by Lynne Hugo
“The vet?”
“She’s my friend. She can take care of this. It needs cleaning and stitching, that’s all.”
Eddie’s face is a blank. He shakes his head not so much in disagreement but as if to clear it. “Rocky’s upstairs,” he says.
Carley is crying stridently through Eddie’s and my argument. “Now I’m a horse? A fucking horse? Ow, ow …” Her face is a grimace as she tries to jerk her hand away from me while I’m fighting to maintain a grip on it so I can keep pressing the wound to stanch the bleeding. She’s slurry, and her eyes are not right.
I look at my husband, tears rising in my eyes. Now, I tell him silently. Now. Now is the time to help your wife.
“No, Carley, of course not. Summer is your friend, too. You used to help her when she came to the barn. Listen to me. Listen.” I wipe her face with a dish towel I’ve wet with warm water, and this time she lets me. Two more beats while Carley sniffs and I give up on Eddie, setting him on a back shelf in my mind for thought later when I can afford time to be bitter and sad. As we drove here from Mama and Daddy’s, Carley was hysterical, and it was all I could do to concentrate on the road. I’d been afraid to pull over—the gun was, after all, in my trunk, and the bullet that had lashed Carley’s hand, scarcely scratched Cal’s thigh, and been blunted by the mattress of saddle blankets before hitting the floor of the stall—was in the pocket of my jeans. Then all I could think of was getting home and getting help.
“Carley, honey, listen to me. Take your hand and keep pressing on the wound, like this, okay. Press it hard. That stops the bleeding.” I put my hands on either side of her face, but she lowers her head and I let her, dropping my hands to the tops of her arms and rubbing them lightly. “I’m going to call Summer. Listen, honey,” I say when she starts to protest again. “This is a gunshot wound. A regular doctor in or out of the hospital will have no choice. It has to be reported to the police. They’ll question you. They’ll question me. I’ll be arrested, but that’s not my main concern. You’re underage, and you’re a lot more than drunk. You’ll be tested, alcohol and drugs. You hear me? First you’ll blow drunk, then the drug screen will show whatever you’re on … I’ll be tested too, but so what? I’m cold sober.” Carley’s head, which she’s kept down staring at her wounded hand and the other pressing the clean towels against it, comes up. Her eyes, smeared with makeup run amok, meet mine. The whites have gone bloodshot with her sobs, and their blue looks grayish black. I put my hands back up to cradle her head, all the silver earrings beneath her loosened hair. “I’ll have to tell what happened, what you were doing, how, where, and why I shot the gun. Can you see why I don’t want the police involved?”
“You shot her?” Eddie says incredulously, as if this is the first he’s heard it. “What the hell is going on? Jewel?”
“No, Eddie, there was an accident. Listen, you just go upstairs, okay? Why don’t you get Rocky and take him out to eat or something? Where’s Chassie?”
“Out with Frank Ratliff, her new one, the big guy …”
I turn back to Carley, who’s sobbing louder again. “Okay, honey, okay,” I say and then, eyes still on Carley, “Eddie, just get me the phone, will you? Then go get Rocky and get out. My car is blocking you, so take it. The keys are in it.” I try to keep my voice even, check his feet in their battered Nikes, jeans fretting around the laces. Willing the feet to move.
“If she’s high, maybe I better call the cops …” he says, moving toward the phone.
“No,” Carley shrieks, which tells me all I need to know.
“We told you right along.” All the righteous stepfather. His palms go up in the air as he gloms on to one line of a whole story.
“Eddie,” I interrupt to divert him. “You don’t want Rocky seeing the police here, you know that. And he’d say something to Lana. You get him out the front door, so he won’t be involved at all.”
“Shit,” Eddie mutters and crosses the tile to bring me the phone.
“Now read me the emergency number for Creekside Large Animal Care.”
This time he does what I ask.
Summer calmed Carley, cleaned and dressed the wound. She’d brought a local anesthetic and a morphine shot with her. Carley watched her through narrowed, suspicious eyes, but Summer handled her as if she were a skittish yearling, talking, as she does to people and animals, in a voice that’s brown sugar–glazed, faintly Southern, quiet, and kind. Her eyes are blue and very direct, but Summer only asked me for ice and a rubber band to keep her pale hair out of her face. Later, she said, “Do you want to tell me what happened?” but it was as my friend, concerned for me, for us.
“I do, I will. I can’t thank you enough for coming.”
“It’s all right. Another time.” Then she sat at the breakfast bar and wrote down what we needed to do to take care of Carley’s hand. Carley was curled up on the couch, eyes at half-mast, the shot of morphine doing its work.
Now, Summer gone, I cover Carley with an afghan and tuck the edges around her on the couch where the lee of her stomach curves in, leaving space for me between her shoulders and her knees. I stroke her hair, blond roots extending a good three inches now until the November-like fade toward where she dyed it all black. It’s leached over time to a dull noncolor, like tree bark against a gray sky on a cold wet day. Her many-studded ear is exposed, and I cannot bear it, suddenly, everything that has invaded my girl’s body, and I cry for her, for myself, for all that’s lost, and the guilt of what I have done.
I don’t know what time it is when Eddie brings Rocky back. They must have gone to a nine o’clock movie after dinner, Eddie making sure he’s not around to help in a crisis, I think, and then tell myself to try to be fair, that he did have to get Rocky out of the house. Chassie hasn’t come in, I’m pretty sure, since she sounds like an entire cavalry when she does. I’ve taken the cushions from the living room couch, my pillow, and a blanket to fashion a bed on the floor where Carley would have to step on me were she to try to get up. I don’t want her to awaken without my being right there to give her another painkiller. I want to know how she is. I want to put my arms around her when she’s awake and try to heal this terrible thing.
It’s Eddie who startles me awake, though. “Jewel,” he whispers, shaking my shoulder. “Hey, Jewel, I’m back.”
“Okay,” I say, lifting my head and scanning the room for Rocky or Chassie or both. Relieved, I lie down again and close my eyes briefly.
“Don’t go back to sleep. Why’s she still here?”
“What?”
“Why’s Carla still here?” he says again, furrowing his forehead and looking meaningfully at Carley as if I might have forgotten her name.
“For God’s sake, Eddie, where did you think she’d be? I’m taking care of her, just like we’d take care of Rocky or Chassie if one of them was hurt.”
He misses it. “Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about, Rocky and Chassie. We can’t have them around this. I mean, what the hell happened? Are the police involved? We’ve got to get her out of here, that’s the first thing. Are you okay, baby?”
“No, no police. I told you, it was an accident, in the barn. Carley was… drinking beer with Cal, and I was trying to scare Cal.”
“Beer? You said she was high.”
“That’s what I meant,” I lie. I can’t tell Eddie what I saw. He won’t put his fingers in his ears, but he’d twist it into all Carley’s fault, the same way my mother would have made it mine. “Where’s Rocky?” I say, knowing I can divert him.
“Up in bed,” he says, falling in line. “Is Chassie in?”
“Not that I know of. I fell asleep.”
He checks his watch. “I don’t know about this Frank guy. He’s older. She’d better be up there. I kept Rocky out way too late, took him to the new Stars Wars movie. You’re taking Carley back to her place in the morning, right?”
I’d hoped not to take this on tonight. Carley snorts in her sleep, which galvanizes me to my knees to check o
n her as Eddie backs up in alarm, but she’s not stirring. Her lips are dry from breathing through her mouth, and I add it to my mental list to put something on them for her.
“Not here,” I whisper, sighing and pointing to the formal living room, a place where nothing ever happens except bad news and difficult private conversations. It came with the house, as one always does.
“I’ll run up and see if Chassie’s in and check on Rocky, make sure he’s asleep,” he says.
You weren’t worried about waking Carley, and the silent words are like the bitter skin of an orange around my heart. “I’ll wait for you,” I give him aloud. Draping the blanket around me, I head for the living room where I turn on two inadequate lights and survey the formal neutrality, which won’t last.
When Eddie comes down, he detours into the kitchen, and I hear the refrigerator open. When he appears, he’s carrying two bottles of beer and a bag of popcorn. “Chassie’s not home yet. Rocky’s asleep. Thought you might be hungry,” he says, which means that he is.
“I’ll take the beer,” I say, thinking I should never drink anything ever again; it could connect me to what happened. I pop the top.
Eddie looks hot and sticky. His white cotton T-shirt, rumpled, shapeless, old, says UK Basketball in big blue script. I’ve told him to throw it out, but it’s a favorite of his in that irrational way men have with terrible shirts. “You cold?” he says, disbelief in his voice.
“I got chilly when I was lying down,” I say. We are both avoiding the topic at hand. Impatience gets the best of me again, even though I know it would be best to stay low. “I’m keeping Carley here for now. She needs to be taken care of, and Roland won’t do it. He wouldn’t know how, for one.”
“Whoa. I thought we had an agreement about this. Carley doesn’t live here.”
“Agreements change. I’m changing it.” Eddie’s eyes widen. Before he has a chance to answer, I throw down the rest. “Not only that, Eddie. I’m quitting at Mama and Daddy’s. I won’t go back there. I’m taking care of Carley and getting her well, and that’s it.”
“Whoa. You can’t just quit.”
“Eddie, quit saying whoa to me like you’re some sort of cowboy. You couldn’t ride a horse on a merry-go-round. I can quit and I have.”
“You mean you told them?”
“Not yet. Doesn’t matter. I’m not going back.”
“Because Carley and Cal drank beer? How’s that your parents’ fault?”
“Please don’t pretend it’s my parents you care about. It’s my paycheck from the county you’ve got stuck up your butt, and it’s not because Carley and Cal drank beer that I’m quitting. It’s because they let Cal come back and stay there, and I told them I’d quit if they did. So now I’m quitting. Nothing I do is enough for them to … what? Care? Whatever. I told you I have to change my life.” Tumblers are clicking in my mind. “No more everybody’s patsy. The county will send someone else. I’ll call the office in the morning. They have emergency replacements. It happens all the time.”
He’s reeling, I can tell. I’d put fire in my eyes and voice, and it suddenly extinguishes, leaving me ashy. I sink against the back of the upholstered chair. Eddie is sitting across from me on the cushionless couch, and he looks ridiculous, his knees too high, his ass too low. “I’m going to sleep,” I say into the cavern between us and clamber up, dragging the blanket with me to head back to my spot next to Carley.
Carley wakes once during the night, and I help her to the bathroom as if she were a groggy child again. Two of the Percocet left over from Eddie’s dislocated shoulder and she’s soon back to sleep. When those are used up, if I have to, I can call my doctor, say I’ve thrown my back out again, and there’ll be a prescription for Vicodin at the pharmacy. I close my eyes against thoughts of Eddie and refuse to let myself check whether Chassie’s still out.
In the morning, Carley is asleep when Eddie appears in the dim kitchen. I’ve made a pot of coffee and used my hands to rinse my face in cool kitchen faucet water. Eddie’s in the same clothes he was last night, as am I. “I’m going to kill that Frank,” he greets me. “Chassie didn’t come home last night. And she’s not answering her cell phone.”
“It’s not exactly the first time,” I say and pour him a mug of coffee. “She’s probably at Tiffany’s and she’ll call you when she wakes up with some perfectly fine excuse. You like Tiffany. She’s reliable, and Chassie is eighteen, not that I think she should stay out without telling you. But please keep your voice down. As long as Carley’s asleep, she’s not in pain.”
He stands, arms crossed on his chest, feet wide, at the edge of the breakfast bar dividing the kitchen from the family room. He ignores the coffee I’ve set near him. “When are you going to your parents’ house?”
I stare at him. “Didn’t you hear me last night? I quit. I quit, therefore I’m not going.” I say it slowly as if I’m talking to the disabled, which I think I am.
“You mean you’re just not showing up?”
“I called the office and left a message on the machine.”
“You’re not going to tell your parents?”
“They’ll figure it out.”
“What about the horses?”
I know what he’s thinking. This is his ace, which it took him all night to come up with. He’s thinking that I’ll never be able to stay away from the horses. The truth is, I don’t know how I’ll bear it. He’d use what I love against me.
I won’t let him know how it hurts. “Eddie, they’re pastured. They’re fine right now.” The kitchen and family room are still a hushed gray because they have a southern exposure, but down the hall the entryway is expanding with morning sun, the sidelights of the front door spreading light down the hallway. I gesture in that direction pointlessly, as if the sun doesn’t shine in other seasons. “See? Summertime. And don’t pretend you care about them, anyway.”
“What about your parents’ medicine? You can’t just not show up.”
“I told you, I left a message. Eldercare has a list of substitutes for emergencies. People get sick or quit all the time.”
“This is so wrong,” he says, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you’d do your own parents like this.”
“Eddie, as you keep pointing out, it’s a paid job. Which means I have every right to quit. My mother quit on me when I was a kid. I’m done trying to make her love me.” The sentences spit themselves out of some vehement wind tunnel and drift toward the ground. I think, Oh, is that true? But I don’t stop and pick the words up and neither does Eddie, so I go on. “If you’re so worried, then you go over there.”
“Maybe I will,” he says, palms up. “I’m going out lookin’ for Chassie anyway. Maybe I just will go over there.” He runs his hands over his face, a dry wash, and clomps in front of me toward the door into the garage.
The truth is, I don’t know what I’ll do about the horses. I only know that for right now they’re safe in the pasture and that I will put my mind and hands to fixing my daughter, who will wake angry and hungry for something other than breakfast and mother love, mother guilt.
Independence
EDDIE WAS SO WORKED up before he left the house that he forgot to look up Chassie’s boyfriend’s address, so ended up just driving. He was flummoxed. First Jewel made her own hair look like a crackhead cut it with a chainsaw, then she shot her druggie daughter and brought Carley home to be patched up by a vet, but she blamed her parents and quit the County Eldercare Health Services job even though she knew perfectly well they needed the money to keep their house. And Jewel was the sensible one?
What was that stupid thing his mother used to say? Don’t get yourself all in a kerfuffle, Eddie. Well, he was now, and his brain so scattered his head couldn’t hold it anymore. Oh, he was in a mood to whip somebody’s ass, and Frank Ratliff was as good a candidate as any, Chassie out cavorting overnight doing God knows what. Meanwhile, Rocky …
“Shit!” Eddie slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. He
’d actually forgotten that Rocky was asleep at their house instead of at Lana’s. “Goddammit!” He applied the brake heavily and veered to the side of the road intending a U-turn but even as he slowed, he thought better of it. It wasn’t even eight-thirty. If nobody dragged Rocky up, he’d stay in bed until eleven or later on the weekend, already starting that teenage crap at twelve. It drove Jewel nuts; she thought kids should be up and doing some chores if they weren’t in school, but she wouldn’t want him underfoot today. It was a safe bet she wouldn’t get him up.
He straightened the pickup and drove on slowly. He was alone right now on the back road, fenced bluegrass pasture on one side, a pond and the entrance to another new subdivision on the other. It occurred to him that this was The Change coming over Jewel. He’d heard about it from men at work, men who used words like psycho and bitch in the same sentence to describe it. Some of them said women could take hormones and get normal again. “Like a woman could possibly be normal,” his buddy Butch had hooted in the break room.
“Butchie, that’s not supportive,” Eddie minced at the time, pretending to hold out a skirt, mocking Jewel.
But damn it, she wasn’t acting normal, not one bit. How long did The Change take? She could do a hell of a lot of damage at this rate. The idea of talking to Cal wasn’t pretty, but somebody had to make it clear to them all that Jewel really wasn’t coming. Eddie had a fear that Cal would show up at his house looking for her. What would Jewel do then? Eddie’s kids were in that house, for godsake. The guy was a dickhead, and Jewel had reason to hate him.
He drove on, trying to think through an approach, occasionally rubbing the unshaved stubble on his cheeks, chin, and neck. He picked sleep from the corners of his eyes with a hand that was square and nicked. The day was opening bright and clear, the grass still wet and dew-spangled. Maybe today wouldn’t be so humid that he couldn’t get a breath in all the way.
He still had no plan when he reached his in-laws’ home and he knew that wasn’t good. He parked next to Carley’s battered car and made his way to the front door, taking note that there was no other car there, which meant that the agency hadn’t sent somebody yet. He couldn’t figure out whether he should be happy about that or not. He used the corroded brass knocker hesitantly and, when no one answered, repeated it louder. When he raised his arm he noticed that his shirt had a sour odor, and it came to him that it was the same one he’d worn yesterday, which had been Saturday, and slept in, on top of the bed. Jewel hadn’t even told him to change.