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Bryan Gruley: The Hanging Tree

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Bryan Gruley The Hanging Tree

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I looked at the bologna and onions snapping in the pan, looked back at Mom. I turned the heat off and went over to sit on a footstool facing her.

“OK,” I said.

She shook her head, threw the afghan back off her shoulders. “What did you ask me?” she said.

“About Shirley. The hockey fight you guys had at town hall.”

“Hockey fight?”

“Shirley McBride, Mom.”

She wasn’t remembering. But she was trying. She closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips together in her lap.

“Shirley and I-oh, God. That was like a hundred years ago. The only person who gives a damn about it is Shirley.”

“Gives a damn about what?”

She opened her eyes. “Eddie.”

“Gracie’s dad?”

“Yes. Eddie. Your father’s cousin. The one who died in the war. “

“OK.”

“He used to come up here on weekends when he was in high school. I didn’t really know your father yet. I actually met Eddie first. Down at the public access. He pretended to help my father put our boat in.” She smiled. “He was standing on the stern and Daddy gunned the boat and Eddie went flying.”

“Ah,” I said. “You and Eddie had a little summer fling?”

“Well…”

“I’m not sure how much of this I want to know.”

“Not a fling,” Mom said. “I wasn’t that kind of girl.”

“Good.”

She sat there thinking. She looked at me. “Shirley,” she said. “That was her on the sidewalk today.”

“That was her, yes.”

“She was wearing braids. All sorts of braids.” We were back in the distant past again. “After Eddie, she wouldn’t braid my hair anymore.”

“No?”

“No. She never forgave me for Eddie. Even after, especially after Eddie died, and she started in with the boyfriends.”

I thought of the trailer where I would knock on the only door and sing out, “Graaaayseee!” Most days Gracie would come right out and close the door quickly behind her. Once in a while she’d ask me in because she hadn’t finished her Frosted Flakes and tea. I thought her kitchen smelled like a doctor’s office. Shirley might come to the table and sit silently smoking in her slip. Once there was a hickey the shape of a snail on the skin over her collarbone.

“All those men, every single one of them a piece of shit.”

“Right.”

“I’m sorry, son. Forgive my language. Shirley was drawn to that like a deer fly, but those men…” She brushed at her eyes. “What was I supposed to do? Turn Gracie away? Send her back to that revolting little trailer in the woods?”

“You did the right thing, Mom. Gracie loved you.”

“She loved you, too, Gussy.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why won’t you believe me?”

“Mom,” I said. “When you saw Gracie at Audrey’s the other day, she gave you an envelope.”

“I didn’t see Gracie at Audrey’s the other day.”

“Yes, you did, you told me you did.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Now she was telling the lie she’d forgotten to tell two nights before.

“All right. So what?”

“She brought you an envelope.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Yes, you do. It was a life insurance policy.”

“No-”

I stood. “Should I get it out of your bedroom?”

She gave me a look of reproach that she couldn’t sustain. “Sit down,” she said. I sat. “I brought the envelope to Audrey’s. Gracie had sent it to me, she said for safekeeping. Of course I had to take a peek. And when I saw that…” She shook her head no. “I’m glad I peeked. I don’t want that money.”

The money Shirley had been talking about at town hall.

“So you tried to give it back?”

“I told her I didn’t want that money, I didn’t want her to die.”

I leaned in closer. Gracie would have given Mom the policy around the time she gave Soupy her letter to Haskell, “in case something happened.” Around the time Gracie supposedly was with Felicia Haskell at the pizzeria. I looked over at the bouquets people had sent. Felicia’s weren’t there anymore.

“Mother,” I said, “she was just giving you her life insurance policy. Did you have some reason to think she was going to die? Did she tell you she was in some kind of danger?”

“No.”

“Or you don’t remember?”

“I remember. She was fine.”

“Did she say anything about-wait.” I was thinking about the rejection letter, which made me think of the Zamboni shed, which made me remember what I had found there. “Hang on.”

I stood and dug in my jacket hung on the back of a kitchen chair, then sat back down with my mother. “Look what I found.”

I handed her the blue hairbrush.

“Oh.” She took it in her left hand. “Where did you get this?”

“In the Zamboni shed. Gracie had it in a secret place.”

Mom turned it over in her hands. As she did, her lips began to tremble. Her eyes welled.

“Mother?”

She clutched the brush in both hands and brought it to her chest. She bowed her head. She began to sob.

I reached across the chair and took her by an arm. “Mom. What’s wrong?”

“She didn’t have to-” Mom had to stop for a moment. “I told her you could have helped.”

“What are you talking about?”

She thrust the brush at me. “Why couldn’t you two get along? Why couldn’t you both just-” She was struggling to talk. “I told her. I told her… I told her you could help her.”

“Help her what?”

“She wouldn’t listen. ‘He’ll never help me. He hates my guts.’ That’s what she said. But you, you…” She pulled the brush back into her, crying harder. “Shirley can have the money. I never wanted any money.” She was sobbing so hard now that she could barely catch her breath. “I could have… I could have…”

“What? You could have what?”

She held up a hand to stop me. She set the brush in her lap and reached one hand out. I took it.

“Mom, what is it?”

“Those people. All those people from down there. I wish they’d just stay. Just leave us alone. We don’t need their big houses and fancy boats.”

“Mom?”

She tightened her grip on my hand.

“You know, I would give my life for you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes. I know that.”

My mother hitched forward in her chair, gathered up my other hand. “Any mother,” she said, “a good mother, would lay down her life for her son.”

I waited.

“Gracie didn’t have an abortion,” Mom said. She saw the quizzical look in my eyes. “There was no abortion.”

“So there was no baby?”

“Yes. There was.”

I looked down at our entwined hands. “I know who.”

“No, you don’t.”

“You don’t know, Mom. There’s a really bad guy downst-”

“No, Gus. Think.”

In my mind I walked into Gracie’s good bedroom again, the one with the light coming in, the poster on the wall, the child’s drawing of the hockey player. Then I heard the piano music again. I looked up at my mother.

“Are you-” I let her hands go. “No. My God.”

“I wish she would have asked you for help.” She picked up the brush again. “It’s my fault that you two never got along.”

“You knew? You knew all along? All this time? Fourteen years?”

“I’m sorry, son.”

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