The Roanoke Girls

by Amy Engel

  “Fine by me.” There are dozens of grain silos dotting the outskirts of Osage Flats, but I know exactly the one Tommy’s talking about. It was abandoned years ago, its roof caved in and stone exterior slowly crumbling to dust. An eerie sentinel on the prairie, used mainly as a teenage party location the summer I lived here.

  We drive in silence for a few minutes, through the deserted heart of town, out onto County Road 7. The only sound is the steady whup-whup of tire on asphalt. Tommy glances over at me, then back at the road. “Remember the last time you and I were in a car together?” His fingers drum a restless rhythm on the steering wheel.

  “Let’s not go there,” I say, turning to look out the window, watch crops bathed in pre-sunset gold roll by.

  “I’m guessing you haven’t reconsidered talking to Cooper, then?”

  “Nope.”

  Tommy turns onto the gravel road leading to the silo. He slows to barely a crawl, making allowance for the potholes and stands of tall weeds growing down the center of the road. “I still think you should be honest with him, Lane. It’d be good for both of you.”

  “Honesty is the best policy?” I brace one hand against the door as we hit a hidden dip in the road. “That the motto you live by, Tommy?”

  “Try to,” he says, and I don’t miss the way his hands tighten on the wheel. He knows what’s coming, has probably known from the second he saw me outside the police station. I have to give him credit for not trying to avoid it.

  I shift, jackknifing one leg up onto the seat as I turn my body toward his. “Then why didn’t you tell me you were fucking Allegra?”

  Tommy pulls up in front of the silo and puts the car in park, turns off the engine. He reaches down, and the windows open with a whir. Hot evening air floods in, tangling my hair across my face. Tommy stares straight ahead, then lowers his forehead to rest on the steering wheel. I look out at the crumbling silo. The ground at its base is littered with beer cans, crumpled fast-food bags, probably a generous sprinkling of used condoms, too, if memory is anything to go by. It all looks virtually the same as the last time I was here, more than a decade ago. Cooper and I had sex in his truck in almost this exact spot. I still remember the sound the bench seat made as its springs creaked under my knees, the feel of Cooper’s fingers scraping along my spine. Tonight the wind whistles through the gaping holes in the silo, rustles the tall wheat on either side of the car so that it sounds like something is slinking toward us, hidden in the grain.

  “It was one time,” Tommy says, breaking the silence. His voice is hoarse and low as if he’s crying, but when he raises his head to look at me, his eyes are dry. “It only happened once.”

  “Is this where you say it didn’t mean anything?” I ask with raised eyebrows.

  Tommy shakes his head. “It meant something. At least to me. As for Allegra…I wouldn’t venture a guess.” It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him say her name like the taste of it is bitter in his mouth.

  “How did it happen?”

  Tommy shuts his eyes and leans his head back, against the headrest this time. “It was a couple months ago. I was having dinner at The Eat. Sarah was in Wichita for the weekend at a bridal shower. And Allegra came in. Sat right down at my table like it hadn’t been more than a year since we’d talked. She was sweet, funny, laughing. Kept touching my arm. You know how she could be when she felt like it.”

  I nod even though he can’t see me. That was always the trick with Allegra—her moods were erratic and her goodwill was only ever offered on her terms.

  “She asked me to drive her home. Said your gran had been uptown with her but had gone back to Roanoke earlier and Allegra didn’t want to call Charlie for a ride. And it just happened, Lane.” He turns his face toward mine and opens his eyes without lifting his head from the headrest. “The thing I’d been wanting my whole goddamn life. She finally let me touch her all the way. She finally said yes.” He sighs out a shaky breath. “I didn’t even think about Sarah. My own wife didn’t cross my mind.”

  “Why that night?” I ask. “After all these years?” But I think I already know the answer, picture Cooper’s thumb grinding into that tabletop. In Allegra’s mind, Tommy was supposed to be hers. Her backup, her just-in-case. She wanted to prove to him that he could try to walk away, but he wasn’t going to make it far. But it’s possible I’m being unfair, maybe she actually loved him and only realized it once she lost him. Or maybe she was simply being Allegra, who never learned how to be anything less than the favorite.

  Tommy laughs, but it’s not a sound I’ve ever heard from him before. It’s coarse and jagged and makes my heart jump against my ribs. “I have no fucking idea. She could have had me a thousand times. But she waited until I got married. She waited until I said vows to someone else.” He lurches forward, startling me. “Who does that?” he demands. He slams his hands against the steering wheel hard enough to shake the car.

  I’ve never seen Tommy like this—angry, unpredictable—but it shouldn’t surprise me. I’ve learned by now that life picks away at all of us, backs us into corners we never anticipated. Turns us into people we never thought we’d become.

  “What did Sarah say?”

  Tommy swivels his head in my direction so fast it’s a wonder he doesn’t give himself whiplash. “Sarah doesn’t know.”

  “Tommy…come on.”

  “What? I sure as hell didn’t tell her. No one knew but Allegra and me.”

  Sarah may be naïve, but she’s not stupid. If she doesn’t know, it’s only because she doesn’t want to. Willfully blind to what’s right under her nose.

  “Why didn’t you say something earlier?” I ask. “You think I give a shit that you cheated on Sarah?”

  “I give a shit, Lane!” Tommy exclaims, pounding the steering wheel again. “I’m not that guy. I don’t want to be that guy.”

  “Looks like you are, though.”

  Tommy shakes his head, covers both eyes with his palms. “Goddammit, Lane, do you ever ease up, even for a minute? I mean…Jesus Christ.”

  “Hey, if you were hoping for hand-holding, you picked the wrong person to confide in.” I nudge his shoulder until he lowers his arms and looks at me. “But I’m not judging you, Tommy. God knows, I’m not in any position to do that.”

  He blows out a breath and points to the glove compartment. “Can you pass me the cigarettes? Should be a lighter in there, too.”

  “Since when do you smoke?” I ask, rooting around until I come up with a crumpled pack of Marlboros and a scuffed plastic lighter. Today must be my day to learn new things about Tommy.

  “Since never, really,” he says, lighting a cigarette. “Cooper left those there, and every once in a while, on really shitty days, I get the urge.” He takes a drag, holds the smoke so long I wonder if he’s inhaled it, before twisting his head to blow it out the window.

  “You must not have too many shitty days, if you still haven’t finished the pack.”

  Tommy smiles, sad and small. “More than you’d think.”

  I give him a minute, let him calm himself with nicotine and oral fixation before I keep prying. It occurs to me that some part of Tommy must want, need, to talk about this. He could easily shut me down otherwise. He’s the cop, after all.

  “So, then what?” I ask, after he’s taken a couple of puffs. “With Allegra.”

  “Then…nothing.” Tommy’s voice breaks a little, and he clears his throat. “I called her two, three times a day for weeks. Left messages, begged to see her. I was a zombie at work, barely better at home. I was ready to uproot my entire life for her, let the whole town know I was a cheating, lying bastard if it meant I could finally have her. I was willing to give up everything. And she wouldn’t even answer my calls. Couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone.”

  Tommy sounds sincere, but my internal bullshit alarm is pinging. It matters to Tommy what people think of him. It always has. He likes being seen as the good guy. And I don’t think that would change just because
he managed to get into Allegra’s pants. “Did you try and go see her?” I ask.

  Tommy laughs again, that sharp bark I still don’t recognize. “Try? You have no idea. I practically lived on the road outside Roanoke for a solid week, but she never left the house. Eventually I came knocking, and your granddad said she wasn’t interested in seeing me. Sent me away like a little kid, like a beat dog with my tail between my legs.” A muscle jumps in his jaw, his fingers twitch on his leg. “I can’t remember ever being that angry. Goddamn pissed. She waited until I was married, until I’d moved on. And then she fucked me. And afterward, she wanted to pretend like it’d never happened. I swear to God…I could have killed her.”

  I suck in a swift, startled breath, and Tommy’s gaze flies to mine, his hands already coming up to reach for me. “No, Lane, no,” he says, the words practically tripping over themselves they’re in such a hurry to leave his mouth. “That’s not what I meant. I wouldn’t—” A long cylinder of ash tumbles from his cigarette and lands on my bare leg. I flinch, brushing it off, Tommy’s hands getting in the way of my own. “Shit, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s fine.” I wet my thumb and concentrate on rubbing the ash mark off my skin so I don’t have to meet his gaze. Good, sweet Tommy is only a memory now. Replaced with flawed and human Tommy, who is probably capable of almost anything, like all the rest of us.

  Tommy stubs out his cigarette on the side-view mirror, tosses it out the window. “This is such a fucked-up mess.” The coming night bathes his face in shadows. The smell of smoke wafts toward me on his breath. “My life. Allegra gone.” He pauses. “What if she really is pregnant? What if it’s mine?” He looks at me with weary, defeated eyes. “How did it all get so fucked up?”

  It’s not the kind of question that can ever have a good answer, so I don’t even bother to try.

  There was a war inside her head, and she wished it would stop. Every day a raging battle, an endless, exhausting tug-of-war. She knew it was wrong, what they were doing. She knew it, no matter what he said. Carried the evidence in her hollowed-out cheekbones and bitten-to-the-quick fingernails. But she loved him. Not an easy butterflies and sunshine kind of love. Not a fairy tale. A dark, twisting horror show of love. Love that spread through her like poison, coiled like inky tentacles that slowly squeezed out all the light.

  Sometimes she went into town and had sex with whomever showed the slightest interest. And let’s face it, she was a beautiful girl. There was plenty of interest. Other nights it was alcohol, pills in a plastic baggie, white powder snorted from the back of someone’s dirty hand. She hoped that maybe if a stranger fucked her hard enough, if she emptied her guts until it felt like her stomach was going to rip out through her throat, she’d be able to rid herself of him. Of the never-ending need that lived inside of her like a sticky vine, refusing to surrender.

  She wished she was more like Eleanor, who didn’t seem to feel anything at all, looked at the world with hard eyes, gaze always trained on some distant horizon. Eleanor was going to run, Camilla was sure of it, even though Eleanor didn’t talk to her anymore. Didn’t talk to any of them, really. Bided her time. Eleanor went into their father’s study and closed the door when he called for her, stole money from Sharon’s grocery cash, and waited for her moment.

  Camilla tried to imagine a life away from Roanoke. A life without his face, without his hands on her body, without his voice saying her name. The thought made it hard for her to breathe. It felt like freedom. It felt like death.

  Lately, every time he touched her, she pictured her organs turning black and rotten, even as she keened with pleasure. Whatever sickness they both had was working its way through her skin, deep into bone and tissue. Her love was knotted with so much darkness. She’d never be able to separate all the tangled strands. Would never be able to love someone without hating them, too.

  In New York you could hardly see the stars, which I never thought about one way or the other when I lived there. Our apartment wasn’t exactly the penthouse, so I wouldn’t have been doing a lot of stargazing, even if there had been something to see. In books, people always said lying underneath the stars made them feel small. But stretched out on a blanket in the bed of Cooper’s truck, the net-of-pearls stars didn’t have that effect on me. Lying there, looking up at the inky black shot through with pinpricks of brilliant light, I felt my whole body expand like I was as big as the entire universe.

  “I never saw the stars before,” I said. “Not really.”

  Cooper shifted next to me, his naked leg rubbing against mine. “Too many lights?”

  “Yeah.” The warm night air pressed down on me like a sticky hand. A bead of sweat slithered along my neck. I turned my head and looked at him. “You know, you’re the only person here who never asks me about New York. Everyone else is always asking a million stupid questions, but you never do.”

  Without using his hands, Cooper moved the toothpick he had clasped between his teeth from one side of his mouth to the other and back again. “Figured it was the same bullshit, different scenery.” He tilted his head to look at me. “Right?”

  I smiled. “Yeah, pretty much.” I shifted onto my side, kissed his bare shoulder and the curve of his collarbone. He smelled like smoke and summer. Out here in the fallow land behind Roanoke, we didn’t have to worry about putting our clothes back on after or how loud I moaned when he fucked me. The heat and scratchy blanket beneath us felt like a small price to pay for the privacy. I ran my fingers over a scar at the top of his arm, asking a question with my fingertips.

  “Belt buckle,” he said. “Same as the ones on my back.”

  “What made him so angry, so mean? Was his dad like that, too?”

  Cooper pulled the toothpick from his mouth and tossed it over the side of the truck. “Don’t know. Don’t care. Whatever it was, it’s not an excuse. I think maybe he was born pissed.” He ran a hand through his hair, eyes on the stars. “The thing I can never wrap my mind around is how my mom ended up with him. You don’t look at her and think she’s the type to put up with that shit.”

  Cooper was right. The first, and only, time I’d met his mom, she’d surprised me. I’d expected someone mousy and meek, the kind of woman who would startle in a strong breeze. But Mrs. Sullivan looked like hardy farm stock, tall with broad hips and a no-nonsense smile. She looked at the world out of Cooper’s golden eyes. Her handshake was strong and firm. It was hard to imagine her cowering in a corner, but I knew that was where she’d spent a good portion of her married life.

  “When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was protect her, keep her from getting hit. But once I got older and realized she wasn’t as quick to shield us when he got going…it made me hate her sometimes. There were times I let my dad throw a few good punches before I’d step in to protect her.” Cooper’s voice was matter-of-fact, but I knew him well enough now to hear the shame underneath.

  “I hated my mom, too,” I told him. “And not some of the time. I hated her every second of every day.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. “Because she wouldn’t let me love her instead.”

  We were both silent for a minute, and the sky was so vast, the stars so bright, it was almost possible to believe you could hear them burning.

  “Remember how I told you I beat up my dad?” Cooper asked. “That night on your screened porch?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The first thing he did once he regained consciousness was laugh. He laughed so hard, blood pouring out of his nose. Said I was going to turn out exactly like him.” Cooper reached over and hauled me on top of him, our hard and soft spots fitting together like puzzle pieces. I propped myself up on his chest so I could see his face.

  “You think you’re going to?” I asked. “Turn out like him?” No one had to explain to me the power our childhoods had over us, even when we fought like hell against them. I wasn’t stupid enough to think Cooper could snap his fingers and become a different man than the one
his father was trying to mold him into. I wondered if a boy bred and raised by a man with hungry fists and an appetite for pain could ever escape the violence in his blood.

  Cooper’s body tensed beneath mine, his heart beating against my rib cage. “I hope not,” he said finally. “But that bastard’s with me all the time, whispering shit inside my head.”

  I nodded, understood exactly what he was talking about. I could still hear my mother’s voice, her wails, her fears, echoing in my own skull. Cooper’s arms tightened around me, and he hitched my body up, my breasts sliding over his chest. “I try not to give in to it, though. That urge to pound someone. Because whenever I do, it feels worse than all the times he beat me. Like I’m turning into him, exactly like he said I would. I tell myself every day I go without doing it makes it easier. Makes me less like him.”

  “Does that work?”

  Cooper tipped his face up toward the sky. “Hell if I know. But it’s all I can think of to do.”

  I traced a figure eight onto Cooper’s chest, his skin pebbling under my touch. “Sometimes I’d tell my mom to go ahead and kill herself. I knew she wanted to, so I’d egg her on. I never thought she’d have the guts to actually do it. She had nightmares a lot, too. And I stopped waking her up, bringing her cold washcloths, and helping her go back to sleep. I let her scream and cry. By the end, I didn’t care anymore.”

  I raised my eyes and found Cooper’s. He smoothed my hair back, tucked it behind my ear. He didn’t tell me it was okay, or he was sure I hadn’t meant it. He knew it wasn’t okay, that it never would be.

  “That’s it?” he said instead, voice quiet. “That’s the worst you got?”

  It wasn’t. But there were some things I could never say aloud, not even to Cooper, a boy as damaged as I was. How sometimes when I whispered those awful words to my mother the veins in her neck stood out so far from her skin I thought they might explode. How her fingernails would leave red welts down the side of her face. On the nights my words cut deepest, sliced quick and deadly as scalpels, her eyes practically bulged from her face, and I was filled with a rotten, hellish joy because at least she was looking at me. At least she finally, finally, saw me. “Stop it,” she screamed sometimes, staring at me from between the bars of her fingers. “Stop it, you evil little bitch! Stop it! Stop it!”