“Oh, Margaret. I really am glad to see you.” Luanne walked over and wrapped her arms around Margo, hugged her long and hard. Margo remembered the way her ma had wrapped the jungle towel around her on the dock, but in her mother’s embrace, Margo now stiffened. She searched for the smell of cocoa butter beneath the scent of her mother’s herbal perfume. When Luanne pulled away, tears were streaming down her cheeks. “I didn’t want to leave you, Margaret Louise. Sit down with me.”
Margo followed her mother to the couch, took off her jacket, and folded it over her knees.
“I haven’t cried in a while,” Luanne said, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. “Roger’s away until Friday. He’s working in New Jersey, just coming home on the weekends. That means I can run around as much as I like, so long as I keep a low profile.”
“You have a nice Christmas tree,” Margo said. She wondered if Smoke would like a tree in his house.
“It’s a fake one. Remember how your daddy always cut a tree that was too big for the living room so it was bent over? What did you used to put on the top of it, that cross of sticks wrapped with yarn?”
“A God’s eye,” Margo said. Joanna had told her that a homemade God’s eye allowed God to watch over the family. Luanne’s tree had a silver-and-glass star on the top with a light inside. Margo leaned back on the couch and was amazed at how soft it was, how the cushions embraced and supported her. She wanted to pet the velvety fabric like a dog’s fur. A tear dripped from her cheek onto the fabric of the couch before she even realized she was crying. She wiped her face. Luanne pushed a box of tissues toward her.
“What do you think of the lake?” Luanne asked.
“It’s big,” Margo said. “It’s nice.”
“I knew you’d love it. Can you believe this house?” Luanne gestured around the big room, at the tall windows, white-painted walls hung with black-and-white photographs of what at first appeared to be beach landscapes, but were actually close-ups of women’s bodies. The big fireplace with the marble mantel was swept clean, as though it had never contained a fire, and sitting on the mantel were a few abstract sculptures in sandy colors. The thick off-white carpeting had not a stain on it. Luanne nodded toward the lake. “See how beautiful the view is? Roger fusses about goose poop on the lawn, but it doesn’t bother me. He runs out and chases them away when they show up.”
“I’m pregnant,” Margo blurted out. That word felt ugly and dishonest in her mouth.
“What? No. Oh, no. Sweetie. How far along are you?”
“Three months.”
“You’re not even showing. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. I know I didn’t take care of you when I should have, but I will now. Are you feeling sick in the mornings?”
“Not anymore.”
“Whose is it?” Luanne asked. “Is the guy in the picture?”
“He’s gone.”
“I guess we women have to take care of ourselves.” Luanne studied Margo beside her. “God, you’re beautiful, Margaret. I was so depressed back in Murrayville, I don’t think I even looked at you the last few years I was there.”
“Joanna always said being beautiful was a curse.”
“She would say that,” Luanne said. “Being beautiful should be fun.”
“I’m hungry, Ma,” Margo said.
“Of course you’re hungry. You’re eighteen. And you’re pregnant. I was pregnant when I was eighteen.” Luanne stood and Margo followed her into the kitchen.
“I haven’t eaten yet today.”
“Roger eats at work, and I try not to keep much food in the house when he’s gone, so I’m not tempted by it. Here’s something.” She pulled a metal can of cheese spread out of the refrigerator and put out some crackers. When Margo picked up the can and looked at it, Luanne took it from her, removed the lid, and sprayed orange cheese onto one of the crackers. Margo carried the plate and the can into the living room, and they sat on the luxurious couch. Margo ate one cheese cracker after another, enjoying the surging water sound of the spray. She offered the plate to her ma. Luanne shook her head.
“I talked to Aunt Joanna a few months ago,” Margo said. “She thought maybe I could stay with her at the house and finish school.”
“Poor Joanna. What a life she’s got. Do you want to finish school?”
Margo shook her head.
“I didn’t, either. You know I was only seventeen when I married your father.”
“Joanna had another baby. Another boy.”
“Christ. She’s got to be forty. How’d Cal talk her into that? Six kids. Six boys.” She laughed.
Margo startled at the sound of the name Cal spoken so casually. Brian had said it with such venom, Joanna with such reverence. This way of saying his name made more sense with the weakened version of Cal she had seen. “It’s a Down’s baby,” Margo said.
“Down’s baby?”
“They had to get rid of all the dogs, even Moe, because they made the baby cry. Billy said the baby’s a retard.”
“Oh, Down’s syndrome. Like a Mongoloid. Joanna has her work cut out for her. Good thing she’s such a hard worker.”
“If I stayed, I could have helped with the baby.”
“Good thing you got out of there. She’d have worked you to death, sweetie.”
“I don’t mind working hard.”
“What about fun? What about pleasure? I think those things are the purpose of life. Women like Joanna find that view distasteful.”
Margo shrugged.
“But I do work hard, in a way. Nowadays I have to work hard to look young. Even a fifty-year-old man like Roger, who can’t tolerate children, expects me to look like a teenager.” Luanne laughed. She took hold of Margo’s hand and held it for a moment. “I forgot how quiet and serious you are. You look so pretty that people probably don’t mind you don’t have anything to say.”
Margo watched gulls skim the water outside and land near shore. She wondered if they could stay on the lake all winter.
Annie Oakley’s mother had not wanted her to come home at first; she had wanted to send her daughter back to the wolves. Annie won her way into her mother’s home through the hard work of hunting and trapping, by being able to support the whole family, including her mother’s new husband. There was no wood to chop here, though, no food to kill and gut, nothing obviously in need of repair. Margo was missing the weight of her gun, and had to lift the tension out of her shoulders. She said, “I can help you do anything you need done around here.”
“I just can’t believe you’re here. Right here with me. Like a ghost. Like somebody from a past life.” The television was on. It had been on when Margo entered, and it seemed to grow louder as the minutes passed. “You can stay here . . .” Luanne said. “I guess until about six o’clock Friday when Roger gets home. I’ll make you an appointment with the doctor.”
Margo hadn’t realized she was holding her breath. “I went to the clinic today, but I left.”
“Why’d you leave?”
Margo shrugged.
“So tell me. Where are you living now?” Luanne asked. “Your letter said you were only twenty-some miles away.”
“On the river.” Margo gathered herself. “I trap muskrats like Grandpa taught me, and I sell their skins. And I fish. And there’s this big black dog I love named Nightmare. He looks like the Murrays’ dog Moe.”
“You skin animals?” Luanne slowly asked and then laughed. “Your dad asked me to cook him a rabbit once. This was when you were little. So I boiled it with the hair on and the guts inside. I knew I was supposed to skin it and gut it for him, but I figured if I cooked it whole, he’d never ask me to do it again. I smiled when I served it to him.” Luanne left the room and returned with two cups of black coffee.
Margo tried to take a sip, but it was too hot. “Dad always said you couldn’t boil water.”
When her mother sat down again, she asked, “Okay, you live on the river. What else?”
“This guy, Fishbone, taught me to skin a mus
krat in two minutes.” She held up two fingers and repeated with emphasis, “Two minutes. It was incredible.”
“It’s almost Christmas,” Luanne said. “I want to buy you a present. What would you like?”
Margo shrugged.
“Seriously. You must need something.”
“Socks,” she said. “Ammo.”
“Maybe some nice underwear. That makes anybody feel better.” Luanne’s smile was the one in all those photos. Only it no longer looked fake—it was her real smile. Luanne sipped from her coffee. “Too bad it’s not summer. You could swim in the pool. Come look at it with me.”
Margo pulled herself up and followed her mother to a side window. Luanne pointed out a big green rectangle between this house and the next. A few stray leaves littered the tarp, but there was no snow on it. “We’re planning to build an enclosure so we can swim year-round.
“Don’t you swim in the lake?”
“Never.”
“Do you still lie in the sun?”
“God, no. I wish I hadn’t done it all those years. They’re saying now it damages the skin. You should be careful, too, wear a hat, if you want to keep from getting wrinkled. You think you’re safe in the winter, but the sun reflects off the snow, and it’s even worse. This has been a hard lesson for me to learn.” Luanne reached out and pushed Margo’s hair behind her ear.
Margo turned away. As soon as it didn’t seem rude, she shook her hair loose.
“How’s Cal?” Luanne asked.
Margo shrugged. She sneezed. She didn’t know what triggered it, her mother’s perfume or all that sunlight reflecting off the snow and pouring through the windows. From where she was standing, she could see the house to the north, a white one-story structure with a steeply pitched reddish roof. The big lake was built up as far as she could see, one house next to another. Many of the yards had pontoon boats or speedboats too big for the river up on sawhorses in their yards, covered with tarps.
“Why don’t you take a shower, and you can rest in the guest room if you like? I’ll make a phone call before the clinic closes.” Luanne touched Margo’s cheek again. It reminded her of the way Brian had touched her that first morning, as though she were made of clay that could be shaped. “You don’t use anything, do you? No mascara even?”
Margo had showered just the day before, but she wanted to use her mother’s bathroom. It had two sinks and smelled like strawberries. The pink towels were thick and fluffy. The hot water never ran out, though Margo stayed in the shower for half an hour. As she combed her wet hair, she could hear the television from the other room, and the droning made her feel dopey. She wrapped herself in the towel and moved into the guest room. She lay on the bed, on top of the covers. Maybe soft towels were something she might want on her boat. She’d have considered stealing one if she’d had her backpack with her.
When she next woke up, the sky through the window was dark. She sat up and felt startled to be naked on a strange bed. She remembered where she was, at her mother’s house, and convinced herself it was not a dream. The television still played in the next room. Her own clothes were not on the chair where she had left them, but had been replaced by a pair of women’s jeans and a white button-up shirt like the one her mother had been wearing. Her army knife and her wallet were on the dresser. A green parka was hanging on the back of the door.
“It’s sleeping beauty,” Luanne said when she entered the kitchen. “You slept almost four hours.”
“I didn’t mean to sleep so long.” Margo didn’t usually even sleep four hours at night without at least waking up to feed the fire.
“You’re talking to a woman who used to sleep all day. Do you remember that? That was a sign of depression, my doctor says. Look, I ordered us a pizza. I had them load it with everything. I remember that’s how you liked it.”
Margo smiled as Luanne lifted the lid.
“You look good in my clothes,” Luanne said when they were sitting at the kitchen table, built into the corner, four times the size of the table on the Glutton.
“Where’s my other clothes?” Margo said.
“I threw them in the washer and dryer, but maybe I should burn that jacket. Looks like something one of those Slocums would have worn. Oh, remember the Slocums?”
“That’s Daddy’s old jacket.”
“Well, it looks like it hasn’t been washed since . . . in a while, anyhow. We’ll see how it comes out of the dryer. I put another jacket in the guest room for you, a warm parka. You can have it if you like it. It makes me look dumpy. Do you want some wine?”
Margo shook her head.
“I don’t usually drink during the week, but this day is turning out to be quite a surprise.” Her mother took a sip of white wine. “Tell me something else about Murrayville. Anything.”
Margo swallowed and offered, “A lady with a mean dog lives in our old house. She smokes a pipe. And Junior went to Alaska.”
“I’m glad to hear somebody else got out of there.”
Margo hated how far away Junior was. She swept that thought away and decided this was the best pizza she had ever tasted. She devoured the piece before her and took another.
“Did Cal . . . ?” At first Margo wasn’t even sure what she wanted to ask. “Did Cal force you, Ma?” She watched Luanne’s face. “Is that why you left home?”
“Cal? Force me?” She laughed and put her hand over her mouth. Her fingernails were painted the same pearly color as the clinic nurse’s lipstick. “You couldn’t possibly have known. You were so young. Cal and I were . . . well . . .”
“What?”
“Cal and I were something. An item. Cal was the great love of my life back then, not your father, bless his heart. I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”
“You. Were with Cal? On purpose?”
“On purpose? I suppose you could put it that way.”
“Did Daddy know?” This kitchen was bigger than Joanna’s kitchen. The surfaces were not cluttered with containers, cutting boards, or piles of dishcloths. Joanna had a whole row of cookbooks under her cupboards, but Margo saw none here.
“He knew after a while. And so did Joanna. She promised she’d make my life hell if I didn’t leave. That woman is tougher than you think. Cal had said he would take me away from Murrayville, go out to California with me, but I realized he was never going to leave all that—his wife, his kids, his company. He had too much to lose. We had a lot of fun, me and Cal, but he would have thrown me under a truck to preserve his life as it was.”
“Daddy really hated Cal,” Margo said.
“Leaving you was the hardest thing I ever did, Margaret, but I had to go. I would have died otherwise or drunk myself to death. I never belonged there. The river stink drove me crazy. On the day I left, I found a blue racer snake curled around my damned clothesline. And the mildew. Every leather belt turned green, every leather shoe. It never bothered you or your father or the damned Murrays. I stayed as long as I could. You’ve got to give me credit for staying as long as I did. I waited until you stopped growing.”
Margo nodded so Luanne would keep talking, but the question must have shown on her face.
“Remember when you were fourteen and we measured you on that tree?”
“You left because I stopped growing taller?”
Luanne got up from the table and carried her glass and wine bottle into the living room. Margo followed, though she could have easily eaten more pizza.
“You didn’t need me, anyway, Margaret. I didn’t know anything about raising a kid when you came along. That’s why I let you do whatever you wanted. I figured you knew better than I did what a kid needed.”
“I didn’t mind if you didn’t know.”
“Those Murray women minded plenty. They said I would raise a wildcat or wolf cub. But look at you! You’re perfect.”
“A wolf cub? They said that?”
“Oh, I don’t know what they said. I don’t care about those people. I was crazy about Cal, though,” Luann
e said and laughed. “But don’t worry, you are your daddy’s child. No doubt about that.”
“You said in that note you left that you wanted to find yourself,” Margo said.
“Well, I figured out soon enough that myself wasn’t who I was looking for. I was looking for somebody else, somebody who would take care of me.”
Margo looked behind her, out the living room window, at the lights giving shape to the darkness on the shore.
“Margaret, honey, look at me. You’re not old enough to understand why I left, but sometimes a woman has to start over, make a whole new life to try to find happiness. I know it’s selfish.”
“I worried that you forgot me when you went away.”
“Oh, Margaret, a mama doesn’t forget her child. You have to know that. It’s just that when I lived with your father, I dreamed of a house like this. Think how all three of us shared that one tiny bathroom with no tub, just a shower. Now I’ve got three bathrooms, four if you count the little one in Roger’s photo studio.”
“Daddy quit drinking,” Margo said. “Before he died, I mean.”
“I wish you could understand how I had to start over. A clean slate. Roger’s a good guy, when so many of them are pigs.” She poured another inch of wine into her glass. “How could you know? You’re so young.”
Margo shook her head. “I’m not that young, Ma.”
“It was dumb, what I did, to lie to Roger from the start,” she said. “Do you think I should tell him the truth? See what he does? Take a chance on losing all this?”
“No, that’s okay.”
“God, I just wanted to have some fun. I didn’t mean to get separated from you this way. But things snowballed.”
“You did sleep a lot in Murrayville.”
“I was a depressed drunk. You didn’t seem to notice, but everybody else did.”
“I just wanted to see you,” Margo said.
“You have every right to hate me for what I put you through, Margaret. Do you hate me?”
“No.” Margo tried to remember Smoke’s words. “You should live how you want.”
Once Upon a River Page 26
