Heartless A Shieldmaiden's Voice: A Covenant Keeper Novel Page 25

  Ted put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb into heavy Saturday traffic. His hand on the stick shift shook, and his breathing sounded shallow and fast. Raw regret oozed where dishonor had nested so long. Like the black dreams that sometimes plagued Carole, Ted’s own sins seemed to finally claw at him. Sitting beside him she could sense agony in his battered heart. Braking, he steered the car sharply back to the curb, and sat quietly.

  It was better if Beth didn’t see this, Carole thought, assuming that was why he’d stopped. Ted never allowed Beth alone in Shanghai. Carole reached for the door handle, about to go back upstairs and get their daughter, when Ted spoke.

  “Why did you stay? All these years, and all I’ve done to you, why did you stay?”

  Carole put her hands back on her knees and swallowed.

  “Mostly because I had no choice.”

  Ted shifted in his seat to look at her, and for some reason she didn’t want to look back at him. It would be easier to tell him if she didn’t look at him.

  “But you knew, even when I tried to hide it, you knew.”

  “Of course I knew.” She didn’t say, Your heart told me, she didn’t have to.

  “You must have wanted to kill me.” He spoke the last three words so low she barely caught them. She kept blind eyes on the window and considered that.

  She hadn’t wanted that, or maybe the truth was that she couldn’t have borne it. She whispered, “I settled on watching you kill yourself.” She turned her head to see his reaction.

  Ted crossed his arms over his chest and leaned forward as though it could equalize the agony inside. After a few minutes of ragged breathing, he started to talk in spurts, as though pulling each word forcefully from somewhere deep and dark. “I didn’t mean to—when we married—I meant to keep my vow. I thought I could. But you were so close, even that first day, I could feel you,” he gasped uncomfortably. “I couldn’t bear it. Like you were crawling inside me, erasing me, erasing my—first—Beth.” Ted thumped a hand lightly over his heart, where beneath his shirt rested the old tattoo of his first love. He leaned forward and put his head on the steering wheel, closing his eyes. “It held you out. The other women kept you away.”

  Carole’s heart lit with pain. She’d known this, somewhere deep inside she’d known it from the first.

  “Sometimes I wanted you to leave,” he admitted.

  “I know,” she whispered and two hot tears sprang from her eyes and slid burning down her cheeks. She turned to look out the passenger window.

  “You invaded me, I couldn’t bear it. How could you stay, Carole? How could you bear what I’ve done to you?”

  A passerby peeked in the window at her, and Carole turned her head to face forward, wiping the tears away. “I love you.” She wondered if it sounded stupid, desperate, and pathetic to Ted. Dropping her hands in her lap she turned to look at him as anger, packed down and kept hidden, welled to the surface.

  “And love is not a transitory, changeable thing for me. I had no way to keep you out. When I gave myself to you, I gave myself to you, Ted. What I am, that strange, weird, oddity that I am—the one you fight so hard to keep away, that woman knows how to love. Despite your rejection, I love you with all that I am. I can no more walk away from you than I can leave half my own body behind. You don’t like my heart touching yours, Ted White? You don’t like my strangeness or even my job? I know these things! Believe me, I wanted to leave! If it had been possible to cleave myself in half and leave you, I would have done it years ago! But I couldn’t!” Carole wrapped her arms across her chest too, leaning forward, assuming the same position Ted held. It hurt. Every time she thought he couldn’t possibly hurt her more, he did. Yet as sure as she knew she lived, she knew the pain of separating from Ted would be far greater. The fierce strong warrior inside her seemed to curl up in shame.

  Ted grabbed her then, pulling her against his sturdy chest and wrapping husky arms around her. He held tight. It was the last straw. Torn between hope and humiliation, Carole cried. He held her there, while pedestrians looked through the window, rocking her back and forth as though she were Beth, patting her unruly hair. Carole cried until she had nothing left, until only hoarse sounds escaped. The voices kept silent, watching and waiting.

  “I do know what it is like, Carole, to love someone who isn’t worth it. My Beth—she never let me close. I never knew why until she died. Did you know that her death was a public scandal? My pain was fodder for the gossip mongers. Washington wallowed in my suffering. But I did the same thing to you didn’t I? Shoved it in your face? I can’t even honestly say I didn’t want to hurt you! Half the time I think I did, as though I could retaliate through you. Oh, God, Carole, I will find a way to make it right. I will find a way to atone, I swear it to you.”

  Carole, feeling the distant touch of that pained heart, knew he meant every word, and she wanted to believe him, because she had no choice. The warrior inside covered her face in disgrace.

  LOILING GAVE MOM her own Bible. Beth never saw her read it, but she went to church with them on Sunday morning and Mom knew all the verses. Daddy stopped crying, and Beth got grounded for watching MTV. Grounded wasn’t much different from before she got grounded. The only difference was now Dad said, “Should she be doing that? She’s grounded.” Mom would say, “Your call, Ted.” Daddy would think about it and then let her go walking with Mom, or to the library, market, the gardens, or in-line skating. After a week, Daddy stopped talking about being grounded. He put his arm around Mom a lot, and sometimes Mom smiled, not big like Daddy, just a little one that sneaked out.

  They all went to the park together now, and they moved into an apartment closer to downtown. Beth started Sankle School for gifted children, and Dad drove her. He told jokes and laughed the whole way. He was the best Dad ever, and even if he really grounded her he’d still be the best Dad ever.

  THE NEW APARTMENT reminded Carole of the little dump above the tattoo parlor that she’d had in San Diego, where Beth had been born. There was a guitar shop below this one which stretched halfway to the next block. They had to walk five flights of stairs up to reach the apartment, and there was no elevator. She loved it. The rent cost half of the other place, and that meant they could afford The Sankle School for Beth. Ted insisted Beth would fit right in with gifted children. Carole rubbed olive oil inside her bread pan, and dropped the bread dough inside. The telephone rang.

  “Hello—Ni hao!”

  “Mrs. White? This is Headmistress Ahlio. I’m afraid we need either you or your husband to come to school and pick up your daughter immediately.”

  “Is she all right?” Carole tried to buy time. “Did she get hurt?” Sooner or later she was going to.

  “No, no, Beth is fine.”

  “What happened?”

  “She is being dismissed from Sankle School, Mrs. White. Please pick her up or we can send her home via taxicab. Which would you prefer?”

  “I’ll come get her.”

  LEAVING BETH’S BACKPACK with her expensive new textbooks on a park bench they went skating together along the wide path of the public garden. Carole waited for her daughter to speak. Beth was mad and activity calmed her.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong, Mom.”

  “Life’s not fair, Beth.”

  “I’ll say,” she groused. “People steal, cheat and lie all the time! Then they lie about stealing, cheating and lying.”

  “Yes.”

  Carole slowed down so that Beth could keep pace with her. Beth glared out of the corner of her eye. “I’m not going to let them do it.”

  “Maybe it’s not your job to stop them.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  Carole sighed. “If you really think that, you’d better be prepared to defend yourself.”

  Beth skidded to a stop. “They’re not allowed to hit me!”

  “They’re going to do it anyway, Beth, if you make them mad enough. So you need to either hush, or be ready to defend yourself.”

&
nbsp; “Daddy said if someone tries to hurt me I should run away.”

  “That would be the same thing as hushing up and you just told me you won’t do that. Do you want to learn how to fight?”

  “I don’t want to fight.”

  “Then you better learn to hush. That means that when the music teacher is kissing the principal in the art closet, you don’t tell everyone about it during assembly. Do you understand?”

  “If people didn’t lie it wouldn’t matter what I said!”

  Carole pressed the back of her skate to the ground and slid to a quick stop, forcing Beth to make a clumsy stop of her own. “But they do lie! And it does matter! You know that! If you can’t get your mouth under control you’re going to have to suffer the consequences on your own. Daddy and I aren’t always going to be there to defend you!”

  Beth glared without quite meeting Carole’s eyes. After a moment Carole moved and allowed her daughter to continue skating along the smooth path. She heard Beth whisper a defiant, “Fine!” under her breath.

  Carole impatiently blew out her breath. Guess she’ll learn the hard way, just like the rest of us.

  THE BELL RANG and all the boys and girls hurried to gather their books and papers. There were only four minutes until the next class and the teachers at Public School Yong 717 were strict. Beth scooped her books into her arms and followed, smoothing the skirt of her ugly khaki uniform. They all had to wear bright red neckties too. It was a thirteen-year-old’s nightmare. The only nod to individuality was their shoes; as long as they were black, they were acceptable. Most of the boys wore the coolest running shoes and the girls wore heels. Beth adored heels but she stood almost six feet tall, so she wore the lowest flats she could find. Still, she looked like a flagpole waving above the crowd of neat, petite Asians, an extra skinny flagpole from a country with a very loud flag—like Nepal or Antwerp. Beth hated her body. She walked looking at the floor and tried to blend in.

  “Are you a giant? I mean is it normal to be so tall where you come from?” A perfect china doll of a girl, who managed to look adorable in her uniform, asked with a giggle. Beth cheered up. It was the first time someone had spoken to her in a week. Maybe they could be girlfriends. Dad had gotten her bunk beds just so she could have a sleepover. More than anything, Beth wanted to have a sleepover, or at least get invited to one.

  “No, I’m not a giant, I’m just tall. My parents are too. My dad is six inches under seven feet tall—that is 1.9812 meters. I’m taller than my mom but not by much. I don’t know if everyone in America is this tall, I haven’t been there since I was a baby.”

  “I think I’d die if I was that tall. You look so weird.”

  “I am a little weird,” Beth admitted and laughed. “Not a little weird, I suppose I’m a big weird—because I’m big, you know?”

  “I think I get it.” The perfect china doll edged away from her.

  APPARENTLY HER HUSBAND wasn’t trying to hide any of his secrets anymore. Fast food wrappers were tucked under the couch. Two McSatay hamburger boxes, two large fry containers, and an apple pie box. Pizza boxes littered the kitchen counter and take-out containers covered a good many surfaces. Carole had long suspected that Ted and Beth hid the evidence, but now she perused their new apartment a month earlier than expected. Passing through the house with a trash bag, she cleaned up. Inside Beth’s bedroom she found empty French fry containers. It floored her. Studying the crunchy bits of fries remaining in the container, Carole decided the food wasn’t dirty. It wasn’t healthy, but it wasn’t what the voices would call dirty either. Then she laughed out loud, relief sweeping through her. For the first time ever she knew for certain that Beth didn’t hear voices.

  “Oh, thank God!” she whispered like a prayer. The voices would never have allowed this. Testing her theory, Carole took a dried bit of the salty thing that had once been a potato, and popped it into her mouth. “Degraded. Flimsy. Unnatural.” Chuckling, she spat it into the trash.

  Ted pushed the bedroom door open, his aftershave wafting over her and she fought a shiver.

  “Carole! I thought I heard you laugh! Welcome home.” Eyeing the trash he flushed slightly. “Er, sorry. She only eats fries fried in vegetable oil. Why is that funny?”

  Shaking her head and smiling, Carole said, “I’m just surprised she can do it. She’s less like me than I thought.”

  “Oh, she’s plenty like you.” Ted pulled her into a hug, his after-shave almost overpowering. “How’d you know which apartment was ours?” Then, as though realizing he didn’t want to hear that answer he released her and asked quickly, “How’d you get in?”

  “The door was unlocked.”

  “Uh-oh, Beth raced out to catch a taxi to school when I was in the shower. You know our daughter thinks everyone is as honest as she is. We overslept and I’m pretty late, but how about I make a phone call to the office and spend the day helping you pick up?”

  “I don’t mind getting it.”

  “Well, I mind. Besides, trust me, you don’t want to see the bathroom.” He hugged her again. “I’m glad you’re home safe, and early.”

  DAD PICKED BETH up after school. He’d been doing it since she turned in some kids selling dope on the 94 Green Line train. “We’re busted. Mom came home early.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “She’s not mad. She said she’ll just never understand the whole French fry thing.”

  “Guess I’ll be cleaning my room this weekend.”

  “Nope. I did it. I thought you might want to invite somebody over for a slumber party?”

  Beth wailed. “I try Dad, they say no. They think I’m a tall freak.”

  He stepped on the brake and the car jerked to a sudden halt. The tires of the car behind them screeched as it was forced to brake suddenly. “You’re a tall freak? Beth! I’m a tall freak too! We have so much in common. It’s like we’re related.”

  It made her laugh. The car behind them started to blow the horn. Dad ignored it and asked, “Do you like ice-cream?”

  “Yes! Dad, you know I do.”

  “Oh my gosh, do you think all tall freaks like ice-cream?”

  She giggled. “Mom doesn’t.”

  More people started blowing their horns. Daddy looked in the rearview mirror at them and then back at her. “Do you think they’re blowing their horns at us because we’re tall freaks?”

  “Maybe it’s because you’re stopped and they can’t get out of the parking lot until you go.”

  “So you don’t think they care if I’m a tall freak?”

  “No!”

  “Do you think the people walking past our car right now, and staring in the windows at me—see how they’re pointing at me?” Dad waved at them. “Do you think they care if I’m a tall freak?”

  “I think they think you’re just a freak, Dad.”

  “That’s another conversation, so don’t try to change the topic. Today the discussion is tall freak. Do you think that that crossing guard, see him? The one who’s waving his arms and getting all red in the face, do you think he cares that I’m a tall freak?”

  Beth laughed. The guy was having a fit. She shook her head.

  “So how many people do you think really care if I’m a tall freak?”

  “I don’t think anybody cares that you’re a tall freak, Dad.”

  “Hmm, I thought they all did.”

  “No you didn’t!” Beth accused. Not even Daddy could get away with the smallest falsehood, she heard them all.

  “You’re right! I know they don’t care, but when I was fourteen—or almost fourteen like you—I thought they all did.”

  Groaning, Beth leaned back in the seat. “I get it. It will pass, I’ll grow up and people won’t care if I’m tall.”

  “It’s true, Beth.”

  She smiled at him. Sometimes it was wonderful to hear the truth.

  THE VERY NEXT day Beth found someone who didn’t care if she was tall. Sitting at a table in the lunch room, eating her favorite peanut butter b
anana sandwich on Mom’s homemade bread, she tried to avoid attention. Since there’d been no empty tables, she’d sat at a table with several other kids who also looked like they wished they were invisible. One boy had terrible acne, the other boy was enormously fat, and the other girl was having a baby and she was only fifteen years old. Everyone whispered about her. With the American giraffe in their midst it was official, this was the loser table.

  Figuring if they all had to be losers, maybe they could do it together, Beth offered the pregnant girl an oatmeal cookie. “They’re healthy and you probably need to eat healthy, and it’s really good. My mother made it.” The girl took it and smiled shyly.

  “Hey, Blondie.”

  At first Beth assumed the boy was talking to someone else. She glanced left and then right, and finding no other blondes she looked right at him. His name was Wuan Cho and he was so beautiful. Every time he walked past her in the hall she dropped something in tribute to his handsomeness and her own awkwardness.

  “Beth, right?”

  “Right.” She cleared her throat. It sounded froggy.

  “You’re American aren’t you?”

  She nodded mutely.

  “Do you know any movie stars?”

  She shook her head. Why did everyone ask that?

  “You live in my building. Well, sort of. I live in the B section and I see you go into the A block. We should hang out sometime.”

  “Okay,” she managed.

  “Cool. Tomorrow? I’ll meet you in the laundry room, after dinner? We can hang out, you know, do stuff.”