Valentine

by Elizabeth Wetmore

  Mrs. Whitehead walks to the kitchen sink, pulls the curtain back, and gazes out the small window. So it is, she says and tugs the curtain firmly closed. So it is. She studies her cigarette for a few seconds and flicks the ash in the sink. She picks up a glass and pours some iced tea from a pitcher on the counter.

  Are you sick? Casey asks, swaying from side to side, her long skirt nearly brushing the kitchen floor.

  Nope, Mrs. Whitehead says. She takes a sip of her tea and stands looking at the glass. Her hair is lank and close to her head, her eyes luminous and ringed with shadows. It is not unlike the way Debra Ann’s mother sometimes looked when she was having a bad week, when Debra Ann would follow her from room to room, asking questions. Do you want to hear a joke? Do you want to watch some TV or sit in the backyard, or lie down in your bed while I read a book to you? If it was a bad enough week, Ginny might stop talking altogether. She might spend hours in the bathtub, turning the tap back on to keep the water hot, slowly turning the pages of her National Geographic, sighing loud enough that D. A. could hear her through the closed door. Today, Aimee’s mother looks like a reed in a windstorm, Debra Ann thinks, hanging on, hoping she can bend enough to survive.

  Maybe I am sick. Mrs. Whitehead lets out a short, barking laugh. Maybe I am just bone-tired.

  Aimee looks at the other girls and they lift their hands, palms up. What’s wrong, Mama?

  She tells the girls that Judge Rice handed down the sentence yesterday afternoon. A year’s probation, she says, and five thousand dollars to that girl’s family.

  The girls all gasp. Five thousand dollars? D. A. says. That’s a fortune.

  Yeah, Casey says, he’ll feel that in his pocketbook.

  Girls, Mrs. Whitehead says, stop it right now. Y’all don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.

  Justice is served, Debra Ann calls out. Ha! Lauralee laughs, and they all high-five each other.

  Oh, shut up. All of you girls shut up.

  One year of probation, she says, and her voice is a rupture. Five thousand dollars. Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

  If a diamondback had just slithered out from under the kitchen table, the girls could not look more shocked. Aimee takes two steps back with her hands in the air, as if her mother might shoot her. Mama, that’s heresy.

  Oh honey, it is not. It’s blasphemy. And really, who the fuck cares?

  She hurls her glass of iced tea across the kitchen where it slams against the wall and shatters spectacularly. Rivulets of iced tea roll down the flowered wallpaper and gather on the linoleum. The baby begins to scream from the other end of the house, and she slides to the floor as if somebody stole her backbone. I don’t know what to do with myself, she says.

  D. A. doesn’t know what to do either, none of them do, but they are old enough to know it isn’t right to stare. So they turn away, four girls pivoting almost in unison to face the wall. They wait, and when some minutes have passed and Mrs. Whitehead still has not moved from her place on the kitchen floor, Debra Ann picks up the phone to call Mrs. Shepard. She listens and then taps the receiver a few times. Phone’s dead, she says. Wind must have knocked out the line.

  You’re wrong, Aimee’s mama says. It was just working.

  No, ma’am. It’s out now.

  Aimee’s blue eyes are huge and her cheeks are white as a sheet of paper. What are we going to do?

  The baby’s scream pierces the air and disintegrates into a steady, mournful wail that makes D. A. want to clamp her hands over her ears. I’m going across the street to get Mrs. Shepard, she says. She walks over to Aimee and hugs her tightly. I’m going to Penwell with my friend, but I’ll be back soon.

  After Debra Ann has gone, Aimee kneels next to her mother. Can you get up off the floor, Mama? Maybe have something to drink? But Mary Rose keeps her hands pressed stiffly against her thighs. I don’t think so, honey.

  And when Mrs. Shepard walks through the door a few minutes later, still wearing her house slippers, she looks around the kitchen, her eyes taking in the broken glass, the iced tea all over the wall and floor, and the three girls leaning uneasily against the doorframe while the baby howls like someone has set him on fire. Mrs. Shepard claps her hands sharply together. You girls go get that goddamn baby and take him to Aimee’s room. She bends down so she’s eye level with Mary Rose, who is crying so hard her whole body shakes with the strength of it.

  None of the girls have ever seen a grown woman cry this hard, not even at a funeral, and they are all too young to recognize it as rage.

  Mrs. Shepard rubs the younger woman’s arm and rests one hand in the center of her back. Okay, she says, you’re going to stand up now and come sit down at the kitchen table.

  Aimee’s mother shakes her head.

  Honey, I can’t bend over like this for one more minute. Now get up.

  Without a word, Mary Rose stands and walks over to the kitchen table. She sits down and lays her head against the oilcloth, her shoulders moving in time with her sobs. Corrine wipes the tea off the wall and sweeps the glass into a corner. Just for the time being, she says, we’ll clean it up in a few minutes. After she pours two glasses of iced tea and carries them to the table, she looks over and sees the girls still standing in the doorway with their mouths open. Why are y’all still here? Corrine says. Go get that goddamned baby before he bursts a blood vessel.

  The girls walk down the hall to Aimee’s bedroom, the wind shaking the house like it wants to fling them out the windows and into the yard. They sit on the floor and make goo-goo eyes at the baby, and Casey suggests they play O Mighty Isis because Isis can master the wind, and Lauralee says they ought to play Incredible Hulk, because he can turn his rage into a force for good. Aimee doesn’t want to play anything. She just sits and looks from her baby brother to the window, and back again. She tells the other girls she has been thinking about probation—what it means, or what she thinks it means. Dale Strickland can still go anywhere he pleases, he can eat ice cream whenever he wants, and go see a football game. What about Glory Ramírez? What happens to her? And what about them?

  Half an hour will pass before Corrine comes into Aimee’s room with a bottle for the baby. She looks around their little circle, three pale, round faces and the baby grabbing at his sister’s hair. Where the hell is Debra Ann? she asks them. Why isn’t she in here with you girls?

  Corrine

  Between the wind blowing and the baby crying, between air filled with enough dust to suffocate a bull and Mary Rose refusing to open her goddamned curtains, not even for two minutes to let some sunlight in, Corrine couldn’t have heard or seen Jesse and D. A. pulling the garage door open and backing the truck out. Now she stands on the dusty concrete with clenched fists and sweaty armpits, staring at the empty spot where Potter’s truck used to be. All that remains is a puddle of fresh motor oil.

  Mary Rose runs across the street, still buttoning her blouse, purse knocking against her hip bone. Her shoelaces are untied and she is not wearing socks. When she sees Corrine standing in the empty garage, she stops abruptly. Where is Potter’s truck? Where’s Debra Ann?

  I don’t know. Still hung over from the salty dogs, Corrine presses her fingers so hard against her eyelids that she sees stars. She tries to recall the last time she sat in the truck. When did she last listen to Bob Wills on the radio and shift into neutral before turning the key and hoping for the nerve to stay put for as long as it took? When was the last time she stared at the gauges for a minute or two before sighing and turning the truck off and going inside to fix herself a glass of iced tea? Two nights ago. And then, as always, she left the key in the ignition.

  Mary Rose hurries into Corrine’s kitchen and holds the phone receiver to one ear. Propping the door open with her foot, she quickly taps the switch hook, listens for a couple of seconds, and taps it again. How much gas is in the tank? she calls through the open door.

  Less than half, I think. Corrine scans the garage. Everything is in its usual place, other than the empty space
where Potter stored his tent. Boxes of Christmas ornaments are labeled and lined up on the shelf next to the rest of their camping gear. His rakes and shovels are stacked in a corner, covered with a fresh layer of gray dust, and just like that, Corrine sees him walking across the backyard with some animal lying in the center of the shovel blade—a garter snake or mouse or sparrow. She sees him digging a hole, a goddamned grave for every little creature. He should have outlived me, she thinks. He was so much better at life.

  Corrine walks to the center of the garage and turns in a slow circle, her gaze lifting and falling as she again scans the room. Potter’s truck is gone, the phones are out, and although the dust storm has passed, the air is still so thick with particulate and heat that her lungs feel as if they’re caught in a steel press. The puddle of fresh oil again catches her eye, and then she sees the piece of paper lying next to it on the concrete.

  Mary Rose steps out of the kitchen and stands with one arm outstretched as Corrine hands the page to her. It is a napkin from the strip club, folded in half, and although the words beneath the logo are slightly smeared, the women can make out the words Penwell and gas station and, on the other side of the napkin, a name. Jesse Belden. Rocking slightly, with one arm folded across her belly, Mary Rose leans forward until her hair scrapes the floor. We have to go get her.

  She runs back to the kitchen and starts pounding the phone switch so hard Corrine can hear it in the garage. When Mary Rose returns—still no phone, goddamn it—her face is the color of old embers, or the fine gray dust covering Potter’s workbench. That’s out near our ranch, Mary Rose says. Her blue eyes go flat. I know who took her.

  You know this man, Mr. Belden? Corrine glances at the note. Debra Ann spoke of him once or twice, but I thought he was one of her imaginary friends.

  That’s not his name, Mary Rose says flatly. I know who he is. She runs back across the street and disappears into the house. Less than five minutes later, she is standing in Corrine’s driveway, rifle clutched in one hand, several loose cartridges in the other. I told the girls to stay put and call Suzanne Ledbetter the minute the phones are back on, she says.

  Corrine holds out both hands, palms up. We need to put that in my trunk.

  Mary Rose shakes her head. We have to go.

  Drops of sweat roll down her forehead and her hair lies flat against her neck. Corrine is standing less than a foot from her neighbor, close enough to catch a whiff of grease and body odor, and to see that her pupils are enormous, an eclipse ringed by her pale blue irises. We don’t want to scare anybody, Corrine says, and I have my pistol in the glove box if we need it.

  He’s going to kill her, Mary Rose says, and for a moment Corrine thinks she may be right. But D. A. has seemed fine this summer, purposeful and busy, she has even stopped pulling out her eyebrows. If this man hurt her in any way, there were no signs. And there is something else eating at Corrine—a note Debra Ann showed her earlier in the summer. Thank you for helping me. I am great full. Where’s this from, Corrine had asked the girl, and D. A. said he was part of her summer project.

  We don’t know anything, she tells Mary Rose. Debra Ann said he was her friend.

  Well, what the hell does she know? Mary Rose shouts. She’s a little girl and he’s a—her voice breaks and goes hollow—monster.

  Bastard, Mary Rose spits the word out, as if she’s just swallowed a glass filled with vinegar. The rifle is clenched in her hand, knuckles streaked white and red. She is lit with rage and purpose.

  Deadly, Corrine thinks. She takes a deep breath and tries to sound calm. We don’t yet know what the situation is. Debra Ann might be running away.

  What in the hell is wrong with you? Mary Rose looks at Corrine as if the old woman has lost her mind. Strickland wanted Aimee, but he got D. A. instead. And it’s my fault.

  Whatever air Corrine has wrestled into her lungs disappears completely, and she reaches toward Potter’s workbench. When she shoves aside the gardening tools and presses her hand flat against the table, the dust and cobwebs that have gathered over the long spring and summer take flight. Heat and dirt again fill her lungs and she coughs into her shoulder. I can’t do this, she thinks.

  Let me put that weapon in my trunk and I’ll drive us out to Penwell. She stands up straight and reaches for her neighbor’s hand, but Mary Rose jerks away from her. Whose side are you on, old woman?

  Please, Corrine says. Again she reaches out, but Mary Rose is already running back across the street, where she leans the rifle against her car and digs wildly through her purse. When she finds her keys, she grabs Old Lady and sets it on the passenger seat. She drives off without so much as a glance in Corrine’s direction.

  * * *

  The Whitehead Ranch is three miles south of Penwell. Close enough to walk to, as Glory Ramírez did, and if you had walked those miles with her, you might have grabbed onto the barbed-wire fence that separates the railroad track from the makeshift grave, a single row of large caliche stones piled one on top of the other, and the smaller, unmarked grave that is only a few yards away—a dog that belonged to one of the workers, an infant killed by fever, a small child who got bit by a rattlesnake. And if you weren’t paying attention, or you were looking behind you, you might have fallen over the pile of rocks, as Glory did. You might have watched the wind move through the grass with the same dread in your belly. You might have looked back at the place you had walked away from and opened your mouth, only to find you were unable to speak. It is at the smaller grave where Glory sat down and picked the gravel from the palm of her hand, and it is there Jesse Belden hoists D. A. Pierce onto his shoulders and braves those wild grasses still being whipped and tugged by the last of the dust storm, so she can see the gravesite she’s been telling him about all summer.

  * * *

  Corrine is an unrepentant leadfoot, accustomed to going at least twenty miles over the speed limit even when she’s in no particular hurry. Now she drives down the I-20 like death itself is chasing her. The speedometer’s needle trembles between eighty and eight-five miles an hour, but Mary Rose’s white sedan is moving faster, and the distance between the two cars grows until the younger woman is at least a half mile ahead.

  With the storm moving south at ten miles an hour, the women drive into a cloud of red dirt and bone-colored caliche dust. As they approach Penwell, the wind turns fierce and Corrine’s car begins to shake. The motion roils her stomach, reminding her that she has not eaten today, that she is thirsty, that she drank too much last night and every night since Potter died, that she is an old woman completely unprepared to stop the world from coming apart at the seams.

  When they were standing in Corrine’s driveway and Mary Rose spat out that word—bastard—her voice was flat as the land Corrine is looking at now, and her heart fell to her feet. She has heard this tone of voice a few times in her life, usually but not always from a man or group of men. And although Mary Rose is angry and afraid, and there’s a little girl driving around with a man they don’t know, it occurs to Corrine why Mary Rose’s tone of voice sounds so familiar.

  It is not the ginned-up, high-pitched rage you hear when a crowd burns a book or throws a rock through a window or plants a kerosene-soaked cross in somebody’s yard and sets it ablaze. The flatness of Mary Rose’s speech, the hollow affect, the cold and steady tone of voice—all are fear and rage transformed into wrath. Hers is the voice of someone whose mind is made up. All that’s left to do is wait for the little spark that will justify what is about to happen next. All her life Corrine has watched this poison move through her students and their parents, through men sitting at the bar or in the bleachers, through churchgoers and neighbors and the town’s fathers and mothers. She has watched her own kith and kin pour this poison into their best glassware, spoon it onto the plates and bowls their ancestors hauled in wagons from Georgia and Alabama, all while proclaiming that they worked for everything they ever got and nobody ever gave them nothing, they earned it, living and dying in that refinery, in t
hose fields, and they can’t do a goddamn thing about the people who control the purse strings and hand over their paychecks, who can put them out of work with a wink and a nod, but they sure can point a finger at somebody else. If they say it long enough, in enough different ways, they might stop seeing the child of God standing on the other side of those words, or buckling under the awful weight of them. Whatever gets you through the night, or helps you turn your back so you can keep up the lie. Whatever lets you light the match or throw the rope over a strong branch, and still be home in time for dinner and the football game. And while Mary Rose maybe has better reason than most of these fools and sinners to open the door for unbridled wrath, Corrine also knows this: one way or another, it will eventually kill you. But goddamn, you can do some damage on your way out the door.

  Corrine presses the accelerator and tries to close the gap between her car and Mary Rose’s. At ninety-five, her Lincoln shakes and roars like a jet. When Mary Rose slows down to make the sharp turn onto the access road and then guns the engine, what feels like an acre of dust is thrown onto Corrine’s windshield. She slams on the brake and slides onto the dirt road with one last look in the rearview mirror, and for the first time in her life she wishes that a state trooper would put down his newspaper or lunch and pay attention to her for one blessed minute.

  It is nearly three o’clock, less than an hour since Corrine stepped into her garage and well past the time of day when she mixes up her first whiskey and iced tea and heads for the front porch. When her hands begin to shake, another reminder that she has absolutely no business being out here, she laughs and beats her fist against the steering wheel. She should have driven directly to the police station, or stopped by the 7-Eleven and asked if their phone was working. All she wants—all she has wanted since Potter died—is to be left alone, to slowly drink and smoke herself into the sweet hereafter. But here she is, an old lady with busted lungs and a dead husband, driving all over hell’s half acre in a Lincoln Continental, going to save the world. It is so ridiculous that Corrine knocks her fist against her forehead and laughs until tears draw streaky lines through the dirt on her face. Well shit, she thinks. Here I am.