1503951243

by Laurel Saville

  All the talk of local tragedies seemed to remind Dix of something.

  “What about those rape charges against Darius?” he asked Sally. “Do you know anything about that?”

  “Yeah. That was Cassandra, the meth head,” Sally said. “Turns out, sadly, I know that girl. And her entire fucked-up family. Of course her name isn’t really Cassandra. I hadn’t seen her for a long time. She’d changed a lot. Aged a lot. Meth will do that to you. It was her daddy who got her pregnant. Mother denied it, said the girl was making it all up, and Dad acted like it was no big deal. Said his daddy had done the same to his sister. That’s why they dropped the charges. After the story came out, the father disappeared. The rest of them—alcoholic mother, junkie brother, and mentally challenged baby—moved up to Plattsburgh. Living in some old motel converted to Section 8 housing. All part of the system, now.”

  Dix sucked his teeth. “American Dream,” he said.

  “White-trash version.”

  They popped out of the woods and into Dix’s yard. They stood blinking in the high midday light.

  “Sally,” Dix said, his voice quiet, “once you get the all-clear, once the police tape comes down, can I come out there with you? I’d like to see it again. See where—”

  Sally stopped him by putting a hand on his arm.

  “I’ll call you. I promise. First thing.”

  They nodded at each other. It was time to go. It was time to get ready for whatever was coming next.

  Dix stood in the doorway to the room his mother had always referred to as the guest room. The walls were painted a soft green, the underside of a leaf. Plaid curtains in subtle shades of lichen and pumpkin hung in the windows. There were twin beds covered with laundered-soft chenille spreads. There were pillows in the same fabric as the curtains. An antique desk with a needlepointed chair. A closet with only a few empty hangers. His mother loved the sight of those twin beds, he remembered. They always brought a smile to her face. They must have seemed full of hope to her. Hope for good company. And, it occurred to him, probably for grandchildren.

  He thought of Miranda. She seemed so far away, as though their time together had been a decade ago. He was surprised by how few actual memories he had of her. She was more of an idea than a person. Already. And yet. They had a daughter.

  Dix had never changed a diaper or held an infant. He’d never soothed a crying baby. He’d never bandaged a scraped knee or helped a kid with homework. The previous night, after dinner, in those dark hours when insomnia kept him awake, when other men might be furtively turning on their computers to look at porn, he hunted the Internet for information about babies’ developmental stages and key parenting tasks. He fretted over car seats and Montessori education, vaccinations and bullying, summer camps and cloth versus disposable. He finally went to sleep and dreamed that the dog lying next to him was instead a wild, woods-reared and fur-covered child who didn’t understand a word he said. He woke up frightened that before he even got a chance to try being a father, he was going to fuck it all up. He was scared that he already had.

  He wished his mother was there to help him. It crossed his mind that Sally, with all her rough pragmatism and coarse good humor, would be good counsel and company for this chore. He noted, without sadness or remorse, that he was not wishing Miranda was there. Then he’d have her to take care of, as well as all this. It was a harsh, cold thought, but it was also true. She should be there. He recognized that. But he had grieved for her as much as was possible. That job was done. He had other jobs to do now.

  He was reluctant to disturb the room. Doing so would disturb his mother’s memory but also disturb fate. What if, in spite of everything, this room was never filled with a crying or laughing or sleeping child?

  Platitudes filled his head. Get your house in order. Be in a position to succeed. You’ll rise to the occasion.

  He’d rather clean out two decades of compacted manure from an old barn than do this. Cleaning out a barn was something he knew how to do.

  He stepped over the threshold. He began by taking down the curtains—they seemed too adult and tailored for a little girl’s room. He rubbed a cloth over the sills and removed the fine dust of disuse. He wiped the glass with vinegar and water. The light that came through the sparkling windows was a soft caress. There was nothing to hide from in here. Maybe he didn’t need curtains at all. He calculated where he’d put a changing table, small dresser, and crib once the beds were moved out. For now he’d put them in the back bedroom, his old room, where he used to sleep with his feet sticking out from under the blankets; that room was now empty of everything but camping gear. There was space in there. Maybe his daughter would like the twin beds. Someday. When she was old enough. When she wanted to have a friend over to spend the night. As impossible and improbable as that seemed now. Dix pulled back the bedspreads, folded them, placed them in the linen closet. He stripped each bed of its musty, unlaundered-for-years sheets and threw them in a pile next to the washing machine. He then picked up a pillow but immediately dropped it back onto the bare bed, as if he’d been burned.

  He watched for what he had felt inside the stuffing, and eventually the pillow began to move of its own accord, throbbing and pulsating. He placed his hand gently on its taut surface and felt the life squirming within. He went to the kitchen, found a scissors and a small basket, returned to the guest room—the baby’s room, his daughter’s room—and gently split open the skin of the pillow. The white stuffing, released from its container, spilled apart, revealing at its center a gray field mouse with a cluster of pink pups at her teats. Dix used both hands to gently scoop all of them and a generous amount of pillow filling into the basket. Then he took the whole family to a protected corner of his wood shop and tucked them on a shelf behind a box of spare tractor parts and a bucket that held his tree-climbing harness. He grabbed a palm full of birdseed from the can where he kept it locked up from the raccoons and spread it out near the basket.

  This is ridiculous, he thought. Most of the time I’m filling gaps, sealing holes, and setting traps for these guys.

  This time was different. He covered the furry mouse and her naked pups with a layer of pillow stuffing, tiptoed backward out of the shop, and just before closing the door, turned the heat up by a few degrees.

  Dix had a fantasy that his first visit with his daughter would take place in a park where they could dash about on the green grass in the sunshine. He wanted to see her move and play, watch the wind riffle her hair, which he imagined hung down to her shoulders in blonde streaks. He wanted to take her for an ice cream cone and wipe the melted drips from her chin.

  But instead, she was just a baby, and he was being summoned by the State of New York to some bureaucratic office building where he had to find a room designated by just a number and a letter.

  The day came on stormy, the skies gray and angry, the air thick with late-August humidity. Dix drove along wet, black streets to an imposing brick building with white pillars out in front. He bypassed the grand front entrance and pulled around the back, where he had been directed. He had been too eager, so worried about all the things that might have caused him to be late—bad weather, slow farm equipment, getting turned around—that he was now twenty minutes ahead of schedule. He sat in his truck and stared out the window. It had started to rain again. Heavy drops flung themselves from the sky and pinged their damp desperation onto his windshield. He didn’t bother turning on the wipers, just let the water run in rivulets that obscured his view. With nowhere else to go, his eyes wandered around the cab of his truck. His toolbox, big enough to occupy the entire foot well on the passenger-side floor, was surrounded by several coffee-stained paper cups. A grease-marked coat and pair of beat-up boots were against the far door. He ran his callused, scarred hands over the gimpy, coyote-looking dog curled up at his side. He raked his hands through his recently cut hair and over his cheeks, still stinging slightly from the close shave he’d given them that morning. He was wearing a pair of flat-fr
ont khaki pants he’d bought for the occasion, a button-down shirt he’d freed from a several-year-old dry cleaning bag in the back of his closet, and a pair of plain brown loafers he had taken from a box on a shelf, which had sprouted a thin layer of mold he had to polish away before levering his feet into them. He was wearing his newest, cleanest Carhartt jacket, but still, there was a tear on a pocket and a stain on the sleeve.

  He didn’t feel much like father material. He also didn’t have a clue how to turn himself into father material.

  Nonetheless, it was time to go in.

  He was met by a squat woman. She looked like a larger woman who had been inadvertently shrunken in a dryer. She was also young and aggressively unadorned, wearing a stiff, matronly, beige pantsuit, and her hair was pulled back tight into a black rubber band. A spray of acne dotted her forehead. She held out her hand.

  “Aline Beaudin.”

  Dix shook her hand but forgot to say his own name.

  “We need to establish a few ground rules for this first visit,” she said primly, looking at a clipboard.

  A clipboard. A strange accoutrement for a visit with a baby.

  “The rules are merely to protect the child until paternity and custody are established by the court.”

  The child. The child without a name. The child he wanted to name. But didn’t dare. He was told not to touch her. Not to call himself “Daddy” or “Papa” or anything that denoted himself as her father. Not to be affectionate, emotional, or demonstrative. He would be supervised. The meeting could be terminated at any time. He had thirty minutes. He was to be relaxed and act natural. Dix fought the urge to scoff at that notion.

  He was brought to a room as beige and nondescript as Aline’s pantsuit. A low table at the center. Brightly colored plastic toys scattered across it. A woman, an older version of Aline, Dix thought, sat in a chair that was too small for her, talking in a low voice to something he could not see. Aline stepped away from him and settled herself in a chair in the corner of the room with clear sight lines to the table. The other woman stood, motioned to Dix to come forward, and left the room. Dix hesitated. He’d never fit in that chair. His knees would be banging against his chin. He took a step forward. Now he could see to the other side of the table. There was a baby in a small seat, on a blanket on the floor. She was holding a stuffed toy in front of her face. She was talking to herself. Babbling. Dix took another step forward. One more and he’d be at her side, looking down at her. His heart hammered in his chest. The baby flung the toy away and looked directly at him.

  Dix took in a sudden inhalation. In that first moment, when his daughter turned and met his eyes, all he saw was Miranda. The sharply angled cheekbones still swathed in baby fat were Miranda’s. The frank and puzzled expression was Miranda’s. The broad brow was Miranda’s. He blinked at the heat that had risen in his eyes. Slowly, the vision of Miranda dissipated, and in its place, he was left looking at a pretty baby with sandy-blonde hair and gray eyes who was staring back at him. Her eyes opened slightly in alarm. He was a stranger. Not her father. Just a stranger. Dix took the final step he needed to reach his daughter’s side. He folded himself like an old-fashioned wooden yardstick until he was in a kneeling position. His knees clicked in protest.

  “Hi,” he said. His daughter was already about four months old. With all Sally had told him, he had figured that Miranda probably got pregnant the previous fall. She probably didn’t realize for a few months—her periods were always erratic, and she wouldn’t have started to show until she was about twelve weeks along. She had moved to The Source in mid-December. The baby had been born in early May. She may have been a few weeks premature, delivery brought on by the stress of the cleanse. Fortunately, she’d had several days with Miranda, nursing, bonding, before the sepsis took over. She was healthy. She was here. That was all that mattered.

  The girl continued looking at him, gurgled, and stuck her fist into her mouth.

  “Whatcha doing?” he tried.

  She tossed her head back and forth a few times. Dix was terrified she’d start crying. Then what would he do? But she just scrunched up her nose. She seemed colossally unimpressed with the strange and so-far-useless adult next to her. Which was exactly how Dix felt about himself. Whatever swell of emotion had risen in him when he first saw her quickly ebbed and left him feeling washed out and empty as a deserted beach. He had no idea what to say or do. None of his online reading had prepared him for how small and not-yet-verbal she would be. Dix stretched his legs out in front of him like two felled trees and picked up the toy she had cast aside. It was a stuffed giraffe. He danced it a few inches from her face. She reached forward and grabbed it from him. He let her have it. She tossed it away again. They repeated this routine a few more times.

  She’s already trained me to fetch, he thought. Something I still can’t get Lucky to do.

  Then she stuffed it in her mouth. Dix was worried about germs—the thing had been on the floor—but he couldn’t remove it without touching her, which he’d been told not to do. And he didn’t want to make her cry. So he just looked at her. He silently counted her fingers and toes. He looked at the chubby folds of flesh at her elbows and knees. Her skin reminded him of bread dough. Her gray eyes stared at him, unblinking, even as she mouthed the stuffed animal. Dix wanted to do something with his overgrown hands. He picked up a picture book from the table. He held it up so she could see it and turned the pages, pointing to the animals and naming them cow, dog, cat, chicken. She slapped at the book. He turned a few more pages. Pig. Donkey. Rooster. He went slowly. He went back to the beginning. He didn’t want the book, the visit, to end. But inevitably, Aline eventually stood and looked at her watch.

  “That’s enough playtime now. Time to go home,” she said.

  Home. The word made Dix flinch. Aline approached. The little girl, his daughter, ignored her and tried to grab at another toy. This pleased Dix. He showed her how to turn the knob on the toy so it made noise. Aline stood there for a few moments. The baby squealed in delight. Dix turned the knob again. Aline took another step forward. The baby gripped the toy. Aline removed it from her hands and lifted her from the seat. Now the baby squealed in frustration. Aline ignored her cries, patted her on the back a little too hard for Dix’s taste, then carried her across the room and out the door. They left Dix, marooned, alone, in the middle of the room.

  Dix picked up Sally at the motel. It was a low-slung building with twelve evenly spaced doors surrounding a parking area of broken asphalt. The Dew Drop Inn. She was waiting in a plastic chair outside the door marked with a seven. She climbed into the cab and they sat, just looking at each other, taking each other in, for several moments.

  “Are you ready for this?” he asked.

  “Are you?”

  He shifted his gaze out the windshield. “Going to be strange to go back. See the place all empty this time.”

  “Just ghosts,” Sally said.

  They spoke little as he drove. Sally asked how his meeting with his daughter went, and Dix said it sucked. She told him not to expect much until he had her home. Dix asked if she knew what her own next step was; she shook her head. Dix suggested she take her time. He stopped the truck before turning into the driveway. A torn piece of yellow police tape flapped from a fence post in the hot, humid summer air, the words Do Not Cross tangling as they twisted in on themselves in the restless breezes. He made his way slowly and silently up the drive.

  “I feel like I’m going to a funeral,” he said as he turned off the truck.

  “You are,” Sally said as she pushed her door open and stepped into the yard.

  Dix followed her into the stifling, stagnant day. No animal sounds came from the barn—they had all been sent to rescues. No human sounds came from the house—everyone had been evicted. The trailer was still swathed in yellow warning tape, with a notice that included a prominent skull and crossbones glued over the door. Dix and Sally stood there, heads swiveling, as they took in the sad sense of desolatio
n that hung over the hollow. Dix had hoped to find whatever remained of Miranda’s pyre. Sally had told him she had no hopes whatsoever.

  “Creepy,” she finally said.

  “Whatever I thought I’d find out here,” Dix said, “I won’t.”

  “Me neither. Let me get my stuff, and let’s put this place in the rearview mirror.”

  But still, they stood as if at a graveside. A curtain in one of the farmhouse windows luffed. Then, Dix felt the hair on his arms stand up. The breeze had stilled. And the window was closed. Something had moved the curtain from within. His eyes scanned the windows. A silhouette made indistinct by the dirt covering the glass flitted by.

  “Dix . . .” Sally’s voice was a whispered warning.

  “Get into the barn,” Dix said as the handle on the front door of the farmhouse began to move. “Run.”

  Sally did as she was told. Just as she slipped into the darkness of the barn, the farmhouse door opened. Darius stepped onto the porch, blue eyes blazing and white teeth sparkling.

  “Well, well. Dix.”

  The men stared at each other.

  “Darius, you’re not supposed to be here. You need to leave.”

  “What, Dix, did you think I’d still be in jail? For all your petty accusations?”

  Dix knew Darius had made bail. He wondered if he’d used Miranda’s money to do so. “I don’t care where you are, Darius,” he said, “as long as it’s not here.”

  “I was there. In jail. Where you put me.”

  Dix shook his head slowly back and forth. Saliva pooled in the back of his throat. “You put yourself there,” he said.