Can’t you just pretend you like it?
They slept for a few hours, and then, before the sun rose, he walked her back to the train. They did not look at each other, and there was no goodbye. She slid under the turnstile. She looked at the subway map. One transfer, and she would be at the airport. With her bruised face, with her swollen lip, she was sure they would let her fly home. Never to return.
She stood on the platform and waited for the train to arrive. A few businessmen joined her. A side glance at the young woman with the long blond hair and the messed-up face. The train pulled into the station. She sat down. She straightened her dress. She pulled her legs together. Her thighs stuck together. She pulled up her dress a bit and looked down. She was bleeding.
MY MOTHER PULLED THE BEER can to her mouth stiffly, first hitting the top lip as if it were lost, then sliding down to the bottom one. She drank and drank and it spilled a little down the corner of her mouth and down her neck. I watched the line of beer drain into her housecoat. Her eyes drifted, and then whatever light was in them before was gone. She put the can down. It was empty. She crushed it with her fist and the table shook.
She started to stand. I said, “Sit down.”
“I want another beer,” she said.
“No,” I said.
“You get me another one,” she said.
“Talk,” I said.
She slumped down in her seat and flopped her hands on the table. She stared down sullenly, then jerked her head up at me and held her gaze on me for a while. Finally, she said, “You can’t feel because you’re not supposed to feel.” Her words came out a slushy mess, as if she were wading through them in her mouth. What a wasted mess my mother was.
“I’m not explaining it right,” she said.
“Figure it out,” I said. “I can wait.”
“You can’t feel because if you feel it will hurt,” she said.
“Mom,” I said.
“Can I please have a beer?” she begged.
“No,” I said.
She bent her head down, then said, very quietly, “I didn’t want it to hurt anybody anymore.” She slouched forward on the table, her head still down, and then held it up with her hands. “You were my little girls.”
“That’s right,” I said. And then I spoke very clearly so that she would understand—and so she would remember it after I had left—that what she had done was wrong. “We were just little girls.”
Valka came down the steps with Jenny. My mother stood and I stood and pushed her down and she barked a noise at me.
“We are done here,” I said. And we unlocked the dead bolt on the front door, the three of us crazies, and walked out into the snow.
25.
I had to do one last thing before we headed out of town. I was cold and shaking. I made Valka drive. The snowflakes were gigantic and lovely and we could barely see but I knew how to get there by heart. We rode slowly, past the last working stoplight before the railroad tracks, and down the barren back roads between farms. I blasted the heat. Jenny fiddled with the radio and she sang along quietly in the backseat.
“Couldn’t we do this tomorrow?” said Valka. “Like when we can see. Like when we’re not going to hit a snowbank and be trapped forever.”
“No. Now,” I said. “You made me come home, and now I am going to finish it.”
Valka tightened her hands around the steering wheel. “If I die I’m going to kill you.”
And then the snow stopped and it was fine, I could see everything clearly ahead of me. The cornfields were empty, it was just snow everywhere. There was not another car on the road. I was too excited to be done. I had never been done with anything before. I wanted to feel good. I wanted to feel right. I wanted to feel.
We parked in front of the home I used to share with my husband. There was a light on upstairs, and downstairs it was dark except for the flickering light of the TV. Jenny stopped singing and Valka tapped her hand on the window. The dog from next door came out with his limp, barked once, and then ran back behind his house. It was too cold out for even the animals.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” said Valka.
“I’ve never been surer of anything,” I said. Which was not really the truth but I was caught up in being a hero. It was my big dramatic moment. The end of my story in Nebraska.
There was no more waiting in cars for me. I got out of the car and opened the trunk. I pulled out the suitcase full of money. The suitcase from my honeymoon. A present from my mother. A goodwill gesture to get me out in the world, but also to make sure I was thinking of her while I was gone. Everything was rewiring in my brain all at once.
I slung myself into the snow, one foot after the other, until I reached the path Thomas had cleared. I held the suitcase tight in my arms. This is what I needed to do to be free. I laid the suitcase gently in front of the front door. I stared at it for a moment. I nodded to myself. I would never darken this door again.
I walked back to the car and got in and slammed the door shut and it sounded nice and firm and final to me.
“Do you feel better now?” said Valka.
“Yes,” I said.
“Did that give you the closure you need?” said Valka.
“I think so,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Yes. I feel free.”
“Good,” said Valka. “Now, can you please go get that money back? Because otherwise you are flat broke. And if you’re going to move to Los Angeles, you’re going to need some cash.”
“But—” I said.
“I mean, really,” said Valka.
“That’s a lot of money,” said Jenny.
“Right! And what about that unborn child back there?” said Valka. “Who’s paying for the baby food?”
“But what about closure?” I said.
“Oh, screw closure,” said Valka. “I’ve got a good therapist you can call. Get your closure that way. Take the money and run, kid.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said.
A light turned on downstairs. Valka pointed at the house.
“You better do it now or forever hold your peace,” she said.
I bolted out of the car, leaped through the snow, and grabbed the suitcase. Another light turned on, and the outdoor light, too. The last thing I wanted was to see that husband of mine. Like ever again. I ran back to the car, and when I slammed the door that time, it sounded even better.
“Okay, I get it now,” I said.
“Must I teach you everything?” said Valka.
“Just shut up and drive,” I said.
And so she did.
Epilogue
We all watched that show. Not a person alive in the U.S. of A. missed the series every Tuesday night at 8 P.M. EST for the three months it was on. Rio: Undone. How she almost died from driving under the influence in the early morning. How she wounded four Mormon parishioners visiting from Utah with her white Suburban. How she got off scot-free from jail because of the testimony of two people: a preacher and the head of a major studio. And there was the doctor who claimed she would never survive in jail because of her wounds. Rio could not remember a thing before the accident. There was talk of a lawsuit against another doctor who had given her prescriptions for a variety of medications that she did not technically need, but that faded, just like Rio’s looks.
Because then there was the “undone” part. This miracle of modern technology could never have plastic surgery or another injection again. It would kill her, the doctors said. So everything she had ever done to herself started to undo itself, and she decided to let cameras film it. One week there were wrinkles around her forehead, the next around her eyes. Her lips shrunk down to thin purple lines. Her chin dropped into a jowl. The episode where she begged to get her hair colored had everyone laughing along. “I wouldn’t want to go gray either,” said Valka, whose hair had just started growing back in, baby soft brown and fine.
Her body—once it healed from bruises inside and out—was still in good shape, and her therapists insiste
d she work out, though she had to take it real slow. The episode where she ran a 5k for breast cancer helped raise an extra 100 million dollars in donations. At the end of the series, she was a forty-eight-year-old woman. Still beautiful, there was no denying that, but she looked exactly like she was supposed to look before she had started messing around with what God gave her.
“She kind of looks like my aunt Irinie,” said Valka. “But without the stoop.”
We watched her on the Emmys. Oh, Rio got lots of parts after that, not just for Lifetime but for the pay cable stations, too. She was the gray-haired grandma now in the TV movies, never the mom again. I did not get how forty-eight years of age equaled an old lady, but I do not make the movies, I only watch them. But it was her role as Helen Keller’s teacher, Anne Sullivan, later in life, that won her the Outstanding Supporting Actress award. Valka and Jenny and I cheered her from our living room and threw popcorn in the air. In her speech she thanked her agent, her manager, Jesus, and blind people everywhere, who would never be able to see her movie but would hopefully be able to hear how much love for them she had in her heart.
That same weekend Thomas’s penile implant stopped working and he got an infection and almost died. It had actually broken down a week before, but it took a few days for the infection to kick in. He did not realize he was sick. He passed out on the tractor and his fiancée found him in the field. She ran around looking for him when he was late for dinner, and gave him mouth-to-mouth and saved his life. That was more than I could ever do for him.
His doctor pulled out the implant and told him it was best if he steered clear of putting any other foreign objects up there. He was back to the nub. When I heard all of that, I called him and told him to send me the divorce papers.
She can have him, I thought. Who am I to stand in the way of love?
ME AND VALKA AND JENNY all live a fine life together in Santa Monica. We go to the beach on the weekends. Valka sits under a giant umbrella to protect her skin from the sun. “I’ve had enough cancer for one lifetime,” she said. Jenny and I rush through the ocean like it is the most amazing thing we have ever seen, and it is. It is wild and romantic and angry and free. Baby Laura squeals from the shore until we dip her feet in the water. I like that she is going to grow up near the ocean. Sometimes Paul McCartney comes in from Las Vegas and gives that baby the eye like he is trying to plant one right inside Valka. I wonder what she has told him and what secrets she has kept for herself. She does what she needs to do. I try to be the best friend I can.
Jenny is great in the shop. She deals with all the teenagers in town like a champ. They are her people. It is a relief for Valka, I think. We all keep an eye out that she does not get another bun in the teenage oven anytime soon. Next year she is taking floral design classes at the community college. Valka would be just fine expanding her floral empire with Jenny’s help. I keep the books, stay in the back, away from any of the chitchat. I pray sometimes to keep my head together, because you can use prayer however you want. There are no rules one way or the other. Jenny and I go and talk to a therapist. We both agree it helps us just as much as the sunshine does.
LAST WEEK MY PARENTS came out for a visit. Jenny and I had huddled together and decided it was time for them to see their grandchild. Dad was struck dumb the minute he met little Laura. He sat down on the couch with her and got all quiet, and for a second I thought: that is it. He is really gone forever. But then he was on her with the toys and the cooing noises and he bounced her around and she laughed and adored him right back. Girl needs a grand-daddy like that. There was not a dry eye in the room. Even my mother, she rubbed at her eyes, caught a drip on her fingertip. Jenny steered clear of her, did not even lay a kiss on her cheek. It was fine. They do not need to be friends. They just need to give that baby love.
We played for a few hours, me and Dad and Mom and the baby. Jenny hovered, watching, and took the baby back just for feeding and changing. I think she let herself relax a little bit, especially when Dad was holding her. When the sun was setting we all went onto the back porch. Jenny and Valka stood off to the side, keeping an eye on me and Mom. We were drinking beer. Mom was smoking a cigarette. I took a drag. It was just like the good old days when I was still innocent and she was still an all right mother. Dad had cradled the baby up against him and was slow-dancing against the sunset. Jenny and Valka went inside to start dinner.
I asked for another drag, and Mom tapped out another cigarette from her pack. “Might as well just have your own,” she said. She blew out a huge wave of smoke. “You know I’m no good at sharing.”
Dad gave Laura a little dip.
“California dreaming,” said my mother. She hummed to herself her own secret song. I wondered if she remembered that last conversation we had in my hometown, but if she did she wasn’t showing it. That was fine by me. I never wanted to talk about it again, at least not with her. I had other things on my mind.
“All right, I guess I got a question,” I said.
“Ask away,” said my mother. “No secrets over here.”
“What did you want?” I asked her. “With your life.”
“You mean did I want to be Miss America or something?”
“We grew up thinking you hated us the whole time,” I said. “Like you could have been something better, something fancy, if you had not had us to drag you down, to keep you in Nebraska.”
She finished her cigarette and dropped it on the ground and stamped it out with the bottom of her shoe as if that cigarette had done her some wrong in life. She was thinking about what she was supposed to say. The words were not coming so easy. I did not know if that meant I was about to hear a lie or the truth.
“All I wanted was the two of you,” she said. “All I wanted was to be married and to have children and to love my husband. That’s how I was raised. I know I kicked up every so often—”
“Uh,” I said.
“Okay, more than every so often,” she said. “But to have happy kids who were healthy, that was my job, I knew it.”
“I know you wanted something more,” I said.
“What does it matter anymore, Catherine?” she said. “You got out. You and your sister both. Somebody did something right somewhere.”
I looked right in her face to see if she was lying, but I do not know if that mattered either. It was enough for me that she wanted to believe it was the truth.
FOR NOW, I AM A SINGLE WOMAN, not alone in the world, but single anyway. I see how people look at me. They think they know exactly who I am because I am on my own. But I look back at them, too, with my single woman eyes. There is no one else telling me what to think but me. I am open, but careful. I pay attention. I am learning all the time. There is a lot to learn. I have a lot of work to do. Because I want to become the best version of me. The version I do not even know yet.
Someday I will be ready to look for love again. That is what I wanted forever, love, pure and simple. I could not find it with Thomas nor with any stranger I have met yet. And when I am ready to emerge from this cocoon of doctors’ offices and ledgers and the strong scent of roses and orchids, I think I will rise like the sun. Brilliant and mighty, I will blind someone with my love.
But I am in no hurry.
This book would not have been possible without the generosity of Art Farm Nebraska and Ed Dadey. A million thanks to this wonderful residency program hiding out in the cornfields of Marquette, Nebraska.
Thanks also to the following co-conspirators who help me to be a nicer person and a better writer: Whitney Pastorek, Sarah Balcomb, Cinde Boutwell, Wendy McClure, Kerri Mahoney, Bernie Boscoe, Kate Christensen, Catherine Hopkinson, Sunil Thambidurai, Mara Jauntirans, Rosie Schaap, Emily Flake, Hana Schank, Maura Johnston, Pauls Toutonghi, Amanda Eyre Ward, David Goodwillie, Joni Rentz, Aimee Lee, Samantha Pitchel, TD Sidell, Ryan Walsh, Kevin Keck, Timothy Schaffert, Lauren Cerand, Janice Erlbaum, Summer Smith, Sarah Bowlin, Megan Lynch, Doug Stewart, and Jon Stuyvesant. You are all an inspiration to me.
>
With love, as always, to my family.
The Melting Season Page 20