The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga 2)

“Don’t talk stupid. People don’t change,” she said. “They grow into what they’ve always been. They just stop pretending, that’s all.”

My head felt small and tight. My cheeks were burning. I couldn’t speak.

“Some people are the jealous kind,” she said. “They don’t love themselves, so they can’t love or trust anyone else. There’s no way to fix them. That’s why you’re really upsetting me.”

“I think that’s the worst thing anyone ever said to me.”

“I’m going upstairs now and lie down,” she said. “I don’t feel well. Or maybe I’m going to take a long walk by myself. You can let yourself out.”

I don’t know how long I stood in the middle of the living room while the house swelled with wind and her footsteps creaked across the ceiling. “Come down, Valerie!” I shouted.

I heard a door slam and thought perhaps she was having a tantrum, which meant her mood would pass and at some point we would make up. But doors began slamming all over the house, and I realized the wind was perpetrating an innocent deceit upon me, unlike the pernicious deception I had just perpetrated on myself. I had let suspicion winnow away my faith in the girl I loved, and as a consequence the gift presented to me had been taken away and probably would be given to someone else. Worse, I knew the fault was my own.

That’s about as close to a definition of hell as it gets, if there is such a place.

MY MOTHER WORKED in a bank and each afternoon came home earlier than my father. I was sitting at our redwood picnic table in the backyard with the cats and Major and my Gibson when I saw her through the back screen, a glass of sun tea in each hand. She came down the steps and sat across from me, her expression thoughtful rather than irritated or anxious. “Are you worried about something, Aaron?”

“Nothing in particular.”

“Worry robs us of happiness and gives power to the forces of darkness.”

“You learned that in a log-house church in San Angelo. I’d leave it there.”

“I learned it in 1931, picking cotton from cain’t-see to cain’t-see. If you have enough to eat for the day, the next day will take care of itself.”

I looked at the simplicity and repose in her face. These moments came to my mother rarely, but when they did, the transformation in her manner was as though she had undergone an exorcism. Today it’s called bipolar. Back then, people didn’t have a name for it.

“I went to Mr. Krauser’s house,” I said. “He told me he had been protecting Jimmy McDougal from a homosexual who hangs out at the Pink Elephant. He said Saber hangs out at the Pink Elephant, too.”

“Mr. Krauser believes Saber is a homosexual?”

“That’s what I gathered.”

She ticked her nails on the side of her glass. “What’s your opinion?”

I was hesitant to confide in her. Her mercurial nature was similar to my father’s, but rather than rage, she would find pills in the cabinet or solitude and darkness in her bedroom. My mother’s prison was her mind, and she took its dark potential with her wherever she went.

“One time at Saber’s house when we were fifteen, he asked if we could get naked and wrestle.” I gazed at my hands, my ears ringing in the silence. I saw her pick up her glass and remove the napkin from it and slowly wad the napkin in her palm.

“So what did you all do?” she asked.

“I made a joke about it. Then he said he was just kidding.”

“And that’s the way to remember it. It’s nothing to worry about. What occurred then was not bad, and it’s not bad now. That’s the way you must think about it.”

“Really?” I said, looking her in the face.

“Mr. Krauser said he’s protecting Jimmy McDougal?” she said, the subject already behind her.

“Do you know something about Mr. Krauser I don’t?”

“You could put it that way. I know a liar and a bully and white trash when I see it. Is Mr. Krauser in the directory?”

OUR TELEPHONE WAS in the hallway. I sat in the living room and could hear her dialing Krauser’s number. The cats and Major had followed us inside. They perched on the furniture like an audience anticipating a stage presentation. My mother’s voice was clear, without emotion, her accent less like Texas than the boarding school she briefly attended in New Orleans through the generosity of a charitable family.

“This is Mrs. Broussard, Aaron’s mother, Mr. Krauser. I understand you think his friend Saber Bledsoe is of questionable character. . . . You saw him at the Pink Elephant? Can you please tell me what you were doing there? I see. Why would you have Jimmy McDougal in your automobile at the nightclub if in fact you did not want Jimmy to be in the company of the men who frequent the nightclub? Mr. Krauser, I’m not going to report you for your activities. Instead, if I hear you have lied about or mistreated either my son or any of his friends, I’m going to take a horse quirt to you in public, in front of witnesses. Then you can explain your shameful behavior to others, in particular the superintendent of schools. Thank you for your time.”

There are good days you never forget. There are also days when people can throw a cup full of kerosene into a smoldering, wood-fueled stove, not pausing to think about the evaporation process and its effect when they casually toss a match through the grate.