by Erin Saldin
I lean my bike against the side of the house and go in around the back, by the kitchen. “Home,” I call.
A muffled shout from upstairs. I toss my backpack on the kitchen island and go to the fridge. I still haven’t really eaten since my fruitless trip to the Open Six Hours, and I’m starving. I’m slathering some mustard on a mystery-meat sandwich when my mom walks into the kitchen.
“We thought it was you,” she says. She turns and yells up the stairs. “Darling, our beloved son has returned from work.” Then: “So, how was your day? Work? Friends?” She scrutinizes me. “Did you see Jane?”
It never surprises anyone that I’m close to my parents. I wish it would. I wish people—okay, Jane—would look at me and think, I bet he has a really strained relationship with his parents, instead of what they really think, which is, I bet his mom knows all about his feelings of inadequacy, or, I bet he and his dad stay in on Saturday nights to refinish midcentury dining chairs.
“Mom,” I tell her, “Gold Fork’s small, but it’s not that small.” I wish I wish I wish it were.
“Hmm.” Mom’s not really listening. There’s a copy of the newspaper with an article on the Nelson fire on the dining room table. She’s been reading it. I glance at it, and she catches me looking.
“Do you think there’s a connection between the two fires?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “I don’t.” I walk over and put my arm around her. “The chapel was an accident. You know that.” As always, the lie lands like concrete in my gut. “Embers from the campfire . . . or something.”
She sighs, looking suddenly very tired. “I want to believe it was an accident—the chapel. Not vandalism or—worse.” Mom picks up the article and studies it, then puts it back down. “I want to believe that people are inherently good, Davis, even when they do bad things.”
“Hey, Moose.” My dad comes downstairs, wiping his hands on the front of his “house jeans.” (He really only has two pairs of jeans, because he’s more of a chino-and-button-down guy when he’s working at the real estate office in town during the week.) “Anything new?” He sees the newspaper and flips it over so that the article is hidden. He looks at my mom, but she gives him a quick smile to let him know she’s okay.
“No Jane sightings,” she says. Turns back to me. “Want to talk about it? Shake out the emotional cobwebs?”
You wouldn’t guess it from the dirt roads and burger joints, but Gold Fork’s a bit of a hot market for a good counselor. And who better to trust with your darkest secrets than a minister who wears blue jeans under her robe and won’t turn down a scotch at Christmas? A minister who never, ever minces words. My mom is that guy at the party that you keep inviting because he brings the booze, but then you have to deal with the fact that he’s gonna say something like, “Damn, man, what’s that on your face?” My mom’s like that, except she says things like, “Lord God, please help us to see what others can’t, and to press for the change that you find fitting,” all while standing at the pulpit and staring so directly at her own son that everyone else starts staring at you and they, too, notice the stupid baseball hat you insisted on wearing this morning.
She’s no wild one, my mom, but she’s just wild enough to be real. And her congregation loves her.
They certainly loved her enough to try to raise money for a new church in town when—unbeknownst to her or anyone else—her son and his friends burned down the old one two years ago. They had to sell the land at Washer’s Landing, of course—it was worth too much, and the profit paid for a significant portion of the new building. It broke her heart.
“Things will come together, Moose,” my mom says now. “They always do. Sometimes in the most fantastic ways. Have faith in yourself.” She looks down at the table, shifts some random papers around. “Anything else I should know about?” She looks up again, and I swear she’s sizing me up. “Work . . . the fire . . . and friends?” Her tone is off.
But before I can answer her, ask her what she’s getting at, my dad laughs.
“What this family needs is some sun and sand,” he says. “Why don’t you and I head down to the dock, Moose, and work on that new extension I’m putting in? I could use a hand.”
My phone buzzes with a text from Dan. Piece of paper found at Nelson site. At least one legible word, according to fire chief.
“Great idea,” Mom says. Her tone is normal again. “It’s been a while since we’ve had a Dock Day. You guys head down now, and I’ll bring some snacks in a few.”
Another text: Nelsons coming back to town in a couple weeks. Need you to do follow-up interview. Standard questions. Up for it?
Sure, I text back. Interviewing the Nelsons is a far cry from following up on organic chicken. It’s hard not to be excited about that.
“Sounds good,” says Dad. “Davis?”
“Okay.” I put the phone on the counter. “Let me grab something first.”
I’m rereading the first book in Pierce’s The Song of the Lioness series (for the twentieth time), and it’s still in my backpack from last night. Once I get it, I step over to the kitchen window and peer down at the lake. From here, I can’t see much—just a fingernail of blue. But from down on the dock below our house I know I can see a few of the nicer cabins on the other side of the water, the Den in particular with its log siding and tennis court. The Sea Rays, a few people in the bows, making their way from cove to cove to pick up friends for an afternoon of drinking and tubing. The Weekenders on their Jet Skis, curls of white foam skimming the lake, turning to larger plumes of white as they get closer to our dock. Is Jane on the back of one of them, her arms circling the waist of some Apollo? Yelling over the sound of the motor, Are you sure your parents won’t be back until next week?
I mean, when you think about it, there’s only one reason why I’m not running into Jane at every street corner. Why I didn’t see her at Fellman’s. Because there’s only one reason anyone skips that party.
She’s moved on.
ANA
There are moments you don’t forget. This one was just after Mom and the Colonel (that’s what I called him) broke up a couple years ago—and we were sitting on our thrift-store couch, picking the burnt kernels of popcorn out of a big plastic bowl. We both like the burnt bits. She’d been crying, and I’d been saying the empty, trite things that I thought you were supposed to say in these situations. He was the only guy she’d dated for as long as I could remember. I didn’t know how to respond.
“You’ll find someone better,” I said, not even sure if I believed it. Not even sure I wanted her to.
Mom looked at me. I remember how her mascara had streaked around her eyes so that she looked like an evangelical from one of those shows that are always on when you watch TV at one in the morning. I was just kind of patting her arm like I was a Red Cross volunteer after an earthquake, and she said, “There’s only one Better, mi cielo.” She laid her hand on mine and squeezed and said, “The rest is all bullshit. All of it.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Know this,” she said, her voice suddenly angry. “You can love as many people as you want. But there will only be one who is better than the rest. Only one guy will get you—really get you. And if you lose him, or if you don’t even see him in the first place, you’ll feel it forever.” Then she started to cry again.
At the time, I didn’t think it worthwhile to point out that, from where I stood, the Colonel sure didn’t seem like “the Better,” and that frankly, I was glad he was gone. I just let her put her head on my shoulder and cry, and I said more empty, trite things and chewed slowly on the burnt kernels and willed that night to be over so we could get on with our life as just two.
But I haven’t forgotten what she said, because, on one level at least, she was right. I don’t think that we can trade love around like baseball cards. I don’t believe that a heart, once broken, ever fully heals. I think we love once, and fiercely.
And I think I might not get love the way other p
eople will. I think Vera might be my Better. She may not know my name, but she knows me.
And. Even if she doesn’t remember me telling her, she knows the truth about the chapel fire.
That’s why, after I run into Davis at the Open Six Hours, I decide to go visit her. For some reason, seeing Davis made me uneasy. He was talking about someone who looked like Erik’s dad and I couldn’t concentrate because I was remembering how he showed me his novel about Jane at Fellman’s. How I watched his face. Saw the way he looked at each page like he wanted to disappear into it and be the story. And I tried not to think about how things might have turned out. I tried not to think about the weeks leading up to the chapel fire and the way Davis had—still has—of capturing a moment that appears nondescript to everyone else and making it somehow hilarious or strange or lovely. How we’d started talking, finding dumb excuses to sit together, sharing sidelong looks, inside jokes. And I thought—I hoped—that the overnight at the chapel would bring something more.
I got my wish, I guess.
I didn’t wear short sleeves for a whole year after the fire. Even now, I rarely do. The scar is more than just a reminder. I’m marked by the ugliness of what we did. It defines me. And it holds me hostage.
Davis hasn’t looked at me the same way since.
We were fourteen, I remind myself again. Whatever we had? It didn’t mean anything.
I jump on my bike and head for the Royal Pines. Down Main Street past the hotel and the coffee shop, the lake glistening. The water’s surface out toward the middle is dotted with the tiny wakes of water-skiers, even though the water must be only barely above freezing. It’s June, after all—not exactly the height of summer. I take a left onto Rollins, a back road that skirts the town. The houses get smaller, and the front porches, which are all wicker furniture and fresh flowers closer to the lake, start to sag under piles of tools, metal benches with lead paint peeling off. The pine trees out here even look bedraggled. It’s hot, and I’m sweating by the time I arrive at the nursing home. My shirt is sticking to my back, my dark hair a frizzy mess around my face. The sky is growing dark and I feel like I’ve just ridden through a cloud of gnats, but as soon as I walk in the sliding doors and pick out Vera’s calm face in the solarium, it’s all worth it.
She’s my person. My Better.
“Hi, Vera.” I kneel down by her wheelchair. “It’s me.”
She looks confused. “Isn’t it always you?”
I nod. “I guess so.”
“Well, take me away, then.” She glares at one of the nurses, who’s walking toward us with a cup of juice, and the nurse turns on her heels and walks away. Vera sweeps one arm in front of her. “Let’s go. This room isn’t doing anything for my complexion.”
I keep my laughter low as I push her back to her room. Erik says that, viewed from the air, the Pines probably looks like a swastika. I disagree. I think it resembles an insect, with four or five hallways stretching out from the main nurses’ station like legs. Each hall is named for a tree, naturally. Vera lives in a single apartment halfway down Larch Hall. She doesn’t have any roommates, unlike some of the residents. When we get there, I park her next to her bed and side table and then move around the room, opening the blinds and straightening things up. “There,” I say, grabbing one of the visitors’ chairs from the corner and pulling it next to her. “Fresh and cheery.”
“That you are,” she says, per our routine. She reaches over and pushes the bowl of nuts on the side table toward me. “Would you like a snack?”
“Thanks.” I take one and chew. I always take one, even though I know they’re the same nuts that were here last week, and the week before that, and the week before that.
She’s never called me by name. She remembers me, of course—my face, sometimes even my stories. Maybe when we’ve lived as long as Vera has, certain things don’t matter anymore. The words we use to set ourselves apart from others might seem frivolous. “Names are just accessories,” she said once, and she was right, as always. She’s never mentioned my darker skin and hair—has never called me Lupe like a couple of the other residents who came up with it one day and still call out to me as I walk by their wheelchairs like we’re all in on it together. Lupe! Lupe! All that matters to Vera is that I show up, eat her almonds, listen to her breathe.
We chat for a while, covering the basics. This leads, like it often does, to Vera saying something about the dining room in her old house, how you could seat twenty around the table if you needed, and me saying, Twenty? I don’t know twenty people to invite! and Vera laughing lightly. I’m just picking up her Harry Potter book to start reading chapter one for the fortieth time when I hear someone talking loudly by the nurses’ station.
“—a list of medications. That’s all I’m asking for.” Short pause. “Well, I don’t care if you don’t know me. I know my rights.” It’s a woman’s voice, and she sounds tired. Tired and angry. “What? I have to call ahead? Is this a spa? Do I need a reservation?” There’s a mumbled response, then finally: “Thank you. I’ll do that.”
I raise my eyebrows at Vera. “Did you hear that? Sounds like there’s some drama.”
She blinks. “Hear what?” She rests her hand on my arm. “What were you saying?”
I hold up the book with my other hand. “Never mind. Should we read a little?”
Vera peers at the cover. “That looks interesting.”
“It sure does,” I say, even though we had this exact same conversation four minutes ago. “It’s called—”
“Excuse me.”
I turn my head at the voice. It comes from a short woman in the doorway. Stocky. Compact. Her dull brown hair falls to her shoulders, and she’s wearing an orange and purple caftan that makes her look like she just stumbled out of bed and brought the sheet with her.
“Excuse me,” she says again. “Could you leave us?”
“What?” I close the book.
“You know, could you leave us? Go work on another room?”
“Another room.” All I can do is repeat her words.
“I can take it from here,” she says. “You can leave now.”
I grab Vera’s hand with my own and squeeze. Then I look back at the woman. “I don’t work here,” I say slowly, enunciating so she’ll understand. “I’m a visitor like you.” I can’t believe I’m explaining myself. I want to ask her if the color of my skin has anything to do with it. My mom’s told me about the sorts of things she hears at the spa. Beyond the ordinary half-joking requests for happy endings (“Joke!” they say when she steps back, reaching for the doorknob—“I was just joking!”), there are the other ways people can make her feel small. The uglier ways. Practicing their Spanish on her—dinero, por favor, final feliz. Asking her if she’s got her papers. So yeah—I wonder if this woman looked at me and thought, Chica probably cleans the bedpans. But then, something about her voice is familiar. A voice I heard over the phone, almost two years ago, asking me for more information about myself.
She looks at me steadily for a moment and then says, “You must be Ana.”
That’s when I realize that I’ve seen her expression before—annoyed, looking down and to the side like she’d rather be anywhere but where she is—and I glance at the family photo next to Vera’s bed.
“Abigail,” I say.
“Abby. Abigail’s a name for a dead president’s wife.” She takes a step into the room and looks around. “No one calls me that except my mother. She always refused to call me Abby.” Her gaze flits back and forth between Vera and the room, never resting on the woman in the wheelchair for long. It’s as if Vera’s not even here.
I squeeze Vera’s hand again.
Abigail—sorry, Abby—starts moving around the room, picking up things and putting them back where she found them: a cardigan, the small potted cactus I brought Vera last month. “It’s not the shithole I was imagining,” she continues. Her voice is flat, a little gravelly. She speaks with the careful precision of someone who doesn’t talk
often.
Vera’s been watching us the way a cat watches two birds from the window. Her head moves from my face to Abby’s and back again. “Hello,” she says finally, holding out her hand. “Welcome. You must be the help.”
Abby snorts and looks away, and I think about the only other conversation I’ve had with her, over the phone more than a year and a half ago. I’d answered the ad in the Gold Fork Roundup. I was probably the only person who did. Companion needed, it had read. Elderly woman. No poachers. And I’d wondered why the person placing the ad was concerned with getting an elk out of season until I talked to Abby on the phone. My mother is addled, she’d said, almost before I’d finished telling her my name. She’d clipped the ends of her words as though they were fingernails. Old and addled, and she won’t know you from day to day. She certainly doesn’t know me.
I remember thinking that mothers never know their daughters.
She’d kept talking. What I want to know is, what’s in it for you? I have control of her assets, she’d added, as though that meant something. So there’s nothing to gain there.
That’s when I almost hung up the phone. But I didn’t. I told her that I liked old people, that I didn’t have a grandma, that I needed a job. All true. I didn’t tell her that I needed something to keep my mind off the memory of the fire, of the sound that came from within the chapel as I fought my way back in, slicing my arm and searching for something that I wouldn’t—couldn’t—find. But by then those weren’t the only reasons I wanted the job. By then, I just wanted to see the woman whose own daughter thought about her in terms of assets—of gains and losses. What kind of woman could Vera be? And, I’d wondered, what kind of daughter was Abby?