by Abby Geni
At quarter to four, the manager ambled in, late for his shift as usual. Fred was damp around the shoulders from the rain. Darlene had the rats pinned against the wall and was easing them toward the door with her broom. Baylor stood in the corner, pointing and shouting, “They’re over there! Right there!”
Fred took in the scene with raised eyebrows.
“What’s all this?” he said.
Darlene swung her broom, and the rats poured through the back door in tandem, their snaky tails whipping around the jamb, gone into the drizzle. Baylor whooped. She wiped the sweat from her brow.
“What happened?” Fred said.
At that instant, there was a crackling sound. The fluorescent lights flickered and dimmed. Everyone looked up in alarm. And then the power went out.
The tinny beat of the music stilled, along with the persistent rumble of machinery from the freezers. It took Darlene a moment to realize what had happened. The wet, gray glow through the back door was now the only light in the storeroom. Baylor remained fearfully in the corner, staring around as though concerned that the blackout might be the second wave of the rats’ assault.
The patter of the rain filled the silence. Darlene shot a glance toward the back wall, lined with refrigerators. The glass doors displayed the milk and cartons of eggs within, the panes fogged by condensation. Each unit was now a sleepy, shadowed mystery. The contents would begin to thaw in a matter of hours. Any delay in repairs could cost the supermarket hundreds of dollars in spoiled stock.
Fred gazed at her with an expression of fishlike amazement.
“What on earth is happening?” he cried.
Darlene glanced at her watch.
“Sorry, boss,” she said. “It’s after four. I’m off the clock.”
THE PICKUP TRUCK WAS CANTANKEROUS, as it always was in wet weather. The street was the same smoky hue as the sky. Darlene passed a tawny station wagon going the other way, its windshield too smeared with filth and rain for her to see who might be inside. Long ago, in another life, she might have stayed to help Fred with the situation. It would have been a kindly thing to do, but these days she was “plumb wore out,” as Daddy would have said. She had called the electric company’s hotline, learning from the mechanical voice on the other end that it could be hours before the power came back on. She discovered that the outage was limited to central Mercy; the farms on the outskirts still had electricity, along with Shady Acres and poor Cora, home sick. She clocked out and departed with a wave, feeling nothing but relief. It was rare and lovely to encounter a problem that did not fall squarely on her shoulders.
Now she switched on the radio, humming along to a country song about heartbreak. She pictured Cora’s ashen face and glazed eyes. Her sister had not looked well that morning—distracted, feverish, unlike her usual self.
On the radio, the announcer began to talk about the Oklahoma City bombing. Darlene knew the story, though the tragedy had happened back in 1995, before she was born. At the time, it was the worst terror attack the United States had ever experienced. Darlene had seen pictures of the Murrah Building after the explosion, one whole side calved away like an iceberg tumbling into the sea. Dozens of people died and hundreds of buildings in the downtown area were harmed or destroyed.
By comparison, the bombing at Jolly Cosmetics had not been that bad. Darlene tried to find solace in this. She switched off the radio, listening to the swish and click of the windshield wipers instead. She drove past the church, its steeple black against the haze of rain. Once upon a time, the McClouds were regular visitors there, shepherded by Mama, dressed in their Sunday best. But Daddy was never a religious man, and his lack of faith was cemented by the untimely death of his wife. Darlene had not darkened the church door in years. Cora had never attended services at all.
When Darlene pulled up in front of No. 43, the rain had blown over, leaving a pleasant chill in the air. Moving quietly, she let herself inside. She expected to find the TV on, but the trailer was silent. Cora’s bedroom door was shut. Darlene assumed that her sister was napping, which was all to the good. Cora could use the rest, and Darlene never got the place to herself, something like privacy. She changed out of her beige uniform, observing that the pant leg was now stained from an olive oil spill earlier in the day. She sighed. A greasy smudge like that would never completely wash out.
In an ideal world, she would now take a long bubble bath, perhaps with a glass of wine. That was what weary women did on TV. But those women did not live in a single-wide trailer with only a shower stall in the bathroom. Darlene spared a moment’s thought for her beloved tub from childhood—antique, claw-footed, mottled from years of use. The basin was big enough to hold both her and Tucker, back when they were still young enough to bathe together.
She closed her eyes. Not a day passed that she did not think of the old house. The curlicued staircase. The lemon-scented kitchen. The leafy sprawl of the oak tree. After Mama’s death—a gut punch—Darlene had found reassurance in the house itself. The high rafters. The sun in the curtains. The solidity and constancy of a place that did not change. The seasons that followed were not easy, with newborn Cora squalling in her crib, and Daddy dazed and out of focus, and the long trek to and from school, and diapers to be changed, and Tucker failing out of math, and one of the cows falling ill, and everyone still in mourning. Yet Darlene always felt that the house held her, supported her. Sometimes her lost home seemed more real to her than No. 43.
She wandered the trailer, picking things up and putting them down again. It was difficult for her to relax; she was out of practice. She felt a vague desire to clean. The place was tidy, but there was something a little off, as though someone else had been scrubbing the floors when she wasn’t looking. Darlene put on her favorite sweatpants, the ones with OKLAHOMA SOONERS written in glittery letters across the fanny. She poured herself a cup of sweet tea. Her migraine was gone. The rain seemed to have washed it away, rinsing the pain out of her sinuses. Now there was just the concurrent nausea to contend with. Every migraine came with aftershocks: upset stomach, sensitivity to light, fatigue.
Still, she could rest now. Jane would not be home at all; she was having a sleepover with another girl from the soccer team, a halfback with freckles and her own bedroom. Darlene threw a fond glance at Cora’s door. They would have a peaceful evening together. They would microwave something nice for supper. Pot roast, maybe.
Darlene gathered up the mail, carrying a stack of glossy catalogues over to the sofa. She never ordered anything from them, but they came anyway. She flipped through the pages, trying to focus her attention on a paragraph about summer pastels.
“Don’t worry,” she murmured aloud. “Don’t worry.”
Yet she was worried. Something was not right. She could not focus on the images in front of her. She could not put her finger on what was amiss. Perhaps it was the lab rats in the grocery store. Perhaps it was the bizarre series of recent events in general. She’d been keeping an eye on the story of Jolly Cosmetics in an idle way, too busy to pay much attention. Perhaps it was Cora, who was never sick; Darlene could not remember the last time her sister even had a cold. Perhaps it was the anniversary of the tornado. Darlene hated the annual visit to her parents’ grave. It accomplished nothing—no connection, no catharsis—only serving to remind her of everything she had lost. Still, she could not bear to skip it either, to act as though the date meant nothing.
Once, long ago, she looked up the history of the graveyard. She wanted to know why it lay at such a distance from Mercy. To her surprise, she had learned that the cemetery predated the town by half a century. It was older than Jolly Cosmetics, older than the state of Oklahoma itself; the first people to be buried there had been casualties of the land rush. The dead had resided in this place longer than the living, and their home was convenient to nobody but themselves.
There was something important in this idea—Darlene was almost sure—unless it was the kind of half-formed, ethere
al insight that sometimes came on the verge of dreaming. She nestled into the warm embrace of the couch and closed her eyes.
11
Darlene woke to the sound of the doorbell. It took her a moment to remember where she was. On the sofa. In the dark. Catalogue splayed open on her lap. Her arm was slung above her head, the fingers numb and tingly.
The doorbell rang again, an insistent clang. With a groan, Darlene got to her feet and flipped on the lights. She observed with some surprise that Cora’s door was still shut, then shuffled to the front door and threw it open.
A man stood on the stoop. Darlene did not have her glasses on, so he swam in and out of focus. He appeared to be handsome, with a strong jaw and confident smile. Then she realized that he was a policeman. He wore a bulky uniform that both obscured and highlighted his strong shoulders. He was not alone, either. A female cop stood behind him, smaller and slimmer, milk pale in the porch light, her blue cap nestled on a thatch of flaxen hair.
Darlene fished in her pocket for her glasses. Once she was able to see, she recognized them both. This was the way of things in Mercy; no one was a stranger. She could not quite remember the man’s name. They knew each other from high school. A music class, maybe. The woman was Kendra Drake, an old classmate. She flashed a false smile, and Darlene returned the expression like a mirror. Kendra had been both pretty and popular as a girl, wielding her good looks like a blade. It did not surprise Darlene to see that she had grown up to become a cop.
“Roy Rush,” the man said, extending an arm.
“Darlene McCloud,” she said. “I guess y’all already knew that.”
“Band, right?”
“What?” she said, shaking his hand automatically. Then she remembered. She played trombone during her freshman year, before it became clear that she did not have the right kind of fingers. Roy was the drummer. A senior. She had a flash of memory: Roy at the back of the music room, a pleasant combination of muscle and paunch, his hands deft, his skin a rich brown with hints of copper that caught the light.
“We’d like to come in,” he said. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure. I guess.”
A wind blew in through the open door. Darlene realized that she was wearing sweatpants and a tank top with no bra. Her nipples stood up in the chill. She folded her arms across her chest. She was still waking up. Awareness swirled through her body like sugar dropped in tea, only gradually absorbed.
Roy and Kendra made a great deal of noise as they strode into the living room, their uniforms rustling, holsters squeaking. Darlene perched on the arm of the couch and motioned for them to take the cushions. Roy smelled like cigarettes. Kendra’s beauty had curdled over the years. Her scowl no longer had the seductive quality that Darlene remembered.
“We need to ask you a few questions,” Roy said.
She nodded. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
“Three people live in this house, is that right?” he said. “You and two sisters?”
“That’s right.”
Her heart seemed to be beating off-rhythm, giving strange little spasms that sent crackles of electricity through her body. On TV shows, the arrival of police officers at an odd hour always presaged a terrible injury, even a death.
“Was there an accident?” she asked. “Is Jane okay?”
“Jane?” Roy said. “That’s your middle sister, right?”
“Oh, God. Is she all right?”
“Everybody’s fine,” he said. “Let me start over.”
He was too tall for the low sofa, his body bent at an awkward angle, his knees poking up like spider legs. At his side, Kendra retrieved a notepad and pen from her pocket and began to jot something down.
“We’re here about Tucker,” Roy said.
At the sound of her brother’s name, Darlene got to her feet. She circled the coffee table and caught a glimpse of herself in the little mirror above the television—her hair matted from sleep, her cheeks flushed. She ended up in the kitchen. There was no true separation between this area and the living room; the boundary was marked by a change in the linoleum, without walls or door. She was only a few feet from the cops on the couch, but somehow it felt good to inhabit a different space.
“Can I get you some water?” she said. “Or some sweet tea?”
“No,” Roy said. “We have a few questions about your brother.”
“I don’t have a brother.” She had not meant to say this. The words sounded absurd in her own ears. “I mean, Tucker’s gone. He ran away.”
She broke off, unable to continue her thought. Glancing down, she noticed that there was a pan in the sink. Evidently Cora had been cooking while she was home sick. There was a plate too, smeared with syrup and butter.
“When was the last time you talked to Tucker?” Roy said.
“It’s been years,” Darlene said.
“He hasn’t called here recently?”
“No.”
“Has he come by the house in the past few days?”
As Roy spoke, there was an accompanying scratch of pen on paper. Kendra was taking notes.
“I said no,” Darlene said. “Absolutely not.”
“You’re sure you haven’t seen him?”
“I’m sure,” she snapped. “You can ask me the same thing a hundred different ways, but the answer isn’t going to change.”
The fact of the dirty dishes was suddenly untenable. She turned on the faucet, then pulled on her rubber gloves and poured a dollop of soap onto the sponge.
“Would you mind if we took a look around?” Roy said. He pitched his voice higher to compete with the hiss of the water. Darlene did not answer, scrubbing the saucepan. Cora appeared to have scrambled some eggs without cooking spray. It would take elbow grease to get rid of the residue.
Roy approached her, hovering in her peripheral vision.
“Did you hear me?” he said. “We’d like to take a look around.”
“No.” Darlene switched off the water with a savage movement. “My little sister is sick. She’s asleep in her room. I can’t believe the doorbell didn’t wake her. All this noise!”
Roy was standing very close, his eyebrows cocked at a watchful angle. Darlene could smell his cologne, a combination of fruit and spices. The odor mingled in an oddly harmonious way with the residue of cigarettes on his breath.
“I don’t like to talk about Tucker,” she said. “It’s upsetting. You’re upsetting me.” She could hear her own voice rising. She flung out a hand, pointing into the sink. “I’m very busy right now, as you can see. I have to wash these dishes.”
Roy took off his policeman’s cap, revealing a close-cropped mat of black curls. A few gray threads glistened around his temples.
“This is important,” he said.
Now she had the impression that she was not thinking clearly. There was something she ought to ask—something she had forgotten. The whole interaction was a mess: a blur of migraine fog and postnap muddle.
“Tucker is a missing person,” Darlene said slowly. “He’s a runaway. He was seventeen years old when he left. I filed a police report back then. You should know that. Y’all probably know more about him than I do.”
Finally, a question bloomed in her mind, clear and true.
“Why are you looking for him?” she said.
Roy turned away, his face closing like a door.
“I can’t answer that,” he said. “Police procedure. I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.”
The darkness in the trailer seemed to intensify, the corners of the kitchen swallowed up by shadows.
“Tell me what you want with Tucker,” Darlene said.
Roy reached into his pocket and unfolded a sheet of paper. He smoothed out the creases with his hands and passed it to her. It was a photocopy of an artist’s sketch. A man’s face. Bulging forehead. Vicious little eyes. Dangerous mien. The image seemed vaguely familiar, as though she had seen it recently in
passing.
“Do you know this man?” Roy asked.
“No,” Darlene said.
“Could that be Tucker?”
She folded the paper and handed it back.
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t look a thing like him.”
From the couch, Kendra’s voice caught Darlene off guard, as high and sweet as a flute.
“We need to know where Tucker McCloud is,” she said. “It’s urgent. We were hoping you’d let us look around the house, Darlene. It’s more friendly that way. But we’ll get a warrant to search the premises if we need to.”
Kendra tucked her notebook into her pocket and came to stand beside Roy, elbow to elbow, a solid wall of officialdom. Darlene shook her head, trying to clear it. She lifted her hands, tangling them in her hair.
“I have to think,” she said.
Kendra clucked her tongue. “Not much space, is there? If you were going to peddle your sob story on TV, I reckon you should have asked for more money.”
Her voice was as soft as silk, but its menace was unmistakable. Roy glanced back and forth between the two women, not quite sure what was happening.
Darlene weighed her options. She’d been here before. She had endured some version of this conversation with nearly everyone in Mercy. They all had an opinion about her actions. Some people felt that she had done wrong by her siblings (Those poor little girls, too young to have a say in any of it). Some resented her for taking the easy way out (All of us were hit hard by the tornado, but nobody else tried to turn a profit). Some felt sorry for her (Everything you said on TV was the God’s honest truth. Nobody around here suffered more than y’all did). And some felt indignation on her behalf (You took care of your family. Don’t you listen to those gossips). Over the years, Darlene had encountered every possible viewpoint.
The expression on Kendra’s face was familiar: narrowed eyes, flared nostrils. Roy frowned in confusion, chewing on his thumbnail. Darlene took a calming breath, then drew herself up to her full height.
