Driftless

by David Rhodes

  AS OLIVIA WAITED FOR HER SISTER TO RETURN FROM HER WALK with the dog, she became less excited about discovering a healthy connection between her brain and her right foot. She had been trained by experience to be cautious in assessing the possibility that she might find release from her disease. How many times in the past had she and others been encouraged to hope that her condition would improve? Disappointments had followed discouragements like a caravan of lame, dusty mules.

  Never again, she resolved. I’ve been tricked by hope before.

  She would keep quiet until she had something trustworthy to report.

  So when Violet returned with the dog and a bread bag filled with watercress, Olivia said nothing. Nor did she speak when for the first time she was able to move her other foot—even when she began to feel the kind of pain in her lower back, hips, thighs, knees, calves, ankles, and feet that any person might feel after years of atrophy.

  Instead she complained, truthfully enough, of diarrhea, and Violet took her to the Grange Clinic, where in the privacy of the examination room she moved her feet for the doctor.

  Dr. Fleckmann, an aging general practitioner, arranged for a week of tests, at the end of which two specialists from Madison with half the alphabet marching after the names on their shirt pins explained to Olivia that she had been misdiagnosed in earlier years. The symptoms commonly associated with multiple sclerosis had instead issued from an undetected spirochetal bacterium. Prolonged doses of oxytetracycline, the primary antibiotic in the coffee tin, had been effective in beginning to counteract it. They recommended a more narrowly prescribed medication with fewer gastrointestinal side effects and returned her to the care of Dr. Fleckmann.

  Still suspicious of her long-term prospects, Olivia withheld this news from her sister.

  But she was anxious to tell someone about the wild possibility of not being perpetually incapacitated, and Wade Armbuster eagerly agreed to protect her secret and assist in strengthening her neglected muscles. Every weekday after work at the cheese plant, he drove Olivia to a deserted county park, and in a secluded glen surrounded by hawthorn and quaking aspen she began the arduous task of re-learning how to stand, balance, and walk.

  Her rehabilitation was greatly assisted by the exercise of her iron will. Previously confined to the playground of her home personality, Olivia took an almost sadistic delight in forcing her body to comply with her wishes. Fueled by the unholy anger of nearly a lifetime of needless invalidism, she fought to recover her wholeness. She interpreted pain through its secondary attributes and viewed fatigue as an illusion to be overcome. She tasted her own blood, relished the flavor, and improved quickly.

  Unfortunately, her physical advancement was so unconscionably rapid that it outpaced her ability to adjust to it. Her thoughts could not keep up. First, there was the anger, and from that cup she drank deeply and frequently. For years she had been imprisoned in beds, chairs, utilitarian clothes, and ugly, oversized shoes, when all she really needed was a common medicine that could be purchased by the pound. All those interminable hours of staring at ceilings and walls, longing for health!

  How she hated those memories.

  She had been robbed of her youth. And though she might succeed now in winning something back—some last, fleeting taste of normalcy before creaking middle age and eventually imbecility captured her—still nothing could ever save her youth, which, unredeemed, hung about her neck like a murdered child.

  Her spoiled past was a terrible thing to contemplate, yet she felt compelled to stare into this fetid heritage as though to find salvation in revulsion.

  She felt as if she had spent most of her life imprisoned in a cold cellar only to learn that the cellar door had never been locked. Now, standing in the outside stairwell, she wondered how she could ever walk fully into the bright front yard after her grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, uncles, and aunts had all died waiting for her to come out. Their absence was more palpable than any presence, and it often seemed better to return to the cellar.

  To be healed without their gathered approval seemed unthinkable.

  There were so many people to hate, beginning with the doctors. Fiends, warlocks and witches of the black arts! Why hadn’t they known what to do?

  She thought of all the people she suspected of blaming her—who looked upon her illness as lack of faith and her infirmity as cowardice. How could she endure the memories of those smug faces? Their condemnation had been so convincing she had even come to fear her poor health was somehow justified—not because of anything she had done but because of who she was. Feeling bad had convicted her of being bad. She had blamed herself for something she had had no more control over than she had over Earth’s orbit.

  It was a fucking infection, Wade said.

  At night she dreamed that all the violence of Armageddon had been taped to her body and hidden beneath a yellow raincoat. Just when all of Job’s friends gathered around to examine her suffering, she yanked the cord and sat bolt upright in bed, her fists shaking, holding back a scream loud enough to crystallize blood sugar for miles around.

  And there was one person with whom she was most incurably enraged—for whom there could never be forgiveness, someone who should have known better.

  Violet.

  The tiny, stemless indigo- and white-blossomed flowers were just beginning to grow, spreading like scattered necklaces through the park’s mowed grass, and Olivia was walking on them, crushing them beneath her feet, her muscles and bones growing stronger.

  At night, exhausted, she ate meals in enormous proportions, washed down with plastic tumblers of raw milk.

  “Land sakes, Olivia, you must have a tapeworm. There’s nothing left over for the dog’s leftovers.”

  Olivia’s eyes seethed.

  “Here now, if your little outings with Wade are going to make you frown all the time so much, then don’t go. It’s not like you couldn’t find something more useful to do. Yes, Trixie, I’ll be right there. Don’t carry on so. Land sakes, there’s not enough hours in the day’s hours.”

  It soon became clear that Olivia had tied a knot she did not know how to undo. Before she was ready for it she had a nearly fully functioning body, yet had said nothing to her sister. She had trapped herself into pretending to be an invalid inside her own home.

  The real problem with accepting her new health—the one that kept her lying mute and unmoving while her sister bathed her, dressed her, prepared her meals, washed her clothes, and tucked her into bed—was what she would do about Violet. What would Violet do without her to take care of? Violet needed her to be sick, and she needed to be sick to keep Violet.

  Olivia began to fear that Violet, on her own, would discover her secret. She called Dr. Fleckmann to remind him of the confidential nature of doctor-patient relationships and discontinued her afternoon outings with Wade, despite his loud protests. (As her body had grown more functional, his passion for her had increased, and the exercises he devised for her rehabilitation were, well, they were not very helpful.)

  She didn’t feel she could live without Violet, yet she was sure Violet would leave the instant she learned of her new wellness. Whatever love Violet felt for her surely had more to do with her being sick than with her being Olivia.

  She also began to fear the infection would somehow return and any declaration of health could be shown to be false. So it might be prudent to keep quiet a little longer.

  Imprisoned in her psychological jail—a fort that had locked out its own soldiers—Olivia had never been so unhappy. There were no longer any safe thoughts, only anger and anger’s silent partner, fear. Each night she struggled with these two, weaving them into a fabric that would allow her to walk away from them, and each morning she unraveled the work and set them free.

  One night in early June as Violet slept in her bedroom at the end of the hall, Olivia could not suppress a desire to explore the upstairs.

  As Violet breathed heavily, Olivia silently rolled through the living room and pa
rked the wheelchair at the bottom of the steep staircase. Wearing corduroy slippers and a bathrobe, she gripped the sturdy wooden banister and drew herself to her feet.

  As she climbed slowly, the creaking of boards proved unexpectedly alarming in the otherwise dark stillness, but these moments were offset by the remembered smell of old varnish, mold, stale air, and her grandparents. Memories ignited with each seven-inch rise in elevation. Ten minutes later, standing firmly on the second- floor landing, she inhaled deeply and looked down the hall, where moonlight entered the four-paned, south-facing window. She reached for the light, thought better of using it, and let her fingers trace fondly over the shape of the switch, the edges rounded by repeated contact with the fingers of her family.

  Following a dubious faith in wood groaning less near walls, Olivia traveled down the hallway, supporting herself when possible by pieces of furniture and door frames. It was an enchanted journey—a reverie in which the thoughts of her ancestors, remnants of their souls, seemed imbedded in the walls like scribbled prayers tucked into the Temple Mount. Reaching the window, she looked into the moonlit yard and was amazed at how the high view rendered the familiar scene foreign.

  She then opened the door at the end of the hall slowly and stepped inside her parents’ bedroom, where giant magnolias on the wallpaper greeted her like familial faces from the world beyond. An ocean of loss broke upon the shores of memory and her heart rushed to inform her of its beating. She crept further in and rested her hands on the walnut bed, marveling at its solemn, diminutive size. Now a resting place for old quilts and boxes of craft supplies, the tiny bed seemed extraordinarily incapable of having once held her mother and father, yet the logic of its having done so remained unimpeachable.

  Feeling with her hands around the bed, she reached her mother’s dressing table. When she was a child, it had always seemed like a personal shrine, and she drifted into the memory of her mother’s face—combing her hair, sucking color from a shiny tube of lipstick, and making her eyes dark, her mirrored reflection so serene, so filled with graceful dignity, so unapproachably goddesslike that Olivia despaired, even now, of finding a maturity of her own.

  She removed the rolls of fabric from the embroidered stool, carefully set them on the floor, and seated herself before the mirror. In the dim light she could only make out the outline of her head, where tufts of hair curled outward like dark flames. Behind her, the magnolia faces loomed larger than life, and in an instant of unpremeditated bravery she reached out and turned on the lamp.

  The plastic-against-metal click exploded the room in fulgent light, and Olivia, unprepared, noted three instantaneous events. The glare could not be contained in the room and raced out of the window and crashed against the oak tree in a blaze of bright leaves; her eyes looked owl-like into their own reflection; and she heard Violet’s bed making noises in the room below. She reached to turn the lamp off and succeeded only after knocking a cardboard box to the floor, where it landed in a solid phalummmp.

  Olivia closed her eyes and prayed she would not be discovered. She confessed to every sin she had ever committed, knowingly and unknowingly, and promised never again to disturb the dead.

  When she heard footsteps mounting the stairs she did not know where to turn; her heart was beating so loudly she could hardly listen. She thought of hiding beneath the bed but was sure there was not enough room. Besides, what was the point? Her empty wheelchair sat at the bottom of the stairs like a neon arrow pointing upstairs. There was nothing she could do. What she most feared had passed out of her imagination and into existence. The heavy steps came down the hall and Olivia turned to face them, ready to accept her undying curse.

  The door was pushed wider open and the pit bull plodded into the room, looking like a small white cow.

  Olivia crept out of the room and closed the door seamlessly behind her. With exacting care, she traveled the length of the hallway and descended the stairs in a seated position, the dog following patiently.

  In the safety of her wheelchair, she uttered a sigh of relief that allowed so much of her strength to escape she could barely get back to her room and into bed.

  Trixie returned to Violet’s room.

  MUSHROOMS ARE UP

  WINNIE GOT UP EARLY. SHE SET HER CUSHION BEFORE THE east-facing window, lit the candle and placed it on the floor beneath the ledge. Her shawl was in the closet under an oilcloth and she pulled it around her thin shoulders, folded into her ritual posture, and began her morning devotions.

  But after closing her eyes she discovered a freshly plowed field of worry. Among other distractions, the sweet smell of furniture oil on the shawl crawled through her landscape of mental images, preventing her from fixing her mind and calming her breath. Her heart beat like a cornered raven’s. Shapes howled and thorns sprang from even the most soothing recollections. As though to prosecute her, her thoughts returned again and again to Jacob Helm.

  She pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders and tried harder. Moving her lips, she carefully considered every syllable of every word of the Twenty-third Psalm, yet even this rigorous discipline could not force her mind to behave. She took off the shawl and threw it to other side of the room but its smell had invaded her pajama top, and like homeopathic medicine it worked more powerfully in diluted form.

  Every thought had Jacob Helm beneath it, smiling through his eyes, interested in her, understanding her, appreciating her, respecting her, liking her, his black hair wet, his feet bare, his living room steamy hot.

  Maybe if I stop resisting, she reasoned. Perhaps struggle helped the Enemy wax stronger. To end the war, stop fighting. Closing her eyes again, she allowed her attention to follow whatever course it wished, pursuing spiritual victory through surrender.

  But surrender, it seemed, had an agenda of its own and this plan came to an emphatic end when she felt saliva climbing up her throat and below, warm and moist, she swelled up like a young grape.

  She quickly blew out the candle, left the room, and took a shower. Ever since last fall she had waited for the rest of her New Life to begin, but the one that presently seemed to be emerging couldn’t possibly be the one intended for her.

  Could individual destinies be mixed up and assigned to the wrong people?

  Jacob Helm had called her in the middle of the night, not saying anything, apparently just to frighten her. Even though he didn’t speak, she knew it was him. She just knew. And he had her father’s name written down next to his computer. These were clearly the actions of a potential stalker.

  And even if he wasn’t a potential stalker and there was some explanation for her father’s name on his kitchen table, what could possibly happen next? Nothing good could ever come from what she felt now.

  Downstairs, she combed out her hair, set a pot of water and tea on the stove, and looked into the dim, premorning shapes outside. The back of the church with its two low windows looked like a wide face.

  Finished with cording her long flaxen braids, she stared into her brewing tea, decided against drinking it, poured it into the sink, put on her corduroy skirt and jacket, and went outside.

  Standing in the front yard felt no better, she discovered, but she soon understood where she needed to be. Her yellow car started with a rattling purr and she drove without headlights into the growing morning light, away from Words, down the valley, over the ridge, through Grange, all the way to the little bridge in the marsh.

  This was not the first time she had returned. She had come often and tried again and again to rediscover the epiphanic presence that had once called her name out loud. Yet she found only the barren, empty place—the bottle without the genie. She had even eaten as many as six custard-filled pastries, thinking that perhaps they would help, but they didn’t.

  She sat on her favorite wooden plank near the middle of the bridge, hooked her arms over the steel railing, her legs dangling over the side. Beneath her shoes the water rushed and murmured along with the industrious chattering of many large, hungr
y birds and the numb thrumming of insects. She looked into the stream and wondered what would become of her, and added her voice to the others:

  “I used to be so excited about my life, Dear One, so willing to be good no matter what—so convinced I would find happiness and peace. But now I spend my whole life taking care of old people who don’t know me, don’t understand anything about me, don’t even like me. I’m lonely and don’t know how to stop being lonely. I’m sick of wanting the things I was born wanting and I’m sick of trying not to want them. Mostly I’m sick of me. I want to be more than I am, different than I am, but I can’t be. You leave me here alone and it’s certainly not safe. There’s no telling how I might turn out. My teeth are growing crooked. I’m fraying like an old rope. Must every joy die in a single lick, yet longing last through a thousand banquets? I know I have no right to complain—I’m such a worthless thing—but does that seem fair to You? Why must the puzzle of happiness be so difficult to solve while the twists of grief always grind in the same horrid direction? If You don’t want me in Your World why did You invite me in? Why didn’t You just leave me outside? Why let me visit if I couldn’t stay? Is this a test? What must I do to pass? If being good isn’t good enough, how about being bad? I’m so lonely.”

  She walked to the car, took a pair of scissors out of the glove compartment, and returned to the bridge.

  As she cut, ropes of her hair fell into the water.

  A noisy vehicle came over the rise. She did not bother to get up and continued cutting until only several ragged inches remained attached to her head. July Montgomery parked his white pickup, walked over, and sat next to her.

  “You’re out early, Miss Winifred,” he said.

  “So are you, Mister July.”

  “Wade wanted to make some extra money, so he’s milking for me this week,” said July. “It’s beautiful here. Just listen to those birds.”

  “I should be going,” said Winnie.

  “Wait, I’ve got something for you,” he said and he returned to his truck.