by Heather Clay
For Nick
And gratia Jenny
PROLOGUE
CHARLOTTE WAS SPEAKING to her already. Not waiting there, in the dark, for Knox to crest out of sleep, but already talking, low and fast. Knox rubbed her ears, blinked, and tried to sit up. Her nightgown ticked against the sheet, making the brief flash of static that Knox thought of as “bed lightning”—Charlotte’s words. Charlotte had words that Knox tried to resist, but couldn’t.
She was a shape, hunched over Knox and saying I’m going now, I’m meeting Cash, go back to sleep.
Don’t go, Knox thought. But what she said was: Don’t tell me. I told you I don’t want to know. Stop telling me.
It’s not like I’m having sex with him, Charlotte said.
Shut up, Knox whispered.
He hasn’t asked me. I think he’s scared. He’s only fifteen.
Knox’s attempt to laugh quietly, incredulously, sounded like a hiss. So are you, she said.
Charlotte wiggled her shoulders a little. Maybe tonight’s the night, she said. If I feel like it. You never know. Hold down the fort for me.
Why are you acting like this, Knox said.
Charlotte never answered questions like that. Why would she? She lifted herself off the bed, crossed the room, and let herself into the hall so quietly that Knox hated her even more, hated that her talent for stealth was just another admirable thing about her, among too many.
Wish me luck, Charlotte said, her head appearing briefly around the jamb, then dissolving into the dark again.
Good luck, Knox said, despite herself.
She waited, breathing as softly as possible so she could hear. After a minute there was just one sound, a small creak, to signal Charlotte’s movement through the house. Knox felt she knew the floorboard that had made it, just as she knew everything, every bit of space that lay under their roof. She knew the roof, too, had crawled onto it from the window of her mother’s dressing room twice before and sat on a loose shingle, looking out at the scarecrow cast of the metal television antennae, the spiky landscape of storm rods. And below, she knew the banisters upon which, if she squinted, she could make out fingerprints in the polish, and smudges from all the gripping and sweat and dinner grease and soap and dirt from the yard and the fields outside. It was all here, all the evidence and effluvia of a family’s happiness, swimming around them. Knox could see it clearly, but all Charlotte could do was step on a creaky board on her way out, and probably not even register the sound it made.
Knox pulled the sheet taut, arranged it under her armpits, patting it around her body. She would sit, vigilant. It would be easier than sleeping, hot and anxious as she’d get trying find her way back to rest. Rest couldn’t come because Charlotte had been caught once. She had made their mother believe that she’d only been on the porch for ten minutes, having gone out “to think.” Knox, of course, knew otherwise, though she hadn’t asked to. That night, standing at the top of the stairs, she had mentally begged her mother to ask: Get dressed, to think? Wear eyeliner, to think? But Charlotte was safe that time—safe in the way their mother struggled to keep the hope off her face, and failed. It was beaming off her like heat.
“Think, honey?” she had said. “What about? Are you all right?” She meant: School, a boy, something worse? Anything was all right if it meant that Charlotte would talk. She had taken to disappearing into silences in a way that none of them had expected. She had new breasts, still nubbly but there, under her shirt. Her hands—everything about her was long now, more real somehow, taking up more room.
Charlotte glanced at Knox from her place at the bottom of the stairs on that particular night as their mother waited. She kept her eyes on Knox and said, “No. I don’t know.” Knox pleaded in her head for Charlotte to make something up, to ask for help for something, however far-fetched, but Charlotte gazed through her, concentrating on a point in space beyond her head. Charlotte shifted her weight; what their mother couldn’t seem to remember for long was that her sister hated questions and tended to harden under a prolonged gaze. She looked, to Knox, like she’d been tapped on the shoulder during a game of freeze tag, and was waiting only for the scream of somebody’s whistle to explode back into movement and into herself.
“There’s a lot on my mind,” Charlotte said quietly, finally. Knox glanced away from Charlotte’s narrowed eyes and at their mother, who looked as if she’d been hit.
“Is there?” their mother said, trying to smile.
Charlotte looked at the ground and nodded. Freeze, Knox thought. If she were different she might fly down the stairs and tap Charlotte back into life. But she was frozen, too. Someone had tagged them all.
Their mother closed her eyes for a moment, the way she did sometimes when she exhaled the smoke from the cigarettes, Salem Menthols, that Knox knew she regretted as soon as she reached for them, having told herself, and whoever else was around, I shouldn’t have this.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll talk in the morning.” Charlotte turned and began to climb the stairs. Their mother followed, her footsteps thudding too loud for the late hour. They each passed Knox without speaking and went into their rooms. Knox had remained where she was until her legs began to shake from the cold and she didn’t want to think of anything anymore.
Knox looked out the window beside her bed. A magnolia was there, just beyond the glass, with great bowls of blossom that smelled like lemons. Charlotte was out there, too. Maybe she had lied about meeting Cash in order to impress Knox and was walking around by herself, “thinking,” or standing by the road trying to hitch into town. It was harder lately to know what Charlotte would do, even when it seemed like she was telling you. Knox lay still, and refused to shut her eyes.
BUT THEY OPENED, and she knew she had slept. The tree outside was just visible against a dull, breaking light. Everything was quiet. Knox let herself down from the bed and began to move toward Charlotte’s room as if she were still dreaming. She moved onto the landing and down the hall and felt something in the stillness that told her Charlotte wasn’t back in her room yet. She reached the door, opened it, took in the tumble and mess, the covers blown open and onto the floor, and saw that this was so.
I’m going, Knox thought, surprised at herself but feeling capable of something brave.
She picked her way downstairs, knowing which steps to avoid but wary of her own tread, which lacked the balance, the levity, of Charlotte’s. She was less sure of how far she extended, and often bumped up against things unexpectedly. Knox concentrated hard on steadying herself, coming awake now. She reached the bottom of the stairs and slid the soles of her feet against cold boards until she stood in front of the hall closet, took out a coat of her father’s, stilled the tinging hanger with a quick movement, pulled on the pair of old tennis shoes her mother gardened in, let herself out the back door.
The world was loud and busy in an instant. Knox stood on the porch in the damp air, thrilling to the sing of crickets, wind moving across the grass, the surprised nicker of the mare that stood at the fence line bordering the yard. She felt powerful in the knowledge that no one knew where she was—or thought to care. This was what Charlotte must feel on those nights she left them. Except, Knox thought, Charlotte tells me. Like babysitting; Knox was left to watch the memory of prior trouble, to watch the clock and mind the possibilities until their rightful owner returned.
Knox exhaled once, and again, more loudly, listening to her breath get lost among all the other sounds. A bird whivvied at her from a nearby tree. She stepped off the porch and began to walk.
Charlotte had told her once that she met Cash, the farm manager’s son, where their driveway butted up against the road. There was a set of wooden gates and a hedge against which Cash would sit, waiting for
her to come. Knox made her way down the walk, past the garage, and onto the blacktop drive, the fields around her becoming more defined with each step. On both sides of the blacktop, land rolled toward barns and toward the stands of locusts and pin oaks that jagged up beyond them. The driveway slanted down and Knox traced it rapidly, her hands opening and closing in the pockets of the coat. Charlotte would be ripped about being looked for. Another one of her words, ripped. Pissed, freaked, chapped, fucked—there were others. But Charlotte might surprise, too. She might smile when she saw Knox and say something beatifically kind. If she were naked, she might not scramble for Cash’s jeans to hide herself with but instead open her arms to Knox, and laugh a knowing laugh when Knox lay her head against the new breasts, the shocking little flesh cones that Charlotte had shown her, lifting up the recently purchased bra that left red marks where its seams had been. She could be naked, Knox thought. They both could be. She kept moving but more slowly now, unsure of what she wanted.
When the gates came into sight she began to stamp in the loose sneakers as she walked. Thwock. Thwock. Thwock.
She stopped after a few paces to listen and, hearing nothing, stamped again.
Then she made for the hedge, a dense wall of boxwood that was taller than she by at least a foot. At the farthest end there was a hollowed-out place that Knox remembered as she drew closer to it. Her father complained about it sometimes: a dead cave of twigs just visible from the road. It needed to be dug up, replaced. Knox moved nearer, took a deep breath, and whispered, “Charlotte?”
Silence.
“Hey. Hello?”
She peered in, and looked away immediately. She had seen a flash of something silver: A zipper? A hook? It had been on the ground, detached from any body. Knox hummed to herself for a moment, then turned to look again. There was a bracelet, their mother’s, lying in the twiggy, tamped-down grass. Nothing else. Knox knelt to pick it up, then shuffled on her knees into the hedge cave and sat cross-legged, the big coat insulating her backside and legs from the cold ground. She turned the bracelet in her hands; Charlotte must have borrowed it. Surely without asking. It was heavy, made of thick links and fastened with a turquoise beaded clasp; she never wore it, their mother, but she never threw it away, either. Other things got removed from the suede-covered jewelry box she kept on her bureau, costumey things that had outlived their outfits and uses, but not this.
The dawn grew brighter. Knox slipped the bracelet into a pocket of the coat and started to get up, wondering whether or not she should keep looking for her sister. What would Charlotte say if she were found? If Knox could find her asleep, somewhere hidden, and carry her back to bed, things might be different. The coat stuck to her skin in places, making her feel the parameters and sweat of her body as she emerged from the little cave, dragging branches against one another as she pushed out.
“Hallo,” someone called. Knox stopped where she was, as if stillness could make her invisible.
“Hallo,” someone called again, louder.
Knox looked up. Gary, the night watchman, stood about five feet from her, swinging the heavy flashlight he carried in one hand, and fingering the collar of his shirt with the other. He looked washed in the thin light, his clothes and face pale.
“I—,” Knox began.
Gary squinted at her. He had one of those faces that a life lived at night must make. A face that made it hard to tell what a person was thinking, behind the lines and hard skin. “Better get on home,” he said. “Right?”
“Um.” Knox said, “I’m sorry. I was—”
“Okay,” Gary said. “You get on home.”
Knox felt the blood rise, flushing her neck and face. She backed up a step or two, keeping her eyes away from Gary’s, then lurched into an awkward half run up the hill, heading straight for the house. She imagined Gary watching her and thought she should slow down, appear calmer—but that would mean allowing him to watch her for a longer time; she wanted nothing but to be out of his sight. She dodged the nettle piles that showed up inky in the light, like little cacti. She sucked in breath as the incline got steeper. Stride. Pant. Stride. Was he laughing, behind her? At the office parties her father held twice a year Gary usually stood, laughing, in a corner, drink in hand. It wasn’t a nice laugh, wasn’t meant for others to join in. She knew this. People would be surprised at what she knew about them, from watching.
Knox stumbled past the old locust with the hollow in it, the one Charlotte used to make her stick her hand in, daring her to risk squirrel bite or the spooky brush of fungus that grazed the bottom. She didn’t stop moving until she reached the edge of the back step, where she bent over, hands on knees, trying to quiet herself enough to enter without making any more noise.
She let herself in and went up the stairs. She passed the door to Charlotte’s room, which was still open. Bed empty.
In her room, Knox first took off her father’s coat and wadded it under the bed. It smelled of dirt, of the outside. Then she remembered the bracelet. She took the coat out and shook the bracelet from its pocket, put the coat back. She got into bed with the bracelet and held its cool, small weight against her face for a while. She thought as fast as she breathed:
Oh my God.
God.
After a few minutes, her breath slowed and her hot sense of her own absurdity distilled into something else: the realization that she lay unscathed at the moment, with a story to tell if she chose to tell it. This felt close to relief and caused her to stretch out her limbs under the covers and try to forget that Gary might say something to her father, or that Charlotte still wasn’t home, or that she never wanted her own Cash because it wasn’t safe, and she would have to work hard, well into the future, not to let the wrong people know that this is what she preferred to the rest of night’s possibilities: this clean, white bed, its canopy arcing over her like a cupped hand.
• I •
KNOX
THE SUMMER that everything happened was the hottest summer Knox could remember. Heat pooled around them all, a soft, wet heat that nobody talked about. It was just what was.
Her students didn’t talk about it, but stumbled out the side doors of the center when it was time for their breaks and stood mutely in twos and threes that didn’t correspond to any friendships or alliances that Knox knew of but seemed the result of an uncharacteristic economy of movement. Stood with whomever they happened to find themselves next to, blinking, kicking occasionally at pieces of gravel, until they were called inside. On the farm, the foals stood the same way in the fields, unless they had shade or water to retreat into, in which case they drew together with their mothers into a mass of shifting rumps and bobbing necks, sometimes lowering themselves onto their sides, one by one, until the ground was piled with shapes that panted so slowly that Knox would fret about death, respiratory failure, pulmonary arrest if she watched too long, and so turn from the kitchen window of her cabin, or walk on.
Dumbstruck. Struck dumb. Knox could describe almost anything this way, on the hot days. The town and the farms that spread around it were quieter now that the July sales were over and the buyers had flown away. The land seemed to buzz like the insects did, with vibration rather than sound. Felt, not heard, its tongue thick in its mouth.
“He calls you Ugly?” Marlene said. Her mouth was half full of sandwich, so calls came out callfz. They were sitting in the lunchroom, watching the students through the large window that faced onto the courtyard of the learning center. Nine more minutes until break was over, according to the wall clock above Marlene’s head.
“Well,” Knox said, eyeing Brad Toffey as he stepped onto a picnic bench and seemed to ponder whether or not to jump off it, then stepped down and sat heavily on the ground, staring into the middle distance, “yeah. But it’s just a nickname. I think it’s funny, actually. He’s always called me that.”
Marlene chewed, her eyes fixed on Knox’s face. Knox looked back at her and smiled, knowing that it would be long seconds before Marlene could swal
low her bite and respond, that the delay was killing her. Marlene, forty-six and well into her second marriage, liked nothing more than to discuss Knox’s lack of savvy when it came to “relationships”—or, more accurately, the one relationship she’d ever had. Marlene’s hair was frosted and faded into overlapping patches of white, russet, and dark brown and shook a little as her mouth worked.
“Take your time,” Knox said. “Wouldn’t want you to choke, Mar.”
“Screw you,” Marlene mumbled. A fleck of mayonnaise dropped onto her chin, and she scratched it away with a manicured nail. “I don’t understand it. You’re not ugly. At least, not most of the time.”
“It’s a nickname, Mar. Not important,” Knox said.
“Mmm,” Marlene said, squinting at her. “I guess.”
Knox shifted in her plastic chair, trying to work some feeling back into her legs and lower body. Last night, Ned Bale had proposed to her again, in his way, as they lay on a quilt at the music festival, finally cooled by the dark and the beer they had drunk while they listened to the amped-up Dobros and fiddles. Jerry Douglas was on the stage, plucking the melody for “Wildwood Flower” over a steady line of bass notes, when Ned rolled toward her and said, “We should do it, Ugly. I mean, why not?”
That was how he asked.
Knox had been watching an old man dance on a toting board near their blanket. He was wearing a T-shirt that said BADASS FROM SKELETON PASS and jerking a little mountain clog, keeping his torso rigid and still, his hands limp at his sides, his face impassive, his legs flailing quickly like a marionette’s. His shorts hung so low that Knox could see the exposed jut of his pelvic bone when he kicked his foot back and slapped it with one of his hands in response to a high whoop from the second picker. The woman with him—a wife or daughter, the bloat on her face making it hard to tell which—lolled on her side in the grass beside the board, as still as the man was lively. Knox briefly wondered how far they had come for the music; Skeleton Pass was surely one of the holler towns far to the east. She knew she shouldn’t be wondering anything about anyone’s driving distance—she should only be reacting, plumbing for words, using them or not, moving toward Ned or moving away.
