Ash Falls

by Warren Read

  Bobbie said, “What do Lyla and Jonas have to say about this? They must know.”

  Marcelle slid her coat off and laid it on the cot next to her. “Most of the time they tell us we need to grow up and act like adults. Then Mr. Henry goes out for a drive and Mrs. Henry goes and makes lace in her room. When she catches me by myself, when Eugene’s not there, she tells me I shouldn’t be so hard on him. Says I have to work harder, go along with him, so he doesn’t get all worked up.”

  Bobbie shook her head. “That’s bullshit, Marcelle, sorry for swearing. One hundred percent. It’s not my business, but Jesus. You don’t deserve that. Any of it.” She took Marcelle’s hands in her own and squeezed them until they were warm.

  The door opened and a boy came in. Marcelle recognized the curly black hair and crook nose as someone from back when she had gone there. But she didn’t really know him. Bobbie got up from her chair and said to Marcelle, Just a minute.

  She went to the counter at the far side of the office and drew a plastic tray from the wall cabinet. She spoke in a low voice to the boy, while the boy stood against the counter with his arms to his sides and drummed his long fingers against his legs. Bobbie set a single pill onto the counter, took up a pen, and started scratching notes on her clipboard. The boy looked over at Marcelle. He chewed on his fingernail all the while he stared at her face, and down at her boobs, and the hands that she cupped tightly on her lap.

  “Take your pill, William,” Bobbie said. “Then straight back to class, no lollygagging.”

  “I don’t lollygag.”

  “And you need to be in here before the bell rings. Mr. Cowan doesn’t like students leaving class for any reason. Not for meds, not for anything.”

  “I know,” he said. “I just forget.”

  “Well, don’t forget.”

  “That’s what I take pills for, Mrs. Luntz.”

  Bobbie grumbled in her throat. He looked over at Marcelle and smiled a toothy grin, and when Bobbie gave him a nudge in the small of his back he sauntered out the door into the hallway. Bobbie came around and walked to the front of her desk, and leaned against its edge.

  “So Marcelle.” She gestured toward her own cheek. “There are people I can call. We can, I mean. Get you somewhere safe.”

  “I don’t care about the bruise.”

  “You should care.”

  “That’s not why I came, anyways.” Marcelle looked down at her shoes. They were wet from the slush, the canvas ringed dark all around. She was cold now. She brought her jacket to her lap and tucked the zippered edges under her thighs.

  “Why I came is I’m late on my cycle. About a month and a half. And since you’re a nurse and all…”

  Bobbie sighed, and cleared her throat. For a long time, she didn’t say anything. She just shifted against the desk, the wood creaking under her weight. She brushed at a spot on her jeans and folded her hands on her knees. Finally she said, “Have you taken a test yet?”

  “No.”

  “You need to take a test, Marcelle.”

  “I’m afraid someone will see me. And anyways I’m never late.”

  “You don’t need to be ashamed to buy a pregnancy test. You’re married. And even if you weren’t, women go in all the time to buy them. This isn’t 1960.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t want anyone to see me.”

  “Did you call your mom?”

  Marcelle’s throat began to tighten, and she felt the wave moving up through her chest again, and her eyes well up. Her nose suddenly started to drip and she wiped at it with her bare hand.

  “She said I made my own bed.”

  Bobbie came and sat down on the cot beside her. She slid close and tucked a tissue into Marcelle’s hand. She didn’t say anything, and she didn’t hold Marcelle’s hand or hug her, or pat her knee or anything like that. She just sat there, with her hip against Marcelle’s, waiting while she wiped all the mess that ran from her nose and her eyes.

  Finally Bobbie said, “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  What she didn’t know was exactly how to put the words together, the words that would say she just didn’t want it. Not the baby, not the marriage. Not Eugene.

  Bobbie got up and walked to her desk and pulled a flat drawer out from the front. She grabbed a scrap of paper and wrote something down, then brought it to Marcelle. “Take this phone number.” She put it in her hand. “No matter what, you can’t stay with someone who hits you.”

  “It’s probably really small right now,” Marcelle said, putting her hand over her stomach. “Probably not even like a real person yet.”

  Bobbie looked up at the clock. She was looking at the time, as if what Marcelle had just said hinged on the minutes left in the day.

  “Would I be a bad person if I got rid of it?” she said. She began crying again, and this time she just let the tears roll on down her face and fall onto her chest.

  “You mean abortion?”

  Marcelle nodded.

  Bobbie looked at the clock again and then out the window. Marcelle followed her gaze. The rain had stopped, and there was enough sunlight that the drops glowed on the glass like tiny stars.

  “It doesn’t matter what I think.” She put her hands on Marcelle’s. “It has to be your decision.”

  “I think I’m sure about it, Mrs. Luntz. One hundred percent.” She pulled her hand from under Bobbie’s. “Could you take me? I know it’s a lot to ask, but I don’t know anyone else.”

  “It depends. Are you eighteen yet?”

  “No ma’am. Not till February.”

  “Well then I can’t. I’m really sorry honey, but you’re a minor.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “It hurts to even suggest this, but have you thought about talking to Lyla?”

  Marcelle felt the tears coming again. It did hurt, even thinking about it made her stomach ache. “Oh no,” she said. “Do you think you could? I can’t even think…”

  “Oh, Marcelle, I don’t think so. I can’t picture her listening to anything I have to say. We’re not exactly girlfriends.”

  Bobbie took the seat behind her desk and stayed there for some time, rubbing her thumb over her palm, just staring at her hands, working them back and forth. There was a bowl of candy next to her hands and a glass mug, half-filled with milky coffee. Other than those and a pink notepad with a single pen crossed over it, the desk looked like more of a prop than anything else.

  She finally stood up. “Give me a little time to process this, Marcelle. How about you call me tonight at home. You still remember our number?”

  Marcelle nodded as she stood and slid her coat back on. “If you talk to her, can you tell her not to say anything to Eugene?”

  “Call me at six.”

  “Mrs. Henry’s gonna be sad. I sometimes hear her talk to Mr. Henry about having grandchildren someday.”

  “Yeah, well it’s not your job to make babies so Lyla Henry can get what she wants.” She took her own jacket from the hook beside her door. “I’ll walk you out.”

  They walked all the way through the hallway and down the stairs, and out to the parking lot. The bell marking the end of first period rang, and Marcelle quickened her pace, leaving Bobbie behind, cutting through the parked cars toward the street. Bobbie yelled something to her. Marcelle kept walking and zipped her parka to her chin, pushing her hands into the pockets. She wanted to turn around, to see if Bobbie was coming after her. She wondered if she did turn around and look up at the windows, would she see the frantic scurry of kids in the windows, of hands pushing shoulders, and teachers whistling and clapping, and flipping the light switches for attention.

  She finally stopped and looked behind her. Mrs. Luntz was gone. The reflecting sky whitewashed the entire wall of windows.

  This thing inside me. Part me, part Eugene.

  She was completely exposed, naked to anyone who might be looking out at her now. Marcelle Foster with her ugly black eye and moon face, standing like a fat old cow in th
e muddy parking lot, just staring up at us.

  Pretty soon it’ll have his nose and my eyes, and fingers that push hard against the insides of my body. And then it’ll be too late.

  Marcelle Foster, the same stupid girl she always was.

  Bobbie and Lyla

  The night that Ernie first mentioned Ash Falls, Bobbie had left the Owl Tavern on her own, a good hour before closing time. She and the other shift nurses had been up to their elbows in drinks and barflies, and Bobbie was halfway through her third dance with an electrician by the name of Rico.

  “I keep a boat docked down at the marina,” he said.

  “That so?”

  “Yep. You should come see it. I got it set up real nice.”

  Bobbie shook her head against his shoulder. “I gotta get home,” she said. “My kid’s got a thing in the morning, real early.”

  “You got a kid? How old?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Eleven years old and home all by himself.” He slid his hand around Bobbie’s back and tucked his fingers inside the waist of her jeans.

  Bobbie smiled. “No,” she said. “He ain’t by himself.” She took his fingers from her waist and pressed a kiss to his sandpaper face, right next to his mouth. He turned his head, but she pulled herself back from him.

  “You ought to go over and ask Laurie to dance,” she said, nodding to the booth. “She’s the cute one with short black hair.”

  “Does she like electricians?”

  “I don’t know. She might like boats.”

  Bobbie slipped through the back where the outside lighting was best and went straight to her car. Seatbelt cinched tight, she drove off with the tape deck dialed up, singing along with Blondie and feeling damned good, her hands at ten and two with the window all the way down, her shirt unbuttoned to the middle and billowing in and out from her skin. She kept to the side streets all the way, cutting from Aurora Avenue to Greenwood Park then circling around to the Episcopal Church on the corner of Dayton Street. As she hooked south onto to 92nd, she snapped the headlights off so she might pull into the driveway unnoticed.

  She rolled up to the duplex, and there on the front steps sat Ernie in gray sweats and a t-shirt, eating peanuts, a fat plastic bag at his side and a fist-sized mound of empty shells between his bare feet. A cigarette was balanced on the lip of a beer can, the thin tree of blue smoke growing from its smoldering tip. It was almost one-thirty, and even though Bobbie had stopped drinking two hours earlier, there was still a good buzz behind her eyes. All the house windows were dark.

  “You sharing any of that with the squirrels?” She did up her buttons and walked around the front of the car, opening the passenger door, locking it then closing it again. “That’s a lot of nuts for one person.”

  “I wanted something with salt,” he said. “The shelling gives my hands something to do.”

  “How come you’re sitting out here? I told you I was going out after work.”

  He took a final drag from his cigarette, then flicked the butt in a high, orange arc over to the side yard. He blew a plume of smoke into the air.

  “I can’t fucking sleep.”

  Bobbie climbed the concrete steps and took a spot beside him, the cold seeping through her jeans. She reached down between his feet and scooped a handful of shells, then dumped them off the side of the porch into the azaleas.

  “It’s not getting any better,” she said. “If anything, it’s getting worse.”

  “I’m not mad at you, babe. If you need to blow off some steam with your friends, go ahead. I told you, I don’t care.”

  “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about your sleeping.” She ran a finger along his temple and pushed a rope of hair over the saddle of his ear. “I wish you’d get yourself in to talk to Dennis.”

  Ernie pulled away and corrected his hair. “Dennis costs money we don’t have.”

  “We got insurance.” Along the street opposite, boxy bungalows crouched side-by-side, specked with a collage of pumpkins that winked and grinned, gap-toothed, from dimly lit stoops. She cupped her hands to her face and breathed into them.

  Then Ernie said, “What would you say about us getting out of here? You and me and Patrick.” He leaned back, putting his elbows against the step. His eyes narrowed and he stared up into the night sky, and the goofiest smile she’d ever seen stretched over his face. He said, “We could move out of this city, away from the traffic and the streetlights. Goddamned sirens every ten minutes. Think of it. We could just look up and see nothing but stars.”

  Bobbie drove her hands into her coat pockets and leaned over, pressing her stomach to her knees. She turned her head to the side and looked out over the void that was the side yard. Ernie reeked of cigarettes, but only cigarettes this time. Still, even out in this scrubbed October air she could smell him. How many butts, she wondered, would she find dotting the lawn when she came out to get the morning paper?

  “I’ve only been a year at the hospital,” she said. “Things are just setting in. The thought of having to look for another job all over again—God, Ernie. Can’t you call Dennis? I’ll call him myself if you want.”

  Ernie stood up, sending flakes of peanut shells fluttering from his lap to the steps, some of it onto Bobbie. He let out the groan of a man beat, and pressed his hand to her hair. He rested against it, gently, and Bobbie reached up and took hold of him. She didn’t push him away, but she held his hand in place, and moved her finger against his cold skin. She didn’t want this. It was too sudden, too drastic. It was possible that he was right, though, maybe he needed it. Maybe she needed it.

  “Let’s go to bed,” she said. “We can talk about this in the morning.”

  “It’s morning right now,” he said. He slid his hand from beneath hers and walked into the house, closing the door behind him.

  Bobbie stood at the kitchen window, phone in hand, watching the neighbor’s garbage can roll from his driveway to the street. It was dented on one side, and it limped as it went, finally coming to a stop in the gutter against the curb.

  The phone had rung five times in her ear before Lyla finally picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Lyla”?

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s…Bobbie. Bobbie Luntz.”

  There was the sound of breathing then, for several seconds, nothing at all on the other end.

  “Are you there?”

  “What do you want? Something with Hank that I don’t know about?”

  “No,” she said. “I mean, not that I know of.”

  Old man Hart came down from his porch and limped to the end of the driveway, looking as though every ounce of his strength was being used to drag that bucket back to his garage. Forty-five years, he’d been there. It’s what he’d told her one day, over the top of his pruning shears. Forty-five years. An entire lifetime.

  “So why are you calling here? I don’t have time for games.”

  Bobbie took a deep breath. “Can we meet?”

  Bobbie waited for Lyla, in a booth at the back wall of Cook’s Grill, a place twenty miles outside of Ash Falls that she had driven past dozens of times without consideration. She nursed a cup of smoky coffee and stared out the window into the parking lot. It was 10:30 in the morning and there was a dull ache going on with her leg. Not more than a half-dozen cars populated the lot. Four old timers crowded the bar.

  Twice, the waitress had come back to ask Bobbie if she wanted anything to eat. She was fiftyish, with gray-streaked hair folded up into a heavy bun, too much foundation and a loose floral blouse with a nametag that said Howdy. She wore her shirt untucked, letting the whole thing tumble over snug jeans that stopped just above her ankles.

  “How about a piece of pie?” she asked.

  “Just coffee.”

  “We got apple and sour cream cherry, fresh made.” She tapped her pen on the order pad. “It’s real tasty.”

  Bobbie forced a smile. “I’m waiting for someone.”

  H
owdy shrugged her shoulders and walked away. She retreated to the space behind the counter where she resumed her waitress banter, winking at the whiskered old men who mashed their potbellies against the bar. She poured coffee from the glass bubble and pushed slices of cream-topped pie at them as they talked over one another about the wives who didn’t talk to them, or ex-wives who wouldn’t leave them alone, and joints that didn’t bend like they used to but other parts that worked just fine. Her head tipped back as she laughed and doled out saccharine terms of endearment:

  “Oh, Punkin.”

  “You old Slydog.”

  “Mister Man, I will run you outta here myself.”

  Bobbie watched it all happen and tried to imagine what it would be like to be A Good Regular, like these old codgers. Just walk into a place and have folks drop what they’re doing and give you a shout, pick up the conversation from the exact place it had been left earlier. She never had that in her old haunts, though The Flume had been a little like that. Sometimes. Even so, it hadn’t always felt good. The banter could be casual and light-hearted, but in the time it took her to pull the darts from the cork everything could turn nasty and deeply personal. Shortcomings and airy rumors quickly floated to the surface. And as such, Bobbie often found herself walking out at closing time with a crippling headache, a kind of a verbal hangover of long night of serrated dialogue. But these people over there, spreading conversation like they were spreading butter. They were fucking loving it.

  Lyla Henry’s white sedan turned into the lot and settled in the stall right outside Bobbie’s window, and Bobbie felt her skin flush, down her back and over her legs. Her feet crawled with electricity. What the hell was she doing calling Lyla all the way out here? The woman hated her; she wasn’t going to be able to get a word in edgewise. She had to be out of her mind to be sticking her hand in this hornet’s nest.

  Lyla slid the column shifter into park and dropped the visor in front of her face. Her elbows bent outward and moved in small circles, and when she flipped the visor back to the ceiling, there was a blue scarf tied down over her hair, framing her giant drop temple glasses. She saw Bobbie and froze, her hands curled at her chest like a squirrel. Bobbie waved, but Lyla just turned and shoved the car door open with her shoulder.