Still Life

by Christa Parrish

  “Do you like it?” he whispered in her ear.

  She nodded, and he cradled her in his arms, lifting her over the mess of hair on the floor, twenty-five years of her life cut away and, the next morning, tied up with the garbage.

  In point seven miles, exit right.

  Eastley. She knows landmarks, and turns left at the turquoise barn, another left at the road leading to the water tower, and then she passes the main entrance to Abram’s Covenant, where gawkers and organic produce seekers and tourists park to visit the farm store. Ada drives past, counts three gravel turnoffs. She takes the fourth, leading to her family’s home.

  Her mother comes out to the porch as Ada turns off the car, opens the door. Rosemary Mitchell holds her hand above her eyes, blocking the glare of the sky on the snow, and Ada wonders what her mother considers the greatest abomination—her daughter’s hair, her clothes, or the fact she steered her own car to this sacred place.

  Women can’t drive in the community.

  “Julian’s dead,” Ada says.

  Rosemary gathers her oversized sweater more tightly around her. Ada hates that sweater. It was hers, at one time, the wool coarse and pungent with specks of dried hay woven into it. She’d been forced into it all winter, her only warm outerwear, and it would scratch her exposed skin until it bled. A wool allergy. She tied dish towels around her neck to keep the eczema from flaring, and to protect her blouses from the salve she needed to keep infections away.

  “Come inside.”

  Movement stops when she enters the house. Her sister Judith freezes with a dish in her hands. Her youngest two siblings stop their penmanship lessons, copying Bible verses on blue-veined paper. And Micah, the eldest brother at home, appears from somewhere; he’s always been so stealthy, a fisher cat among their family, solitary and fierce in his attacks. He takes ahold of her mother’s arm and, from the grimace on her face, pinches it. “She can’t be here,” he says. He’s fifteen the day after Christmas, old enough to be the man in authority when their father isn’t around.

  Her mother says, “The man is dead.”

  Micah’s eyes grow large. “I’ll get Father.”

  Ada doesn’t move from her place just inside the doorway. In the waiting, Ada’s mother tugs the bottom of her short hair, the same way Julian did when checking to make sure the cuts were even, but Rosemary seems to want to stretch it, make it grow faster to provide a covering for Ada’s bare neck. “What have you done to yourself?” she whispers.

  And then her father is here, Abram Mitchell the prophet, his gaze slipping over her, slug-like, a trail of accusation and shame left in its wake. He laughs in several rapid, dry puffs of derision. “My dear Ada. Did you honestly believe you would be allowed to keep him?”

  She says nothing, staring at the toes of Hortense’s boots, her bowed head too filled with fire to lift.

  “Tonight we kill the fatted calf,” her father says. “Tomorrow we discuss restoration.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Katherine prepares dinner, sautéing mushrooms and onions on the electric stove burner, the edges caramelizing, and she scrapes the vegetables from the bottom of the nonstick pan. She’s an impatient cook, absentminded, the heat turned up too high. “Ma, it’s burning,” Bryce says, fiddling with his phone while leaning against the microwave. He’s heating Swiss Miss, two packets to a mug, the torn pouches and spilled cocoa mix littering the countertop.

  “No, it’s not,” she tells him, but he’s right. She adds some water to the pan to loosen the food; it steams and browns, and then cools around the newly added frozen pepper strips. “See? All good.”

  “It doesn’t smell all good.”

  “Take care of your mess.”

  He flicks the loose powder into the sink, turns on the water for half a second to rinse it away. Then he crumples the wrappers into one ball and shoots it into the trash can. “Three points.”

  “Two, at best,” Katherine says, checking the sausages beneath the broiler. The topside is almost black, the bottom still blushing. She turns them. Setting the timer on the stove would help, but she’s never learned how to use it and the manual disappeared years ago.

  Bryce removes the cocoa from the beeping microwave, cuff of his sleeve pulled over his hand as insulation, and he stirs the liquid slowly. He wants to talk; usually he’s in his bedroom after school, not skulking in the kitchen, taking too long to make a snack. Katherine knows to wait. He’ll speak his mind when ready.

  We are so alike.

  Her relationship with Bryce is the hardest. While common interests attract, common personality traits repel. His fierce independence, like hers, closes him off from others. He’s always been her I-Can-Do-It-Myself child. From tying shoes at three years old to running five miles a day at twelve, to AP physics homework, he’s done it alone. She wonders, though, if some of that self-sufficiency isn’t because, as a child after Evan was born, he had so much he had to do on his own. She couldn’t be there for him the way she desperately wanted. Evan’s needs were at the forefront of her existence. All else came second as necessity.

  She’s tried to make it up to him over the years, if that’s at all possible. Special Mommy-Bryce nights out, taking him to all the Disney movies in the theater, topped with as much Fanta and Sour Patch Kids as he could eat, not to mention massive tubs of popcorn with butter. Allowing him to pick the restaurants almost every time the family went out to eat. Expensive electronic gifts, new video games, even a car for his eighteenth birthday—a used Sentra, but only four years old. She can’t buy back those years, but she hasn’t been able to stop trying to make him feel as though he has just as much value as his brother.

  Cautiously lifting the mug to his lips, Bryce inhales the surface of his drink, slurping it, and winces. “Two minutes is too long.”

  “I could have told you that.”

  She shifts the frying pan to a cold burner and remembers the sausages. The tops are crispy but not too dark. With tongs, she moves each one from the pan to a platter and covers the mound with aluminum foil. Bryce rummages through the silverware drawer, finds a McDonald’s straw saved from dinner last week. He taps the end on the top of the microwave until the straw breaks through, slips the remaining paper away, rolling it between his thumb and pointer before throwing it into the garbage. “Three points,” he says again, “definitely,” and uses the straw to hold each of the mini marshmallows beneath the surface of his cocoa until they melt away. “Chris Kennedy got into MIT.”

  “When did he hear?”

  “Letter came yesterday.”

  “Did you apply at the same time?”

  “I got mine in three days sooner.”

  “Bryce,” Katherine says, “that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I know.”

  “Just wait.”

  He nods. “Yeah.”

  The back door opens and Will kicks the snow off his boots before stepping onto the braided rug where shoes get kicked off and tripped over. “It’s really coming down,” he says, unzipping his coat and hanging it on one of the pegs in the wall. Hat off next and shoved in the sleeve. “Smells good in here.”

  “Sausage and peppers.”

  “Did you get rolls?”

  Katherine holds up the bag.

  “Great,” Will says. He goes to her, kisses her softly, breath warm and cola-flavored. “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  They’re trying, little things. Taking time to greet one another, not simply a peck on the cheek but connecting by looking each other in the eyes and acknowledging the return home, to family. He eats dinner with her, not in the recliner with the company of television. And he makes an effort to come up to their bed at night, not fall asleep in the chair. And she turns off the lamp instead of leaving the bedroom to finish a few more things downstairs—to avoid him—or reading while he covers his head with a pillow to block the light. And she touches him while they sleep, sometimes stomach-to-back and so close she wakes with her nightshirt twisted around Will�
��s arm, or stuck under him so she can’t get up to pee unless she wriggles away, which always wakes him. Sometimes they stay in their own space, holding hands across the invisible line demarcating his side and her side.

  It’s not enough. After Christmas, they say. We’ll really deal with this after Christmas.

  “Want to eat?” she asks.

  “Are we waiting for Evan?” Will untwists the tie on the bag of rolls.

  “He’s after school for something.”

  “Photography club,” Bryce says, and after dumping the cocoa down the drain, rinses the mug and pours in orange juice. He snags a hoagie bun and, with his fingers, adds three sausages. Bites away a quarter of the sandwich. “He’s getting a ride home.”

  “I guess we’re not waiting then,” Will says, fixing three sandwiches with the fried pepper mixture and mustard on top.

  “Save Evan at least four sausages,” Katherine tells them.

  “I’m done,” Bryce says. He refills his mug and nods toward the stairway. “Homework.”

  “Don’t spill.”

  The door opens and all three turn to watch Evan barge inside, red-cheeked, hair damp with sweat beneath his knit cap, coat open. Watery mucous drips from his nose. He sniffles, rakes his sleeve across his face. And he stands there, shoulders heaving, eyes bloodshot with exertion and fury. “I walked home,” he says.

  “Why didn’t you call?” Katherine asks. She reaches to remove his hat but he flinches. “I would have come to get—”

  “Mr. Bailey, Mom?”

  “Evan.”

  “Seth told me. He heard his parents arguing. About you. About what you and Mr. Bailey . . . did.”

  She feels Will’s arm come around her, hears him say, “Not now.”

  Bryce already has read their faces. “Holy crap.”

  “That’s enough, both of you.”

  “They’re getting divorced, Mom.”

  “I said that’s enough,” Will shouts.

  “You know about this?” Evan creeps forward. “How can you both just stand there and—”

  Will slaps him, a solid man-slap, full hand to the side of Evan’s head. The boy recoils, stumbling backward, instinctively reaching for something solid to break his fall, finding the pan handle and yanking it from the stove. It overturns, soggy onions and peppers ooze down the oven, splatter Evan’s pants, puddle on the vinyl. The pan follows, clattering to the floor. Evan’s cheek glows red; he touches it.

  “Go to your room,” Will says.

  He does, footprints of olive oil and melted snow trailing him.

  “Dad,” Bryce says.

  “You too.”

  “But—”

  “Now.”

  The older boy shakes his head in disgust and brushes by them, close enough to force Will out of his path. Katherine tears handfuls of towels from the roll and drops to her knees. She sops up the peppers, gathering the mess into nests of paper, and then fumbles in the cabinet beneath the sink, the one still with the child lock on it though it’s long bent and opens with a good yank. She finds the Fantastik and sprays the stove front, the floor.

  “Kate, get up.”

  “It needs to be cleaned.” She wipes the oven, slips her hand beneath it, gathering several weeks’ worth of crumbs as well as grease. She deserves to be down here, with the dehydrated corn kernels and the uncooked pasta and the peppercorns she spilled the other day but didn’t bother to sweep, just kicked them under the broiler drawer to deal with later.

  Will drags her up by the arm. She flaps away from him. “Don’t.”

  He wrenches the bottle of cleaner out of her hand and throws it into the sink, and then tries for the towels clenched in her other fingers. She hides the wad behind her back, not allowing him to take it from her, and in his frustration he punches the refrigerator. Magnets loosen their grip on their orthodontist appointment cards, coupons, pay stubs, and take-out menus, dropping the paper items over Will’s feet. He swears, and then grabs her and hugs her. She sobs and he doesn’t let go.

  Finally she wipes her face on his shirt. “I’ll talk to Evan,” he says.

  “No,” she says, shaking her head. “Let me.”

  Upstairs, she knocks on his bedroom door. “I know you’re mad, Evan, but please let me in.”

  Nothing.

  A draft whispers to her toes from beneath the door.

  “Evan?”

  She turns the knob. It’s unlocked, and she pushes the door open without releasing it, leaning her shoulder into the wood and cataloging each slice of bedroom as it’s revealed. The dresser first, Evan’s gym clothes strewn atop, drawers open with socks and denim peeking out. The bed, unmade, same headboard he’s had since he was five, dotted with glow-in-the-dark star stickers. His telescope, a Christmas gift three years ago, thick with dust. On his desk, in front of the open window, a magazine rattling in the wind. Katherine crosses the room and looks outside; the window is only a couple of feet above the roof of the porch. In the snow she sees footprints.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  She wears a long-sleeved t-shirt as her covering, the band of collar holding back her bangs, the sleeves wrapped around her head and knotted at the nape of her neck, the body of the shirt trailing down her back in waves of yellow cotton hair. Her mother had offered her a bandana, but she did not want it.

  Julian bought her this shirt.

  She doesn’t change from her inappropriate clothes, either. Instead she puts on the apparel of an outsider, an oversized black sackcloth her father keeps on hand, should someone come into the community as an observer or a potential convert. A symbol of mourning the old life, of submission to the new. It pools on the floor even as she sits at the dining table, the itchy rectangle of fabric so long around her.

  Her mother serves venison stew for dinner. No calf had been slaughtered for the meal; she’d had the pot simmering on the stove when Ada arrived. Since no one cooks with salt—a worldly luxury, an adulterer of the God-made taste of the food he provides—the meat tastes soft and dark, like soil, and the vegetables have long lost their flavor to the stewing juice. There’s cornbread and fresh butter and water. Eleven-year-old Tamar and eight-year-old Caleb stare at Ada, their food untouched. Micah sneers. And Judith, almost eighteen and betrothed since Ada left—she knows because her sister’s ears have been pierced, a sign she belongs to another—shreds the deer meat with her fork, eating one thread at a time. Her mother blots her nose with her napkin; Ada had made them from a worn sheet when she was nine, hand sewing the hems with tiny pink stitching, and then embroidering the corners with snowflakes, a set of eight. The other place settings have mismatched napkins of various sizes and fabrics. Perhaps the rest of them had been used into rags or were mixed in with the washing, or perhaps her father ordered them all burned when she left, and Rosemary had held onto this last one, something of her daughter she refused to give over to the fire. Ada wishes for that last choice to be true.

  Only Abram speaks, unimportant things at first, no more than gossip, about the happenings while Ada’s been away. About her other siblings, married and with families of their own, who want to be here but there’s no room for them around this table, in this home—“How blessed I am that my quiver is so plentiful!” he says with such mirth she can hardly believe it—but she will be reunited with them tomorrow. All of them. The entire community.

  “Everyone will come together to welcome you home, Ada. And you are welcome. We will meet in the morning to begin your reconciliation to the covenant.”

  Judith’s chin trembles.

  “Father foretold his death, you know,” Micah says.

  “There will be time for all that later.” Her father raises one calm hand and pats the air.

  “She needs to hear it. She chose lust and debauchery over her true family, and her life here with a prophet of God.”

  “And now she is where she belongs, and it was and will be made right.” Ada hates his voice, sing-songy and reasonable and very, very satisfied. She shivers, spoons
the stew broth into her mouth, and swallows, but it does nothing to warm her. Her father centers his gaze on Micah, tilts his head downward while his eyes remain fixed, pupils dilated in the gloaming. Her brother shrinks, bites his cornbread wedge, crumbs dropping into his lap.

  “Well, I think it is time for bed. You will all of you need your rest for tomorrow.” Abram stands, as do the rest of them, following his lead, and on the way past her, he touches Ada on the shoulder. “Welcome home.”

  The house is simply built, a paradoxical pioneer home with all modern conveniences. The interior is wood plank, walls white, floors sealed with brown deck paint, ceilings natural. The main living area is a large, open eat-in kitchen and common sitting area. Off that is her parents’ private bedroom. The children share the open loft above, divided by a wall down the middle—boys on one side, girls on the other—so there is privacy from one another, but not from those below.

  Ada climbs the stairway, each step no wider than a cinderblock, slips off the black overgarment, and sits on the corner of her childhood bed. Tamar scrambles into nightclothes, tenting the gown around her before pulling it over her head, wriggling beneath it, and then emerging through the armholes and collar with her daytime clothes in hand. Her socks remain in place. She kneels to say prayers, which last less than three Mississippi, diving under the covers with an uncertain amen. Judith takes longer, unpinning her hair, combing it as the brittle ends snap, crackle, pop. The first time she ate Rice Krispies, it startled her how much they sounded like hair breaking during this nightly ritual. She’s brushed so much hair so many times, but not tonight, even though she thinks Judith may want her to offer. She won’t be sucked back into her old life, not this easily. Yes, she’s here, and it’s her father’s victory, but for Julian’s sake, it can’t be her surrender. She’s the resistance.

  Or the prisoner of war.

  Why did I come back here?

  Because she knows nothing else.

  Judith undresses with her back toward Ada, glides into bed with the grace of clouds, and flicks off the light. Ada’s mattress squeaks and groans as she fights with the sheet tucked around it. She settles on her side, the shirt still on her head. She removes it, twists it in a ball, and hugs it.