by Warren Read
Each township and turnoff along the way brought them closer to Ash Falls. She looked out the window at the passing world, hearing the sound of Eugene’s rattling chest and his deep growl through a clenched jaw, and she could see a future with sheets drawn over his pasty chest, his eyes closed or not, the branch of scars that wound up and down his arms and over his face. Her stomach swayed with the bend in the road, and she could feel the sweat on his clammy face, like raw meat, and the dead weight as she struggled to move him to a chair or back into bed, or on the toilet, leaning him into her as she helped clean his seat. Giving him a bath, maybe, if Mrs. Henry did not expect to do it herself.
Everything she remembered or imagined or pieced together as possibility welded another bar to her cage, and for a brief moment Marcelle considered opening the door right then and there and jumping right out onto the highway.
By the time they pulled onto Shale Street, the streetlamps were steady, spreading white pools over the cracked, gray concrete. Marcelle collected her purse to her lap and undid her seatbelt. The second they came to a stop in the driveway she stepped from the car, circling around the trunk to the stripe of lawn that separated them from the neighbors.
“Marcelle?” Lyla stood against the fender of the car, her jacket bunched against her chest. “Marcelle, what are you doing?”
“I think I want to go for a walk. If that’s okay.”
“Well don’t you want to go inside and get cleaned up?”
Marcelle shook her head firmly.
“It’s cold,” Lyla said. She reached a hand out, as if she might take hold of her from twenty feet away. “It feels like snow, even. You should come inside.”
Marcelle tucked her purse under her arm and bit down on her lip. That she felt as if she might start to cry surprised her, that sudden swell in her throat, the molten rush from her stomach up into her chest. It wasn’t Lyla or Jonas or even Eugene, but the sense that all she wanted to do was keep walking past that tiny strip of grass, down the sidewalk and on and on, she didn’t know where. Someplace where every house was new to her, and nobody recognized who she was. Mrs. Henry had to stop talking and Marcelle had to stop listening to her, just get her feet moving again.
It was so much colder than it had been that morning, the kind of air that slapped at the skin and made ears sting. Soft lights gave away all the living rooms of the block, low, golden squares looking out, drapes still open on some, blinking blue lights of television sets playing to rooms that looked mostly empty. She tucked her purse down into her jacket and quickened her step, weaving through unfenced yards and naked hedges, four streets of forgotten plastic summer clutter, pails and shovels, errant lawn darts and toppled yard furniture. At the end of it all she stopped midway up Maple to sit down on the cold concrete curb, directly across from the Luntz home.
In a dozen breaths, Marcelle took in wood smoke from as many chimneys and the heady odor of moss that crept over the lawn behind her, moss that seemed to find its way into every living thing. She sensed the slice of coming winter, the metallic scent that came down the mountain from the glaciers, and the frigid rivers that wove back and forth under the highway bridges, all the way down to the wide, saltwater bay. All the lights were on at the Luntz house.
She gathered her purse into her arms, set her jaw firm and pushed off from the curb. She marched across the street to the back door, where Mrs. Luntz stood in the kitchen, just on the other side of the paned glass, pulling cans from an open cupboard as if nothing remarkable at all had happened that day.
The moment she swung open the door, Bobbie put her hands to her mouth. Marcelle could feel her scouring every inch of her, as if she were following the quilt of her old parka, over her breasts and the swollen sleeves. She moved her head to one side as she looked over Marcelle’s legs, thick and trembling as they must have been, and the bare hands whose nails clung tightly to the cuffs of her sleeves. Reaching out, she took Marcelle by the arm and pulled her from the porch, over the threshold.
“Jesus Christ,” she said. “What happened to you?”
That she hadn’t realized the extent of it in the hospital made no sense. But under the harsh white globe of the ceiling lamp the rust-colored patchwork came through, blood that had soaked into the pale blue of her jacket and over her jeans, and the drops that had spattered onto the toes of her once white tennis shoes. Bobbie pushed around her and leaned out the door, turning her head right and left before closing the door hard.
“What in the hell’s going on? Tell me that’s not what it looks like.”
Marcelle went to the small table near the living room alcove and sat down. “It’s Eugene’s,” she said, pulling at her stained jacket. “These guys at a motel in Everett beat him up. He’s in the hospital.”
“What guys?”
“I told the police what I saw. I don’t know.”
And then Bobbie sat down too. She stared at Marcelle’s coat again, her eyes washing over it as if she were hoping to clean her with her mind. At some point she looked up again, brows pulled to the sides, lids welling. It was obvious that she wanted to ask more but she would not do it. She just took hold of Marcelle’s hands and squeezed them, holding them together with her own.
“The Henrys drove me home,” Marcelle said. “He’s going to be there awhile I think. After that, I don’t know.”
“About him or you?”
“What?”
“After that, you don’t know about him, or about you?”
In the room adjacent, the television was on. A man and a woman were fighting over roars of canned laughter. They were outside in a backyard that wasn’t real, with fake trees holding up the fat man as he lay back on a hammock with a can of beer perched on his giant belly. The woman paced around him like she was an ostrich, hysterical, slicing at the air with her arms as she ranted.
Then Bobbie said, “You want me to call Patrick in here?”
Marcelle stared down at her thighs again. One of the bloodstains was a handprint.
It was funny how little they said to one another at first, like they were two children meeting for the first time. Patrick’s mother held her hand in the small of Marcelle’s back, as if she might pull back and run from the house.
“Hey Marcelle,” he said. He stared at his socks, stark white with gray toes. His jeans bunched at his ankles, like they always did.
“Hey.”
Bobbie said, “You guys can chat in the living room if you want. I was just going to finish up in here and go to bed.”
“You want to go outside?” Patrick asked. He looked up at Marcelle then, his gaze moving up the front of her jacket, crisscrossing from one side to the other before settling at last on her eyes.
Tiny flakes swirled in the cone of the streetlight, and in the yellow glow of the porch lamp, the slightest specks of snow had begun to cling to the grass blades. The two of them sat together on the porch steps, close enough for Marcelle to steal some of Patrick’s warmth.
“So are you still working at that farm?” she asked. “With those minks, or whatever?”
“Yeah.” Patrick leaned forward on his knees. “There was pelting the other day. Killing them and all.” He nodded so that his whole body rocked back and forth, and Marcelle could see the forced bravado, the same tone and body language that he used to show when he talked about those weeks he’d been on the run.
“Was it hard?” she asked. “To kill them?”
He shrugged his shoulders and stole a glace at her, lightning-quick. “A little, I guess. But it has to happen. They’re not pets.”
“Eugene used to always say how nasty they were, how they had it coming.”
He sat back on his hands and looked over at her. His eyes widened with a look that shrunk her down into her shoes. “That doesn’t mean it’s fun to watch them die.”
“I never said it was.” Marcelle shifted on her rear and tugged the zipper of her jacket down a few inches to let the cold air inside. The snow was falling heavier now, the flakes still
tiny yet filling the spaces under the streetlights and beginning to whiten the dark sidewalk that stretched out to the street.
“It was so crazy, in that motel. With Eugene.” She rubbed her hands over her knees. “I thought he was dead. By the time the cops came he was shaking so hard they had to put him on a board and tie straps over him. And the whole time he’s just staring up at the ceiling, his eyes all big and wide. He looked so scared. And the blood, just running out of him, all over the carpet. They’re gonna have to tear it all out and replace it, you know. That much blood won’t ever come out.”
She looked to Patrick, who leaned forward on his knees with head in his hands. His eyes gave away nothing, not sympathy, not disgust, not even satisfaction at the details Marcelle gave.
“I never seen him look that scared before,” she said, “not in all the time we been together. I sure didn’t expect that.”
Patrick blew into his hands, a plume of steam sifting through his fingers. The light from the porch lamp washed over him, turning the blond streak in his hair a shade of orange. He seemed older than when she last saw him, even two weeks earlier, from Eugene’s car at the drugstore. His face looked hard. Stronger, maybe. Maybe it was his father’s face that was growing into him.
“So what are you gonna do now?”
“Everything’s so different,” she said. “I don’t even know how I got here.” She shook her head, a tear rolling down her cheek, traveling halfway to her chin before she wiped at it with her sleeve. “Sometimes I feel like I want to just get on a bus and go wherever it’s headed.” She looked at him, but he stared straight ahead. “You know like we used to talk about? Not even look to see where it’s going,” she said.
“You could do that,” he said.
“No I couldn’t. That only happens in the movies.”
Then it came to her. Before she had a chance to think it through clearly, it was out of her mouth, into there air, impossible to take back.
“Do you think you could talk to that lady? The one you stayed with?”
“Mama T?” Patrick leaned back on the porch step, looking up the street, as if the answer to Marcelle’s question would be found somewhere on the next block.
“What’s wrong?” she said, as if it was the greatest idea in the world. “I got money. And I can get a job.”
For the longest time he said nothing. He wouldn’t look at Marcelle, even when she leaned forward and craned her neck to meet his glance. He continued to stare up the street, chewing at his thumbnail and rocking back and forth, all the while snowflakes were caught in the breeze, sweeping up onto the porch where they settled on legs and arms and bare, pink faces.
“You want me to call her now?” he said finally.
She caught her breath. It wasn’t something she had planned to do, not then. Not with Eugene in the hospital, with his blood barely dry on her jacket.
“Let me get my coat,” he said, standing up.
They stayed to the sidewalks that ran down Maple Street all the way to Main, past dark, stony pillars fronting Harmon Funeral Home and the burned out shell of Mick’s Laundromat. Even though everyone in town said it was Eugene, no question about it, it had been Patrick who surprised Marcelle with the idea that it might be one of his dad’s sleepwalking things.
“Even he thinks he could have done it,” he’d said to Marcelle. “He told my mom the day after it burned down that he woke up behind the library that night.”
It was then—as they walked past Mick’s—that it occurred to Marcelle she should ask Patrick about his dad. Was there any word from him? Had he been caught? She was curious, but more than that, she knew it was the right thing to do, give him a turn if he wanted. It was how things had been between them before Eugene—they’d talk about parents and school and problems, and all the endless things that tangled the two of them together. His father. But now there never seemed to be a right time to bring it up, a single moment when she thought he wouldn’t break apart with just the mention of it, just turn on his heel and head straight back home, to leave her in the same spot she had been before she’d left Mr. and Mrs. Henry in their driveway.
They came to the end of the block and crossed the open street to the grocery store, its massive wall of windows dumping light into the parking lot. Suddenly Patrick dashed into the open and twirled in a circle, arms outstretched, head back, and eyes closed. He turned and turned, fingers reaching toward Marcelle, and it made her laugh to see him behaving so beautifully ridiculous. She swatted at his arm, and he stopped, looked at her and, for the first time that night, smiled.
“What?”
“You know what,” she said. “God, you can be so weird sometimes.”
“Come on,” he said. “It’s the first snow. And you’re leaving it.” His eyes caught the lamplight, glistening and full, and his teeth broke through thin, wet lips. “Goddamn you,” he said. “Sometimes you can be such a pain in the ass.”
A car pulled into the entrance behind them, its headlamps projecting a moving circle of yellow light over the storefront glass. Giant paper signs advertising weekly specials flashed at them, red and brown numbers blotting the white squares like old bandages.
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “I’m hoping to fix that about me.” Marcelle felt a momentary lightness and took hold of his sleeve, pulling him with her as she skated gracefully over the snow, all the way to the front doors, the two of them, hands clasped behind backs, their laughter bouncing through the lot as they carved long staccato lines over the jewel-specked plain.
The doors slid open, the warm air rushing over Marcelle as the smell of bread and doughnuts took hold of her, raking the insides of her mouth with an excruciating desire for food. The cashier looked over at her and Patrick, lingering on Marcelle, and once again she considered the condition of her clothing. The woman looked as if she knew Marcelle had done something horrible before coming in, a trail of carnage stretching out somewhere behind her. Through caked blue eye shadow and spidery lashes she studied them both, all the while punching at the register and pretending to pay attention to the pile of groceries that she snatched from the cart. Marcelle worked her hand inside her purse. Her fingers moved through the clutter like they were working a knot, and she kept Patrick in her periphery, knowing he must think her crazy with whatever she was doing inside that purse of hers. She finally drew out a twenty and held it out to him.
“Can you get change? That lady’s staring at me like I killed someone.”
“Just tell her it’s your husband’s blood.”
“Right, that’ll make it all better.”
It wasn’t late, but the mood in the store felt like near closing. Only a few people waited in line to pay, and there weren’t more than three others standing around the produce department, staring at apples and onions and potatoes they held in their hands as if they were things to be hatched rather than cut up and eaten.
In the aisle behind the register, a man and woman stood next to one another. They were an old couple, the man with a full head of hair, brilliant white that he’d combed back in a drift down to the base of his neck. She wore a flowered scarf over her hair, and he had on a heavy knitted sweater that dropped past his waist, maybe something she had made for him. It was that kind of sweater. The man held his wife’s arm gently as she stood on tiptoes and pulled cans from the shelf, and set them easily in the cart. It was as if she was on the edge of a cliff reaching for berries and he had to steady her, to be certain she would not slip and fall. She picked up a can, read the label and set it back, and then she turned to him and said something. He nodded, and she reached up and patted him on the cheek three times, said something else, and then walked off in front of him, her arms clasped behind her. He looked around and broke into a big, toothy grin then took hold of the cart, shaking his head as he pushed it down the aisle behind her.
Patrick came to her and dropped a bunch of coins into the slot then pushed at the keys. Turning away, he huddled close to the wood partition of the booth.
Marcelle managed to croak a “Hello.”
“Hi baby.” The voice was deep and smoky. “My boy Spooky tells me you in a hard spot. Need somewhere to be for awhile.”
“I think so.” Marcelle’s stomach rose and settled under her coat. “Pretty sure. I got my own money.”
“He says you thinkin’ of runnin’ away from your man. That true?”
“Yes ma’am. I want to leave for a lot of reasons, but he’s the biggest one.” Marcelle turned and looked down the cereal aisle again. The old couple was long gone. Patrick was looking at her as she talked, glancing down at the mouthpiece in the pauses, as if he could see Mama T responding inside the phone.
“I got money,” Marcelle said again.
“I heard you before,” Mama T said. “First thing, you make sure this what you want. Things can get real ugly when a man’s been left behind. I don’t want no drama brought to my stoop. I got plenty of that already.”
“Yes ma’am.”
There was a heavy sigh on the other end of the line and the sound of something tapping. Marcelle reached over and took Patrick’s hand, and he squeezed back. Finally Mama T. spoke again.
“All right then,” she said. “You get my number from Spooky. If you make up your mind to do this, you call me. You get yourself to the bus station, and I’ll come fetch you.”
Marcelle thanked her and promised to call one way or the other, and then she hung up, and her arm felt lighter the second she left the earpiece on the cradle. A pathway opened, a possibility. Something she’d never had before, and it was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.