The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel

by Val Brelinski

  She stood up from the ground and tried to examine her hands, but it was too dark and she couldn’t tell what was blood and what was just shadow. “I’m here,” she said.

  He helped her up and dusted off her shorts. He examined her hands and hip and made a sharp whistling sound through his teeth. The bike too looked ruined, its front wheel now oddly bent and misshapen. They left the bike where it was and started walking. After a half mile or so, he saw her limping, and he had her jump up onto his back so he could carry her piggyback-style. “Hey,” he said as they bumped along with her feet banging clumsily into his thighs. “I’m sorry. I’m a complete idiot and a jerk. If you hate me for the rest of your life, I’ll understand.”

  “So much for Paul Newman,” she said, and kicked her heels against his legs a little.

  He turned his face toward hers with a look of surprise and then kissed her quickly on the nose. “You are all right,” he said. “All right.”

  She closed her eyes and rested her chin on his shoulder and smiled the rest of the way home.

  Her father was sitting on the front step. The porch light was on and he had his pocketknife out and was peeling the bark off a willow branch. She had seen him a block away and had made Grip stop and let her walk on by herself. “Hi, Dad,” she said, holding her hands casually behind her.

  “Where’ve you been?” He said this without raising his head from the careful notches he was cutting.

  “Out,” she said. She sat down gingerly next to him. “Just taking a walk.”

  “Taking a walk at ten thirty at night—is this the type of thing you’ve gotten used to doing while I was away?” He cleaned the last bit of bark from the very end of the branch, then folded the blade back into the knife handle. “Is this your typical nighttime activity?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. He stood up and stretched. “Let’s see that it stays that way. We’ve got enough to worry about already.” He held the screen door open for her. “Right?”

  “Right,” she said.

  As she passed by him through the open door, he put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m counting on you, Jory.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze and then stood unmoving on the porch step.

  “Aren’t you coming in?”

  “No,” he said. “I think I’m going to stay up and watch the sky for a bit. Vega is especially bright tonight.”

  She latched the screen door and stared at him from behind the mesh. “What does that mean?”

  He sat down on the top step. “Nothing,” he said, and pulled his knife out of his pocket. “It just means that August is through. Summer is over. It will be a fall sky from now on.”

  Jory watched him wipe both sides of the knife blade on his pant leg. “Good night, Dad,” she said.

  “Good night.” Her father picked up the willow branch again and turned it over in his hands. “By the way,” he said, his back turned toward her, “don’t leave your sister sleeping in the front yard like that ever again.” He cut a small notch in the base of the branch. “She’s just little. You have to watch out for her.”

  Jory stood behind the screen door. “I do,” she said. “Usually.”

  “Usually is a scary word.” Her father took the end of the knife and slit the branch in two, all the way up. “When a scientist says ‘usually,’ you know it’s time to get out the protective eye gear.” He turned and caught her eye. “That sounded almost like a joke, didn’t it? It wasn’t meant to.”

  “I know,” said Jory.

  “Good,” her father said, nodding but not smiling. “Good.”

  That whole week their father stayed home from work—a thing he had done only once before, when Frances had given him the chicken pox. He spent most of his time doing mysterious errands in the car. Driving somewhere and doing something that no one was allowed to do with him. Sometimes, late at night, Jory could hear him talking on the phone. On Thursday, their father drove Grace to the doctor—a doctor clear up in Blackfoot this time—where she was going to be observed overnight. Grace said she wasn’t scared to see a psychiatrist—“a Christian psychiatrist,” their father kept clarifying—but Jory had seen how tightly she was holding on to her overnight bag. The next day, their mother stayed in her room and Frances was sent next door to the Hewetts’—a thing rarer still than the chicken pox. Jory spent the afternoon lying on her bed and trying to read They Came to a River while not picking at the huge scab on the side of her hip. Finally, after she had drifted off to sleep without meaning to, her father came in and sat at the foot of her bed. Even though she was asleep, she could feel his weight where it was holding the quilt tight against her feet. She opened her eyes and saw him looking at her the way he did when he was nervous, when he was going to tell her she was grounded, or how love between a man and a woman was a powerful chemical force and should be taken very seriously, as seriously as a chemist would if he were nitrating glycerol.

  “Well,” he said.

  Jory sat up and waited.

  He appeared to scrutinize his hands as they rested on top of her white bedspread. He bent and unbent his fingers.

  As a father, he said, he had not done everything he should. He realized that now. He had been busy, too busy, and perhaps not very observant; he had taken his good fortune in his family for granted, and now, well, now certain things had happened because of it. At least partly because of it. No, not just partly—he amended—he was as much to blame as anyone. He ran his hands through his hair. Children depended on their fathers to protect them. Even when they didn’t realize it, Frances, Jory, and Grace, even Mom, they were all counting on him to protect them from things that could harm them. It sounded simplistic and maybe even archaic, but sometimes, he had discovered lately, the truth was both. He shook his head. He couldn’t change what had already happened. He couldn’t do anything about the things that were already done. As much as he might want to, he couldn’t fix those things. He took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. But he could do something about right now, and right now Mom needed some rest and Grace needed some time and some privacy from prying eyes and wagging tongues, and Jory needed to help him make sure they both got these things. It was going to require a certain amount of sacrifice and compromise, and maybe even a little discomfort for a while. But he knew he could count on Jory to do her part. He knew she wanted what was best for her sister and her mother, that she understood how important it was that they all got through this difficult time in one piece. She just needed to trust that he had all their best interests at heart. He glanced up at Jory. That might not have been the best choice of words, but she knew what he meant. She was just going to have to trust him.

  “Dad?” said Jory.

  “Mom and Frances will be staying here at home with me, and you and Grace will be temporarily staying in a very nice little house I found for you out at the north end of Arco.”

  Jory sat completely still underneath her quilt. “What?” she said. Her voice came out in a small squeak.

  “It will only be for a while. Just until things have calmed down some. And then you can both come home. But for now I think it’s vital that Mom get the rest she needs and for Grace to have some time to herself to think things through. And you can be there to keep her company and make sure that she’s doing all right.” He patted her leg through her quilt. “I’ll be checking in on you every little bit, bringing you groceries and necessities—things like that. Oh, and I’ve got correspondence course materials ordered for Grace, and she can complete her class work that way—she’ll get her diploma through the mail. I looked it up, it’s just as valid as a regular diploma. I don’t think any colleges will object—although I might have to do a little more research on that.” Her father rushed on. “Plus, there’s a wonderful woman who lives in the main house in front of yours, Mrs.”—he pulled a white note card out of his shirt pocket—“Kleinfelter. That’s it. She’ll check in o
n you too, just to make sure that you’re getting along all right.” He tried to smile. “Just think—no parents to tell you what to do every minute. You two girls on your own. It’ll be like having a slumber party.” Her father glanced at the note card. He folded it in half and then in fourths. He re-creased the note card’s edges with his thumbnail. “A slumber party,” he said again.

  “Grace isn’t going to school?”

  He shook his head. “I think it would be better if she didn’t.”

  “Where is this place—this house?” Jory could feel her voice getting higher, her throat filling with a burning knot of something. “Does the Academy bus run clear out to the country? How will I get to school?”

  “You know, I was thinking about that, and I realized that there’s a perfectly good school right out on the edge of town—Schism High. The building’s a little bit on the old side, but I’m sure the teachers and the kids are just fine.”

  “Schism? Where all the goat ropers go?” Jory felt the first tears spilling over and dropping down the side of her nose. “No,” she said. “No, Dad.”

  “Jory,” said her father, “don’t make this hard.” He moved up on the bed next to her. He put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed her tightly against him. “You’re my big girl,” he said into her hair.

  “I’m not,” she said. “And I’m not going. Make Grace go live there by herself.” She pushed herself away from him. “I won’t go,” she said. She glared at him and swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Please try to understand. I have to do what’s best. I have to think of everyone.”

  She stood up and threw the quilt back onto the bed. She kicked at the bottom drawer of her dresser. “You can’t make me,” she said.

  “The groceries and your winter clothes are already in the trunk of the car.”

  Jory turned and stood in front of him, her heart beating hard in her throat. What desperate thing could she say or do to make him reconsider? “I stole a pair of earrings,” she said.

  He reached up from where he was sitting and took hold of one of her hands and then the other. “I know,” he said. “Where’s your suitcase?”

  Part Two

  The New World

  Chapter Six

  Jory gave Grip a final wave and watched as the ice cream truck pulled out of the long dirt driveway. Then she sighed and started up the steps of Henry Kleinfelter’s diamond-windowed house.

  Inside, Grace had woken from her drug-induced stupor and was now sitting up on the dead cat couch, wearing her old green Pathfinders skirt and their father’s long-sleeved shirt. She was drinking cherry vanilla ice cream through a straw. “Do you want some?” she asked, stirring it around in her blue metal glass. “I put the rest in a bowl in the freezer.”

  “I thought ice cream made you sick.”

  “It does, sort of. But I’m so hungry.” Grace’s voice was faraway and dreamy. She took another sip. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Nowhere.” Jory sat down in a greenish chair. She felt no need to explain her absence. She didn’t want to explain Grip and his ice cream truck either. She ran her fingers over the dark wooden scrolls carved into the chair’s armrests. The grooves in the wood were perfectly finger-size, smooth and almost warm, as if they’d been pressed into place instead of carved.

  “That psychiatrist gave me some kind of shot.” Grace laughed a strange soft laugh that made it sound as if she had something thick lining her throat. “He and Dad both seemed to think I needed tranquilizing for some reason.”

  Jory peeped up at Grace. “What’s it like? Being tranquilized, I mean.”

  “I don’t know,” Grace said. She yawned and then shivered. “It’s strange. It’s kind of like having the flu, except you don’t feel sick. Like when you lie on your bed in the afternoon and watch the sun move in inches up your bedspread. You know? It’s like I’m seeing and hearing stuff but it’s all kind of muffled. Or like I’m watching myself from a little ways away.” She shrugged. “I can’t describe it.”

  “What are we supposed to do here all the time?” Jory gazed around the room. “There isn’t even a radio or a TV or anything.”

  “We’re supposed to come to our senses. That’s what we’re supposed to do.”

  Jory tried to keep her voice light. “Well, maybe you could hurry up and do that, then.”

  Grace gave Jory a sad look.

  Jory stood up. “We’re stuck here now. I’m stuck here.”

  “Well, I’m not crazy,” Grace said. “And I didn’t steal any earrings either.”

  Jory stared at Grace. “Dad told you?”

  Grace said nothing, instead she stared at the floor with a sudden intensity.

  Jory shook her head. “I never stole anything. Not earrings or anything else! The man at Super Thrift just thought I did. Thinks I did.”

  Someone was knocking on the front door.

  Grace didn’t move, she didn’t even seem to blink, so Jory walked to the door and stood on her tiptoes to look out the three paned windows at the top. A thin, tallish woman with a knot of hair the color of old bones was standing on the stoop. “It’s her,” Jory whispered, and opened the door.

  The old woman attempted a smile. “Hello,” she said, looking Jory up and down. “You must be the younger one. I’m Hilda Kleinfelter. Your neighbor. Well, more like your landlord actually. No, wait, you bought the house, didn’t you? Well, I rented the house out that last time, so I keep thinking you’re paying rent. Hmph.” She shook her head. “Well, I am your neighbor.” She didn’t hold out her hand, although Jory kept expecting her to. In fact, she kept her arms tightly folded across her chest. She was wearing a faded housedress, blue with small purple flowers on it, and thin ankle socks with what appeared to be men’s brown work shoes.

  “Well, oh, um,” said Jory, “would you like to come in?” The old woman moved with surprising quickness into the front room. “This is my sister Grace,” Jory said, pointing to Grace, who had not risen from the couch. Mrs. Kleinfelter nodded and murmured something and gazed about her. “You’ve got some unpacking, I see,” she said, a note of slight irritation entering her voice. “I always hated the unpacking. Never minded the moving, just the unpacking. Well,” she said, continuing her surveillance of the room.

  “We just got here,” said Jory.

  “Um-hm, um-hm. I don’t know if you know this or not, but this was my brother Henry’s house. I lived up front with Dix, and Henry lived out back here by himself. For forty-eight years. Yes.” She shook her head up and down. “We had quite the farm—apple and cherry orchards, seed corn by the acre, quite the place. Things had to be scaled back considerably, though, once Dix went on.”

  Jory had no idea what response was called for and glanced quickly at Grace, who merely sat and smiled peaceably. “It’s very nice,” Jory said finally.

  “Oh, it’s all right, I guess.” Mrs. Kleinfelter rubbed the toe of her shoe across the faded roses in the rug. “Mmph,” she said, and seemed to decide something. “Well, I’m gone,” she said, and started toward the door. “You girls take care of yourselves. Your father seemed to think you needed some taking care of, but I can see you’re all grown up. I wouldn’t know the first thing about it anyhow. I told him I’d look in on you and I will, but that’s it. As I said, I wouldn’t know the first thing about it.” Mrs. Kleinfelter turned the door handle and moved down the front steps.

  “Good-bye,” said Jory, but Mrs. Kleinfelter was already some ways across the yard.

  “There goes our neighbor,” said Grace sleepily. “She never minded the moving, just the unpacking.”

  Jory shut the door and sat down in the brown chair again. “Who doesn’t mind the unpacking?”

  Grace stretched her arms above her head. “Frances,” she said. “She thinks it’s like opening presents. Remember that time at the motel up
in McCall? She opened her suitcase and said, ‘Look, here’s my shoes!’ like she’d thought she was never going to see them again.”

  “That’s right!” Jory said. “But she wouldn’t use the toilet until Mom took the ‘seat belt’ off.” Jory laughed. “And Mom made the devil’s food cake to bring with us, but it was so red it looked purple and I said it was possessed by the devil and Mom said that wasn’t funny and threw the whole cake in the motel trash can,” Jory said. “And then she made me go sit in the car and I got to spend the night in the backseat.”

  “Not the whole night,” said Grace.

  “Maybe not the entire night,” Jory admitted. Sometime after it got dark Grace had sneaked out of the motel room with a blanket and pillow for Jory. A fact that made their father feel so terrible that he had come out too and brought both his daughters back inside, where their mother and little sister appeared to have slept soundly through the whole incident.

  Grace seemed to be thinking about something. “Once when I went with Dad to Missoula and it was Valentine’s Day, I was mad because he wouldn’t let me go to the accreditation meeting with him, so I sat in the motel room and cut out all these hearts and cupid shapes from the motel phone book and taped them to the walls and windows.”

  “Did he make you sleep in the car?”

  Grace stretched out on the couch. She rested her head on one of the armrests and closed her eyes. “No, but he made me take the cut-up phone book to the motel manager and tell him what I’d done.”

  “Eeek,” said Jory.

  Grace pulled her hands up under her chin. Her voice was drowsy and slow, almost like an old record winding down. “The time we went to Pacific Lutheran I got so sick that Dad had to take me to their school nurse, and when we were walking out of her office, I fainted, but Dad didn’t stop, he just kept walking out to the car. The nurse had to go out and get him and bring him back in. I was still lying on the office floor. The floor had big green and white squares of tile. I remember waking up with my cheek pressed against one of the green ones.”