by Joe Meno
“Do you wanna take a drive with me up to Baliboo? My Aunt Fiona finally died and my cousin Twilla needs some help with the arrangements.” Charlene was holding my hand and leaning against me.
“Why sure.” I smiled. “Stay a couple of nights in a fancy motel bed? Make love on a mattress instead of a parking brake?”
“Oh, wait a minute. I forgot. It’s over the state line. I won’t have you breaking parole on account of me.”
“So what? If we go for the weekend, we’ll make it back before anyone ever knows.”
So we went.
I took three days of vacation time and we made it away. Charlene drove the whole three hours up to Baliboo, Wisconsin, with me singing and making jokes and grabbing her thighs, and somewhere just over that state line a precious little thought occurred to me and reminded me of something Guy Gladly had told me. The world does not end with that tiny scrub of a town. Sitting in the passenger seat of that car, watching Charlene, seeing the whole bright world flash by, I got the feeling that she and I were not only driving, but moving straight ahead. We were moving past it all, moving right by, with her beautiful brown hair blowing like a halo around her head and her sweet delicate voice whispering in my ear. It made me want to drive all night. It made me want to stay in that car with her and drive and drive until all the things I had ever lost or known were long gone. Charlene’s foot was heavy, and we made it to her crazy aunt’s place in three hours.
It was an old gray, gloomy house, withered and soaked in despair. It made Charlene squeeze my hand as soon as she caught sight of it. It broke any good mood right away. Nothing about it seemed alive save for the small black birds that were perched still and sullen, singing little whistling hymns in the low trees.
“There it is.” Charlene smiled. “Me and Ullele used to sit in those swings out front for hours and talk about boys. She told me once if you wanted a boy to love you, you had to kiss his lips, then say a quick prayer to the Virgin Mary, and then say his name a hundred times every night before you went to sleep.”
“Does it work?” I asked.
“How do you think I got you?”
Those nice chain swings swung from a fat maple tree out front, dangling just above the overrun grass and weeds. The house itself was a real sad sight all right, getting worse as we stepped close. A whole section of the porch had begun to sink and lean in on itself. There was a broken window or two on the second floor and crabweed and black vines growing up the side. There were all kinds of holes dug into the wood paneling along the top floor, and nests and hunks of weeds growing right along the gutters and the roof. It looked sad. I watched Charlene take it all in and shake her head.
“It didn’t used to be like this. There was a nice garden out on the side there and wind chimes on the porch. It used to be the prettiest house ever. I used to pretend that I’d get married to some professional race car driver and we’d move in here and I’d sit out on the porch every night waiting for my husband to come home from the races and then he’d come from over the hill there and carry me up the stairs to that big silver four-poster bed and we’d sit up there and kiss and watch the sunset and stay awake as long as we liked.” Charlene gave a little sigh and tried to smile. “It seems all the things I ever wanted are pretty far away.”
I squeezed her hand and helped her up the porch as the whole house gave a little creak.
“My daddy would have a heart attack if he saw the place like this.” She frowned.
“Why didn’t your folks come?” I asked.
“There was some pretty bad blood between my daddy and his sister. She wouldn’t be beholden to anyone. She was that kind of woman. When my father offered to pay for her to be put in a rest home, she told him to take all his money and go to hell. My daddy, well, you know how he is, he kept a grudge against her after that and they stopped talking altogether. When my cousin called to tell us the news, my daddy just shook his head and said she’d already been dead to him for years already.”
I nodded and kissed her cheek. “It’s nice of you to come up here like this. I’ll bet your aunt would appreciate it kindly.”
“I wanted to see the house again and her and just try to make it all nice in my mind.”
Charlene knocked on the door and her crazy cousin Twilla swung it open with a scream. “Charlene!!!” she howled. “You came!! You really made it! You came!!”
Twilla was something of a lunatic, I guess. She had been raised on a dog farm, and one night when she was sixteen she went out and shot all the puppies dead with her daddy’s Winchester because the boy she loved didn’t ask her to the Spring Dance. I had a feeling most of the women in Charlene’s family suffered some sort of mental problem, though, not through any fault of their own. It seemed to me these crazy ladies were mostly lonely, lonely by themselves or with their own families around, and no one cared or noticed until some blood had been shed or something turned up dead in the yard. It seemed all these ladies suffered from each having a lonely kind of heart.
“This is Luce.” Charlene smiled, introducing me.
Twilla kissed my cheek and shook my hand. “Nice to meet you, Luce. Nice of you to drive all the way up here with Charlene.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” I said.
“So has everything been arranged?” Charlene asked. “Did you need some help with anything?”
“Nope, it’s all taken care of. Aunt Fiona’s upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” Charlene asked.
“Yes. Lord, that’s the way she wanted it. Wrote it down in her will. She wanted to be kept up in her room for at least seven days so all her kids could be sure she wasn’t just up there asleep. She started losing her mind there at the end. The house started falling apart and there was no one around to help her keep it up, with me at the hospital and, well, you and your sisters all over the place. So she got lonely up here, I guess. Started letting little animals inside the house. Let them damn squirrels ruin the place. It was a kindly thing to do, I guess, open up her house, but creepy just the same.”
“That was her way.” Charlene frowned. “Is she all right to see?”
“I guess. But you might not want to go up there. You haven’t seen her in some time and it might be a kind of shock.”
“It’s OK.” Charlene smiled. “I’d like to say goodbye if I have the chance.” She squeezed my hand and then started to walk up the stairs. I began to follow and then Charlene stopped and stared at me with a frown. “Luce, you don’t have to come along,” she whispered.
“It’s OK,” I mumbled. “You can prop me up in case I faint.”
Charlene gave a warm little smile and took my hand and we walked the three flights of stairs to the top floor without another word. I felt myself beginning to sweat. I was getting nervous as hell. Charlene turned the rusty gold doorknob at the top of the landing and opened the door a little bit.
Mothballs seemed to tumble on out. That musty dusty scent began to cloud my eyes as I followed Charlene and stepped inside, staring at all the holes dug into the walls and through the floor to the light outside. Cool blue light covered everything, streaming across the floor, making shadows every step we took from all kinds of holes in the floorboards and walls. There was the silver four-poster bed, bright and wooden and draped with a dark purple veil. There was the old lady’s shape, resting in place, covered with a dark blanket up to her white little chin. Her long gray hair rose above her head and over her shoulders and nearly reached the floor. It appeared she hadn’t cut her hair in a few hundred years.
In that room, something else was breathing. Making a desperate little plea.
We stepped closer, holding hands, and we were about two feet from the bed when I noticed something moving right above that old lady’s face.
A bird.
There was a tiny goddamn sparrow nested in the huge gray tangle of her hair. Then I looked again and saw another bird propped up beside her ear. That old lady laid in her bed with a nest of birds in her goddamn hair. I stopped where I was
. Then something skittered across the floor and I tried not to shout. Charlene gave a little start. This little thing skittered back and forth and then under the bed. A squirrel. A goddamn squirrel. There were all kinds of animals living in the goddamn hair on her head and in the room where she was lying in her most final of reprieves.
Charlene squeezed my hand and took one step closer, then turned away. “She looks like an angel lying there,” she whispered.
I nodded and watched as a bird appeared from behind a pillow and then took flight and crept outside through one of the holes in the side wall. It was too much of a sight. There was another tiny sparrow resting on the old lady’s lips. It looked like the damn thing was giving her the softest, most delicate kiss it could deliver. It nested right there on her lips and gave a little chirp as a kind of sweet reply to all the things that old dead lady might be whispering. I could hear the sounds of that bird breathing. The sound inside its throat. It was humming. It was humming and staring right at me. I tried to close my eyes, to block it all out, but I could still hear its little heart beating in its throat and its little beak breaking open and closed, I could hear its tiny sharp fingers holding tight to that old lady’s skin, stealing her soul as she slept in that dark purple bed. I left Charlene there to have a moment or two alone, deciding it might be best if I waited down the stairs.
After a while, I went outside and found Charlene sitting in her swing out front, humming a little song out there all alone to herself.
It had already begun to get dark. The sun had just begun to set and night was rolling in like a single cloud from the west.
Charlene sat in her nice old silver swing, barely moving at all, hanging there, suspended in place. She could have waited there long as she liked and she’d still be the most beautiful sight I’d ever see.
“How do.” I smiled, bent over, kissing her cheek. She placed her head warmly against my chest and I took a seat in the other swing, dragging my feet underneath me in the little bit of dirt and grass. “How you doing there, pal?” I asked, staring at the way her head was hung kind of low, like it was all weighed down pretty heavy with some unwieldy thoughts.
Charlene gave a little smile and twitched her nose.
“In heaven, there are cradles of gold,” she murmured in one soft breath. “That’s what my crazy aunt used to tell me. Told me there’s a whole long place filled with golden cribs full of baby angels waiting to be born. That’s what she used to tell me where babies came from.” “That sounds sweet.” I smiled.
Charlene nodded and looked down at her bare feet. Then she said something quick, with a soft little smile and twinkle in her eye and a pass of her hand right through her tousled brown hair, and after she said it, I thought I might just about die.
“I think I’m preggers, Luce Lemay.”
My heart skipped a full breathing beat.
It hit me like a sucker punch right in my teeth. I fell right out of that tiny silver chain swing and on my behind and looked up at her, feeling my heart shaking somewhere down around my waist.
“Come again?” I sputtered, cotton-mouthed as all hell. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t make a sound. All the words in the world had become frozen and unfamiliar to me just as she lowered her hair and said it again.
“I’m in the family way, Luce. I’m late by four days. I’ve never been this late before in my life. I feel it, too, I think. I’ve been trying to think of some way to tell you the last few days. But I just couldn’t let it wait. Sitting here thinking about it, I thought I shouldn’t let it wait.”
I nodded. In that moment, everything changed.
“A baby …” I mumbled.
“That’s right, fella. A baby. And I’m too old to be praying some angel might miss its turn and skip over me.” She placed her hand against her cheek and closed her lips. “This is it. I’m pretty sure I can feel it.”
I got right up out of the mud and kissed her lips. They were not so tender and soft. They were tight. They were tight and trembling and scared as rabbits. I put her hand in mine and she laid her face against my chest.
“I’m scared, Luce. I’m twenty-five. What if this is the only chance I get? I don’t wanna miss it. I don’t wanna give it away or get married or get myself fixed or do whatever you’re supposed to do when something happens like this. I wanna keep it. I’ve thought about it and even if you split town, I want to keep it because it’s part of me and full of nothing but love.”
By now Charlene was crying and muffling it in my shirt and I was all broken up and teary-eyed and still fighting to think of something to say.
“You don’t think we should get married?” I muttered.
“No,” she whispered. “No, it’s not right. We’re sure not ready to get married, and bringing up a baby is hard enough without trying to figure you and me and us all out.” She looked away. “I’m just not ready for any of this …” she sobbed, clinging tight to my shirt.
“Guess I just don’t know,” I said. “Guess I don’t know what we’re supposed to do.”
Charlene just shook her head and cried some more.
“I guess you’ve just gotta take what’s good around you and love it right now,” I mumbled. “That’s how I feel anyway. I’m not saying we should get married or anything you don’t wanna do, but it seems to me this is a kind of gift and we’d be damn fools to screw it up just because it’s something scary and new. But you know how I feel about you. You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. And seeing you like this makes me wish I had never laid a hand on you. But then there’s a part of me that’s scared and happy and glad as hell. There’s a part of me that’s sure if I could take it back somehow, I know I wouldn’t. This is something special between the two of us and I’ll do whatever you want me to do but leave you, because you’re the most important person in the world to me and this is a blessing and we should take whatever good things we’re able to.”
“Guess that’s one way of looking at it.” She smiled, then she leaned back and pulled all her hair back into a ponytail and tied it up tight, knotting it there like a kind of promise, a kind of quiet agreement to what I had just said. Then we both just sat there quiet and still.
“Do you wanna get hitched? Or is it just getting hitched to me that seems so bad?” I asked.
“No, it’s not that. I’m just scared, Luce. I’m scared for you and me and what my parents are going to say and what we’re gonna do when this baby’s born.”
“But it’s a good kind of scared. It’s being scared but full of hope. Hope of all the good things that might come,” I said.
Charlene leaned in close to me and I kissed her neck. Then we sat there without saying a word for a few minutes more.
“Hitched, huh?” she said, rolling her brown eyes.
“It might not be so bad. There’s worse reasons to get married than this.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“Well, like money for instance. Or because you don’t think you can find anyone else. I think we got something here. We got something here we don’t have to put into words, Charlene.” “It might be nice.” She smiled.
“Well, heck, I don’t hear you going on and on about how you feel. The only way I’m sure of how you feel is when we’re kissing or doing things like that. Most of the other times you’re a kind of mystery to me.”
“Hmph.” She frowned, shaking her head.
“It just seems right to me. I mean, we could save up some money and maybe move out West or put a down payment on a mobile home. But this is the start of something, Charlene. This is the start of something great. I think you might feel it, too.” I took a deep breath and stared at her face. “What do you say?”
This pretty lady leaned over and kissed my lips in a soft breath. “I do, Luce Lemay.” She leaned in so close, so gentle beside me. Her skin seemed so smooth and bright that I wanted to kiss her and keep kissing her until the night had fallen all around us like a delicate screen and we could be alone in the field together for a long,
long time, not worried about ever going back to La Harpie.
That night we made it in the Blue Moon Motel a few miles down the road, in a bed, between nice white sheets, like a real couple, like a man and a woman should, holding each other tight, sleeping in each other’s arms all night until the sweet-faced Mexican maid came to our door in the morning and told us we had an hour before checkout, and that was fine because it was all just a little glimpse, a single little glimmer of what it would all be like someday not too far away.
We headed on back the next night, after all the arrangements for Aunt Fiona had been made, with Charlene beaming and me holding her hand as she kept one hand on the steering wheel, not driving back, but straight ahead and away from the past. Everything was perfect there in the night. Everything was perfect and sweet and good with the two of us all alone out on the road, sharing one beautiful dream.
Just before we got back to La Harpie, I had a terrible thought. I thought it and made the mistake of saying it before I could catch myself.
“Maybe we should wait.”
“Huh?” Charlene whispered, half-dreaming.
“Maybe we should be sure before we go and tell anybody about the baby, I mean.”
“Oh,” she said. “If you like.”
“I just … I mean, I hope you’d still want to consider marrying me, but if, well, that changes how you feel, I’d understand.”
“You don’t sound so sure yourself.”
“No, I just don’t want you to, us, I mean, to jump into anything. We might as well be sure.”
“I guess,” she said looking away. “I’m sure, even if there isn’t a baby.”
I looked down at her hands on the wheel. “I’ve just gotten through one too many mistakes already. I wouldn’t want, well, you to be another one, too.”
