Send Down the Rain(53)
My shorts lay in one corner. My underwear had spilled off the bed. “Not right this minute.”
She stood and walked to the door, allowing me a close-up view of those same enticing short, silky, lacy pajamas. “Your secret’s safe with me. I had to cover you up twice last night.”
I shook my head.
She glanced over her shoulder. “And you’re blushing.”
30
That afternoon found me staring down at Mom’s grave. Arms crossed. A wrinkle between my eyes. Mom had never remarried. Said the first time just hurt too much. After Bobby and I left, she lived alone, doing laundry at night and cleaning rental houses during the day. Then Bobby returned, but he melted down soon after. She and Allie shipped him off to rehab, where he spent the better part of five years off and on. Once he sobered up, they divorced and he ran for state legislature. He made a name for himself and eventually ran for US Senate and moved to Virginia, keeping a condo in West Palm Beach.
I, meanwhile, was trying to outrun my memories and bouncing between a dozen different places. Cape San Blas was not one of them. So Mom lived the last decade of her life in relative isolation. Allie would check on her from time to time, but Allie was a painful reminder. One day Mom had a stroke pumping gas. She was dead before she hit the ground.
Not knowing how to find me, Bobby delayed the funeral a few days. He used the FBI to track me down. I showed up and we buried her, but I never said a single word to Bobby nor he to me. He knew better than to open his mouth, because the second he did I was going to shut it.
Somewhere on planet Earth, if he was still alive, my dad would have been sixty then. I hadn’t seen him since the broken-plate day. But that didn’t mean time had softened my feelings. If I was good at one thing, it was hate. We lowered Mom’s coffin, threw some dirt on top, and I climbed into a rental car to make my way home.
I leaned against Mom’s headstone, peeled open a new roll of antacids, and popped four into my mouth. Strange how I’d grown to like the chalky, minty taste. Since leaving North Carolina, the pain in my chest had become more constant. Sharper.
The breeze pushed the leaves along the grass and tugged at the moss hanging in the scrub oaks above Rosco and me. I scratched behind his ear and he rolled onto his back, paws in the air. Rubbing his tummy, I spoke aloud to the cold, granite memory of my mother.
“Strange how one man’s absence can leave such carnage in its wake.” The dull pain in my chest had graduated toward knifing. And if I’m being honest, even shortness of breath. I massaged the muscle just below my collarbone, then my shoulder, but it didn’t help. As if I needed another reminder, my phone rang. Caller ID registered my doctor’s office, calling to reschedule my missed appointment. I pressed Decline and sent them to voicemail for a third time.
White cottony clouds drifted silently above. I spoke again, this time to Rosco, who didn’t care what I said as long as I kept rubbing. “I can’t remember any of my dreams coming true.” He groaned in agreement and closed his eyes. “Now I open up and try to love, and find nothing but dead chunks of flesh and shrapnel where my heart used to be.”
I ran my fingers through the carved letters of Mom’s name. She’d been gone a long time. Trouble was, my heart had never really accepted that. Too many words had been left unsaid. “You and I alone know the truth. If you see a way around all this, I wish you’d let me know.”
31
Life had returned to Cape San Blas. Word spread. Locals appeared daily to witness the progress and ask when we were opening. Gabriella and Diego got in on the action and sold tea, bottled water, and sopapillas to the spectators. Media outlets from Pensacola to Orlando had heard the news about “the coming Tornado” and sent reporters and camera crews. In the space of two weeks Allie had been interviewed a dozen times. From managing what was needed, to running back and forth to pick up supplies, to “Here, hold this board,” I pitched in where I could, making myself useful while trying not to get in the way. To some extent, I was the glue. I was also the checkbook, but I knew that going in.
Allie had secured her suppliers, and then hired and trained servers and dishwashers and line cooks and bartenders. She was in full restaurant-management mode and seemed happy. Controlling food costs, managing employee schedules, planning food presentation. Nothing got past her. With one eye on the completion schedule, we scheduled a “soft opening.”
MANUEL, JAVIER, PETER, AND Victor had cleaned up their mess, arranged for the removal of the Dumpster, and washed and waxed the work truck before I realized they needed something else to do. They couldn’t go back to the migrant world. Couldn’t go back to Mexico. And they didn’t have the paperwork to get hired in the legitimate world. The process to citizenship was too expensive.
That afternoon Allie and I pulled the four of them aside and walked across the street to the vacant property. When Allie’s dad purchased the land some sixty years ago, the original deed included twenty acres across the road. At the time it was considered worthless; they couldn’t have given it away. As the restaurant prospered, they used an acre or two for parking, but the rest remained wild and unusable.
I put my hand on Manuel’s shoulder. “Can you put the carnival here?”
Manuel nodded confidently.
“It will mean disassembling most everything up there and bringing it down here. Including the metal building that covers most of it.”