Catching Heaven

by Sands Hall

  And so, dressed in tight jeans and her cropped sheepskin vest, Lizzie had sauntered into the Billy Goat hoping for, but not expecting, a long tall cowboy who happened to have a store of condoms in the pocket of his jean jacket.

  She let the engine warm before pulling away from the curb. Another of Jake’s admonitions. Don’t drive a car right away after it has been sitting in the cold. You could destroy your engine that way, Liz. Maud could do something with that, but she didn’t even want to try. She drove along the sleeping roads, a lit window here and there testament to someone’s industry, or someone’s insomnia. Jake.

  Beneath a white sheet the languorous limbs of Maud and Jake moved like the tide coming in. She turned the heater up another notch.

  They slept in spoons, Maud’s body a pale question mark curled within the dark curve of his. Her wet boots slipped against the bare metal of the clutch and brake pedals. The truck swerved, straightened.

  She punched on the radio, poked her way from one brief snatch of country song to another, found Morning Edition on the classical station. She listened with as much interest as she could muster to a report on a town that had taken vigilante justice into its own hands, then to an obituary of a jazz trumpet player.

  Yesterday after Maud had driven away, Jeep would not stop crying. Tears seeped steadily from her eyes. Thinking it was the ordeal of the morning, Lizzie drew the bath she thought would help settle her, made her tea, wrapped her in a quilt. But it was Sam. “What if he dies?” Jeep sobbed. “We should have gone with her. We both should have gone.”

  Lizzie had pretended she didn’t know what Jeep meant. She felt now, as she’d felt then, an odd wonder at herself. Jeep was right. Why hadn’t she gone? What was so important that she couldn’t go?

  Morning Edition played a slow and mournful trumpet piece, recorded by the musician who had died. A commentator began to talk about what was happening on the West Bank.

  When Maud had driven them all down to Maggie’s place to see Sam, it was as bad as Lizzie had feared it would be. An old trailer served as his sickroom. Small windows let in little light. The paneling was a fake, orangey plywood, the place cold and dreary on that cold and dreary day. Sam lay on a narrow mattress not moving, though his eyes gleamed when he saw her. His face was slack, wan, and gray, the bleak color of morning sky before sun breaks the horizon. She took his hand. His fingers trembled against hers, a kind of constant patting as if he was making sure she was, indeed, there. Sara, full of cheer, came in to feed him. He coughed in the middle of a spoonful of corn pudding, almost choked, a dreadful sound, as if a gob of hard mucus would not dislodge. “Sorry” may or may not have been what he said. The yellow liquid ran down his chin. He dabbed at it with useless, ashamed fingers. Lizzie found herself scrambling to get outside the trailer, sat with her head between her knees until Mr. Asshole showed up. He stepped over her to get into the trailer, where he’d greeted Maud with his brand of laconic enthusiasm, then lectured her, hectored her, on Indian matters. Lizzie heard Sara try to shut him up at least three times. She sat on the cement block that served as the trailer’s step for what felt like hours, while inside, Maud carried on in what seemed a betrayal of cheeriness. She’d stared out at the flat landscape, cold and miserable, until Hannah came to get her. As they walked away, Summer asked, “Why is Sam always in a trailer?” Lizzie watched Maud think about this, as if the answer would be revealed by the expression on her sister’s face.

  The rear window finally began to de-ice. There were no other headlights behind her, before her. She was driving on the moon.

  After Jeep had taken her bath, sipped her tea, gotten the rest she insisted she didn’t need, she helped Lizzie pick up the house. Lizzie successfully kept them away from the topic of Jake and Maud, but as they folded laundry, Jeep sighed and said, “Nothing happened, you know.”

  Lizzie snapped a pillowcase. She did not pretend she did not know what Jeep meant. “What couldn’t have happened?” Later, after Mrs. Theibeau had arrived with Theo and Summer, Lizzie asked Jeep to stay with the kids. “After you get back from your AA meeting, of course. I feel like kicking back a beer at the Billy Goat. Do you mind?”

  It was clear Jeep had minded, and they both knew Lizzie didn’t mean just one beer, but when she called around ten to say so, Jeep seemed resigned. She was watching a video, and told Lizzie that Maud had called. “She was at rehearsal. I didn’t ask her about Sam. She said she’d call again later.”

  Lizzie had been pleased that after such a long time her game had not totally disappeared, and it hadn’t been hard for Ken—Ben?—to persuade her to come on into his squalid little house with the promise of a beer. Standing in the glaring overhead light of his kitchen, Lizzie thought about leaving before things went any further. When he backed her up against the refrigerator, straddling her feet, bending his knees to tilt his pelvis against hers, Lizzie knew his kisses weren’t going to light any fires. But she let him press the backs of her hands against the cool enamel of the refrigerator door, let him moan, and move his mouth and hips against hers, let him carry her into the dark bedroom and roll her onto the bed. He shook her feet out of her boots, peeled her jeans off, put his hands beneath her T-shirt.

  “Wear a condom,” she told him. The glow of the street lamp outside the window passed along the rising and falling shoulders, the muscled legs moved against her own. When she finally raised her arms to loop them behind his neck, she felt rough skin and remembered Jake’s, smooth as no man’s skin had ever been smooth.

  The last time she’d made love it had been with Jake. She’d realized this with a kind of horror. “Don’t worry about me,” she whispered. “You go ahead. I’m not going to make it.”

  Ken hadn’t liked this idea. In the process of thinking about what to do about it he fell asleep on top of her.

  Was that what Jeep meant when she’d said “nothing happened”?

  She hadn’t passed a car since leaving Ken’s, but she put on the blinker anyway for the turn onto the county road. His name wasn’t Ken. And not Ned. Jeb? Jed. That was it—they’d talked about where it came from, his Seventh Day Adventist parents who’d named him Jedediah. “Jed,” she said, aloud. And then, comparing the sounds of the names, “Jake.”

  An image emerged as clearly as if it were a film she’d seen, unspooling before her like the dark road she traveled down. She laughed, a brief, harsh sound. Maud and her metaphors. It was easy to laugh at the hyperbole of them, but the fucking things were contagious.

  She’d been sailing around this vast ocean, looking, though she didn’t know it, for a way, a place, to put her anchor down. And without knowing it she’d stepped onto the galleon that was Jake. That was part of the picture—a broad, firm boat in the middle of a heaving sea. But she had stepped off it again, still searching, although she hadn’t known that’s what she was doing. And she had ruined everything, she had crashed and burned—drowned, if she kept to the metaphor—everything that mattered to her, she was in perpetual free fall. She floated, drifted, swimming and diving through levels of salty water, working her way down through an ocean of complexity and desire, lower and lower, looking for a certainty she’d known once and would be seeking now forever.

  It was foolish and simple to say this strength and stability had been given to her by Jake. But there it was, foolish and simple. She’d come to know it too late. The galleon had settled into the sand of the ocean bottom. Festooned with seaweed, home to brightly colored darting fish, serene, unmoving. Home.

  All kinds of things were wrong with this underwater analogy. It had to do with drowning, with being submerged, and, given the water involved, no doubt with sex. And how could a galleon at the bottom of the sea be considered serene? But these drawbacks did not diminish the image. The brightly colored fish were the kids, Mrs. Theibeau, they were Jeep and Jeep’s child-to-be, and Maud as a mother. Sam—but she would not think of him, not now. Sara and Cal and even Aaron and damn little Yvette. And Jake. All these things that darted into and out
of the windows of her life. Perhaps for the first time she understood some aspect of her sister’s constant mental acrobatics.

  Her boots slipped against the stripped brake and clutch pedals as she brought the pickup to a stop. Her own car was parked in the driveway. Beside it was Sara’s large and battered yellow Chevy. Lizzie curved her hands over the top of the steering wheel, rested her chin on top of them, and contemplated what this might mean.

  Her boots squeaked on the hard snow that glistened beneath a low-slung moon. She pressed the front door open and then closed. The light over the counter had been left on, a piece of paper placed directly beneath it.

  Dear Lizzie—

  It’s about midnight. I called from rehearsal several times, but Jeep said you were out. Now I’m here. You are still out.

  Sam passed away today.

  I wanted to tell you in person. I’m sorry. You were there in spirit.

  Driver is sleeping on the couch. He wants to talk to you.

  I love you. I need to talk to you about Jake. Also about Jeep.

  See you in the morning. I love you.

  M

  Lizzie took a shivery breath. She tiptoed through the living room, careful not to wake Driver, who had the comforter pulled over his head. Jeep would be sleeping, as usual when she stayed over, in the den. She wondered where Maud had parked herself and found her in Hannah’s bed. Maud was curled around Hannah, their dark hair identical against the flowered sheets.

  She checked on Theo, pulled the blanket up around his shoulders. With infinite quiet, she undressed. She ran water onto a washcloth, making as little noise as possible, and sponged herself all over, then slipped between too-cold sheets. She wished for Jake’s hard brown body. Even in his depths of sleep, when she painted into the deep hours of the morning, when she was a cold entity invading his cocoon of warmth, he’d wrapped her body with his, saying, “yes, yes, yes.”

  Light grew along the peaks and ridges of Fable Mountain, as if someone were drawing it with an unsteady hand. She could sleep for an hour, anyway. Hannah’s alarm clock in the next room would wake her, as it always did, the irritating four quick beeps in a row repeating again and again. She would be downstairs before everyone woke up. She would make coffee, turn this into as normal a morning as possible. She turned her face into her pillow. Her eyes ached. They felt hot, dry. She hoped Maud had told Jeep. But what—how—would they tell Summer?

  But when she woke, the sky, though still gray, was bright enough to let her know she’d slept late. The house was quiet. She took a fast shower and went downstairs. In the kitchen, Maud, her back to Lizzie, was feeding Theo a piece of toast.

  “Where’s Jeep?”

  Maud jumped, turned. “She had the early shift at the Wagon Wheel.”

  “She know about Sam?”

  Maud nodded. “She couldn’t stop crying this morning.”

  “Mami.” Theo put his arms out.

  “You’re fine where you are, Theo.” Lizzie poured herself coffee. “I gather you got the girls to the bus on time.”

  “Barely.”

  “They know?”

  “I think so. Probably because it’s odd that I’m here. And because Jeep kept crying. But I didn’t tell them.”

  “And where’s Mr. Asshole?”

  “He went up to look at Sam’s trailer.”

  Lizzie peered out the kitchen window. Harsh tears pressed at the backs of her eyes. Driver stood halfway up the path, looking up at the old caboose. He wore Sam’s jacket. The fringe flapped sideways in the wind.

  “He intend to take Sam’s stuff? Works fast, doesn’t he.”

  “I don’t think that’s it.” Maud came to stand beside her. They watched Driver continue on up the hill. “I gather he and Sam had some sort of talk.”

  Lizzie felt as if her lungs were caving in, collapsing in on her heart. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Maud went back to Theo, who was banging on the apron of his high chair.

  Lizzie pressed the heels of her hands, warmed by the mug of coffee, into her eyes. She had handled everything so badly. He should have known at the end who loved him. Now he was gone. There was no way to let him know that she was sorry. No way to do it over. She would live with her abandonment of him to the end of her days. What penance could she do? What atonement could she offer that would be enough?

  She picked up her cup, staring out the window even after Driver disappeared into Sam’s trailer. She stepped to one side of the sink so that Maud could run water over a cloth, and listened to Maud telling Theo what a good boy he was, how much toast he had eaten, how his face was a mess, how much he was loved. She thought how much it would mean to Maud if she were to cross the kitchen, hug her, thank her. It was a journey of two steps. She could not make it. The bitterness pressed at the backs of her eyes again. She picked a few dead leaves off the plant in the window, stared up the hill. “What’s he doing in there?” she said.

  Maud didn’t answer. After a pause she said, “Another letter from Mom?” Lizzie turned. Maud held out an aerogram.

  “I wasn’t in the mood to read it yesterday,” Lizzie said, taking it from her. “It’s probably just about when they’re coming.” She tore it open. “Details of their plane, blah, blah, blah. Didn’t you get one of these?”

  “I haven’t been home. I went from Maggie’s to rehearsal to here.”

  Lizzie looked at her, seeing the rise and fall of sheets and blankets that was Maud and Jake in bed. “Quite a couple of days you’ve had,” she said. “As far as that goes, quite a couple of nights.”

  Maud’s face went quite pale. “It wasn’t like that—”

  Lizzie shook the letter at her. “They won’t make it in time for your opening. They’ll come later.”

  “I slept in my clothes. That’s all.”

  Lizzie assumed that the knock on the door was Driver. But it was Jake who pushed open the door from the mudroom.

  “Hey.”

  Lizzie watched the color rise in Maud’s cheeks. “Hey yourself.” So she’d kept her clothes on. Had Jake?

  Jake took a step towards Lizzie, stopped. “I’m really sorry, Liz. About Sam. Really sorry.”

  She turned to look out the window again. Of course Maud would have called him. “What is taking him so fucking long?”

  “Driver,” Maud explained. “He’s up at the trailer.”

  “I had your battery charged,” Jake said. “That’s all the problem was.”

  Lizzie turned in time to see Maud squint. “It’s a battery, Maud,” she said, at the same time Jake said, “Whatever else it is, Maud, it’s also just a battery.”

  Only Maud smiled. Jake said, “May I have some coffee?”

  Lizzie watched him look for and find the mug he’d always used. “And you’ll be pleased to know,” Jake said, getting milk out of the fridge, “or maybe you won’t care. I used it as an opportunity to get the door on my own car fixed.”

  Lizzie turned, again, ready to mock him. He was reading the stuff stuck with magnets to the door of the fridge, looked up in time to catch her eye as she recomposed her features. “Good for you,” she said. It sounded hollow, but at least, she told Sam in her mind, she was making an effort.

  “And I thought, Liz”—his voice was tight—“maybe you’d drive me back to town. We could talk a bit. Nice portrait,” he said before she could answer, pointing to paper filled with back-and-forth scrawls that was Theo’s latest effort. “Looks just like you.”

  Maud brushed imaginary crumbs off the table into a cupped palm, studiously not looking at her, and Jake hurried on. “I was all prepared to use Maud’s car for the rest of the day, but it took the guy about fifteen minutes. All this time I thought the lock, or even the whole door, would have to be replaced.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Maud. “Talking about this stuff with her around is impossible,” he said to Lizzie. “Worse than Minerva, and I’ve told you how bad that was. ‘What’s this really mean?’ ”

  After a long pause, Li
zzie said, “It makes life very dense.”

  “Dense.” Looking hugely relieved, Jake nodded and swallowed some coffee. “Sue called. Wants to know if Jeep’s doing okay.”

  “Well,” Maud said, with a glance at Lizzie, “she couldn’t stop crying.”

  “She should have called in sick,” Lizzie said.

  Maud nodded. “But she had the early shift at the Wagon Wheel and didn’t want to leave them in the lurch. Then there’s class, which she doesn’t want to miss, and tonight’s the Red Garter, and she needs the money. She said work is good, that it would keep her mind off things.”

  “Dammit. I told her to call in sick.”

  “Morning.” Driver spoke from the door. “Good morning, Lizzie.” He came towards her. Almost she could see flames flickering around him. Certainly his eyes looked as if they could burn something. She stepped backwards, bumping into Jake.

  Driver came very close. His Adam’s apple worked up and down. “I was wrong,” he said. “Taking Sam away. I was very wrong.”

  Lizzie watched as Maud’s face blurred through sudden tears. She felt her lips, and then her eyes, crumple in upon themselves. She could do nothing to stop the sobs that shook her, and was mortified that when Jake’s arm found its way around her, she would so utterly let go, mortified that in spite of her best efforts a cry escaped her, then another. Her legs, too, betrayed her. She turned into Jake. If he held her, she would not slide to the ground. She was surprised that tears could be so hot. Surprised at how much snot would drip from her nose. The tears, the snot, the cries she could not stop buried themselves in the black cotton of his sweater. “Oh, Sam,” she cried. “Oh, Sam.”

  Two nights later, Maud called, very late. “You need to come, Lizard. Jeep’s tried to kill herself.”