George looked at Rose. “I didn’t come here to talk about Pa. Wanted to say something else.”
He looked so miserably unhappy, she wanted to go to him, cradle his head against her breast, promise him it couldn’t be as bad as he thought.
“I don’t know how to say this. I can’t find the words I want. They keep slipping away. They’re like Zac. Never where you want him.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Here he was, about to tell her everything was over, and he was making her laugh.
“I always knew I shouldn’t marry,” George began. He spoke slowly and deliberately, almost as though each word had to be hunted down and captured before he could use it. “You ought to have good stock for marrying. I’m not good stock. Got rot at the heart. Just like a big black oak we used to have at home. People used to say how pretty and green it was. Ma had parties under it in the summertime. One day a wind came up and blew it down. The inside was all rotten. That’s me. Inside all rotten.”
Rose didn’t have any idea what George was talking about. True, he was pretty on the outside. But she had no idea what kind of rot he could possibly be referring to. It obviously wasn’t a liking for drink. He wasn’t enjoying this evening any more than she was.
“That’s why I tried to stay away from you,” George continued. “Do you know how hard it is to keep yourself from doing the one thing you want to do more than anything else?” He transfixed her with his gaze, its intensity heightened because of the struggle to fight his way through the cloud of alcohol. “It’s the worst kind of hell.”
Rose felt an upsurge of hope. He was telling her he wanted her. He was saying he had to force himself to stay away from her. Still, she warned herself not to build up false hopes. The whiskey had muddled him. He could still utter those fateful words.
“Pa was prettier than any oak tree,” George said, going off on a tangent Rose couldn’t immediately follow. “But he was rotten. Mean and rotten. Ma tried to hide it, but I could see it. All of us could.”
Rose felt she was living with two people she couldn’t see, people she couldn’t talk to, argue with, drive away. Two people who stood between her and George. Between all the Randolph boys and happiness. They were like ghosts haunting the living out of anger at their own ruined lives.
“It’s in all of us. It’s what makes Jeff so bitter, Monty ready to defy the world, Hen enjoy killing, Tyler dislike people. It’s what caused Madison to turn his back and walk away.”
“What’s in you?” Rose asked. If she didn’t understand something soon, she was going to lose the thread of his conversation altogether.
“The rot,” George told her. “It’s there, eating away, just waiting for a storm. Then it’ll break through and destroy us.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you or your brothers,” Rose hastened to assure him. “Even Jeff.”
“I’m the worst of all,” he said, ignoring her. “I’m just like Pa.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Rose said. She would have been furious if anyone else had made that statement.
“I won’t be a good husband. Pa tried, but he made us all hate him. The worst thing I can think of is having you hate me.”
A glimmer of understanding pierced the fog. George saw some of the same faults in himself he had seen in his father. He was afraid he would make the same mistakes.
“You’re not the least bit like your father,” Rose assured him. “You may not always want to take responsibility—no one likes it all the time—but you accept it because you love your brothers.”
“But—”
“You know no one else can do what you’re doing. If you join the army, you won’t leave until they can take care of themselves.”
“Pa left us,” George muttered.
“You could have stayed away after the war, but you didn’t. You could have gotten fed up with Monty or Jeff and left, but you didn’t.”
George didn’t look convinced.
Rose decided it was time to get to the core of the problem. If George wasn’t willing to mention it, then she would.
“If you’re trying to tell me you made a mistake in marrying me—”
The transformation was instantaneous. There was nothing confused or apologetic about the George who sat before her now.
“I never said anything about not wanting to marry you. I didn’t, did I?”
“No, but I thought you meant—”
“I wanted to marry you more than I ever thought possible. But everything ought to be perfect for you. You ought to have a husband who loves you more than life, who’s worthy of the love you have to give, who wants the same things you want, who won’t destroy everything he touches.”