Crystal Grader, Tag Cavello [best books to read for beginners txt] 📗

Hannah whispered with a giggle, “you’re bucking the trend. Again.”

“Mom, what are you doing?” Crystal’s muffled voice came through the wall.

Soon after, the house went totally quiet. Hannah waited. Something hard and heavy came down with a slap! that sounded like a carpet being beaten. Crystal screamed. Seconds later the sound came again. So did Crystal’s scream.

Hannah went into the hallway. Here the slaps and the screams were much louder. Crystal was hurting bad. She edged closer to the door, which was open a crack.

Slap! “Ahhhhhh!”

Slap! “Aieeeeee!”

Closer. Closer.

“Mom, PLEASE!”

Hannah pushed on the door…

And met Crystal’s tear-streaked eyes, as she lay over Lucretia’s knee. She was being spanked with a heavy, hard-covered book—the biggest their mother could find, by the looks of it.

Stop her, those eyes seemed to say. Do something. Anything.

But Hannah, stunned, only watched as more slaps came down. Crystal’s tiny butt, which was bare (Lucretia had yanked everything down before setting to work), looked red enough to boil water on.

“MOM!” Crystal screamed again, with all the force her cheering lungs could muster. “MOM, I’M SORRY!”

“Sorry ain’t got it, girl!”

The book rose into the air for the nth time, hesitated, dropped.

“OWWWW!”

Hannah couldn’t watch anymore. Her bare feet began to move backward. Slowly, ever so slowly. She went into her bedroom and closed the door. Her thumb clicked the lock. Then she lay down and covered her head with the biggest pillow she could find.

It didn’t work. The slaps, the screams, they all made it through. Her only choice was to wait for Lucretia to stop.

“Please, Mom,” she whispered, crying into the pillow-case. “Please, that’s enough.”

But five more minutes went by before Lucretia thought it was enough. By then the pillow was too wet to sleep on. Hannah tossed it aside for another. She heard Crystal’s door close. Footsteps—Lucretia’s—passed down the hall.

“I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU!”

Crystal pouring her heart out, giving Mom every last drop. Hannah tore some tissue out of a box on the headboard and wiped her tears. Sleep wasn’t going to come for a long time tonight. Best to find something to do, then. Her hand went back to the headboard, found a book….and pushed it aside for the PSP sitting next to it.

A video game; that was just the ticket.

PART SIX: Dead Calm

27

Since her return to Monroeville, Crystal had put off visiting the Jackson farm; the argument she’d had with her mother over pizza made the whole idea almost loathsome to approach. Still, Lucretia had been right about one thing: You’re lying, she’d said, after Crystal promised to keep clear of the farm. You’re lying, and you’re as terrible at it as you’ve ever been.

Indeed. Crystal was putting it off, but she knew that eventually a good enough reason to go would come around, and on the first Friday of October, it finally did. That morning, Lucretia asked Crystal if she could take Luke to a bingo party with her old office friends. She wanted to show off her grandson, and this, she reasoned, would be the perfect time—a festive atmosphere with everyone who knew her present. Crystal told her it would be fine. That it would be better than fine, actually. It would give her a chance to call Miko and lay some all important truths on the table between them.

“Good idea,” Lucretia said. “How much does he know, anyway?”

Crystal finished tying one of Luke’s shoes, knowing that within the hour it would be untied again. “Almost nothing. I didn’t even tell him I quit my job.”

“You’re in for one hell of a long phone call.”

“I’ll pay for it.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Momeeee!” Luke whispered, in his best Halloween voice. “Mommy, wook!”

Crystal followed his pointing finger to a cardboard skeleton hanging over the porch. “Ooooh!” she told him. “Scary!”

“I meant that when you tell him the marriage is over, he’s not just going to say oh, all right, and hang up. There’s going to be fireworks.”

“Miko,” Crystal said, throwing a scarf around Luke’s neck, “hasn’t shown me any fireworks in years.”

Lucretia offered up nothing further on the subject after that. Either she was content with her warning given, or the idea of taking Luke to the party had her too buoyant to linger over the bête grise that was Crystal’s marriage. It scarcely mattered, as Crystal had no intention of calling Miko anyway. It was just another lie to add to the pile.

***

She didn’t call—but he did.

The landline phone rang mere minutes after her mother had gone. Feeling a bit buoyant herself now (the Jackson farm beckoned), Crystal picked it up, ready to fob off any solicitor who dared interrupt while she prepared for another trip down memory lane. She had a number of witticisms at her disposal, remembered from the days before her departure to Manila, when it seemed like every hour someone called with a sales pitch about switching electricity providers or a joining a gym.

“Hello,” she fumed into the receiver.

“Crystal?”

“This is she. How can I help you?”

“Crystal,” the voice, a man’s, repeated flatly.

Recognition dawned on her. “Miko. Jesus, I’m sorry. I just wasn’t expecting a phone call—“

“That’s one hell of a vacation you went on. It’s been over a month.”

“Well flying back and forth to Manila’s a pain in the ass, dear. You know that.”

“I do,” he replied, his tone still flat. “I also know that you quit your job.”

“That’s true,” Crystal said after a few guilty moments. Then, curious: “Who told you?”

“Not my wife.”

“No,” Crystal said, looking down at her ring finger, which was bare since she got off the plane in Cleveland. “Not your wife.”

“Why did you quit?” he asked.

Her hand closed into a fist. “Why should I tell you? You never tell me anything. You never talk to me at all anymore.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

She laughed. “Well, since you never tell me, I guess I’ll have to tell you. Miko,” she said, then drew a deep breath and held it. Was this really going to be so simple? Could she prove her mother wrong and end five years of marriage with a few sharp words spilled over a telephone line?

“I’m listening,” came the other’s voice.

Do it, girl. Be brave.

“I’m not coming back to Manila,” she let out. “Ever. I want us to get a divorce.”

Silence on the line. This time Crystal knew enough not to hold her breath. The wreckage of their marriage lay a long way down under the falsely placid waters they’d once sailed, and right now, she sensed that Miko was down there with it, exploring it, contemplating it. Seeing it, perhaps, for the very first time.

“No,” he said. Croaked, as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “No.”

Crystal closed her eyes. “Yes, Miko. It’s over.”

“But why? I don’t understand. Where’s Luke?” This last was almost seized upon. The sound of it made Crystal’s throat swell. She’d been expecting anger from him, not fear, not pain.

“Luke’s at a bingo party with my mom,” she got out. “They won’t be back until this afternoon.”

“Put him on the phone. Please.”

“Miko, I just told you he’s not here.”

“But I need to talk to him.”

“I…I know you do.” Oh God, she was doing it again. Hurting someone she cared for—hurting him really bad. This wasn’t how things were supposed to play out. Of course she’d known that Miko would resist. But not like this. Cold and aloof, that was her husband’s style. “And you can. Just as soon as he comes home.”

“Why are you doing this, Crystal? I don’t understand.”

“You don’t. I barely understand it myself. But Miko…we are just not in love anymore. That’s the simplest explanation I can give.”

Not happy with her answer, Miko began to create ones of his own. “Is it because of Manila?” he chanced. “Would you rather we live in the States? Because that’s fine—“

“It’s not about Manila.”

“The condo. The neighborhood. It sucks.”

“No it doesn’t. You love Salcedo Village.”

“Yeah, but what about you?”

“Miko, please.”

“I’m just trying to get to the bottom—“

“This is the bottom!” she shouted. “We don’t talk anymore! We don’t do anything together anymore! We get up, we go to work, we come home. Blah blah blah! I play with Luke and cook dinner. You hide behind a newspaper or some stupid book. Watch golf. And all the time I feel like you’re not really there. That it’s just me and the baby.”

“I can change. I will change.”

“It’s too late for that.”

“Why is it too late?”

Crystal clenched her teeth. “Dammit, Miko, I do not owe you any reasons! Not after five years of watching you hover in and out of that condo like a ghost! Do you understand me?”

“Crystal—“

“Do you understand me? Yes or no?”

“I understand you.”

“Good!”

“Crystal?”

She hesitated. There were tears in Miko’s voice; he was weeping. Sweet Mary, mother of God, he was weeping. Not since the time of Lucy’s suicide had she heard him do that, or even come close. Then, she’d been able to commiserate, and perhaps today as well. Except that time was short. She had places to go and things to see. It wasn’t her fault that by some stupid coincidence Miko had called. Fuck coincidence. If he wanted to call her up at the wrong time then he deserved everything he got. And fuck Miko too, she thought with sudden hate. He’d made her unhappy for five years. Five motherfucking years.

She opened her mouth to tell him as much, when he said: “Don’t take him away from me. Please. I need him.”

“You need him,” Crystal said, knowing well enough who him was. “Well you’ve got a funny way of showing it, Mister. I change his diapers, make his milk, buy his clothes, cook his meals. I sit up with him at night when he cries. What do you do? Tell me that, Miko. Where’s your contribution?”

“Crystal, wake up!” he screamed. “Please!”

She could hear his tears now, practically feel them through the receiver. They weren’t cutting the ice. Things between them had been frozen over for far too long.

“You want to be alone, Miko?” she asked. “You like drifting along all by yourself? That’s fine. I’m letting you go. Goodbye.”

“But what about Luke?”

“We can talk about Luke,” she said, after her ear stopped ringing. “But not today.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re crying worse than he does right now.”

“Crystal!”

“Goodbye, Miko. I’ll be in touch.”

And before he could scream anything else to impair her hearing, Crystal hung up the phone.

“Maraming salamat,” she said to the empty room. “Ingat.”

***

She smoked two cigarettes on her walk to the Jackson farm. Helping her with the deed was a cool breeze that swept down from a sky of white, tumbling clouds where faces formed and twisted and disappeared. Crystal recognized none of them. What use had she on this day for a familiar visage, real or imagined, that wasn’t Jarett’s? Or Chubby’s? Sweet, shaggy Chubby, who’d disappeared not long before the final crash, and whose whereabouts she’d never learned.

As if on cue, a dog barked at her from one of the back yards along the street. Crystal paid it no mind. She turned left onto the one-laned drive that was Jackson. A NO OUTLET sign warned her not to venture much further. Like the dog, it didn’t matter. She walked to the railroad tracks, where no train was passing by to block her from the trees, through which Wye Street, as always, wound like a kiddie coaster at Cedar Point.

It was here that she finally hesitated. As Lucretia had promised, a NO TRESPASSING sign stood at the entrance to the farm. Beyond it, dead leaves tumbled and dodged in a cold wind off the fields. Of course none of these things—sign, leaves, wind—surprised her. They’d been here during Jarett’s time and had failed