The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel

by Val Brelinski

  “Where’s your sister? The little one, I mean?” Grip glanced down the block. A trifle cautiously, Jory thought.

  “In California. With my mom.”

  “What for? Vacation?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Why didn’t you go?

  Jory shrugged. It was strange how few real answers there were to his questions.

  “You mean it’s just you and your dad? For how long? When’s your mom coming back?”

  Jory stared across the lot at the ice cream truck, at the several spots on its side where the blue-painted lettering was starting to fade. “I don’t know. I don’t think they are coming back.”

  Grip was now plucking pieces of grass out of the ground. He pulled up a blade of grass and began tearing it into small bits. “Maybe you should go to California too.”

  “What? Why?”

  Grip ran a hand through his shortened hair. A gesture that reminded Jory of her father. “I just mean that maybe it’d be good for you to live somewhere else . . . with someone else.”

  Jory felt stunned by the unexpectedness of this conversation. “My dad needs me,” she said. “He’s not the same anymore.”

  “I hope not,” said Grip.

  Jory made an exasperated sound in the back of her throat. “There’s no point in still being mad at him now. He probably hates you too, you know, but it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  Grip shook his head again. “You don’t get it. I don’t hate him, or maybe I do, but it’s not for the reasons you think.” He reached out and put a hand on her bare arm. “I’m telling you, this is not a good situation for you.” Grip turned her arm over so that her hand lay palm up. He lightly touched the tendons that ran up her wrist. “I’m thinking of taking off for Phoenix in a day or two. My mom’s there and she said I could stay for a while. Until I find a job or something.” He glanced at Jory. “You could come visit.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Jory’s own surety surprised her. She pulled her arm away, even though his fingers had felt wonderful. “My dad doesn’t have anybody else now.”

  “Yeah? Why do you think that is?”

  Jory was beyond amazed at the turns this conversation was taking. “Because my mom is . . . my mom. This is what she does when things get too hard. She goes into her bedroom and shuts the door or she goes to Blackfoot and gets shock treatments. Now she’s in San Diego sitting by a pool and letting her sister take care of her.”

  For a moment neither one of them said anything.

  “I should never have let her go that night. That night at Hope House.” Grip sounded almost as if he were talking to himself. He smacked himself in the forehead with his fist. “I’ve thought about it a million times since then. I should never have let him take her.”

  Jory gazed at him in silence. Absolutely none of this was how she had imagined it. No one was saying or doing any of the right things. Not even close.

  “I could have stopped him and I didn’t. But I knew the cops wouldn’t believe me over him—why would they? And I was scared to go to jail.” He hung his head slightly. “She told me she didn’t know what she’d do if he made her go back, and look what happened. I should have had the fucking balls.” He pushed himself up to his feet and then stood over her. “I was a stupid miserable coward.”

  “No, you weren’t.”

  “Oh, yeah—I sure as hell was. I could have told the cops that she was scared of him, or at least threatened to. She’d still be here now, right now, if I’d had the nerve.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jory stood up and brushed the dirt off the back of her pants. She stared down at Grip. “Grace wasn’t scared of my dad—she adored him.”

  Grip seemed to be debating something and he gave Jory a long evaluative look, one that seemed to contain both anger and sorrow. At last he sighed, letting out a long, almost quavering breath. “He killed her, Jory.”

  Jory stood there blinking as if trying to slow or clear her vision. For a second, she felt absolutely nothing, the expression on her face one of flat incomprehensibility.

  “She would never have killed herself. Not voluntarily.” Grip shook his head. “Not with the baby.” His head shaking continued. “He pushed her into it.”

  Jory was dumbstruck. Both by what he was saying and the strange assurance with which he was saying it.

  “He backed her into a corner.” Grip stood up and began pacing in the grass now as if he’d been storing these words up for months. “Just like she was some kind of dog. Like he owned her and he was going to decide what would happen to her.”

  “That’s not true,” said Jory, her voice rising in pitch. “He was trying to protect her.”

  “From what?” Grip turned away from her and threw an invisible something—a blade of grass or a thread from his shirt maybe—across the grassy lot. “It was completely his fault. He might as well’ve handed her those pills and a glass of water.”

  Jory could feel herself breathing much too fast. “Grace chose to do what she did all by herself. She chose to kill herself. And her baby.” Jory felt sick for saying these words. Sick and traitorous.

  Grip stared at her, a sad, almost pitying look on his face. “Your father is a megalomaniac or something. He’s like an egotistical freak who has to control everything in his own little world. He thinks he’s a so-called god and that his word is law and that everyone should do exactly as he says. Or else.”

  Jory could hear herself scrambling for words. “He said the exact same thing about you!” She gave a sort of hollow-sounding laugh. “That you needed to have other people admire you to feed your own ego, that you tried to manipulate people, like Grace and me. That you needed attention.” She could no longer remember the exact specifics of her father’s admonishment. “He said you were bad—that you were no good.” It had come back to her. “That you were a criminal.”

  “That’s bullshit.” Grip reached out one hand and took her elbow. “I know it hurts to hear these things, Jory, but you needed to find out what he was like sooner or later. For your own good.”

  “You’re wrong, completely and totally wrong,” she said, stepping back from him and out of his grasp. “And if you only knew my father even the littlest, tiniest bit, you’d know how utterly wrong you are. Grace was crazy. She had . . . problems.” Jory turned away from him and realized that her kneecaps were shaking. “My dad had to take her to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist thought she was so nuts that she should be put in the hospital, that she should be institutionalized, but my dad wouldn’t let them because that’s how much he loved her. And he’s sick now because of what happened to her. He can’t even leave our house. He’s skinny and he can’t go to work or run or sleep or do anything because of how terrible he feels—because this has ruined his life—because of what she did to him. Because she killed herself to get back at him.” Jory suddenly gasped and put her hands over her mouth.

  “That’s right,” said Grip. “That’s why she did it—to get back at him. For all the really rotten things he did to her.”

  Jory could not seem to stop her kneecaps from doing this utterly strange movement. She turned and then began to walk and then to run haphazardly, blindly, across the grass and over the curb.

  “Jory! Hey! Wait—wait!”

  She could hear Grip calling her, but she didn’t stop. She ran down the sidewalk, her breath catching and her eyes blurred with tears. She could hear herself making noise as she ran, some kind of strange and ragged talking she was doing to herself, garbled words or cries that made no sense.

  She ran and she didn’t stop until she was inside the house and had locked the door behind her. For a moment or two she leaned there against the door frame, gasping. And then, as if helpless to resist, she rushed to the front window.

  He was gone.

  Jory stumbled down the hall, her hands held against her mouth.


  At Grace’s closed bedroom door she stopped. She opened the door and stood looking at her older sister’s small white metal bed and her white-painted dresser, her nightstand and the milk glass lamp that sat on the dresser, and the hooked oval rug placed directly in front of the tall wooden rocking chair. This was exactly how her sister’s room had always looked. The only thing out of place was the old blue suitcase that was perched at the end of the bed, opened wide and still waiting to be packed. Jory turned away from this last sight, but it was too late, much too late to unsee anything. A large leather Bible sat on the dresser top with an unused bottle of Wind Song perfume next to it and next to that stood a little photo in a gold frame: a picture of the three Quanbeck sisters on a sandbar in Banks, Idaho. They were all smiling and wearing identical red bandannas to keep the wind and sand out of their hair. Their father had taken the picture and because the sun was behind him his shadow cast a large dark blob across a portion of their bare legs. Jory remembered that day. Their mother had discovered their Siamese cat in the process of giving birth and so she hustled them all into the car and insisted that their father drive them all the way to Banks. Their mother made them stay at the river’s shore until the sun went down and she was quite sure that the bloody and most likely obscene event back home was over and done with. Her mother’s caution—which Jory learned about only later—was ironically shortsighted since the very next day Frances discovered the mother cat in a corner of the laundry room in the process of calmly eating her one remaining kitten.

  Jory picked up the photo and carried it with her over to her sister’s wooden desk, where she sat down in the desk chair and opened the desk’s lone drawer. Inside the drawer was a copy of Discipline: The Glad Surrender by Elisabeth Elliot and a red leather Spanish New Testament. There was also a white silk bookmark with the Beatitudes printed on it and a handful of gold cross pins that were given out for perfect attendance at Sunday School. Next to the pins was a dried carnation with a hat pin stuck through its stem, an empty beaded coin purse from Yellowstone, a tiny white tube of Avon Kiss Me Quick lipstick, a small plastic giraffe wearing a halo, an instruction booklet for a Timex watch, and a green spiral notepad. Jory pulled the notepad out of the drawer and put it on top of the desk. She flipped open the notebook’s cover and felt a terrible wrenching deep in her chest as she was confronted with her sister’s childish straight up-and-down writing, its modest loops and careful curls as familiar to her as her own. The Keys to a Happy Life: (1) Live only to please Jesus. (2) Do not concern yourself with what others think of you. (3) Keep your eyes firmly on the heavenly prize. (4) Make certain that your outward adornment is befitting of a child of God. (5) Give of your time, your money, and your possessions to the poor, and to the poor in spirit. (6) Spread the good news of Christ to everyone you meet. (7) Be humble and patient. (8) Forgive those who harm you, just as Jesus has forgiven you. There were checkmarks next to each of these numbers; some items had more checks than others. Jory turned to the next page. Seven and eight are the hardest. At least for me they are. This means that I need to rededicate myself each day to being more Christlike and less like the selfish and petty human being that I am. Jory turned to the next page. Weaknesses, it read. Eating more than my share. Fighting with Jory. Thinking bad thoughts about Mom. Wishing I were prettier. Being jealous of Charlene Doremus. Charlene Doremus! Jory’s mouth dropped open involuntarily. She reread the list. But we didn’t fight that much, she thought. Did we? Did we? Her heart felt pinched and small. Bruised, almost. She turned another page in the notebook, but it was blank, as were all the rest of the pages in the notepad. She flipped through the pages again and again, but there was nothing else to see.

  At her sister’s closet her throat closed tight at the sight of the limply hanging skirts and blouses, the somewhat worn and scuffed size 8.5 leather shoes that still held the impressions of Grace’s very particular feet. Jory turned away with a quick movement and slid the closet door closed behind her.

  She stood in front of Grace’s white-painted dresser and pulled out each drawer in turn, running her hands blindly through her sister’s other belongings while barely daring to look at them: socks and underwear and bras, pajamas and slips and T-shirts and pedal pushers, wool sweaters, an old button-down shirt of their father’s that she must have begun wearing after she’d gotten back from Mexico. The material and the slight weight of each worn item seemed to hold within it some essence or magic transferred there by its wearer. They were just clothes, Jory tried to tell herself, just random pieces of fabric that could have belonged to anyone. But it was the belonging that was the thing. The possessing, the owning, the wearing. Each of these items surely still had cells of her sister clinging to them. Little bits of her. Jory had the sudden wish to climb inside the drawer and live there, to sleep and rest there as if in a cottony cocoon, swaddled in the same clothes her sister had worn next to her very own body. With a feeling of bold inevitability, Jory pulled a faded green T-shirt out of the middle drawer and looked at it. Only Visiting This Planet, the shirt read in round, bubbly script. She held the shirt up to her face and breathed in as deeply as she could. She let its slightly salty, slightly detergent-scented folds fall across her face and neck and she held the shirt there across her eyes and nose and mouth, rocking herself back and forth on her knees. She put her hands deep inside the shirt and pulled its neckline over her head, tugging it down and over her own. In the back of the bottom drawer was an old pair of blue bedroom slippers that Jory found herself hugging unaccountably to her chest. She had still found nothing revealing here, no notes or photos, no clues about anything, no new hints about what had happened that might tell her how to feel or what to think. There were only the lived-in and left-behind belongings of her sister, her strange, wonderful, hideously frustrating sister who would never write in her notepad or wear her pajamas or fight with Jory or strive for holiness or hide her truest thoughts from her family ever, ever again.

  Jory held the slippers tightly to her T-shirt-covered chest and moved over to the bed and pulled back the bedspread and crawled beneath. The sheets smelled of nothing but laundry detergent, as did the pillow. She turned the pillow over and breathed in deeply. It, too, smelled only of Tide. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or heartbroken, or if it was even possible to be both. It wasn’t dark outside—there was still some softly warm light slanting through the window blinds, but Jory put her hands inside each of the slippers as if they were mittens and held them up next to her face and lay there listening to the sounds of the house: the soft ticking of the clock on the dresser and the even quieter sound of the few cars shushing by on the street outside. There was no carnival music to be heard, not a single bewitching, tinkling note. Jory guessed that she would probably never hear that peculiarly magical tune again. She could feel the babylike softness of one of the terry cloth slippers against her cheek as she drifted toward sleep, and for a second she even thought she could smell a hint of something very Grace-like in the room, something ineffable but close, mysterious, and utterly singular. The scent of her older sister, who would live on only inside the people who had loved and perhaps harmed her the very most.

  The next morning Jory took a scalding hot shower that felt wonderful as it beat on the back of her neck. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she had done this, showered and used lotion all over her skin. She examined herself in the steamy mirror. Her breasts were actually slightly bigger now, although this realization didn’t quite thrill her in the way that she had expected it to. Nothing was the way she had expected it to be.

  Jory pulled her pants back on and then carefully eased Grace’s faded green T-shirt on. She brushed her wet hair until the tangles were completely gone.

  Her father was at the dining room table. The Arco Arcade was spread out in front of him, but he didn’t seem to be reading any of it. Jory sat down across from him and for an extended moment she examined him.

  His hair was slightly messy and a mechanical pe
ncil was clipped haphazardly to his pants belt loop. The shoestrings in his long, worn oxfords were two quite different shades of brown. He was much sloppier than he used to be, more wrinkled and shopworn and quite a bit skinnier, and sometimes he didn’t seem to know that she was talking to him, but he was her father. He would never be anything other than that. Even if he had done the worst possible things for dubious reasons, even if he had ended up destroying the very things he was trying to protect, he had loved her and cared for her and excused her flaws and faults since the moment she was born. And he continued to watch over her with the kind of firm devotion any real god should show, but rarely does. In return, she gave him this: immunity from accusation and a firm pedestal on which to stand, above and immortal. Was that too much to ask? But it didn’t really matter, this question or its answer, because she knew that as much as she might want to, much as she might try to, she would never really be able to see him any differently—or feel any differently about him, either—no matter what.

  Their new shoes were blue with bright orange stripes and her father looked dubious even as he tied them snuggly around his feet. They had each gotten a pair of the exact same type, her father’s in size 11 and hers in size 7.5. He glanced down at his shoes again, as if they were a foreign appendage he wasn’t quite sure about. “Can we wait for the sun to go down a bit more? I only really like to do this once it gets good and dark.” Her father sat gingerly down in the broken lawn chair and Jory sat down in the grass next to him. The ground felt cool and solidly lumpy beneath her.

  For a while neither of them said anything. They just sat and gazed ahead of them at the sky. The evening air was soft and quiet, no lawn mowers or crickets or carnival music. There was the faint sound of a screen door opening and then slamming shut somewhere down the block.

  “When I try to think about space going on forever,” Jory said, clearing her throat, “I can’t really even picture it in my head. I can’t really believe it. I always imagine that there’s an edge or a stopping point somewhere.”