by Joanna Rose
He held out his hand, his holy anointed fingers, bound in holy oil for two weeks so he could touch the consecrated host, if that was still true, if it was ever true, and he said, “Throw that away for you?”
“Thanks,” and she put the torn pieces in his hand, careful not to touch him.
“Be very careful out there,” he said. “Watch your feet. And the stars, of course. I always watch the stars. It’s what I think of when I pray.”
She stopped. The anger fluttered in her stomach, just above her stomach really, but not her heart, and she said, “Why’d you say that?” She wondered if it sounded as rude to him as it did to her.
“It’s my job to say things like that,” he said. “That and keeping the bingo games honest,” and he giggled again.
She turned away and heard her own feet on the road, her breath in her ears, his voice in her ears, his voice saying, “I don’t think he wants to go.”
Bullfrog was watching her from his spot on the welcome mat, lying comfortably, not getting up or even looking like he was thinking about it.
Father Lucke said, “Too dark out there, eh, little fellow?” Bullfrog wagged at him.
The wind gusted at her back, cold, with an edge to it, and she hugged her arms around herself.
“Have a nice evening.” He wiggled his fingers. “Whatever you two decide on.”
He reached for the door. Bullfrog got out of his way, and he went in. Bullfrog settled himself back on the mat.
A shower of drops hit her face, and she looked up at rain clouds moving in, over the stars and the moon.
Late, after Ruby’s Roadhouse had emptied out and was dark, and only the sound of the wind or rain and the fire popping in the woodstove, and Bullfrog snoring, she thought of how to tell Jen about this crooked little town, securely balanced on the edge of the world. She went out to get firewood from the stack under the house, but she just sat in the doorway and looked down to the dark beach, for silver lights in the water.
There was a rattling down the hill by Mrs. Taskey’s store. The old woman from the beach, or maybe another old woman, rattling the trash cans behind the store. She dropped a lid on the ground, turned, and looked at her in the doorway. They looked at each other, and then Pattianne was looking at the empty back of the store, the trash cans all lined up with their lids on, and Bullfrog was not snoring by the stove but standing in the doorway with her, sniffing the air. Sometimes losing time like that made her nervous. Sometimes it filled her with wonder. The world seemed to stop and start.
“Wonder,” she said. “We are seeking wonder.”
She wondered when a silver tide would happen. Some of the websites said bioluminescence might happen after a bright sunny day. Some said something about dinoflagellates. Nothing anywhere said anything about a silver tide, except for the four-unit motel in Nanaimo, which was closed until May. She wondered how long her money would last. And how much it would cost to fix the Fiat. And how she would find a place in St. Cloud. And what it took to get a divorce.
She laid the low table with a plate and fork and a knife, and butter in a small, crescent-shaped dish. All the dishes were some kind of green. She spooned tomatoes from a can onto toast, shook on Parmesan, and sat with her eyes shut. Bullfrog gave a low, polite moan, sitting right next to her on the floor, in front of the open door of the woodstove. He stared at the tomatoes on toast, a long, silver string of drool reaching to the floor. He hadn’t eaten his dog food. Sometimes he seemed to feel that dog food was beneath him, like now, and he stared at the tomatoes on toast until he got some.
She drank red wine from a pale green coffee mug. The wine and the wood smoke made her eyes want to close, but every time she went outside to pull more wood from the pile and look down the hill at the lights of Ruby’s Roadhouse, and check the surf for silver light, she got wet and cold and awake. She came back inside and loaded up the woodstove, drank more wine, and got warm and dreamy again. She stayed up, burned wood, wondered about wonder.
Wonder is a lifting in the heart.
Wonder is belief in the fleetest moment.
Time stops and starts, goes away and comes back from somewhere.
Frankie called Bullfrog the Wonder Dog.
“He wonders what’s going on,” he said.
It’s a wonder she and Michael ended up married.
He had an orange Volkswagen when she first met him. Now he has a green one. It’s shiny and wet and it’s parked right in front of Ruby’s Roadhouse. The same little beige Madonna had ridden her magnetic base on the dashboard of every Volkswagen he’d had since his parents bought him his first one at the age of sixteen, and also on a moped he had once.
He steps out onto the porch of Ruby’s Roadhouse and looks around, shading his eyes from the sun. Then he looks right up at her, at her house. He crosses the road, disappears around the big rock, and she thinks to run, and then he comes up to her house, and she shuts the door, shuts Bullfrog inside to hide him from Michael, stands there facing Michael alone.
He makes the sign of the cross.
He says, “Are you taking your pills?”
And then she opens her eyes to being awake.
Every time.
The fire was burned to embers. Bullfrog nosed around with his front feet on the low table. The windows were no longer black squares looking back into the room, but pale and colorless, looking out to gray morning.
Her first hangover in Tofino.
She opened the door, and he headed out to do his business. It was all gusty, warm wind, smelling like candy made of pine trees, and the stink of stale wood smoke in her hair. She used to love the stink of stale wood smoke. She put an apple and a candy bar in her pocket, in with the blue glass vial and the pack of Marlboro Lights. Her head pounded.
Wickaninnish Bay was wild and white with high tide and high wind, and the daylight moon, half full, looking like a thin piece of shell. The far horizon was a black edge between the water and the gray sky, way out, and the wind from inland had an edge to it. The vial got warm in her jacket pocket, and she liked it being there. It didn’t seem like she had to throw the ashes in if she didn’t want to—a weird thought, creeping into her life, which wasn’t even really a life right now, just this errand. This mission.
Bullfrog ran around, rock to stump to pile of kelp, his fur fluffed out. He was happy as a pinball.
She turned into the woods, and it was quieter, and bright with wet. It seemed like she was about to remember something, and then the feeling went away, and she got self-conscious. She should be thinking about guilt and lies and shooting her mouth off, Mission, and her father, Michael and his mother, her own parents, going back to St. Cloud. She came out to the highway at the church.
And it was snowing. The snowflakes were fat and falling in clumps, the snow so bright it seemed pink. She sat on the front step of the church. The snowflakes landed on her face and seemed to burn. Her eyes watered, sparks, and she just wanted to close them, so she did. She listened for Bullfrog, for his tags jingling, the wind picking up and fading, a car going by, one of the crows making its weird knocking croaking sound.
When she stood up and walked to the road, everything seemed too bright, and, at the edges of puddles, stars. Two white lights went past, a truck, and then steam pouring out a tailpipe into the cold air, the brake lights waiting for her.
“Hey! You need a ride?” and it was Carson, standing next to the truck, his door open.
She got in, Bullfrog got in, Carson was talking, and they moved through the snow that fell in sharp patterns onto a wet, black road that curved.
“Hey, Pete? Are you all right?”
“I get these headaches.” It was all she could say.
He drove to the store and she got out and sank to the step, trying to shut her eyes against the sharp, bright snow. Mrs. Taskey came out.
Later, Pattianne remembered Mrs. Taskey and Carson helping her up the path to her house, one of them on each side of her, while she tried to keep her eyes shut. She remembe
red closing the door and falling onto the bed. She slept all day, and woke to see Bullfrog looking at her from his spot by the door, and then she slept again.
The girl Lakshmi came in the morning, with a care package from Mrs. Taskey. She sat in the chair and took out a small casserole dish.
“Listen. I’m fine now. I just get these headaches. You don’t have to stay.”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “Mrs. Taskey said so. Besides, it’s okay. Look, she sent cupcakes, too.”
After a while, Carson came, and she couldn’t look at him. He stood in the doorway in the light, and then he and Lakshmi left together, and Bullfrog sat by the woodstove and sadly watched the door.
That night Father Lucke came to the door, standing on the top step, his hands jammed into the pockets of his canvas jacket, and asked how she was feeling.
He said, “I must insist you join us.” There was the giggle. “Bingo night.”
She stood up straight.
“I’m fine really,” she said, not feeling fine, feeling shaky and embarrassed.
“Come on, now,” he said. “It will make Mrs. Taskey feel better, you know.”
“Make her feel better?”
“I think she was a bit worried, you know,” he said. “You being a traveler, and no people. I think she finds it a bit worrisome.”
Bullfrog lay down by the woodstove and watched them. No dogs at Ruby’s Roadhouse. She didn’t say a word going down the path, and neither did Father Lucke. They just walked. His khaki pants dragged in the mud, too long for him.
The tall woman in her white scarf was at the desk, not cleaning, just watching the goings-on. She looked out the window to the porch when they came in.
“I left him at home,” Pattianne said.
She nodded, the shells in her ears swinging, and she said, “So, you’re feeling better, eh?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
There were maybe fifteen people in the lobby, standing around the card tables. Carson wasn’t here, but Lakshmi was, and she waved. She was with some of her sisters, or cousins, right there in the corner by the door, brushing a little girl’s hair.
She said, “Where’s Sugarlips?”
Pattianne whispered, “No dogs at Ruby’s Roadhouse. Says so right there on the sign.”
Lakshmi giggled, and the little girls covered their mouths and looked at the tall woman, who was talking to grown-ups.
Pattianne whispered to Lakshmi, “Does she live here?”
Lakshmi put her hands to her hips, shook her head as if there were shells in her ears, and whispered, “Proprietress.”
Some of the people looked familiar. A young man who didn’t look familiar came up to her and said he was glad she was feeling better, and she tried to smile. She sat into one of the deep soft couches and looked at the fire in the fireplace as if it were a television, as if she knew what the hell to do with her face, her hands.
Mrs. Taskey came in and hurried over and sat right next to her on the arm of the couch, patted her on the knee, a light tap she barely felt through her jeans.
She said, “Will you be taking a card, Pete?”
Pattianne hated bingo, which she didn’t say, she just said no. She said, “I’ll just watch.”
“Okay, dear, maybe next round.”
When the number-calling started, the girls all jumped up and sat at a table, and everybody else did too. They all paid close attention to the guy in the red vest, and Pattianne eased back into the pillows, almost comfortable, picturing herself as looking comfortable and at ease. She couldn’t see her house out the window. She just wanted to be there, and she sent Bullfrog thoughts, forming the words clearly in her mind, one at a time: I. Will. Be. Back. Soon. The effort of thinking in sentences emptied her head, and she might as well be playing bingo.
I caused someone to die by mouthing off.
I ruined a family’s life. Two families.
Three families.
I had an abortion.
She considered speaking some of these words out loud. It would be like lighting up a cigarette in church.
Mrs. Taskey caught her eye and winked.
One of the little girls at Lakshmi’s table screamed, “Bingo,” and Lakshmi looked over at Pattianne and rolled her eyes.
The proprietress came to her with a paper cup of cider.
Pattianne said, “Thank you.”
Mrs. Taskey bent over the counter, leaning on the open newspaper, doing the crossword. Pattianne said hello and kept moving, over to the rack of greeting cards. She stared for a while. Her birthday was coming up. Her father’s birthday. She found a card with a sailboat on it that wasn’t cutesy and walked up to the counter. Mrs. Taskey stood up and rubbed at her neck.
“So.” The elbow of her pale blue sweater was black from newsprint. “How are we feeling?”
“We’re fine,” Pattianne said, which sounded rude, so she said, “Thank you.”
Mrs. Taskey opened a cookie tin with a Currier & Ives design. “Look here.” It was full of small, heart-shaped cookies.
“For your little trooper there, since he can’t come in. This way he’s not completely left out.” And she held the tin out. “They’re dog cookies, made from bone meal mostly. My little granddaughter got the recipe from the internet.”
So Pattianne said thank you again, and took one, and there was an odd rush behind her eyes.
Mrs. Taskey snapped the tin shut.
“Just doing the puzzle,” she said. “Makes you smart, you know. Or keeps you smart, in case you already were. Wrinkles in the brain―it’s all about wrinkles in the brain. Wrinkles in the face, not good, wrinkles in the brain, good.”
Pattianne put the card on the counter next to the puzzle.
“Oh, cute!”
“For my dad,” she said.
“In New Jersey?” Mrs. Taskey asked. And then she said, “Well, here comes Josie—you know Josie. Well, maybe not. She drives the school bus, runs Josie House, and it’s her birthday too—well, on Friday. How about that? You should come to her birthday dinner. Josie cooks the turkey, and it’s potluck besides that. I’ll be making apple pie. Apple with huckleberries, just a few. I sprinkle them in for color. What would you like to bring?”
A woman and two little kids came in the door. They all wore lumpy knitted scarves and caps.
Mrs. Taskey went into high gear. “Josie, Pattianne here is joining us for the Josie House potluck. It’s her dad’s birthday too, how about that? What should we have her bring?” She tapped the counter with her pencil.
Pattianne didn’t want her to say Pattianne. She didn’t want to go to dinner at the bus driver’s house. She didn’t know what Josie House even was, and she didn’t want to know. The two kids ran down an aisle.
“Muffins! Of course!” Josie said it like it was a pronouncement, and loosened her scarf, pink and white snowflakes maybe, and unzipped her coat. “How you feeling, Pattianne?”
Josie was very pregnant.
“Okay. Thanks.”
Josie rubbed her belly.
“I’m not much of a baker,” Pattianne said. “I’ve never even lit that oven.” And she held the birthday card up. “Guess I’ll be off.” And she escaped and tried not to let the door slam.
A short, beat-up school bus was parked outside. Bullfrog took a shot at the tires.
She wanted to write Dearest Dad on the card, but she didn’t. They would think she was being weird. They already might. They probably all did. She tried not to think about that. She didn’t think her mother and father were worried. It was surprisingly easy not to think about Michael, but she was sorry about Mrs. Bryn, and Claire, and she was too sad to think about Mr. Bryn at all. Thousands of miles, a wonderful thing, all that distance, a national border, the Strait of Juan de Fuca. A wonderful thing.
She signed the card Love, Pattianne and Bullfrog and put it in the envelope, and addressed it in her best handwriting, so they’d think all was well. She was just traveling, the marriage didn’t work out, poor thing, she
’ll be fine, she’ll be home soon. She held the card, knowing how far it would travel. She set it on the windowsill like a decoration, next to the big white feather.
13: SIXTEEN MILES AN HOUR
The next day, Lakshmi knocked, shave-and-a-haircut, and came in with a bag, which she unloaded by dumping the contents onto the small counter. There was a carton of milk and a box of Arm & Hammer baking soda, flour in a small white bag, shortening in a squatty can. There was butter, and a red can of baking powder. There was vinegar.
Pattianna said, “What’s all this stuff for?”
Lakshmi sang out, “Practice, practice, practice.”
Pattianne told her she was just heading down to the beach. The rain was falling straight and steady.
“Yeah, I know,” Lakshmi said. “I hate practicing anything. I used to have to practice flute but finally figured out that if I, like, practiced loud and bad, like every night, they would finally let me quit. Especially if I really practiced a lot on this one song my dad likes, like, he likes it a lot. ‘Moon River’? You like banana muffins? There’s some bananas down at the store that are way spotty, you know, how you use them for banana muffins. Or banana bread.”
She had green glitter eye shadow today, and it had gotten on her lips. She sat down and started kissing Bullfrog, who would be glittery and green tonight.
There was another knock at the door. Pattianne pulled it open, and there stood Mrs. Taskey. A girl with pale brown braids stood behind her.
“Hello, dear. This is Barbie. Barbie, say hello. Barbie wants to help. How are you feeling today, Pattianne? Lakshmi, your father said he’d meet you at the store at five. Now you be there, down at the store,” and she came in, Barbie right behind her. Barbie was maybe ten or twelve. She had small awkward breasts and a chipped tooth in front that she poked at with her tongue, staring at Pattianne, standing right there by the door.