by Lynne Hugo
“Louetta? What? Louetta’s not dead.”
Carley started crying, something he could see wasn’t new. Her face already looked all bleary and red. But his first thought was that she must be wrong. It wasn’t like Louetta had been in critical condition or anything. He took her hand and led her out the kitchen door, down the two steps and to the side, so they’d be out of sight. “No. I don’t get it. She can’t be. You called your mother? What?” He was stammering, trying to focus himself, but, more, trying to get Carley to focus. It was already twilight, and a full moon, the harvest moon, was rising just above the trees, the very tops of which were like the embers of a dying fire from the last bit of sunset. Venus was large and surreal-looking.
The girl shook her head as if she couldn’t find words and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. She was still in barn clothes, he noticed, a red flannel shirt, dirty jeans, and boots. Her hair was pinned up, as she had it when she was working the horses. “Not me. She was already here. Cal found her.”
“Cal found your mother?” Eddie was completely confused. Could she be talking like this from being high? “Where’s Cal now?”
“He’s got Grandpa.” A fresh waterfall.
“Carley, for God’s sake. Where?”
“In the tack room, I think. Cal said I should wait for you and then come out and get a horse for Grandpa. Grandpa says he’s got to be on a horse. Mom wouldn’t get Moonie for him, and he started to feel his way out of the house, so Cal walked him. Mom’s in this, like, cleaning frenzy.”
Eddie’s head felt like a mass of cobwebs, distracted by the reference to getting “Moonie,” which sounded like the religious cult thing. He set that aside, deciding it wasn’t important right then. “Where is Louetta? Grandma?” he persisted, speaking slowly as if she were impaired.
She answered the same way, as if he were. “They took her away. They took her body. Away. The ambulance people, two men and a woman. They said she was already gone, and they took her away. But, Eddie, Mom has flipped out.”
“What do ya mean? ’Cause she’s cleaning?”
“Like, she slams the vacuum cleaner into the couch and says, ‘You can’t know anything. Nothing is true, everything’s a lie, nothing’s what you think.’” Carley pantomimed the wand hitting furniture with each phrase, rage or despair or both. “And she’s back and forth, crying and then she’s not crying but with a bad look, like that night. You know. The gun.” Carley looked down at her scarred hand, then back up at Eddie.
“No. No, she wouldn’t. Not again,” he said uncertainly and touched her shoulder before letting his hand drop awkwardly back to his side. “You’re sure about this?” But the thought that Carley might have used something had passed, and the question was rhetorical. “Should I go in?” he said, hoping she’d say, No, you’d better leave.
“Yeah. Yeah, see if you can get through to her. I don’t know what to do. We can’t leave her like this.”
It was strange to him, hearing the we. Gratifying, the loneliness of the moment alleviated enough that he touched her shoulder again and met her eyes when he nodded. “Here,” he said, handing her his cell phone, which was, indeed, turned off. He’d been careless. “Call Chassie, will you? Tell her what’s going on, and have her find Rocky. God knows where he is. Jewel was supposed to pick him up. I’ll go in by myself.”
“Okay,” and she took it in her hand. Then Carley shocked him by putting her arms around him and her head against his chest. Impulsively, he wrapped his arms around her, cheek on the top of her head.
“It’ll be all right,” he whispered, even though he doubted it. And he kissed the top of her head, as he would have Chassie, when he felt deep heaving through her. His own eyes were wet, some for Louetta and some for the collapse of his hope. Eddie rubbed Carley’s back, and when they each let go, his shirt was damp from her face.
He tried not to startle her. “Jewel? Honey, it’s me,” he said, approaching from the side. Just as Carley had said, she was vacuuming, in the living room now, as if it were Judgment Day and Jesus were about to knock on the front door to do a sanitation inspection. “Damn, honey, hold up,” he said as she turned, brandishing the wand like a saber.
“Who are you?”
“Jewel, you’re scaring me. You know me.”
“I don’t know anybody anymore. I know who I thought you were. Get out of here. My mother is dead.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, honey.” He put his hand out, reaching toward her.
Jewel, who had been waving the vacuum wand above her head, slammed it down. “Get away!”
A sear of pain. Eddie jerked his hand back with a loud exclamation. “God … ah—”
“Get away from me. I mean it,” she said, her voice a needle scratching over the words.
Eddie doubled over his wrist, putting it in the fold of his body, sheltering it with his other arm. Light-headed, eyes watering, he put one knee to the ground to steady himself.
“My God, Jewel,” he whispered, looking up, crying. “What next? You gonna cut the rest of your hair off? Or, wait, the gun is around here somewhere, isn’t it? You can go ahead and shoot me.”
“I don’t know you,” she said. Her voice had gone flat, but her eyes still had a dangerous look.
Still on one knee, cradling his arm, his voice went scratchy with pain. “Look, I’m sorry. I guess I did everything wrong. At least I tried. I didn’t shave my head or just quit like you. Just like you tried with Carley, I was trying for my kids. And for you. I tried to save things.”
“You used Carley, you took her out of rehab. You lied about everything. For money.” A hissed accusation. “You knew my mother was dying, and you didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t know Lou was worse, I swear. Took her to every appointment. Got all her medicine. But, yeah, I did ask Carley for help.” Eddie looked down, ashamed for a moment. Then, “But I wouldn’t give her the car. I told Cal I’d kill him myself if she got near any booze or drugs or he put himself anywhere near her. She’s doin’ good. Sober. Healthy-looking. She loves the horses, and she took over, and she’s done right. We kept the place goin’, Jewel. Your mom, she kept firing everyone anyway. You know how she is. Was.” His wrist was throbbing. He looked back down at the bruise that was rising, reddish-purple like a plum.
“I don’t know you,” she started again.
He felt ridiculous then, looking up at her, and used the arm of Hack’s chair to hoist himself to a stand as he interrupted. “Look at yourself, Jewel. Do you look like yourself, for God’s sake? We’re all strangers here.”
Jewel’s face contorted into either a dry sob or rage. Eddie thought she was going to dissolve, fall over in grief, but he didn’t have the balls to try to put his arms around her. She was still holding the vacuum cleaner wand, and he was supporting his injured wrist with the other hand.
“Cal said she was by that window when she died,” Jewel said, pointing. Her eyes were glassy. “That’s where he found her. She must have seen me. I walked right up the driveway. He thought she might have been trying to open the window. Oh my God, was she trying to call me?”
Eddie stepped forward and wrapped his good arm around his wife. She didn’t strike back, but her body didn’t yield either.
The churchy part of Louetta’s funeral was about mercy, and mercifully short as if to demonstrate that concept. As far as Carley was concerned, it was the rest of it that was hell, first getting her mother there and then the nightmare burial that was like an early Halloween show.
She asked Chassie to help her get Jewel dressed, and her mother tolerated their putting makeup on her so she wouldn’t look so dead herself. Jewel was going to leave her hair in a ponytail, but Chassie said, “No, let me,” and did it with a curling iron after she shaped it with scissors. Carley said it was amazing how Chassie got it to blend so pretty, not look hacked up anymore. She said it for her mother’s benefit, but she didn’t mind that Chassie took it in.
“Thanks. We learn this stuff in beauty school,�
� Chassie said, looking pleased. “We’re supposed to call it cosmetology, but I think it’s nicer to call it what people really want. You know? Everyone wants their most beautiful selves, don’t you think?”
Carley nodded. “Good point.”
“If you want, I can soften up that stripe in your hair real quick. I’ve got stuff right in my room, from highlighting mine. Just take a couple minutes, then you wait twenty minutes and wash it. I mean, only if you want.”
Carley looked in the mirror and thought, Grandma said my hair is so butt-ugly, the horses think I’m a zebra. “Yeah. If you’ve got time. Thanks.”
Meanwhile, Jewel just sat there in her own bedroom, stiff and silent as a mannequin, the blue drapes drawn as if to shut out hope. Carley and Chassie hadn’t had to clean the house, fortunately, because everyone was going to Carley’s Grandpa’s after the funeral instead of back here. It was better for him, people said, to be in his own environment. People included Chassie, Rocky, Eddie, her mom’s coworkers, and Eddie’s coworkers, not that it was any of their business. Eddie’s ex, Crazy Lana, wanted to come, too, but Eddie said, “No way, José,” and Chassie agreed. “She just thinks there’ll be good cake,” she said, rolling her eyes.
Carley had been relieved to have Chassie giving her a hand during the funeral preparations with the Assorted Fruits and Nuts that were their tangled family. They’d been trading eye rolls. She’d gone so far as to ask Chassie to help her look for Nadine. Eddie had tried to call for Hack’s sake, but Nadine’s phone was disconnected. Eddie was so pissed he just said, “Screw it,” and didn’t do another thing. Cal shrugged his agreement with Eddie and was no help. Even though Jewel was zoned-out, Carley knew Eddie, to say nothing of her mother, would jump off the nearest cliff to the drugs conclusion if they knew she was going to Nadine’s. That was pure crap; Carley just thought that Nadine ought to be given a chance to be at her own mother’s funeral even if the two had parted on pretty bad terms.
Carley couldn’t think of a way to ask Chassie to keep her company—maybe it was asking for protection, but that didn’t sound right—except by confiding in her.
“Let’s do it,” Chassie said, as casually as if she were giving Carley a piece of gum.
They lied about where they were going (“shopping”), drove to Nadine’s last address in the Woodhill section of Lexington, and asked around enough to find that Nadine had given the landlord and other people the slip six weeks earlier. Carley, who’d once been comfortable there, known people, was eyed warily. She’d tried to avoid being recognized.
“Think they’re covering for her?” Chassie asked when they were back in her car.
“I know what you’re saying. People around here are sketchy. But more likely, Nadine really does owe them a bunch of money. They seemed more mad than anything.”
“What happens now? I mean, how do we find her?”
“We don’t. Families do lose people. Sometimes they show up again. Shit, look at Cal. Seven years … and then y’gotta watch out for what trouble they’re packing if they do.”
“Well, you’re not sketchy,” Chassie said, grinning for a moment and slugging Carley’s thigh.
Carley wondered if Chassie really hadn’t sensed the restless danger that had been a scratch below the surface. No point in freaking her out now. And did Chassie really not know perfectly well just how sketchy Carley was? No way Eddie hadn’t told her about Roland, and Carley’s gig in rehab. Good grief, Chassie wasn’t the blind one. She’d seen the great bandaged hand and could see the scar right now; Carley’s hand was in plain view, resting on the thigh Chassie had just slugged. No, she knew about her and Cal, the whole barn scene. Did she just not get any of what went on around her? When Carley stuffed her hair under Jewel’s gardening hat and let the wide pale brim flop low before they got out of the car to ask about Nadine, all Chassie said was, “I love that hat.” What was it with this girl?
Chassie pointed ahead. “Wanna stop at that grease factory and get a Coke?” She was inviting Carley into her clear-skinned, short-skirted, simple, leftover high school trashy prettiness, a world with girlfriends and vapid music and even more vapid boyfriends. Carley didn’t want that world, but she’d also never been invited in. And look what Chassie had done today. Given her a compliment, too.
Thanks, really thanks, had risen from Carley’s chest to her throat, but tears wouldn’t fit Chassie’s grin, and they’d both be embarrassed, so she said, “Only if that Coke comes with fries and a burger. You drove. I’ll pay. Your dad gave me money to get groceries yesterday and said I could keep the change. I’ve got almost fifteen bucks.”
“You’re on,” Chassie said.
So, no Nadine, but at least they were pulling off something, however pathetic. The day her grandma died, when Eddie went in to deal with her mother, Carley had thought there was no hope. She’d thought that if there was a funeral at all, there would need to be a metal detector to make sure the mourners were disarmed. Her mother scared her, unapproachable, hand scrubbing the most remote corners and every one of her grandma’s angel collection. The frightening part was that even when Jewel was holding a sponge, her eyes made Carley think the sponge was loaded with bullets instead of soap. When Eddie arrived, she’d been mowing the decrepit shag carpet with the vacuum.
Carley had gone on to the tack room after she and Eddie first talked. Her grandpa was there, out of the house where his wife had died, sitting on one of the two old folding chairs, looking spent and frail as a pile of twigs. He was crying, and Cal had pulled his chair next to Grandpa so he could hold his hand. She hadn’t thought Cal could do that. “Get me my beauties,” Grandpa sobbed, only Cal couldn’t understand what he said.
“He says he wants his beauties. The horses,” Carley translated when Cal looked to her. Cal was crying himself, only with his eyes, not his voice. Carley scanned the room but didn’t see even a beer can, and that wasn’t like Cal, especially with bad stuff going down.
“What do you think? Okay to get them in again?” Cal said.
“I came out to do that. You told me before,” she reminded him, although she shifted her weight and rubbed her arms, angling for time while she thought about it, not sure this was really the best idea. Was he going to be content with just touching them? It was getting cold, and Hack only wore one of his old cotton Western shirts, long-sleeved, the plaid faded to the color of river stones.
But she lifted halters off their hooks and threaded them over her arm, scooped out a bucket of grain. “Be back soon,” she said and went out to cut through the paddock. She called the horses in the same way her mother always had, standing just behind the fence and banging on the bucket. She’d get them in and tied and then run in for a jacket for her grandfather rather than try to explain to her mother how she’d let him get sick and die just now.
Almost as soon as Carley got her name out, Moonbeam appeared, Charyzma a nose ahead of her, the others a length behind. Carley let Moonie stick her muzzle in the grain bucket first, then put the halter on her and let her through the two gates, into and through the corral, and did a quick tie while she opened one side of the barn doors. Then she brought her inside and tied her in the center aisle. Her grandfather would be sheltered, and maybe he wouldn’t ask her to ride with him. There’s a skill to ponying another horse and rider, and she and her grandfather had planned to start practicing in the corral this week. She wanted to learn for his sake, but she sure as hell didn’t want to start when he was this shaky. She was pretty distracted herself.
But then Eddie led her mother out to the barn by the hand. His other arm was bent at the elbow, tucked along his belt. “Here, honey. Here’s something good. Carley’s got one of the horses in for your dad.” He was talking to Jewel as if she’d gone mad but was still within calling distance of normal. “Hey, Carley, what d’ya say, could you get your mom’s horse in, too? I mean, so she can just see him? Would you mind?”
She picked up his tone. “No, that’s cool. Here, Mom. Hold out your arm for the
se other halters and lead ropes. I don’t know why I grabbed them all at once anyway. I’ll only take Spice’s with me this time.”
Jewel stuck her right arm out to receive the other tack. She didn’t say a thing.
Spice and the other horses were grazing just on the other side of the corral fence, expectant. “Just you, boy, right now, just you,” Carley said, sliding on his halter.
When she brought Spice into the barn, Jewel was standing by Moonie with her face next to his and her hand on his neck. When she saw Spice, she crossed the few steps and hugged his neck.
“See? The beauties are still fine. See what a good job Carley’s done, honey? Ask her about his leg. Honest to God, we were all just trying to take care of them. And everyone,” Eddie said, too perky in the human silence. His tone and voice seemed to keep going after he stopped, mixing all wrong into Hack’s crying on Moonie’s mane and the small sounds of the horses’ shifting hooves and swishing tails. The wide barn door was open and the noise of crickets came there, too, arguing the earth’s irresolvable and wordless losses.
Carley said, “I’ll go get brushes and picks.” She spoke softly but enough to dispel Eddie’s echo. She worried she was missing something and the barn might ignite at any minute, fiery, deadly roof timbers falling to crush them all. Going to the tack room twice—she’d go back for hoof oil—would give her a chance to unload the barn gun, put the bullets in her pocket.
Her mother and grandfather fiddled with Spice and Moonbeam first, giving them each a long, thorough grooming. Carley had already taken care of them earlier in the day, but they got curried and brushed all over and their feet cleaned again. Then they were stalled while the other two were brought in for the same treatment. Full darkness came with a light, imperceptible step. Cal ordered two pizzas, and Eddie gave Carley his wallet to pay for it. Jewel wouldn’t eat any, but she made her father have some.
“I gotta call Chassie again and make sure she’s there for Rocky. Your mom may not be willing to come home with me,” Eddie whispered to Carley when they went to the house to get napkins and soda. “If not, I’m stayin’ here with her. I won’t leave her with Cal. Too many bad memories. I can sleep downstairs on your old bed.” They stood outside the barn conferring a moment. Eddie carried two more jackets he’d rummaged out of the closet. God only knew whose they’d been in some other life. Something was wrong with one of his arms. He looked like he was trying not to use it.