The King Falls Page 2
Jackson had looked down at the floor as he spoke, clearly revealing that he was less than proud. “It was because I was so short, and your mother was taller than I was by several inches. And your uncle Murl was over six feet before he started shrinking there at the end. I admired him so. He looked down on nobody. That’s why.”
“Would you care to elaborate, or are you gonna just leave it at that? Uncle Murl was one toxic male specimen, I have to say. A couple of rape charges that got dismissed, as I recall, and I’m willing to bet that he never set foot in church after his first communion.”
“Okay, so he wasn’t a saint. Who is? The thing is, I wanted tall children, taller than I was, at least. Specifically, I wanted a tall son, tall as your uncle Murl. And . . . and here you are. I got my genetic wish.”
King could find no words.
“I’m so proud you’re tall,” Jackson had continued. “You’ve never had to put up with what I’ve had to in my life. They smirk and call it the ‘small man syndrome.’ I’d have to say it’s real, based on my experience, but it’s a battle you’ve never had to fight. To have more women taller than you are is something you don’t want on your plate, believe me.”
King found the comment even more unsettling than the one about his mother. “I hope you’re proud of more than my height, Pop. That’s kind of a backhanded compliment, if you think about it. I may have started out like Uncle Murl, but . . .”
“Wait . . . whaddaya mean, you started out like Uncle Murl? Is there something you haven’t told me, son?”
King shrugged but also looked uncomfortable. “I just meant my attitude toward women, that’s all. I think it’s not what it should be.”
Jackson had blanched. “Please tell me you aren’t gay. Not after all the girlfriends you’ve had. You can’t be.”
“Hell, no, Pop. That’s not what I meant at all.”
Jackson had gone on to tell him that of course he was proud of him, but it had stuck with King all this time that perhaps his father didn’t really see who he was; that his presumption was that all his son wanted was to continue being a part of the business. A tall part of the business. It had seemed so superficial—without any true depth of feeling. It was all a matter of inches. Was that the extent of the relationship between father and son? If so, what loyalty did he really owe to the man?
And then there was that dream his father had detailed. King had read up on dreams afterward, even though he knew from his catechism that the church did not exactly endorse such a diversion as gospel. The book he’d skimmed insisted that information could sometimes be imparted in dreams that could be obtained nowhere else—including waking life. If that were true, then that description of “time running out” truly disturbed him. How could his father know anything? Was this just a random thing? How could anyone know, other than Father LeBlanc?
King snapped out of that particular reverie and thought about his mother for a moment. How would Ethel Mayes Kohl handle such a revelation about why his father had married her, assuming she ever found out? He knew he would never tell her such a cruel and calculating thing. Nonetheless, she was a formidable woman, and she had never been concerned about the business. Instead, her mantra was family, family, family. More than ever lately, she had been pressing him about getting married and giving her grandchildren before she got too old to pick them up and play peekaboo without too much of an effort. She had even told King that she had some names picked out for them when they came. That had been an annoying revelation for him, to say the least. He hadn’t even begun to think about such a thing as baby names. That not only wasn’t on his plate, but the plates weren’t even in the cupboard.
“King, honey,” she had begun in that smoker’s voice of hers that had long ago become her trademark in the days before she had quit, “I want you to keep these family hand-me-downs in mind when you and your wife get pregnant. I fully expect grandchildren to spoil.” They were both sitting on the wicker sofa on the back screen porch underneath the whirring of the creaky old ceiling fan that they’d been meaning to replace for years. They certainly had the wealth and wherewithal to do it, but for some reason just hadn’t. With great wealth sometimes came great inertia, and wealthy people could get away with this and that being run-down or out of order for a while. They were just termed quirky and given a jet runway’s worth of the benefit of the doubt by their peers.
Caught off-guard, King had said, “But I’m not even married yet. And what do you mean—hand-me-downs? Are you talking about clothes? I can buy my own clothes, Mom. I stopped letting you dress me back in high school, if you recall.”
The remark seemed to wound Ethel, and before continuing, she had taken another sip of her mimosa that she was never without past noon in hot weather. “Heavens, no. Forget about clothes. I mean handing down our family names. Now, if you should happen to have a girl first, I think Lorien would be nice. That was your great-grandmother’s name, and no one has ever bothered to honor her. We can’t let her slip between the cracks, can we?”
“I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but Lorien sounds like a sports car, Mom. We might as well be calling her Jaguar.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s perfectly respectable.” There had been a pause in between further savoring of the mimosa. “And then, if you should have a boy, I favor Belfast.”
King was unable to restrain himself. “You’re kidding? A kid having to live with that all his life? Wasn’t that the name of one of Rosalie’s mansions that got burned down during the Civil War? Didn’t a Union officer blow it up on the High Bluff because he wasn’t invited to one of those elaborate soirées the planters were always giving to keep the Union brass happy and at bay?”
“No, you’re thinking of Belforest. That was the Forest family. They say Franklin Forest committed suicide after that because he just couldn’t take the loss of his magnificent mansion. Just up and cut his wrists and bled out all over the Belter parlor love seat. They had to throw it out because of all the bloodstains that just wouldn’t come out, no matter what they did. Of course, I suppose an upholsterer could only do so much back in those days. Now try to keep up.”
That was another thing. How ironic that Ethel had told him to “try to keep up.” It was she who seemed to be slow on the uptake these days, asking people to repeat things all the time. King had even suggested she have her hearing tested, but she would have none of it. Just the mention that she might be hard of hearing sent her into what Southerners referred to as a hissy fit. Still, something about her seemed to have changed and wasn’t quite right.
Matters had gone even further downhill during their baby names discussion, and King had not bothered to try and retain the succession of inappropriate monikers his mother had trotted out in dizzying and ditzy fashion. He only knew that she continued to press him these days about the women he had been dating—particularly, the two he had seen the most of since college had ended five years ago—Bella Compton and Patrice Leyton.
King returned to his bridge party guest list, smiling at the next name he was viewing.
Ah, Bella! Short for Isabella, which he always thought had a medieval flair to it. Or was he thinking of Queen Isabella of Spain, ordering the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María to set sail for the New World? He had invited her up to his college graduation, and that’s where they had first done it—at the Holiday Inn, instead of on campus. Few could afford the price of their rooms, but King had paid for their best suite and ordered up room service to gild the lily. It had all seemed so adult to the both of them, giving them a feeling of smugness and superiority. Champagne, smoked salmon, and sex. Could anything be more illusion-building?
After that, they continued seeing each other in Rosalie and became identified as a couple socially. Ethel and Jackson were beside themselves in anticipation of a wedding, which would genetically bring together the wealthy Kohl and Compton families in perfect union. And what a looker Bella was: nearly as tall as he was, but blond where he was dark; freckled across the bridge of her nose
and prone to sunburn, she had the sort of smile that suggested she should be modeling toothpaste or moisturizer out in California. Plus, Jackson never tired of pulling his son aside about the important matter of proposing.
“I’m tired a’ asking this. When are you two gonna tie the knot?” he had said during their most recent discussion. “Your children are sure to be tall, you know.”
But King had thrown cold water on his father’s enthusiasm with no qualms, having not fully recovered from the revelation about his mother’s family’s tall genes in that previous confrontation. “On the other hand, Pop, we could have a throwback. After all, you’re short, so the odds favored me not being as tall as I am. Genetics are a crapshoot, and then there’s always that ‘skipping a generation’ thing. That’s not out of the realm of possibilities.”
Jackson scowled, stopping short of wagging a finger. “Why in hell would you wanna go there, son? Are you just trying to annoy me?”
King just let it lie there. He disdained a serious discussion on the subject of settling down. Besides, Bella Compton was willing to wait, anyway. Forever, if she needed to, as she had told him before their falling out, and that had been fine with him. “I want to be with you ’til death do us part,” were her exact words.
King pulled out of his contemplation. Death. Time running out. Was it all as simple as that? Was there some hope for him yet?
As for Patrice Leyton, she was a different proposition altogether. There had been that summer when King and Bella had had that big falling out, and he had told her in a regrettable fit of rage that their courtship, so to speak, was going nowhere fast. It was somewhat of a lie, since he still cared for her, but he chose not to clear up the matter. Sometimes, he thought commitment was not to be found in his DNA. There seemed to be something perverse in his makeup that he couldn’t control.
So he had started seeing Patrice on the rebound, and he was not naïve enough to believe she was going out with him for any other reason than she had an eye to the main chance. He knew the Leyton family was not to the manner born—as blue-collar as they came. He would never have been caught dead dating her in high school, but she had come onto him more than once in a private moment or two at their lockers in between classes. He had filed it away and made good on her “offer without an expiration date” that she had granted him. She had even written him a little note on one of those blank greeting cards from the pharmacy and slipped it into his hand. It had read: ANYTIME, BIG MAN, ANYTIME. And then had been signed: YOU KNOW WHO.
Patrice’s beauty was a striking contrast to Bella’s. Whereas Bella seemed to have found a way to bottle sunshine at high noon, exuding it at a moment’s notice, Patrice had mastered the art of looking downcast and vulnerable with her long lashes, darker coloring, and exquisite, pouting mouth. The combination was capped off by her generous bust, which had been her calling card since she was fourteen. She’d long had the boys swarming around her like fruit flies, and she hadn’t exactly swatted them away, but she’d made it all too abundantly clear to King that it was he she really coveted.
King stopped himself from reviewing his relationship with Patrice any further. That smile he had generated at his thoughts of Bella had now morphed into an ugly frown, one that was more than painful. Maybe that chapter of his life with Patrice was the real beginning of what he was planning to tell them all at the party. His confession to Father LeBlanc had not really cleared up the matter for him. At least, not in any way deep down in his core, where he had to live with himself. The Hail Marys had rung hollow, just an exercising of fingers over rosary beads. Texture, but nothing in the way of real absolution. Perhaps there was only that one thing that really would turn his world right side up. That was the payoff he was hoping for, and then everyone would let him off the hook—Bella, Patrice, his parents and their expectations of him—every one of them—at the party. True, he imagined that none of them would likely view it the way he would, but it was his life, not theirs. Even if his father mentioning that phrase from the dream—time running out—continued to shake him to his roots. Was that an indication from unseen sources that it was too late?
Last on his list was Wendy Rierson, president of the Rosalie Country Club Bridge Bunch and reporter for the Citizen. Among the invitees, she was the true outlier. She did not really fit in as an integral part of his life, but he wanted her there anyway for some reason that he couldn’t quite identify. Perhaps it was because he had found a way to lighten his load by getting back into the swing of playing bridge after he had first joined the club. She had been so welcoming, and it was there, while bidding and making a grand slam, that more of the idea had occurred to him. Plus, even though he knew she was married—and to a police detective, at that—he could not entirely banish the slight crush he had on her. It was the auburn hair and the blue eyes and the way she put all her players at ease every time they met and spent a few hours trumping tricks and counting points and winning rubbers. It had all further developed a new way of thinking and viewing his life for the young scion: a secret world that no one else knew anything about, yet which he fervently desired to enter. But that small group would soon know about it at the party, and he would take it from there, no matter how negatively any of them might react. And who knew? Maybe one or two of them would even understand his decision. Stranger things had happened in this world.
That last thought gave him pause. There was another way he could do this. Maybe he was making it too public all at once. Should he be more private about it? Was that the right way to go? One-on-one? What about Marcus Silvertree? He probably wouldn’t even consider responding to an invitation, and wouldn’t that seem like rubbing it in, at least on the surface? There was too much bad feeling between the two of them. Their last confrontation had been as rough-edged as they come.
“I may be out,” Marcus had told him, standing rigidly across from him as King sat behind his office desk looking supremely smug. “But I’ll find some way to get even with you, I swear. You and that daddy a’ yours didn’t play by the rules, and you know it. You stole customers from me right and left. You have no ethical standards, and you know it.” Marcus had sounded and looked as fierce as his great, dark handlebar mustache, which had always made him look like part of an old-fashioned barbershop quartet, even though the man couldn’t carry a tune.
“I doubt that very much,” came the bored reply from his real estate competitor. “You make me want to yawn.”
Then Marcus had stormed off, and there had been no contact between the two of them since, although King had shared the confrontation with his father, who had taken grand delight in the details.
“We got him, son, we got him.” And there had been not a drop of empathy in Jackson Kohl’s reply.
King went down the existing list and considered once again. But each time, something froze him in place, making him unable to pick and choose. Maybe he should just leave it all the way it was. He’d gone to all this trouble and planned nearly every detail, even though he’d had his mother help him design the invitations and pick out the stock; he was supremely annoyed that she had dipped her index finger in her perfume and touched it to the back of each envelope. Ugh! No man should send out scented invitations. But why turn back now and dump this format?
King got up from his desk and stretched his long legs. He glanced at his watch and was startled to discover how much time had passed since he had sat down with the list and reviewed everything. No matter. He exhaled and then headed for the kitchen, full of beef stew–preparation smells, where his part-time cook and housekeeper, Wyvonne Sidley, awaited him at the stove with an eager smile.
Young and single with a distracting head of trendy, long-flowing, rainbow-colored hair, she was putting herself through the College of Rosalie by working several afternoons a week for various wealthy families. She’d even worked her class schedule around her duties. It had taken King aback when she had made quite the production of telling him how to spell and pronounce her peculiar name properly.
 
; “You see, the W and the Y combine into just the one letter Y all by itself and that’s the letter you pronounce, followed by the ordinary VONNE part, if you get my drift,” she had explained. Then she had said that her parents wanted something unique for her that people would remember, but also that to her way of thinking, they never really thought things through.
“My parents were like that with my name, too,” King answered back, giving her a wink.
“Sometimes I think my parents should just have gotten some sense into their heads and just spelt it WHY-VONNE to avoid all the confusion,” she had continued, and then left it at that.
“Is there something you need right now, Mr. Kohl?” Wyvonne was saying at the stove back in present time. “Your favorite stew should be ready in about another hour or so. I know how much you love it. I mean, I could actually serve it now in a pinch, but it gets better the longer it simmers.”
He told her no, he needed nothing right now, and the stew smelled delicious as usual. Then, “I’m going out for a little spin. I need to get outta the house. I’ve been cooped up with my guest list all afternoon. I worry too much about everything, as you know. I shouldn’t overthink things, but I guess it’s in my nature.”
“I know you want all your parties to go just right, and I think the ones I’ve helped out with have turned out that way. This one will, too.”
King hesitated for a few awkward seconds, but then recovered his resolve. “There’s no question about that, Wyvonne. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Thanks. Well, when do you think you’ll be back, sir?”
“Not sure,” he told her. “It may take a little while. I’m gonna try to see if I can count every single KOHL AND SON sign all over Rosalie. I especially like the SOLD ones. More money in our pockets these days when things are tough, as Pop would say. That won’t be an easy task to cover all that territory, since I don’t intend to miss a one.”