The Kindest Lie(65)
“I remember when Daddy wasn’t mad,” he said.
Gazing out the window, she turned away from him to blow out a ring of smoke. “You’re too young for memories,” she said. “You’re supposed to be out there making memories, not looking back on them like some old man.”
Whenever it got quiet and dark outside, those times he had nothing better to do, thoughts from years ago rattled around in his head. He couldn’t shake them. “What color were Mommy’s eyes? Do you remember?”
He watched Granny’s flabby neck jiggle when she swallowed. “They were kind of like a chameleon, I guess. When the water at the river had that deep blue color to it, her eyes matched it. But when she’d be out playing as a kid and get blades of grass stuck in her hair, her eyes looked green to me. I guess she had that kind of beauty where you didn’t know what to expect or when. Always a nice surprise.”
Those times when Granny still put him to bed at night, he thought just maybe she’d live forever, but then light came in from outside—the moon or maybe just a streetlight—and it showed him all the things he never noticed in the daytime. Like how her skin bent and folded. The way her eyes had dulled over time like a lightbulb burning out. What would happen to him when she died? She told him not to worry about it, but he knew it could happen. And if Daddy couldn’t take care of him anymore, who would?
“Am I really going to have to go to Louisiana?” He looked away from Granny, terrified of her answer.
She patted his knee. “I can’t say for sure right now.”
Closing his eyes, he faked sleep until he heard Granny tiptoe away. Miss Ruth’s face appeared in his mind, and he wasn’t sure why, but he allowed himself to picture what it might be like to live with her. They’d conduct paper towel experiments and she’d learn the lyrics to Blake Shelton songs. He’d ride in her Infiniti on summer days with the top down, and it wouldn’t matter that Daddy called her a traitor for driving something other than an American-made car.
He tucked those thoughts of Miss Ruth into the part of his brain that helped him sleep and usually guaranteed good dreams at night. But still, he tossed on the sheets and couldn’t get comfortable, his mind twisting around Granny’s words about him moving to Louisiana. I can’t say. Her words played over and over in his head and he kicked the covers violently, yet nothing drowned out the sound of her voice. I can’t say.
He got up and crept down the hall to his bedroom. Kneeling, he ran his fingers along the rough carpet under his bed, pushing aside pencils, notebooks, and an old bike helmet. Finally, he made contact with his dusty old nursery rhyme book from when he was a child. He pulled it out, flipping through the pages until he found the slick, slightly bent photograph. Lying down again with a flashlight, he studied his mom’s face until his eyes burned. He’d snuck the picture out of Granny’s album months ago. It was the only candid shot of him and his mom—the two of them at the Indiana State Fair sharing a cloud of fluffy, sticky-sweet cotton candy. In the photo, a glob of it was stuck to her nose and she was trying to lick it off. The picture came out a bit blurry because Daddy had tilted the camera laughing so hard at how silly Mom was being that day. The memory made Midnight smile, and he held on to that feeling, lying under the covers with the photo on his pillow, until everything inside him dulled to a low, pleasant hum and he fell asleep.
Twenty-Two
Ruth
A haze of cigarette smoke hung in the semidarkness of Wally’s Tavern, stinging Ruth’s eyes. She couldn’t stop thinking about DeAngelo and how he could be the missing link, the compass leading to her child. In a town as small as Ganton, people had to know him, especially if he’d duped so many out of money and had been at the center of multiple adoptions gone wrong. Maybe she could inquire subtly without tipping people off about her own son. And if anyone would know, it would be Wally. She’d been around enough bartenders to know that they heard all sorts of strange things in their line of work and kept many confidences.
Her eyes adjusted to the shadows and she made her way to the wraparound bar, the sticky floor gripping the soles of her boots. It was two days until Christmas, and a string of lights hung above the bottles. She remembered people saying Wally kept them up all year.
An older man with a slight bend to his back leaned on the bar holding a wad of cash. When Ruth got closer, she recognized him.
“Dino, what are you doing here?” As soon as she said it, she realized how obtuse her question sounded. He lived in town, and even if he didn’t, this was a public place and he had every right to be in the tavern.
He smiled wide, exposing the gold crowns that capped his back teeth. “Well, I’m actually here to p-p-pick up some garlic wings for your grandmother.”
Hopefully, Dino didn’t see the surprise on her face. She would need to get used to having this man around. Recovering quickly, she said, “Mama loves her wings. Spicy and breaded, right?”
“You know that’s right.”
Wally emerged from the back with two Styrofoam containers of food and handed them to Dino with a plastic bag. How long would Dino be visiting with her mother that evening? Ruth had been staying at Mama’s house every night for almost a week, and he hadn’t been back to the house since she first arrived. But would he stay the night this time, and if so, would she be interrupting when she returned to the house? In the college dorms, her roommates always left a ribbon on the doorknob or some other sign to indicate they had overnight company. But this was new territory—her grandmother—and she didn’t have a clue how to navigate it.