Ash Falls

by Warren Read

  She came through the glass doors and made her way straight toward Bobbie, a mustard yellow cardigan falling over pressed, cream slacks that snapped as she walked. She didn’t say anything; she simply slid right into the seat opposite and hoisted a bulky white purse onto her own lap.

  Howdy came from behind the counter to their table. She stood to one side, her rear end directed at Bobbie, the heel of her hand resting on the Formica.

  She said, “Who’s hungry?”

  “Not me,” Lyla said. “I’ll have some tea. Earl Grey if you have it.”

  “So don’t nobody want food.”

  Lyla began to rifle through her purse, crowding the booth with the jarring noise of shrinking cellophane. This was classic Lyla, the kind of passive-aggressive behavior that Hank used to complain about so much.

  Bobbie said, “I don’t think we’ll be eating.”

  “Well if you change your mind.” The waitress turned and left, fanning herself with her order pad as she went.

  Lyla took out a tissue and dabbed at her nose. She blinked behind her glasses, the movement taking up the entire lens.

  “Well,” she said. “Here I am.” She pulled two napkins from the chrome dispenser and scrubbed at the space in front of her. “I can’t wait to hear what this is all about.”

  Bobbie took a drink of coffee and went over the script in her mind, the conversation she had rehearsed all the way out. “Thanks for coming out here,” she said carefully. “I know it’s a long drive.”

  Howdy appeared with a thick coffee mug and a small pewter kettle and left it without a single word on the table between the women. Lyla pinched the string from the rim and poured the hot water, and gave the bag four or five rough bounces.

  “What’s so top secret that you couldn’t tell me over the phone?” She blew over the rim of her cup and sucked in a sip. Pink lipstick bled from her puckered lips into her skin. “If all this is about that husband of yours, don’t bother. Hank told me everything.”

  Bobbie leaned back in the booth and put her hand on her forehead. She felt feverish, nauseous. The image of Hank and Lyla gossiping over Ernie flared in front of her. “Lyla, come on,” she said. She looked out at the tumble of gray clouds. The tree shadows that had earlier lain over the parking lot were now vanished into the darkening ground. Her leg was really starting to throb.

  “It’s about Marcelle.”

  “Marcelle.” Lyla stiffened. “What about her?”

  Bobbie sighed. “Where to start?”

  “Is this about the black eye? We’re well aware of it.”

  “And it doesn’t concern you?”

  “Eugene’s got a temper. She knew that going in.”

  “It doesn’t concern you, then.”

  “Of course it concerns me! What kind of a person do you think I am?” Lyla put a hand to her mouth and looked over her shoulder, back at the bar. The waitress still leaned over the counter, resting on her elbows. One of the men was talking with some energy, his knuckly hands opening and closing in front of him.

  “They’re still kids,” Lyla said in a hard whisper. “It’ll work itself out with time; they need to grow up is all. If there was anything I could do to make that happen any faster, believe me I would.”

  “Have you even said anything to Eugene about it? You or Jonas?”

  Lyla looked at Bobbie as if she had suggested she call the pope himself. “If you think either Jonas or I can fix Eugene just by talking to him, then you don’t know anything about anything. Believe me. If that girl had half a brain in her head she wouldn’t even be in this spot. Those two made the decision to get married, in spite of anything I or the girl’s mother had to say about it. So I say, let them stand in their own mess.”

  Bobbie tipped her cup and swirled the shallow black pool around the edges. This was turning into way more work than she’d imagined, and she hadn’t even gotten to the heart of the conversation. She had begun to see something of the world that existed inside that house, the denial and excuses, and placating. It seemed that Eugene was less of a child and more of a creation, though she had always suspected as much. She also had discovered a newfound sympathy for Hank. It was no wonder that he couldn’t say Lyla’s name without simultaneously rolling his eyes or shaking his head.

  She looked up at Lyla, who was now picking change from her coin purse and counting silently. Bobbie took hold of the coffee mug and ran her finger over the handle.

  “She’s pregnant.” There. It was out.

  Lyla snapped the coin purse shut and held it to her chest. Her teeth showed between taut lips, and her eyes seemed look not at Bobbie but through her, to somewhere else, maybe to her own basement where she envisioned what lay ahead. Hopefully she saw what Bobbie saw, a miserable Eugene and Marcelle, and a big, fat, squalling baby sandwiched between the two of them.

  “So that’s it,” Lyla said. “Well, I guess it was only a matter of time, wasn’t it?”

  “And, she doesn’t want it.”

  Lyla shook her head and laughed softly. “What then? She’ll adopt it out. Give it up for some stranger to raise, I suppose.”

  Bobbie leaned forward in her seat. “She doesn’t want the pregnancy.”

  Lyla brought the mug to her lips. Her chin quivered, and she finally set the tea in front of her without taking a drink. “She told you that? And what about Eugene? Does he get a say in any of this?”

  Bobbie slid the coffee cup to the far edge of the table, next to the window. “All she wants, Lyla, is to start over.” It wasn’t until she said it aloud that she felt the avalanche of possibility that those words carried with them. Start over. How many times had she dreamed of climbing back in time, finding the decision that, if done over again, would fix it all? Things could have been so different for her. For everyone.

  Lyla reached up and took hold of her necklace and pinched the gold strand between her fingertips. She wound the chain around her finger as she stared out the window.

  “He doesn’t even know, does he?”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  She took off her glasses and drew a tissue from her purse, and set to work on the lenses. “I don’t know why you had to drag me out here and humiliate me in the open,” she said. “You could have done this over the phone.”

  “Marcelle’s scared half to death, and she needs you.”

  “Right. So she can just, start over. Pull that handle and reset everything. And won’t that be convenient for her?” She glared at Bobbie with a hatred so real, so visceral, that Bobbie thought she might reach out and take hold of her right there in the booth. “People don’t always get to just do whatever comes into their pretty little heads,” she said. “When you flout the boundaries that God puts before you, there are consequences. You and Hank ought to know a thing or two about that.”

  And there it was, finally. “This isn’t about Hank and me, Lyla.”

  “Oh, it isn’t?” Lyla snapped. “Do you think we’d be sitting here if it wasn’t for your little thing? You had a husband. Lord knows what life Eugene would have had in front of him if it hadn’t been for that night. Don’t sit there and tell me it’s not about you and Hank.”

  Bobbie watched as Lyla ran her thumb around the rim of the cup, wiping the pink smudge on her napkin.

  “I know that game plenty well,” Bobbie said. “What if. What if those kids hadn’t been drinking beer right there in the open; what if someone had actually taken it away and made them leave? Or better yet, what if there had never been soap dumped all over that floor? I wouldn’t be sitting here with my leg feeling like it was ready to fall off, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have had crutches with me that night, now would I?”

  “You could have never come to Ash Falls.”

  “The same goes for you, Lyla.” Bobbie slid forward in her seat and folded her hands on the table. “We could do this all day, name every choice made from this moment all the way back to the Mayflower. It doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done. What we have is right now pl
us whatever comes after.”

  Lyla put her hands over her face and slumped in her seat.

  “This is one of those choices that can set the path for the rest of their lives,” Bobbie said. “There’s no reason it has to trap them, and you know it. In your heart, you have to know that.”

  “Why are you telling me all of this?” Lyla dropped her hands to the table. “That girl can and will do whatever she wants. She can walk out that door tomorrow and do whatever she wants to that baby.”

  Bobbie leaned back in the booth. The conversation was sliding quickly, and she hadn’t even gotten to the point at which Lyla would either agree with everything or clear the entire table with her arm and storm out.

  “Marcelle’s a minor. Her mother won’t be bothered with her, so like it or not, you’re all she’s got.”

  “It seems like she’s got you. Why don’t you take her there and get it done?”

  “Marcelle has your last name, now,” she said. “If you go with her, you can say you’re her mother. Nobody has to know any different.”

  Lyla sat bolt upright, as if she had discovered some grand secret. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Try for a minute to forget that it’s me sitting here,” Bobbie said. “Pretend you never met me in your life and just consider what I’m asking you to do. I can think of a dozen different outcomes if you shut this out. And there aren’t many good ones there.”

  They sat for awhile, Bobbie busying herself, thumbing through the sugar packets, counting the famous landmarks on the wrappers. Lyla refilled her cup with water and let the teabag seep, but didn’t drink from it. Outside, the rain began to pelt the window. It grew more rapid and denser, fat drops running in rivulets down the glass and drumming on the hood of her car, round drops bouncing off the asphalt and filling up the low spots. Lyla gathered her purse onto her lap and slid to the edge of her seat.

  “I’m going,” she said.

  Bobbie reached out a hand. “Will you at least think about it?”

  Lyla pulled back. She scooped up her purse and her scarf. “Good lord,” she said. “How in the world could I not think about it?”

  Marcelle and Lyla

  “Richland, Washington. For Vic Foster. No ma’am. V-I-C.”

  Marcelle put the lid back on the boiling pot and leaned against the sink, the coiled telephone cord circling the expanse of her waist. She reached up and penciled a drawing of a star into the window sweat with her finger.

  “It’s my dad,” she told the woman on the phone. She drew a long, arching tail from the star and a sharp crescent moon in the corner. “What about Victor? Is there a Victor?”

  “There’s no Vic or Victor Foster in Richland or anyplace in the vicinity.”

  Marcelle thanked the operator while turning a circle to free herself of the cord. She put the phone back on the wall receiver and returned to the window. She had added several more stars and traced the entire perimeter with a long, snaking curl when Lyla came in through the back door.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said. “To the window. It gums up the glass.”

  “I’ll clean it.” She grabbed the hand towel from the dish rack and swabbed the window. Lyla came over and took the rag from Marcelle.

  “Just never mind,” she said. She lifted the lid from the pasta, turned down the heat and set it back off the rim. Marcelle moved to the kitchen table and sat down in the chair against the wall. She took the weekly grocery flyer and began to thumb through it, looking at the cereals and produce ads, dog-earing the corners as if she might come back to it.

  Lyla filled a glass from the faucet and drank the entire thing down without a breath; then she folded the dish towel over the edge of the counter. She smoothed her hand on the terrycloth and straightened the fringe.

  “I talked to that nurse this morning,” she said, not looking at Marcelle. “But I guess you know that.”

  Marcelle nodded.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ask her to call me?”

  “No,” she lied. “She said she wanted to talk to you.”

  “I’d have rather not spent my morning having tea with that woman. To have her be the one to tell me about this.”

  Marcelle felt a bubble roil somewhere under her stomach and she shifted in her seat to press herself against the chair. More than anything, she wanted to leave the kitchen, go to the bathroom or go outside. Anyplace that Mrs. Henry was not.

  Lyla took her glasses off and set them on the counter. She looked up sharply, and when she did this the smallness of her eyes was jarring to Marcelle. She knew she had to have seen Mrs. Henry without glasses before this. But at that moment, it felt to her like a discovery of sorts. That Eugene’s mother’s eyes were akin to little blue thumbprints on her head.

  “So you’re dead set on this?” Lyla said. She pushed her lips out. She waited and tilted her head to one said. “You’ve thought this through carefully? This is the path you really want for yourself?”

  Marcelle nodded. Her head felt like it weighed a hundred pounds on her shoulders.

  Lyla came over and sat down across from her. Her eyes were red, as if she had been crying. “You silly girl. Think you know everything but you don’t. You don’t know a darned thing about what the Lord intends for you. None of us does.”

  The skin on Marcelle’s hands was so white, with blue veins running like a road map to her knuckles. “I don’t believe he intends that me and Eugene stay married,” she said, not looking up at Mrs. Henry. “I don’t believe that. I think he knows it’s a mistake.”

  “So He made a mistake when He blessed your union?”

  “I think me and Eugene made a mistake when we asked the preacher to bless it. Yeah.”

  Lyla groaned and worked her fingers into her temples. “Oh Marcelle. And what about Eugene? You know he ought to be a part of this decision.”

  “No,” Marcelle said, shaking her head firmly. “If he finds out then he gets to choose, not me.”

  Lyla’s eyelids fluttered. She got up from the table and hurried to the sink, and took the dishrag and put it to her eyes. She kept herself facing the window, staring into the glass that by now had fogged over again, bringing up Marcelle’s galaxy once more.

  Somewhere in the midst of Mrs. Henry’s sniffles and trembling shoulders, Marcelle burst into tears. It had come surprisingly hard, from nowhere, and her own shoulders bucked and rolled as she sobbed. She scrubbed at her face with her shirtsleeve, gasping and sucking at the air, and snorting all the sudden looseness back up into her head.

  Lyla dropped her head back and put a hand to her face. “Oh criminy,” she said. She reached over and tore a sheet from the paper towel spool and rushed over. “Don’t do this,” she said, thrusting the square at her. Marcelle took it, and Lyla stood back from the table, her arms over her chest, inkblot eyes bearing down pitifully.

  “Look at you,” she said. “Good lord, you’re nowhere near ready for any of this.”

  “I wish I was.” She spoke between forced breaths. “I wish I could be like you. And Mister Henry. Me and Eugene. We wouldn’t fight over anything. Ever again.”

  “Wishing is all fine and good, but it doesn’t get the bills paid or keep the house clean. You need to learn, Marcelle, that life is hard. It’s hard work, every minute of every day, no breaks.” She walked over and turned off the stove. “Your noodles are done.”

  She wasn’t hungry anymore. In fact, as she sat there wiping the tears and snot from her face, she had a hard time believing she’d ever been hungry.

  Lyla made a noise in her throat, a kind of low growl, and she went to the lower cupboard where she took out a colander and brought it to the sink. She grabbed hold of the dishrag again and used it to take hold of the pot handles. When she tipped the contents into the sink, her entire face vanished in a plume of steam.

  “How old were you when Eugene was born?” Marcelle asked, finding her breath again.

  “I was older
than you, that’s for sure,” Lyla said. She turned the cold faucet and let the water run over the pasta. “I’d been married longer than a few months, too.”

  “To Mister Henry?”

  “Yes to Mister Henry.” Lyla rolled her eyes and kneaded her fingers through the cooling macaroni.

  “Was it an accident? Eugene, I mean.”

  Lyla swung her head to her shoulder, giving a wide-eyed look to Marcelle. “No, it wasn’t an accident,” she said. She turned her attention back to the sink. “It was unexpected. But not an accident.”

  “Still. You wanted him.”

  “I wanted a baby.”

  “Did Mister Henry?”

  Lyla went to the cupboard and brought down a glass bowl with a red, plastic lid. She took the colander and dumped the noodles into the container, sealed the lid, then put the whole thing into the refrigerator. Snatching the dishtowel from the countertop, she walked to the window and scrubbed at the foggy glass.

  “I told you that putting your fingers all over this would gum it up. I’ll be looking at that picture of yours all week, now.”

  Marcelle reached to the center of the table and took the salt shaker and poured some crystals into her palm. She licked her finger and pressed it to the salt. When she put it to her tongue, she ran her eyes over the whole kitchen, over the faded flower-papered walls and the mismatched, out-of-style appliances. She studied the glossy painted cabinets that gleamed in icy blocks on the walls, and the ruffled yellow drapes that twitched as Lyla brushed against them with her towel.

  “Sometimes I think I might want a baby. Someday,” Marcelle said. “But then I think, how can I be a mother when I don’t even know how be a wife?”

  Lyla tossed the towel into the sink and leaned against the counter. “Oh Marcelle, stop being such a martyr,” she said. She had put her glasses back on, and she looked at Marcelle with the stare of an old owl. “And let’s both stop pretending that life with Eugene is anything but exhausting, all right?”