Sing You Home Read online

  "Daddy pays," she told me. "And I don't go out to bars."

  She wasn't just sweet, she was saccharine, and for the life of me I didn't see why Reid was blind to the fact that Liddy was too good to be true. No one was that pure and sweet; no one actually read the Bible from cover to cover or burst into tears when Peter Jennings reported on starving children in Ethiopia. I figured she was hiding something, like that she used to be a biker chick or that she had ten kids stashed away in Arkansas, but Reid just laughed at me. "Sometimes, Max," he said, "a cigar really is just a cigar."

  Liddy had grown up as the only spoiled child of an evangelical minister, and because she was making a major life change by moving north of the Mason-Dixon Line, her father insisted she give it a trial run. So she and her cousin Martine moved to Providence, in a tiny apartment on College Hill that Reid had found for her. Martine was eighteen and thrilled to be away from home. She started wearing short skirts and heels and spent a lot of time flirting with Brown students on Thayer Street. Liddy, on the other hand, began volunteering at the soup kitchen at Amos House. "I'm telling you, she's an angel," Reid would say.

  But I didn't answer. And because he knew I didn't like his fiancee--and he didn't want that kind of strain in his family--he decided that the best way for me to get to like her more was to spend more time with her. He started making excuses, working late, and asked me to drive Liddy each day from downtown Providence to Newport, where he'd then take her out to dinner or a movie.

  I'd get her in my pickup, and she'd immediately change the radio station to a classical one. Liddy was the one who told me that composers used to always end their pieces in a major chord--even when the piece was mostly written in a minor one--because ending with a minor chord had some connotation of the Devil. It turned out that she was a flutist who'd played with all-state symphonies and had been first chair at her Bible college.

  I'd swear a blue streak at a driver who cut into my lane, and she would flinch as if I'd hit her.

  When she asked me questions, I tried to shock her. I told her I sometimes surfed in the darkness just to see if I could make it through riding a curl without smashing my head against the rocks. I told her my last girlfriend had been a stripper (which was true, but it didn't involve a pole--just wallpaper. Yet I didn't mention this to Liddy).

  One freezing cold day, when we were stuck in traffic, she asked me to turn up the heat in the truck. I did, and three seconds later she complained because it was too hot. "For God's sake," I said, "make up your mind!"

  I figured she'd lay into me for taking the Lord's name in vain, but instead Liddy turned to me. "How come you don't like me?"

  "You're marrying my brother," I replied. "I think it matters more if he likes you."

  "You didn't answer my question."

  I rolled my eyes. "We're just different, is all."

  She pursed her lips. "Well, I don't think so."

  "Oh really," I said. "Have you ever gotten drunk?"

  Liddy shook her head.

  "Ever bummed a cigarette?"

  She hadn't.

  "Have you ever stolen a pack of gum?"

  Not even once.

  "Ever cheated on a guy?"

  No.

  "I bet you've never even gotten to third base," I muttered, and she blushed so bright that I felt like my own face was on fire.

  "Waiting for marriage isn't a crime," Liddy said. "It's the best gift you can give someone you love. Besides, I'm not the first girl to do it."

  But you may be the first one to actually carry through with it, I thought. "Have you ever lied?"

  "Well. Yes. But only so I could keep Daddy's birthday surprise party a secret."

  "Have you ever done anything you regretted later?"

  "No," she said, just like I expected.

  I rested my wrist on the steering wheel and glanced at her profile. "Have you ever wanted to?"

  We were stopped at a red light. Liddy looked at me, and, maybe for the first time, I really, really looked at her. Those blue eyes, which I'd thought were so empty and glassy, like those of a toy doll, were full of hunger. "Of course," she whispered.

  Behind us, a driver honked; the light had turned. I looked out the windshield and realized that it had started snowing; that meant my chauffeur services would take even longer. "Hold your horses," I said to the driver under my breath, at the same time that Liddy realized the weather had turned.

  "Oh my," she cried (who in this millennium says Oh my?), and before I could stop her she jumped out of the truck. She ran into the middle of the intersection, her arms outstretched and her eyes closed, as the snowflakes landed on her hair and her face.

  I honked, but she didn't respond. She was going to cause a massive pileup. Cursing under my breath, I got out of the pickup. "Liddy," I yelled. "Get into the fucking car!"

  She was still spinning. "I've never seen snow before!" she said. "This never happens in Mississippi! It's so pretty!"

  It wasn't pretty. Not on a grimy Providence street where a guy was doing a drug deal on the corner. But cynics always assume the worst, and I guess I was the biggest cynic of them all. Because, at that moment, I realized why I distrusted Liddy on principle. I was afraid that maybe someone like Liddy had to exist in the universe in order to balance someone like me. A woman who couldn't do anything wrong surely canceled out a guy who never did anything right.

  Together, we were two halves of a whole.

  I knew then why Reid had fallen for her. Not in spite of the fact that she was so sheltered but because of it. He would be there for all these firsts--her first bank account, her first sexual encounter, her first job. I'd never been someone's first anything, unless you counted mistake.

  By now, other cars had started honking. Liddy grabbed my hand and twirled me around while she laughed.

  I managed to get her back into the car, but I sort of wished I hadn't. I wished we'd just stayed in the middle of that street.

  When we started driving again, her cheeks were pink and she was out of breath.

  Reid might have everything else, I remember thinking, but that first snow? That was mine.

  One sip, when you measure it, is practically nothing. A teaspoonful. A taste. Certainly not enough to really help you quench a thirst, which is why that first sip leads to just a tiny second one, and then really just enough to wet my lips. And then I start thinking about Zoe's voice and Liddy's and they blend together and I take another swallow because I think that may split them apart again.

  I really haven't drunk very much. It's just that it's been so long, the buzz starts fast and spreads through me. There is a rush like a tide in my head every time my foot hits the brake, which manages to wash away whatever I was thinking at that moment.

  Which feels awfully good.

  I reach for the bottle again, and, to my surprise, there's nothing in it.

  It must have spilled, because there's no way I drank a fifth of whiskey.

  I mean, I couldn't have, right?

  In my rearview mirror is a lit Christmas tree. It takes me by surprise when I happen to glance at it, and then I can't stop staring, even though I know my eyes should be on the road. Then the tree lets out a siren.

  It's May; there are no Christmas tree lights. The cop raps against my window.

  I have to unroll it, because if I don't he'll arrest me. I tell myself to get a grip, to be polite and charming. I can convince him I haven't been drinking. I did that for years, with the rest of the world.

  I think I recognize him. I think he may even go to my church. "Don't tell me," I say, offering up a gummy, sheepish grin. "I was going forty in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone?"

  "Sorry, Max, but I'm gonna have to ask you to step out of the--"

  "Max!" We both turn at the sound of another voice, followed by the slam of a car door.

  The cop falls back as Liddy leans into my open window. "What were you thinking, driving yourself to the emergency room?" She turns to the policeman. "Oh, Grant, thank goodness you fo