By then, I was long gone. A different name. Another town. Another state. Nevada. Georgia. Dakota. Tennessee.
Montana bore a scar on her wrist, twisted like a snake, where she’d caught her hand in a metal screen door, trying to escape. They all bore scars. Montana had broken a shoulder. Her eye had been beaten shut. When she came to me, barefoot and running, the deepest scars were on her heart.
Her heart I could heal.
Her heart, I could have kept, but I let it go.
I tried to keep their flowers, to name their birds. For Montana, bitterroot, a beautiful bright pink burst. I grew them from seeds in the sunny back windows, and cut them, kept them on the table in a glass bowl. Montana’s bird, a meadowlark. Its belly bright yellow, and its throat open like a flute.
The day after, I took bitterroot by the handful and scattered it on the river. I looked, but nothing was left. Not a knuckle, not a joint. I went down at dusk, unafraid to be seen, the flowers tight in my hand. I lived here, a small woman carrying flowers through a field. I could be picking raspberries or wild strawberries. Not looking for bones. I stood on the shore with my feet warm on a big slanted rock, and let the flowers go, fluttering onto the water. They floated and moved south in a wavy line, like a row of ducks. One stuck. The broken branch of a tree lay across the rapids, making a triangle of water that pooled. One flower stayed there, its head open and pink. It looked up at the sky. I wondered how long it could live there, lodged, drinking in the river.
three
RAYELLE
When I was eight, Khaki, who was eleven, and fast, dared me to huff gasoline out of the lawn mower, pushing the back of my head down toward the hole, the fumes, heady and dense. After, I lay back on the grass, the whole world spinning at warp speed, until I threw up all the ice cream I’d eaten at the barbecue. I remember her watching me like I was a subject in an experiment. Her eyes squinted in observation. Huh, she said when I puked.
She was that kid. The one who could get you to do anything. I was the other kid, the one who would do it.
She ran away when I was twelve. When my body was going faster than my brain. When I needed her the most. She left with a boyfriend who had a car, was going to college. There was no one left at home for her.
She was just the first one of us trying to outrun her own dark shadow.
We swim without making noise, passing each other in the middle, with no splash. Couper goes in naked, me in my bra and panties, and I wish then that I’d put on black or lace ones, and not just plain white. I see him only from behind as he slips in, silent. The water, dark and opaque.
Music comes from one room, and the voice of a guy laughing. The thump of a back door that leads out to the beach.
Underwater, I feel like nothing, like a string uncoiling, arms and legs like electricity. I swim to the deep end, and bob up next to him where he hangs on to the side. The water feels like velvet.
What happens when they catch you? I say.
He smirks. The first time? he says. You can talk your way out of it. After that, they fine you. Trespassing.
I bob, but keep my eyes on him. What are you, some kind of pool-sneaking outlaw? I say.
I prefer to think of myself as an urban pioneer, he says, straight-faced, until I start laughing. It feels good, the laugh, the water, his foot underneath the surface, up against my skin.
What happens when they catch you? he says.
It kicks the air out of me.
There were no charges to be filed, I say, and I manage to smile, but it’s hard, and if he looked close it would be grotesque, that smile, all teeth and stretch, the tendons in my neck hard and popped. I dip my head underwater then, smooth out my hair. Think about not breathing.
He grabs some kids’ towels that were left on the fence, hanging out to dry. They’re thin Disney towels, but better than nothing. Couper wraps one around his waist and then lays the other one over my shoulders, squeezing out my hair, rubbing down my arms.
He says, Well, Rayelle . . . You should probably know . . .
And I think, Married.
Or worse. This is when he tells me he has herpes, or a conviction. That he’s staying at Pine Bluff Estates, an unemployed, drunken felon.
All women eventually fall in love with me, he says. His hands completely cover my shoulders.
I burst out a laugh. All women, I say. I mirror his smirk, his eyebrows, his cocked head.
No exceptions, he says.
None.
Well, very few, he says. When he laughs, I look at the odd shape of his mouth, at his lips that are full, but not pretty, and enough to swallow me right up. It feels like there’s a trapdoor inside my gut that maybe he nudged open, just with his knee against mine, or his foot on my leg, his hands on my shoulders maybe. And I know it right then, what makes him different from anyone else I’ve ever picked up in a bar. This is a guy you could fall for, for all the wrong reasons. That’s what makes him dangerous, naked in a pool after midnight, trespassing on private property. Hopping, like an outlaw, over the locked gate of my heart.
He keeps a little bottle of bourbon in his glove box. His car, a long, two-door avocado-green Gran Torino with white vinyl seats, the kind I’ve only ever seen at a car show. At first, I don’t even believe it’s his, the car is such a beauty, and I’m wet and stumbling through the parking lot, away from the pool. Until he opens the passenger door for me and ushers me in. He loosens the latch on the glove box and lets it fall open. I see the bottle in there on its side. Not a cheap jug of Early Times like Chuck keeps in the cupboard above the fridge. This is a square bottle of Knob Creek, the size of a paperback novel.
Go ahead, Couper says, settled in the driver’s seat. I crack the seal and take a long drink. There’s a new stereo, in the place where the old AM radio or eight-track went. It’s amber, and out of place against the dials and chrome of the retro dash.
Amber, I think. I could have said my name was Amber. I smile at him with my mouth around the bottle. Summer’s eyes were amber, when they finally changed from that slate baby-blue. I thought they’d be brown, like mine, but they never deepened past gold. Her father always said they were green, but they weren’t. Eli and his mother, June Carol, both of them green-eyed, wanted to see themselves reflected in her face, not me, not a mix of me and Eli. You’re always looking for yourself in your kids. Your eyes. Your mouth. Your curly hair.
I press my teeth into the bottle, bone against glass. Couper fiddles with the stereo, his big hand covering the light, and then letting it out when he moves away, like the moon coming in your window when you’re trying to sleep.
Save some for me, he says, and I hand it over.
Something low and moody and twangy plays out, a slide guitar, a girl singer, but husky and deep, the way I’d want my own voice to sound. It sounds familiar to me, and when she gets going, I recognize part of it as “Blue Moon.” You saw me standing alone. And there is a moon, low on the horizon, above the lake, hanging like a fingernail.
Couper takes a swig, then stashes the bottle back in the glove box, his hand against my knees. With his face that close, I put my fingertip on his arm where his sleeve is rolled up to the elbow. He’s thick, his arms, his legs, not fat, but like there’s more meat on him than on most guys. All it takes is my fingertip. He looks up, still leaned over. He smells like bourbon and pool water. His cheeks hot from the drink. His lips, like velvet, big and soft and all around mine.
He puts his hand on my belly. Under my shirt, like a big cushioned bear paw, above the top of my jeans, around my navel, his fingers warm and padded. Some guys won’t touch you there at all, they go right for the tits, or the ass, but Couper swoops around there, on the extra flesh right in the middle, and of course, he can feel the corrugated stripes, the scars, the extra baggage I’m carrying around now, even though I’m young. Even though everybody says that when you have a baby so young you bounce right back.
I put my hands on his face, my fingers up along the sides of his cheeks, into his
hair at the temples. His mouth is like an oven. I feel my spine give, and I make a low sound without expecting to, and he backs up.
Whew, he says. He sits back, behind the wheel. I guess we should drive, he says.
I sit sideways and watch him. He puts the car into gear with the wand on the wheel, past drive, and then back.
Whew, he says again. Then, I could steer with my dick, he says and laughs. And I laugh. And then we drive.
The bourbon hits me hard. That wine before liquor shit—which I’ve never believed—turns out to be no joke, even for a drinker. I remember laughing, driving fast on the way out of town, on that dark stretch of road where the pine trees sweep above on either side, making a tunnel of branches that whisper in the wind, where sand gathers on the sides of the road and in mounds between long stiff patches of grass. There’s the run-down tackle shop and marina, and another parking lot, full of holes so deep the car rocks in and out of them. There’s the lake again, and more trees, pines and willows along the water’s edge, some picnic tables beside the parking lot. I remember a funny story about a teacher from my high school who got caught fucking the principal out here, and I tell it to Couper, with all the details that I don’t even know, but that right now are so vivid in my head, that it’s me with my legs in the air, and Couper is the principal, and I can feel the sliver from the wooden table in my back, and the mosquitoes at the bottom of my ass.
He parks. There’s a small camper, rounded and white with orange lettering on the side. An S that makes a trail, like a comet.
This? I yelp. This is where you’re taking me? I laugh, my throat still warm from the whiskey.
He gets out of the car and holds out his arm to lead me in. And I don’t know, something about him said money to me. His shirt, or his Chase Visa card. The Knob Creek or the immaculate car. Not shit-can trailer.
He keys in and turns on some lights. He moves a stack of legal pads and a laptop, and then pulls the table right off its base and lays down a platform and mattress that make a bed. There are soft sheets, not new and glass white like I imagine in a fancy hotel, but real cotton and old, a flowered pattern from the eighties, like something my mother might have gotten for her wedding. To Ray. She never married Chuck. Chuck just kind of picked up where his brother left off, and no one argued with that. Least of all my mother.
Couper tells me to lie down. I’m ready for anything, tingling. The room feels close, like I’m inside a rolling soup can, or a big casket. I’ve got a rumble below my heart like a motor. I remember his lips under my ear, behind my neck, under my hair, on my shoulder. The press of his hand into the thin mattress, next to me. A knee behind mine. Pinned.
But that’s all. And believe me, if you asked me I’d say I don’t sleep through anything, not any night, not ever. But it’s not true. I have a bad habit of sleeping through the most important stuff.
I wake up without pants. I think he must have slid them off me, to get me comfortable or—who knows?—to feel me up. I don’t feel felt up. I feel twingy and restless, like I expect to have a killer headache but don’t. I wake up all at once, thirsty, with the sun warm and pouring in behind my head. I know where I am. I remember his face and his laugh, the feel of his mouth on mine. His legs underwater. I feel fine. Sometimes, maintenance drinking has its payoffs.
He’s not there. My mother always says you could throw a ball from one end of our trailer to the other, but sitting up on this bed, my head against the ceiling, I could spit and hit the other wall. There’s a little counter and a tiny sink. A blue-speckled enamel coffeepot with a matching cup and a fresh-brewed smell. A little two-burner cooktop. A cube fridge. A screen door that is open to the smell of the lake and, from farther off, charcoal, the sounds of cars in the parking lot, seagulls, trucks going by on the road.
I hear my phone buzzing. It’s in the back pocket of my jeans, on the floor, at the foot of the bed. I lean over to grab it, like swishing my hand in water from the side of a boat. There are two messages, both from my mother. One at 2:35 AM (when I was already sleeping) that says: wtvr yr doing its not goood, with the extra o, unless she meant gooed. And another at 9:05 AM that just says Where with no question mark. I picture her sending the first one from the end of the bar, her fingers clumsy. Squinting hard at the tiny keys. And the second one this morning at the table, before her coffee, her mouth dry, her typing not much improved from the night before. Her fingernails, long, yellowed, drumming while she waits for my response. Maybe thinking I found some place, someone, something that will take care of me. Me, on my way out of town, finally, burning up a trail of damage.
I delete them both without answering. There’s no other activity. Who else would call? I haven’t applied for any jobs. My old friends don’t know how to talk to me and haven’t in a year.
I imagine me and Eli, if Summer had lived. Me with Summer at my mom’s, shuffling her back and forth between me and Eli. Seeing him less and less. Having a sticky-faced toddler to take everywhere. Registering for kindergarten. Explaining. And not. Alone.
No one else is calling.
When Couper steps into the trailer, the whole thing rocks a little.
Morning, he says. He hands me a bottle of water. I put the phone facedown on the bed.
I sit with one foot up and the other hanging, and his eyes are slow. The white cotton of my panties showing. It’s a long way up my leg. I open the water and drink a long time, and he pours me a cup of coffee, black, just gives it to me and goes outside.
I pull my jeans on and walk way out to a dark wooden bathhouse to pee. It’s cool and drafty under the stall doors, with spiders in the rafters, and webs over the windows. There’s no paper, just an empty, rusted dispenser. After, I go to the sink and rinse my hands in water so cold it makes them ache. The mirror, clouded over. You can’t see a reflection, just a general outline of color and shadow and black speckles coming through the other side, growing on the glass like frost. Which is good, because I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in there I want to see.
I don’t notice until I walk back where he is—in a blue padded camp chair under a willow tree by the water. He has a laptop and his little spiral pad at his elbow. He wears glasses, rectangular and low on his nose, like he needs them only to see the screen. When he looks up at me, he looks over them.
What are you doing? I say.
Writing, he says.
Why didn’t you sleep in the camper? I ask. I don’t actually know this. He might have for all I know, but I don’t remember bumping into him, or feeling him against me while I slept, curled into him, or under him. I’m hedging.
He says, I didn’t want to crowd you. He takes the glasses off, then lays them on the computer keyboard. Rubs his dark eye.
I cock an eyebrow. I want to touch him, put my hand on his shoulder, or his head, my cold fingers on the back of his neck. But I don’t.
Crowd me, I say instead, and go inside.
He comes up from behind. Takes the hem of my shirt, which I slept in, and lifts it off. It peels away from the dip in my back where I’m sweaty from sleep and from the walk across the parking lot in the sun.
Couper, I say. I’m not asking. I’m trying it out, saying it aloud, feeling the shape of his name in my mouth. I slide up onto the bed. The sun is bright in stripes across the sheets, shining in my eyes when I lie back. I half expect the bed to buckle beneath us, but it’s sturdy, and the movement is slow, deliberate, like he has all the time he needs. His hands, warm, make a slow sweep up the sides of me, over my hipbones, along my rippled middle like he’s reading braille. It all feels extra real. Maybe it’s the daylight. Coffee instead of whiskey. His age, or his weight. I feel small. I’m a tall girl, with substantial arms and legs, round tits, before and after the baby. After the baby, Eli felt small, like I was a gaping wound he couldn’t fill. But with Couper, I feel small. He could pick me up, move me around to his liking. Has found a waist he can hold on to, wrap his fingers around.
Couper, I say again. I claw into him, pulling h
im closer, urging.
Shhh, he says, the way you would if someone was interrupting you, like you were trying to finish something, a sentence, or the rest of your story.
After, when he puts his shirt back on, the notebook is still there, stuffed into his pocket, its edges ratted from use.
What’s this? I say, and run my fingers along the spiral. Are you a contractor? I ask. I’d seen it sometimes, a guy taking measurements for a project, a flat pencil in his pocket to sketch out the length of something.
Notes, he says.
I start to laugh. I didn’t think I had anything to teach you, I say, and mean it. He seems to know what he’s doing.
I’m sure you’ve got plenty, he says.
I watch the lines of his face in the sun. The gray at the edges of his hair. I think he must be over forty.
What do you do? I say.
I’m a consultant.
What does that mean, I say, but don’t really ask it, just walk my fingers up the part of his belly where the shirt’s not buttoned. I mean, what do you actually do? I say.
Pay attention, he says.
You get paid to pay attention, I say.
Yes ma’am, he says.
You can pay attention to me, I say, and he laughs.
I was about to . . .
I’m still naked, on my back, my belly flat and emptied, rippled.
What about you? he says, and I roll over, give him my bare back where he curves his fingers into the dip at the low part of my waist. What do you do?
I go soft. For all the times I’ve been tempted to tell my whole sad story to the next guy, the next townie I hope not to run into at the gas station or the beer store, the next guy who thinks he’s found a willing lay, I can’t. I can’t spill it. Not yet.
Couper leans in, kissing, his lips inching up my spine. Home from college? he says. I feel his breath between my shoulder blades.
The Scamp Page 3