Sing You Home: A Novel Read online

  “Why would you do this to me?” Zoe’s crying. I know, because when she cries, her voice sounds like it’s wrapped in flannel. Lord knows I’ve heard it enough times over the telephone lines, when she called to report another miscarriage, and tried to convince me that, really, she was fine, when clearly she wasn’t.

  Reid puts his hand on my shoulder. For solidarity, support. I close my eyes. “I’m not doing this to you, Zoe. I’m doing it for our kids.”

  I feel Reid reach for the phone, push the button to end the call.

  “You’re doing the right thing,” he says.

  If I’m really so different, now, why do I need Reid to tell me that?

  Next to my foot is the bucket of green crabs we’re using as bait. No one likes green crabs; they’re at the bottom of the food chain. They’re moving in circles, getting in each other’s way. I have an uncontrollable urge to toss them all overboard so they have a second chance.

  “You all right?” Reid asks, peering up at me. “How do you feel?”

  Thirsty.

  “Kind of seasick, believe it or not. I think maybe we should just pack it in.” And when we reach the dock, fifteen minutes later, I tell him that I promised Pastor Clive I’d help clear some brush at his place.

  “Sorry about the fishing,” Reid says. “Better luck next time?”

  “Couldn’t get much worse.”

  I help him get the boat on the trailer and hose it down and then wave to him as he drives home to Liddy.

  The thing is, I never promised Pastor Clive anything about clearing brush. I get into my truck and start driving. I’d throw myself on a board and surf to beat all the thoughts out of my head, but the water’s dead flat today—my curse. Meanwhile, my tongue feels like it’s swollen twice its size, and my throat’s gone so narrow I can barely whistle my next breath through it.

  Thirsty.

  It’s not like one little drink would really hurt. After all, like Reid said, I’m different now. I’ve found Jesus; together I know we can walk away from the second one. And to be honest, I think if Jesus were in my shoes right now, he would want a cold one, too.

  I don’t want to go to a bar, because the walls have eyes and you never know what’s going to get back to someone. Now that Reid’s paying the bulk of Wade Preston’s fee (Anything for my little brother, he had said), and with the church pitching in the rest—well, the last thing I need is for some member of the congregation to go tattling about me stumbling off the straight and narrow. So instead I drive to a liquor store all the way in Woonsocket, where I don’t know anyone and nobody knows me.

  Speaking of legal evidence—which is apparently what I’m going to be doing a lot of in the near future—here is some:

  1. I only buy one bottle of J.D.

  2. I plan to have a few sips and toss the rest.

  3. As further proof that I am thinking clearly and not falling off the wagon (or being run over by it, for that matter), I don’t even crack the seal until I reach Newport again. That way, when I drive home, it’s only a matter of miles.

  All of the above is presented, Your Honor, as proof that Max Baxter is in full control of himself and his life and his drinking.

  But when I pull into a parking lot and open the bottle, my hands are shaking. And when that first golden lick hits my throat, I swear I see the face of God.

  The first time I was introduced to Liddy, I didn’t like her. Reid had met her while he was doing business down in Mississippi; she was the daughter of one of his investment portfolio clients. She held out a limp hand and dimpled her cheeks and said, “I am just so delighted to meet Reid’s baby brother.” She looked like a doll, with her blond curls and her tiny waist and hands and feet. She wore a purity ring.

  Reid and I had actually talked about that little detail. I knew Reid was no saint and had had his share of relationships in the past—and I myself couldn’t imagine buying a lifetime supply of ice cream without tasting the flavor first—but it was my brother’s life, and I was far from qualified to tell him how to live it. If he wanted to hold (limp) hands with his fiancée until his wedding night, that was his problem, not mine.

  Liddy’s only job, although she had been out of Bible college for three years, was teaching Sunday School at her daddy’s church. She’d never gotten her driver’s license. Sometimes, I’d pick fights with her just because it was so easy. “What did you do when you had to buy something?” I’d ask. “What if you wanted to go out to a bar one night?”

  “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 fiancée—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,�€