“Hi, Marie,” Debra said, eyeing the black-spotted tail feathers. Marie had been bent over in a tomato patch. The rooster flapped right up to Debra, her heart leapt into her throat, but Sam wedged himself in the rooster’s path and shooed it away. She could see where Sam had missed a patch of chin-whiskers he must have thought he shaved. Smelling of pipe tobacco his big belly seemed to smother his belt buckle. This elderly couple had a grandma-grandpa way about them, a cozy kind of pleasant, an unconditional acceptance that Debra had only read about.
“What have you got here?” Sam asked in his second-childhood way, immediately scooping up the segregated brownie that he popped in his mouth.
“Uh . . . brownies,” she said, feeling wicked, hearing it crunch in his teeth. How could she let herself be sidetracked? She hadn’t come here to feed bugs to old people. She lied, “I thought I would put some walnuts in. There must have been some shells.”
“Oh how nice,” Marie said. “I’ve got a fresh pot of coffee.” Her enormous bosom ended at her waist which Debra felt up against her when Marie wrapped her arm around her. Holding onto Debra as tightly as she held onto her cane, Marie led her back to the house. Without intending to, Debra ushered her up the porch steps, through the screen door, and on inside.
Amid a collage of pictures that covered the walls, mountains of newspapers were stacked haphazardly in every corner and on the kitchen table. Debra could definitely smell garlic but what was that other smell? Eucalyptus? Ben Gay? Nearly everything inside dated back to the nineteen-fifties—teapot wallpaper, paisley carpeting, and a green boxy refrigerator. Stacks of dishes, pots, and pans, left to dry upside down, were piled next to the sink, and old jelly jars of what looked like dried peas and herbs were jammed together on the counter tops.
“The paper said someone killed a rabid raccoon in Grafton,” Marie said, letting go of Debra’s arm. “A raccoon’s been dumping my garbage and chicken feed all summer. I hope it doesn’t have rabies.”
“He must live in my chimney. I swear I think something’s alive in there.” Debra scanned the array of faces within the pictures. “You wouldn’t believe all the weird things I hear in that house.” Now that she’d said it here, of which she hadn’t in all this time, she would give them the chance to say something about her farmhouse, something they might have been keeping from her. Forks clanked on dishes with Marie at the sink. A sticky fly strip overhead buzzed with a fly that hadn't died yet.
Marie’s voice broke in. “Would you like some coffee?”
“No thank you.” Debra shifted her attention to the many pictures. Sam and Marie were young in some, posing with their children. A graduation picture of a young man was in the mix, and a picture of a young girl who looked like Julie.
“Marie, is that Julie? Are you related?”
“Not legally. We tried to adopt her when she was four but they said we were too old. It didn’t seem to matter that we’d raised seven kids. We were her foster parents. Her brother was a baby at the time. We wanted him, too, but another couple adopted him. It was terrible how they split them apart just because those people didn’t want a little girl.”
“Does she stay in touch with him?”
“It was a closed adoption. We were never able to find him. Funny thing though, her mother was real sick, and had two pendants made, so they could match them up if they ever found each other. I’m sure Julie still has hers. Used to be, she’d never take if off. Marie sipped her coffee. “I never would have known about Julie if I hadn’t been the nurse on duty that day. Julie was so little when her mother died. It just broke my heart.”
When Julie was four years old her mother was dying of cancer. Snuggled up to her mother in the hospital bed, the little girl seemed to think, if she lay perfectly still, that she would be invisible to everyone there. That no one would take her away. Atop her mother’s bosom, their bodies moved as one with every rise and fall of her breaths. Listening to her mother’s heart, Julie’s eyes followed the heart monitor behind the saline drip.
“Isn’t there anyone Fay?” Marie asked Julie’s mother. “A sister, a cousin, an aunt?”
“My husband and I came over from Ireland. My family disowned me because I married a Catholic. His family disowned him because he married a protestant. It’s been just me and the children since he died. Someone ran a red light,” Julie’s mother said, her eyes on the ceiling as if she saw heaven there.
“I wish there was something I could do,” Marie said, a salty taste in her throat.
Another nurse came inside. “It’s time,” she said. “The social worker’s here.”
Fay rubbed her eyes clean of tears. “Julie. Be a good girl.” She smoothed Julie’s hair and patted her shoulder. “Come on, Honey. We talked about this. You know I love you.”
Julie stiffened, gripping her mother’s hospital gown. A portly woman introduced herself as Miss Huntley, and nudged passed Marie. All business.
“I have another appointment at ten. Say good-bye now.” The woman took hold of Julie’s waist and whisked her up like a five-and-dime doll.
Julie was suddenly hysterical, crazy hysterical, kicking, screaming, and writhing in the woman’s fat arms. Marie could still hear her being carried down the hallway, and to the parking lot. Then suddenly remembered the necklace and hurried after them. Marie stopped in her tracks when she saw the kind of care that Julie was in for.
Miss Huntley had set Julie down on the pavement, and taken Julie’s face in her vice-like hand. “Listen, you’re in my charge now,” she said. “Stop it.” She shmushed Julie’s face in her oversized fingers. “Stop it now.”
Julie hiccupped her breaths.
“Wait a minute,” Marie yelled from inside the door. “I have something for the little girl.”
“I’m already late,” Miss Huntley said to Marie. And said to Julie, “Come,” like you would say to a dog.
“Just give us a minute,” Marie said, and knelt down to Julie’s level. “Oh Honey, don’t cry. Look, this is from your mother,” Marie held a necklace in her open hand. “It’s half a heart. There’s a rose and a drop of water engraved on the back. Your baby brother has the half that matches yours. When the two of you get separated, you’ll be able to find him with this.
“Where is he?” Julie hiccupped her words. “Where is my brother?”
“Please, I’m running late.” The strict woman said, squeezing Julie’s hand.
Marie clasped the necklace around Julie’s neck and cradled her cheek. “It’s going to be all right. This nice lady will take care of you.” She looked to Miss Huntley. “Won’t you?”
“Of course,” she said, jerking Julie’s hand. “Come now. Pick up your feet,” which Julie did kicking the portly woman hard. The woman released her grip just long enough for Julie to get away and run to Marie. She hugged Marie’s legs, and through a tear-stained face she pleaded, “Please don’t let her take me.”
Chapter 9
Marie finger-dusted a picture of Julie from when she was ten, the first time Julie milked goats. She still milked them once in a while when Marie’s fingers got stiff. And she still collected eggs for her, too.
Marie wandered into the hallway, looking at pictures of her children, of Julie. She stopped at a picture from when Julie was fourteen—the first time she wore lipstick. Julie was so pretty, so happy then. In the next picture Julie was sixteen. It had been taken on her wedding day when she married Kyle, who lived just past the wheat field where they live now. They had ridden the same school bus as children. Marie could never figure out why Julie had such a crush on him. He wasn’t particularly good in any sport, he ignored her, and he wasn’t any better looking than any other boy. Marie took off her glasses and wiped her eyes. “Sam, you’ve had enough of those brownies.”
Marie couldn’t look at the picture anymore. After what Kyle had done to Julie, it had taken a long time to forgive him. Deep down Marie wasn’t sure that she had. She could still see Julie watch the school bus drive away without her. She could s
till see that sorrow in her eyes. Bad girls were not allowed at school. It had taken a long time for Marie to blur what she pictured when Julie confessed.
Julie was so excited when she turned sixteen. She finally had a date with Kyle. In her bedroom she applied lipstick and pressed a tissue between her lips. She twisted the top off a bottle of liquid eyeliner, the one she’d been practicing with, and drew a delicate line in her lashes. Her stomach felt funny, imagining what it would be like to kiss him. The doorbell rang and she started sweating in all the wrong places.
“Julie! Kyle’s here!” Sam yelled down the hall.
“I’m coming!” Julie yelled back, licking her fingers, trying to tame a tiny curl with spit.
Kyle stood just inside the doorway with his hands in his pockets, rattling his car keys, examining the wood-grain in the door. There was no expression on his face, happy or sad, pleased or displeased. It was always hard to read him.
“How is your mother, Kyle?” Marie asked, arms folded. The three of them stood by the door—Marie, Sam, and Kyle.
“She’s well, thank you,” Kyle replied, nodding his head, still rattling the keys in one pocket and rattling change in the other.
“And how’s your dad?” Sam asked.
“He’s well, thank you,” Kyle answered, glancing at Marie once and back at the door.
Then Julie came around the corner. Kyle opened the door and motioned for her to go first, smiling politely.
“I’ll be back by eleven. Is that alright?” She asked halfway through the door.
“You’ll be back by ten, or you’ll have no pie.” Sam always loved to tease her.
“That never made any sense to me. Who eats pie with mittens?” She said good-bye in a finger-wave. “I’ll see you at ten.”
The two teenagers jumped inside his father’s old Cadillac.
“Come on and sit next to me.” Kyle motioned. Julie scooted closer. It seemed story-book magical, the scent of him, Brute aftershave and leather.
“Where are we going?”
“Royal Castle.” He slid his hand over her knee. “Or maybe you want to go somewhere else first.” He didn’t smile or turn his head which made what he’d done even more uncomfortable.
“No. Royal Castle’s fine.” She stopped his hand before it went too far and sat back. Kyle slipped his arm over her shoulders and kept it there the entire way, trying every once in a while to feel more than she would allow. He pulled into the parking lot still struggling to reach the C-cup prize.
“How many hamburgers do you want?” He asked as he got out of the car.
“Uh . . . two?” This wasn’t what she expected, none of it. She thought they would go to a restaurant, nothing extreme, just a place where people would wait on them. She thought he would at least open her car door, but he didn’t. He went inside without even waiting for her. She wasn’t sure if she should follow him or not. And she got out anyway and went inside and she stood next to him.
“You’re a hard one to figure out,” she said.
“Oh. I guess I was thinking about something else.” He rubbed the back of her neck.
“Like what?”
Kyle eased his hand inside the back of her collar and studied her eyes. “Like what color your panties are.”
Julie stiffened, planting her wide opened eyes on the wall directly ahead, thinking maybe he said that to test her sense of humor, maybe to see if she was a prude. Trying to look unfazed, she blinked once and giggled half-heartedly. “Silly. Fridays are blue. If you must know Saturdays are pink, and Sundays are always white.”
An approving look, he whisked their bag of hamburgers to the car and they ate them there in the parking lot, listening to Herman’s Hermits on the radio. Julie sat quietly by the window and sipped her Pepsi. She hoped she’d said the right thing without giving him the wrong idea. Kyle bunched up the wrappers and crammed them in the bag and then he leaned over and nuzzled a kiss behind her ear. She could hardly breathe.
“Let’s go somewhere,” he whispered.
“. . . sure,” Julie barely squeaked out the word, in love, scared, happy, anxious. Two people sneaking off in the night. To cuddle. To kiss. This was everything she always thought it would be.
“Why are you sitting over there?” He tugged her close and started the car. It felt sublime sitting so close, him wanting her, her wanting him. Driving, songs playing on the radio, The Doors singing, “Come on baby light my fire,” then Frankie Valli singing, “Can’t take my eyes off of you.” A mood of romance, the warmth of him beside her, they drove for almost an hour and came to a farm in Medina. He pulled off the road into a cornfield, the tires jostling on the uneven ground. Someone else was parked in the field, their car windows steamed up, panties hanging from their rear view mirror. This isn’t right, she thought to herself. He moved in, his arms around her, and slow-kissed the nape of her neck.
“No. Not this way.” She pushed at him.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” Kyle said. “It’s late.”
Feeling a bit of relief, Julie flashed her watch in the moonlight. “It’s almost nine. I think you’d better take me home.”
“I was thinking that, too. We’ll go back home. You sneak out after everyone’s asleep and I’ll meet you behind your house. We can spend the whole night together.” He ran his hand up her inner thigh. She stopped him.
“Kyle . . . no.” She was taken aback. They hadn’t even kissed.
“I thought you liked me. I thought you liked me a lot.”
“I do. But . . . .” She hesitated. This kind of being in love was all wrong. Being in love was supposed to feel better than anything you would ever feel in your whole life, not like this. He quietly withdrew from her and turned the car down a country road. Julie moved back to her own window in silence. What had she done? It was a long drive home, the radio low, she wouldn’t let herself cry.
At home again, Kyle stopped the car on the driveway’s edge. He shifted to park and turned the engine off. “Julie,” he said, a tenderness in his voice. “Can’t you tell how I feel about you? Don’t you know?” He pulled her close and kissed her, his tongue wetting her lips. “Midnight. We’ll go out to the wheat field and just kiss. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” Julie asked.
“I promise.”
“. . . okay,” she said, the aftertaste like whisky burning your throat, warm in your belly, a kind of drunkenness that stifles good sense. They met at midnight. He brought a blanket and a condom. The wheat swaying in the wind, he told her not to scream. He told her not to tell anyone. Her telling him no, he took her in the open air. He pinned her down and he took her against her will.
Julie snuck back inside the house, bleeding and raw. How could she tell anyone what he’d done? It was all her fault, he told her so. The sex part was over. The crying lasted all night.
The next day, Kyle told her to meet him again. She would do what he said. He would love her, she thought, and they would be happy. He brought a blanket again, and another condom. She brought Vaseline, which melted the condom. Julie got pregnant that night. Believing abortion was an act against God, she had two choices, put the baby up for adoption or keep it. Then the doctor told her she was pregnant with twins. Kyle called her a whore. Julie called him things she’d never repeat. But she married him anyway, him resenting her, her knowing it. When twins Nate and Jeff were born, Kyle quit high school and worked for his father’s small masonry company, paving cement and laying brick. By the time his father retired to a warmer climate, Kyle had taken over the masonry business. By then he knew what an Irish temper was. Julie made sure of that.
Julie told Marie everything, and never spoke of it again, because Julie loved her and couldn’t bare to see her cry. Julie hadn’t come out and said that. But Marie knew.
Chapter 10
Bruce slipped off his game warden hat and pulled his hair back in a pony-tail where a cobra tattoo seemed to crawl out of his shirt onto his neck. He’d driven for an hour to get there, away fr
om the city, and parked his car where he thought no one would look twice—in the empty parking lot of Brentwood Pines Development. It seemed oddly strange, these new houses in the middle of nothing, a deserted-looking place this time of day. You’d go half-a-mile before you’d see another house, probably three of them on the whole road. But it was a barn he was looking for, set way back in a field, half a mile away, a dilapidated barn where the cats were.
He hacked from the back of his throat and spit. He opened the trunk and flipped through a mess of torn maps and oil-stained rags, uncovering a hunting knife in a leather case that he snapped to his belt. He shoved aside an empty gasoline can where a tin of Fancy Feast rolled out of the variety pack. He unpinned a sturdy pole equipped with a retractable leash. In his mind he was doing his job. It was justified. These cats were neglected. They would die anyway.
He crossed the street, jumped the ditch, and trudged in mud through a barrage of trees. It had been some time since he’d been here. The briars, the path through the thistles, had grown. Underfoot the ground was uneven by means of deadwood and corroding junk. It was as though every passer-by had thrown their garbage out into the field, years and years’ worth, half buried now. He could see the barn. He told himself no one would know. What was it anyone’s business anyway? At the barn he looked inside through a crack in the wood. The cat was mostly rotted from the last time he’d been here. He would cut it down, pitch it in the field. He would feed the cats Fancy Feast and pick out a pretty one. But when he came around front he saw that someone had boarded up the barn. He could see the old farmhouse from here. No one had lived there for years. Heading toward it he smelled something fowl, the stench of a cow. He remembered now. He’d seen a girl on the porch, in the spring, some time ago. “Must be some desperate sack,” he said to himself, drawn to the farmhouse. In a quiet approach he came to a window where he saw the young girl, long hair, a pecan kind of brown.
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