The Good Daughter

by Alexandra Burt

  My mother leans closer into him, her face ashen but unwavering. They stand in the open passenger’s door and as he’s trying to push Mom back in the car, she spits in his face. Cobb stands with his eyes closed, reaching for a handkerchief in his pocket, holding on to the car. My mother steps behind him and shuts the door with a bang. There’s a scream that turns into a whimper as I watch Cobb opening the car door. His hand is hanging lifeless off his wrist, dripping blood around his fingertips.

  Without any emotion on her face, my mother walks away from Cobb as if strolling through a park on a sunny day. I sit beneath the wooden steps, surrounded by discarded coins and candy wrappers, and wonder how far she’d go to protect me. I feel elated suddenly, as if the worst I imagined had just been erased to never become true. Because my mother keeps me safe.

  I wonder if she would’ve been mad if I had told her about Cobb. It was probably best not to make a big deal about it. She knows best.

  I love you, I’ll always be a good daughter.

  I promise.

  Twenty-seven

  MEMPHIS

  MEMPHIS knows Dahlia is exhausted from work and worried about the dog but she must go on with Quinn’s story. She doesn’t want to add any more hurt to Dahlia’s already delicate state—but so many other painful things must be brought to light.

  “She needs surgery,” Dahlia blurted out the moment she entered the kitchen that first night they’d spent at the farm. The dog was nowhere to be seen and Memphis could tell there was bad news.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “She had puppies and one wasn’t born and mummified inside her. I have never heard anything like it. She needs surgery.”

  Her heart broke for Dahlia then, the way she held back the tears, so courageous, not wanting to show her anguish.

  Even now, as Memphis watches Dahlia spoon soup out of a pot she had left on the stove, there’s a fragility about her that Memphis hadn’t been aware of. Maybe the toll their life had taken weighs much heavier on her than Memphis ever suspected. To Memphis it’s a sad way to eat supper, holding the pot by its handle, tipping it slightly to get to every last bit. She suddenly feels tears well up in the back of her throat but she isn’t worried, she won’t cry, she’s learned to swallow it all down, allow the acid in her stomach to dissolve it.

  Memphis watches Dahlia scrape the sides of the pot with the spoon. She wishes she had allowed Dahlia to have a dog as a child, but that would have made everything more difficult. Dahlia had begged for a dog more than once but Memphis didn’t have the heart; what if they had to leave it behind, or couldn’t find a place to live, or the dog got sick and they didn’t have money for a vet? So many reasons she had had not to give her what little she asked for. She should have allowed Dahlia to pick a dog from the pound, a small one that was calm and didn’t bark a lot, and Dahlia would have had some company instead of spending her days home alone.

  As the spoon scrapes the bottom of the pot, Memphis can clearly see the damage that’s been done. But she never, never, let anything happen to Dahlia, not on her watch. When she was a child, some man had looked at her wrong and they had packed up and left. Where it wasn’t safe, they wouldn’t stay. And it was never safe. She always anticipated a knock on the door, and they’d take her away and then what would happen to Dahlia? It was a constant worry, that infinite fear of getting caught. But nothing mattered then, she made those sacrifices willingly, and she too had been surprised by the ferocity that girl had brought out in her, that love for her. She should have made more allowances; a dog would not have been the end of the world. She can’t shake the feeling that keeping secrets took a much larger toll than she’d expected. “I hope she’ll be okay. I like her.”

  Dahlia looks at her, puzzled.

  “The dog. Tallulah,” Memphis repeats. “I hope she gets well.”

  “I hope so too.”

  “When is she coming home?”

  “I’m just waiting for the vet to call so I can pick her up. She’s on the mend. Don’t worry.”

  “Do you need money?”

  Dahlia looks up, surprised. Memphis sees the stunned look on Dahlia’s face; for Memphis to offer money is an odd concept, and Dahlia probably wonders how much social security Memphis can possibly squeeze out of those jobs she got paid under the table for. “No, I don’t. But thanks.”

  “Where are you working?” That dog business is getting to her and Memphis isn’t sure if she forgot or if Dahlia never told her.

  “The Lark Inn. I’m working double shifts.”

  “How much is the vet going to cost?”

  “A couple thousand.”

  “I want to pay for it.”

  “You have that kind of money?”

  Memphis can tell Dahlia regrets the comment by the way she pinches her lips shut, but she can’t take it back. “Don’t worry about that. Let me know if you need money for the vet bill? That’s all I’m saying.”

  Dahlia spoons the last of the soup from the pot. She does the dishes and they share the paper, but Memphis just flips the pages, has to read paragraphs twice and still is clueless. Finally, she gives up. “The story I told you about the woman and the baby?” It sounds like a question, a continuation implied somehow, and Memphis hopes Dahlia won’t get up and tinker around the house but stay put so she can bring the story to an end.

  “What about the woman and the baby?” Dahlia asks.

  Stay with me, Memphis wants to say, there’s a reason I’m telling you this, you’ll see, it’ll be worth your while. She watches Dahlia emerge from behind the paper, here she goes again with this tale of a woman giving birth in the foyer her facial expression seems to say.

  It’s difficult to find the beginning every time, a spot from where to start, a point in time that links the story of Tain Fish and Nolan Creel and Quinn together.

  Memphis gets up and hugs Dahlia, wraps her arms around her. Dahlia remains stiff. They have hugged before, but never like this, never with Memphis holding on so tight, and it feels right to her. Dahlia relaxes; Memphis feels her body sag and her muscles become loose.

  “There’s more,” Memphis says and brushes Dahlia’s black hair out of her face.

  Memphis catches a scent of laundry and cleaning supplies coming off Dahlia, like a whiff of nostalgia.

  When Dahlia props her legs up on the chair and lights one of Memphis’ cigarettes as if they are friends chatting about people they used to know, Memphis speaks as loud and clear as she can muster.

  “Nothing good came after the stillbirth,” Memphis says. “Nothing. At least not for a while.”

  —

  Tain was aloof; she brooded and stared into space. When she did eat, she wolfed down her food as if she were a feral animal, drew strange designs with sticks in the dirt as she sat on the back stoop. Reserved as she was, there was a tightness about her. Quinn studied Tain’s body and couldn’t make light of her; how she wasn’t slumped at all, her body too tense for that; how she seemed not relaxed enough to be present. Tain smiled a lot—a slight pulling upward of her lips as if there was something she was looking forward to—and it wasn’t a role she played either, for Quinn made it a point to observe her from afar and she was always the same old smiling and absent Tain. Distant, wound up, in anticipation.

  In a bucket in the only upstairs bathroom Tain left her bloody pads, and almost two months after the stillbirth, she was still bleeding. Quinn emptied the bucket daily, and when the bleeding stopped, she made it a point to buy her pretty underwear and matching bras and though Tain wore them, the bra straps remained tangled, her appearance always slightly disheveled.

  Through all this, Nolan watched Quinn suspiciously. He spent his days in the shed and if he came inside, he ignored Tain as if she wasn’t even there. He wouldn’t address her, wouldn’t say her name, and eventually he became intolerant of her presence.

  “How long is she
going to stay?” Nolan asked. “She can’t be here forever, she must have family somewhere. It just doesn’t seem right,” he’d say, gazing out the window, at the tree and the small grave underneath that held the tiny human the size of a baby doll. The dirt still hadn’t smoothed out and the small mound within the otherwise flat landscape seemed to unsettle him, a constant reminder of things gone awry.

  Quinn knew what this was all about. Nolan was protective of what he considered to be his; his shed, his house—Tain wasn’t allowed in their bedroom at all—even down to the smallest things, like his mug. A silly mug, chipped and speckled, blue, cracked by age, and when he saw Tain drink out of it, he stormed off, slamming the door behind him.

  “As soon as she feels better and comes around, we’ll help her find her family,” Quinn said. “She is not in the condition to leave right now.”

  “What if she is a minor and having her here is against the law? It can get us into a lot of trouble.”

  “We’re not breaking any laws allowing her to stay,” Quinn said. “What do you want me to do? Put up flyers in town? That’ll cause a stir for sure.”

  “How old do you think she is?”

  “Around twenty, I think,” Quinn lied. She knew Tain’s back molars were only partially erupted, which could be a sign that she was much younger, but Quinn didn’t know enough about teeth to be sure.

  “She must go, Quinn. This isn’t right.”

  Quinn was taken aback by Nolan’s opposition, his constant griping about Tain and her presence. She didn’t cause any problems and did a lot of chores around the house and the farm. It wasn’t right? If anything it wasn’t fair to her, Quinn. Was it right that she had no baby to show for all the money she had paid to Aella? Was it right that her gut cramped and twisted, making her wince every time she picked up a gallon of milk? Was it right that every time her stomach became full and bloated and her breasts stung like needles, she, yet again, was shedding precious skin meant to sustain life? Was it fair that she withered in pain for days on end and just when she felt better and had regained some strength, there came the spasms again as if her insides were a coil twisting themselves into a tight spiral? “What do you want her to do? What if she has no place to go? Do you want me to send her out into the streets? To do what?”

  “Quinn, I’m not saying put her out tomorrow, but we should have a plan. I’ll ask around.”

  When he saw Quinn’s face, he held up his hands in a defensive gesture. “No, I’m not telling anyone about her, I’m just asking where someone like her would go.”

  “Someone like her?”

  “Homeless, I meant to say. A plan is all I’m asking for. A deadline, a date, anything. She can’t stay here forever.”

  “I won’t put her out if she has nowhere to go. Know that.”

  “What do you want me to do with this floor?” Nolan dropped his breakfast dishes into the sink with a clank. “I can still see the bloodstain. You want me to replace it? Stain over it?”

  Nolan was far removed from the man who had carried Tain into the house and gently lowered her onto the ground and tucked his jacket underneath her head. He was no longer the mindful husband who used to hang up fresh wallpaper, plant flowers—he was now a man engrossed with blood that had soaked into the unfinished wooden floor in the foyer. He was preoccupied with making it all disappear as if it had never happened; the birth, the blood, Tain.

  “No one cares about the floor, Nolan. No one pays attention to it but you. Don’t concern yourself with it, obviously you have more important things to do. I’ll take care of it. Just go and . . .” Go and do whatever, Quinn no longer cared. She had this moment of clarity, looking at Nolan and his stained pants and flabby body gone soft over the years, no longer working and hammering, just tinkering around in that shed, and she was done with him. If he walked out right now she wouldn’t mind. For all she cared, she might as well walk out with Tain and both of them could start a life somewhere else. It’s an option, Quinn thought, I might just leave with her, pack our few belongings in Nolan’s truck and take off in the middle of the night. By the time he stumbled out of bed and limped to the window to see what was going on, they’d be on the road, turning east toward a bigger city, or south, farther into the country, where fewer and fewer houses and farms dotted the landscape. “Go and do what you do,” Quinn managed to say with a much softer voice. “I’ll take care of the floor.”

  After Nolan stormed out the back, after she heard the screeching of the shed door, she flung open drawers, rummaging through odds and ends until she found a hammer. When she gripped the smooth wooden handle tight in her right hand, the heavy head resting in her left, she ran her fingertips over the sharp claw, then over the blunt face. She dug deeper into the drawer, collecting the longest nails she could find, and she dragged a rug from the living room into the foyer and positioned it so the bloodstain no longer showed. She held a nail by its length and with one swift movement she lifted the hammer above her shoulder and lowered it on top of the nail head.

  She recalled her father but she could no longer remember the scent of his suits or his aftershave. Sigrid too had all but disappeared to wherever the memories of the dead go, but the sound of the hammer making contact with the nails conjured up Benito and his uncle nailing down the rose trellises, and then a vision of the stillbirth was all that remained. Quinn blinked away the briny tears, yet the vision of the lifeless little body remained.

  Bam. Bam. Bam.

  Quinn continued to hammer, repeating the downward motion without making contact with any nails. She didn’t stop hammering until Tain stilled her hand and pulled her into an embrace. Quinn had always been self-conscious when she cried but Tain holding her seemed to allow her to give way to the enormity of her grief. She sobbed, her breathing ragged, gasping. All these years with Nolan she had felt as if she could scream in all four directions and no one would hear her. Tain’s body felt gaunt in her arms but her embrace was strong and determined. Tain held on to Quinn and wouldn’t let go and even as Quinn struggled to break free, reaching for the hammer, Tain held on.

  Together, they sank to their knees and they sat motionless, unaware of the time passing. No thoughts came to Quinn except that her fate was sealed.

  —

  Nolan remained unmoved in his resolve to get rid of Tain. He became increasingly impatient as Tain clumsily knocked over coffee cups, spilling the dark steaming liquid over the tablecloth Quinn had just smoothed over the kitchen table, and he’d shake his head as she stumbled walking up the front porch, knocking over a water bucket. The more Nolan watched Tain, the more she attracted disaster wherever she went. Quinn, realizing Tain’s clumsiness, took to being around her as much as possible, reminding her, Steps, watch out, and Don’t knock over the mug. Careful now.

  After weeks of Nolan’s callous behavior Quinn had an epiphany: Nolan’s impatience came from the fact that Quinn and Tain had become close. He hated how they giggled and laughed, and he’d shake his head as if he didn’t condone their relationship. When Quinn fixed up the upstairs bedroom for Tain, Nolan watched them as they moved a wicker table from the porch to the room to use as a nightstand. Quinn rummaged through the quilts in the linen closet, most of them littered with moth holes and yellowed at the edges, but there was one that seemed in much better shape, a tufted quilt with a large pink wreath stitched in the center. They laundered the linen, gave the floors a scrub, and flattened the quilt over the four-poster bed. All this Nolan observed suspiciously.

  Quinn wanted Nolan to see that Tain was pulling her weight, gave her endless chores to complete to keep her busy, and checked on her intermittently. She made her take out the garbage and do the laundry, the ironing and the mopping of the floors, and while it seemed harsh, it kept Tain from brooding and staring off into nothingness. Quinn felt as if she had to protect Tain from herself, and eventually she completed all chores without supervision while Quinn took to her bed, allow
ing blood to soak pad after pad, which she stuffed in the bucket in the bathroom. Tain emptied the bucket for her and every morning when Quinn awoke, she felt grateful that for once she didn’t have to pretend to be strong.

  Winter arrived and Nolan came down with the flu, shaking the house with his coughing fits and spitting phlegm and vomiting for days on end. When Quinn couldn’t get any sleep next to him, Tain offered Quinn her room.

  “No, I couldn’t ask you to sleep on the couch.”

  Tain laughed, exposing her teeth, and Quinn realized that Tain seemed to be more cheerful lately. “You can sleep with me until Nolan gets better. The bed’s big enough.”

  And so they started sleeping back to back, sharing a large quilt and breathing the same air at night and Quinn couldn’t help but think that this was as close as she’d ever be to having a sister.

  Sometimes, during certain moments, when they squeezed the pits from the sour cherries to make jam, when they folded sheets and pulled them taut and their movements were coordinated and well thought out, Quinn wondered if Tain was the child Aella had assured her would appear in her life. Quinn wanted a baby, still wanted one, but she wondered if she’d be able to settle for Tain, this fawnlike creature slipping in and out of her very own world, as if she had somewhere else to be as she stared out a window or at a picture on the wall without really seeing it.