accept the good and the bad, to love the good and the bad, but it was like she had to see him as perfect in order to love him.
“Alonzo loved his work, especially research, but Janice couldn’t share that because she didn’t have the training or a scientific mind. She tried to be his lab assistant once and I guess it was a disaster. When Alexa came along, he suggested that she throw herself into motherhood, grow a garden, make the most of being able to be at home with her baby, and that seemed to work pretty well. Alonzo started a big kitchen garden for her, but ended up having to do most of the work, since Janice would forget to weed and water and fertilize in time.”
That last bit surprised Charlotte. “So the garden was Alonzo’s creation. I remember seeing it before, around the time Alexa graduated. It was huge and flourishing.”
“Well, by that time Hewey was helping Janice take care of it—which suited Alonzo just fine.” Gani took a sip of water. “But about the tunnels. I told Alonzo about old tunnels being used in hydroponic cannabis farms, and in the way we would often do, we started speculating about what would be needed to make a successful farm in the tunnel between the lab and the outbuilding. That in turn led to wondering if we could grow the buckeyes hydroponically in order to cut down on the expense and space for growing them, problems Alonzo was trying to solve with his hybridizing project as well as creating a plant with the maximum amount of saponins. But unless he knew it would work with the buckeye, he couldn’t change the setup in the greenhouse. It had to be done off-premises, as a preliminary experiment, if you will.
“So we went down in the tunnel ourselves, and Alonzo just kept hacking away at the boards and rubble until he found the start of the big tunnel. It went quite a way, up to some kind of cave-in. But it was in good enough shape to turn into a makeshift hydroponic farm. We decided to take the experimental element all the way and use solar power for the bulk of the energy needs, which was possible because the tunnel ran under a wide-open area with a lot of sunlight.
“I saw the solar panels.”
He nodded. “Those are ours. We had Hewey help us set it up. Alonzo actually knew how to handle Hewey pretty well, told him that Janice had a deep fear of tunnels, so to say nothing to her about what was going on. Hewey agreed to this wholeheartedly, which is no surprise since he’s like her puppy dog. But he worked hard, did everything we told him to do.
“Everything went really well until the plants went in. I put in half a dozen cannabis cuttings, so that we could get those potted plants out of the greenhouse before the client’s inspectors came. We built the entertainment center in the lounge to disguise the tunnel access. If you put your hand on the frame at the left of the TV, you’ll feel a latch behind it. That whole center unit opens like a big door and you can walk right down into both tunnels. Hewey was pretty handy with that, actually surprised us. He’s so stupid in some ways, but the guy can build and grow just about anything.
“Anyway, when Hewey saw the cannabis, I thought his eyes would pop out of his head. He clearly knew what it was, even though I’m under the impression he doesn’t smoke. I told Alonzo, and he said it reminded him of a story Eddie Corton told him about being at the mercy of the miners who built the tunnels, and having to promise them each a new car if nobody in town found out about what was going on.
“And that’s what Alonzo did—promised Hewey a car. But Hewey said he wanted a truck or a van, so he could make some money on the side delivering stuff for people, and Alonzo agreed, because then we would have a guy with a truck for the times we needed stuff delivered, too. Hewey didn’t say anything to anyone, or at least not to Janice, and when Alonzo was satisfied that everything was set up right, he bought Hewey a small delivery truck.”
A small delivery truck. Charlotte remembered something. “A white panel truck, by any chance?”
“Yeah.”
A nurse came in just then, asking Charlotte to step outside while she checked Gani’s sutures.
Charlotte recollected the white truck that blew the stop sign and sent her skidding into a snowbank when she swerved out of the way. Was Hewey driving it? And why would he be in such a hurry? Was he the one who robbed the greenhouse—thinking the plants were all cannabis?
If so, where was he taking it? And did Gani know?
Then there was Alexa’s account of the argument she witnessed in the lab’s lounge. Janice was upset about something illegal. It sounded like she, too, was under the impression the buckeye plants were cannabis—and that she was also seeing the hydroponic lab in the tunnel for the first time. Was there more to Alonzo’s statement to Hewey that Janice was afraid of tunnels than just an excuse to keep things from her?
It didn’t make sense to Charlotte, because Janice, according to Honorine Grady—and Jack—had a very relaxed attitude about drugs.
She lost no time asking Gani about it, after the nurse left with a warning that she’d have to leave soon to let him rest. “Janice discovered the tunnel that morning, before Alonzo was shot, right?”
“You know about that?”
“The fight had a witness.”
“Alexa? I knew it.”
“Don’t feel bad. She’s your proof that you didn’t shoot Alonzo, just like you’re hers—you both left well before the estimated time of death. Stick together, my friend.”
Gani looked frustrated, but he nodded. “You’re right, at least logically. But I still sense that on some level she hates me.”
“So tell me about Janice that morning.”
“Alonzo and I were checking on things, had the access to the tunnels wide open, when Janice came in. It was like the first time she’d been in the lab in at least several years, and she would happen to come in on a day we were feeling lazy. At first she didn’t seem to know what she was looking at, and then realized it was a tunnel, not a basement. And she thought the plants were all cannabis. For one reason or another it freaked her out.
“The problem was that when someone got aggressive with Alonzo, he would immediately become even more aggressive, and go for the win. So instead of reassuring her, he mocked her, and that just made her madder. The only time he seemed to deal with her issues directly is when she kept mentioning Alexa, and he said that if they needed a lot of money quickly, growing dope in the tunnel was a good way to get it done.
“Yet even that made her madder, impossible to reason with, and finally Alonzo used our relationship as a way to get her out of his face. I’m ashamed to say I wanted her out of my face, too, and when he kissed me in front of her, I kissed him back like there was no tomorrow. Little did I know there wasn’t, not for him.”
Gani grabbed some tissues out of the box on his tray and wiped the tears off his face. “I had to get back to campus, meet a couple of students and get some grading done. So he said he’d see me later if he could, the next day for sure. I saw Alexa getting out of a cab as I pulled out of the driveway.”
“Actually, Gani, that was Alexa attempting to leave—she got there early enough to witness a large portion of what went on in the lab, then decided to come back later in the day when things cooled down.” She explained how Alexa could see what was going on in the reflection off the observation windows.
Gani looked worried. “So she saw me and her dad kissing?”
“Yeah, but she knew her father’s inclinations. Right now she’s pretty frantic for other reasons. Janice isn’t a match for a kidney, and her father’s dead.”
“Janice is psycho. Alonzo’s words, not mine, and he meant medically, not metaphorically. Don’t trust her as far as you can throw this hospital.”
“What happened, then, after Alonzo was killed?”
“The robbery threw me. At first I thought the same thing as everyone else, that somebody came to steal what they thought was cannabis, and Alonzo tried to stop them or at least point out their stupidity, which led to his being shot. But Janice made it extremely clear to not let on about the tunnel lab, keep it hidden at all costs. She said that she wanted it shut down and the tunnels closed off, but it couldn’t be done until the police were finished with their investigation.
“I went along with it in part because I was in shock, and scared, and didn’t know what to think about any of this, you know? Furthermore, Alonzo was making me a business partner right before he died, and I didn’t know if the paperwork had gone through, or if it would continue to go through. Once I was legally an owner, I’d be able to have a say in things. So I decided to just lay low for as long as I could.
“The cross-burning happened right after Janice made it clear she wanted the tunnels shut down, which I thought was too much of a coincidence. Then there were those pictures on the hate group website, so I started to think that maybe there was another element to all of this.
“After my partnership in the business was confirmed, Janice did a one-eighty. She would now get only half the money from Alonzo’s contract work, and she needed more money than ever for Alexa’s medical expenses. She mentioned what Alonzo said about growing dope for a lot of money as quickly as possible. I felt for Alexa, and then understood what Alonzo was trying to do, have everything in place in case more money was needed. So I agreed, but explained that growing it was only part of the game, that it needed to be sold to someone who would process and distribute it.
“Two nights ago I was cornered in the driveway at the lab by a couple of biker dudes. Talk about shock. They had tattoos like the cross that was burned. They were big and forced me into the lab, where I was sure I was gonna die, because they kept talking about me taking them for fools, and what kind of shit I thought I was trying to pull, passing off something that wasn’t even low-grade hemp as cannabis. I told them I wasn’t trying to fool anybody, and I never said I was either growing or selling weed, and explained about the stolen buckeyes.
“They seemed to know about the hydroponic lab, and forced me to show them, so I did. They really liked what they saw, and since the buckeye plants growing in there were the same as the ones from the greenhouse, it backed up my claim that I was a scientist trying to grow something altogether different than weed, and that I didn’t try to sell them—they were stolen. I showed them the difference between the plants. But of course it only proved to them that cannabis could be grown there. They said to turn the whole thing over to weed, and they’d be back to talk money.
“Of course I had to tell Janice. I figured this was as good a chance as we’d get for selling any cannabis we grew to a dealer. She said she wanted to think about it, think it through, and I thought that was reasonable. But when she came back she had changed her mind again—she was ranting, said to destroy the whole thing and blow up the tunnels, because once those bikers got their tentacles in, we’d be at their mercy and lose everything, especially if they got caught. I told her to make up her damned mind, that I was getting fed up with being pushed around by her, by the thugs, by the university, by life, and I just ranted back at her until she cried and left. And after I wrapped up for the day and went home, I crashed into a tree. And that’s all I know.”
“So the tunnels are still intact, and the hydroponics?”
“Yes. She called me this morning, and I convinced her to wait, to give me a chance to get back to work. I could perhaps help the bikers set up a lab on their own property with the equipment in the tunnel, and that might be one way to get them out of her hair, and maybe get some money out of it. But I stressed to her to stay calm and not make them nervous or blow things up, because that would really bring in the authorities and we’d all be in deep for it, since she’s half owner of the lab. And she needed to think things through, to be certain for Alexa’s sake.”
He took another sip of water and looked up at her as if she had him pinned to the wall. “If you go to the cops with this, Charlotte, you will not only destroy my career and Alonzo’s legacy, you might be screwing up Alexa’s chances. She could go on Medicaid, sure, to cover the initial costs, but it doesn’t cover everything and she would lose it the minute she went back to work.”
Charlotte left, glad to know more about what happened on one hand, and wishing she didn’t know on the other.
Back home, she saw an email from Diane had come in, regarding the Corton Estate:
Hi Charlotte—E. M. Corton’s will was contested. He had originally left several bequests to people he was close to or their descendants, like his private secretary and somebody named Dodie Mahon, with the balance going 50/50 to his grandchildren, Janice and Jonathan. However, their mother Joan contested it and somehow managed to get the bulk of the estate left to Jonathan. The farm and a trust fund already belonged to Janice and Alonzo, and were in both their names. I’ve also learned that Alonzo left everything he owned to Janice, but since he made Gani a partner in the laboratory, Janice only gets a half ownership in the business. Jonathan Corton is very wealthy, in no small part because his mother left him everything on her death, and she in turn had a lot of money and land because she was a Vanderburgh, some of the oldest money in the state. She didn’t even mention Janice in her will, which said that Jonathan was her only child. She proved in court that she had given birth to only one child, Jonathan, and said that Janice was a foster child taken in by the family, but never officially adopted. It is possible that Janice Garibaldi has known that Joan isn’t her mother at least since E. M. Corton died.
Normally, the contents of a living trust are private, but when Joan contested the will, some of it became public record. From what I could tell, Janice and Alonzo’s fund was much larger when it was established than it was by the time Alonzo died. I’m thinking Alonzo might have tapped into it in order to build the laboratory. So there really isn’t much left in it for Janice, and by extension, Alexa. It would be no surprise if they are dependent on the income from Garibaldi Labs.
There it was at last—the proof that Janice Garibaldi was not the daughter of Alexander and Joan Corton. And there was the proof that Dodie Mahon was practically, if not literally, a member of the family to Eddie Corton.
And on top of all that, it was public knowledge that Janice wasn’t a “real” Corton, but an unadopted foster child. Even if this information was kept from her, it wouldn’t have been kept from Alonzo. He knew.
Charlotte was inclined to go with Honorine Grady’s suspicion that Janice was actually Corton’s daughter by a woman he sought out for solace. She looked over her notes. Honorine also said that Corton was awfully chummy with some of the men who had worked on the tunnels—and the ledger books suggested that one such relationship lasted all the way to a funeral in 1976 and a last payment for tunnel repairs in 1968, to Dodie Mahon.
Charlotte thought it was highly unlikely that the name of an old man who died in 1976 would turn up in an Internet search—but it did, in a genealogy site that gave the names, date and place of birth and date and place of death of the principal, and often of his or her parents, spouse, and children. Nearly every name under an entry was linked to its own entry.
She began, naturally, with Dodie Mahon, and learned that he was born in 1890 in Floyd County, Kentucky, and died in Elm Grove in 1976. His first wife, with whom he had five children died in 1930. He remarried in 1932 and had two more children, Earl and Dorene. Clicking on Earl didn’t turn up much of interest; by contrast, clicking on Dorene revealed a great deal more.
Dorene, who was born in 1934, didn’t marry until 1965. But she married a man named Burdock Sawyer, who turned out to be the son of Corton’s foreman Bud Sawyer, and the father of the four Sawyer brothers that Donovan went to school with—the ones who formed The White Ghost Riders. Dorene was listed as having had only one child, Hewlitt, in 1973—which was Hewey Sawyer’s proper first name.
If Dorene Mahon Sawyer was Janice’s mother, she would have been sixteen years old at the time she was seeing Eddie Corton; no wonder Corton would have wanted to keep it a secret, and no surprise that Dorene could have been persuaded to give up the baby.
Charlotte knew that some of her wishful thinking about Dorene Sawyer being Janice’s mother was in no small part because Dorene not only had a son, Hewey, she had a brother and possibly other relatives, vastly increasing Alexa’s chances of finding a family member who would make a good kidney donor.
At any rate, she now knew for certain that Hewey’s mother was Dorene Mahon, the youngest daughter of Eddie Corton’s foreman and general handyman, Dodie Mahon. She did a general search for Dorene, and found her photo in a newspaper announcement from 1964 of her engagement to Burdock Sawyer: a pretty, pale blond who looked a lot like Janice. It wasn’t proof, but it was leaning toward proof.
Were either Janice or Hewey aware of their relationship—and if so, for how long? And did that information have anything to do with Alonzo’s murder? And how did it actually work in relationship to the White Ghost Riders, the gang formed by Hewey’s much older half-brothers and resurrected by their kids and grandkids? She sighed. More information was still needed.
When Donovan called that evening, she told him about the tunnel off Bishop Hall, what Jack said about the Garibaldis, the conversation with Gani that confirmed the existence and current use of the tunnels off the lab, the email from Diane confirming that Janice Garibaldi was not Joan Corton’s daughter, and the genealogy site that confirmed Hewey’s grandfather was a beneficiary in Eddie Corton’s will.
“And there’s another thing, which I’d forgotten about until Gani said something. It happened right before I got to the train station to meet Alexa.” She told Donovan about the white panel truck that blew a stop sign and narrowly missed broadsiding her Jeep.
“My god, Charlotte! You never said a word.”
“I know. I sort of forgot about it after everything else that happened that day and ever since. It might not have anything to do with this. But it was very unusual, and I have to add it to the pattern of the day’s events, because Alonzo gave a truck just like that to Hewey as a way to make sure he didn’t tell Janice about the tunnels.”
“So if it was him in the truck, that implicates him in stealing the plants—and in killing Alonzo.”
“Exactly,” she said. “But the Sawyer brothers are almost definitely involved, as well—they personally cornered Gani and they’re pressuring him to grow weed for them in the tunnel.”
“You’re going to have to talk to Barnes about all this.”
Charlotte didn’t say anything for a bit. She still hadn’t quite decided what to do with the information Gani gave her about growing cannabis, and his warning that if she told the police—in this case Detective Barnes—a lot of lives could be ruined for all the wrong reasons.
“What’s up, sweetheart?”
“Moral dilemma about what to tell the detective. My problem is how much to tell Barnes, because so much of it is tangled up with the cannabis in the hydroponic lab that’s being grown for Gani’s friend who has cancer. It’s a real conflict for me.”
“Yeah, I can see that it would be. So we have to break it down, figure out what is really most important here.”
“Right.”
Donovan paused. “We’ve got a murdered guy, for one. Somebody’s killed Alonzo, and has also attempted to kill your friend Gani.
“Now, you’re right to be concerned about Alexa’s welfare, but we need to step back a little, and look at it in terms of the bottom line. Alexa is still able to have dialysis, if I understand correctly, and if worse comes to worst, she can get on Medicaid to help with a transplant. Getting the rest of the money is a bridge that can be crossed when she gets to it. But whoever is killing or attempting to kill people has to be stopped—before they kill someone else—and in my book that tops anything above and beyond the basics for Alexa.”
“Agreed. But if we send Barnes in there now, there’s no guarantee he’ll be able to determine who killed Alonzo, yet Gani risks losing everything, as does Janice, and by extension Alexa—not just their freedom, but property used in the growing or manufacture of drugs is often seized. And the legal costs would wipe them out, even if they won, because these days our local prosecutors and politicos like to milk the ‘drug problem’ for all its worth; they seem to be prosecuting possession of marijuana as severely as heroin. Barnes is a good guy, but even if he would be sympathetic to someone having a half dozen personal-use plants, it wouldn’t be easy for him to look the other way on this in the current political climate.”
Donovan sighed. “The very existence of a secret hydroponic operation plays to intent, Charlotte, even if there aren’t any illegal things growing in it. That might be one reason Janice wants it destroyed.”
“If it was you or me facing that problem, I would agree. But I’m not sure she would think it through that far.”
“True. It doesn’t sound like she’s keeping a cool head about it. It’s understandable, though. Look how that whole situation affects you—and you’re not the one who’s lost their husband, father, or lover.”
“I wish there was something I could do, just sort of swoop in and figure out what happened to Alonzo with minimum damage to anyone who’s innocent of his murder.”
“Not gonna happen, sweetheart. The war against drugs is like any other war—there’s gonna be collateral damage.”
“So I guess we just need to think which way will create the fewest innocent victims. But I’m stumped.”
Donovan paused again. “There’s one thing that we could try. Have a little talk with the queen bee.”
“Who? Janice Garibaldi?”
“Uh-uh. Dorene Sawyer.”
“Hewey’s mother? How do you figure?”
“She’s the one who might know the answers to a lot of the questions, like whether or not she’s Janice’s real mother, whether or not her stepsons or grandsons set that cross burning, and whether or not Hewey had anything to do with either killing Alonzo or stealing the plants. These matriarchs never lose their power over their clan. She might be eighty years old, but she’s still working as the bookkeeper at Lester’s, and as long as she’s sharp as a tack, she’s in the driver’s seat.
“Hewey is her baby, her own, even if he is forty. If he got into trouble, I’d stake my life on it that she would be there to either straighten him out or make the problem ‘go away,’ if you get my drift. For all we know, the White Ghost Riders might have been acting on her orders.”
“But that means she would cover up Alonzo’s murder.”
“Doesn’t mean she’ll succeed.” His voice sounded as if he relished the challenge of talking to Dorene. “Besides, there’s a wild card we can play—a desperately sick granddaughter who needs a kidney and a line of money.”
“You’re thinking she doesn’t know about Alexa?”
“She might know about Alexa, but not about her illness. I have a hunch that would be the one thing to make Momma Sawyer come forward, and show her hand.”
“It might also mean that Alexa now has at least two more relatives to ask for a donation. Dorene had a brother, and she might have other blood relatives besides Hewey that we don’t know about. I’m liking the idea of approaching her about it for that reason alone. You, know, find out for sure if she’s Alexa’s grandmother before getting her hopes up.”
“You could approach Dorene just like you did Jonathan Corton, although maybe it might be a good idea if I went along, seeing as these people might be murderers.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes at the idea. “Ya think?”
“I do.”
“There’s another possibility to all this, you know—Janice is just plain insane. She might be the one that told Hewey she wanted Alonzo dead, and Gani’s brake lines cut. And Hewey just does what she tells him.”
“Or Janice cut the brake lines herself,” he said. “Not beyond the realm of possibility, ‘cause you can find out how to do all kinds of things on the ‘Net.”
Charlotte looked up Lester’s on the computer and saw they would be open until six p.m. on New Year’s Eve, and told Donovan.
“Do you think you can resist going over there alone, and wait until I get back, sweetheart?”
“I think so. No worries. I need a day to just sit here and think about everything I know about this case. Plus, there’s getting ready for Jimmy’s party.”
A little while later, he sent an email:
“Hearing Aunt Helene play this morning brought back so many memories. When Ronson wasn’t around, my mother would sometimes listen to the radio, and one time there was this beautiful piano music playing. She said it was Aunt Helene performing. After that, whenever we’d get together as a family, I would ask her to play something for me. She usually did, except this one time when she and Uncle Paul had a fight. I can’t wait to get back tomorrow. D.”
When I looked up from my coloring book, they were in position at the dinner table in front of a window as big as a wall, backlit by a winter sky: my mother and father on one side, my aunt and uncle on the other. My father was seated, looking down at the white tablecloth, and my mother was setting a cup of coffee in front of him. My aunt had just been seated by my uncle, and he was leaning forward, his hands cupping her shoulders, as if saying something pleasant to her; they were both smiling. I loved to look at my aunt and uncle but I rarely took my eyes off my parents.
My mother and my aunt were sisters, and in those days my mother was still young enough to have the face of a woman, the kind where you could see remnants of having been loved. By the time my father died, it was the sexless face of hard labor. This does not mean she had been broken by her marriage, but that she had the will to endure it. Prisoners who survive the harshest sentences are the ones with the toughest will.
My aunt looked loved then, and, even several years after my uncle’s death, looks loved still. The determination that the old must have to live well despite being old is still softened by that aura of my uncle’s caress.
Two wives, two husbands. Two marriages. As far as I could tell, both marriages followed the same rules: husband, wife, job, house, car, and perhaps a child or a dog.
Once I saw my aunt and uncle fight, and it was tempestuous—yelling, cursing, things thrown. I was frightened, because when my parents fought like that it meant very bad things, days of cold danger until my mother could steel herself to do whatever had to be done to affect a truce. Then I caught my aunt and uncle in the kitchen after their fight, in a passionate kiss. It left me feeling aroused. It was many years before I realized that that was how I was supposed to feel about making up, the beauty in being able to forgive and be forgiven.
How did they pick each other, these husbands and wives? I can only say what I’ve seen as a man, to look upon a woman and imagine her as my wife, and then back away, uncertain. Marriage always seemed like such a gamble. When I came to understand my mother’s story, how she had been brutally rejected by another husband, my real father, and how the man I had always thought was my father married her without knowing everything about her, I laid the blame at his door. Yes, my mother was grateful to him for rescuing her and willed herself to wifely servitude—but what sort of man thought that would be enough? What sort of man thought it wouldn’t backfire, become a cancer on his happiness and hers?
Any sort of woman can make a sort of wife, any sort of man can follow the rules to be a husband, if they don’t question themselves and each other too deeply. Then I think of my aunt and uncle, and how she still carries the grace of their love. I know, then, what is possible.