Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [9]
Lily wouldn’t say where the money was. Just that it was safe. She had decided not to get too concerned about where it came from. She wasn’t the one who stole it. For her, it was found money. Her plan was to hoard it. She said it was their security. Use a little to help pay bills every month. Clothes and shoes for the kids. Insurance. Maybe a fairly new used car every few years. Those dreary sorts of things, on and on. It was like a snapshot of how their marriage had sloped down to its present moment. Lily had lost all her fun. Come into enough money to change your life big-time right now, and all she had the imagination to do was hide it and dole it out in dribs and drabs forever.
Over the next days, Bud became resentful. Where had his goddamn money gone? When she was out of the house, he frantically looked in every stupid place she might think was clever, with no success. Then they fought. Which was what they started calling it when Bud gave her a beating.
The first time, Lily was out of work for three days before makeup would cover the bruises. And the fights continued, sometimes just mild and out of habit, and sometimes for blood. One bad night, Lily conceded partway. The next morning, they went to a lawyer and added Bud’s name to hers on the deed to the house, and the lawyer did a fine job of pretending not to notice how her mouth looked, and her left ear, and the way she carried her right arm. The deed wasn’t so important to Bud. His money would buy a couple of blocks of bungalows like Lily’s. It was the principle of the thing.
Afterward the fights diminished somewhat but did not stop entirely, for Lily would not say where the money went. It was like a partial truce. Except strange days began unfolding when Lily was stupid enough to leave Bud alone with the children, and it became an issue for him to explain bruises and red marks.
Even with all her provocation, Bud would never have stabbed Lily if she hadn’t come home unexpected one day. An especially bad moment for her to walk in without knocking. All of a sudden she was shouting, I’ll fucking kill you if it’s the last fucking thing I do.
And those would be her final words on that subject or any other, since she died in the fight that followed. Blood almost black against the white kitchen linoleum, and Bud gripping a black-handled butcher knife whetted keen to the point of invisibility along the curved edge of the blade. A siren wailing faint in the distance due to a neighbor’s phone call out of weariness from the frequent racket. The two children standing in the doorway to the dining room, looking dead-eyed at the scene.
CHAPTER 3
MOTHER. WHAT A VAGUE CONCEPT. Luce had never wanted to be one and hadn’t seen hers since sometime around third grade. She remembered Lola rarely, but almost always in a pretty summer dress. Pink polka dots or shimmery lime green. A full skirt, and sunburned freckled breasts swelling above a tight bodice. Sometimes Lola smelled like lipstick and sometimes she smelled like Scotch and sometimes she smelled like the damp moss that grew along creek banks. Her hair changed colors several times a year, like leaves on deciduous trees, which, when Luce first learned the word in fifth grade, she thought meant man-eating trees.
On a bad day, Lola would slap fire out of you at the least provocation. Such as you and your little sister having a row in the backseat of the car. Lola didn’t worry over fine layers of justice. She would reach her arm behind her and smack blind at whichever child and whatever part she could reach. Leave red finger marks on your bare legs and arms and faces. All the time driving and smoking with her free hand and shouting about what sorry little bitches she had made. Then five miles later, as soon as you quit bawling, she would pull over and hug until all the breath huffed out your mouth. Lola would ignore you for days, and then she would be right in your face needing your attention. It was still confusing to Luce which one was worse.
When Luce felt charitable,