Black Cake(89)

Johnny Lyncook turns back to the sofa and eases himself onto the seat. Etta Pringle trips over something as she maneuvers around the coffee table between them.

“Bunny Pringle,” he says, in a tone that Byron can’t decipher. Almost like an adult who’s fixing to reproach a child. No, it’s something else. Something sharper. It’s because she knew, isn’t it? She knew that Covey had survived that plunge into the sea, all those years ago, and she never told him.

“Mister Lin,” she says, sitting down at the other end of the sofa, without looking at Johnny Lyncook.

Byron, Benny, and Marble follow Etta’s lead. They each sit in a chair facing the sofa.

“Marisol!” Johnny Lyncook calls. The woman who opened the front door earlier comes into the room, wheeling a serving cart of drinks and peanuts. “Lime water,” he says, and waves a hand toward the cart. There are slices of lime and a maraschino cherry floating in each drink. Marisol places a glass in front of each of them.

“You remember lime water, don’t you, Bunny?” he says to Etta. “You and Covey used to love this stuff. You loved all the same things, didn’t you? Always did everything together, just like sisters.”

Etta shifts in her seat. “Sure, I’ll try one of these,” she says, reaching for her drink without looking up at him. Byron watches Etta over the rim of his glass. The charismatic woman who threw her arms around Byron when she first met him is turning into something still and cold, right before his eyes. A person capable of keeping lifelong secrets. A person harboring a well of anger. She hasn’t gotten over her resentment of Johnny Lyncook, has she? Well, that makes two of them.

Etta Pringle is here because their mother asked her to take them to meet their grandfather. So here they are. But Etta is looking tight-mouthed and Byron is beginning to feel ill to his stomach. Benny and Marble, on the other hand, seem fascinated by this encounter with their mother’s father. They are leaning forward as Johnny Lyncook explains who the people in the other photos are.

As if they should care.

And now, Johnny Lyncook is saying something about the olden days but Byron isn’t really focusing on that. Byron has come to a decision. He’s going to get up and walk out of this room. He knows he shouldn’t punch out a ninety-year-old guy but he’s thinking that if he stays in this room, that’s exactly what he’s going to do.

“You want the bathroom?” Lyncook says, when Byron stands up. “Marisol, show Byron where the bathroom is.” Byron nods. He might as well make a pit stop before leaving. As he follows Marisol back across the broad marbled floor, he hears Lyncook saying, “I was big into the gambling, you know?”

Byron stops and looks back. His mother’s father is leaning forward on his cane, leaning toward Benny and Marble.

“I liked to gamble and I liked to drink. That’s how I lost my daughter.”

Byron turns back. “Lost your daughter?” He is aware that he is raising his voice as he crosses the floor. “Did you say you lost your daughter?” He is standing over Lyncook now. “You didn’t lose her, you threw her away. You sold her to a criminal.”

“That is not true. It wasn’t that simple,” Johnny Lyncook says. “I had no choice.”

“No choice!”

Byron grabs the cane from the old man’s hand and flings it to the ground.

“Byron!” Benny says.

“Do you have any idea what you put your daughter through?” Byron says. “Do you know how our mother had to struggle to survive?” He turns to point at Marble. “This woman,” he says, “was your daughter’s first child. Do you know how your daughter ended up pregnant with her?”

“Enough, Byron,” Benny says.

“Do you know what happened to her?”

“By-RON!” Benny says, raising her voice, using a tone that she has never used toward her big brother. Byron looks at Benny now, and then at Marble, who is looking at him with her brows pulled together, her lips twisted apart. He wipes the perspiration from his nose. He shouldn’t have said that, not that way. Not in front of Marble. He wants to take back what he said. He wants to take back the whole day but he can’t do that, so he walks out of the room, heads straight for the front door.

Fifteen minutes later, Byron is halfway across the causeway when it occurs to him that Etta, Benny, and Marble have no car and he has all their luggage.

Shit.

Byron turns back at the end of the crossing. When he gets back to Johnny Lyncook’s house, the three women are standing at the edge of the driveway like travelers waiting at the end of a dock for a ferry boat. Benny and Etta each have an arm wrapped around Marble’s waist. Marisol stands at the door, watching, until they get into the car and slam the doors shut.





Unthinkable





Because some things are unthinkable, Lin’s brain will do what it must. It will fire a signal to block the flow of oxygen that carries unthinkable thoughts. It will flood its own backyard with blood and short-circuit the idea that is trying to push its way across Lin’s cortex. It will leave Lin with only this: the memory of Covey at age ten, scrambling out of the back of his station wagon with Bunny and the neighbor kids, squealing as she rushes toward the waterfall, whooping as she crashes through the curtain of water, the sound of her laughter, and Look at me, Pa! mixing with the boom of the cascade and echoing off the grotto behind her.