Still Mine

by Amy Stuart

  Though it must have been international news, Clare has only vague memories of this story. Five years ago was the summer she was married, leaving her no time to take in the miseries of the outside world. No one she knew back home read the newspaper—nighttime television was reserved for game shows and sports—all of them well versed in ignoring anyone’s misfortunes but their own.

  In a later article, photos of the thirty-two dead line up alphabetically down the page. Midway Clare finds the three photographs with the Merritt name, each one with that same golden hair as Charlie. Clare scans the text. “Russell Merritt and his two sons found dead. A third son, also a miner, was off shift at the time of the accident.” Charlie.

  Out the trailer window, Clare hears the crack of a branch, the crunch of pine needles. She opens the door.

  “Charlie?”

  The crunching stops. It’s probably an animal, Clare knows, but as she circles to the back of the trailer, her heart beats hard in her chest.

  “Charlie?”

  Clare spots movement in the distance. Not an animal. An upright figure.

  “Who’s there?”

  Clare picks up a stick and holds it in front of her with a two-handed grip.

  “I can see you.”

  A quick flash of white, a ghost. A human shape.

  “Please come out,” Clare says. “You’re scaring me.”

  “You’re scaring me!” A woman’s voice. The figure steps out from behind the tree. She is older, her hair pulled into a silvery ponytail, the skin on her face smooth and peach in her cheeks. She wears a loose linen shirt tucked into shorts. Not dressed for the damp weather. Not a ghost. Clare drops the stick.

  “This is private property,” Clare says. “You’re on the Merritt property.”

  “I must be lost,” the woman says.

  “What’s your name?” Clare says.

  “Louise.”

  “Louise Cunningham?”

  “Yes.” Louise looks up to the sky, as if considering. “Yes.”

  “You live next door,” Clare says.

  Gone batty, the waitress said. Shayna’s mother.

  “You’ve taken a wrong turn,” Clare says.

  “I meant to go to the creek.”

  “You’re headed uphill. It’s not usually uphill to a creek.”

  “I suppose not.” Louise studies Clare. “Do we know each other?”

  “No. I’m Clare O’Dey. A new neighbor.”

  “O’Dey. Is your father a miner?”

  “No. A farmer.”

  Louise walks past Clare to the fire pit, then over to the blankets and back around to the shower, reaching out to touch everything she passes.

  “I know where I am,” Louise says. “This is Russell’s place.”

  “That’s right,” Clare says. “I’ve rented the trailer from Charlie.”

  “Is Russell here?”

  “No. Russell Merritt? Isn’t he . . .”

  But Louise isn’t listening. She plops herself into one of the lawn chairs and uses the rocks of the fire pit to pry off her sandals.

  “Shayna and I used to come here,” Louise says. “We’d camp out when the trailer wasn’t rented. Sometimes we’d stay for days.” She laughs. “Those boys. Three of them like little animals. Always running wild.”

  A wave of exhaustion rolls over Clare, knowing what she must do next.

  “Would you like me to walk you home?”

  “That would be nice,” Louise says. “You know, I saw a cougar here once.”

  “You did?”

  “With Shayna. She was maybe nine.” Louise nods as if the story is revealing itself only as she tells it. “It stood there, over there, staring at us, maybe fifteen feet away. Shayna had her back to it. She was tossing pebbles at trees. I never imagined a cougar would be that big.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I stepped between them. I remember thinking, if I’m fierce, if I’m fiercer than this animal, it will leave us alone. So I stretched out my arms, like this, and I showed it my teeth. I bared my fangs! Can you believe that? It cocked its head, then bounded away.”

  Louise pivots, eyes upward.

  “Clare. That’s your name. Clare.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know the way back?”

  “I can find it,” Clare says. “I don’t think it’s far.”

  From behind Louise’s gait is strong, stoic. Clare yanks the trailer door closed and jogs to catch up. She will walk Shayna’s mother home, take her chances on the reception she’ll receive should Shayna’s father be there. There is no time for caution. Fierce, Louise said. If I’m fierce. Clare likes to think of herself as such, but she doubts she could compare to Louise Cunningham, even in the early throes of dementia. She imagines Louise as a young mother, a coal miner’s wife, afraid of nothing, the sort of woman who commands even these woods, who stands up to all threats. While Clare, if her life so far is any indication, is the sort who runs.

  The Cunningham driveway is enclosed by bended treetops. Clare walks five paces behind Louise until the driveway opens into a meadow, the largest patch of flat land she’s laid eyes on since crossing into the mountains. Beyond it sits a white farmhouse, the paint of its red shutters much faded, its clapboard rotted and peeling. Though the house itself is run-down, the surrounding garden is bright with dogwoods, whatever plants can endure the lack of sun.

  “Stop,” Louise says, pointing to the field. “Shush.”

  In the garden, a snowshoe rabbit plucks at a head of iceberg lettuce, its nose atwitter. A man emerges from the barn with a shotgun in hand. Louise draws Clare back among the trees. By the time he is within range, the rabbit is off into the nearby woods. The man pumps the shotgun and fires a shot into the low clouds anyway. Then he stands still. Both Clare and Louise hold their breath, waiting too, until he gives up and retreats back through the wide doors of his dilapidated barn.

  “Wilfred,” Louise says. “He hates rabbits. He’ll never leave it alone.”

  “They’re eating his vegetables.”

  “Those are my vegetables. And I’m happy to share them with the odd rabbit.”

  “I’ll wait here until you reach the door,” Clare says.

  “Don’t be silly. Come in.”

  “I wouldn’t want to take your husband by surprise.”

  “You don’t know him?”

  “No,” Clare says.

  “Then I’ll introduce you.”

  “But you don’t know me either.”

  “Don’t I?” Louise laughs, then nudges Clare onward and up the porch steps.

  The storm door is loose on its hinges. Louise takes off her shoes and wanders straight into the kitchen. Clare stands in the hall and looks around. Towers of cardboard boxes lean into each other on the living room wall. Even the couch is overtaken with blankets, a box of books, and an old rotary phone off its hook. A small space has been cleared on one cushion, the only spot in the room a person might take a seat.

  Clare moves through to the equally cluttered kitchen. She lifts a box of dusty glasses off one of the chairs and sets it on the floor. Country kitchens are always the same, a square room with cupboards on every wall, stairs to the cellar, the sink under the window, and a harvest table in the middle. A kettle boils soundlessly on the stove, its whistle flipped up. Despite the clutter the kitchen bears no evidence of family, no photographs or keepsakes, only bald spots on the wallpaper where frames clearly used to hang. Louise sets about making tea.

  “Why don’t we sit in the living room?” Louise says, handing Clare a mug. “We could have a chat.”

  This time they pass through the dining room. High stacks of boxes line the wall and folded clothes and dinnerware are piled on the table. Louise behaves as if she’s noticed the mess for the first time, flustered by where to leave the tray.

  “Wilfred doesn’t throw anything out.”

  “My father is like that too.” Clare takes the tray from Louise and goes to place it on a pile of newspapers
on the coffee table. The headline of the top paper reads “Jury Deliberates for Fifth Day in Civil Mine Trial.” Clare sets down her mug and cleans off the smaller of the two wingback chairs.

  “Have you met her?”

  Louise finds the bare spot on the couch and sits.

  “Who?” Clare asks.

  “Shayna.”

  Clare must fix her expression to hide her surprise.

  “No,” she says.

  “She’s married. Settled down.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “She looks after kids to make money, but she’d like to be a writer. Are you a writer?”

  “No,” Clare says. “I take pictures.”

  “She writes poetry, mostly. She has piles of it.”

  “I’d like to read some of her work.”

  “You should ask her to read it,” Louise says.

  It will take some concentration to keep up with the way Louise passes from one era to the next, her notion of time fluid and, Clare sees, not limited to facts. Louise rises and navigates her way to the mantel to look for something. As quietly as she can Clare lifts the tray and pulls out the top newspaper. The photograph is a cloister of reporters, the man at the microphone Charlie Merritt. Clare folds the paper and tucks it into the back of her jeans. Louise returns and hands two framed photographs to Clare. The first is black and white and cracked with age, a man and woman standing in front of this very house, the woman holding a swaddled baby, the house surrounded by pine and cedar saplings barely as tall as the couple. On the papered backing of the frame it reads: Louise Elsa, summer 1951.

  “That’s Wilfred and me with Shayna.”

  “I don’t think so,” Clare says. “It says here it was taken in 1951.”

  “Does it?”

  “Could this be you as a baby? With your parents?”

  Louise frowns.

  The second photograph is Louise and Wilfred’s wedding portrait, they too standing in front of the house, the passage of time charted by the saplings tripled in size. Out the window those same trees now stand two stories high, cradling the house in their drooping branches. In the photo Wilfred smiles and hugs his bride, Louise raven haired and happy. Clare thinks of Shayna’s wedding photograph from Malcolm’s folder, Shayna the spitting image of the young Louise in this picture.

  “Wilfred is foreman at the mine,” Louise says, pride in her voice.

  Present tense, Clare thinks, though the mine closed five years ago.

  “He doesn’t like it when I leave the house.”

  “He’s probably just worried about you getting lost,” Clare says.

  “He’s always at war with someone. He treats the whole town like a war zone.”

  “Maybe he’s got a lot on his mind.”

  “Does he?” Louise says. “I can’t imagine what. He goes to work. I do everything else. He’s never made a meal in his life.”

  Clare smiles. “That sounds familiar.”

  “He worries about Shayna,” Louise says. “Ever since she married that boy.”

  “Jared.”

  “Wilfred doesn’t approve of anything she does. They used to be really close.”

  “They’re not now?”

  “Everything she does disappoints him.”

  “I know that feeling,” Clare says.

  “He’s too hard on her. I tell him, our job is to love her and protect her. That’s our only job. Isn’t it?”

  “It’s not always that simple,” Clare says.

  Louise opens her mouth to say something but sips her tea instead. There is no sign of Wilfred Cunningham out the window, no rabbits in the garden, no sound of his fired shotgun.

  Rabbits. As a girl, Clare shot rabbits and whatever else nibbled on their vegetables, stalking the perimeter of her parents’ garden and piling the corpses neatly in the shed, their eyes flapped open and their coats dribbled with blood. The shooting never bothered Clare. As soon as she could hold her brother’s BB gun steady the lessons started, her father standing behind her, nudging her elbow up and back, covering her outside eye with his callused hand. You see nothing but the target, he’d say. Nothing else is there. He would line up a row of tin cans for her, twenty, then thirty, then forty feet away. Then came the moving targets, skeets and crows through the bare winter branches. And the better Clare got, the more her father expected from her. The more you miss, he would say, the more they eat up our garden. Soon Clare was rarely missing, even the quickest animals no match for her dead aim.

  A newer-model SUV pulls up the Cunningham drive. The man who emerges looks nothing like those Clare has seen in Blackmore so far. He is clean-cut and youthful, khaki pants and a crisp dress shirt tucked in. He opens the trunk and pulls out a black bag, a medical kit, then straightens up and waves at someone. Wilfred. From the kitchen comes the bang of a door. Louise and Clare both stand. When Clare peeks down the hall, she can see Wilfred shuffling in and out of view, his face and neck flushed.

  “Mr. Cunningham?”

  He cranes to follow her voice. When he tramps down the hallway, Clare aligns herself with Louise near the couch.

  “Dammit!” Wilfred says to Louise. “I was looking for you.”

  “I went for a walk to the creek. This nice young lady escorted me home.”

  Both Wilfred and Louise look to Clare.

  “Sorry. I’m Clare O’Dey. I’m renting the trailer from Charlie Merritt. Louise here, your wife, she came over—”

  Wilfred ignores her outstretched hand. “You need to leave. Get off my property. The Merritts aren’t welcome here.”

  “I’m not a Merritt.”

  Wilfred grits his teeth. “I’m asking you to get out of my house.”

  “Wilfred!” Louise says.

  “Sit down. You hear me, Louise? Sit down.”

  “I bet you’d shoot me too if I dared to pick a cucumber. Wouldn’t you?”

  Wilfred points to the sofa. “Sit down.”

  To Clare’s amazement Louise obeys. Once seated she appears deflated, eyes vacant, hands upturned and limp on her lap.

  “Hello?” A voice comes through the screen door. “Mind if I come in?”

  The doctor strides inside, stopping at the sight of Clare.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” he says. “We had an appointment, did we not, Mrs. Cunningham?”

  “You’re never interrupting,” Louise says, brightening. “Come right in. I just made tea.”

  Clare can sense Wilfred’s seething, his inability to manage the sudden crowd in his front hall. And though he makes an obvious effort not to stare, the doctor clearly can’t make sense of Clare’s presence.

  “Hi.” Clare stretches her hand out again. “I’m Clare O’Dey.”

  “Derek Meyer. I’m Louise’s doctor. Are you family? I didn’t know—”

  “She’s not family,” Wilfred says. “She’s leaving.”

  “I am,” Clare says. “Leaving, I mean.”

  “Tell the doc how you’ve been taking off, Lou,” Wilfred says. “Disappearing. Wandering up the hill and down to the gorge in an effort to meet your death.”

  “Is that so?” Dr. Meyer asks. “We’ll have to talk about that.”

  “He treats me like a child,” Louise says to Clare.

  The doctor kneels down next to Louise and opens his kit. Wilfred motions for Clare to follow him into the kitchen.

  “You can leave through the back door,” he says.

  “My shoes are at the front.”

  With a snarl Wilfred pushes aside a chair and approaches Clare. His skin is creviced, his graying hair buzzed short. Wilfred Cunningham, a coal mine foreman, the beds of his fingernails still stained black after five years. In the small space between them Clare can smell the staleness, that of a man used to a woman’s care and lately left to fend for himself.

  “You tell him if I see him over here, I’ll shoot him.”

  “Who?” Clare asks. “If you mean Charlie Merritt, I only met him this morning.”

  “You aren’t
welcome here.”

  “Your wife was lost. It was clear she was . . . disoriented. I was only trying to help.”

  Wilfred jolts to attention, his sights turned on something out the kitchen window. With a start he’s out the back door, snatching up his shotgun as he passes through the cold room, the door swinging behind him. Chasing a rabbit. Clare goes to get her shoes. In the living room, Dr. Meyer presses his stethoscope to Louise’s chest. Clare watches the doctor frown in concentration, his eyes fixed on nothing as he listens to Louise’s breathing. Derek Meyer wears glasses but no wedding ring. Clare knows well enough that this says nothing of whether he’s married. Done with his examination, the doctor writes some notes in a small leather-bound book.

  “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Cunningham,” Clare says. “You too, Dr. Meyer. I should be going.”

  For the first time the doctor makes direct eye contact with Clare. “Can I have a quick word?” he says.

  “I really should go. Mr. Cunningham will be back in soon.”

  “Won’t even take a minute,” the doctor says.

  Clare is self-conscious of her clothes, her jeans and T-shirt grubby from her efforts to clean the trailer. They leave Louise in the living room and move to the kitchen.

  “You’re staying in Charlie’s trailer?” the doctor asks.

  “Yes.”

  He waits for her to continue.

  “Louise wandered up there. She seemed disoriented.”

  “So you don’t know the Cunninghams.”

  “No. I was just walking her home. She invited me in for tea.”

  “I see,” he says.

  “Can I ask you something?” Clare says. “Does Louise know her daughter is missing?”

  Clare detects only a twitch in the doctor.

  “Do you know Shayna?” he asks.

  “No. I saw the Missing Woman poster at Ray’s. The waitress there filled me in.”

  “There’s no reason for Louise to register her daughter’s absence,” Dr. Meyer says. “As you’ve probably figured out, her grasp on reality comes and goes.”