by Annie DeWitt
“Nothing doing,” Father said. “Pretty much just a fire and some fancy camping is all. Remember, baby. I took you camping once.”
“Sure,” Mother said. She hadn’t given in to him yet. But she wasn’t denying him anything either. He was injured after all. Everyone could see that. Everyone could see that denying him would’ve made her look too sharp in the light.
“We ate fresh carp,” she said.
“Crappie,” Father said. “We went swimming and fried crappie over the Bunsen and camped out on the dock. We never made it all the way out to the ocean. You said you wanted to avoid the salt.”
“Right,” Mother said. “I never can get the water out of my eyes. That was it.”
“I don’t know what you kids call camping,” Otto said. “All I know is I came home from the butte that night with a six pack under one arm and a hard-on under the other despite the liquor. I haven’t been that horny since I was a teen. I went to take a piss and caught myself in the zipper. Wilson comes in and I’m curled up on the floor with my head over the bowl. Scared him shitless. All that smoke and wide open air.”
“Cocksucker,” Ray said then from the rocker. It was hard to say if this was intended as a comment on the conversation or if it was just some gesticulation.
“Get back to your sleep, old man,” Otto said.
“Well,” Father said to Otto. “I guess I’ll have to button you up better next time. I took you for a man who could hold his liquor.”
“That’s what being out in the daybreak will do to you,” Mother said, pausing for a moment to stare at Father. “It messes with your sense of the day.”
“Sure,” Otto said. “The sunrise spoils everything.”
They both laughed. They both seemed easier then.
“Speaking of fresh air,” Granny Olga said and nodded down at me. She was talking about my age and the conversation. She’d given up trying to get me to dress. She was on to smoothing my hair.
“There’s no use waterproofing her,” Mother said, nodding towards me. “She’s got a good mind. A little love and squalor isn’t gonna change that. A little love and squalor isn’t going to change anything.”
There was a knock at the front door.
“Be a doll and get that,” Mother said to me. She tapped me on the bottom as she excused me from the room. One day her daughter might have a figure too if she just gave it the right attention.
Callie had come to visit the scene of Mother’s crime. All Callie’s desires had been laid there in our house in Mother’s absence. Callie glanced into the living room through the open door. She looked tired. Her breathing was heavy. Her hair smelled of ointment.
“I heard from the barn hand,” she said. “The horses came home without any riders. I saw him leading them in.”
“How are they?” I said.
“Who?” she said.
“The horses,” I said.
“Fine,” she said. “The horses are fine. The vet’s there now.”
“Thanks for staying with them,” I said.
“Sure,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Sorry for what?” she said.
“That you’ve put so much into looking after them.”
She was gazing at the eagle, the small one in the painting over the wooden chest where I kept my sleeping bag for those mornings I waited on the Steelhead mother’s Impala.
“Where’d she pick that up?” Callie said nodding toward the painting.
“Junk shop,” I said.
“Ah,” she said. “I thought maybe it meant something. I thought maybe he’d painted it for her.”
“Who?” I said.
“No one,” she said. “Your old man.” I knew then how much Callie’d thought on Father. How much of herself she’d wasted away hoping. Like most things that were sinking, she’d seen something shift here and had hoped to grab hold of it. I looked in at Father. His face was puffy and blue. He was smiling with all the teeth he had. I could tell by the way he ignored the door, that Callie was a thought that had not yet occurred to him. Her image was still stuck there developing somewhere in the ether. He was a good man. All he’d wanted to do was fix her pipes.
“Oh,” I said. “Father doesn’t paint much anymore.”
Callie took my chin briefly in her hand and tilted it toward her face so that she could shove her smile into my eyes. I swallowed that too.
“You look like her,” she said.
“Who?” I said.
“Your mother,” she said. “She’s nearly glowing.”
“Yes,” I said. “Mother’s quite well.”
Callie looked at me then with a new sort of terror. There was something welling up in her eyes. It looked almost like laughter.
“Happy to hear it,” she said. “I’m sure she’s happy to see you.”
“I suppose,” I said. “It’s been a long day. She’s been traveling.”
“Well,” she said, “Tell Otto His Helene’s been asking for him. Tell him I put a pot of coffee on.”
“Is she in a bad way?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose she is in a bad way.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll tell him.”
“Well,” she said. “I best be getting home.”
“Are you sure?” I said, opening the door a little further to let her have one last look at them.
“I’m sure,” she said. “I have my boys.”
“Who was that?” Mother said when I came back to the couch.
“No one,” I said. “The stable boy. He came to let us know about the horses.”
“How are they?” she said.
“Who?” I said.
“The horses,” she said.
“They’re fine,” I said. “He said the horses are fine.”
Otto was the last out the door that night. He’d wanted to make his presence felt. He’d roll up his sleeves. He’d helped with the dishes. He’d even taken Granny Olga for a little turn in the kitchen.
“The key is to let the cat out the bag and be done with it,” I overheard Otto saying to Father as Father turned down the lights and showed the old man out.
It was late by the time Mother appeared in the doorway to my little room. I’d taken my time getting ready. I didn’t want to appear as though I was waiting. We’d gotten along well enough on our own.
There was something deflated about Mother that evening. The way she leaned against the doorframe for a moment peering in at me, I could tell she wanted to feel something. I wanted to feel it too.
“Come in the bathroom for a minute,” she said. “I want to show you what I found.”
The tile under my feet was firm and reassuring. The night cast around what little courage it could. I could tell from Mother’s stance that this was a speaking opportunity. She wanted to impart something that only she could demonstrate.
“Is it yours?” she said leaning over the plastic wastebasket next to the toilet.
The basket was thick with paper. On top of the mountain of white there was a sanitary napkin. K’s I supposed.
“No,” I said. “I haven’t gotten it yet.” There was a pause then as we both stared down at the thin strip of blood barely visible in the light. I thought of the underwear I’d buried between the rocks in the stone wall under the trees of knowledge.
I looked at Mother’s face over the toilet in the dim light searching for some signal of recognition. All I saw was a tiny barefoot woman with a far off scare in her eye. Her chest was thin and hollow. For some reason I felt like crying. I had disappointed her, not because of what I had done but because I was still a child hanging on her belt who hadn’t grown up and out yet.
“Good girl,” Mother said again. “That’s all right then.”
A rush of shaking and tears started quietly and then lit into me all at once. I
couldn’t get the air in. This was all the reason Mother needed. She took me into her arms.
“It’ll come,” she said pulling me close to her.
“Anyways,” she said, “Any half decent woman would know enough to bury it a little under the paper.”
When I was sure the house was good and quiet, I made my way downstairs. Granny Olga was sleeping in the room next to the laundry in the basement. Her door was open a crack. Her snoring was regular. The hall smelled of Vicks and patchouli.
The door to the crawlspace was the only one that didn’t squeak. I closed it quietly behind me, putting a shoe between the door and the frame so I could get in again if I needed.
Outside it was cool. I sat on the rock under the apple tree. The damp had set in. I felt smaller than I expected. It was a relief. The road was there if I needed somewhere to run.
When I got cold enough, I wandered over to Father’s Bronco. The front seat was a banquette. I lay down on it. With the windshield above me, I still had the stars. The sun would be in my eyes before the next day had broken. I’d be up by the time Callie appeared on Otto’s lawn, before they knew I’d gone missing.
For now, it was enough to sleep out.
17.
I was awoken by the sun. My body must have moved some in sleep. The back of Father’s T-shirt, my usual sleeping gown, had climbed my torso in the night. It clung in a ball to the sweat at the small of my back. I looked down. My hip bones jutted out from the velour of the Bronco. I gripped the two bones where they rose up from my body as though they alone might direct the vehicle. There was a flatness to the stretch of stomach between them. I admired its shape. That small placid sea.
There was a certainty to the way the door of the Bronco closed behind me. The lock clicked into place and I started for the Bottom Feeder. As I walked up the stone path toward the porch I had the sensation of the road spiraling toward me as if I’d once again been dropped into a world that had receded from my grasp. Even the grass looked sharp and crisp and tangible. The gnarled stems of the apple trees whose heads had once appeared rabid with blossom now leaned out of the lawn no larger than two small shrubs. There was a tightness in my chest as I strode toward the Bottom Feeder that morning. It migrated down to my stomach and the small of my back which felt connected as if by a some small piece of string where Otto Hauser had held it.
Granny Olga was in the kitchen. Despite the bed of wildflowers whose current drifted in through the windows, the house smelled of cabbage and onion.
“Morning, Gran,” I said.
“Morning, child,” she said. “You’re up awful early.”
“I forgot to pull the shades,” I said.
“I told your mother she should install those curtains,” she said.
“The shades work alright,” I said. “As long as I don’t forget to pull them. If I do, the day breaks and I’m in a pool of sweat with the sun raging in on me.”
“I advised her when they bought this place,” she said. “I just can’t see living in a house where you sleep with the birds in the attic or hole up in the basement next to the rodents. Nothing but a recipe for fleas and mold. That’s just my advice.”
“Birds don’t have fleas, Gran,” I said.
“Never mind about that,” she said. “Sit down and have a juice. As long as you’re up you may as well help me set my hair.”
Despite the fact that her girth never shrank, Granny Olga was always preparing for famine. Mornings were the time when she did all her cooking. It wasn’t healthy to slave over a stove in the day. That was her advice. After cooking, she set her hair and had a sponge bath. She slept on her back on the top sheet to preserve her rollers. She’d slept twice each day before anyone else had risen. For all intents and purposes, she lived two lives for every one.
That morning, I’d stolen in on her mid-prep. The gullet of some long-necked bird was boiling next to a stick of celery on the stove. The haluski was just out of the oven. Granny Olga was nursing her tea and a piece of dried toast, which she gummed slowly having not yet applied herself to her dentures. There was a pot of fresh coffee for Mother.
The canister of curlers sat at the far end of the table near the window where she’d have light.
Mother came down in her skimpies.
“Lord child,” Granny Olga said glimpsing Mother’s form as she swung into the room, “It’s not a crime to preserve the mystery some.”
“It’s too hot to be modest,” Mother said.
“Its too hot to be most things,” Granny Olga said. She laughed then. Her words were more compliment than chiding. She was still impressed with Mother’s figure.
Mother poured herself a coffee and picked at the row of sticky buns set out on the counter.
“I can see you’ve settled in,” Mother said, surveying the spread.
“As long as I’m here, I reckon I’ll cook,” Granny Olga said.
“Well fine,” Mother said, sipping her coffee.
“It took me half an hour to find a spatula,” Granny chided.
“If it weren’t for the heat, I’d have half a mind to reorganize this kitchen.”
“I like my organization just fine,” Mother said.
“Everything at arms length,” Granny Olga said. “I’m just saying it would be easier is all.”
“My arms are longer than yours,” Mother joked sidling up to her mother’s lap and sitting in it for a second. Granny Olga ran Mother’s slip through her fingers.
“Put some underwear on, child,” she said. “I can feel your nakedness under there.”
“Why bother,” Mother said. “It already stinks in here to high heaven.”
They laughed then. As she got up, Granny Olga spanked Mother playfully on the bottom.
“You’ll never amount to more than an idea, doll,” she said. “If you don’t learn how to keep a proper kitchen.”
“I just like to allow you to spoil me every now and again,” Mother said.
“Go on forget about it,” Granny Olga said.
Mother walked toward the living room to have a smoke.
“Go outside when you’re done with all that,” she said to me. “If you stay inside she’ll have you slaving over the stove.”
“Don’t act like you’re needing her all of a sudden,” Fender said later that afternoon. We were riding bikes on the macadam next to the garage.
“I’m not acting,” I said. “She’s lonely is all.”
“I don’t like it,” he said.
“You don’t like what?” I said.
“All this niceness,” he said. “It’s some big fake.”
I was waiting on him then to say something. I wasn’t sure what.
“It’s like Father says,” I said, hitting the wheel of Fender’s bike with the thick plastic bat we used for swinging at the softball. “Never leave lonely alone.”
I looked at Fender circling me on his bike and thought of tearing a scab off my body. For a moment I glimpsed all of Fender’s future violences. The lying and looting. The time in the boys penitentiary.
“Who’s good now?” I said as he pulled up next to me. I leaned into him and kissed him long and hard until I could taste his body odor where it had gathered above his lip.
I hung there in front of him. We were nervous with each other. The kiss had reduced him to something sad and soft. I thought of Grandfather, how he used to golf in the house in a pair of trousers with his big belly hanging out. Those days it was too hot for the driving range, he’d putt into a series of cups he’d lined on the carpet while he watched the game shows.
“You don’t fool me,” I said to Fender. “I can see you’ve gone soft under there.”
“Sure,” he said. “Isn’t everyone soft under their clothes?”
“Some people,” I said. “Have another layer before you get to the skin.”
“Wha
t makes them worth the trouble?” he said.
“It’s exciting,” I said. “Difficult people. You want to discover them.”
“You’re not half as nice as you think,” he said.
“Sure,” I said. “And you’re not half as afflicted.”
“What?” he said.
“It means,” I said. “You’re down on yourself and not worth anyone’s trouble.”
“Oh,” he said. “You believe them then, about me.”
“Sure,” I said. “You don’t fool me.”
Fender kissed me hard on the lips. “Discover that,” he said.
I hadn’t noticed Mother standing in the doorway. I saw her face in the crack that led into the garage from the breezeway.
I didn’t say anything then. She didn’t call me out any either.
That night there were fish sticks for dinner. Granny Olga had slept through her alarm. The sticks were cold in places from the freezer. The coil in the toaster oven was uneven again, Mother said.
I took a few bites and lay into the tartar.
“It’s not so bad,” Granny Olga said. “If you chew with your mouth open. A little air cuts the smell.”
We all laughed.
Mother was in her element. Meals never interested her much anyway. She only had a tongue for snacks and sweets. She was talking about all the things Father would never guess.
“Who would’ve guessed,” she was saying. “Our Jean.” She was talking about what she’d seen of Fender and I where she’d spied us through the crack in the door. Suddenly the room went silent and my ears stopped hearing.
“Which one?” Father said looking at me. A small fright was developing somewhere just behind his pupils.
“Jean’s little friend,” Granny Olga said. “The one with the hair.”
I could tell in that moment, in the way Granny Olga pursed her lips and Father held his tongue, that this was the last of Fender I would see as I had known him, that little gutless winged boy sitting Indian in our garage as though he were about to take flight.
“You mean,” Father said. “One of those orphans Ray’s got working his stand.”
