Meteors in August

by Melanie Rae Thon

  Later the screen door whined, and I knew Mother had gone out on the porch. I pictured her folding her arms, just waiting for Father to turn around and snarl, “What is it?”

  Their two voices rumbled along at first, slow and soft, as if they tried their best to be polite and have a real discussion, giving each other time to think and time to speak. But before long their words jumped on top of one another. Daddy swung so hard in the porch seat that it groaned, and I thought it might fly clean off its hinges. The squabble didn’t last long. Father won the quarrel by marching down the road and calling back to Mother, “You drive me to drink, woman.”

  She sat for less than a minute before she came inside. I heard her on the stairs. I figured she had come to her senses and realized what a troublemaker I was, giving her one more thing to fight about with Daddy. I suspected she was on her way to give me the scolding she wouldn’t let my father give me earlier.

  She tapped at the door and said, “Lizzie, Lizzie honey, are you awake?”

  I told her I was. Only the devil could sleep after doing what I’d done that afternoon. I was no better than Zachary Holler. I was impatient and much too hungry. I remembered how I felt as I shoved Gwen against the tree in the gully, strong and mean, thinking only of what I wanted. I felt my own brutal kiss and tasted blood where my teeth cut the inside of my lip.

  “May I come in?” I got nervous when my mother was that polite. “Why are you sitting up here in the dark, baby? Come down and sit on the porch with me. Your father’s gone.”

  I didn’t want Mother’s company, especially if she was going to be so sweet with me when all the time I knew Daddy was right. Zack Holler never would have given me a second look if my lips weren’t orange and my skirt wasn’t tight. I would have been invisible, the same Lizzie Macon he’d always known, and nothing would have happened in the tree house.

  “I’ve got something to tell you, Liz.” The way she said it gave me no choice, so I followed her downstairs to the porch.

  She didn’t start talking right away. She was thinking so hard that she didn’t see how I watched her as we rocked together in the swing. Most times I kept myself from looking at her this way. Tonight I noticed her fingers were stiff, and she rubbed her knuckles one by one. I thought of Grandmother’s hands, crippled by arthritis, her joints so swollen she couldn’t remove the ring of the man who had deserted her. I wondered how long it would take before my own mother’s hands grew twisted, too weak to hold a pot of soup. I saw her by the stove, saw the handle slip from her grasp.

  I wanted to swear no boy would ever steal me away. I would be there to mop the soup off the floor, to chop the vegetables and start another pot. I wanted her to put her head on my lap so I could stroke her hair and face and tell her I’d never be a problem to her again. But I did nothing; it wasn’t our way, not since Nina left, not since Nina stuffed all her easy love in a canvas bag and vanished in the dust on the road.

  Mom patted my knee with her thin hand. “Your father loves you, Lizzie. I hope you believe that. He’s rough with you, I know, but he’s afraid. He doesn’t want you to end up like Nina.

  “He loved that girl too much. Sometimes I think he loved her more than he loves me. Men are strange that way. A wife has flaws and no one knows them better than her husband—but a daughter can be anything he wants to see. She looked like an angel, and that’s all your daddy saw. He couldn’t bear it when he found out. He couldn’t forgive her. He still can’t. That’s the evil that can come of love.”

  I saw Nina twirling down the stairs in her pink dress with the crinoline slip that made it float around her legs. She was fourteen, like me. Nina didn’t have to tempt boys by painting herself like a bird. She was temptation itself. Everyone saw it, everyone but my father. “My baby,” he said, his voice a prayer, “my beautiful girl.”

  “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?” Mom said. “Your father wants you to stay his little girl. He says nasty things he doesn’t mean. Promise me you won’t be too hard on him.”

  “I won’t,” I said. Just an hour before, she’d been railing at my father to go easy on me. Sometimes I thought she wanted me to love him in ways that she couldn’t. No wonder her soft cheeks were crossed with tiny lines. No wonder her long hair was streaked with gray.

  We moved from the swing to the steps to look at the night sky. Once in a while Mom pointed and said, “Look at that!” Or, “There’s another one.” But I never saw a shooting star. Maybe she was only pretending, or wishing. Maybe the stars in the blur of tears that swelled slowly in the corners of her eyes seemed to leave a trail in the night.

  We sat for an hour or more, until Daddy appeared, swaying down the poorly lit street, his hands in his pockets, the whistling man. Mom gripped my arm. “Don’t let him catch us,” she said. Even in his stupor he might sense we’d been talking about Nina.

  I climbed slowly to my room, our room, Nina’s and mine, the room where she had read to me night after night to help me fall asleep. I was restless even then, chased by dogs at the edge of my dreams. I thought of that last summer and how there were so many mornings when I’d wake to find her curled around me in my bed instead of sprawled across her own. She must have known she wouldn’t be around that long; she was trying to say good-bye. At night the shadows in the yard were alive, swarming with boys. But I was only nine and didn’t understand. I tossed in her arms, kicked the blankets from us both and let her soft kisses fall on me, thinking they would always be as plentiful and constant as the rain.

  That night I prayed to a god I barely knew, and I made a bargain. I didn’t want to be lost like Nina. We knew nothing of her life. I had no place to root her. In my mind, she drifted in a desert, parched at noon and frozen at midnight. I couldn’t stop thinking that what Zack and I had done in the tree house could make what happened to Nina happen to me. I saw the stain in the crotch of Zack’s jeans when he rolled away from me. I felt the pressure of his hipbones grinding into mine. Then I saw Daddy slapping Nina so hard I thought her jaw would snap and her teeth would clatter to the floor like the pieces of a broken teacup. I heard him call her those names, names I’d never heard before but understood at once; my father’s tone could not be mistaken. I crouched on the stairs. He grabbed her yellow hair, twisting it around his hand. He told her not to show her face in his house again, and she thought he meant it.

  I was no purer than my sister, no more virtuous than that loathsome cruel boy who could snap the neck of a cat. A grin could tempt me, muscled arms could hold me down, a boy’s tongue in my mouth could make my hands numb.

  That night I promised my new God that if He spared me, just this once, I would devote my life to His work. I’d never give Mother and Father cause for grief again. I would be good enough for two people: my sister and myself.

  14

  BY THE end of April I knew I’d been spared this time. I wasn’t going to end up like Nina, my stomach swelling so I couldn’t hide what I’d done. I figured a girl wasn’t going to get too many breaks in her life and that I’d better find a way to show God I was grateful. It wasn’t easy. Zack took no interest in me, so I had no opportunity to resist temptation.

  I kept my eyes on the ground when Father spoke to me. I wore baggy pants and long sweaters so that even I wouldn’t notice my body. I set the table before I was asked, scrubbed the kitchen floor on my hands and knees, and scoured the toilet once a week. When I saw Marlene Grosswilder at school, I forced myself to think one kind thought. “That’s a pretty dress,” I said to her one day. She peered at me through her thick glasses, suspecting some nasty intention, then hurried away without a word. I smiled to myself: virtue was its own reward.

  Still, I wasn’t satisfied. These were small changes. My knowledge of God’s truth was one drop of rain in the river. I didn’t want to do good things; I wanted to be good. The vast difference wasn’t lost on me even in my ignorance. I was hungry for the Lord now that I was sure He’d heard me. He’d let my beautiful sister go to ruin, had cas
t her into the wasteland, a barren place that was only beautiful when twilight turned the horizon green for half an hour. But He had chosen to pardon me. I began to wonder if I’d been saved for some special mission. A girl like me had little chance of becoming a saint or martyr. I’d have to accept a more ordinary course, without glory or recognition. By chance, Aunt Arlen revealed the simplicity of my calling.

  She plunked herself down at our kitchen table. “Dean can stop flogging himself over this Lanfear Deets business,” she said. “I saw him this morning pumping gas out at Ike’s Truckstop, working every bit as fast as any two-fisted brute I ever saw. Thank God for Ike Turner, always willing to hire an Indian or a cripple. He took Miriam on too; she’s waitressing on the morning shift. I have to say, Lanfear looked like a happy man. I believe there’s a kind of person who’s so common he takes a certain pleasure in being maimed. Sets him off from the rest, know what I mean?”

  “That’s the craziest thing I’ve heard you say all month,” Mom said.

  “The lame shall enter first; says so right in the Bible,” said Arlen.

  “No one wants to be deformed in a permanent way.”

  I leaned against the stove, curling my fingers into a stiff claw to see if I could imagine a mangled hand making me feel special.

  “Well, anyway,” Arlen said, “Dean can stop feeling responsible. Lanfear Deets most certainly is not suffering.”

  “Dean knows he’s not to blame.”

  “I got eyes, Evelyn. I’ve never seen my brother so thin. And his drinking is no secret.”

  “We can’t all be fat and happy like Les,” Mom said. She made the word fat sound vile, something you wouldn’t want to touch, but Arlen didn’t choose to notice.

  “Yes, he is happy, my oh my, don’t I know. He gave Justin and Marshall the word—six months and they’re out. Collin goes soon as he graduates. Fair warning. Les wants some privacy before we’re too dried up to enjoy it.” Arlen had become an expert on marital bliss ever since she’d gone back to Lester. I didn’t think it would last. I didn’t think that loving my uncle would be nearly as satisfying as bitching about him had always been. She turned around to look at me. “You keep that in mind, Lizzie. Find yourself a decent job or a half-decent man when you get out of high school. Give your parents some peace.”

  “She doesn’t have to do anything of the kind,” Mom said. “There’s room for her in this house as long as she wants to stay, till she’s forty if it suits her.”

  “Oh, Evelyn, please,” Arlen said, “I hope you aren’t seriously wishing such a thing on your daughter. Look at Myron Evans living in that filthy house with his mother and those awful cats. Look at Eula and Luella Lockwood, the terrible twosome. For all the time they’ve spent part they might as well have been joined at the hips since birth. Siamese twins couldn’t be more attached than the two of them. No one’s invited them to dinner or tea for twenty years. No one can stand it—all that giggling and carrying on; you ask one of them a question and they both answer, same time, same words. They’re always poking their heads over the fence, babbling at poor Jack Wright. They got him so rattled the other day he backed his car over his own cat. And I hear they do everything together, you know what I mean? One doesn’t go to the bathroom without the other one trotting right behind. And they take baths together too—long, hot baths.”

  “They’re lucky to have each other,” Mom said.

  “You’re talking nonsense, woman. No one should live in another person’s skin. I don’t have to remind you what taking care of her father did to Minnie Hathaway.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Turned her into a lush. And when he died, she had to sell his house to support her drinking. Lives like trash. I hate to think what’s going to happen to that woman when the money runs out.”

  “Me too,” Mother whispered.

  Arlen stood and kissed the air near my cheek. “Staying with your family too long will warp you, Lizzie,” she said. “You just look around this town and you’ll see I know what I’m talking about.”

  As soon as Arlen was out the door, I said, “Mom—”

  “Not a word,” she said.

  I tried again. I wanted to tell her that I wouldn’t leave, not until she was ready to have me go. She pressed her knuckles into her eyes. “Not now,” she said, “please don’t tell me anything now.”

  I thought of growing old in my parents’ house, cooking their dinners, washing their sheets. I imagined Eula and Luella in their bath, soaping each other’s back—who cared what anyone else thought? I saw Myron making his mother’s tea after dinner so that she could rest her feet. There were so many things he couldn’t do, but he was able to do this night after night, and I believed the smallest acts of kindness might save us from God’s anger, might allow Him to be merciful in the end.

  Now that I believed I saw the answer, the humble path, I was anxious to show God how gladly I would give up my life to His will. To my mind, nothing could be more work than attending the prayer meetings Marlene Grosswilder held in the auditorium every morning before school. But I was God’s docile lamb. This was just one small test.

  For three mornings in a row I lurked in the back of the room, hoping Marlene and her friends would tell me something I didn’t know. I knew the man who was supposed to be my savior had healed lepers and raised men from the dead, but I didn’t know how to live like him, selflessly and free of desire. I saw Mary Magdalene on her knees, anointing him with her perfumes, burning her incense, combing his long hair. I wondered how he could resist her.

  Marlene’s followers spoke of mounting the wings of eagles, and went into a swoon singing a song about love being patient and kind and altogether lacking in envy. I longed to have the patience to love Marlene, but I swiftly failed.

  On the fourth day Marlene indulged in a rousing reading of the Twenty-third Psalm. Her flabby thighs shook when she claimed to be walking through the valley of the shadow of death, and she looked straight at me when she said God was preparing a table for her in the presence of her enemies. When she finished her bit, Marlene wiped the sweat from under her nose and marched down the aisle toward the very place where I stood. I looked over my shoulder, but sure enough, I was the only one there. “I’m so glad you’ve joined us,” she said. “I hope you’ll sit in front tomorrow and that you’ll prepare a reading of your own to share with the others.”

  I considered Marlene’s generosity through the years: the valentines I didn’t get, the parties I wasn’t asked to attend. “You know,” she said, “it’s a wonderful thing. We’ve had our disagreements in the past. We never could be friends before, but now we can be friends in the Lord. Isn’t that fine?”

  “That’s not fine at all,” I said. “That’s a heap of crap. Either people are friends or they’re not.” Marlene sputtered but couldn’t answer. Swearing was a great sin to her. She had a gift for meanness when she was a kid, but as far as true wickedness was concerned, Marlene Grosswilder was as helpless as a blind woman describing the color red. I was sure no boy had ever chased her through the woods, no dogs had ever bounded across her dreams.

  I didn’t waste time on guilt. I needed guidance, someone who understood that the depths of my sins went far beyond using a cuss word now and then, someone who would recognize evil at a glance, a woman who wouldn’t hesitate to pluck out her own eye if it offended her. I knew just where to find that woman, but I’d have to wait until Tuesday night.

  15

  I HAD to sin to go to Freda Graves’s house. I had to lie to my mother. This was the price God demanded, the rip in my veil of purity, a constant reminder of my inability to escape myself. God kept me humble.

  The night I joined Freda Graves’s group, people nodded to me as if they’d been expecting me for some time. I spotted Myron Evans, more pale than ever, his hands resting limp on his knees; I had to look away, thinking how he’d offered to pay Zack Holler for something I was beginning to understand. I was ashamed to know, ashamed to be tempted by the same
boy. I flushed with the memory of Myron as he cradled his strangled cat, its early death the cost of desire.

  Lyla Leona wore a red satin top with spaghetti straps. We’d had a freak spring storm the day before and a fine layer of snow still clung in the shadows near the houses, but Lyla never shivered. Her cheeks burned bright as just-slapped skin. She was a warm woman. Bo Effinger sat squeezed up against her on the loveseat. He pinched his own legs, fighting the urge to lay one of those gigantic paws on Lyla’s big thigh. He meant to leave a trail of marks up and down his leg, a reminder to be good. He had to keep hold of himself. Who else would dare to stop a six-and-a-half-foot man with a bulging forehead and no eyebrows? No one. His white hair shot up straight from his skull, fine and sparse, dead grass on a hill, ready to blow away.

  Mrs. Graves’s congregation had swelled to nearly twenty; I was the youngest but not the furthest astray. Minnie Hathaway motioned to me, patting the empty place beside her on the couch. I couldn’t refuse her invitation. Now that Minnie denied herself the calming effects of alcohol, she couldn’t keep still. Her head bobbed on her skinny neck; every few minutes her whole body jumped, as if an electric jolt buzzed through her cushion. She tried to pretend nothing had happened. After punching the air with her bony fists, she folded her white-gloved hands over her patent leather purse and smiled at the ceiling. She had tried to paint a beauty mark at the side of her mouth, but a spasm in her palsied hand made the mole look huge and cancerous.

  I knew Minnie Hathaway’s father had lived too long. That’s what Arlen said. He chased every young man from their porch. When he finally had the decency to die, Minnie was already wrinkled and her hands shook in the morning. She couldn’t make her coffee fast enough to stop the tremors. After a while she didn’t bother to try: whiskey was just as warm and worked twice as fast.