Northern Light

by Deb Davies

  “I slept with George when I was fourteen,” Ann said. “Fourteen. In the hay field. It hurt, the first time.”

  “He was years older than you,” Laurel exclaimed.

  “He tried to be gentle. He was nicer than other boys. He said I was his innocent. We were in an innocent place.”

  “The beeswax. The lavender,” Charles said.

  “He said he’d come back. We made love so often, those first days. The sun moving over us, wild flowers around us. Then he said he had to go away—first, to college, then to get a business started. I waited for him. And he did come back. Once a month.

  “Then his business was going great. And he couldn’t come back so often. But he still came, and we still made love, only we went to hotels then. Once, there was a band, and we danced.

  “And then he didn’t come for six months. He told me he loved me, but that he needed to be married, married to someone more like him. He needed to marry someone who’d been to school, because I didn’t go on past high school, you know. I had to look after my mother. He said he was marrying this woman who was smart, but cold, and that he’d always love me, and as soon as he had enough money, he’d retire and we would travel the world. And then, I didn’t see him, and I waited and waited…until I couldn’t wait any longer.”

  “Were you pregnant?” Laurel asked.

  “Aren’t you the schoolmarm smart one! You should learn to keep your mouth shut!” Ann slapped Laurel with the ladle, which stuck momentarily. When Ann pulled it off, a red, raw weal crossed Laurel’s cheek.

  Charles said nothing. He had held George’s picture in his hands—the one in a silver frame, the only picture Claire kept on her dresser. He recalled the broad forehead, the wide set eyes, the open smile. He’d thought what it might mean to be as handsome as George had been.

  “But he didn’t come back,” Ann said. “And I almost forgot him. I had Tansy, and I had Patsy to help me, and I had the store, and I found out I was good at something. Tansy grew up, and George had cancer when he retired. I knew then that we wouldn’t travel the world.”

  Claire stared at her, blistered lips parted. “I’m sorry.”

  “How dare you be sorry for me! What did you ever do? You never ran a business. You never raised a child. George didn’t want a child with you! You had dribs and drabs of jobs and threw artsy-fartsy parties.” Ann scowled. “We even look alike. Did you notice that? We both freckle, and we both have good breasts. But you got fatter than I did, and your hair started turning white before mine did! So why did he love you?”

  Claire stared, unable to answer.

  Laurel looked as though holding back words would choke her. Charles shook his head at Laurel, trying, without words, to tell her not to piss Ann off.

  He interjected, trying to stall before Laurel could answer, “You two did have a lot in common. You running a store. Claire being a corporate wife. To do either you need to empathize with customers, send flowers, throw parties. But she could handle small talk more easily than you, because college gives you a little gloss of the world. Her parents expected she would go to college; I am guessing yours didn’t.

  “Laurel helped too, because when Claire doubted herself, she could call and ask Laurel, ‘What’s an unreliable narrator?’ and Laurel would tell her.”

  “She already knew the idea,” Laurel said. “She just didn’t know the word.”

  “David,” Claire said. “And George.” She had no trouble pronouncing either name. In fact, her tone was venomous.

  They heard a car pull up the driveway and saw car lights play across the yard. The Bentley. Tansy got out from the driver’s side door.

  You’re saying,” Ann asked, “that George didn’t love me because I didn’t have the right background?”

  “Mom.” Tansy inserted herself, quiet and sounding worried.

  “What are you doing here, baby?” Ann said.

  “We came home early. Jen’s foot hurt. She took some codeine tablets, and she’s out cold in the car. I wanted some help getting her into the house.” She paused. “I heard what you said, Mom. Is that a gun? I don’t get it. You have a lot of friends. The neighbors all love you. And we’ve always been friends, more than most mothers and daughters. And Patsy loved you. For gosh sake, give me the gun. Don’t shoot yourself,” Tansy said.

  “You’re giving me too much credit,” Ann said. She’d moved to put her back to the river, able to see Tansy while still keeping an eye on Charles.

  “You always helped me, Mom. When Simon left, and I gave up the baby, you helped me get my job before I finished school.”

  Ann looked trapped between the fire she’d fed and the daughter she had nourished.

  “You’ve had some kind of a breakdown,” Tansy said, moving closer. “But I can help. Let’s just go, before you hurt someone.” She clearly hadn’t seen Arnie or Bertram Allarbee’s body.

  “Your mother’s gone bat shit crazy,” Laurel said.

  “I’m teaching Claire.” Ann’s voice was surly.

  Seething anger raced through Claire. Maybe George had loved Ann. Maybe Ann had symbolized a time when life had been simple, and maybe he ached for that. Maybe, when he’d traveled, he’d found ways to see her. Maybe he had been fulfilling a promise when they’d moved back to his hometown. In fact, why had she believed his “I just happened to find this house” shit?

  Why couldn’t he just have said he wanted out, once he’d retired and didn’t need her to throw cocktail parties for him? Once he wasn’t depending on her to order peeled jumbo shrimp and a seasonal floral display? Divorce couldn’t be that hard. Millions of people all over the world did it. His bread had been Michigan-buttered on both sides, and he’d seen no reason to cut back, because, to George Monroe, only George Monroe mattered.

  She mattered, goddamn it! Laurel and Charles mattered, and George’s cowardice had set them all up to die. Even Patsy had mattered. How had she, Claire—street hockey player—spent all those years married to a greedy little prick?

  Tansy continued to step toward her mother, using the careful movements and tones she’d use on a hurt animal. “Let’s go home,” Tansy soothed. “I’ll make cocoa.”

  “We could go abroad,” Ann said. “We could travel. You could meet the most wonderful men and go dancing. I’ve got airline tickets to Brazil.”

  “I just want to ask you one thing,” Tansy said, sliding something out of a skirt pocket. “I don’t understand where this came from.” She stepped slowly, carefully, toward her mother.

  “Beats me,” Ann said. “Looks like some kind of bone.”

  “It’s a toe bone from a polydactyl foot,” Charles said. “I mailed it to you, Tansy. Pearl found it in the basement of this house.”

  “So you said in your note.” Tansy was quiet.

  Charles could hear the river. Near the fire pit, a few crickets had ventured out.

  “Simon’s feet hurt,” Tansy said. “Sometimes he’d limp.”

  Ann waved the ladle. “Simon said he loved you, but he left without saying goodbye. What kind of boy does that? He left when you got pregnant. What kind of child would you get with DNA like that?”

  “The funny thing is,” Tansy said, “you told me not to do an open adoption, but I did it anyway. Right at the last minute, when you’d gone down to start the car, I asked how to reverse closed adoption records. How to get in touch.”

  Ann stilled. Laurel crouched, and Charles scooted.

  “I’ve got pictures, Mom,” Tansy said. “The doctors operated on my baby’s feet when he was six weeks old. They say the surgery’s simpler now, and then no one calls your kid Troll Toes.”

  “Well, good,” Ann said. She put down the ladle and tucked a gun in her belt.

  “Mom.” Tansy reached forward and touched her mother’s shoulder. “Charles says this toe bone came from the basement here.”

  “‘Charles says,’” Ann said, jerking away from Tansy. “Charles says. Charles says.”

  “Mom, is Simon’s body in the base
ment? I’ll love you, and I’ll take care of you, no matter what you say.”

  Ann turned to Charles.

  “You fucking dipshit,” she said. “Claire, if we had time, I’d heat this ladle to molten metal and ram it up your cunt.” She leaned toward Tansy and touched her cheek. Then she pulled on Claire’s binding, and the ropes came off with that single tug. “Guess I’ll have to let you go,” she said.

  Then, in a single fluid motion, she jerked Claire toward her and lifted Claire across her chest, as easily as she’d lifted heavy boxes in the store.

  Charles tried to get to his feet, but his body failed him. His haunches collapsed, and he slid the rest of the way down the slight embankment. Closer to the fire pit, the lavender smell filled the air.

  Ann stood poised as though preparing to toss a caber, supporting and finding the balance for Claire’s weight. Ann was a strong woman, but Claire was no longer limp. She was thrashing furiously, more muscled than Ann had probably expected. The air stirred, and sparks flew around the three women, fused in a triptych that shimmered in the heat.

  Laurel was on her feet for a second before Tansy pushed her backward. “Stay down!” she said, her eyes focused on Ann. “Let me help,” Tansy told her mother. “I love you, Mom.” She leaned in to kiss her.

  Then she pulled Claire from her mother, swiveled, and dropped her. Claire’s head hit and bumped down the outside of the fire pit.

  Ann was thrown off balance and wobbled, knees bent, body tilted backward. Then Tansy hip checked her, and Ann landed in the fire pit, thrashing and screaming, scrabbling on her hands and knees in the coals. Her elbows thrust out. She was keeping her face out of the fire, but they could smell her burning—the terrible smell of rare, scorching meat.

  Tansy turned away from her mother—away from them all—and walking fast, took the path down to the river. Charles could hear her splash across to the opposite bank.

  Laurel stared stupefied.

  Small, flickering tendrils of fire, like the flames atop birthday candles, raced up the scarf that trailed down Ann’s neck, and dripped beneath her rib cage.

  Laurel bent and picked up the pistol that Ann had dropped. Holding it by the barrel, she slammed it into Ann’s head repeatedly until there was an audible crack. She kept slamming the gun into Ann’s skull until Ann’s whole body collapsed in the flames that now roared higher. The night sky filled with sparks and smoke.

  Outside the farmhouse windows, Laurel could see Bill and Barbara hooking down hay bales from the loft in the barn. Every now and then, the couple would stop their work, put their arms around each other, and talk and laugh.

  Charles, who looked as though he’d been dragged through nails and gravel, had gotten up early and set the coffee pot and mugs on the round table in the farmhouse kitchen.

  “Chicken mugs,” Claire said. “Why am I not surprised Barbara has mugs with chickens on them?”

  She had cut her own hair off, unevenly, just below her cheekbones, and was wearing a high-necked smocked dress that had long sleeves and a skirt that covered her knees. She had seen the advertisements and knew she looked like Eleven in Stranger Things. Most of the blackened burn scabs were gone, but antibiotic cream made healing spots show like dots of mercury.

  “I thought you were a tough guy,” Charles said to Arnie. “Now that I know you are going to survive I am going to ask. How did you know to wear a vest?”

  “You think I don’t have one iota of sense?” Arnie asked. “After your vomitous mushrooms, Bertram and I both wore vests. Ah, fuck,” he said. “I hate cracked ribs.”

  “You’re going to have a scar on your forehead.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Laurel said.

  One of Arnie’s eyes was patched, and his head had been shaved. The bullet that had careened around the right of his skull, plowing up the scalp, had lost momentum and stalled four inches back of his left ear. The bandages had been removed, but stitches ran around his head like railroad tracks.

  “At least I have a forehead. I’ll be prettier than Bertram Allarbee.”

  “Prettier than Ann Campbell,” Charles added judiciously.

  “Do you remember that game we played as kids?” Laurel asked. “Cootie. You had to assemble them. They looked a little like big crickets. When she was in that fire pit, she made me think of a burning, plastic cootie, and I kept thinking she could fly at my face, like a grasshopper in a field.”

  Charles said, “She reminded me of a fossa, up on the bones of her toes, trying to lift herself out of the flames.”

  “I’m not asking you what a goddamn fossa is,” Arnie growled.

  “Civet. Sort of,” Charles said.

  “Arnie, even I’m prettier than you,” Claire said.

  “Debatable. You look like you’ve had smallpox. Or sand flea bites could look like that,” Charles told her. “I like the hair, though. It’s not quite as short as Zoe’s.”

  “At least I don’t walk as if I’ve been stretched on a rack,” Claire retorted.

  “Thank God for the Marshes’ spare bedrooms and warm, cushy beds,” Laurel said. “It took me days to stop feeling as though I’d been put through basic training, and most of what I did was just sit on hard ground. I have my new idea of heaven. Down pillows and comforters are free if anyone wants them. What are your thought about the afterlife, Arnie?”

  “A place where people don’t kill each other,” Arnie said.

  “In my very non-theological heaven,” Charles said, “all the species on earth but humans exist.”

  “Mine,” Claire said glumly, “is going to take some revising.” She flushed red around her burn pocks, but no one looked at her. Instead, heads turned as Jen walked through the door, followed by Tansy.

  “Sit down, you two. You want tea or coffee?” Usually, Charles made this offer, but in this case, Arnie spoke.

  “I’d love coffee,” Jen said, pulling out a chair and sitting down heavily.

  Tansy sat down. She was wearing blue jeans and a plain black T-shirt. Her expression was, well, expressionless.

  “I burned my mother alive.” She looked straight at Arnie. “Will there be an inquest?”

  “You didn’t kill her,” Arnie said.

  “I killed your mother,” Laurel confessed. “She was trying to get up. I hit her on the head with her gun. Hard. A number of times.”

  Tansy just looked at Laurel. No reaction.

  “How did Jen find you?” Arnie asked.

  “I stayed with friends above the flower shop,” Tansy said. “I could ignore you and Elaine, but Jen limping from store to store, looking for me, made me feel guilty. I knew I’d have to go back to work, anyway.”

  Claire reached one burn-pocked hand out to her. “You saved my life, Tansy. And I don’t know what was wrong with your mom, but people sometimes change with age, or illness, or tension.”

  Tansy shook her head. “She killed Simon,” she said. “Isn’t that what happened, Charles?”

  Arnie answered. “We did find bones in the basement of Claire’s house. Under Murphy’s body.”

  “Like New Orleans stacked poverty burials,” Charles mused. Laurel kicked one of his shins as hard as she could. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “My mind wanders when I’m tense.”

  “Shut up, Charles,” Jen said. “Tansy, we’re sorry.”

  “Shutting up,” Charles said.

  “Some of the hurt’s worn off,” Tansy said. “I didn’t think Simon would just leave me, especially after I told him I was pregnant. He seemed happy. So all these years, I’ve wondered what happened to him. When you lose someone like that, you think about them all the time. Did he drown? Did he have amnesia? Did he break a leg, roll down into a hollow, and die slowly because no one could hear him?”

  “He died because someone put a bullet through his skull,” Arnie said. “His death was fast and painless, but I’m sorry all this time has passed without you knowing that.”

  “It’s what she tried to do to you,” Tansy said, “
and—what was his name?—Bertram Wannabee.”

  “Bertram Allarbee,” Arnie said. “I always thought that was a Charlie Brown kind of name. You know, the kind you have to say the first and last half? But he was a brave kid. A brave man, actually. When there’s a bridge named after him, it can just be Allarbee Bridge.”

  Now Tansy was tearing up.

  “I don’t think we’ll know exactly what killed Ann,” Arnie said. “A seizure, maybe, followed by burns and brain trauma. Somehow, her pepper-box gun discharged several times. Who knows why? Could be she had a hallucination, an after-effect caused by those mushrooms.” They all knew he was prevaricating. “I don’t think she could have or would have wanted to live.”

  Arnie was blocking out dreams he had of Ann, leaping, charred and burning, over the wall of the fire pit and running after Claire. When he dreamed about this, the woods caught on fire, and flames roiled around Claire and her house, leaving all of them on the ground like apocalyptic skeletons. Some part of his mind knew he was drawing on Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Humans alone could destroy enough.

  “What happens now?” Tansy asked.

  “We keep digging up Claire’s basement,” Arnie said. “There will have to be an inquest, but we’ll try to keep publicity toned down. And you’ll be busy, involved in other things by then. You should try to find Simon’s family. We can help.”

  Tansy left hand clenched, and she put it to her mouth, staring hard at the daylight to stop herself from crying.

  “We can get in touch with them. They might want to see their grandchild, if the adoptive parents will let them.”

  “They’ll know my mother killed him. Why would they talk to me?” She sounded dubious.

  “They might want to see their grandchild,” Arnie repeated. “And they’ll know your mother helped many people, with the exception of two periods in her life when some kind of disastrous compulsion drove her to act in ways that no one understands.”

  “How will they know that?” Tansy said.

  “We’ll tell them,” Claire told her. “We’ll tell them you tried to prevent her from hurting herself or from hurting anyone else.”