The Lives of Edie Pritchard

by Larry Watson

  “Grandma?”

  Edie gets off her knees and sits back against the door. “Honey,” she says to her granddaughter, “it might be a lot of things but okay isn’t one of them.”

  Lauren nods. She sits down next to her grandmother and puts an arm around her shoulders. Edie grabs and squeezes her granddaughter’s hand.

  Roy comes back in from the balcony. He slides the screen and then the heavy glass door shut, and when it closes it seems as though the room’s breath has stopped. He walks over to Edie and Lauren, who are still sitting on the floor.

  “They drove off,” he says. “For now.”

  “For good,” Lauren says. “Billy’d come back if he could but Jesse won’t stand for it. He’s got all this weird family pride.”

  “Still,” says Roy, “I’ll stay here.” He points to the sofa. “Right there. I’ll be right there.”

  Edie holds her hands out to Roy. “Help me up,” she says.

  He pulls her to her feet.

  “But you can’t stay,” she says.

  “Just for the time being,” he says. “Until we can be sure—”

  “No,” she says, looking up at him. “Don’t you understand? If you don’t leave, I might get used to having you here—needing you here—to feel safe. No, I have to get through the night without you here. If I don’t, I’ll feel like I can’t make it without you here. You or another man. You have to go, Roy. If it doesn’t work . . . Well, then I’ll know.”

  “Edie . . . just tonight.”

  She shakes her head no and pushes him away.

  “I’ll leave the gun.”

  Edie hurries over to the coffee table, picks up the gun—by the barrel, just as Roy carried it last—and carries it to him. She presses it toward him so insistently he can’t help but take it from her hand.

  “You take it,” she says. “Take it. I don’t want it here. I don’t want to see it or touch it ever again. I don’t want to be who I was when I held it in my hand.”

  Roy shakes his head and starts to speak, but Edie puts her hand over his mouth. “Go, Roy. You have to go. Thank you. Thank you so much for everything. For being my brother . . . I know it’s not what you wanted. But thank you.”

  “But, Edie—”

  She steps back and grabs the front of his shirt. “Go,” she says. “Now. Go!” She pulls so hard that Roy can’t help but move toward the door.

  Lauren understands something that he doesn’t. She’s on her feet now, and she opens the door for him. She hugs him and says, “Thank you, Uncle Roy.”

  In his confusion he steps out the door, and as soon as he does Edie closes the door.

  The sound of the deadbolt locking into place is not so different from the sound of a semiautomatic pistol’s slide being pulled back.

  THE NEXT MORNING is a Saturday, and the alarm on Edie’s clock radio is turned off. Nevertheless Edie is awake and out of bed at seven. On her way out to the kitchen to make coffee, she sees the corner of a small piece of paper under the apartment door.

  She picks it up. It’s a business card for a Billings real estate firm, Joseph and Associates, and Carla Linderman is the name of the specific associate on the card. On its back is a handwritten message.

  Edie,

  If you ever need anything, call me. Roy

  406-223-3964

  Edie sighs and shakes her head. She carries the card to the kitchen and puts it in the drawer where she’s placed so many other items she wants to save but has no real place for.

  EDIE DRIVES RIGHT up to the entrance of the Prairie View Mall, though at this hour—minutes before five o’clock—the parking lot is largely deserted.

  Before Lauren gets out of the car, Edie tells her, “I’ll be right here at nine o’clock.”

  “I have to close tonight,” Lauren says, “so I won’t be done till like nine thirty.”

  “I don’t mind waiting.”

  Lauren opens the door and swings those long legs out. Then, just as quickly, she climbs back into the car and slams the door shut. “I can’t, Grandma. I just can’t go in there.”

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you feel well?”

  Lauren shakes her head no.

  Edie reaches out and presses the back of her hand to her granddaughter’s forehead. “You don’t feel warm.”

  “I don’t feel like sick sick. I just hate going in there. I hate-hate-hate it.”

  “Has somebody said something?” Edie’s expression darkens. “Has somebody done something? Have they—”

  Lauren shakes her head furiously. The dreadlocks lash back and forth across her face. “No. No-no-no. You always think something like that. No. It’s just . . . it’s like so boring, Grandma. And people come in and they stare at me like I’m an alien or something.”

  Edie glances at the clock on the Honda’s dashboard. And then she steals an even quicker glance at her granddaughter. At that long sleek body and those ropelike coils of hair. Alien indeed. Edie says, “It’s only for a few hours, Lauren. You can last a few hours, can’t you?”

  “But it’s every day, Grandma. Every fucking day!”

  “I don’t know what to say, honey. It’s only a part-time job. What is it—twenty hours a week? And you’ve been there less than two months.”

  Lauren wipes the tears from her cheeks. “Fuck. My mascara.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” says Edie. “You go in there and see if you can’t get through your shift. If you can’t, call me and I’ll come get you. And tomorrow we can start looking around for something else. Maybe at the bank? In the meantime—”

  “Yeah. Right.” Lauren climbs out of the car and slams the door so hard the car rocks on its springs.

  Edie leans forward and bumps her head over and over against the steering wheel.

  EDIE SIPS HER wine, a rose the color of those wispy clouds in the west that she and Rita look out on from Rita’s balcony.

  “She says she feels like an alien,” Edie says.

  Rita shakes her head. “If she’d cut off those damn curls or whatever she calls them, she’d look like any other white girl wandering around the mall.”

  Edie shrugs helplessly. “I thought she’d have made some friends by now.”

  “Give her time. And a haircut.”

  “I thought . . . Oh fuck it. It doesn’t matter what I thought.” With a few long swallows Edie finishes her wine.

  The screen door makes a metallic scraping sound as it slides open. George Real Bird comes out onto the balcony.

  “Here to watch the sunset?” his mother asks.

  “There’ll be one again tonight? Hot damn.”

  “Smart-ass,” Rita says, but as her son hops up next to her she rests her hand affectionately on his shoulder.

  He’s carrying a liter of Diet Pepsi, and he rests that on the balcony rail as he pulls his squashed pack of Marlboros from the pocket of his shorts.

  Edie asks, “That new leg wasn’t the answer?”

  He smiles at her. “You were really counting on going dancing, weren’t you?”

  “You promised.”

  George pinches a cigarette out of the pack. “I realized,” he says, his tone more serious than the usual banter that goes on between Edie and him, “I didn’t know what kind of dancing you hand in mind. You know, Indian or white. And then I realized it didn’t make a goddamn bit of difference. I don’t know how to do either one. I can’t dance. That’s just the truth. So what the fuck do I need another leg for?”

  Love and anguish illuminate the look that Edie and Rita exchange. It’s a look only parents can share, and like all parents they know to keep the look from their children’s sight.

  THE HEAT HAS come on during the night, and the early morning air in the apartment is redolent of hot dust. Edie shivers as she walks down the hall to the bathroom.

  After she steps from the shower and dries off, she removes the flannel robe from the back of the bathroom door, wraps it around herself, and knots it tightly. She walks to the kitchen with a tu
rbaned towel on her head.

  There on the table is a note, and she steps back in recognition and retreat. Is this who she has become, a woman people would prefer to communicate with in writing rather than addressing their words to her face?

  Hi gramma

  Sorry I had to borrow your car. Please don’t call the police or anybody because you can get it back in a few days. I’ll text you where I leave it. I bet uncle Roy will give you a ride there.

  Billy and I have been texting and we talked a couple times. He really wants to get back together & its going to be different. He and Jesse have gone there separate ways.

  I know you don’t think so but Billy & I are meant to be together so thats what I’m going to do.

  Thank you so so much for everything.

  Love you,

  L

  Carrying the note Edie walks to her granddaughter’s bedroom. The girl’s gone, and the bed is left unmade. The photographs that were stuck in the mirror’s frame are gone too, though the musky odor of Lauren’s perfume lingers in the room.

  Edie walks out onto the balcony. None of the cars in the parking lot look the way they looked the night before. Their windshields and back windows are white with frost, but where her Honda had been parked there is now an empty rectangle of black asphalt. Edie’s sigh is a small, brief cloud in the morning air.

  Back inside, the note still held tightly in her hand, Edie walks into the kitchen. She opens the drawer that’s filled with everything else in her life she can’t quite get rid of. The card with Roy’s telephone number is easy to find, and she carries it and today’s message to the telephone.

  The phone is in her hand. The phone is in her hand . . .

  “Uncle Roy,” she says and laughs a little.

  And then Edie puts the phone back on the hook. She opens the cupboard under the sink and drops both handwritten messages into the garbage can.

  THE WIND BLOWS hard this morning from the northwest, and as it sweeps swiftly across the plains it carries with it cold from the Rockies’ far-off icy heights. It’s that wind that finds Edie as she walks down the hill on her way to work, that wind and nothing else that causes tears to spring to her eyes as she leans hard into every gust.

  Acknowledgments

  Many, many thanks to my agent, PJ Mark, and to my editor, Kathy Pories. Their advice, insight, and commitment to this novel have been invaluable.

  Thanks also to Brunson Hoole, Michael McKenzie, Stephanie Mendoza, Lauren Moseley, and everyone at Algonquin Books. A writer could not be in better hands.

  I’m grateful to copyeditor Robin Cruise for her sharp eye and enthusiasm.

  I’m very fortunate to work with such wise, dedicated professionals.

  Finally, a special thank you to my wife, Susan, to whom this novel is dedicated. She was my inspiration and my test case for all things Edie. I couldn’t have written this book or any other without her support. And I doubt I would have wanted to try.

  Also by larry watson

  As Good as Gone

  Let Him Go

  American Boy

  Sundown, Yellow Moon

  Orchard

  Laura

  White Crosses

  Justice

  Montana 1948

  In a Dark Time

  About the Author

  Raised in Bismarck, North Dakota, Larry Watson is the author of ten critically acclaimed books, including the bestselling Montana 1948. His fiction has been published internationally and has received numerous prizes and awards. His essays and book reviews have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and other periodicals. He and his wife live in Kenosha, Wisconsin. A film adaptation of Watson's novel Let Him Go is currently in production with Kevin Costner and Diane Lane and due to release in 2020.

  Published by

  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  Workman Publishing

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 2020 by Larry Watson.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and

  insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents

  either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA: LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019059066

  eISBN: 978-1-64375-057-6