Some Things That Stay

by Sarah Willis

“Yes,” I say.

  “Thank you again, Tamara. Good-bye.”

  “What the heck was that about?” Robert says.

  I roll my eyes because I still can’t believe it. “It’s a guy who says Edith might have TB and he has to come give her a test.”

  “No.”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, you’re kidding me.”

  “Really, Robert, that’s what he said. And he said to tell Helen she has to be tested too.”

  “No.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jeepers creepers.” Robert’s eyes are as big as saucers. He’s forgotten all about the last ten pieces in his puzzle. “Let’s go tell her,” he says. So we do.

  Helen’s in the kitchen as always. She throws a fit. She doesn’t even let me finish telling her half of it before she starts asking questions and jumping to conclusions.

  “I have TB? From that cow? How could that happen? What am I going to do?” Her hands fly about like trapped birds. She touches her face, her neck, her chest, as if she’s afraid they might not be there anymore. She walks into the living room and looks at her face in the mirror on the wall. Robert and I follow.

  “You just have to get tested, Helen. It’s not that bad,” I say.

  “Not bad? I could be dying right now. I have to devote my life to God. I can’t die!”

  You’d think the way she loves God so much she wouldn’t mind dying at all because she’d be with Him, but she’s talking so fast her lips flutter; it’s like she’s a different person. I guess she’s really scared.

  “I’m sure glad I didn’t drink that milk,” Robert says. “Boy oh boy am I glad about that.” I shove him. “What?” he says.

  By now everyone is coming into the living room. Brenda and Rusty and Mr. Murphy. Mrs. Murphy’s at work. They’re all asking what’s wrong and I try telling the story again, but everyone interrupts until Mr. Murphy tells everyone to be quiet.

  “This vet, he said Helen should get a test?”

  “Yes. And she should use rubber gloves when she milks the cow.”

  “I’m not milking that cow anymore!” Helen shouts. “I will not milk that cow!”

  “Well, no, of course not,” Mr. Murphy says.

  “I’m going to church!” Helen says. “I have to pray.”

  “Your mother’s gone to work, Helen,” Mr. Murphy says.

  “Then I’ll walk!” She stomps out of the house.

  “It’s a two-hour walk to church,” Rusty says.

  “It’ll do her good,” Mr. Murphy says. Then he turns to us. Robert, Megan, and I have all bunched up together. “Why don’t you kids go home for a while. I need to call our doctor.”

  We all nod. Brenda starts to follow us out the door, but Mr. Murphy catches her by the back of her shirt. “You stay here,” he says.

  We go home.

  As we cross the road, we can see Helen walking away, getting smaller in the distance.

  “She didn’t say good-bye,” Megan says. For a moment, I think this is me thinking; I’m so sure it can’t be Megan. Then, when I realize it is Megan, I wonder if she means our mother or Helen. Either way, Megan is crying, rivulets of tears running down her pale round cheeks. She has been abandoned too often.

  “She’ll be back,” I say. “She’s just gone to church.”

  “I don’t think so,” Megan says. “I don’t think she’ll come back.”

  The misty rain has stopped. Leaves drip soft exotic sounds on grass so green and wet it’s like walking in a sea. The attic light catches the sun and winks brightly. I think about Timothy. I think maybe he’s stuck in the attic because secretly he didn’t believe in God either, and his soul got left behind. Maybe he just believed in regular people, like his mom and dad. Maybe there are some things parents just can’t do, and he knows that now. And now we have abandoned him too. Lately there have been more noises in the attic. My mother would tell me a squirrel has gotten in through the rafters, but she’s not here.

  I pause before the steps to our house, not wanting to go inside, now that the rain has stopped. Megan stands one step behind me as Robert pushes past us. “I’m reading The Vault Keeper and nobody better bother me,” Robert says, and disappears inside. I think this might be a good time to tell him about the ghost in the attic, just to give him a real thrill, but I don’t want to go inside even to torture him. I sit on the steps and take off my shoes. Megan does the same.

  Megan follows me to the unfinished bomb shelter, where there are three inches of warm standing water. There is no drain; the idea was to keep rain out, the rain of radiation. The bottom is slick with a slimy moss and the place smells of mold, but it’s still fun to walk around in, slicing through the water with our bare feet, pretending to skate on the slick surface. The sun seems to blink and I look up to see a large blackish bird fly across the sky toward the stand of trees to our right. A moment later we hear the laughing cry of the pileated woodpecker, followed by the hollow echoing sound of him hammering the tree with his hard beak, marking out his territory, saying, this is my home, my home, my home.

  I waste time just shuffling my feet, pacing back and forth in the water, until I decide to do what I knew I would do all along. “Come on,” I say to Megan, even though I don’t need to tell her to follow me. She will anyway.

  I go into the barn and out the back of it, and stand in the mud at the bottom of the hill. “Ally Ally In Free,” I yell. “Come and get it! Yoo-hoo! Come on, come on, come on!” I don’t think it matters what you yell, it’s the tone, a high-pitched sound that carries through the air like a dinner bell. We wait. Edith comes loping over the hill and galloping down. Before she gets to the barn I turn and go inside to get the sweet oats she loves. Megan scoops out a handful too. Edith heads toward us and we back up until she is standing by her stool, then let her munch the oats out of our open palms, her thick warm lips spilling very little onto the ground. Then, while Megan rubs Edith between the eyes, I pull over the metal pail and begin to milk her. I know I should get some gloves, but I don’t. I’m going to do this just like my mother did.

  Edith’s udders are huge and swollen-looking and her teats dry and warm and rubbery. I have tried this only once and stopped quickly, but now I concentrate on the task, closing my thumb and finger around her teat, then pulling just a little as I close the rest of my fingers from the top to the bottom. A spray of milk comes out and misses the pail. I get hold of another teat with my other hand and do the same thing, aiming more carefully. The milk makes a light rattling noise as it hits the inside of the pail. I go back and forth from one hand to the other, finding a rhythm, getting most of the milk into the pail, which fills so slowly I think my arms will fall off before I get an inch of milk in there. Edith is a big animal, and at first I keep glancing at her legs and hooves, thinking she might try to kick me, but she seems to like what I’m doing, and I rest my head against her side, like my mother did. This gives me more leverage and I increase my rhythm.

  Milking a cow is a good place to think. I wonder if my mother did a lot of thinking here. I wonder if she worried about dying and decided she didn’t want to, and why. Was it us? Was it Daddy? Was it this place? We are closer to a town than we have been in a long time. Maybe it was like eating something sweet. Maybe she realized that something she was avoiding was really something she wanted. Maybe she decided it was the time to get her strength back, so she could be strong enough to fight to stay here. That’s what I think. But then I worry she just left us, plain and simple. Left me. And I get mad again.

  I think about Helen walking off to go to church, and it reminds me of my sister going to her room. Helen’s not going to church to pray, but to hide. But Megan came out of her room and Helen will have to come home, and I—what? Something nags at me, like I am supposed to do something I have forgotten. Or stop doing something. I feel, like I do in church, that I almost have it, some answer. The sound of the milk splashing into the pan becomes a what? what? what? what? There doesn’t seem to be an answer.

>   When I’m done, Megan follows me to the ditch, where we dump out the milk. As I turn with the bucket, I notice the red flag is up on the mailbox. The mail has come while we were in the barn.

  There is a letter for my father. I tell myself I will not read it. I don’t want to read it. I think these things as I tear it open just as if it were addressed to me. Megan doesn’t protest. She lowers my hand so she can read it too.

  Dear Stuart,

  I miss you. I am very tired, more so than when I first came. I know the doctors must be giving you reports, so you know more about how I am doing than I do. They don’t tell us anything. They treat us like little children. The frightening thing is that sometimes I enjoy it. I am so weary it feels good to be told to lie still. My cough has come back worse than ever. I have lost a few more pounds and my temperature stays high. I have heard the nurses say the medicine doesn’t help me as it should. They act as if I have committed a crime and don’t even allow me to get up to go to the bathroom. I am once again writing this letter on the sly. Don’t tell the children I’m worse. I tell you only because you must plan on me being here the full six months at least—except there is talk of closing the place down and sending us all to different county sanitariums, or county hospitals. I would like to stay here. I am tired of moving about.

  There is a bit of a community here, by which I mean the patients have formed social groups, with structures. Those here the longest are on the top of the ladder. It is much like New York. I even found myself jealous, actually wishing I had been here longer so I could be in that group. I thought I escaped all that when we left the city, but maybe I am still a city girl at heart. Maybe when I get out of here we might go back for a visit.

  Some patients here have sex together. They call it cousining and they do it so boldly the staff must know. Personally, I can’t imagine it, even with you.

  Day and night I am grateful for just one thing. That you and the children didn’t catch this. When I heard the diagnosis, I saw myself as something deadly to others, like a walking bomb. If you had caught this too—

  My dreams are so strange. I dreamt I was riding on Edith. We were racing across a wide-open field. I could feel the breeze in my hair. Then suddenly, I was sitting on the porch at the house in Colorado, and the sky was so blue. There was something about bats flying in the daytime, and I was scared, and when I looked back at you, you were gone. Jane, the woman in the bed next to mine, who has given me this pen and paper, woke me up. I guess I was crying in my sleep. I have made friends here, although they baby me because I am so sick. One man got to go home yesterday. It made me cry.

  I had better stop writing. Jane will mail this for me. (I am the only one at the moment who is not allowed out of bed.) I miss you. I love you. Say hi to the children. It will be a while before I can write again.

  Me

  I refold the letter and put it back in the envelope. I wish I hadn’t read it. I wish Megan hadn’t read it.

  My mother isn’t getting better there. She’s getting worse. My father should read this letter. Get her out of there. But he’s in New York City being honored for painting pictures of my sister flying nude.

  The phone rings two times, then stops. Robert must have answered it. It will be the sanitarium saying my mother is dead. She has given up. I shouldn’t make Robert take this call. I go inside. Megan follows.

  Robert is explaining about the cow having TB. “And Tamara says a vet is going to come here and … Okay. She’s right here.” He hands the phone over to me. “It’s Daddy.” I roll my eyes. I don’t want to talk to him.

  “What is Robert talking about?” my father asks without saying Hello, how are you? “The cow has tuberculosis?”

  I tell him everything the doctor told me in as few words as I can.

  “Well, that’s just wonderful. A sick cow. She got TB from a cow. What next?”

  “Helen has to get tested and she’s at church praying.”

  “What?” He sounds exasperated, as if all this were happening to him. “Well, I’ll have to come home,” he says.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “What do you mean, why? Because I should.”

  “We don’t need you. The veterinarian doesn’t need you. Mr. Burns will come take care of the cow with the vet. We’re staying at the Murphys’. There are lots of other men here. We don’t need an oil painter right now.”

  “Damn it, Tamara, give me a break.”

  “You’re the one who always says to be practical. I am. You can stay there. We don’t need you right now. Maybe later. Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll be home tomorrow, Tamara. Tell Mr. Murphy that. You and I will have a little talk when I get there, about your attitude. I’ll see you then.”

  “Fine, but you don’t need to.”

  “Good-bye, Tamara.”

  I know when he says my name that many times I’m in big trouble, but I just don’t care. I hang up, then remember the letter in my pocket. But he must know she’s not getting better. He must.

  Megan stands a foot away from me, watching me with big doe eyes. Her thumb is in her mouth. Robert is jammed into a corner of the room, sitting on the floor reading a comic. I want to crawl into my bed, stick my thumb in my mouth, and go to sleep.

  “We’re going swimming,” I say.

  Robert looks up. “Mommy says we have to have an adult with us.”

  “Do you see any around?”

  He shakes his head no.

  “You going to tell on me if we do?”

  Another shake.

  “Let’s go get Rusty and Brenda,” I say.

  “I got to get my suit on.”

  “Who says you have to wear a suit?”

  His mouth pops open. Thoughts cross his face like clouds in the sky, each a little different. He’s thinking about being naked in the pond, which will scare him because he’s already afraid of the fish. He’s thinking I’ll call him a sissy if he doesn’t go skinny-dipping. He’s thinking of seeing Brenda naked. The last thought is enough. “Okay.” He stands up. I walk out of the house like the Pied Piper, innocent children in tow behind me.

  Brenda’s outside on the tire swing. I wave her across the road and tell her my plan and say we’ll wait by the barn. She runs off to get Rusty. In a few minutes, we’re all on the way to the pond, Kip tagging along, happy to be part of a group of kids. I wonder if he’s forgotten Timothy yet. I wonder how long it takes to forget.

  Brenda walks next to me. “I’ll catch hell if my dad finds out we snuck out to go skinny-dipping.”

  “Scared?” I ask.

  Brenda laughs. “Nah. This’ll be fun. Hey, Rusty’ll see you naked. Did you think about that?”

  I grin. “No, completely forgot. Oh, well.”

  “He has a crush on you,” Brenda says.

  Something flutters inside me. It’s a giddy feeling. I grab Brenda’s hand. “Let’s run!” We hop over cow pies and shriek when we barely miss one. Kip barks at our heels. It’s a warm day full of blue. It’s a day to keep, so I try to store in my mind the feeling of holding Brenda’s hand, of the way the air smells crisp, the sound of our voices, then I hear Rusty laughing behind me and I decide without a moment’s hesitation that I will get pregnant with Rusty and never move again.

  At the pond we take off our clothes, pretending it’s no big deal. We stand with our backs to each other, yards and yards apart, each one of us trying to figure which piece of clothing to take off first, which last. Rusty tries whistling something, then stops. I turn my head and catch a glimpse of Rusty’s white butt, just as he’s stepping out of his underwear. He sees me looking and does a little hop and a skip on one foot, to keep from falling over. When I pull off my shirt, I can see Brenda’s eyes widen. Brenda has breasts like small measuring cups, not even whole cups. Maybe the one-half-cup size that I use to measure milk into pancakes. I like her breasts more than mine. They look like they don’t get in the way.

  Megan’s the only one who really doesn’t care about ge
tting undressed. She’s also the first one in the pond.

  “Ohhhh! It’s muddy between my toes. And it’s really warm.” It’s only up to her waist. She plops into the water and splashes around. Rusty’s trying real hard not to look at me, but he can’t help it. He’s a shade of hot pink, a blush from head to toe. His penis starts to lengthen and he runs into the water and out to the deep end, where it’s just over his head. “It is really warm,” he says. “Jesus, Brenda, you’re skinny as a pole.”

  “Fuck you, Rusty.” She goes in the water, walking in slowly. “Ugh! I don’t remember it being so slimy.” She runs and belly-slams in the water as soon as it’s deep enough.

  I take my time walking through the water to the deep end, even though I hate the soft muddy bottom of the pond. There are little baby leeches in here. I got some last time, in between my toes. They rub right off.

  Robert’s the last one in, which means he has to stand there naked, out of the water, while we tease him. His penis is a tiny thing, all shriveled up. Finally he gets in, and once he does, he loves it.

  Kip sits by the edge of the pond, watching us carefully. He has a sense of responsibility. He’s already lost one boy.

  Brenda, Rusty, and I have races across the deep end. More than once I feel Rusty touch me under the water. Brenda wins every race. She has the body of an eel. And Rusty and I are a bit distracted. Robert can only do the doggy paddle and tread water. Megan has decided to cover herself in mud, and brings up handfuls of the stuff. I don’t want to spoil it by mentioning the leeches, so I don’t.

  We see who can do a dead man’s float the longest, and I win. Brenda helps Megan learn the doggy paddle, and soon Megan’s out in the deep end with us all shouting to her to swim to us. Finally she gets tired and goes back to covering herself with mud in the shallow end. The pond is a murk of stirred-up mud by now, and you can’t see more than a few inches under the surface. Rusty gets bolder and fondles anything he can touch. Robert obviously tries to touch Brenda because she shouts, “Hey! Get your paws off me!” but then she laughs so hard she swallows water and chokes, and we all laugh, including Robert. We are doing another dead man’s float contest when Mr. Murphy finds us.