Crystal Grader - Tag Cavello (reading women .TXT) 📗

and took a drink of coffee as she spoke. “I do indeed. And I’d say to be careful about breaking things that offend you if I thought it’d do any good.”

“I don’t break everything. Sometimes I just…have to have what I want.”

The rain came then, a slanted sheet. The three of them—man, girl, and dog—watched it together for several minutes without making a sound. Crystal found her eyes jumping from place to place through the scene below, as if in effort to elude the downpour. From the first row of corn they went left to a tree stump which according to Jarett belonged to a mighty elm that had been struck down by lightning in 1978. Nearby was a grapevine, devoid of fruit in this season, as was the apple orchard behind the barn. She took a deep breath. Sweet-smelling raindrops sprinkled over her face.

“All I ever wanted was to write books and live in a castle,” Jarett said.

Crystal blinked at him. It was an odd thing to hear; she didn’t know what to make of it.

“Well from the look of things, that’s what you’ve got,” she pointed out gingerly. “But are you happy being alone?”

“Not always. At least Chubby’s here.”

She had to laugh at that. “Okay, Jarett, by alone I meant—“

“I know what you meant. But most of the time I’m all right.”

“And what happens during the times when you’re not all right?”

“I lie awake. I look at the ceiling. Sometimes I come out here for a cigar and watch the corn.”

“Does it help?”

The wind began to taper off. Jarett’s eyes were set on something far away. A memory, perhaps, that the corn blocked from Crystal’s view.

“Jarett?”

“A little,” he sighed, giving Chubby a pat on the head. “It carries me downstream to the next mooring at least.”

“She must have been quite a girl,” Crystal chanced.

That shocked him from his reverie. “Who?” he asked.

“The one who slipped away. The one who couldn’t be replaced. Who kept you from getting married.”

“You ascertain all that from the way I brood in the rain?”

“I know a broken heart when I hear one. By the way…you said at your lecture that you didn’t like writing. So why tell me now that it’s all you ever wanted to do?”

He took another drink of coffee before answering, and though it may have been her imagination, she thought the cup hit the table a trifle harder than normal as he put it down.

“I don’t like it, Crystal, but I still want it.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I have no fucking idea.”

She pondered this mystery by herself for a minute before giving it up as a bad job and moving on to the next part of his wish.

“Is this farm your castle?” she asked.

“Yes it is. And I love it very much. Way, way more than I do writing.”

“So quit writing. Tend your crops.”

An instant after the words were out Crystal slapped her forehead in disgust.

“Jesus, what am I saying? I love all your books.”

“Don’t worry,” Jarett told her. “I can’t quit.”

“Too many stories left to tell,” she mused.

“No. I have three books left in my publishing contract. Damn,” he added after a moment. “The rain’s stopped. That means back to work.”

“On the book?”

“Hell no. The farm. Are you sure you don’t want that ride home?”

Crystal felt her heart sink. It was obvious what the question meant. Their time was up. She thanked him for his offer but thought it’d be safer for them both if she walked. He agreed, keeping his gaze on the corn as she stood up. Whether or not that meant anything was hard to tell. Maybe his mind was somewhere else (castles, lost loves). Or maybe he thought it would hurt too much to watch her go.

“Chances are I won’t be seeing you again until school starts,” she poured out with deliberate fineness.

It earned her a glance—quick, almost skittish. Then he went back to hiding in the husks.

“I hope that’s okay,” she continued. “I don’t want our sessions to stop.”

His shoulders twitched. “Of course. No problem.”

“Do you want me to cook you anything before I leave?”

“No. Thank you. I’ll be all right.”

So that was that. Angry without really knowing why (what indeed had she been hoping for by coming out here today?), Crystal knelt to give Chubby one last scratch for the summer. Then she stepped off the porch and into the wet grass. A dogwood petal flew into her hair. She brushed at it, setting it free, only to have another one land on her arm. This one she left alone.

“Jarett?” she called, turning back towards the house.

He looked at her with his brow raised in mock innocence. It didn’t work for even a moment.

“Are you afraid of me?” she heard herself ask.

The word that came back sounded honest and frail as the dogwood petal.

“Yes.”

Crystal gave a slow, thoughtful nod. “Maybe you should stop that. Maybe if you did you’d find something you like about writing after all.”

And without waiting for a reply, she turned on her heel and walked off.

 

PART THREE: Pretty Bubbles

14

 

Middle age had crept up on Lucretia Genesio like a jungle predator. It had tracked her through her thirties, as she worked and played with energetic beauty, biding its time for just the right early morning, just the right bathroom mirror, to pounce on her—savagely—with wrinkles, dark circles, and stiff joints.

Today she was nearing fifty…and from what Crystal could see at present, that predator was still biding. True, she was wearing her hair shorter these days, and her nail polish had changed from brick red to beige. Admittedly, she no longer took sugar in her coffee, or ate bacon and eggs for breakfast. And yes, the car she drove was more quiet, more slow, the shoes she wore, the same. None of it mattered. Lucretia was still ahead in the game. The proof lay in her eyes, which were wide and alert as ever, even over an internet video chat that extended ten thousand miles.

“You’re eternal,” Crystal told her, iPad in one hand and coffee in the other, “you know that?”

The older woman gave a laugh through the screen. “Don’t go casting your evil spells on me.”

“I’m not. I’m pouring out my envy. Seriously, how do you keep time from beating down the gates, Mom? What’s your secret?”

“Time doesn’t beat down gates, Crystal. It creeps through underneath. One night when I was forty I went to bed and had a dream about pearls; in the morning I woke up with gray hair in my bangs.”

“I don’t understand what that means.”

“Time is subtle, Crystal, that’s what I’m trying to say. Time is subtle. Except for you. You look like hell.”

“Mom!”

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Speaking of time, what is it there? Ten o’clock?”

“It’s midnight,” Crystal replied. “I’m sitting at my kitchen table. Alone,” she added, almost to herself.

“And the typhoon?”

“What about it?”

Lucretia blinked as if the question were stupid.

“Is everyone okay?”

“Oh yes, it’s gone.”

“Good. Hannah says to lay off the rice.”

“She always says that and she knows I never touch the stuff. Tell Joey and Eva Aunt Crystal says hi.”

They chatted a bit more about nothing in particular. And yet Crystal thought that her mother could sense something in the wind, some revelation lying in wait beyond the sandy dunes of their trivialities. In between topics she would stop to lean her head to one side, like a lost woman studying a map. Except that Lucretia was not the one who was lost.

What’s wrong, Crystal? that tilted head seemed to ask.

And the hell of it was…Crystal really didn’t know. She only knew that things here in the Philippines—her job, her marriage—weren’t right.

“Hey, Mom,” she said tentatively, “how would you feel about my coming home for a little while? I could bring the baby.”

The tilted head on the screen went straight in a blur.

“I would love that,” Lucretia replied. “I’ve missed you. Hannah too. And this town”—her eyes rolled as she spoke—“this town, Jesus, Crystal, it’s gotten even slower since you’ve left. Why shouldn’t it? You were…without doubt a bolt of color in the fabric.”

“All right, all right,” Crystal laughed. “Jeez, I didn’t expect you to lay it on that way. I expected something more like—“

“Is there something wrong between you and Miko?”

“That,” Crystal finished, shoulders dropping.

“Well?” Lucretia nodded. “Is there?”

Crystal glanced over her shoulder before answering. It was enough for the woman on the other end. She asked what was the matter, to which Crystal replied nothing. Nothing, she went on to add, was precisely what the problem could be called.

“I don’t follow,” Lucretia said.

“We’re not…like a couple anymore, Mom. We don’t…I don’t know,” she trailed off, frustrated.

But having finally stumbled upon the revelation, her mother wasn’t about to walk off without investigating.

“Don’t what?” she said. “Tell me.”

“Can’t,” Crystal replied after draining her mug, “it’s too hard to articulate.”

“Stop it. You’ve never had trouble with articulation. You were insubordinate, insensitive, and inquisitive. But never inarticulate.”

“Mom.”

“So tell me. If the candle’s flickering there must be a reason.”

“Lack of oxygen.”

“Meaning what?”

Crystal drew a deep breath without knowing what was going to come out next. She and Miko didn’t love each other the way they used to. Hell, they didn’t love each other at all. He had stopped looking at her, stopped listening to her. The same thing went for her students at work. It was something that couldn’t have been predicted in a million years. Crystal Ilagen, focal point of one of the most widely publicized criminal events in the history of Ohio, had graduated high school, gotten married…and become the invisible woman.

“Only Luke seems to notice me these days,” she said, after spilling all of this to Lucretia in jagged, stuttering sentences. “And Mom…I just don’t know what to do about it. Except walk away. Me and Luke together.”

“Maybe that’s the right thing to do, Crystal,” the other woman told her. “Maybe. But remember you left here because of something you wanted to get away from. Did it work?”

The remark puzzled Crystal. Blinking, she said, “I left Monroeville because Miko took a job here.”

“There was more to it than that. Don’t try to fool your own mom.”

“Are you talking about Jarett?”

“Was there another pedophile here who seduced you and—“

“He wasn’t a pedophile and he didn’t seduce me.”

Blood erupted into Crystal’s cheeks as she spoke. On the screen, Lucretia gave her a twisted look; the memories of Jarett Powell were still garden fresh in her mind—or rather, garbage spoiled and covered with maggots. In any case the man’s name was poison to her and always would be. But she had barely known Jarett, and knew even less of the truth between him and her daughter. Whenever they spoke about what had happened in Monroeville nine years ago (which was almost never), she proceeded from complete ignorance. It always infuriated Crystal to hear the blame put on Jarett, and that Lucretia was doing it over a long-distance internet chat didn’t seem to make a whit of difference. She suddenly wanted to reach through the screen and backhand her mother across the face.

“You don’t know what he was, Crystal,” Lucretia cooed, with plastic wisdom in her eyes. “You were too young. Men like that are impossible to understand. They’re scum.”

“Mom,” Crystal ground out, as a little voice counted to ten in her mind, “we need to stop talking about this. I don’t want to come home mad at you.”

“All right. You know there’s plenty of room here at the house. What will you tell Miko?”

After a deep breath, Crystal said: