The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel

by Val Brelinski

  Her back and sides were now quite slippery with sweat. She made two wrong turns and had to backtrack a few miles before she found it. The fake plastic palm trees at the trailer court’s entrance waved familiarly at Jory, and at this, her deadened heart gave a sudden small leap. She parked the car and got out and began walking down the rows of trailers. It all looked just the same, although the empty wading pool was now completely filled with greenish water. Jory walked to the farthest row and saw number 23, its string of colored lights still hanging, but no longer lit. Grip’s old black Schwinn was no longer leaning against the side of the trailer, either. She opened the trailer’s screen door and took a breath and knocked at the solid wooden one inside it. After a moment, she knocked again, her heart thudding. Jory cupped her hand over her eyes and peered in through the door’s window. It was dim inside, but she could see that the Formica table was now folded back up into the wall and there were no coats in the open closet next to the kitchen. She put both hands around her eyes. The cactus sat in its spot above the kitchen sink and there were three clean plates standing in the dish drainer. The calendar girl still smiled out from the wall and held out her bottle of 7Up. Jory stepped down from the door. She backed up and glanced around her. The ice cream truck was parked over next to the left side of the trailer park’s lone picnic table. She ran over to the truck, pushed open the door, and leaped up inside it. The green plastic beads were still hanging around the rearview mirror. She crawled into the back of the truck and knelt and lifted up the lid on the ice cream freezer. A waft of stale, warm air rose up to greet her. Inside the freezer was carton after carton of melting ice cream.

  She let the freezer lid slam shut. She sat on the floor of the truck and leaned her head against the side of the freezer. Maybe he was just riding his bike somewhere and had forgotten to plug in the freezer. Maybe he was out getting groceries. Or a newspaper. Maybe he was riding by her house this very minute. Jory scrambled up off the floor and scooted between the truck’s seats and jumped down onto the ground. She walked across the gravel toward the other side of Grip’s trailer. She brushed through a thick patch of weeds and cheatgrass. The back side of the trailer seemed very similar to the front, except that there were two small windows instead of one, and two concrete blocks that served as steps to the back door. Jory stepped up onto the top cement block and turned the door’s handle carefully back and forth. This yellow plastic door had no window cut in it and it was locked. Jory stepped down off the cement blocks. She stood back and gazed at the two windows. She gave a sudden impotent leap—a completely stupid and pointless maneuver since they were both too high up for her to see into. She bent down and hoisted the uppermost of the cement blocks and hauled it over to a spot directly beneath one of the windows. Picking up the bottom cinder block, she shuddered. A revelation of worms, now bare and uncovered, writhed whitely in the sun’s glare. She quickly carried the second cinder block over to the first and, with a grating sound, set it on top of the first. Stepping gingerly up onto them, she leaned against the trailer window, her hands cupped around her eyes. Inside was Grip’s bedroom. She stared intently at his bed, which was covered with a nondescript blue bedspread. A goosenecked lamp sat on the linoleum floor of the trailer, along with some shoes, old tan work boots that Jory had seen Grip wear before, and something that looked like Mrs. Kleinfelter’s old brown dress—the one that had been let out at the waist—crumpled up beneath the bottom of the bed. She stared at the dresslike thing—the smallish portion of it that was poking out from underneath the bed—and at its brown paisley pattern. Jory stared and stared, as if the dress might shift and move or change into something else. As if it contained a message within it that Jory could decipher if she stared just a little longer.

  Off in the distance, she could hear a crow cawing mightily, and then another one, farther away, cawing back.

  All the way to school, Jory could feel her heart in her chest, its steady, painful throbbing. Her heart beat on and on as she piloted the car back to Schism. Fifth period had just begun when she pulled into the parking lot. She found her seat in earth science and got out her notebook and began taking notes. “The earth is a relative newcomer,” Mr. DeNovia was saying. “While the universe is at least thirteen billion years old, the earth has been around for only 4.55 billion years of that. This birth date was determined by C. C. Patterson using uranium-lead isotope dating on several meteorites including the Canyon Diablo meteorite.”

  “We always called ’em shooting stars,” said Laird, leaning toward her and whispering.

  Jory knew what she was supposed to say, but she couldn’t do it. She stared down at her notebook instead.

  “Hey,” he said, still whispering.

  Jory was appalled to see a teardrop splat onto her writing. The blue ink bled outward and obscured what had been written there. The earth was now a bleary, unknown age, although the universe’s age remained clear. Her small world had been wiped out while the rest of the cosmos went on unchanged—a tiny lesser planet washed away in a small, second flood, and barely even noticed in its passing.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jory leaned her head against the glass of the diamond-shaped window. The leaves were nearly all gone and the plum tree was a tangle of knotted black branches. Any crows that alighted now were simply doing so to clean their beaks; there were no more plums—green, ripe, or rotten—to be had. The propane tank had a rim of frost on its rounded top, and the clothesline hung empty and vibrating in the wind. Jory had finagled Mrs. Kleinfelter into letting her stay home from school and she was supposed to be folding up her pants and skirts and dresses and putting them in a box to take to Mrs. Kleinfelter’s. Jory’s father didn’t want her staying in the house by herself. Ed Hewett had done a certain amount of investigative work to help find Grace, but so far the detective had had no luck. Which seemed amazing, Jory had heard her father telling Mrs. Kleinfelter, in a town of this size. Jory was leaving all of Grace’s clothes in Henry Kleinfelter’s bedroom closet. Grace would need them when she got back.

  Jory carried the box of clothes down the stairs and out the front door. She crossed the frozen lawn between the two houses and then dropped the box and knocked at the back door.

  “You don’t need to knock,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter, wiping her hands on her housedress. She opened the door and Jory carried her box in through the kitchen and down the hall to the spare bedroom. Jory dropped the box next to Dix’s wardrobe and then lay down on the scratchy brownish red blanket at the bottom of the bed.

  Mrs. Kleinfelter came in and stood in the bedroom doorway. “Why don’t we drive up to Idaho Falls and go shopping,” she said. “I hear they have some very nice dresses at that Mr. Alexander store.”

  “Thanks,” said Jory, staring up at the ceiling through her laced fingers, “but I really don’t want to go to Homecoming.”

  “Well, you could always use another dress, though, right?” Mrs. Kleinfelter leaned against the door frame. “This is the girl that loves clothes.”

  “I do love clothes,” said Jory. “I just don’t feel like going to Homecoming anymore.”

  “Fine,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. “I guess I’ll just have to go clothes shopping by myself, then.” She turned around and went into the living room. Jory could hear her opening the hall closet and getting out her coat.

  Jory got off the bed and walked into the living room. “I’ll go,” she said.

  “Oh, don’t do it on my account,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter, tying a scarf around her head. “I need a new sweater anyway.”

  “I know,” said Jory. She got her own coat out and put it on. It seemed to weigh several pounds and felt horribly scratchy around her neck. She had a sudden desire to rip all the coats and their hangers off the clothes rod and throw them on the floor. She shuddered once quickly and tried to banish this thought from her head. Everything’s going to be all right, she told herself. Everything is going to be all right. Everything is going to be
fine.

  “My,” said the sales clerk, “she certainly is a thin little thing, isn’t she?”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter clucked in agreement.

  “I don’t know if any of these junior-size dresses will even fit her. We may have to drop down to the petites. Or the tween sizes.”

  “Tween?” Jory peered at herself in the dressing room’s full-length mirror. The dark green dress she had on hung off her shoulders and she kept having to hitch the bosom portion up in vain.

  “And, sweetheart, I think you’re going to need something a little more darted in the bust,” the saleswoman said, pursing her lips.

  “Well, what do you have that would fit?” Mrs. Kleinfelter sat in the dressing room chair, fanning herself with her checkbook.

  “I’ll go see what else I can rustle up.” The sales clerk sailed out of the room, leaving the permeating odor of White Shoulders perfume behind.

  “I hate that kind of woman,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter.

  “What kind?” asked Jory, still hitching.

  “That kind,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter.

  “I look awful,” said Jory, and she sank down onto the floor in a dark green froth. “I look like a hideous scarecrow.”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter laughed and then tried to change her expression. “It’s just the dress,” she said. “It’s too severe.”

  The dressing room lady pulled back the curtain and came in with a flourish of perfume and hangers clacking. “Let’s just try these on for the style,” she said. “We can always size up or down.” She smiled, revealing an amazing number of teeth.

  “Maybe we could have a little privacy,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter.

  “Oh, well, of course,” said the dressing room lady, “but you’ll want to consult with me about the fit, you know.”

  “Of course,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter, opening the curtain so that the saleslady could go out. “We’ll call you when we need you.”

  Jory picked up one of the dresses and held it up against her. “Purple?” she asked, looking dubious.

  “No,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. “Especially not in silk.”

  For someone who routinely wore men’s work shoes, Mrs. Kleinfelter had surprisingly strong feelings about fashion. Jory held up another dress. It was knee length and made of black lace.

  “Too grown-up. Like Sophia Loren or some foreign person.”

  Jory held the third dress up against her waist. “Oh,” she said. She turned around so Mrs. Kleinfelter could get the full effect.

  “Hmmm,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter.

  Jory slipped the dress on over her underwear while Mrs. Kleinfelter discreetly turned away. The floor-length dress was made of cream-colored velvet with a rose-colored satin sash and tiny cream-colored rosebuds that lined the neck.

  As Jory stood and contemplated herself in the mirror, Mrs. Kleinfelter took her time doing up all the buttons in the back. Afterward, she gathered up Jory’s hair in her own perpetually cool hands and held all of it there on top of Jory’s head. “I can teach you how to do that if you want,” she said.

  Jory eyed her reflection. With this dress on and her hair up, she looked taller and almost grown up. Like someone quite a bit older and more serious. She looked like Grace, she realized. Grace in her baptismal dress from the year before. A small cry escaped Jory’s lips.

  Mrs. Kleinfelter let Jory’s hair fall back down. “You don’t have to wear it like that.”

  “No,” said Jory, turning and holding Mrs. Kleinfelter’s hands in her own. “It’s not my hair. It’s just everything else.” She dropped Mrs. Kleinfelter’s hands and sank down onto the little dressing room stool.

  “You probably haven’t had anything to eat today, have you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jory miserably.

  “Come on,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter, gathering up the discarded dresses. “Let’s pay for this and get out of here,” she said. “I’m sure our saleslady is more than ready to make her commission.”

  On the way back home, Mrs. Kleinfelter insisted that they stop at the Me-O-My-O for dinner. “I haven’t eaten there in years,” was her excuse. “And the lasagna’s supposed to be good. Let’s live dangerously.”

  The restaurant was cozy and dimly lit, with red-and-white-checked tablecloths and red-flocked wallpaper featuring flotillas of Venetian gondoliers sailing eternally past. The restaurant’s red leatherette booths were filled to capacity with middle-aged couples, some with children. While they waited for their lasagna, Mrs. Kleinfelter grilled Jory about what shoes she could possibly wear to Homecoming.

  Jory picked at a lemon slice bobbing in her water. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe Grace has something that I could wear.”

  “The dance is tomorrow night. Are you sure?”

  “I’ll look in her closet when we get back.” Jory fell silent and pushed her water glass to the edge of the table. The lasagna had arrived, perfect squares on their white plates. “I think Grip went away,” she finally said. “He went away somewhere. He’s gone.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I went to his trailer.”

  “Oh?” Mrs. Kleinfelter’s eyebrows shot up.

  At this admission, Jory’s heart gave a jolt. She took a drink of water and then another. “What would you do if you knew something bad about someone, or you thought you knew something bad about someone, but you weren’t entirely sure how bad it might be, or even if you knew it for sure?” She paused for breath. “Would you tell?”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter stopped her chewing. “I’ve somehow lost the drift of this conversation.”

  Jory tried to slow her thoughts. “I think I saw Grace’s dress,” she said, watching Mrs. Kleinfelter’s face. “Your old brown dress. It was in Grip’s trailer.”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter put her fork down next to her plate. “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure. It was half hidden under his bed.” Half hidden. For some reason, this phrase had been stuck in her head since she had first peered through Grip’s trailer window, and the words had obviously been waiting and ready to pop out of her mouth ever since.

  Mrs. Kleinfelter looked very solemn. “Jory,” she said. “Have you told your father about this?”

  Jory shook her head.

  “When was this? That you saw my dress, I mean.”

  “Yesterday. On Wednesday.” In fact, it had been Monday. Three days had passed already. Four, if you counted Monday.

  Mrs. Kleinfelter frowned. “You have to tell him.”

  “But maybe it doesn’t mean anything,” Jory tried.

  “How can it not mean anything? It has to mean something.”

  “But maybe not something bad. If I tell my dad, he’ll automatically think it’s something bad—that Grip did something bad. I know he will.”

  “Be that as it may.”

  Jory felt her shoulders droop. “He wouldn’t hurt Grace,” she said, but even she could hear the tiny bit of hesitancy that had crept into her voice.

  Mrs. Kleinfelter gazed around the restaurant for a moment or two, and then she fixed her eyes on Jory with something like renewed purpose. “I lied to you,” she said. “That day when I said that Dix and I had never had any children.” Mrs. Kleinfelter rearranged her napkin on her lap and quickly cleared her throat. “We had a baby boy, David Daniel was his name, and he had blue eyes just like his father.” She smiled briefly. “I didn’t know the first thing about mothering and he was a colicky baby and I was already forty-two—I already had quite a bit of gray hair.” She shook her head. “When he was three years old, he got the chicken pox, but then he was fine. He only had a few of the little blisters left on the bottoms of his feet, and the doctor said it had already run its course, and we—that is, David Daniel and I—were lying on my bed. I was tired from all the nursing of him, from all the days and nights of sickroom care, and I wanted to take a n
ap and he—he just wouldn’t be quiet or lie still, and I told him to be quiet, to just shut up and be quiet for one goddamn minute, and then he did get quiet and I was so glad that I drifted off, and a few hours later I woke up and he was dead.” Mrs. Kleinfelter looked down at her lap. “That was the last thing I said to him—that was the very last thing he heard me say. The doctor claimed it was something called Reye’s syndrome, that it couldn’t have been helped, that I couldn’t have known.” Mrs. Kleinfelter stopped talking and sat silently in her chair.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Jory. “That’s terrible.”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter said nothing.

  “But it wasn’t your fault.” Jory gazed at Mrs. Kleinfelter’s large, almost transparent-lidded eyes, at her long, knobby fingers now interlaced on the tabletop. “You didn’t know.”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter smiled briefly. “It was years and years ago. Talk to your father,” she said.

  When they got back, Mrs. Kleinfelter went straight inside to watch Ben Casey on TV, but Jory walked down the path between the houses and up the stairs to Henry’s house. She opened the door and stood in the darkening room staring about her. There was nothing to see—just the old furniture squatting in the usual spots, accumulating more dust—but it felt strange to be here now that she was staying at Mrs. Kleinfelter’s. Now that Grace was gone. Jory climbed the stairs to Grace’s bedroom and opened her closet door and peered inside with a growing sense of futility and unease. None of Grace’s old tennis shoes or boots would be appropriate for her new Homecoming dress. What had she been thinking?