by Anna Roberts
She shook her head. “Not much. She wants to go home, but home is here now. He wants to go to New Orleans, not her. And he wants her to know the truth.”
“The truth about what?”
“I don’t know,” said Ruby, pulling on her shorts under Gloria’s robe. “Like I said, it can get...loud up there. All those voices. She’s on I-75, that much I do know.”
He could have kissed her. “That’s the stuff. That’s what I need.”
“You’re not going after her? She ran away from you for a reason, Gabe. She didn’t want what happened to Charlie to happen to you.”
“It won’t,” said Gabe. “Yael’s not going to settle for me. If what you say is true then he’s got exactly what he wants. Better even than you having Charlie’s baby.”
She frowned, and he realized he’d have to explain at least some of it. “Yael’s like a family curse or something,” he said. “Almost like he’s in the genes, like color blindness or extra toes. I think Charlie was Gloria’s grandson, and I think he and Blue had the same father.”
“West Lafayette,” said Ruby.
“You knew?”
She reached into the pocket of her shorts and pulled out a creased, charred photograph, a police mugshot with the name burned away but for the first two letters. But it was enough. The man had Charlie’s fierce eyes, the same sharkish grin and the same deep lines between nose and mouth. He had Gloria’s high, wide cheekbones and thin Irish skin, and even through the photograph it shone through somehow; he’d had the same swagger she’d had before the dementia got really bad.
“Holy shit,” he said. “Where did you get this?”
“A police file,” said Ruby. “Charlie – well, Yael – he burned it. It was the weirdest thing. He said this detective came right up to the door and handed it to him. I should have known something was up right away.”
Gabe searched the face in the photo for something that reminded him of Blue, but there was nothing. Then he unfolded the burned edge and saw just enough of a profile to make his heart sink. He knew that chin, knew exactly how its point would wrinkle when the owner was thinking hard, like when she’d been lying awake trying to figure out how to tell him about Eli.
“What are we going to do?” said Ruby.
Gabe folded the photograph again. “You’re going north,” he said. “And you’re gonna go tell your cousins or whatever not to eat my friends; I think you owe me that much.”
She nodded. “Okay. And you? You’re going after her, aren’t you?”
“Yep. Can I keep this?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks.” He tucked the picture in his jeans, alongside the plastic bags containing the hair samples. Another reminder of the faith he owed Blue. Believing was twice as hard when you didn’t want to believe.
*
Another year, another Halloween. She thinks there are more pumpkins than usual, maybe because carving them is a good way to keep the kids occupied and less likely to twang on the piano-wire nerves of adults hanging on each White House bulletin. Mom just looked up at the clear blue sky and said, “We’re doomed,” then carried on taking in the laundry. Warren’s dad has a different approach; he’s hollowed out the earth behind his house, lined it with concrete and filled it with canned goods.
The wall is cool under Gloria’s fingertips. There are bunks set into the walls and a metal partition half concealing a stainless steel toilet. The air has the faint dusty smell of recent comings and goings, a strong breath of anxiety. It’s supposed to be the safest place, but it looks too much like a prison cell.
“You think we should build one of these?” she says.
Warren Yates doesn’t smile. That was what beat him out for prom king; he just doesn’t smile as often and as bright as Jack Keane, but it doesn’t matter. The girls think Warren’s seriousness is sexy, brooding. Gloria would prefer smiles, but she has to have Warren, now that she can.
“Everyone should,” he says. “Dad says we came close. Real close.”
“It seems expensive,” she says, leaning her butt against the edge of the bolted-down metal table. He closes the door with a solid clunk and she wonders if this place would hold a werewolf. “I thought you were supposed to just duck and cover?”
“They want you to think that,” says Warren, coming close enough so that she can smell the Juicy Fruit gum on his breath. Forbidden most times; his nitwit mother has a pet theory that if you swallow it by mistake it can block up your insides and kill you.
“They?”
“The government.” His fingers brush the bare skin below her one good angora sweater. “When they dropped the bombs on the Japs the people standing in the open turned to ash where they stood. Blew away in less than a second. There was nothing left but their shadows burned into the wall.”
She knows he’s trying to scare her so she’ll cling to him, the same reason boys take girls to stupid movies full of plastic swamp monsters and wolfmen and things from outer space. Only it doesn’t work, because he’s talking about real horror – atoms and ashes and Russian missiles trained on the coast. Far scarier even than what’s under her own skin. If it had happened and she’d blown away to ash, what shape would her shadow on the wall be?
Gloria turns her face away from his lips. He was supposed to feel like victory but he just makes her sad. And then there’s that thing – Yael, she calls him – growling away like a hunger pang. He always wants to share, but Warren has killed the mood with his talk of bombs.
“What’s up? Did I scare you? Talking like that?”
He did and he knows it, and she’s so disturbed that she can’t help but lash out a little. “No,” she says. “Just wondering...”
“Wondering what?”
“Whether you’d heard from Donna.”
The growl echoes through her bones now and she remembers how Yael hates being thwarted.
“Gloria...” Warren begins, but she cuts him off, wraps her arms around his neck once more. Mothers always tell you that boys won’t love you if you say yes, but they won’t look twice if they know you always say no.
“Ignore me,” she says. “I’m just being a bitch.”
So he does. Like he even needed to be told.
She comes home with her hair mussed and her sweater stretched out in that telltale way that says hands larger than her own have been rummaging under it. The growling has softened to a settled purr but she knows it won’t be long before he’s hungry again, eager to feel the second hand shocks and shudders of her flesh. And truly she doesn’t mind, because she’s queen now. These days nobody laughs at her for being poor and weird, or if they do they do it far out of earshot. Even prom queen Carol George came fawning and offering to fix her hair, do her make-up and make sure everyone knew Gloria was the real belle of the ball. Anything to apologize for the trick of the ballot box that handed her Gloria’s crown.
Gloria tiptoes to the back door, smoothes down her skirt one more time, and walks into the darkened kitchen. She turns on the light and nearly screams, because Grandma was sitting there in the dark the whole time, and the crazy old broad doesn’t even blink when the lights are switched on.
“Jesus,” says Gloria, hand on her heart. “What are you doing here?”
Celeste Thibodeaux blinks slower than most people. Her eyes are the same clear, cold blue as Gloria’s own, her jaw square and her lips a straight scold’s line. If she flew into the room on a broomstick it couldn’t be more obvious what she is. “You know what,” she says. “I hear you’ve been having a little monthly trouble.”
Gloria goes to the kitchen drawer and takes out her cigarettes; she’s eighteen now and nobody can say shit. Even so the match flame shivers when she lights up. “Then you heard wrong. There’s no trouble.”
“And why is that, do you think?”
She blows out a thin stream of smoke. Shrugs with a nonchalance she can’t quite fully fake. “Dunno. Maybe I grew out of it.”
“You don’t grow out of a thing like that,
Gloria. What did you do?”
“Do? I didn’t do anything. Why can’t you just be happy for me? I graduated high school, didn’t I?” More than most McCormicks did, especially the ones with the family curse.
Grandma snorts. “Don’t you give me the wide-eyed wonder babe treatment, girlie-girl. I know what happened in your biology class.”
“That?” says Gloria. Jesus, she had nothing. Four years and forever ago. “Why are you carping on that now? Besides, everyone knows Sadie just cut herself for attention.”
“Maybe so,” says Celeste. “But the other girl. The one you had all the trouble with –”
“ – Donna? Went nuts, yeah.” Gloria shakes her head. “She probably had a guilty conscience. I heard that can happen.”
Grandma reaches across the table, helps herself to a smoke without asking. “Did you also hear she got so sick of the voices in her head that she flat out begged her doctors to take an ice pick to her brain? Only it went wrong – and now she can’t speak without drooling, or walk in a straight line.”
“And how is that my fault?”
Grandma lights up, peering through the match flame like she’s threading a needle. Fire is just a reaction, Warren says. His world is made up of chemicals and reactions, but Gloria is coming to learn that there’s more, lurking in the spaces between atoms. She knows that Celeste is squinting to see that place; an old witch knows as much about the spaces inbetween as a human can know, which isn’t much.
“I don’t know,” Grandma says, blowing out the match. “All I know is your ma don’t buy rat traps any more. And you’re looking the picture of health, under the circumstances.” She narrows her eyes again, like she can see the fur coat Gloria’s wearing on the inside. “You been by the old Keane place lately?”
“No.” That part is true. It’s been years.
“You know what’s in there?”
“Nothing,” says Gloria, and it’s true. Kind of. The place is falling apart.
“You’re damn right there’s nothing,” says Grandma. “And there was something – that much I do know, because I sealed that thing up in there myself.”
He stirs. Giggles. If he had a nose right now he’d thumb it at her.
“What is it?” The question spills out before she can stop it. This is the only person she can ask, because he’s not a person, and he’s not one for straight answers.
Grandma sits back in her chair and sighs. “Oh, you idiot girl. You mean to say you took it out of there without even knowing what it was?”
“I didn’t –”
“ - don’t you dare lie about this, Gloria. You let it out, didn’t you? Let it walk around under your skin a while. Didn’t I tell you about the McBride witch?”
Ugh. This. Always with the folk tales and the old country. The closest Celeste ever got to Scotland was a matinee showing of Brigadoon. “That’s a fairy tale,” says Gloria.
“It was real. Goddamn, I know they say every new generation thinks they invented the world brand new, but you kids take the fucking cake. Do you know what they used to do to women like us?”
“Burned, raped, tortured, blah blah,” says Gloria, lighting another cigarette. And this time she looks right into the space inbetween and realizes the only person she can rely upon for answers is herself. “What was I supposed to do? Sit around and take it? Donna Patinsky was mean to other people besides me, you know. She was the queen hell bitch of that high school, and some might say she got what was coming to her.”
“Oh God, girl. You did it, didn’t you?”
“She did it to herself,” says Gloria, rising from her chair. So hard to stop once you get started. “Every person she tripped up, pushed in a locker, started rumors about - she did that to herself. If it eats at her at night then good. I hope it eats what’s left of her brain.”
Grandma’s face is the color of old milk. She doesn’t yell, which is worse somehow. “Gloria, I don’t know how to begin to help you. You got that thing crawling around inside you and all you can think about is getting even with those uppity girls from high school?”
“Someone has to. What else am I gonna do? Sit on my ass and read more fairy tales?”
“You dumb little bitch,” says Grandma. “Fairy tales come from a place of truth. Poisoned apples, a hundred years asleep, cutting off your toes to fit a glass slipper – there’s always a price for being the princess, Gloria. Fairies don’t come cheap.”
And that’s the last thing she says. The last thing anyone understands, anyway, because when she tries to keep on talking the words come out all mumbled and her mouth is on one side. The cigarette falls out from between her fingers and onto the floor, and when the ambulance has been and gone Gloria finds the hole it burned through the old linoleum...
*
...”You’re lying,” said Blue, dismissing the picture in her head. But it was hard. So vivid. She remembered not only the old orange-brown linoleum but pushing her brothers toy trucks across it as a child; not her brothers, but Gloria’s. “Gloria would never give her own grandmother a stroke.”
Right, said Yael, his voice clear over the thunder of rain on the motel roof. Just like you wouldn’t lie on a sheet of smelly wet cardboard and wish your own mother face down in the floodwater.
Blue lay still on the bed, her hands by her sides. She couldn’t stand to touch her own belly, not now she knew for sure what was in it. A migraine had driven her off the road and she remembered reading that pregnancy made the volume of your blood double by half or some equally crazy number. The spot on the side of her head itched.
Hard times make us wish strange fates, said Yael. Even for those we love.
“Did she die? Of the stroke?”
Not right away. She lived for another year or so, mostly paralyzed. One eye drooped so much it closed out of muscle weakness, but the other eye – blue, like yours – she held wide open, glaring. Whenever Gloria came into a room that eye would fix on her with such malice; the old lady couldn’t speak a word after the stroke, so she made her accusations with that one wide eye. When she died the undertaker couldn’t get it to close. Put a coin on the lid and it rolled off. Tried to sew it shut but the stitches kept slipping. In the end they had a closed casket. It was the only way Gloria would go to the funeral.
3
Gabe got as far as his house.
When he pulled up outside there was a car waiting, and out stepped a hipster-looking detective in a rolled-up flannel shirt. Gabe knew he was law enforcement before he even flashed the badge; the guy moved with the tedious purposefulness of people who were way too sure they were on the side of the angels.
“Name’s Lehman,” said the detective. “No relation to the Wall Street crooks. You know you got a tail-light out?”
“Uh, no.”
“Well, you do. This your vehicle?”
“Yeah,” said Gabe.
Lehman fished a notebook out of his flannel shirt pocket. “Weird,” he said. “I thought I recognized the license plate. Came up in a missing person’s case lately – Joe Lutesinger. You don’t forget a name like that. What is that? Swedish?”
“I guess,” said Gabe, fighting the urge to just leap back in the truck and drive away. The back was full of Gloria’s old kitchen floor; he’d torn up the linoleum rather than keep trying to clean it. “He’s from Minnesota.”
“And he’s there now?”
“No,” said Gabe. “He’s up near White Springs, actually. You want me to call him?”
Lehman shrugged. “We’ll get to that,” he said. “But I don’t think we got to have a proper conversation, you and I. After we picked up your old...grandmother, was it? Aunt?”
“Gloria,” said Gabe. “Neither. But she was like family. My grandfather’s old girlfriend.”
“Right,” said Lehman. “Harry Coronado. Oh, don’t look so surprised, Gabe. Your old Pop-Pop had quite a record back in the day. Little coke, little weed, a couple of ugly biker beefs and a whole lot of meth.”
Goddamn, why
wasn’t she here now? Two minutes of Gloria’s crazy old lady routine would have assured this persistent little asshole that all he was looking at was a whole lot of standard issue white trash drama that was never going to look impressive on a performance assessment form or whatever. That he’d do so much better going after coke dealers and people smugglers and serial killers and all the usual big Florida game.
There was no way to tell a cop that he needed to leave right now to catch up with his witch girlfriend, who may or may not be carrying a demon-haunted baby, so he didn’t try. “That’s really interesting,” Gabe said. “But he’s been dead for like, years. So...”
“Well, you say that,” said Lehman, with a smile that meant nothing good. “But we don’t seem to have a death certificate for Harry. Just disappeared off the face of the earth. Kind of like Charlie Silver. And Eli Keane. And whatsername – your girlfriend. Ms...Beaufort, is it?”
“So what?” said Gabe. “I’m a serial killer?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. Like I said, we never got to have a proper conversation.”
“Look, detective, I’m a little pushed for time here –”
“ – oh, it won’t take long. If you’d just like to swing by the station –”
“ – I really can’t do that,” said Gabe, thinking frantically of the house. He and Ruby had scrubbed the place a thousand times over, but any cop with half a brain would know why it reeked of bleach.
“We can make it official?” Lehman said.
“No.” There was no way around it. Jesus, talk about bad timing. Gabe sighed. “Fine. I’ll come.”
He turned to close the tailgate, his heart hammering behind his ear drums as he thought about the roll of ruined linoleum beneath the tarp. The thing was probably a smorgasbord of blood and hair evidence. His heart beat all the faster when he remembered how something small and hard – a tooth or bone fragment - had rattled to the bed of the truck. It wouldn’t take five minutes in a forensic lab for Gloria’s old kitchen flooring to give up what had happened to Charlie fucking Silver.