The house had seemed familiar to Claire somehow, from the very first time they bumped down the winding, overgrown driveway. The cracked windows, the knob and tube wiring, the peeling wood siding, the very fact that it had lain untouched for so many decades conjured for her both possibility and reminiscence. She had walked through the chilly rooms trying to imagine the family that built this home—the Blackstocks—back when the land could be had for nothing; imagined how hard they must have worked these fields until too many years of drought forced down the harsh truths about dry-land farming. The ranch had been leased for cattle grazing after that, but the Realtor had no record of anyone else inhabiting the house. Claire wondered if there had been children, more than one; whether it was purely the shifting of climate and crop that drove them out, or if divorce or disease and death had emptied the house. It felt important, somehow, to believe that it had been abandoned because the settlers had moved on to good and hopeful things, that the bones and dust here remembered more joy than capitulation.
Claire takes a Costco-sized pack of Clorox wipes out from the box labeled CLEANING SUPPLIES, and starts scrubbing the counters and cabinet shelves, sweeping flecks of insect wings and mouse droppings into a garbage bag. She crouches to pull a package of paper towels from behind the steel P trap under the sink and abruptly scrambles backward, striking her head on the bottom of the counter when a mouse skitters across her hand and disappears through a gap in the cabinet panels.
The smell is overwhelming, the sour, yellow odor of mouse urine. The shrink-wrap around the paper towels has been gnawed into a ragged hole, and the towels themselves shredded into a cushioned nest of fluff and excrement. Three naked, fetal mice blindly claw the exposed air that was a safe universe only seconds ago. She crouches, breathes through the sweet wool of her sweater sleeve, trying to remember the incubation time for hantavirus. They would have to be alive, of course, she thinks. No longer than the end of her smallest finger, the color of a new pencil eraser. She gets to her knees and hunts out the plastic dustpan, angles it beneath the pipes to scoop up the infant mice. One rolls ahead of the flange, risks being crushed against the wall, and she uses the soft edge of a sponge to flip it gently into the pan, gives herself a minute to accept that she is going to jettison them into the snow.
She carries them far enough from the house so they will be invisible from the windows, but rather than fling the weightless contents out to scatter wherever gravity carries them, she deposits them gently, even considers burying them. It might be faster that way. The low sun angle shadows every wind-driven gully as deep as a cavern.
Coming back in she stamps the ice off her boots and turns to shut the door behind her, stifling a gasp when she discovers Jory standing there, wrapped like a winter bride in one of the white down comforters.
“What were you doing out there?” Jory asks.
Claire brushes her hair back, careful not to touch her own face with her contaminated hands. “Nothing. I’m cleaning.” She rests the dustpan against the wall. “I thought you were sleeping.”
Jory is silent, and Claire leans forward to kiss her forehead. “I’ve gotta get to the store. What do you want for dinner?”
Her habits are still city habits; running to Whole Foods for a single meal, expecting to find the flaked salt and saffron stems and arborio rice for the dish she’s craving. In Hallum it is eleven miles to the Food Pavilion where she settles for Morton Salt, McCormick curry powder and Uncle Ben’s. But there are advantages, too, she decides, to the rural truths of living out here. This store is amply stocked with mousetraps and poisons.
Claire stacks her cart with enough groceries to get them through the week. She buys all the basics—spices and oils and vinegars, coffee and flour and sugar and tea bags—too tired to remember if she packed the contents of her kitchen cabinets into the U-Haul or left them behind for the moving truck. The cart becomes so laden it threatens to careen at any subtle slant in the floor. When there is little room left she goes to the far corner and studies the choices for ridding their home of the rodents who have run freely for the last decade or more. There are all sorts of contraptions and devices—a whole science of extermination. There are those that trap and kill through starvation and thirst, those that quickly electrocute, those that flavor poison as nourishment for mothers to take back to their babies; and the Havaharts, for the softhearted souls who want to believe that throwing them out in the snow is not equally fatal. She puts two Havaharts on top of the food and heads to the checkout stand, but thinks again about the distance to town and the knot on the back of her head. She asks the clerk to wait while she runs back to grab a box of d-CON.
Hallum has folded up for the night. Other than the lone bar at the other end of town, the grocery store is the last business to close. Strings of tiny white Christmas lights are still draped around a few gift store windows, the single streetlight at the end of the block shines on empty parking spaces and deserted sidewalks—no theater, no neon, no cruising teenagers marking territory with booming music.
A fine mist has crystallized into a stinging cold. Her gloves lie on the front seat; she can see them through the window. By the time she’s packed the groceries into the trunk her fingertips have gone so numb she can’t puzzle the key into the front door slot, and every passing locked-out second makes her hands stiffer, clumsier, winds her up in frustration until she wants to kick the door.
“Señora?”
Claire jumps when she hears the voice, sucks in a draft of freezing air so quick and deep it burns and her keys fall into the snow underneath the car. A woman is standing in the gutter only a few feet from the car, dark-haired and darkly clothed enough to be nearly invisible in the icy fog. Claire’s heart pounds so hard she is startled into confusion. The woman awkwardly backs up onto the sidewalk, nearly slipping on the icy lip of the curb, “Discúlpame. Sorry!”
There is such a sincere apology in her tone Claire doesn’t need the translation. The voice is small—or rather, from a small person—and when Claire calms down enough to focus she can see the woman is compacting her slight body into a stanchion against the freezing night wind, her arms locked around herself. She is dressed in a buttoned-up cardigan and jeans. A knit cap, pulled low over her hair, and mittens are the only hint of seasonable clothing. Claire starts to ask her if she needs help, but the habits of the city rise up before logic and she looks down the block and behind her into the street, which is swallowed up by the night only a dozen yards from the store lights. A single set of taillights is just turning the corner. “Do you need something?” Claire asks. The woman shakes her head, seems almost embarrassed by the question. Claire glances another time over her shoulder and bends down to retrieve her keys. She unlocks her door and tosses her purse onto the seat beside her gloves, standing between the open door and the safe interior of her car. The store is closing—banks of fluorescent lights shut down in a series along the ceiling, from back to front, until only the glow of freezer cases and the green flickering of the registers show through the glass doors. The staff must have left through the back door. “They’re closed,” Claire says, then feels silly for stating the obvious. “Do you speak English?” The woman shrugs her shoulders. “Habla inglés?”
The woman untucks one bare hand from beneath the other arm and holds her thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “I study.”
Claire looks up the street again. “Do you have a ride? A place to stay?” She searches her foreign vocabulary and pops up with a word for house. “Un maison?” French—what closet of her mind had that come from? She rummages her memory again, more strategically. “Casa. Una casa?” she asks, moving her finger in a little stirring motion she hopes will translate to “nearby.”
The woman’s eyes—remarkably large for her face—brighten, and she nods quickly. She leans down and picks up a canvas pack, holds it up briefly in front of Claire to confirm she has a purpose and destination. Then she hitches one strap over her shoulder and starts to walk down the street, stepping ca
utiously in the narrow track of icy footprints compacted between storefronts and curb. Claire watches her for a minute, uneasy and considering, until her cell phone rings and Jory tells her the house is freezing and she can’t get the fire started.
The woman is at the end of the block when Claire passes her in the car. She stops and rolls down the passenger window, waits until the woman is close enough to hear her. “Señora?” Claire holds up a heavy red plaid lumberman’s jacket Addison used to wear in college. Jory had dragged it out of the closet to wrap around her feet and left it on the floor of the backseat. “Por usted.” The woman seems hesitant to approach, and Claire realizes that she herself is now the suspicious one. She drapes the jacket halfway through the window so it’s easier to reach and puts the car into Park, the heater blasting onto her aching hands. “Por favor.” She keeps smiling at the woman, wants to urge her to just take the jacket, finally, so she can go home. The ice crystals are beginning to turn to snow; lacy white wafers drift onto the hood of the car and dissolve into clear beads. At last the woman steps off the sidewalk and puts her hand on the wool, now flecked with snowflakes. Claire broadens her smile, ready to close the window and leave. But still the woman hesitates. “Sí, por usted,” Claire encourages, trying not to sound impatient.
At last the woman folds the jacket into her arms and leans down so her face is fully visible through the open window. “Thank you. Thank you. I will care for it for you.” The ungainly phrase comes out in a heavy Spanish accent, like that of someone who might have studied the language but rarely pronounces the words. It draws Claire’s attention, this solemn acceptance of responsibility for a piece of clothing Claire would have given to Goodwill the next time she cleaned out the car. And something she sees in this woman’s remarkable eyes, too. Thanks, surely, is there, but her obvious gratitude—and obvious need for a coat—is clearly tinged with shame. With a small wave, the woman turns away and begins climbing the steeper street that heads to the few residential blocks before the town disperses into fields and orchards and forest. At the top of the hill she disappears into the unilluminated night, still carrying the jacket in her arms.
• 5 •
Indeed, the house is freezing. It doesn’t help that the bathroom window upstairs has been left open for who knows how many hours, probably after Jory tried to clear the room of steam. Her underwear and T-shirt are soaking in a pool of suds beside the bathtub. Her hair is still wet and turbaned in a towel, and she is wrapped in both Claire’s and Addison’s velour bathrobes, reminding Claire of the way Jory would sweep through the house at the age of seven or eight, playing queen in a plastic gold crown and just such an oversized bathrobe. That was only six years ago. Turn around and it’s gone.
“Did you ever get dressed today?” Claire asks, dumping the wet clothes in a laundry basket.
“What? In case my friends came by?” Claire returns the look without a word, and Jory drops it with a noncommittal shrug.
The kitchen is exactly the same as Claire left it, except for the Cheerios stuck to the sides of an empty cereal bowl. She’s too tired to cook, or at least too tired to be imaginative about it. She puts a plate of sausages in the microwave, which she serves up with sliced jack cheese and apples and a bowl of roasted almonds. Jory sits grimly in front of her plate as if saying a silent, sullen grace. “What’s the matter?” Claire asks.
“I thought you were buying dinner.”
“This is actually very nutritious if you think about it. A little unorthodox, maybe, but it’s got all the food groups.” Claire studies the table for a minute and gets up to scrounge through the refrigerator. She comes back with a bag of washed spinach and opens it into a bowl, picking out a few darkly rotting leaves. “There. Balanced meal.”
“Where is Dad, anyway?”
Claire glances at her watch. “Landing in Chicago. I’m sure he’ll call.”
Jory peels the translucent casing off the sausage and coils it at the edge of her plate. “What’s in Chicago?”
“Another meeting. People who might want to help him get his lab running again.” Claire reaches across the table and folds the sausage skin into a napkin. “We’ve talked about this, honey. He doesn’t like having to travel so much. He’d rather be here. With you.” Jory flicks her eyes at Claire. “With us.”
They eat in silence after that. Claire finally opens the newspaper, unfolding it noisily across half the table just to disguise the sound of Jory’s chewing, which she seems to be intentionally exaggerating. Jory picks at the denuded sausage and the cheese, then gets up to serve herself a bowl of ice cream. “They were still alive, weren’t they?”
Claire looks up over the newspaper and shakes her head once. “I beg your pardon?”
“When you threw them into the snow. They were still alive.”
Claire pushes the paper aside and presses her fingertips against her closed eyes, presses until the blackness is flecked with tiny purple dots. “Sweetie. Mice carry diseases. We can’t let them breed under the sink.”
Jory smacks the back of her spoon against the surface of her ice cream, slamming it into a mushy vanilla pond. “It’s worse that way. Doing it halfway like that. You should either save them or kill them.”
She swallows a spoonful of ice cream like it’s gristle. Claire can tell she is trying not to cry. A hot wave floods up from Claire’s stomach, makes her want to dig the damn mice out of the snow and revive their pitiful frozen souls. “Well, maybe their mother found them out there. And they say freezing isn’t a bad way to die.” Did she really just say that? Jory is stone-cold silent, wrapping all her anger into this cause. “Okay,” Claire starts over. “You’re right. I was a chicken about it.” The towel twisted around Jory’s hair has slipped to one side and she holds her head at a slant to keep it balanced, finally jerks the wet mass of cloth onto the floor. A strand of damp hair trails through her ice cream. Claire clears her throat. “We could get a pet. A cat.”
Jory might as well be deaf for all the response she offers, but Claire sees the tension curving her lower lip, the eyes fixed on her bowl.
“Like, a barn cat. Only we’ll keep him inside. We wouldn’t even have to feed him.” That remark finally starts the tears down Jory’s cheeks. Terrible as she feels, Claire prefers this to the stalemate. “Well, you wanted a cat when we were in Seattle. I thought it would make you happy!”
“Get a cat? And you’re looking for a job? How long are we staying out here?”
She looks so miserable Claire is ready to forgive the dumped clothes and open window and filthy kitchen. She walks around the table and squats with her hand on Jory’s sleeve. “Oh, baby. I can’t give you a number. It’s just till Dad gets things back on track with his company.”
“You keep saying that. You and Dad both, since we sold the house. But you never say how long that will take. I mean, look at this place!”
Claire rubs her daughter’s back but feels her spine stiffen even through the two bathrobes, a twitch of withdrawal she tries to respect, accepting that this house looks different to all of them now that it is their only home. “I can’t tell you how long. Who knows, maybe Dad found an investor at the meeting today—it could happen anytime. And I’m just exploring the jobs out here. It’s all going to work out, sweetie. It’s temporary. I promise.”
And a mother always, always keeps her promises. So the mark has been set, the cards laid out. It cheers her up, in a way, as if such a promise had the power of all round-bellied maternal goddesses behind it. How many blind leaps into optimism mothers offer their children. And maybe that was part of the reason things usually did work out all right. Maybe the endgame attributed to fate could be bent by the collective will of mothers—there was a thought to play with, though it made it hard to figure out how anybody could possibly wage a war under that cosmic plan.
She sends Jory upstairs with the laptop and a DVD and unpacks the groceries, almost enjoying the fresh start to the kitchen. Yes, the spices are only the cheapest, sealed up in thei
r clear plastic bottles with their red plastic caps, not the little tins of polished silver with hand-lettered labels she used to buy at DeLaurenti. But they are all fresh. The cabinets are uncluttered, as minimalist as the days of her first apartment with Addison, when they would spread a beach towel in front of the wall heater and eat cheese and crackers and popcorn and peel a whole box of mandarin oranges with a bottle of the cheapest wine, and enjoy it all just fine. Just fine.
She scrubs each shelf before arranging the items in neat rows, sweeps years of dust out from behind the refrigerator along with the remnants of the mouse nest, imagining this kitchen with new appliances and countertops and slate floors. It’s the perfect setting for soapstone, this antiquated kitchen. Maybe they should put in an Aga stove.
They had already sketched out plans for a remodel, even hired an architect at one point years ago. He and Addison had turned the practicalities of design into a philosophical art—debating the “vernacular references” of the farmhouse lines, the “cultural history” imparted by dormers versus hip roofs. Addison reveled in the house-to-be, blind to the existing buckled floors and ruptured gutters, the deflowered bouquets of sprung wires. It was the planner in him. The dreamer. Claire understood that better than he ever would. Addison was happier in the creative adventure than in any finished house. And where would the world be without dreamers? Especially the world of science. Back in the Stone Age. Still depending on witch hazel and poultices. Claire was fine with letting him conspire and doodle and walk through imaginary configurations. In fact, until this week they’d spent all their vacations to Hallum at one of the local resorts, visiting their property only to scruff around in the orchard hunting deer antlers and the translucent sheddings of snakes, collecting the small sour apples in autumn for pies they never baked.
Healer: A Novel Page 4
