Pew

by Catherine Lacey

  I looked at the gown, looked down at my shoes, plain black ones with thick soles and no laces. I listened at the door, heard her footsteps disappearing, then nothing, then nothing, then nothing. I held my ear to the door—still, nothing. I put my hand on the knob, tried to turn it, but it would not turn. I thought of the hallway, thought of the emergency exit at the hallway’s end, the trees beyond the emergency exit, and wondered what sort of trees they were and how much shade they might offer. I knew about trees, but I didn’t know anything about this.

  I sat on the cushioned examination table beside the folded gown. My shoes were still on my feet, clothes still on this body. I leaned back across the table and shut my eyes and thought that at some point in the future, long after humanity had run its course, after some other creature had replaced us, maybe, or maybe even after the next creatures had been replaced by whatever came after them, at some point in a future I could not fully imagine, a question might occur in some mind, and that question might be What was the human? What was the world of the human?—though it would be in some unforeseen language, perhaps a language that was without sound, perhaps a language that did not have to grow from a damp, contaminated mouth—and if this question ever did arise in that future being’s mind, would it even be possible to catalog and make sense of all our griefs, our pains and wars? Our delineations? Our need for order? The question arose then—did all this human trouble begin in our bodies, these failing things, weaker or stronger, lighter or darker, taller or shorter? Why did they cause so much trouble for us? Why did we use them against one another? Why did we think the content of a body meant anything? Why did we draw our conclusions with our bodies when the body is so inconclusive, so mercurial?

  Resting on that table, not getting undressed, not putting on the paper gown, I feared I’d become something sacrificial, but I would not lay myself out on this altar. Whatever else I may have been, I was, I knew, not theirs.

  The door opened and Nancy was there, somehow leaning toward and away from me at once—

  Well, I guess I nearly forgot about you down here—or not exactly forgot, but we just had a few people show up and … well, everything is sort of confusing here the past few days.

  She stood shaking her head, frowning at the clipboard in her hands.

  Well, where were we?

  She flipped through the papers on the clipboard, then looked up.

  Goodness me—you haven’t even gotten undressed! Now, how am I supposed to do the examination if you’re still in all your clothes and all? I’ll just give you another minute, then, OK? We haven’t got all day you know—

  She shut the door and I heard her footsteps going rapidly back down the hall. I sat up, tested the door again—still locked. A tiny noise—something like the sound of a leaking ceiling, a drop of water clicking against tile, then silence, another sound, silence, another. I ran my hands across the ground, looking for water, but found, between a chair’s leg and the wall—an insect the size of my smallest fingernail. It was something like a grasshopper but smaller and brown. It jumped every few seconds, but landed on its back, the hard shell ticking against the floor. I caught it softly in my hands—one of its hind legs was bent the wrong way. It kept my attention. I could not think in any other direction.

  Nancy and Dr. Winslow must have come in at some point, but I did not notice until they were standing close, standing over me and asking question after question.

  When I looked up at them, they stopped speaking and the silence around all of us was the sort that comes after something has shattered—a clear, high silence.

  See? Nancy said to Dr. Winslow. And we don’t have enough staff to deal with an uncooperative patient. Dr. Winslow nodded, turned, and was gone.

  OUTSIDE THE HOSPITAL I crouched beside a bush, opened my cupped hands, and waited for the insect to jump out. I felt Hilda’s shadow cast across my back. The insect did not move. I looked for its eye or antennae to flicker, but they did not. Its legs were bent up into its body. I set it down in some mulch beneath the bush and stood, uncertain.

  Hilda did not speak as we got into the car or as the car left the parking lot or as the car sped up the ramp to the highway, down the highway, miles down the highway, taking us with it. She did not speak and she did not turn on the radio. She did not look at me and I did not look at her. We both looked forward and wet, cold gusts of air came through the vents toward us. I wondered about the insect, about whether it was dead, whether I might have suffocated it, whether I had crushed it somehow without realizing.

  I’m a patient woman, Hilda said eventually. I was taught to be patient, and I am patient, and I believe Jesus would be patient, so it’s what I should do and I really do try, but I am just about running out of patience.

  She opened her palms on the steering wheel then regripped it, finger by finger, faint veins visible along her forearms.

  I’m sorry, but … the examination—maybe we didn’t make it clear or maybe I didn’t make it clear—this was important to us. Steven and I decided that we really needed some clarity on you in order to keep you in our house. We have concerns, you know, legitimate concerns. And this lack of cooperation, well, it is really trying my patience. We can’t help you if you won’t tell us anything and won’t even let a doctor make sure you’re physically … all right. You must understand that we’re not obligated to help you—that we’re doing this out of our own kindness. And who do you think paid for that? I paid for that. It’s not free. They’re not just giving out free doctors’ appointments to anyone who needs them, you know. We had to pay for it, and it wasn’t cheap.

  Some distance up the highway a small car appeared to have driven off into a ditch. A tow truck was there. A few people stood at the edge of the road, still and close together while someone attached a chain to the back of the car.

  You must think I’ve never known anything hard, that none of us do, that we could never understand. But isn’t that just the problem? We don’t know anything about you because you won’t tell us, but we’re only asking so we can help you.

  Hilda slowed down as we approached the car and truck. A woman was sitting on the side of the road, at the feet of two men. Her hair was matted on one side with what looked like blood. The men stood with their arms folded, watching as the chain went taut and slowly pulled the car from the ditch. As we passed them, Hilda rolled down her window and stuck an arm out, waving. All three of them waved back, waved and smiled, even the one with the bloody head. Hilda rolled her window up and sped away.

  Maybe you think we won’t understand, but we really would understand. I know difficulty. I know real pain. She swallowed. I’ll even tell you. Then she didn’t say anything. We drove a half mile in silence before she began.

  My father, the man you met in the waiting room, a few years ago he was real sick, nearly died, and after that he just wasn’t the same anymore. Then one afternoon, he got a kitchen knife and stabbed my stepmother in the eye. Just stabbed her in the eye, just like that out of nowhere. So we had to put him out there at Monroe because the nursing home wouldn’t take him and thank God he didn’t manage to kill Paulina because our family—our reputation—well, I don’t think we would have recovered from something like that. It would have affected me, the boys, my husband. We would have all been tainted, maybe would’ve been forced to move away …

  When my father married Paulina, well, she was so much younger than him and she didn’t—she just didn’t match the rest of us. She was nervous and she looked different, you know, dark haired, sort of tan—well … She never knew her father and I think there was a reason her mother kept him hidden. She didn’t even wear white at the wedding—and it wasn’t her second wedding or anything. You can’t even imagine how difficult it was growing up. Even at church the children picked on me about it. Seems like children are often the first to just come out and say what’s wrong with something. And to have to call someone Mother who behaves like she did … Well, it just wasn’t right. We were the only family like that in
town, so we had to work twice as hard to be … right. To sit right with the community. It’s all we have here—sitting right with the community. It’s all anyone wants.

  Of course—Mrs. Gladstone, Paulina—she’s clearly never been the same and bless her heart she’s all self-conscious about that glass eye. Won’t hardly ever go out. I try to include her, you know, in my life. I don’t want her to be so abandoned but she won’t even leave her house, ever—just won’t leave, and I can hardly set a foot in there.

  And when she woke up in the hospital she thought her husband—my father—she was so sure that he was the one who was dead, and no matter what we told her, no matter how many times we explained that he was alive, that he had attacked her, she just didn’t believe it. She thinks it was her fault she lost that eye, and she kept saying, No, my Charles wouldn’t do something like that. It must have been some strange man, some strange man that came in, then blamed it on Charlie. I told her, no, it wasn’t some strange man, that Charles had even admitted himself that he’d done it. And she just kept saying that if it was really him, then she must have done something to deserve it. Can you imagine?

  I remembered Paulina, Mrs. Gladstone, sitting quietly in her house, still and alone. The human mind is so easily bent, and so uneasily smoothed.

  I was the one who found her, Hilda said. She’d staggered out onto her front porch, gushing blood, and thank God I drove by when I did or she would have died right there on her lawn, and then what would we have done? Wouldn’t have been anything to do then but move away or something …

  On the highway ahead of us you could see the heat rising, warping the air. Hilda unwrapped two sticks of chewing gum, put them in her mouth, and chewed as she spoke.

  All I am saying is that I know a thing or two about going through something difficult. That’s all I’m saying. So maybe there’s something you don’t want to talk about, but you’ve got to talk about it. That’s the only way things get better. It’s the only way. You could at least think about what it might be like for us, for our community. We don’t know what to do, and there you are showing up in the middle of the festival week plus all this confusion going on over in Almose County. It’s an especially difficult moment and we need you to cooperate. Do you understand?

  Hilda stopped and turned off the car in the driveway beside Roger’s house, but she didn’t open her door so I didn’t open mine and we sat there for awhile. A few times Hilda began to speak, got two or three words out before stopping, then starting again. She kept looking straight ahead out the windshield, so I did, too.

  Roger is going to take you over to visit a friend of his for the day, and I need to talk to Steven about whether you can keep staying with us. He may think and I might think that it’s just too much for us, for the family, the boys. And it is—well …

  She started to open her door but stopped and shut it again, turning to me, her face softer and voice brightened and high.

  But I just want you to know that you really are welcome in our house—you’re welcome there and I really do mean that. I don’t have any problem with you, exactly, and I really do want the best for you and you must know that if we can’t have you stay with us anymore that it isn’t a personal decision—it’s a practical one. And I mean it, you really are welcome in my home at any time in the future, and you have been welcome all this time and I want you to know that. It’s just I’ll have to see what Steven says is the most practical. After today and everything. I just have to see what he thinks.

  She nodded to her own faint reflection in the windshield.

  MOST PEOPLE AROUND HERE are not fond of strangers, you know. I probably don’t need to tell you.

  Tammy was smoking a thin cigarette, ashing into an empty soda can. The house was wooden and old, all its planks buckling and splintered, pale blue paint chipping. Through the neglect, it was clear this place had been cared for in other ways. Roger had left me there an hour before, saying only that he would be back later.

  No, she said, taking a long drag on the thin cigarette, I probably don’t need to tell you that at all.

  She and I sat together on the porch, listening. Every half hour or so a train roared down the train tracks behind the house, a wall of metal noise, suddenly there and large, then fading, then gone. Sometimes I watched her cigarettes disappear into breath, but most of the time I just stared at the yard overtaken by tangled vines and dead leaves. Some cats were in there, rustling round, trying to kill anything they could.

  You know—I would have never thought I’d be one of those wives who waited all afternoon for her husband to get back from work, but maybe it’s true that you just turn into your mother—whether you notice or not, you ain’t got a choice.

  She smiled at this, shook her head, then dropped her cigarette into the soda can. It hissed in the can’s wet.

  Bless her. The bitch. I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, I know, but … well, people shouldn’t speak ill of their own children either. I suppose I—well, I guess I disappointed her too much and she didn’t live long enough to burn off all that disappointment.

  A tabby came up the porch steps with a corpse swaying from his mouth, but Tammy laid a firm look on him; he paused midstep, retreated slowly, then bolted back into the yard’s overgrowth.

  Did you have parents or just some people who thought they should own somebody?

  Neither, I said. The word took me by surprise, came out abrupt and soft.

  Huh. Orphan?

  I didn’t say anything for a while, looked at the wooden floor, felt a memory lingering in me somewhere, like someone uncertain at a front door, hesitating at the bell. I don’t remember.

  Well. It’s overrated, family. You’re lucky if you get born into one where you belong. It’s really a lot more rare than people want to say. You know, I ran off to the city when I was—Jesus … was I seventeen? Well, we know how that story ends, don’t we?

  She swallowed hard and lit another cigarette.

  But the thing is—I found a place to sleep for a few weeks, way out in some neighborhood, I couldn’t even tell you where it was now—I was in way over my dumb head. But it was a Latvian neighborhood and I got a little job sweeping up hair at this beauty parlor owned by this old Latvian lady—I can’t even remember her name now, that’s how stupid I am. I mean, I don’t even think I’d even heard of Latvia—I was just real dumb. Still am. But she was so nice to me, and so funny, and I was just this ugly little girl with no money, no friends, and I hadn’t done anything or seen anything. She’d had such a different life—leaving her country, leaving everyone she ever knew, really starting over—but I felt I had more in common with her than anyone I’d grown up with, more than anyone I’d known down here, more than my own family. Immediately, I felt it. I can’t explain why. I don’t know why it is a person can feel so misplaced, even from the beginning, you know—even as a little child I felt there had been some kind of accident that got me born here. I guess my mother, the whole family, really, felt the same way, that there had been some sort of mistake. And now where am I? Ten miles from where I was born, puttering around all day, napping and smoking too much and trying not to eat the whole kitchen.

  She stubbed out her cigarette and sat still and quietly for a while.

  I don’t mean to be so negative. I know that’s not what people like. Sometimes it’s just hard to really think about your life, all the years of it you can’t take back, to think about what it is.

  For a long time we waited for that last sentence to vanish, and when it seemed it had gotten far enough away from us, she stood up and began pacing the porch.

  I’m not going to tell, she said over her shoulder. That you said something. You know that’s what everyone wants, don’t you? That’s what they’re waiting on? Some of them think you’re a mute, of course, that it’s medical, nothing to be done anything about, and you may as well let them keep thinking that. Me and Hal won’t rat you out to nobody. Maybe nobody’d believe us anyway. She leaned over the porch railing, maybe
looking for the cat, then she turned around—This place, you know, it’s not so terrible, but it’s not so nice either.

  She crouched to turn on a small radio on the floor. Someone was singing with a piano and Tammy sang along in a small, half-embarrassed way. A red car drove up and parked in the one part of the yard where the vines and roots had been cut back. A slight man emerged from the car and climbed the porch steps, smiling at Tammy all the while. He wore a green shirt with the name HAL on a patch sewn over his heart. When she embraced Hal, Tammy seemed almost twice his height—she had to hunch to kiss the top of his bald head. They touched each other so naturally, so easily, it was as if each of them had a kind of wind vane tuned for the other.

  Name’s Hal. He smiled and waved one hand sharply at me. He sat on the old sofa where Tammy had been. She’d gone inside the house but soon came back out with a bowl of potato chips and a dark red drink for him, ice singing in the glass. I was staring at a few large and brightly colored feathers that hung above us, spinning in the ceiling-fan draft.

  You ever seen a peacock? Hal asked.

  Oh, here we go. Tammy lit a cigarette and paced at the edge of the porch.

  Vaguely, I sensed a memory of waking up on a lawn somewhere and seeing two large birds—peacocks—staring at me from across the grass. One of them spread out a great tail of feathers, and the other did the same. They swayed there, necks long and twitching. Each feather seemed to be watching me for a moment, watching me through the silence and heat, then they’d closed up those fans and darted away, dragging all that finery across the grass, running for their lives.

  Pretty things, Hal said. Tammy always liked them so I saved up to have some out here. They came mail order, came in a crate shipped overnight. They were just so beautiful. I couldn’t hardly believe it—bright blue, sort of purple at some angles. Real pretty like that. But, anyway—what we did was put them in the old chicken coop, which had just been sitting empty since we built the new one, but by the next morning something had gotten in there and ate up two of ’em, blood and all those blue feathers all over the lawn, and Tammy—sweet one that she is—she went around collecting the feathers, just crying and picking up feathers.