The Summer That Melted Everything(52)

Each ribbon and clump of hair that fell, she sat a little taller, a little straighter. A drip from her forehead. A drip from her eyes. Her nose. Her cheeks. Drip, drip, drip. All sweat and tears, and yet wasn’t it the anger melting away before us?

I watched the ribbons fall, their curling and swirling like retiring snakes given the send-off by a woman letting go of the anger that had nearly cannibalized her.

Sal cut so close to her head, all that remained were her white roots. Once he finished, she stood and stepped away from the pile of orange hair and ribbons on the floor. She lowered her head and felt the short rise left.

“Auntie?” Mom reached toward Fedelia. “You all right?”

“All the weight of that hair. You get so used to carryin’ it around, you forget how heavy it is.” Fedelia raised her head and smiled. “I am so happy it is finally gone.”

She threw off the black coat, revealing the glistening chestnut and gold gown beneath. It was cut low in the front and back, fitting to a waist and hips I didn’t know she had. No more bags for her. Sequins and fit the rest of the way.

“Just name me Paradise.” She struck a pose that called to mind a certain duck in flight.

“You look so beautiful, Fedelia.” Mom smiled and lightly clapped her hands under her chin.

Fedelia lowered her arms. “I haven’t heard anyone call me beautiful in forty years.”

Dad held her wet cheek in his hand. “Then that was our fault, not yours.”

He didn’t stop staring at her as he said, “Fielding, tell your aunt how beautiful she is.”

“You’re beautiful, Aunt Fedelia.”

She grabbed Dad’s hand and squeezed it before kneeling down in front of me. “I haven’t been very nice to you, have I, Fielding?”

“You haven’t been nice to any of us.”

That was the first time I’d ever heard her laugh.

She thanked Sal and was about to say something more to him, but the loud knocking on the front door distracted us all.

We went to see who it was, Mom complimenting Fedelia the whole way while Fedelia nodded like she’d never been who she was before.

Through the windows around the front door, we could see Otis pacing the porch, pumping his shoulders and cracking his neck.

Dad stepped over to the door, but Fedelia warned him about opening it.

“He’s mighty boiled up ’bout somethin’. Might scald us all if ya let ’im in.”

Dad quietly slid the end of the chain into the locking track on the door. “We’ll just see what he wants. Isn’t the man owed that? Isn’t he still our friend?”

We weren’t so sure as Dad slowly turned the knob. Over his pacing, Otis heard the quiet opening of the door. The whole house shook as he clutched onto the frame to stop himself from overshooting the door in his mad dash for it.

His face was so damp, it looked as if it’d been attached to a water hose. He was squeezing his head in between the door and the frame, his nose pressing against the top of the chain.

“Did you get our card and vine? You and Dovey have our prayers at this most dreadful time.” Dad shook his head in that give of sympathy.

“Where is he?” Otis tried reaching his arm through the opening, but his muscles were too wide for the narrow way.

“Who?”

“You know who, Autopsy.” Otis leaned into the door Dad was trying to close.

“He’s not here.” Dad waved for Mom to yank Sal out of sight.

Otis roared with his muscles ready. This was what he had lifted all those barbells for. Why he had done all those squats with a bar digging into his shoulders. The running, the protein shakes, they had not been worthless after all. Him being lost in a gym, escaping the world but only in preparation for it. Preparing for this one moment he would be asked to defend his fallen son. He would be asked to bring the grieving mother a revenge she could read in his fists.

“I told you he’s not here, Otis.”

Dad’s fast push into the door wasn’t enough, not against Otis and his great bellowing shove. The chain snapped and Dad was knocked back to the floor. Mom cried out and fell to her knees by his unmoving side, holding his banged head.

She slapped his cheeks, trying to get him to open his eyes. “Come on, love.”

I kneeled at his other side, grabbing his limp hand and shaking it. He didn’t respond.

I looked up at Otis standing in the busted doorway, the broken chain still swinging against the frame as he clenched his fists. All he saw was the boy hiding behind Fedelia.

“You get on outta here, Otis Jeremiah.” Fedelia held one firm hand up, as the other stayed fearfully behind her with Sal. “I said get on. Don’t you dare, don’t you dare come near here. No, I said no.”

Otis gave Fedelia a hard shove into the wall. She slid frightened and shocked down the wallpaper to the floor while Otis grabbed Sal up by the collar of his shirt.

“Fielding?” I looked down to see Dad’s eyes finally open. He was weakly clutching my arm, saying, “Save Sal.”

I would never have been fast enough. No matter how quick I was. I would never have been fast enough to stop Otis from punching Sal in the face. The punch thrust him back onto the floor, where he curled up so tight, I thought he was going to disappear.

I yelled for Otis to leave as I pounded my fists into his abs. It was like hitting a slab of concrete.