“Will you make them, tomorrow, please?”
Gene’s face churned.
“Let’s paint,” Enrique said.
As they covered the papier-mâché surface with green tempera, Gene repeatedly ran to the kitchen to wash smudges from his hands. Then Jay came home and Gene’s attention was lost. He sat poised over the project, a paintbrush ready in his hand, and watched Jay watching TV. “Go home, Gene,” Enrique said finally. There was no formality between the two boys as far as bidding each other good-bye. Often Gene slipped away soundlessly without Enrique noticing; other times he stayed late watching TV after Enrique had put on his pajamas and brushed his teeth. Enrique or Lina would tell him to go home without risking offense.
“Your friend’s a retard,” said Jay once Gene was gone, and this time Enrique didn’t spring to his defense. He couldn’t deny it: Gene stared at Jay like a retard.
Before heading off to bed, Enrique looked over the diorama. It didn’t live up to his vision. At four feet square, it took up an entire corner of the living room. Lake Overlook was a round metal bowl in the corner. They had made the papier-mâché slope leading to the lake as gentle as they could, but it still looked a little like a volcano. Headlines showed through the green paint. Mr. Hall’s trees and houses would save the project. It might not be identifiable as Eula, as Enrique had hoped, but it would at least resemble a lakeside village. When dry ice was placed in the metal bowl on the day of the science fair, the effect of carbon dioxide fumes swirling among the tiny trees would be dramatic.
WHILE RANDY TOOK the dogs on their night walk, Melissa showed Wanda the guest room. “This wing of the house can get a little chilly, so if you need an extra blanket, there’s one in the closet. There should be a new toothbrush under the sink and a bathrobe and towel on the back of the door. Is there anything else you need?”
“No.”
“We’re just down the hallway if you need us.” Then Melissa hesitated, apparently wondering if there was something more she should do or say. She looked around the room, shrugged, and said, “Sleep tight, then. I’ll be getting you up pretty early.”
Wanda brushed her teeth, undressed, and slid into bed. She lay for a few minutes with the lights on, feeling restless. Having always slept in a big T-shirt, she didn’t know if she could sleep like this, in her bra. And more than this, although she didn’t articulate it to herself, she wanted to see Melissa again before bed, maybe to stay up for a while, talking.
I’ll ask for a T-shirt to sleep in, Wanda said to herself. She put on the bathrobe and went down the hall. A door was ajar at the end, allowing a great bar of light to shine on the wood floor of the hallway. Wanda heard a tiny sound. Tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . Maybe the faucet was dripping. She tapped on the door and it swung open a little, revealing Melissa in plaid pajamas with her foot on the rim of the toilet, clipping her toenails.
“Oops, sorry,” Wanda said.
“That’s all right,” Melissa said. “Do you need something?”
“I was wondering if I could borrow a T-shirt to sleep in.”
“Of course. Come in. I’m almost done.”
Wanda perched herself on the side of the big tile bathtub, which had steps leading down into it, like a swimming pool. She watched Melissa lift one toe away from the others and . . . tick . . . tick . . .
“You know,” Wanda said, “Hank was the first person I ever saw cut his nails inside.”
“What do you mean?”
Wanda felt like telling her stories, as if she could again make the magic she had at dinner by telling the truth. “Growing up, it was just something you’d do outside, off the edge of the porch. The boys would pee off the porch if the bathroom was full.”
Melissa laughed.
“When I caught Hank cutting his nails over the kitchen trash I asked him, ‘Don’t you wanna go outside to do that?’ He called me a shit-kicker.”
“A what?”
“A hillbilly.”
“Do you miss him?” Melissa asked.
“No. He’s not as good as I made him out to be.” She stopped herself from admitting he hadn’t moved to Washington, DC, but to Chandler, fifteen miles away.
Melissa folded the nail clippers closed and set them on the counter. “Let’s get you a shirt.”
They walked around the corner—there was no door—into the bedroom. Melissa opened a drawer. “Will this one do?”
The dogs rushed in, grazing Wanda’s leg with their wet fur. Then Randy appeared in the doorway.
“Mind if I loan Wanda one of your shirts?” Melissa asked.
“Not at all.”
Wanda took the shirt. “Thanks for everything, you guys. I’ll leave you alone. Good night.”
Wanda closed the door behind her and walked down the hallway. Beyond her door, the hallway curved, then ended in a window that reached from the floor to the ceiling. Wanda stood looking out on the pine trees, hairy with moss and lit pale by the moon.
. . . .
LIZ ARRIVED HOME and went into the darkened kitchen for a snack. No sooner had she opened the refrigerator, though, than a voice made her jump: “Good news, sis.”
“Winston, what are you doing here in the dark?”
From the window seat he tossed an envelope toward her, and it slid across the tile floor. “You got in.” Winston held a beer can, and there were two more crushed on the windowsill.
“Why are you opening my mail?”
Winston shrugged and looked out over the lights of the back walk, haloed by the steamy window. “Figured you wouldn’t mind. Congratulations.”
With a thrill, Liz picked up the envelope and thumbed through its contents. Since Abby had gotten her acceptance letter, Liz had dreaded the humiliation of not getting in, too. They had made a promise, Both of us, or neither, but it was still a relief.
“Are you gonna go?”
“Of course. That’s been the plan all along.”
“Yeah? All along?” There was a tremor in his voice that surprised her.
“What’s wrong?”
Winston shrugged, tipped his head back, and emptied the can into his mouth. “I always kinda figured you and me would stick close, that’s all.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Winston mimicked her with a sneer. “It’s not like we’re brother and sister or anything.”
Liz shook her head in confusion, and returned to the refrigerator. “Don’t go telling everyone at school, okay?” she said. “I don’t want all the talk yet.”
“Like anyone gives a fuck, Liz. Jesus.” He crushed the can and slid away.
FOR THE REST of the evening, Connie thought about nothing but what had taken place between Bill and her. Even in her hour of prayer at the end of the day, she continued to wrestle with her mistake. But now she told herself to put it behind her. They would go to Marsing on Wednesday; she would continue this important work, careful not to overstep her bounds again. She tried to banish these thoughts from her mind and concentrate on that day’s scripture, but they would not leave her alone. She prayed to the Lord to deliver her from them. Then she closed her Bible and prepared for bed.
As she lay waiting for sleep she realized why she could not get over it. She was angry at Bill—nearly as angry at him as she was at herself. “Showmanship,” he had called it. It wasn’t showmanship, thought Connie. It was a lie, and a lie was a sin. A great sadness came over Connie with the knowledge that Bill, like so many others, wanted to stretch and test God’s law.
She thanked Jesus for showing her this, Jesus, who had overturned the tables at the temple because of just this, “showmanship”—lies.
“Lord Almighty, help Bill. Be with him, and guide him in the one true way.”
This put Connie at ease and allowed her to sleep.
IN THE MIDDLE of the night, Wanda’s door creaked open. She woke with a start and lay with her eyes wide open, afraid to move. She wasn’t in her own bed. Where was she? In the foster home? Of course not. They had talked about it a
t dinner, was all. She was at Melissa and Randy’s. “Hello?” she said.
The click of a dog’s claws against floorboards put her at ease. She turned on the light and saw Simon gazing up at her and wagging his L-shaped tail. “Do you want up?” Wanda lifted the dog onto the bed and looked into his black, soulful eyes. He had a long nose for a small dog. He must have been part dachshund. “You’re one of those special dogs, aren’t you?” When she was little, before her mother had married Alan and stopped going to church, Wanda had had a Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Kray, whose lessons always ended up being about dogs—maybe not every lesson, but that’s what she remembered: parables about Mrs. Kray’s own dogs (it seemed she had dozens); reports she had seen on the news about dogs saving their owners; and articles she had read in Guideposts or Reader’s Digest about angels in dog form who inspired their owners to be born again, or give up drinking, or become a better parent. Although these stories didn’t bring Wanda into any closer communion with the Lord, they did instill in her a belief in the mystical powers of dogs.
“You know Melissa and Randy,” she said to Simon. “Should I do this?”
The dog wagged his tail.
Wanda nodded.
Simon went to the bottom of the bed and lay between Wanda’s feet, facing the door. Wanda turned out the light and went to sleep.
In the morning, Randy insisted on sitting in the backseat as Melissa, elevated on her little pillow, drove. Wanda understood now: Randy didn’t drive.
The day was bright. Wanda put down her visor and, through the makeup mirror, saw Randy loosen the strap and take off his glasses. His eyes suddenly appeared huge. He pinched the bridge of his nose and gave the morning a few big blinks. Wanda could now see that Randy had been handsome before he lost his hair. He still was handsome, in fact. He had a strong brow and big, rich, brown eyes. Now it made sense that Melissa, who was so pretty, was with him. Also now, Wanda felt less squeamish about having Randy’s stuff inside her. This childish concern, which Wanda had been too ashamed even to think through, was put to rest.
When they reached the beach, there was a bright fog over the ocean. “Low tide,” said Randy. He and Melissa sat in the dry sand near the car while Wanda took off her shoes, rolled up her jeans, and walked down toward the water, which was washing far up the beach, then receding back into the mist, leaving tangles of seaweed like knotted hair. Wanda could hear waves crashing off in the distance. She walked onto the shell-littered sand, and the water returned to flow over her feet, numbingly cold. She hopped from foot to foot, giggled, and turned to look back at Melissa and Randy, who waved. A little frightened of stepping on a crab or lobster, Wanda walked gingerly toward the sound. It was the biggest sound she had ever heard, not loud, but all-consuming. She walked and walked and still the water, when it washed in, only reached her ankles. She knew so little about how the ocean worked; could a huge wave come and take her away? She turned back to Melissa and Randy, but they were lost in the whiteness.
In the years since Louis’s suicide, Wanda had never been able to wade in water without thinking of him. Such a weird way to go, giving yourself to the river when there was a shotgun in nearly every house. Maybe he had been in a rush to leave this world, and the river had been there. It was just a five-minute walk from the psychiatric hospital. Wanda knew this because she had met a man who had once worked as a porter there. He had been trying to pick her up at a bar. Wanda had grilled him about how patients spent their time, if the doctors were kind or cruel, and, especially, the distance of the hospital from the river. Then she had fallen into silent rumination and the man, surely thinking her a nut who belonged in Blackfoot, had scooted out of the booth.
Wanda imagined that Louis checked out of the psychiatric hospital and walked to the river quickly, as if late for an appointment. (She had heard that people became exhilarated after they made the decision to commit suicide.) But when he got there, did he sit on the bank for a while, wishing for a friend to talk to? Did he stand there, shin-deep, as Wanda stood now, and cry? Or did he trudge in, battling the water that impeded his walk toward death?
Wanda was about to go back to Melissa and Randy, when she saw a man, both his figure and his figure’s sliced-and-restacked reflection, many yards ahead of her, walking toward the waves. Seeing that he too was only up to his shins, and that he walked easily with his hands in his pockets, gave Wanda courage, and she went forward. Finally the surf came into view, and she turned away from the man. This is what she had expected the ocean to look like: a great swell that crested, then thundered down, sending spray high into the air.
Her feet ached with cold. She ran back up the beach, arrived at where Melissa and Randy huddled together against the wind which whipped at their hair and clothing, and stood breathless, hugging herself and stepping from foot to foot.
Shielding her eyes, Melissa said, “We bring you to the ocean, and you can’t even see it!”
“I did see it, though!” Wanda insisted.
“I mean, the ocean,” Melissa said, with a sweep of the arm to indicate a horizon.
“I did!”
Chapter 11
It was a week later now, the night before the District Science Fair. Enrique had been forced to make the posters himself, since Gene, on their evenings together, had insisted on exploring several fat chemistry textbooks he had checked out from the library. “It’s essential to the project,” he had said when Enrique complained. That was so like Gene, to choose a one-sentence response and repeat it again and again, unaware that it sounded weirder and less powerful with every iteration. All the research that Enrique had been counting on Gene to do, he had done himself—shoddily. He had failed to find out how deep Lake Overlook was. On every zoning map in the library, it was just a wide, flat blob that wasn’t even labeled Lake Overlook, only RESERVOIR. Finally, at a loss, Enrique had called the City of Eula Water Department. “Welp, it’s purdy deep,” was the answer he got.
So the completion of the diorama was delayed until now, Friday night. Enrique begged Gene, “Please, just for tonight, work on the project we have. The science fair is tomorrow. Don’t you want to win?”
Gene said nothing.
“Here,” Enrique said, handing over the posters. “I did them myself. I’m sure the calculations are all wrong. Could you at least color in the drawings? You’re good at that.”
Gene took them and returned home.
Enrique was glad to have the house to himself. Jay was playing in a football game, certainly one of the season’s last, since Eula never made it into the finals, and Lina had gone to watch, as she had nearly every game, although she and Jay went and returned home separately.
Enrique took the bag containing the trees and houses from the closet and brought it into the living room. Each piece was twist-tied in position inside a box, which featured a miniature backdrop: green hills and a distant silo for a house, an orchard for an apple tree. Even though Enrique was rushed to finish the model in order to have time to practice the presentation a few times before bed, he removed each piece with the greatest care. He enjoyed observing all the tiny details, but more important, he intended, after this and any subsequent science fairs, to put the pieces back in their boxes and return them to Mr. Hall. At the bottom of the bag he found two pieces he hadn’t yet seen, as before tonight he had only let himself dig halfway down: a schoolhouse and a church. The tiny schoolhouse bell actually rang, and the church had stained-glass windows with panes of colored cellophane separated by black wire. He set these pieces down with the rest, carefully stacked the boxes back into the bag, and returned it to the closet. Then he looked down at his jumbled little village. What would it be like, he wondered, to live in a cottage with a pine tree blocking your front door and the church doors right outside your window? Slowly, using only the tiniest blobs from the glue gun, he put the pieces into the model.
At nine o’clock, before it got too late, he took a break. As he dialed the number, a queasy feeling stirred in his belly. What would he say
if Mr. Hall answered the phone? But it was Abby who answered.
“Hi, Abby. It’s Enrique.”
“Hey!” she said.
“Um, I wanted to make sure you knew that the science fair is tomorrow, in Chandler.”
“Oh, Enrique, I’m sorry. I can’t go. I’m leaving for Salt Lake really early.”
Enrique was so disappointed that he couldn’t speak.
“I’m really sorry, Enrique. Maybe you can show it to me afterward.”
He didn’t want to say it, but he couldn’t help it: “Didn’t you know it was tomorrow?” He felt silly, of course—why would a high school girl base her schedule on him?—but in all his science-fair fantasies, Abby stood solemnly at the back of the crowd in rapt attention as Enrique spoke, then gave him one of her funny thumbs-ups at the end.
“I have to go see my mom, Enrique,” Abby said gently. “It’s not something I can really put off.”
“Okay.” In his selfishness, Enrique let the wounded tone of his brief answer hang in the air.
“Enrique, my mom is sick. Like, really sick. She’s probably never going to come back home. So . . . I have to go there.”
“Oh!”
“So,” Abby ventured, “maybe you can show it to me afterward?”
“Of course,” Enrique said in a kind of cough. His face was burning. He was an idiot.
“I really hope you win, Enrique. You deserve it.”
“Thanks.”
“Well, have a good night.”
“Good night, Abby. And I’m really sorry . . . about your mom.”
“Thanks.”
Enrique hung up and, flushed to the tips of his ears, went back to gluing. He was careful now, not only with the delicate trees, but with himself. He felt as if a sudden movement would shake something loose, and tears would fly from his eyes. When he finished, he tied a string across the entrance to the living room, and hung a sign from it: DO NOT ENTER!! He didn’t want Jay to come in and kick his basketball into the corner, as was his habit, and ruin the model.
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