The Girl from Charnelle

by K. L. Cook

  “Always.”

  “Let me keep it,” she begged.

  “No.”

  “Pleeeeease!”

  “What if your father were to find it, or one of those pesky brothers of yours?”

  “How would they know it’s me?”

  “They’d know,” he said, reaching for the drawing. She lifted it out of reach. He lay back down and closed his eyes. “It’s not safe, honey.”

  She put the drawing on the table and climbed on top of him, her hips straddling his, her hands pinning his wrists to the pallet. “Please,” she said again, letting her hair drape over his face. “Pretty please.” She pressed her lips to his, knowing that he wouldn’t change his mind, wouldn’t let her keep it. She would have to wait until after they made love, when he dozed for a few minutes. She would smuggle it into her bag then. As she kissed him, she could already imagine the picture folded neatly and tucked between the pages of the Declaration of Independence.

  25

  Options

  What is the value of a secret life?

  She found this in her English notebook from last year. She read her notes on the Joseph Conrad novella, and they seemed distant, foreign, something about doppelgänger, a German word, but she couldn’t remember what it meant, and she hadn’t written a definition. But she remembered writing that question, remembered that the stowaway’s name had been Leggatt and that while reading the book one night, she had dreamed of John rising from the floor of her bedroom, naked and green and glowing phosphorescently, just as Conrad had described it. She stared at the question again, thought about it, closed her notebook, and then, just a few minutes later, Mr. Sparling walked in and wrote on the chalkboard, “What is the value of a dream?”

  He underlined the word “value” three times, and she shuddered. It was as if he’d seen what she’d written but had transformed it, turned it into something new and strange. Were secret life and dream the same? No, they weren’t. But maybe there was a connection? How could he have written this, and at this precise moment? So strange how that happened. Aunt Velma’s word for this flew into her head. Was Mr. Sparling another emissary?

  She paid attention. But he didn’t answer the question he’d written on the board, just turned to the class, lowered his head, and peered over his glasses. “What is the value of a dream?” he asked them.

  No one spoke for a few moments. Jeff Dyer raised his hand.

  Mr. Sparling ignored him but repeated the question with a different emphasis: “What is the value of a dream?”

  Again no immediate answer. Sharon Littlefield raised her hand tentatively. Ignoring her, Mr. Sparling said softly, almost whispering, with an unsettling intensity, “What is the value of a dream?”

  There were titters. Another one of Dwight Sparling’s theatrical stunts. A trick, to provoke them. Was he angry? What was it? No one raised a hand. They waited for him. He examined each of their faces, person by person, maintaining eye contact for an uncomfortable few seconds. And then he nodded and sat down at his desk and began grading papers. He did not look up. There were still thirty minutes of class left. More laughter. He lifted his head sharply. Quiet.

  He turned back to the papers on his desk. They looked at one another, uncertain what to do. To indicate Mr. Sparling’s insanity, Gordy Toffler twirled his finger near his temple and crossed his eyes. But the other students turned away from him. Soon a contemplative silence filled the room. And then, one by one, they pulled notebooks from their desks or bags and began writing in them.

  Laura opened her notebook again. There was her question: “What is the value of a secret life?” She flipped to an empty page in the middle of the notebook and wrote, “What is the value of a dream?”

  And beneath that she wrote, in all capitals, OPTIONS.

  And below that:

  Let it die.

  Don’t rock the boat.

  Wait.

  Mexico.

  Disappear.

  And then below that she wrote, in big letters, POSSIBLE???

  At the bottom of the page, she wrote, YES! And then she wrote it at the top and sides of the page. And around the list. When she was done, there were thirty-seven YESes on the page.

  The bell startled her. The other students sat there at their desks, along with her, and didn’t move. Mr. Sparling did not look up. Then, one by one, they stood and silently gathered their things and left the room. She waited until everybody else had gone. She studied Mr. Sparling, and then suddenly he looked up and surveyed the classroom, as if he’d been oblivious to his students’ departure. He shifted his gaze to her, tilted his head slightly to the right, squinted his eyes, the corners of his mouth lifting quickly. He nodded once, forcefully, and then—was this true? did this really happen?—he winked at her. He dropped his eyes back down to his stack of papers and continued grading.

  Had she really seen what she thought she’d seen? She shook her head and watched him, but he did not look up again. Nor did she say a word, but she felt a pocket of energy bubbling inside her chest. She gathered her things and walked slowly out of the classroom, but when she got to the hallway, she moved more swiftly along the tiled floor and down the stairs. The halls were busy with movement and noise, as students rummaged through their lockers at the end of the day. She moved fast, hearing only snatches of conversation that leapt into the air.

  “What was that all about?”

  “I told you he was crazy.”

  “You had to be there, though. It was amazing.”

  “Bullshit. He’s nuts.”

  “Did you screw her?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Laura, you wanna go—” Dean Compson shouted behind her.

  “No!”

  “To 4-D’s?”

  “No!”

  “Are you okay?” Marlene called.

  “Yes!” she called back.

  Outside, she broke into a run, passing Third Street, over to Buchanan, and continued running through the alley to the Charnelle Public Library. Inside, she sped to the bathroom, flung her bag down, turned on the faucet and splashed water over her face. In the mirror, she saw the drops streaming down her flushed cheeks, like rain on a window. The fringes of her hair dripped. She was out of breath, panting. Her temples thundered. Air whistled in and out of her nostrils. She thought of the horse races in New Mexico that her father had once taken them to—a couple of years before her mother left. Her father knew the trainer, and they got to go down to the stalls, see the Thoroughbreds after they raced. The air whistled in and out of their long noses. They seemed different than Hayworth and Ginger, larger, more forbidding. Their eyes were huge and round and black and seemed to stare right through you.

  She yanked on the white cloth roll and wiped her hands, yanked again and then buried her face in the cloth, which smelled strongly of bleach. She leaned into the mirror.

  “Yes!” she hissed at her reflection.

  She gathered her things and found a table in the back of the library, behind the mystery section, dug through her bag, and pulled out the notebook. Turned to the page that read OPTIONS.

  1. Let it die.

  She had a strong urge to scratch the phrase out. But she decided to leave it on the list because it was an option. A real option, even though she wasn’t willing to consider it. And she knew that John wouldn’t consider it. She knew. It wasn’t going to happen. To imagine that it would die might indeed kill it. Like time. You let it pass or you kill it, and then, before you know it, you’re resigned, if not content, with the killing. No, they wouldn’t let it die.

  2. Don’t rock the boat.

  Was that even acceptable now? Him going home to his wife. The continued secrecy. Forever skulking and slinking and hoping to steal away when his wife and the boys were gone, and her father and brothers, too. That also seemed like a slow death. Yes, some part of her liked all the secrecy, the anticipation of it, the thrill and urgency of what little bits of time they could have
together. But how long could that last? Not much longer. Not now. Not after Galveston. She was forced to admit to herself how much it pained her that he went home to his wife each night. For the last six months, she tried not to think much about his wife and him together, what they did. He spoke so little about their marriage, and she was afraid to ask anything. Or was she afraid? Not really. She just didn’t want to know. She liked that her life and John’s life had these separate containers, and when they came together they were divorced from the rest of the world. But were they? Hadn’t she been thinking lately about him with his wife? Did they do the same things that she and John did? How could he go back to her after Galveston? How would he feel if she started dating “some pock-faced boy with a banana in his pants,” as Manny put it? Would it drive him crazy? But there was no boy she wanted. She wanted him.

  3. Wait.

  But it was risky. It was. In the Amarillo paper, she’d read about two cases of statutory rape over the last few months; both had parents bringing charges against twenty-one-year-old men and their teenage girlfriends—no rape at all from what she could tell, just laws for angry fathers. It was real, though. One man went to jail; the other was missing. But she’d also read about sixteen-and seventeen-year-olds getting married—a twelve-year-old girl, even, although that was in Arkansas and she only heard about it because it was so scandalous. She would be seventeen right before Christmas. And if John divorced his wife, then he and Laura could wait until she turned eighteen. Then her father couldn’t stop them. That would be about a year and a half. They could keep the secret that long, couldn’t they? She knew she could if John would be there waiting. But a year and a half was a long time. Too long.

  4. Mexico.

  Running off to Mexico, getting a quick divorce. That could be done. Or to Las Vegas first for the divorce and then to Mexico for the marriage. Gloria was only seventeen when she and Jerome ran off. Who said you had to wait? The laws could be bent or broken for love, and in time people forgave you. “Ask for forgiveness rather than permission,” Manny liked to say. Gloria proved it. Laura could even write to her and find out the logistics, get some advice. They could settle someplace else, maybe in Europe with Gloria, and then they could return here later, if they wanted, after she turned eighteen. People got over these things. Look at how her family recovered when Gloria left. When her mother left. It wasn’t that hard. It wasn’t. There’d been at least six divorces in Charnelle that she was aware of. And everybody knew that Dave Somersby, whose wife was an alcoholic, was in love with Tina Fellows. They didn’t even try to hide it anymore, would show up at 4-D’s together, and people no longer seemed to care, probably figured he deserved some happiness. Wouldn’t everybody eventually accept what happened between Laura and John? Or would it be another Tate-family scandal—those crazy women eloping, disappearing, stealing other women’s husbands? Home wreckers.

  5. Disappear.

  Her heart beat faster just looking at the word. She knew this was it. This was what she wanted. To just disappear—and never come back. She and John had done it already. Gone to Galveston, and no one had known, had even suspected. It was a test run. He could get a job there—a good one, too. Maybe that was what he was thinking when he asked those questions, said she was his wife. If not Houston or Galveston, then someplace else. They could just leave. Just pack up and skip town in the middle of the night, and they’d have a new life. She and John could just disappear. She could get a fake ID. She’d heard Manny talking about it with his friends, how easy it was to fake these things. The world liked to be fooled. People swallowed without question what you told them. You could reinvent yourself just by going to a new place where nobody knew you. This was America. They didn’t even need to get married. And it wasn’t like his wife couldn’t get by on her own. She had the money anyway, “the frills.” She’d probably move to Dallas with the kids. The kids—yes, that was the problem. Would he leave them? Could he leave them? Would Laura be some kind of monster for asking him to abandon them? Would these boys she’d grown to love, and who obviously loved her, now hate her? And, for that matter, could she leave her father and brothers, do what not just her sister had done but her mother, too? She had come to believe that what her mother had done was a kind of violence, something directed against her father and Manny and Gloria, Gene and Rich, against herself. Wasn’t there some essential meanness or weakness at the core of her action? To wreck the family like that. That’s what Laura believed, if she had to articulate it, which she’d never had to do. But had she and her father and brothers and Gloria really been wrecked? Was there any lasting damage? People got over these things, didn’t they? People were resilient. Her father was over it, wasn’t he? Didn’t some part of her realize—hadn’t she always realized—that what her mother did had to be done? There was even something courageous, heroic about it, wasn’t there? To gather her strength to leave, to head off into a new beginning, a new life, a new world. Cut off from her past—like an animal that chews off its foot to get out of a trap. That’s what her mother had done. That was—as Mr. Sparling had said just the other day when they were discussing the ending of Huckleberry Finn—the story of America, wasn’t it? All these people striking out for a new frontier, a new beginning—thieves, outcasts, runaways, orphans, criminals. All of them risking not just their lives but their identities, too. For what? For the pursuit of…what?

  She stood up, shook her head, went to get a drink of water. The librarian, Mrs. Wickan, who lived down the street from Laura, smiled from the stacks. Yes, she would be leaving Mrs. Wickan, too. All of them. Could she do it?

  She felt agitated, clumsy, sitting back down in her chair. She wanted this to be a Yes. In Mr. Sparling’s room, she had felt it as a resounding Yes. She was willing to pay whatever it cost to get this dream, pay the value. Weren’t cost and value the same thing? Or were they? She put her head down on the table, covering her notebook. She closed her eyes. She breathed. What is the value of a secret life? What is the value of a secret life? What is the value of a secret life?

  She tried to coax back the memory of Galveston, to feel again the rhythm of it, the wet heat. She counted one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. And then held her breath, and it was there, at the edges. She closed her eyes more tightly but tried to remain calm, tried to patiently call it to her. The memory seemed like a skittish animal, hiding in the shadows. Come out, she called. Come out. She wanted it back. She was confused, and she needed the memory to guide her.

  PART FOUR

  Traveling in the Dark

  August 1958

  Thrumming

  It was a Saturday night in early August, and Laura baked pork chops and fried potatoes, her father’s favorite meal. Manny was camping with his buddies that weekend, so she made less than usual, just enough for her father, Gene, Rich, and herself. As she scooped out the last batch of potatoes, the grease popping and splattering in the pan, her father waltzed into the kitchen, smelling of Old Spice and hair oil, dressed up in his red short-sleeved, snap-button shirt, jeans, and stitched boots.

  “Mmmm-mmm,” he said and then leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m starving.”

  “When will you be back?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Late, probably.”

  “What band is playing?”

  “I don’t know. The Pick Wickers, maybe.”

  She nodded.

  Gene and Rich chattered through dinner, and her father told them jokes. They kept laughing and spluttering with their mouths full. She watched silently.

  He hadn’t been dancing in a long time. She remembered that he used to take her mother dancing years ago. But he’d gone out only a couple of times in the last few weeks—for drinks at the Armory with his welding buddies and fishing once with the Cransburgh brothers. She wanted to believe his going out was a good sign—that he was returning to his old self, back to his normal life, that he could still find ways to enjoy himself even though her mother had disappeared less than t
hree months ago. But she also felt uneasy whenever he left the house. She couldn’t shake the unspoken belief that he was somehow responsible for her mother’s leaving. He’d done something to drive her away, maybe they all had, but he seemed more responsible than the rest of them because he was her husband and their father, and it was too soon (wasn’t it?) to be having a good time.

  A shameful heat spread up her neck and over her chin and cheeks. She was as bad as those deacons at the church where they used to attend. It wasn’t fair to her father, not at all. He was the one still here, taking care of them. Not her mother. She had disappeared. Not him. Right?

  “I don’t see why we have to go over to Mrs. Ambling’s,” she said.

  “I told you, I don’t know when I’ll be back. I may play some cards after.”

  “I always watch the boys anyway. Why not tonight?”

  “I just don’t feel right you being here alone at night without me or Manny.”

  “I’m not a kid,” she said. “Manny’s just a year older, and you let him do anything he wants.”

  She didn’t like being treated like the younger boys. Yet she also felt somewhat relieved because she hadn’t been in the house at night without her father or Manny since her mother had left, and she was a little afraid. She also wondered if he thought she needed watching. Maybe because Gloria had eloped and her mother had left a year later, he wasn’t going to take any chances with the last female in the house.

  “We already settled this, Laura,” he said. “You and the boys clean up, then go on over. I’ll get you in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said obediently.

  “You mind your sister now. You hear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Gene said.

  “And be good for Mrs. Ambling.”

  Rich had potatoes and ketchup in his mouth, but he nodded.