“Are we gonna stay with Mama and Aunt Christine and Uncle Buzz for a while?”
Lloyd shook his head. He crumpled the note from the refrigerator into a wad and threw it in the kitchen garbage pail. “This time you’re gonna stay with me.”
Shawn sat down at the table. The Tolands lived in a large circa-1980 two-story log house that was laid out just the way Lloyd and Bianca wanted it. The kitchen had a raised ceiling, which, just like the living room, went all the way up to the roof. Large skylights brought the afternoon sunlight cascading down onto the table.
Kimberly jumped up into the chair nearest her brother’s. “Can we have pizza tonight?” she asked.
Lloyd didn’t answer. The phone was ringing. He walked over to the wall and unhooked the receiver. It was Bianca.
“I thought you said everything you wanted to say in that note you left this morning — the note you left while I was down in Senatobia.”
“Daddy was supposed to bring Shawn and Kimberly here. Did he go there by mistake?”
“Yes.”
“So you have them there with you?”
“I have them.”
“Will you bring them up here?”
“No.”
“I don’t want them staying with you, Lloyd.”
“I’m sober.”
“For now.”
“If you want the kids, you can come get them. But we may not be here. Kimberly wants pizza. I was thinking I might take them to Pizza Hut.”
“Go to the one in Southaven and I’ll drop by and pick them up after they’ve eaten.”
“Or maybe we’ll go someplace else.”
Shawn was watching his father. He was studying his father’s face, examining the way his dad looked when he gave Shawn’s mom a hard time. Lloyd always seemed to be playing a game with Shawn’s mother, but there was never any fun involved. It was as if he had to talk to her this way, had to make things hard for her to keep her from getting the better of him. But he didn’t enjoy it.
“Please just bring them up to Southaven and we can hash this all out whenever you want to.”
“We could’ve hashed it out this morning. The kids weren’t around. We could have said whatever we needed to. But you bailed out.”
“I had to get away, Lloyd. Do you even remember how out of control you were last night? Do you ever remember the way you are with me when you get like that?”
“I’m tired of losing my kids every time you go running off to your sister’s or your parents’.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Lloyd was wrapping the coiled phone cord around his hand and now he released it with a springy snap. “I’ll go to that clinic.”
“I would be so happy if you really meant that.”
“Just let me keep the kids for the rest of the weekend. I won’t drink.”
“I don’t believe you.” Bianca got very quiet. Then she said, “You waved your gun at me last night.”
“I waved the gun?”
“Yes.”
“Did I say that I wanted to shoot you with it?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Lloyd. You said that you were going to shoot yourself. But then you changed your mind, because you said I didn’t deserve to have Shawn and Kimberly all to myself while you were buried six feet under. That kind of talk scares the crap out of me, Lloyd. The kids need to be with me until you can get your head back on. You’re sober right now, so you should understand that.”
“I’m taking them for pizza. They’ll be here later this evening when you get Buzz to drive you down. What did you do with my gun? It needs to be under lock and key when it’s in the house.”
“It isn’t in the house. I disposed of it. I didn’t want it around anymore.”
Lloyd drove his 1989 Honda Accord coupe up the graveled drive to his neighbor’s house a half hour later. Both men were in their late thirties. Jason, like Lloyd, was a weekend farmer. Both men worked weekdays up in Southaven.
“Hey,” Lloyd said as Jason answered the door.
“Hey,” said Jason. He craned his head to see Shawn and Kimberly sitting in the car, Shawn in the passenger side bucket, Kimberly in the back. “What’s up?”
“Did Bianca bring my gun over here this morning?”
Jason’s wife Dolly appeared next to her husband. She wore a scarf and there was a smudge of something on her cheek. She’d been cleaning. “We don’t have your gun, Lloyd.”
“It isn’t Bianca’s to give away,” said Lloyd.
“It is if you’ve been waving it around scaring the daylights out of her.”
“Jason, I want my goddamned gun back. I’ve been using guns responsibly since I was fourteen. I’ll put it away.” Then to Dolly: “I was waving it around for dramatic effect. There weren’t any bullets in it.”
Jason, over his wife’s protests, went to get the gun. He placed it in Lloyd’s palm. “And here are the bullets that you said weren’t in the gun.”
Dolly could hardly speak. “Why? Why, Jason?”
“Because things aren’t going to get better until somebody starts to trust Lloyd again. Don’t let me down, Lloyd. Keep the gun away from the kids.”
Lloyd nodded. “Thanks, guy.”
He didn’t say anything to Dolly. Dolly and Bianca were good friends.
Bianca told Dolly things.
Lloyd put the gun in the glove compartment of the car. He dropped the bullets into his shirt pocket. “Don’t open the glove compartment,” he said to Shawn.
Shawn nodded. “Are we going for pizza, Dad?”
“All right.”
Lloyd took his son and daughter to a pizzeria close to home. He decided to get the pie and Cokes to go. “We’ll drive over to Arkabutla and have a twilight picnic.” The sun was going down.
It took almost twenty minutes to get to Arkabutla Lake, where Lloyd knew there would be picnic tables. The three ended up eating in the half dark and swatting at mosquitoes. Lloyd had forgotten to get napkins and Kimberly cried when she couldn’t get the tomato sauce off her face and hands.
“This was a mistake,” said Lloyd to himself.
“The pizza was good,” said Shawn.
“Let’s get back to the house. We’ll pack your bags and I’ll take you up to your Aunt Christine and Uncle Buzz’s house like your mother wants.”
“Thanks, Dad,” said Shawn.
Lloyd drove out of the picnic area. He stopped to let a truck and boat trailer pull up from the concrete boat ramp. The truck turned and drove away. But Lloyd remained parked, his motor idling. Lloyd and his son and daughter were alone now in the dark.
“She’s gonna divorce me this time,” Lloyd said. “I could spend the next year of my life at that dry-out clinic and it won’t matter. She’s gonna divorce me and take you kids with her.”
Shawn shifted nervously in his seat. “We’ll come see you, Dad.”
Lloyd stared at the spot where the inky darkness of the lake met the near-darkness of the sky. It was quiet, but he could hear the sound of the water gently lapping the bottom reach of the boat launch.
Shawn fumbled for the dome light in the car and flicked it on. He looked hard at his father’s face — a face that he didn’t recognize. Lloyd had different faces that he showed his wife and children. This wasn’t like any of them: this was the face of a man who seemed to be giving up.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know anymore.” Lloyd turned the steering wheel to the right. He put the Accord at the top of the boat ramp. “Let’s see what the bottom of the lake looks like, shall we?”
Lloyd accelerated. The car sped down the ramp, hydroplaned across the water and then settled lambently upon the surface about thirty yards from the shore. “They say most cars can float for a while.” Lloyd turned around to address his daughter. “You want to see if Daddy’s car can double as a boat?”