The Girls

by Lori Lansens

  Convulsions, contractions, like a sneeze, I’d heard a high school girl say once on the bus. Nick stroked my arm, as he kissed me once more, and again. Ruby whined in her sleep, and Nick suddenly stopped and pulled away, as though he’d been caught doing something very, very bad. Ruby didn’t wake. But Nick didn’t kiss me again. I couldn’t look into Nick’s eyes and was grateful for the dark, so he couldn’t see mine. He stood and left without a word. I could not breathe, still reeling as I was, from my petit mort.

  MELODRAMAS MUST BE written at night, as the moon and stars conspire to seduce the imagination to go farther, harder, higher, longer, faster. Yeah, baby. It’s not too much. It’s never too much. You might imagine that the fantasy I had after Nick left was a sexual one, but it wasn’t. It was as narcissistic as any sexual fantasy, as driven by ego, but Nick Todino wasn’t even in it. Maybe melodrama is too tepid a word to describe a fantasy that involves Ruby and me not dying, but having the aneurysm miraculously disappear and going on to be guests on an American television show to promote my surprise bestselling autobiography. In a dramatic turn, we’re reunited with my adopted daughter and our lost mother on national TV. After our appearance on the show, my daughter, and our mother, and Ruby and I decide to get a house together in sunny California, where we live in harmony, despite the preponderance of estrogen.

  (I know. I know. Even for a fantasy, it’s a little over the top.)

  Blame it on the moon.

  What homage to fromage.

  Tomorrow morning we’re going to the farm with a fellow called Gideon, a whisper of a man we met in London at the Museum of Indian Archaeology whom I know Ruby has told you all about. Gideon asked if she could give him some quotes for the book he’s writing about Neutral Indians around the Chatham area, and if he could use some of her site maps and sketches. She just about peed her pants. She did not just about pee her pants when I asked if I could quote her in my book. It made me jealous. Imagine that.

  I’d been thinking how nice it would be to meet another writer, so I was delighted to meet Gideon, who’s had a few journal articles published and wrote a column at the weekly paper in Chatham for a while. (He said he’s seen us at the Leaford Library before, but I don’t remember him.) He and I started talking about writing, and I felt like I did in Slovakia when I realized that Cousin Jerzy was speaking English—someone understands. And, like countrymen in a strange place, we became fast friends, right there in the gift shop, and began a candid discussion about our respective tasks. Gideon described how he wants to ignite a passion for the past in his readers. I could feel his excitement as he talked about his subject, and his deflation when he admitted he was struggling with his nonfictional narrative. He said he wasn’t sure about the structure or the tone. He said he was still trying to find a way in. And here I am, trying to find a way out.

  Nick is driving us all out to the farm. I’m nervous to see him, and excited. I wish I’d never kissed Nick. Or never stopped. What is he thinking? Is he sick about it? Will he even show up in the morning? If he does, I suppose there’s some advantage in not having to confront a person’s expression.

  Ruby and I can’t walk the furrows with Gideon to point spots out directly, not that I’d remember a single location. (We need the stool just to get to the bathroom now. My balance is poor. And Ruby probably wrote about how we had to leave our work at the library last week, and about Roz breaking down and how Lutie had to take her home.) But we’ll be nearby if he has any questions. The lady from the Historical Society, who it turns out has been quite ill, finally called to say go ahead and let ourselves into the museum.

  There’s been a key under the front mat this whole time.

  Dead Men’s Ember

  I feel like a schoolgirl writing in her diary. “We went out to the farm today and drove in the front seat. Nick held my hand the whole way there. I thought Ruby saw, but she didn’t. Or what if she did? I wonder if he’ll kiss me after she falls asleep tonight. Should I ask him? Will he kiss me again if I don’t ask him? He’s coming in an hour! What do I do? Oh my God!”

  The fall has been warm. The villainous sun stole into September and drained the world of its color, the way it bleached a square in the orange shag carpet in the den. The leaves stayed on a full three weeks too long. And the maples went gray this year instead of scarlet. The oaks a shade of putty. The willows a concrete color. And the birch speckled gray, like stone. I missed the fiery sienna, the burst of saffron, the explosion of orange. The leaves turned gray, along with the cars, and the streets, and my gray self, and my gray sister in the blurry gray mirror.

  The shades of gray are gone now too. It’s really only dimensions of dark I see. I’ve been without my vision for a few weeks, but I didn’t tell anyone at first. Not even Nick. I haven’t meant to be a martyr. I’ve just been uncharacteristically optimistic, hoping I might have a reprieve. Like the leaves. Instead it appears there’s some pressure on the optic nerves, which is related to the aneurysm. Or not.

  Today was the first day I felt a chill in the air. A northeasterly wind assaulted me when I opened the door. I felt Ruby grip my shoulder, afraid I might lose my balance and fall. “Cold,” I said, and that was all.

  I couldn’t tell by his tone if he regretted what happened last night. “You’re gonna need gloves” was all Nick said. He helped us to the car, which he’d warmed up for a full ten minutes before knocking for Ruby and me. Even if he hates me, and hates what happened between us, I am thrilled to be near him. And I don’t care how pathetic that sounds.

  Ruby was excited about showing Gideon the farm. She thought it was not out of the realm of possibility that he might find something in one of the fields or near the creek if he walked that way. If she could have, she would have planted an artifact in his field of vision the way she used to do for me. Bless her cotton socks.

  Nick had packed the backseat with extra blankets, foldout chairs, thermoses of hot chocolate and of tea, and a cooler with sangwiches, leaving just enough room for one person. “The professor can sit back there,” he’d said.

  Then, strange thing, we got into the car, and Ray Price was crooning on the stereo. Ray Price. Why Ray Price? If Nick had read this book, if ever I had told him about Uncle Stash’s fondness for Ray Price, I might have thought it was romantic. But I hadn’t told Nick, and Ruby surely wouldn’t have. I felt myself flooding with warmth, and I remembered the watering can in the bathtub, how Aunt Lovey used to wash our hair when Ruby and I were children. I felt the two of them beside me, perfectly, like love. Maybe Uncle Stash and Aunt Lovey were coming to the farm, I thought. Or maybe it was God.

  At the bus station in Chatham, Nick wanted to stay in the car, but Ruby insisted we wait on the platform, like civilized people. I felt Ruby stiffen when Gideon stepped off the bus in Chatham.

  “Something’s wrong,” Ruby whispered.

  “What?”

  “He looks mad, or in pain,” Ruby answered.

  “Must be that pole up his ass,” Nick said.

  “Be nice, Nick,” I begged.

  Ruby was right. Gideon was in pain. And mad too. He explained from behind the stack of blankets in the backseat, as we drove the winding river road, that he’d twisted his ankle, racing to answer a knock at the door that morning, and had been handed a notice to vacate by his landlady. He complained that the place was a dump and said he was lucky to be out of it, but was in despair about where to live, because of the deadline on his book and his inability to write it. He described the black mold on the tiles in the bathroom shower, and wondered if the spores had damaged his brain, and if that’s why he felt foggy when he sat down to write. (I never thought of that—blame the spores!)

  Ruby surprised me by asking Nick to take the long way around Big Bear Line, because my sister doesn’t usually like to drive a foot farther than she needs to. Then I realized it was because she didn’t want to pass the site of our accident. I was glad for her forethought. I’d lost my own.

  I couldn’t watch the landsc
ape roll past, but I could imagine it, and even with the windows closed I could smell it—the death of this present season in the rich black loam, stronger as we got closer to home, but behind the scent of dying the sweetness of spring, and the green smell of summer, and fall and winter again, and the fusion of all the seasons that ever were, and ever will be, uniting in the earth and air around us.

  Finally, I knew, by the certain pattern of ruts in the road, that we had reached Rural Route One. Nick put his hand over mine, weighty and warm. I felt like a bride as we pulled into the driveway of the Leaford Museum. I imagined that my wedding ring was antique white gold.

  I was relieved that I was spared the sight of the old orange farmhouse across the road and kitty-corner to the museum. I noticed that Ruby chose not to look either. I shudder to think what’s become of it and prefer to keep a picture of the place not from now, or from our last visit, or even from ten years ago, but from long before our tenure here, before the pine table and the deadly consumption. I like to think of the farmhouse in its first incarnation, with the backdrop of trees that were clear-cut for crops, Rosaire and Abey eating peaches on the porch.

  “Is Mr. Merkel around?” I asked. The Leaford Museum is built on a slight rise. You can see the farmhouse from there, and the Merkels’ cottage too.

  Ruby paused. “I don’t see anyone. Looks like the truck’s there, though.”

  Gideon decided he wanted to see Ruby’s collection in the Leaford Museum before he ventured out into the windy fields with her map.

  There was much ado getting Ruby and me arranged in the stool from the trunk, and we needed more help than usual maneuvering the uneven walkway that leads to the museum porch. Once there, Nick bent to collect the key from under the mat, and we all went inside.

  I breathed the dust, inhaled the past, and felt Ruby’s heart flutter beside me.

  “Oh,” Ruby breathed. “Oh.”

  “You found all this?” Gideon asked, incredulous. “Without equipment? Without digging?”

  I felt Ruby blush.

  “You found all this?”

  Ruby took a moment, and I felt her scanning the length of the cases. “Yeah,” she said, sounding somewhat astonished herself. “I found all this.”

  We hadn’t been to the museum since Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash died. Like me, recalling the splendor of the farm less than brilliantly, I think Ruby had forgotten how hugely impressive the artifacts were, stretching from wall to wall, like the pages of a book telling some wonderful tale.

  “That’s some collection,” Nick remarked, and I swelled with pride, realizing that all this time Ruby had been climbing her own mountain and had long ago reached the summit. “Quite a legacy. Quite a gift.”

  I felt Ruby blush. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess.”

  For all the chattering Gideon had done in the car, he’d fallen silent, gazing upon the collection of Indian artifacts arranged on plum-colored velvet in the wide glass cases. I couldn’t see the displays, but I felt Ruby lead us to the vast assortment of things she’d found, the mortars and pestles, the curved ax handles, the grinding stones, the beads of wampum, and I heard Gideon’s deep mouth breathing as he moved slowly from object to object. With each exhalation, he seemed to be muttering, “Wow.”

  “Want me to say what everything looks like, Rosie?” Ruby asked, careful not to sound pitying.

  “No,” I whispered.

  I could feel that Nick had moved away from us and walked to the other wall of the museum, in the direction of the life-size enlargement of Ruby and me, at three, under which the sign reads “Rose and Ruby Darlen. Born joined at the head on the day of the tornado—July 30, 1974—at St. Jude’s Hospital, Leaford. Rose and Ruby are one of the rarest forms of conjoined twins—craniopagus. They share an essential vein and can never be separated. In spite of their situation, the girls enjoy a normal and productive life here in Leaford. Picture taken by Stash Darlen, the girls’ uncle.”

  Like Ruby and Gideon, who were wandering in their way, and Nick, who was still studying the photo, I wandered, the way people do, to a more thoughtful place in my mind, unburdened by the laws of gravity. This wandering took me on a journey across the road to the old orange farmhouse to recall once more, as I have in these pages, my life with my sister attached to my head. I crossed the bridge that stretched over the creek, where I could see Ruby and me sitting on the edge, my legs hanging over, swinging a little. Just a couple of sisters waiting for a heron. I moved a little to the right, and glimpsed my daughter there too, a specter sitting with her back to mine, dangling her long legs over the side of the bridge, elegant in spite of her teenage posture. “Good-bye,” I whispered. She looked over her shoulder and smiled. I wandered farther through the fields. Nothing stirred but the mice at my feet as I wandered in circles, lost in the corn. I confess I was looking for my mother. Then, out of the fields and back to the creek where we were baptized and nearly drowned, I looked down and saw Larry’s red truck in the muck, and was struck by an impulse to rescue it. I felt the rush of warm water on my head, and wondered if I might faint for real. I flailed my arms, reaching out for Nick.

  But Nick wasn’t there.

  “Whoa!” Gideon cried, stumbling beneath our conjoined weight, not accustomed to handling our proportions the way Nick is after all these many months.

  “Sorry,” Ruby and I said at the same time.

  Nick was quickly at our side. He took our weight from the wispy man, saying, “What the hell, Rose? What the hell?”

  “Just a little dizzy. It’s gone now,” I lied.

  “Maybe we should go,” Nick said.

  “No,” Ruby and I said in chorus with Gideon. Which was funny.

  The feeling of dizziness stayed with me, and that’s why I did not believe when I saw her face in the window that I was seeing what I saw. I was certain I was seeing an image from my imagination. Blurry, and in color, Cathy Merkel’s face.

  “Mrs. Merkel?” I said to myself.

  “What?” Ruby asked.

  Nick swiveled to see where I was looking. There was nobody at the window.

  “I think I can see, Nick,” I said, but just as I said it, a wash of gray, like a wave, like a cloud over the sun, covered my field of vision once more.

  When I heard her voice, I assumed it was part of the same hallucination. It’s tiresome to be confused. (Poor Nonna.) And terrible to be blind.

  I don’t know if Ruby saw her first, or if Nick did, or Gideon. The men wouldn’t have known who she was. And, at any rate, wouldn’t have known her name.

  “Mrs. Merkel?”

  No response.

  “Mrs. Merkel?” I asked, because I felt her presence, and I was assured of my sixth sense now, just as if I could hear her or see her. (I continue to debate myself over my vision of her at the window. Something my pressured brain constructed? Or did I regain my sight, even briefly, and could I again?)

  “I didn’t recognize the car,” Mrs. Merkel began, her voice sounding hollow in the large quiet room. “The lady from the Historical Society asked me to keep an eye. So I thought I better come over and see what.”

  “It’s Nick’s car,” I said.

  “I’m Nick,” Nick said. I felt him thrust out his hand and heard Mrs. Merkel clear her throat. She was uncomfortable with such a gesture, I knew. Mrs. Merkel greeted people, men and women, Uncle Stash, even her own husband, without a smile or a word, but with a subtle dip of her chin and leveling of her eyes.

  “This is Gideon, Mrs. Merkel,” Ruby said. “He’s a friend of ours from London. He’s interested in the Native stuff.”

  “Hi, ma’am,” Gideon said, though I’m guessing he barely looked away from the dusty cases of rare artifacts. “Look at the carving on this bone sucking tube,” I heard him murmur.

  Ruby and I had never embraced our neighbor and didn’t expect to do so now. We also did not expect her to mention my aneurysm or express her sorrow about our imminent demise. We certainly did not expect Cathy Merkel to cry, the way Sherm
an Merkel did in the children’s section of the Leaford Library.

  “She started when she was about seven years old,” Mrs. Merkel said, not like a proud mother, more matter-of-factly.

  We hadn’t expected her to say that.

  “My husband said she could see things he couldn’t,” Mrs. Merkel continued. “He said she could see things no one could have seen. Like she was some kind of a divining rod for these things.”

  I felt my sister blush. “It’s true,” I said.

  “I just looked hard, that’s all,” Ruby said. She was trembling. Maybe it was pride.

  “Sherman’s digging a new shed in around the same place you found the cooking pots and whatnot,” Mrs. Merkel said.

  “Oh,” Ruby said.

  “Next week.”

  “Oh,” Ruby said again.

  I could feel and hear in the squeaking floorboards Gideon move beside us, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Wonder if I could help, ma’am? Can I help your husband dig?”

  There was a long pause, as Mrs. Merkel seemed to be sizing the small man up. “S’ppose. What about you, Ruby? You like to come out and watch Mr. Merkel dig?”

  “Sure,” Ruby said.

  Gideon, realizing his enthusiasm might have been off-putting, mentioned casually, “The truth is I’m a professional, ma’am. I could assist, just in case anything historically significant —”

  “Mrs. Merkel,” she said. “Call me Mrs. Merkel.”

  “I could assist your husband, Mrs. Merkel. I could give you my number and you could call me in London. Or I’ll give Rose and Ruby my number, and you can call them to call me.”