by Haven Kimmel
In his crib Oliver enacted his new naptime drama: shaking his head and saying nuh nuh nuh, napping was out of the question and he would appreciate it if Claudia would behave herself and set him on the floor. He shook his head, then rubbed his face and nose so hard she was surprised he didn’t hurt himself. He lay down on his back, pulling up his flannel blanket and rubbing his nose with that for a while, and reached for his favorite animal, which Hazel called a squeaky duck but which Claudia believed to be, oddly, a Canada goose. He sucked on its orange foot a moment, draped its long neck over his eyes, and within seconds was asleep.
She left her bedroom reluctantly and went downstairs to the big entryway closet; this was the place she should clean next. She had dreaded tackling it for so long the dread had assumed a life of its own. It was in here that she’d placed all the things Rebekah hadn’t come back to claim, and probably the hour had come round to box those things up and ship them to Peter’s. She got as far as grasping the doorknob, just as she had half a dozen times before, and then somehow the door was open and she was staring at Rebekah’s clothes. There was her green sweater, her green dress, her blue jeans draped lengthwise over a clothes hanger. Claudia took a step forward, reached out and lifted the sleeve of the sweater as if inviting it to dance. There was the smell of her, faint and vanishing, the sage soap, the buttermilk bath salts. Claudia breathed in, even though she knew with every breath she took she was eliminating the last traces of Rebekah in the air. She ran her hands over everything, as Ludie would have done in a fabric store, then took out the rusted flour sifter of Constance Ruth Harrison, studied it a long time, set to work. Outside, the rain began in earnest.
1971
Hazel could only imagine the road Finney had taken to reach her decision, as she refused to talk about it. Awake nearly all night, every night since the wedding reception, Hazel herself could have written a book about Finney’s choices, where A began and where it would lead; the loss inherent in B. She made up a C that didn’t exist, and for good measure a D wherein everyone was happy.
Jim Hank and Finn would arrive at seven, after Albert was safely out for the evening. Edie and Charlie had taken Charlie’s motorcycle to the newly opened StarLite Drive-In. Hazel and Caroline didn’t speak as they moved around the kitchen, making tea, cleaning surfaces that were already sterile. Their silence—the mother and daughter—had a vocabulary of its own; it expressed relative degrees of symbiosis or irritation.
Now, for instance, Hazel knew her mother was wrestling with a particular nameless angel. The angel wasn’t Hazel’s and she didn’t consider her mother’s conversation with it her business. But she wondered. If Caroline was afraid, there was something to be afraid of. If Caroline was nervous…Hazel felt a fluttering in her stomach. But neither said a word, so that when Jim and Finney rang the bell to the clinic, Hazel and her mother walked out with shoulders squared, completely confident, and comforting.
Hazel could hear Jim Hank pacing outside the closed door and she wanted to tell him to stop but didn’t.
“You know what happens, dear,” Caroline said, inclining her head toward Finney’s, rubbing one of her icy hands. “I’ve given you something to help you relax, and you can breathe through this mask if you feel any pain.” Caroline smiled at Finn, who was crying, crying as she always cried, her chin trembling. “I don’t want to frighten you, but this might be a little harder than usual; you are farther—”
“I know.”
“You’re absolutely certain it’s what you want to do? Because I’m happy to talk with you about the alternatives if…”
“No. Yes, I’m sure. No alternatives.”
“All right, then.”
Caroline began scrubbing her hands and arms at the sink in the corner.
“Hazey, I’m terrified.”
“I know you are.” Hazel sat on a stool at Finney’s waist, facing her. She would stay there until Caroline was finished.
“You don’t understand; I think he knows. I think he knows what I’m about to do.”
“Finn, he doesn’t know. He couldn’t. You didn’t even tell me or Jim until yesterday.”
“He said something last night on the phone, I hadn’t expected him to call.” Finney’s hands were shaking so hard they appeared to leap off the table. “If I wait for him to call he doesn’t and this one time, the one and only time I don’t want to hear from him—”
“You need to calm down.” Hazel pressed three tissues into Finney’s right hand, then took Finney’s left and held it between her palms, trying to warm it as she might a small animal.
“He asked me about my ‘young man.’ He asked if I would be seeing him again soon. I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about, but he wouldn’t say any more about Jim.”
“He does not know you’re married. There’s no reason for him to suspect it.”
“They publish the applications for licenses in the legal section of the paper, Hazel! Anyone could have seen it.”
“Does he strike you as the type who would look to see who was getting married?”
Caroline lifted Finney’s right foot, still in a white sock, and slipped it into the stirrup; then the left. “Scoot down, Finn. A little more—that’s better. Okay, one more time.”
“I can’t stand this, I am so humiliated.” Finney turned her face away from Hazel, who had never seen her look even half so miserable.
Caroline patted her on the knee. “All right. We’re going to begin by—”
“Don’t tell me! Don’t tell me anything.”
“That’s fine, then.”
“And now, Hazey, I don’t need to be married, because of…this. Jim Hank would have given me the ground to stand on if I’d decided to raise it myself, but now. He did that for nothing.”
“Jim didn’t do it for nothing. He did it for love, just like in the movies.”
“He”—Finn’s eyes widened and she winced, then relaxed—“he said to take care of his baby. He said he would be watching me. I asked him, ‘Why would you be watching me?’ and he said really smoothly that he’d said he’d be watching out for me.”
Hazel could see the drugs working—Finn’s hands had gone slack and her eyes were a little unfocused. “You feel all right?” Hazel asked.
“I’m fine, I can’t feel…much of anything at all. I’m not crying,” Finney said, sounding surprised. “I’ve stopped crying.”
“Well, look at that.” Hazel rubbed her arm. “And all it took was a tranquilizer. A bargain.”
“A bargain.”
Caroline whispered to Hazel, “Come here a moment.” Hazel rolled her stool over by her mother. “Place another pad under her, please. Do you know”—Caroline lowered her voice even more—“if she has any medical condition, a clotting disorder, for instance?”
Hazel’s heart jumped. “No. No, why?”
“She’s bleeding more than she should be. I think we should hurry.”
Hazel’s hands were shaking as she pulled out the drawer, grabbing three absorbent pads and slipping them under Finney. There was more blood than usual—not enough to be called an emergency, not unless it was Finney.
The clinic doorbell rang. Hazel and Caroline tried not to show their alarm, but Finney was saying, “Who is it, who could be here? Caroline?”
“Finney, you need to lie still. Do not move; it’s probably a patient. Jim can take care of it.”
Hazel looked toward the waiting area. “Does that door lock?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Caroline said, not looking at her. “It’s like the lock on Albert’s office door, you flip the anchor-shaped—”
She could hear Jim talking to someone, raised voices. I need to lock the door, she thought, but Finney wouldn’t let go of her hand.
“Hazel, don’t leave me!”
“Finn, let me go one second. Just a second.”
Jim shouted, “I said no. I said no you can’t, she’s my wife.”
There was a terrible sound, a blow textured with bone, audibl
e even through the door. “Dear God,” Caroline said as someone fell to the waiting room floor.
Hazel looked at Finney for a split second before pulling her hand away roughly. Finn’s face was so white it seemed translucent, and her lips were pale blue. Hazel couldn’t stop, couldn’t think about what she was seeing, she had to lock—
—the door flew open, slamming against the wall behind it. Caroline and Hazel jumped, nearly screamed.
“Stop what you’re doing to her, stop!” And to Finney, who was hyperventilating now, “Get up. Get up, I said!”
Caroline was reaching behind her for a scalpel, as if that would save them from the crowbar, which bore, on its hooked end, a shock of Jim Hank’s hair. “You need to leave this room immediately. I’m calling the police. Hazel, get the phone, please.”
“Oh, you’re going to call the police? And tell them what? What you do here, what you’ve done to her?”
“Vernon,” Finney sobbed, reaching out to him, “please please, I’m afraid.” Her feet were still strapped in the stirrups, and even through the mayhem Hazel realized there was blood dripping on the floor.
“We need to ignore him,” Hazel said to her mother. “We have a problem here.”
“Ignore him? Ignore him?” Vernon swung the crowbar just shy of Caroline’s head, shattering the door of the cabinet beside her. Caroline and Finney both screamed, but Hazel felt very calm, felt time slowing down to a crawl. She reached out and, as quietly as possible, released the strap that held the left stirrup secure.
“This is my baby, this is a human life, you are the worst”—Vernon’s face was flushed nearly purple—“God-damned monsters who ever lived. Get up!” he screamed at Finney, who now was wailing. She lowered her legs and tried to sit up.
“No, Finney”—Caroline’s voice broke—“no, dear, you can’t possibly move, stay right there. Sir,” she said, turning to Vernon, “I understand you have a grievance, but if you move her she will die.”
“Then she deserves to die!” He was spitting with rage. “She is trying to kill my baby which the Lord has promised to me and she’s trying to kill it, it’s mine.”
Finney sat up but could go no farther. Vernon pushed past Hazel, knocking her against the sink so hard a bright tune sang up her spine. He pointed the crowbar at Caroline as he reached under Finney’s legs and lifted her up. It looked effortless, his carrying her, even though she was such a tall girl. Finney said nothing, just wrapped her long arms around Vernon’s neck and rested her head on his shoulder.
Vernon carried her through the doorway, stepping over Jim Hank as he crossed the waiting room. And then—the strangest of apparitions—Albert was coming through the door of the clinic, just taking off his hat and smoothing his hair. Vernon bulled past him, nearly knocking him off the steps.
“Excuse me!” Albert yelled. “What are you doing with Finney?” He stepped into the waiting room, where Caroline was kneeling over Jim Hank, pressing her bare hand against his head wound to try to stop the bleeding. “What in the name of—Caroline, explain this, please.”
“Daddy, we’ve got to follow them, please.”
“Get in the car,” he said. “Caroline, call an ambulance for Jim; that injury is beyond us.”
“I know.” Caroline’s voice was weak. “I know it is.” She picked up the phone just as Albert and Hazel reached the clinic door. Hazel glanced back, a pillar of salt, and she would never forget the look on her mother’s face, never—not if she lived until the end of time. It was the look of a woman watching the village burn, the walls of her own home crashing in the blaze.
“Hello?” Claudia was sitting on the edge of her bed, peeling off her wet socks.
“I’m so glad you’re home.”
“Me, too—it’s crazy, what’s happening outside.”
“Are you busy, though?”
“No, not now. I just helped Millie carry in some groceries. What I mean is I carried in all the groceries while Millie stood looking at the boxes of Rebekah’s things, sobbing.”
“Millie’s there? Good, because—”
“Millie’s always here, Hazel.”
“I just tried—now don’t panic, but—I tried to call Rebekah and the phone’s been disconnected. So I called—”
“The phone’s been disconnected?”
“—Peter’s parents and they said they spoke to Peter three days ago but haven’t heard from his since then. Pete Senior said he had no idea why the phone would be off.”
“Go on.” Claudia pulled out her sock drawer too hard and with one hand, and it came out crooked and stuck. She reached in and grabbed the first pair she could find; she pulled them on, stood, and walked in circles.
“I called Sears and they said he was taken off the schedule as of two or three days ago, the guy I talked to couldn’t remember.”
“I can’t find my—”
“Claudia, be careful driving out there, the roads are—”
“I know, Millie told me.”
“I’ll find you.”
Claudia grabbed a dry shirt, tossed it on the bed. And for no reason she understood, she reached up into the shelf above the closet and took down the box that held the Colt .44. “How will you know where we are? Where will you be? WHY don’t we have cell phones, why?”
“I’ll find you, Claudia. I have something to take care of and then I’ll find you. We don’t have cell phones because we can’t be two places at one time.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Claudia said, hanging up. She ran down the stairs.
Hazel stopped at the end of the lane. The rain was coming down so hard, and in such blowing, twisting sheets, that everything outside the car shimmered indiscreetly, as if in an aquarium. She got out, ignoring the way she was instantly soaked. The hood of her raincoat kept the water off her glasses long enough for her to find the right key. She turned it and disengaged a lock so large it could have served on a pirate’s ship. The heavy chain fell to the ground, and Hazel dragged it behind the stone wall.
“Nice,” she said, hearing the squelching sound she made in the driver’s seat. She drove down the potholed, battered lane, the honey locusts towering on either side of her. The grass in the front acreage was kept cut by a neighbor with a tractor, primarily so that Hazel didn’t face lawsuits, but no one mowed the area right in front of the house, and the grass and weeds there reached, in some places, Hazel’s head.
She parked in her father’s spot, the one closest to the house. Nature doesn’t intend for us to be out in rain this hard, Hazel thought, but she wasn’t sure why. No thunder, no lightning, just countless gallons of water falling on us, and we run from it. She walked at her normal pace up the front steps, turning away from the formal entrance, which was boarded up (the only way to protect the leaded glass panes), to the one door or window that could still be opened. The screen door was gone and there was nothing in its place, just the gaping hinges, and the original door—the mahogany with the carved scrolls and leaves—was gone, too. Hazel had propped it up against the wall in the dining room when it had to be replaced with what stood in its stead now: a solid sheet of green industrial steel. No window, no mail slot. You either had the key or you didn’t get in.
For so long Hazel had believed there was nothing more dangerous than the past. Then she’d seen the future and realized, oh the past isn’t so bad. Mostly a lot of junk back there, stuff no one should have ever kept. We hold on to the strangest things, and long beyond the point they serve any good. She stepped inside the library, turned on the light. The electricity was still on, that was good. Every couple of years the power company had to come out and investigate an outage; once, Hazel herself had gone back to check the fuse box and discovered a squirrel head down inside it, his body slithered around and between the fuses, still clutching the live wire in his fried paw.
Left alone, a house develops its own smell—it will not hold yours forever. Hazel knew how quickly this happened. Standing here now, she could not have guessed at the richness the air u
sed to carry—floor wax, lemons, laundry, her mother’s L’Air du Temps, the disinfectant from the clinic, all the various subtexts of Edie’s life, too. Now the place smelled like wet plaster, mold, slow decay.
In the library the stained-glass doors still ticked open on their tracks, although the shelves held no books. How it came to be that there was stuff on the floor (there was always stuff on the floor), Hazel couldn’t imagine. Pieces of cardboard, empty bags, dirt, leaves, enough twigs to build a new tree—it all just grew there. She kicked her way into the parlor, turned on that light. No down-filled sofa, no floor lamp with the milk-glass globe. Get rid of it, Caroline had told her in the hospital, get rid of it all, I don’t care how you do it. The light at the top of the staircase revealed just how much mysterious stuff can accumulate in the corner of each step, too. Quite a bit. And what was this tangled up with the leaves? Fur?