The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel

by Val Brelinski

  “Stop it,” Grip said.

  “She’s half insane.”

  “I mean it, Jory.”

  “You just don’t know yet because you haven’t lived with her. Oh, wait,” she said, turning and looking at him. “I guess you have lived with her, haven’t you? So now you’ve seen her complete and utter freakiness in action.”

  Grip turned the truck’s wipers on high. “She’s your sister,” he said. “And you love her.”

  “Just like you do, right?” Jory could feel the lump in her throat becoming something solid, a burning densely packed lump of heat that was scalding her from inside.

  “I’ll take you out to Mrs. Kleinfelter’s,” said Grip. “You can call your father from there and tell him where you are.”

  Jory stared out the passenger window at the snow. At the way it was covering everything with white, making the houses and buildings and fields so much cleaner and prettier than they actually were. “She’s having someone else’s baby,” Jory said. “What do you think about that?”

  “I think that’s old news,” Grip said, but he pressed on the gas pedal and the truck swerved slightly across the middle of the road. He spun the steering wheel to the left and the back end of the truck swung around in a wide arc. Jory grabbed the door handle. The truck drifted sideways toward the edge of the road and then slid slowly to a halt with a muffled thump. They sat in stunned silence as the truck engine idled and the wipers continued to squeak back and forth.

  Grip rested his head against the top of the steering wheel. “Goddammit,” he said.

  “She’s only seventeen,” said Jory. Her voice cracked. “That’s not so much older than me. Than I.”

  “Jory,” said Grip. “You’re just a kid. A fucking little kid.”

  “No,” said Jory. She put both her hands up to her face and shook her head. Then she let her hands fall back into her lap. “You kissed me,” she said. “And you meant it. And that was after you knew Grace.”

  “That was a mistake,” said Grip. “I should never, ever have let that happen.”

  “You left me the record!” said Jory, her voice rising further still. “All the X’s and O’s.”

  “Oh, God.” Grip shook his head. “I was just trying to say good-bye. And to let you know I still cared about you.”

  “Are you going to marry her?” Jory asked. She pressed at her eyes with the heels of both hands. “Is that what’s going to happen?”

  Grip looked down at the floor of the truck for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said. His voice was very sad. “I’d like to.”

  Jory gazed at him openmouthed. “You’d be my brother-in-law.” She laughed once then, a strange laugh that seemed to rip and tear as it left her throat.

  “Look, I’m so sorry if I hurt you,” Grip said. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know anything was going to turn out like this.”

  “You don’t think of me like your sister,” said Jory. “Not even close.”

  “No,” said Grip. “I don’t. But I think I could learn to.”

  Jory shoved the truck’s door open and got out. Her feet slid in the snow on the road and she almost fell.

  “Hey,” Grip called. He leaned out toward the open door. “Get back in here.”

  Jory slammed the truck door shut and balanced herself against its side. Snow was coming down against her face and hair and the back of her neck. She could feel its icy wetness seeping into the collar of her sweater. She slid sideways down the shoulder of the road and into some snowy grass. She had no idea where she was, but she started marching blindly across what looked like a farmer’s field, its brittle weeds whipping wetly against her pant legs. She was stumbling up and down a snowy hillock when she heard the truck door slam and Grip yelling her name. She crossed her arms and tried to walk faster. She could hear him running behind her now, trying to catch up, and then she could hear him breathing and panting, his boots pounding heavily against the ground. At this, she too began to run, and she had a sudden memory of playing Fox and Geese with her father at Christmastime and of the joy-filled terror in knowing that there was no escape. Knowing that the person chasing you, the large male person chasing you, would soon be on you and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, you could do. Jory was running full out now, her arms flailing and her feet sliding beneath her, but Grip grabbed her from behind and she tried to twist out of his grasp and they both fell to the ground. For a second she smelled snow-covered dirt and the wet wool of his coat and felt the sensation of his full weight moving on top of her, something thick and pleasurable rising in her even though her arm was pinned painfully beneath her. Grip breathed heavily in her ear and she felt the sensation again, more strongly this time, and she squirmed wondrously against the whole length of his solid bulk, but then Grip was thrusting himself off her, pulling her up with him. “Get up,” he said sharply, even though she was already standing. They stood in the field breathing plumes of smoke out into the snowy air. “I hate you,” she said, and he dragged her back to the truck by the arm.

  They drove on past the water tower and the sugar beet factory and the alfalfa fields now covered in snow. The Birds Eye plant was shut for the winter, but the farmhouses on Chicken Dinner Road each had at least one light burning steadily, and several of their chimneys were now curling with smoke. Grip turned the truck onto Deer Flat Road and made his way down to the end to Mrs. Kleinfelter’s house. He pulled into the driveway and then stopped the truck and turned off the ignition. He turned in his seat and took one of Jory’s hands in his. She jerked her hand away as hard as she could, but he was stronger and wouldn’t let go. He turned her hand over in his and traced the lines in her palm with his finger. “You’re going to be fine,” he said. “And everything that’s happening now will only be a funny memory later on.” He frowned at her and folded all her fingers down one at a time until they were wrapped around his. “You’ll look back on this and you won’t be able to imagine that you ever felt this way. No really.” He shushed her head shaking. “You’ll be embarrassed to think you ever cared about a weird old guy like me.” He nodded. “You’ll grow up and meet a hundred more guys and you’ll probably break all their hearts and you’ll never give me a second thought, except to laugh and wonder what in the hell you were thinking.”

  Jory tried again to pull her hand away. “You don’t know anything,” she said. And embarrassingly, she began to cry.

  “You’re a wonderful person, Jory,” he said. “You’re smart and beautiful and very brave.”

  Jory snatched her hand out from under his and held it awkwardly to her chest as if it were burned. Outside the snow kept falling, silent and thick. A layer of it had now completely covered the truck’s windshield in a way that made the truck as dark and close as a small enclosed cave.

  Grip took his arm off the back of Jory’s seat and sat up. “When you get inside, you should call and tell your father where you are,” he said. “He’ll be getting worried by now.”

  Jory reached out and took hold of the truck’s door handle. She could suddenly feel that the toilet paper in her underwear was soaked through with blood. “Don’t tell me what to do,” she said, and she opened the truck’s door and stepped out. A large clump of snow fell off the truck’s roof and onto the ground, and the blowing snow stung Jory’s face and sent icy wet sparks down her hair and neck. She glanced at Grip and then up at Mrs. Kleinfelter’s house. The porch light was on and it sent a small beacon of light out through the swirling snow. Behind was Henry’s house, deserted and empty. Even the diamond-shaped window was dark now.

  Grip leaned out toward her through the open door. “Jory,” he said, and there was a small question in his voice. A seeming bit of hesitation. One moment’s worth of uncertainty.

  Jory looked at his face, at the way his eyes seemed to look into her, but also past her, as if there was something important just over her head, something vital just beyond her profile th
at he was attempting to see. She swallowed. “They’re sending her away tomorrow,” Jory said. “To some unwed mothers’ home in Kansas.”

  “What?” said Grip, but it was obvious that he understood. “What do you mean? When tomorrow?” He leaned forward and clutched at the door handle. His fingers were so close to hers that she could feel the slight human heat that they gave off.

  “I don’t know,” said Jory. “Why does it matter? She’s just going.”

  Grip had turned completely sideways in his seat, so that he now faced Jory. “Listen. I need you to do something for me,” he said. He leaned farther out of the truck and was trying to take hold of her wrist. “I need you to call Grace and tell her—tell her to meet me somewhere. Down the block from your house or somewhere.” His eyes darted across Jory’s face.

  “You can’t come there.”

  “Tell her to meet me down the block from your house, all right? At the other end of the block—no, down the street by God’s Park or God’s Lot or whatever it’s called. In—I don’t know”—Grip glanced at his watch—“one hour. Exactly one hour from now. Okay?” Grip eased himself out from under the steering wheel, moving over into the passenger seat. His knees were now directly in front of Jory’s chest. He was so close that she could smell the tang of beer and something that smelled like canned plums on his breath. He reached out and clamped his hands down on top of both of hers and squeezed them tightly. “I need you to do this for me, Jory. Please?”

  Jory tried to pull away from him, to move out of his reach, but he only gripped her wrists more firmly.

  “I know you’ll do this for me,” he said. He peered carefully into her eyes, scanning them for a particular response, an unspoken agreement. His fingers tightened around hers and she had a sudden impulse to scratch and slap at him, to leave marks that would last for at least a day or two. “I know you’ll do this,” he said again. “I know I can count on you.”

  “You don’t know anything,” said Jory, and she realized that this was the second time she had said this tonight. With a sudden wrench of her arms, she twisted out of his hold, the momentum sending her a step sideways in the snow. She glanced back at Grip once more, at his fearful and agonized expression that had absolutely nothing to do with her. Then she shut the truck’s door and ran through the snow and up the stairs to Mrs. Kleinfelter’s house, where she opened the door without knocking, as if someone inside had already invited her in.

  Inside, the house was warm and smelled faintly of dust and oil, like a furnace that has just been turned on. Mrs. Kleinfelter was sitting in her favorite chair reading some sort of magazine, but she stood up when Jory came in. “Well, look who’s here,” she said, smiling.

  Jory stood unmoving on the living room rug, as if on a small island that now separated her from the rest of the world. “Oh, Hilda,” she said, and then she couldn’t say anything more.

  Mrs. Kleinfelter took a step toward Jory, but Jory had suddenly found the ability to move, and she walked quickly and with purpose past Mrs. Kleinfelter and into the kitchen, where she picked up the heavy black phone receiver and dialed. The phone rang only once.

  “Hello?” her father said, the note of panic in his voice apparent even to her.

  “Dad,” she said.

  “Jory, where are you?” She could hear a note of anger now expanding to fill the space his fear had previously occupied.

  “Dad,” she said again, as her heart beat fast and faster. “Is Grace there?”

  “Just tell me where you are and I’ll come pick you up.”

  Jory took a shaky breath. She suddenly saw that this moment weighed as much as all the previous ones combined. That all the other mental skirmishes had been small change, child’s play. Here, now, was her very own unexpected expected. For one small suspended second in time, she still had the ability to do or not do something, that once done she would then never be able to undo.

  She let out her long-held breath with a quavering sigh. “Grip is coming for Grace,” she said.

  And then it was done.

  Mrs. Kleinfelter drove the car cautiously down the snowy streets. Jory sat huddled on her side of the car, gazing reflexively out the passenger window, watching but not seeing the houses and countryside sliding past. The snow had stopped falling and the early evening sky was suddenly clear; an almost rosy-colored blue shown through the scattered clouds that remained. And even though the sky was now nearly empty, the snow that had blanketed the landscape remained, covering the fields and roads and houses with a beautifying, cleansing layer of crystalline white that rounded and softened all of Arco’s sharp angles and edges.

  With some remote part of herself, Jory continued to register the car’s silent and ineluctable movement down these most familiar streets. They glided past her old elementary school, the Strike It Rich Bowling Lanes, Vanny’s Line-a-Diner, and Wretha’s Beauty Salon, where her mother went once a year to have her hair permed—her one concession to beauty. Next came each of the neighborhood houses she knew as well as her own, and the front yards she had ridden her bike past and taken shortcuts through and stolen flowers from. Finally, they turned the corner onto Ninth Avenue and Jory could see, even from the end of the block, the police cruiser’s red revolving lights casting a silent searchlight’s glow through the evening air. She sat up with a start, her stomach giving a horrible squeeze.

  “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter, peering concentratedly out the windshield. “What on earth is going on?”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter’s car continued its stately path to the house on Ninth Avenue, and Jory watched, wide-eyed now, as the police car in front of her house reversed and then backed out of their driveway, slowly passing directly next to Mrs. Kleinfelter’s car, going the opposite direction. Jory held perfectly still, watching the black-and-white car pass within two feet of the car she was in. She had only one glance at Grip’s face as he gazed at her in amazement from the backseat of the police car. And then he was gone.

  “Oh, no,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. She turned and stared backward at the police car and then caught herself and veered awkwardly across the road, finally pulling the car to a crooked halt a little way in front of Jory’s house.

  “I have to go,” Jory said, already bolting out of the car. She didn’t even wait to hear what Mrs. Kleinfelter was saying in response, but ran through the melting snow across the driveway and into the front yard.

  Her father stood on the sidewalk, coatless, holding Grace by the arms. Grace seemed to be barefoot, but when she caught sight of Jory, she wrenched herself out of her father’s grasp and strode across the snowy lawn toward her younger sister. Jory saw the look on her sister’s face and tried to take a backward step, but Grace was on her in a moment, slapping and scratching furiously at Jory’s chest and neck. “What did you do?” Grace cried, flailing wildly at Jory with both of her hands. “What did you do?” Jory tried to fend Grace off, but Grace was shockingly strong and landed several blows solidly on the side of Jory’s head. Jory’s ear rang with a sensation that was oddly enlivening; in fact, even as Jory could feel the skin on her face stinging and burning, she wondered at the marvel of being this physically close to her sister again, of breathing in Grace’s slightly bitter breath and feeling the jarring solidity of her bones and the active tension in her sister’s hands and arms. Jory had a sudden vivid long-buried memory of the times from their childhood in which it was she who had flown at Grace, biting and clawing, while Grace had merely stood—smiling and imperturbable—as Jory’s fury raged higher, provoked onward by Grace’s apparent joy in her own martyrdom. And now, finally, here was Grace—righteous, implacable Grace—furiously hitting her sister with complete abandon. The joy that surged through Jory was unaccountable. She could hear their father shouting their names and trying to pry them apart, but Jory hung desperately on, gripping Grace by the wrists and then the hands, both of them clutching at each other as if they were drowning, as their fa
ther continued to drag Grace backward until, with a sudden ripping tug, their hold on each other was broken.

  Their father took Grace completely in his arms, holding her tightly around the waist as if in an embrace. “Grace,” he was saying, and his voice sounded infinitely tender, as if he were speaking to a much younger child. “Come on,” he said, “come on inside, Grace,” and then he turned her away from Jory and began shepherding her back toward the house, both of his arms still around Grace’s now suddenly slumping shoulders. Jory watched, and as they were walking she saw Grace slip once and almost fall in the snowy grass, but her father lifted her up, righted her, and continued to gently pull her toward the porch. Then her father opened the front door and the two of them disappeared inside and the door was shut behind them.

  Jory stood panting on the lawn, her hands on her knees. The Reisensteins’ dog barked twice and then there was no other sound to be heard. It was now as if nothing had ever happened to disturb this silent, wintry night—as if all the actors and players and all their little ecstasies and anguishes had been mysteriously whisked offstage in an instant. As if they had never even been. In a daze, Jory walked up to the porch and sank down on one of the snow-dusted steps. She could feel the shock of the cement’s freezing wetness seeping instantly through her pants and her underwear, past the bloody toilet paper, clear to her skin. Jory heard the front door open behind her and her father came out onto the stoop. He was now wearing his winter coat and carrying an old brown woolen one of her mother’s. “Put this on,” he said.

  Jory didn’t move.

  He leaned down and draped the wool coat over her shoulders. Then he sat down next to her on the step and then leaned over and carefully forced each of her arms through the coat sleeves, pulling the coat tightly around her and buttoning it to the collar.