Evenfall

by Liz Michalski

  He stops smiling, and is off the bed searching for his jeans before she’s finished. “Come on, Cort. Give me a break here. You asked.”

  “I guess I’m too young, or maybe too dumb for you. I don’t have the fancy degree or the big bank account. Is that it?” He pulls his T-shirt over his head. Andie wants to reach out to him, but she feels impossibly exposed. She stays in bed, clutching the sheet up to her chest.

  “You know you’re not dumb. But young, yes.”

  “Guess I am, since I didn’t pick up this was just a summer fling for you. Glad I could help out. Anything else you need before I leave? Another fuck, maybe?”

  “Cort…” She stands up, pulling the sheet with her, but he’s already at the door. “Where are you going?”

  “Home. At least I know where that is.” He clatters down the steps. There’s a whistle for Nina, the slam of the door, and a few moments later the truck’s engine starting. Tires crunch gravel as the truck pulls out of the yard.

  There’s a tightness in Andie’s chest, a heaviness that wasn’t there a few minutes ago. She finds her shirt and shorts under the bed, where she’d kicked them last night in her hurry to undress, and pulls them on. Downstairs, the house is too quiet, as if it’s holding its breath. She’s not really hungry, but when she sees the peach tart, still on top of the refrigerator, she takes it down. She doesn’t use a knife, just pulls off a piece of the crust and eats it. It’s featherlight and sweet. She takes another bite, then throws the whole tart in the trash.

  Gert

  IN her dreams, Gert is dancing with the southern boy. He’s tall and slender and his legs work perfectly fine, but something’s wrong. She can hear their feet tapping on the hard wooden floor of the church hall and realizes the rhythm doesn’t match the music the band is playing.

  She tries to tell the boy this, but he won’t listen. Instead he moves her faster and faster, so that their feet are flying, but the sound they make is still a steady clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.

  She moves her head on the pillow, opens her eyes, and squints against the early morning daylight seeping in from beneath the window shade. She lies quietly, letting her body recollect what her brain already knows, that she’s not twenty-four anymore. The dream of dancing lingers at the edge of her consciousness, a sharp contrast to the aches and pains that take up familiar residence in her limbs. Which is why it takes her a moment to realize she can still hear the sound of feet on a hardwood floor.

  The noise is coming through the open kitchen windows and sounds like a hesitant woman in high heels—a few steps, a pause, then more steps. “Hello?” Gert calls. “Andie?” The footsteps stop.

  She rises from bed, irritably brushing her loose hair over her shoulders and pulling on her robe. It’s not enough that her dreams are mysterious; now her mornings have to be, too. “I’m coming,” she calls, though no one has asked.

  She looks through the kitchen window but can’t see anyone. A shiver of unease runs down her spine. Gert doesn’t believe in ghosts, not anymore, although there was a time in her youth when she hoped, even prayed, to be haunted, would have traded a life’s worth of sleep for a single moment of contact with the small creature whose cries filled her dreams. All nonsense, she tells herself, marching across the floor and throwing open the porch door.

  She’s prepared for almost anything except what she finds—a nanny goat and its kid. The mother gazes calmly at her, yellow eyes unblinking. The kid takes one look at Gert and utters a single bleat, jumps off the porch steps and races in circles of either terror or glee, Gert’s not sure which.

  The goat surveys her shrewdly for a moment before apparently deciding Gert’s no threat. It goes back to eating the few straggly morning glories that deck the porch’s railing, unmoved by the kid’s bucking and kicking.

  “Stop that,” Gert scolds, pulling the morning glories from the goat’s mouth. It pulls back, then releases the vine to Gert’s hold and moves to the next plant.

  “Shoo!” Gert lets the screen door bang shut, setting the kid off in a fresh paroxysm of leaping. The goat, surprised, stops in mid-mouthful. Purple and blue flowers dangle from its teeth.

  Gert passes her hand over her eyes, draws a deep breath, and tries to remember how her life has come to this, how she, who once lived overseas, who commanded a staff of twenty, who ran an emergency room with surgical precision, has somehow become an old woman on a caved-in porch not five miles from where she once started out. When she looks again, the goat has given up on the flowers and is sampling strips of paint that curl from the cottage’s walls. The kid, emboldened by Gert’s stillness, has clambered back onto the porch and is nosing inquiringly at her bare legs. When she doesn’t move, it takes a mouthful of her robe and sucks on it experimentally.

  Gert exhales. She’d call someone to help, but who? She’s supposed to pick up Florence Gilbert this morning. It’s their turn to collect the altar flowers and bring them to the town’s shut-ins, then up to the hospital. But there are limits to what Gert is willing to do, even in the name of Christian charity. Calling Florence to say she’s been detained by a goat is one of them.

  She tugs the hem of her robe, now a soggy, crumpled mess, out of the kid’s mouth. It’s clear who’s responsible for this, and she’s pretty sure where to find him. Cort McCallister is a farmer’s son, but he knows nothing about keeping goats. That sorry fencing of his is the reason Gert’s standing here with a handful of dead flowers and a wet bathrobe to boot.

  Andie may be an adult, and what she does her own business, but enough is enough. Gert’s been willing to turn a blind eye to Cort’s pickup truck rattling in here at all hours, but no more. This morning the whole charade comes to an end.

  She eyes the goats, both of which are now focused on the porch’s plastic folding chairs. In the time it will take her to call over to the big house and explain things, the cottage might not be standing, she decides. Best to just bring the problem there and wash her hands of it.

  She hurries inside to change, pulling on khaki shorts and a white shirt. Rather than take the time to plait her hair she leaves it down—she’s never cared for ponytails on women her age, and if she can’t braid it it might as well be free. She slips her feet into canvas sneakers—the left one has a hole cut out for her bunion—and peeks outside, half-hoping she’s imagined the last few minutes.

  The goats are still there. Gert sighs again and starts to rummage through the cottage for the necessary supplies. Florence Gilbert and the Lord are just going to have to wait.

  Frank

  IT’S early morning, and Andie’s almost out of coffee. When it’s gone, she’ll leave the attic. She’ll run the vacuum so loud my whispers will be lost in the din. She’ll heave boxes so heavy that to distract her could cause injury. I don’t have much time, so when she looks out the window and bites her lip, I take my chances.

  “I saw him this morning,” I say, conversationally. “Before dawn. I tried to wake you.” Andie swats irritably at the air, as if she’s shooing away a mosquito or a fly, then picks up her brush. She stares at the painting in front of her. It’s been more than a week since the sound of hollering brought me down from the attic, and the boy’s gone to ground, rolling in at odd hours of the day and night to care for the goats. My niece spends her mornings painting and her afternoons rearranging the dust of this house. Evenings, she creates a stack of fancy documents, each so thick they take three stamps apiece to mail. They’ve got addresses as far away as Tokyo. The girl’s got running in her blood, and he’s got the McCallister stubbornness, all right. It’s not looking good.

  “You could call him,” I say. “Just pick up the phone.”

  My niece narrows her eyes, takes another sip of coffee. She’s lost weight, and it shows in her face. “You’re as obstinate as your aunt, and liable to end up just like her.”

  She swats the air again, spattering paint. I sigh. “How about more green? Right there.”

  Andie feathers a little green at the edge of the can
vas. The green is the exact color of the fringe of trees along the front pasture, the green of heat and of summer and of discontent. I glance out the window to compare, and then I see it. If I had eyes I’d rub them: Gert Murphy is leading two goats down my driveway, her hair loose and flowing, dirt streaked down one cheek and wrath in her eyes. One look at her and it’s almost a relief to be dead, because it’s clear she has murder on her mind.

  Andie stands back, looking at her painting. From what I can tell, it’s nearly done, but this is no time for woolgathering. “Andie,” I say, loud as I can. “We’ve got company.”

  It doesn’t work, at least not the first time. I try whispering it, right next to her ear, and whether that does it or whether it’s just coincidence, she glances out the window and her eyes widen.

  “Shit,” she says. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  I couldn’t agree more.

  Andie rushes through the open attic door and clatters down the steps. I hear her on the second-floor landing, but I’ve got time, so I linger, studying her painting. She’s added the cat, who floats along the ground like a black plume of smoke, all mysteriousness and stealth. Then I hear her in the front hall, and picture her there, and we both wind up at the front door at the same moment.

  “Aunt Gert?” Andie calls from behind the screen.

  Gert doesn’t reply, just keeps on with the goats until she’s standing right outside the front steps. She’s got a man’s belt I recognize as mine looped around the bigger goat’s neck like a leash, and a small red box of raisins in her free hand, and she looks like fury herself. When she stops, the big goat bleats at her, and she shoves a raisin in its mouth. The little one’s been walking free, trotting alongside its mama. It bleats and gets a raisin, too.

  “Aunt Gert?” Andie says again. “What happened?”

  “Strange,” Gert says, and I long to brush the dirt from her cheek. “That’s exactly what I was going to ask you.”

  “Oh, crap.” Andie opens the screen, steps out onto the stone landing, and lets the door bang shut behind her, causing both goats to jump. “Look, I can explain. They’re Cort’s, but…”

  “The wretched creatures certainly aren’t mine,” Gert says. “Now, since we’ve established ownership, and you’ve already commented on their bodily functions, perhaps you would be so good as to ask your friend Mr. McCallister to join us so we can discuss the matter of damages.”

  “Cort’s not here, Aunt Gert.”

  Gert looks at her, and I can tell she’s taking in the circles under Andie’s eyes, the way her hair’s still uncombed at a quarter past nine in the morning. “I see,” she says, and it’s clear from her tone that she does. But Gert’s never let a broken heart stop her from doing what needs to be done, and I can tell she’s not about to start now.

  “Well then, perhaps you could call him and suggest he come over immediately,” she says. When Andie doesn’t move, she adds, “Unless of course, you’d like to hold on to these two while I do it.”

  Andie sighs and steps away from the screen. Her voice floats back as she vanishes into the house. “Yes, Aunt Gert.”

  I stand there with Gert, looking after the nearest thing to a child we’ll ever have. I come closer, close enough to see the lock of hair that’s fallen across her forehead. I want to touch it, to move it gently, piece by piece, out of her eyes, but my longing overwhelms me, swirls up the wind near our feet, kicks up bits of dust that cause Gert to cover her face and turn away. The goats sense me and sidestep, small hooves moving restlessly as they seek to put distance between themselves and a presence they can’t see. The kid butts Gert hard in the back of the knees, almost bowling her over, and receives a sharp slap on the nose. It blinks and maahs a protest.

  “Stand still then,” Gert says, holding the belt more firmly.

  The mama goat pulls and shuffles in her desire to be away, yellow eyes rolling.

  “Stand still, I say.”

  Gert, I say. Gert.

  “What is the matter with you?” she scolds, giving the belt a shake. Along her hairline, tiny drops of perspiration appear. “Andie,” she calls. “What’s taking so long? If he’s not there, then come lend a hand.”

  There’s an ocean of longing welling up in me. I don’t try to speak again. The desire, the frustration of the last fifty years, is too big for words, so I simply let it be, let it wash over and out of me. I’m reaching her this time, I can sense it. Her thoughts scurry away from me like field mice, but they’re there, I can feel them, just below the surface, and I’m on the verge of breaking through…

  Gert calls out again and Andie appears. She’s changed from her paint-splattered shirt into a black tank top and shorts, and when she comes through the doorway her expression shifts from annoyance to concern.

  “Aunt Gert! Are you all right?” she says, and just like that our connection breaks, is shattered, I’m flying in a thousand directions, into the air, the wind, the earth itself. It’s a struggle to pull myself back, to piece myself together again, and I’m gone for a bit. When I return, when I can focus my energies, I see Gert’s pale face, the pulse in her throat fluttering like a trapped wren. Andie has taken the belt from her, but when she tries to guide her to the porch, Gert resists.

  “I’m waiting right here, thank you very much. He may be your beau, but he’s getting a piece of my mind all the same.”

  “Aunt Gert, he’s not…”

  Gert flaps her hand. “Spare me the details. All I want to know is whether you reached him.”

  “Yes. He’s on his way.”

  “Fine.”

  I try to connect with her again but I’m weak, I can’t. We wait in silence, the only sound the calls of the birds and the rustling of the goats, until Cort’s red pickup bounces into view. It brakes to a stop a good distance from the house, as if Cort wants to ensure a speedy getaway. Cort steps out and behind him comes Nina, bounding and frisking like a puppy. She freezes when she sees the goats, then charges forward, causing the kid to flee in terror and the mother to struggle and twist against the leather holding her in place.

  An angry huff escapes from Gert, like a smoker exhaling. She advances on Nina with a vengeance in mind, but Cort intercepts her.

  “Sorry, Miss Gert,” he says, slipping his fingers under the dog’s collar and pulling her backward toward his truck. He rolls down the window and leaves her in the cab.

  With Nina gone, Andie, who hasn’t looked up since Cort stepped from the truck, gets the goats under control. They cast a wary eye in my direction occasionally, but they’re happy to crop grass and sample whatever else they can find.

  “Here, let me take her,” Cort says, and his hands brush Andie’s as she relinquishes the belt. They look at each other and my niece’s face flames red and the two of them stand there, catching sparks off each other, until Gert interrupts.

  “These worthless creatures belong to you?” she snaps, and they break apart with a jolt.

  “Yes, Miss Gert,” Cort says. “And I’m awfully sorry about any trouble they may have caused.”

  “You should be. They ate half my porch before I was able to catch them. Not to mention what they did to my flowers. Did you know that morning glories are poisonous to goats? If I were a vengeful person, I’d have let them eat their fill. As it is, you’re liable to have loose goat droppings for some time.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Cort says. He voice is strained—the mother goat has dug in her heels and is ignoring his tugs on the lead. The kid has circled back and is chewing the raisin box Gert dropped.

  “What you don’t know about goats would fill several books, I expect,” Gert informs him. “What I want to know is, what are they doing here in the first place?”

  “Well, ahhh—” Cort says, but Andie interrupts.

  “That’s my fault, Aunt Gert. I told him it was okay if they stayed here for a while.”

  “Really? And what on earth made you think that? I don’t believe I’ve ever indicated a fondness for goats.”

&
nbsp; “No, ma’am. I’ll get them out of here right now.” Cort gives another ineffectual tug on the lead, and Andie leans over to help him. Her shoulder bumps against his.

  “Sorry,” she says sweetly, and gives him that Murphy smile, the one that’s worth waiting a lifetime for. Just like that, the boy’s gone again, hook, line, and sinker. I can tell, having had some experience myself. But then Andie’s smile fades. She’s staring at something over his shoulder, and when I follow her gaze I see a cloud of dust rising from the driveway. A baby blue convertible is purring down the gravel, kicking up dirt as it comes. As it passes Cort’s truck, Nina’s head pops out of the partially open window. The dog gives a single bark.

  “Lord, what now?” Gert says, watching it come. The car brakes to a stop just in front of her, and the driver gets out. He’s a large fellow with reddish gold hair, tawny, like a lion in National Geographic. Handsome, in a movie star kind of way. He wears a short-sleeved blue shirt, tight across the biceps, and khaki shorts creased so fine they could cut bread. Black sunglasses, the type movie stars wear, hide his eyes. He moves them to the top of his head when he spies Andie.

  “Babe,” he says.

  My niece’s mouth is open so wide she looks like a trout. She shuts it, then opens it again, but no words come out.

  “Neal?” she finally manages.

  “Surprised?” The stranger has a pleased look, as if he’s pulled off an especially daring stunt.

  “You have no idea,” Andie says. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to talk to you, of course. In person, since I can’t seem to get you on the phone.” He turns and reaches into the car, pulls out the largest bouquet of red roses I’ve ever seen. He moves to hand it to Andie, but she backs away, crossing her arms in front of her. The fellow’s left holding the flowers by his side.

  “Sorry they’re not wildflowers, but the florist was all out,” he says, as if that’s why my niece rejected them. “And chocolate gelato wouldn’t survive the plane ride. So I brought you a different present.” With his free hand he points to the car, and for the first time I notice there’s another person sitting inside it.