That's what counts around here."
"Thanks."
When he went out, she let herself sit. Let herself shake.
Chapter 5
What didn't suck, Phoebe decided, was to come home after a viciously bad day and find two dozen stargazer lilies waiting for her. Essie had arranged them into quite a show in Cousin Bess's big Waterford vase, culling out a trio from the field for Phoebe's bedroom.
"You can have the whole lot up in your room, of course, but I thought-"
"No, this is fine. This is lovely." Phoebe leaned over for a sniff of them where they stood elegant and splashy on the piecrust table in the family parlor. "We can all enjoy them here."
"I didn't read the note." Essie handed it over. "And I have to admit, it was a bitter war of conscience and curiosity. Even though I know who sent them."
"I suppose he did. Well." Phoebe tapped the little envelope on her palm.
"Oh, for God's sake, Phoebe, read it!" Ava stood behind Carly, rubbing the girl's shoulders. "We're dying here. I considered wrestling your mama to the ground for that note."
Phoebe supposed when a man sent flowers to a house with four females, he sent them to all. She opened the envelope, and read.
"'See you Saturday. Duncan.'"
"That's it?" Disappointment dragged through Ava's voice. "Not much of a poet, is he?"
"I'd say he's letting the flowers speak for themselves," Essie corrected. "That's poetical enough."
"Mama, is he your boyfriend?"
"He's just someone I'm going to have dinner with tomorrow," Phoebe told Carly.
"'Cause Sherrilynn's big sister has a boyfriend, and he makes her cry all the time. She lays across the bed in her room and cries all the time, Sherrilynn says."
"And I bet Sherrilynn's big sister enjoys every minute of it." Phoebe reached down to cup Carly's face. "I'm not much of a crier myself."
"You cried when you called Roy last time."
A mother could never hide tears from a child, and a mother who thought she could was delusional. "Not so very much. I'm going to go up and change. I heard a rumor it's pizza night around here."
"And DVD and popcorn night!"
"I heard that, too. I want to go take off my work, and put on my play."
Upstairs, Phoebe sat on the side of the bed. Could a mother ever really protect her child from her mistakes, or the ripples from them that spread all through a life?
Weren't they in this house now because of a single event from more than twenty years before? Weren't they all who they were, with their lives tangled together under this roof, because of that steamy summer night when she was twelve? Decisions she made, actions she took, even words she spoke would affect her daughter forever. Just as her mother's had affected her.
Mama had done her best, Phoebe thought. But trusting a man with herself, with her children, had changed the course of their world. And she remembered it all, every movement, every moment, as if it were yesterday.
The room was a box of heat, stained with the grease of his sweat. He'd begun to swig whiskey straight from the bottle of Wild Turkey Mama kept up high in the kitchen cupboard, so the stench of whiskey added another smear to the trapped air.
Phoebe hoped he'd drink enough to pass out before he used the.45 clutched in his free hand that he'd taken to waving around like a mean little boy with a pointy stick.
Put your eye out, you're not careful.
He'd already fired off a few rounds, but just to kill lamps or bric-abrac and put holes in the walls. He'd held it to Mama's head, too, screaming and cursing as he'd dragged her across the floor by her long red hair. But he hadn't shot Mama, not yet, or made good on his threats to put a bullet in Phoebe's little brother Carter, or Phoebe herself.
But he could, he could, and he made sure they knew he would if they gave him any goddamn lip. So fear lived in the box, too, a terrible, helpless fear that hung in the trapped air like blackflies.
Though all the shades were drawn or the curtains pulled tight over the windows, she knew the police were outside. He talked to them on the phone, Reuben did. She wished she knew what they were saying to him because he mostly calmed down afterward.
If she knew, for sure, what they said to calm him, maybe she could say it, too, in the in-between times he got tired of talking to them and hung up the phone and before he stirred himself up hot again and they had to try to cool him off, one more time.
He called the person on the other end of the phone Dave, as if they were friends, and once he'd gone on a long ramble about fishing. Now, he'd gone back to pacing and drinking and cursing. The terrible in-between time. Phoebe no longer flinched when he swung the barrel of the gun toward the sofa where she and Carter huddled.
She was too tired to flinch.
He'd broken in just after supper, when the sun had still been up. It had been down a long time now. So long, she thought maybe it would be coming up again before long.
Reuben had shot the pretty little clock with the mother-of-pearl face that had been a wedding present to Mama and Daddy, where it sat on the dropleaf table, so Phoebe couldn't be sure how many hours had passed since its death at five minutes past seven.
Mama loved that clock. Phoebe knew that's why Reuben had killed it, because Mama set such store by that sweet little clock.
When the phone rang again, he slammed the bottle on the little table and snatched it up.
"Dave, you son of a bitch, I said I want the electric turned back on. Don't you fucking tell me you're working on it."
He waved the gun, and Phoebe heard Carter suck in his breath. She rubbed a hand over the point of his knee to keep him still, to keep him quiet.
As much store as Mama set by the little clock, she set a lot more by Carter. Reuben knew that, too. So hurting Carter was bound to be somewhere on Reuben's list of things to do.
"Don't you fucking tell me we're going to work this out. You're not in here sweating like a goddamn pig, using goddamn oil lamps. You get the air back on in here, and right quick, and the lights, or I'm going to hurt one of these kids. Essie, get your skinny, worthless ass over here and tell him I mean what I say. Now!"
Phoebe watched as her mother pushed out of the chair he'd ordered her to sit in. Her face looked haggard in the lamplight, her eyes stunned as a trapped rabbit. When she was close enough to take the phone, he hooked an arm around her throat, pressed the barrel of the gun to her temple.
Beside Phoebe, Carter braced to leap. Phoebe gripped his hand, hard, shook her head, to keep him on the couch. "Don't." She barely breathed the word. "He'll hurt her if you try."
"Tell him I mean what I say!"
Essie kept her eyes straight ahead. "He means what he says."
"Tell him what I'm doing now."
Tears slid down her cheeks, bumping into the dried blood from the cut his fist had ripped there earlier. "He's holding a gun to my head. My children are sitting together on the sofa. They're frightened. Please, do what he wants."
"You should've done what I wanted, Essie." He closed his hand over her breast, squeezed. "You should've kept doing what I wanted, then none of this would be happening. I told you you'd be sorry, didn't I?"
"Yes, Reuben, you told me."
"You hear that, Dave? It's her fault. Whatever happens in here, it's her fault. I was to put a bullet in her useless brain right now, it's her own damn fault."
"Mr. Reuben?" Phoebe heard her own voice, calm as a spring morning. It felt like it came from someone else, someone whose heart wasn't punching like fists into her throat. But Reuben's hard eyes tracked over and latched onto her.
"I ask you to talk, little bitch?"
"No, sir. I just thought maybe you were getting hungry. Maybe you want me to make you a sandwich. We've got some nice ham." Phoebe didn't-couldn't-allow herself to look at her mother. She felt her mama's fear rising like a flood, and if she looked at it head-on she might drown in it.