by Rene Steinke
“Oh, hon. Do you know someone who can get it pushed through?”
“It’s already practically in the clear, actually,” he said. “It’s more a matter of getting Lee Knowles to stop making a fuss.”
“Oh, our neighbor over here?”
“That’s the one.”
“Her girl was real smart and cute—her little girl, real sweet—just talked too much.” Darlene blew a tendril of hair from her face in a sigh. “Lee’s gotten odd since then. Can’t blame her really. If that happened to me.” She shook her head and shuddered. “You know, she died.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you. Her daughter, Jess, the one in my class? She died of a blood disease a while back. Right after everyone ran out of Rosemont.”
“You did not tell me that.”
“I sure did.”
“Well, then, I forgot.” He tried hard to remember. He honestly wasn’t sure if she told him things and they rinsed over him, or if she imagined she’d told him things and forgot she hadn’t. He supposed it didn’t matter. But it made him feel crazy, as if she owned whole hours of his life that he’d either lost or she’d invented and labeled as true.
“That’s why she’s doing all this—it’s grief.” She was clearing the table.
“Rosemont was years ago now.”
“Would it matter if it were Cully?”
“Darlene.” But if it had been Cully who’d died, Hal would have found a more constructive way to shuck his sadness. He’d volunteer at the soup kitchen or he’d pray for a sign pointing him to the right action. That land had been rescued and healed. He would never get in the way of building something good. He would never get in the way of people who needed work. He stood up to help with the dishes.
Wiping the towel over the serving dish painted with fish, Hal thought about Lee’s daughter. Without a face, she was just another one of Darlene’s past students, a series of letters in a name. He couldn’t summon much feeling for her, unless he thought of losing his own child. And even then, it was God’s will, right? There was a purpose there, somewhere. It was what you did with your suffering afterward that really mattered.
“I think I can talk to her.”
“Well, you can sure try.” She picked up a glass, pushed a scrubber inside it. “Your mom called today.”
He didn’t look up from his drying the dish, not wanting to see anything in Darlene’s eyes that might depress him.
“She sounded real good. She was playing checkers and even going to the dance class. The nurse said she hadn’t missed church all month. And, Hal, she was sharp as a tack, I swear, just like her old self. We should go out there and visit soon.”
His mother had started to lose her memory and her manners. He prayed for her in a dutiful way, but didn’t like to picture her in full anymore, with her palsied arm, her drooping face. “Sure,” he said, not meaning it.
“She misses you, Hal.”
“I think she misses you more than me, to tell the honest truth. She talks to you more.”
“She’s afraid she’ll say the wrong thing with you, Hal.”
“Mom? Nah.”
“She is. She just wants someone to chat with. She was real cheerful.”
Darlene let the dishwater out of the sink, and turned to him, placed her hands on his sides. His eyes went to the honey-colored cleavage of her tank top. She seemed sexier tonight for some reason. He was feeling God’s abundance, he was feeling the beginning of prosperity.
Cully called over from the table, where he was scooping ice cream from a carton. “Dad, you’ve got to go. What has it been, like six months?”
“You want to come with, then?”
“Sure, I’ll go,” he said. The last time they’d visited Rockytop Arms, he’d been loud about how much he hated the place, no matter if he loved his grandma, the smell of urine and laundry detergent and old cafeteria food, and especially the old ladies who were strangers and wanted to touch him. Hal was surprised he’d agreed so easily.
“Alright then, let’s make a plan.”
Darlene flashed her smile. It had been her idea for Hal to wind his way back to sobriety by learning to do something rather than brood, and funnily enough, though he’d have hated most people to know it, she’d taught him embroidery, how not to prick his finger pulling the needle through the cloth—how to do a knot stitch, a simple stitch, the absurd hoop in his big hand. Darlene made him feel sometimes like a jackass who’d lucked out beyond all reason to end up with such a beauty. And he hadn’t been drunk since he finished stitching that crude image of an old man’s face, crooked through the eyes. Darlene had framed it and hung it on the wall to remind him. “That’s you,” she said. “If you make it.”
WILLA
SOMETIMES, IF SHE DIDN’T FOCUS on the visions, it was almost like they weren’t there. Yesterday, in the tree outside her window, Willa saw a small, round, gray woman, reaching up her arms as if to be held or to praise, but Willa refused her any attention, because there was homework to do, and the woman scared her; and when she looked up from her calculus, the woman was gone. The poetry she wrote might be tipping her brain to this angle.
Today she’d stayed after school for the Lit Mag meeting, and she was the first one there. The classroom with large windows faced the trees, and now and then, in the breeze, leaves would brush against the glass. It had always been true that certain things had to be aligned before she could write a poem, a kind of clearness in her head like a blank sky, and she had ways of creating that clarity, staring at the grain of paint in the wall, touching the curve of each fingernail with the pad of her thumb, and she could acquire this feeling of being a plant slowly stretching out leaves, or a creature growing wings in a cocoon. But at night now, she was afraid to write, because she saw too many not-real things that in the moment were as real as her hands.
She took out the poem she’d written last year during Texas history class. Ms. Stinehart said after a test one day, “If you don’t learn it, it’s all going to die. It’s dying anyway of course, but if you don’t learn it”—she snapped her fingers—“it’s gone.” Dani was also in the class. They’d read about the Overland Mail stagecoach trail, friendly Chickasaw Indians, the fire-breathing secessionists, the branding symbols of the big cattle ranchers, Jim Bowie, the Grass Fight outside San Antonio. Whenever she could, Stinehart brought the discussion back to the Battle of the Alamo. She stood up straighter, a wire of rancor in her voice when she mentioned the “Texians” holding out for thirteen days, waiting for reinforcements that would never come. Stinehart was a member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, and lowered her voice to say that she herself had helped with the preservation and upkeep of the site, keeping the flora historically accurate and monitoring the wear and tear of tourism. Willa got fascinated by one of the handful of survivors of the Alamo, Susanna Dickinson, whom the Mexican general Santa Anna had allowed to escape with her infant daughter, Angelina. He gave them a blanket and two pesos and sent them to Gonzales to warn the others of what would happen if they continued to revolt.
Willa had written a poem about Susanna on that journey, calling up the landscape to help her—the flat, needling horizon, scrubby grass grown brown in the heat, bluebonnets covering a field like a flock of sparrows, and the vast, secretive space of sky with only God behind it.
Bumpton, with his lumpy pimples, came in the room, and a little later Res, who constantly chewed on the inside of her cheek or clicked her tongue piercing against her front teeth. Willa had really only come to see Ms. Marlowe, their advisor, who arrived last, her deep voice encased in a loose silk tunic. “Alright, everyone, let’s get going.” As Res read aloud her story about a black-haired stranger who slept during the day, vampired by night, Willa started to yawn. She wondered if the visions she’d started to see might make her a better writer—and then whether painters or sculptors saw imaginary things that see
med momentarily material. Bumpton said Willa’s poem was weird and that made it good. Ms. Marlowe talked to them about keeping a record, about writing every day. She read aloud two lines from Willa’s poem and said, “Well, that just makes you want to stop chewing your gum and swallow hard.”
After the meeting ended, they all shut their notebooks and wandered out of the classroom. Willa, walking down the hall, saw the knot of guys hovering near the doors, drinking cans of Coke, some of them in gym clothes because they were going to football practice, or leaving practice, or waiting for more practice. Her crush, Cully, was standing there among them in his regular clothes, shoulders slumped, arms folded. She walked past them, felt their eyes on her. She pulled in her stomach, felt the tight press of her jeans at the tops of her thighs.
“Hey, Lambert,” Cully called out to her.
The hairs on her head prickled, and she stopped. He shot out from the group of guys, grinning, and they seemed to watch him as he moved toward her.
“What’s up?” he said.
She liked something about his mouth. “Just coming from Lit Mag. It was lame.”
“You’re a writer or a photographer?” He was only pretending to be impressed, but she liked that he was pretending.
“Writer, I guess.”
A few of the guys were still watching them. Did it mean she was a joke to them, or did it mean Cully had been talking about her?
“What do you write? Mystery stories?”
“No.” She smiled. She wouldn’t say “poems” because he’d make fun of her. “Just stuff I’m thinking about.”
“Me, I hate writing. Those English papers, shit. You should help me sometime.” One of the guys behind Cully snickered, but when she looked over there, they all had their backs to her. “Where are you going now?”
Her mom was supposed to pick her up—and was probably waiting in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette with the window rolled down.
“Just home.”
“Huh.”
She wanted him to kiss her, someplace where no one would see. He would place his hand on her cheek and draw her close, and she would hold the hard muscle at the top of his arm. Her dad might even approve of Cully because he went to their church, and that somehow made Willa more determined that he should fall in love with her.
“Better get going then,” he said, and touched her lightly on the shoulder. She felt the wind go out of her. “Want to come with me out to lunch next week?” He could leave campus because he was a senior, though she’d have to find a way to sneak out.
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
As she turned away from him, the lockers seemed supernaturally blue and precise, the sun crazy-cornered through the glass doors.
IN HER ROOM, she lay on the bed, watching how the light shot through the leaves just outside the window and dribbled delicate shadows on the wall. She lost track of time, as the small dark shapes shimmied above her and she thought about Cully, the dimples in his cheeks and the slight heaviness in his jaw, which seemed to hold so much unspoken feeling. Small rectangles of light from the curtains shifted on the ceiling, and she heard the air conditioner whir on, her sister shouting something downstairs. Cully’s dad was a realtor who’d once shown up drunk to a football game. His mom used to teach the second grade. She knew these facts about him, but from other people, not from what he’d told her himself. He didn’t know yet that he needed someone like her, someone who knew how to feel sorrow. Sometimes when she passed his house, flat and caramel colored, the front door hidden around a corner of the porch, she so badly wanted to know what went on inside, the dull brick practically glowed with significance.
She called Dani and told her Cully had asked her out to lunch.
“Oh, Willa, not him. He’s such a slime bag.” It was the kind of thing she liked to say.
“I think he’s nicer than that.”
“Define nice.”
“Look, I can’t help it. I’m going to figure out a way to get past Attendance and go out with him. You’ve done it—was it that hard?”
“As long as you get back for fifth period, you’ll be okay.”
After she hung up the phone, the air got too cold, and she slipped under the quilt on her bed, heard cars passing on the street outside, and she could smell herself—deodorant mixed with a milky salt. She felt the weave of her jeans under her palms, and watched the light and shadows mixing on the ceiling, pushed her hand just under the waist of her jeans, where her hip bones made a hollow there, let the tips of her fingers graze the damp cotton between her legs. Then, just above her, the shapes of light swept away, and she saw an old-fashioned camera pressing itself through the plaster, the lens extending itself like a blunt nose. The flash popped, and the light fashioned a lion’s mane, a sharp-toothed, open mouth. She pulled her hand out of her jeans, sat up, saw the dirty clothes on the dresser, and when she looked up again, the ceiling was flat.
Her mother knocked on the door and walked right in. “I need you and Jana to clean up the kitchen.” Willa still felt the camera hovering over her, though she knew it wasn’t there. She couldn’t speak. “What’s with your hair, missy? This thing sticking up over here.” Her mother came over to the bed and pulled a lock of hair to the side of Willa’s face.
“I don’t know. I was resting.”
“Your eye makeup is all over the place too.”
“Mom.”
“I’m just saying.” Lately, her mother acted like there was something different, something wrong and out of place in Willa, as if her mouth held some ugly and mean expression that meant no one else would ever love her.
LEE
AT RUSH’S HOUSE, they drank bourbon. Rush’s husband, Tom, clownishly scowled in and out of the room the way he always did, the news turned to mute on the large-screen TV over the fireplace. On the other side of the room, there was a lamp whose base was a cowboy boot, and on the wall behind it, a painting of running horses and a collection of embroidered sayings inside picture frames. Lee tended to let her gaze brush over them, but now her concentration landed on that one she disliked—the smug prayer about accepting what you couldn’t change and having the courage to change what you could. The needlepoint ended in a flock of birds. As if every anguish was meant to disappear into wisdom to know.
Rush pulled her feet up under her on the black leather couch. With her blue minnow-shaped eyes, and her triangular cheekbones, she had a grand beauty and a bawdy, gap-toothed smile. Her breasts were heavy now, in her billowy sheer blouses, her long blond hair always shiny and straight, like her daughters’ (there were bottles of shampoo and blow-dryers crowding the shelves of the bathrooms). “You ever see Charlotte anymore? I swear she saw me and walked right past at the school the other day. Her girl Willa waved though.”
“Char’s eyesight always was bad.”
“Or it’s her manners.”
Lee remembered the last time she’d seen Char’s daughter, a sweet-looking, serious girl with big dark eyes. She’d come in for an appointment with Doc, and she’d been carrying one of those god-awful paperbacks with explosions on the cover that try to get people to think the world will be done with by Christmas.
“At least since she got Christian,” said Rush. “I mean, we all used to be so close. You know what I call her church, that Victory Temple? The way they go on about things, I call it the Viciousness Temple.” She laughed. “You ever talk to her anymore?”
“Not really. I don’t think she hates me. She’s just waiting for me to be saved.”
“Not going to happen.” Rush pulled at the jade pendant of her necklace, raced it back and forth on the chain. “Hey, Lee, are you alright? Your mouth is doing that thing.”
She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to say.
“You’ve been going out there again, haven’t you?” said Rush. “Goddamnit, they buried that poison. And what good does it do you
? Probably dangerous even being out there all by yourself.” She stood up to turn on the radio on the bureau.
“I saw something different this time.”
“I bet you did.” Rush flung herself back on the couch, drew her knees up to her chin. “I just feel like I have to trust people in order to live, don’t you? I mean, me and Tom aren’t moving, and you’re not either. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life fretting about stuff we can’t even see.”
Rush’s youngest girl ran in and out of the room, asking for nail polish. Rush addressed her by only slightly moving her head in the girl’s direction, and told her not to interrupt adult conversation. She had an imperial way of sitting tall and calm, while the rabble rushed around her.
“Do you want some chips? Or I have some really good Hershey’s.”
“No.” Lee savored the bourbon in her mouth. “I’m just saying, there might be news.”
Rush looked away, brought a cigarette to her lips, let it flick upward before she lit it. “Whatever you say.”
“Jack called again yesterday.”
“Honey.” Rush had a way of communicating her disapproval with just a look—as if her thought were too ugly to actually name, and this made it consequential.
“He still likes to talk about her with me. It’s his thing. That’s why he calls.”
“What it is, is he still feels married to you. I don’t care if it’s been years. Takes a while for that to go away for some people. I don’t care if he has a girlfriend.”
“But for me, it’s all gone. Except when he calls. And then I’m reminded. Actually, I kind of depend on it. I think it keeps me sane.”
“Can’t be nice for his girlfriend, though.”
Just then, Rush’s teenage son, lanky, stiff legged, came in the room. “Bryce, say hello.” Rush’s face changed, her cheeks filled out and lifted, her eyes widened, fixed on him. Lee remembered that feeling of brightening and opening as soon as Jess entered the room, everything flowing in her daughter’s direction.