News From Heaven

by Jennifer Haigh

  The summer unrolled like a satin ribbon. In the evening, after supper, they sat on the back porch until sunset. When the sky was dark, she followed him to the bedroom. Luke was an early riser: exhausted by nine o’clock, wide awake at dawn.

  Was it strange that, lying in his arms, Agnes thought of her mother? Though hard to imagine, it was probably true: at one time, long ago, Mae had known a similar happiness. Agnes thought of her sister in the house across town, lying next to Andy Carnicella. They’d shared a bed for so many years that it must seem commonplace.

  She thought of her own young womanhood, gone without her noticing: her twenties and thirties, her forties, even, each decade much like the last. It was pointless to wonder, now, how the years had escaped her. The hundreds of days—thousands—when she might have brought a man a glass of water, and changed the course of her life.

  The house and the yard were their whole world. Luke had suggested, once or twice, going out to eat, but Agnes found reasons not to. Her mother had disdained restaurants. The prices offended her—Mae called them highway robbery—but the truth, Agnes knew, was more complex. Crowds, even small ones, had alarmed her. Each Sunday she’d given herself a silent talking-to, to work up the nerve to walk into church. I’m not like her, Agnes told herself often. All day long, at work, she spoke to nurses and doctors and patients. Restaurants did not scare her. She simply preferred eating at home.

  August was a dry month, good for house painting. Luke was perched on a ladder when Terri’s car pulled into the driveway. She came in without knocking and found Agnes in the kitchen fixing supper. She pointed out the window. “Who’s he?”

  “He’s painting the house,” Agnes said.

  “I can see that.” Terri’s eyes narrowed. “I saw Mrs. Lipnic at the market. She says his truck is parked here at all hours.”

  Agnes busied herself at the sink. “He’s been doing some work for me. He replaced the gutters and the fence.”

  Terri’s eyes darted around the room, to Luke’s boots lined up at the door, his can of snuff on the table, his jacket hanging from a hook on the wall.

  “He’s living here,” she said in a low voice. “You’re living here together. In Mum and Daddy’s house.”

  “Go home,” Agnes said softly. Go home to your husband. Let me have something.

  “Do you really think he loves you?” Terri asked.

  It was the look on her face as she asked the question, the scorn and disbelief, that made Agnes say what she said next:

  “I’m selling the house.”

  Terri looked stunned. “You can’t. Daddy wanted you to live here. That’s why he left it to you.”

  He’s dead, Agnes thought. They’re both dead. And I am still alive.

  “Agnes, why?”

  “I need the money.” The lie rolled easily off her tongue. For twenty-eight years she’d worked double shifts. The large paychecks had gone into a savings account. She had never paid rent or taken a vacation. Her car, a frugal Ford Escort, was bought in cash ten years ago. “Don’t worry. I’ll give you half.”

  Terri stared at her, her face crumpling. She was near tears. “Agnes, what’s happened to you?”

  Underpriced, the house sold quickly. “What’s your hurry?” the agent asked, disappointed by the small commission. “You’re giving away the store.”

  Agnes knew it was true. Her mother’s voice haunted her—You’re throwing away good money—but she was learning to ignore it. Her time with Luke was beyond price. Their life together was a stolen thing—the months of happiness, years maybe, though she couldn’t imagine being that lucky. She had the sensation, often, of living someone else’s life. Sooner or later its rightful owner would steal it back.

  Knowing this, she paid attention. She noticed everything: Luke shaving at her bathroom mirror, drinking coffee in her kitchen; his clean shirts spinning in her dryer in a dance of wild joy. From time to time the thought ambushed her: Someday I will be alone again. When the time came, she would manage. Solitude was an ache she knew, as familiar as her own body. She could bear to be alone again, but not in her parents’ silent house.

  In the afternoon she vacuums the trailer, ignoring the telephone. She roasts a chicken for supper and takes Ore-Ida french fries from the freezer. They are her favorite food; she marvels at their uniform size and shape. Her mother grew potatoes by the bushel and stored them in the cellar. If she could see Agnes now, spending two dollars for a bag of frozen french fries! Made from scratch, they would cost twenty cents.

  Again and again the phone rings. It strikes her as unusually shrill, an echo of her sister’s voice. Certain telephones, she knows, can display the number of the person calling, but the phone company charges extra for this service. Her mother’s thrift is an inherited disease, one she can’t quite shake.

  “Finally,” Luke says when she answers. “I’ve been calling you all day.” A large engine hums in the background. He shouts to be heard over the noise.

  “I thought it was my sister,” says Agnes. “She stopped by this morning.”

  “What did she want?”

  To take me back, she thinks. To take me away from you.

  “Where are you?” she asks. “I can barely hear you.”

  “At the site. We finished early.” He’s started working for an old buddy, Rick Marstellar, who gets state contracts to clean up contaminated lands. Unlike other businesses in Saxon County, Rick Marstellar’s is thriving. There is a great deal here to clean up.

  “Listen,” says Luke. “I’m bringing someone home for supper. Someone I want you to meet.”

  The days are getting shorter. It is nearly dark when his truck comes down the lane. The passenger is a girl she’s never seen before. Agnes meets them at the door.

  “This is Renee,” Luke says. “My daughter.”

  The girl is tall and slender and uncommonly pretty: little snub nose, velvet brown eyes like a puppy’s or a deer’s. Her eyes are ringed with dark liner, her hair bleached silver-blond. To Agnes, she looks older than fifteen.

  “Welcome,” says Agnes. She’s known all along that Luke has children, that he was married and divorced years ago in Maryland. Then there were the girls he didn’t marry. He’d told her on the phone that Renee came from one of those, when he was only sixteen.

  They sit down to eat. Luke devours most of the chicken. He has the appetite of a teenager; watching, Agnes wonders if it will catch up with him. She tries to imagine him her own age, with thinning hair, a belly paunch. It is impossible to visualize.

  Renee eats only a little. Her hands are delicate and birdlike, decorated with silver jewelry. She picks up a chicken wing and licks her fingertips when she is done.

  In between bites Luke talks about his day. He started and finished a job in Kinport, pulling an underground tank from an abandoned gas station. The tank had been leaking for God knows how long, gasoline leaching into the soil. Luke’s crew hoisted the tank, then dug out the tainted earth and loaded it into a dump truck. The driver—Luke calls him a dirt merchant—makes his living hauling contaminated soil to the incinerator.

  The work is filthy and exhausting, but Rick Marstellar pays well. “He can afford to,” Luke says, helping himself to more french fries. “He’s making out like a bandit.” He chews each mouthful three times, then swallows. He gobbles noisily, like a dog.

  After supper, Agnes clears the dishes. Renee rises to help, her sharp hip bones visible through her jeans. I was that young once, Agnes thinks, but it isn’t true. At fifteen she was middle-aged already. She is younger now than she was then.

  Agnes washes and Renee dries, until Renee complains: “I don’t know where anything goes.” Agnes takes the dish towel and hands her the sponge.

  “Thanks for letting me stay here.” Renee takes four rings from each hand and sets them on the windowsill. “My mom kicked me out. I guess he told you.”

  “Why did she do that?” Agnes asks.

  “She hates my boyfriend. She says he’s too old for me. I do
n’t think that matters.” Renee squirts Palmolive into the greasy roasting pan. “Do you?”

  Agnes thinks of herself at fifteen, a sophomore at Bakerton High. She recalls Spanish and history, chemistry and geometry. She has no recollection of even speaking to a boy. “I have no idea,” she says.

  Renee eyes her curiously. “You don’t have kids, do you?”

  “No,” says Agnes.

  “I can tell,” Renee says.

  “I’ll take her with me in the morning,” says Luke. “I can drop her off then.”

  They are lying in bed face-to-face, their feet touching.

  “At school?” says Agnes.

  “Yeah. It’s on my way.” He takes her hand. “Let’s go out tomorrow. Celebrate my first paycheck. A day early, but so what.” This is something local couples do, something Luke and Agnes have never done: drink beer and share a pizza at the Commercial Hotel.

  “All right,” Agnes says.

  She wishes he would reach for her, but the walls are thin in the trailer. Unless she is dead asleep, Renee, on the foldout couch Agnes made up for her, will hear everything.

  “How long is she going to stay?” Agnes whispers.

  “Depends on her mother. They had a fight. About what, I don’t know.”

  Her mother, Agnes thinks. Who is she? Did you love her? “She doesn’t like Renee’s boyfriend,” she says.

  “She told you that?” Luke looks surprised. “Did she say why?”

  “He’s too old for her.”

  Luke rolls onto his other side and stares up at the window. “How old is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Agnes says.

  It is still dark when the alarm rings. Rain beats at the roof of the trailer. Luke releases her with a little groan. In the living room Renee is asleep on the sofa bed. Agnes dresses in her uniform and decides against breakfast. It’s only a dollar, she thinks, and buys a cup of coffee at a gas station on the way.

  Her shift passes slowly. On and off she thinks of the Commercial Hotel, herself and Luke sitting at the bar, in full view of whoever might walk through the door. Anyone would say they make a strange couple. She recalls the photo of her parents, her plain, shy mother at a dance club—the Legion or the Vets—with handsome John Lubicki. By the time Agnes was born, Mae had retreated to the house; she had simply stopped trying. Was this the reason she’d withdrawn from the world? Was she so afraid of what people would say?

  By the end of her shift, the rain stops. Wind chases her across the parking lot. The air smells wet and loamy, the rich perfume of decaying leaves. Agnes hears footsteps behind her, the sharp clop of high heels.

  “Agnes!”

  She turns. Her sister stands beneath a floodlight. She wears a wool coat several sizes too big, a scarf wrapped at her throat. She looks like a child dressed by a careful mother, bundled against the cold.

  “Jo told me you were working,” she says.

  It is the curse of living in a small town. Jo, the charge nurse, was a high school classmate of Terri’s.

  “I didn’t know what else to do. I haven’t heard from you in months.” In the strong light Terri looks tired. Her hair is shorter and parted in the middle. At the part Agnes notices a few strands of gray.

  “I stopped by your house the other day. Your—trailer. I saw his motorcycle outside.”

  Agnes waits.

  “You bought it for him,” says Terri.

  “No,” Agnes lies.

  They stand a long moment, staring at each other.

  “Thanks for the photos,” says Agnes. “I’m glad to have them.”

  A truck backs up to the delivery entrance, beeping loudly. The beeping waxes and wanes with the shifting wind.

  “Why do you hate me?” says Terri. “What did I do?”

  “I don’t hate you,” says Agnes, because she doesn’t. The second question is harder to answer, and she doesn’t try. “I have to go. Luke is waiting. We have plans.” She digs for her car keys and turns away abruptly. She wants only to escape the beeping truck, her sister’s stricken face.

  “He was in prison down in Maryland,” says Terri. “Did he tell you that? For armed robbery. Andy knows all about it.”

  Of course Agnes knows. The store was empty except for the clerk, who wasn’t hurt. Luke was nineteen at the time. He served four years.

  “You don’t know anything about him,” she says, opening the car door.

  Terri grabs her arm. “I saw him in town yesterday. He had a girl with him.”

  “That’s his daughter,” says Agnes, not turning.

  “How do you know?”

  When Agnes gets home, the trailer is dark. Luke’s truck is gone.

  Inside, the sofa bed is closed, the sheets stripped and rolled into a ball. She changes out of her uniform and eyes the balled-up sheets—warily, as though some small animal, a squirrel or raccoon, has invaded her home.

  How do you know?

  The answer, of course, is that she doesn’t. Luke’s parents and grandparents came from Coalport, two towns over. Mae, if she were alive, would know the family’s entire history, or would ask one of her telephone friends.

  Of course, if her mother were alive, Agnes would have no need of this information. If her mother were alive, she wouldn’t be living with Luke.

  In the kitchen she puts away dishes, the clean Ziploc bags left on the counter to dry. She knows that thrift is not the disease; it is only a symptom. The underlying illness is more exotic—inherited from her mother, a familial loneliness and strangeness. It’s a condition that can’t be cured, only managed, like hypertension or diabetes.

  Yet her sister somehow escaped it.

  Why do you hate me? What did I do?

  The Commercial Hotel would be lively at this hour, music pouring out the windows, a live band, maybe. Agnes has driven past often on Thursday nights, and knows that this is so.

  It is nearly midnight when Luke’s truck barrels down the lane. He smells smoky, a little beery. “We stopped out after work,” he says. “Rick was buying, so I figured why not.”

  Because we had plans, Agnes thinks. Because I was waiting for you.

  “Where’s Renee?”

  Luke shrugs. “Her mother’s, I guess. She’s pissed at me.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think?” He struggles out of his jacket and tosses it on the couch. “She wants money, like everybody. She needs it for school. It’s the only reason she tracked me down.” He heads into the kitchen, his muddy boots leaving a trail on the carpet. “She says I never gave her anything.”

  “Did you?” Once a month he pays child support for the three boys in Maryland. Agnes has seen the check stubs. They’re the only checks Luke ever writes.

  He looks startled by the question. “I’m not even sure she’s mine, you want to know the truth.” He opens the refrigerator and studies its contents. “I wanted to take a paternity test, way back when. Her mother wouldn’t let me.” He nods once, as if vindicated. “That tells you something right there.”

  Agnes supposes it does. Though what exactly it tells her is not clear.

  “Don’t get me wrong. She’s a good kid. I’d give it to her if I had it.” He considers and rejects a bowl of leftover spaghetti. “Can’t get blood from a stone.”

  The next morning, after Luke leaves for work, there is a knock at the door. Agnes remembers it’s the first of the month and takes the checkbook from her purse.

  A scrawny blond man stands on the porch. It takes her a moment to place him. When she does, she steps outside and closes the door. “How’s your shoulder?” she asks.

  Wojick looks at her without recognition. “Okay, I guess.”

  “I’m Agnes. You worked on my roof.” She sees him eying the checkbook in her hand. “I thought you were the landlord.”

  “No, but I’ll take his money.” He grins, showing snaggleteeth. “Where’s your man? He go hunting?”

  “At work,” says Agnes.

  Wojick looks surprised. “He got
a job?”

  “At Penn Reclamation.”

  “Rick hired him? I never heard that.” Wojick pats the chest pocket of his jacket, a worn Carhartt like Luke’s. “I just cashed my settlement check. From that accident I had. It’s a long story,” he says, seeing her frown. “I need someone to help me celebrate.”

  “He’s on a job in Fallentree. I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

  “All right, then.” Wojick ambles down the porch steps, hands in his pockets, his breath steaming in the cold. He stops to study Luke’s motorcycle, parked at the bottom of the stairs. “That’s some bike he’s got. It’s a twelve hundred, right?”

  Agnes shrugs.

  “Looks brand-new,” says Wojick. “Where’d he get a bike like that?”

  The idea comes to her all at once, with unusual clarity. It seems both correct and inevitable.

  “It’s for sale,” she says.

  That night she works second shift. She leaves a note for Luke: Supper is in the oven. When she comes home, his dirty plate is in the sink. He paces the trailer like a zoo animal, a large, healthy beast in a small, rickety cage.

  “I saw Kenny Wojick today,” he says. “He came by the job site.”

  Agnes does not respond to this.

  “He was riding a motorcycle. My goddamned bike.” Luke studies her intently, waiting for her to speak. Calmly she returns his gaze. “You could’ve told me you were going to sell it.”

  “That’s true,” she says. She squeezes past him and heads for the freezer, takes out pork chops for tomorrow’s supper. “It wasn’t practical. We have other expenses.”

  Luke stares at her, not comprehending.

  “She’s your daughter,” she says, waiting for him to contradict her. When he doesn’t, she adds, “Don’t you owe her something?”