“Shove it,” Beth mutters.
“You think Jeanette hated you before?” Eliza says. “Now you’ve landed her only companion in the hospital. Worse, you left her behind to care for her dying granddad.”
“When did you become so honest?”
“I only say these things because your head is too far up your ass for you to notice on your own.”
“Maybe you could tone it down a little.” Even though Beth keeps her voice low, the intake nurse still eyes her like she belongs in the loony bin. Beth shakes her head, hoping Eliza will get the message.
“That’s always been your biggest problem. You get so caught up in yourself, you fail to see how you’re affecting those around you.”
“Would you piss off already?”
“You did it during the divorce. And recently. You were so focused on you that you lost your job at the country club.”
“I lost my job because the new owners didn’t want a black woman in their kitchen.”
“You lost your job because you stopped going to work.”
“I didn’t want to work somewhere I wasn’t wanted.”
“And then you got scared and came running back home.”
The nurse at the front desk talks low into the phone, her eyes still on Beth.
“And another thing,” Eliza says. “You know you’re freaking that poor woman out, yet you keep talking to yourself.”
“What am I supposed to do? Take your abuse silently?”
“You used to know how to keep your mouth shut.”
“So did you.”
A security guard shows up. He’s not armed with any weapon aside from his sheer girth, his pale hard flesh straining against the fabric of his uniform.
“You can’t keep this up,” Eliza says. “You’re ruining everything. And you brought your kids here, back to this town, dooming them to the same childhood you had. Gilmer may be gone, but what about the rest of these rednecks? What about Steve?”
“Steve would never,” Beth whispers, and the security guard glares at her.
“You sure about that?”
Beth rubs her eyes like she can erase Eliza from her mind.
“You may be fucking him, but you don’t know him any better than he knows you.”
And even as she protests, part of her wonders what kind of man Steve really is, and whether she would even see the signs. Maybe Eliza is right, maybe Beth is so focused on herself, she wouldn’t notice her own children in trouble.
Maybe she’s no better than her father.
* * *
• • •
After an hour or so, Derek leads Linda back out front.
“I’m serious, though, Lin. You need to de-stress.” He keeps a hand on Linda’s back as they walk.
“Don’t I know it,” she says.
“Taking care of Ernest is too much.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“I’d be more than happy to come help out again.”
“Maybe,” she says.
He hands her discharge papers. Then he hugs her, for a long time. Before he lets her go, he looks at Beth accusingly. No, not accusingly. She has to stop this. He looks at her. Just looks.
“Will you make sure she relaxes?” he says to Beth over Linda’s shoulder.
“I’ll do my best,” Beth says.
At home, Beth finds Jeanette sitting in Linda’s chair, next to Ernest’s bed. She’s texting on her phone. She still has on her sweater, her makeup. When she sees Linda, she hops up to let her sit down. Instead, Beth leads Linda into the living room, sets her in the recliner. She goes to make her a cup of hot chocolate.
“Is she okay?” Jeanette says, coming into the kitchen.
“She’ll be fine. She just needs to relax.”
Jeanette is silent.
“I’m sorry,” Beth says. “You should go to your party.”
“Nah,” she says. “It doesn’t sound like fun anymore.” Beth turns to see Jeanette texting while she talks.
“You don’t have to take off the makeup.”
“I know,” she says, her face still fixed on her phone.
“At least go and keep an eye on your brother,” Beth says.
“You don’t need to worry about him,” she says. “He’s not really that into his girlfriend.”
Which is at least some comfort. Maybe it’s just a phase, and they’ll break up soon. And Beth can walk away from Steve, and the Brodys will be out of their lives.
Then Jeanette says, “Kelli’s the one he’s in love with.”
* * *
• • •
In the dining room, alone with Ernest, Beth is at a loss. Does he really need the company? For all she knows, he has no idea she’s even there.
She hates to see him like this. His body shrunken into the hospital bed. His hair so greasy it looks painted on his skull. The worst are his feet, sticking out of the bottom of the blankets. She can’t recall ever seeing his bare feet; he always wore socks in the house, usually shoes, too. His feet are so pale, the toes long and skinny, the skin smooth, the nails gnarly. Beth pulls the blanket down.
“I suppose it shouldn’t bother me,” she tells him, for all the good it does. “This is your house, after all, and you should be comfortable here.”
He doesn’t move. His eyes are half open, pale blue irises peeking through purple-veined lids.
“Lord knows, I never was,” she says, taking the chair next to him. Last she checked, Linda was napping. Jeanette is upstairs, in their shared bedroom, listening to her twanging music.
Beth never liked being alone with men, though she’s a little surprised to find she’s just as anxious with her own invalid father. She keeps trying not to look at him, but she can’t help herself. She’s staring.
“I always thought you were so strong,” she blurts out. “Even as a girl.”
Her mouth feels dry.
“Even when Gilmer was—” She swallows hard. “When he was—”
Ernest turns his head away. Beth doubts he is reacting to her, and yet she finds herself reaching out, taking his hand.
“You knew, didn’t you? You knew and you did nothing.” She squeezes his hand hard, even though he lacks the strength to pull it away. She stands up, leaning over him. “You know now. You’re still in there. You see it. You see how broken I am. You know it’s your fault. You were just as weak back then as you are now.”
“What are you doing?” Jeanette says behind her. Beth hadn’t heard her daughter on the stairs.
“I really need to put a bell on you,” Beth says.
Jeanette takes her mother’s hand away. “Granddad needs his rest,” she says evenly.
“Yes,” Beth says. “Granddad has certainly had it rough.”
The way her mother talks. The venom in her voice. “What do you mean?” Jeanette asks.
Beth shakes her head. “I’m only joking.”
“What did Granddad know?” She doesn’t expect her mother to answer—her mother never answers personal questions—but her mother’s response is even less than Jeanette hoped for. Beth sits down in the chair again, slumps really, her arms draped limply over the armrests. When she speaks, her voice has changed.
“Oh, you know,” Eliza says. “Growing pains.”
Elizabeth DeWitt
23
My boyfriend wants me to put my tongue in his mouth. His mouth tastes like bitter hops. He tells me to put my fingers in his mouth.
“Right hand, or left?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he says.
I put my left index finger in his mouth. His taste buds are rough, like he’s burned his tongue.
“Push it deeper,” he says.
When I twist my finger around, I can feel the ridges on the roof of his mouth, the smooth gums, the jagged surfaces
of his molars, the oddly regular dips of his fillings.
“Deeper,” he says, and I can feel where the back of his tongue curves down into the darkness of his throat. I’m an explorer, probing into him. I can feel his uvula. His tonsils. I wish I could probe deeper, to feel into the soft center of him, but this is as far as my stubby finger will go.
DRIVING LESSONS
1996
Ernest sat in the passenger’s seat, waiting for traffic to clear enough for his daughter, Eliza, to pull out. It was probably a mistake taking her to drive in Kalamazoo so soon after getting her permit, but he thought it ridiculous that her driver’s ed class never had them drive in the city. And Lord knew, Eliza’s mother, Gretchen, wasn’t going to take her. Eliza has been sneaking around with Steve Brody, that no-good redneck tomcat. Gretchen’s words. And Gretchen would be damned if Eliza was going to get her license and a car to aid her in her poor decisions.
“There,” Ernest said. “That was a perfect break.” Traffic was heavy for a Sunday afternoon, but not that heavy. Eliza’s problem was that she didn’t seem to be able to gauge how fast cars were approaching. She sat there, all five feet five inches of her body rigid in her seat, her hands on the wheel at ten and two, her eyes so large that they pushed her eyebrows up into her furrowed forehead. She went long periods without blinking, and then her eyelids would flutter away the tears that were gathering in her drying eyes.
“There. Again,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Eliza said, with enough edge in her voice to let him know she was less sorry and more angry. He didn’t spend a lot of time with her these days, mostly just when she was fed up with her mother. She would get him to take her to the Soda Shoppe on Main Street, or the skating rink. Eliza didn’t seem to want to be in his house with him. A few years ago, she had always wanted to go to the Muylder Museum in Kalamazoo, but she’d outgrown even that when she was twelve. What to do with a sixteen-year-old? He’d thought driving lessons were the perfect way to spend time together.
“Try this,” he said. “Take a deep breath. Relax. Driving’s not that hard.”
In truth, Ernest couldn’t even remember learning to drive. At ten, he’d already been driving tractors in the fields of his parents’ farm, and he’d occasionally driven the truck on the dirt roads when he wanted to buy bait and go fishing. For him, the hardest part of driving had been unlearning the bad habits he’d picked up; he still had a hard time remembering to check his mirrors, and to use one foot for both the gas and the brake.
Eliza took a breath but still didn’t pull the car out of the lot.
His daughter was always nervous, had been ever since she was a child.
“Ready?” Ernest asked.
Eliza nodded, but she still didn’t step on the gas, couldn’t bring herself to join the rest of the driving world. When did she learn that the world was so scary? He first noticed her nervousness when he and Gretchen decided to divorce. Eliza was four. He’d blamed it on the fact that her life was being upended. He’d figured she’d get better when the divorce was over and she’d settled in with her mother, but her problems only grew worse in the years after, and were especially bad whenever she came to visit him. She’d be irritable and jumpy, and always had her fingers in her mouth. He could imagine that being in his house again, the house where they’d all lived as a family, brought up painful memories. He couldn’t help but think that the Section 8 apartments on the edge of town were a bad environment for her. If only he could get custody of Eliza, he could take her away from whatever it was that was bothering her. He’d tried, too. When that failed, he’d tried to get her to stay weekends with him, but she wouldn’t.
When Eliza still didn’t pull the car into traffic, Ernest tried a different tack. “Maybe we should start on something easier, work our way up to city driving.” He’d meant it as a threat, a way to goad her into action. He wanted to prepare Eliza for the world, wanted her to reach this milestone. For as much as he hated to admit it, River Bend wasn’t a place where Eliza would thrive. He knew that. She knew it. He’d heard her lament many times how much she hated this town, how she couldn’t wait to leave. He wanted to soothe her, so she could head off to college in a couple of years.
Part of Ernest didn’t want her to go—he didn’t understand why everyone was always pushing kids to go to college. He himself never graduated, had dropped out after two years, and he turned out fine. Another part of him, though, wondered if getting out in the world would help Eliza see how good she had it in River Bend. Either way, the least he could do for her was make sure she was strong enough to go. Especially because he doubted he’d be able to pay her way. But instead of taking the bait, Eliza put the car in park, right there in the driveway to the bank parking lot. She unfastened her seat belt, got out, and asked her father to drive. In the passenger’s seat, she kept her eyes fixed on her window, refusing to turn and look at him when he tried talking to her. In silence, she let him drive them both home.
Elizabeth DeWitt Hansen
24
I meet a good man. I tell him nothing for fear I will tell him everything. Steve cured me of that impulse; I will never again be that intimate. It seems to work. Greg thinks I’m normal, whole. He finds me attractive. He says he wants to know me, because knowing is loving. He tries so hard to make me feel good, his head buried between my legs. We lay in bed in the morning, our bodies so close. I’m not attracted to him. I remind myself that he’s a good man, and tell my body to shut up its cravings. He’s the kind of man I would want my son to be. I manage to seem whole long enough that he marries me. I take his name.
I give nothing, have nothing to give. Most of my insides have been scooped out and buried, rotten, in someone else’s yard. What little is left I’ve shoved down deep, hoping to hold on to it, terrified of it being discovered.
But my husband is smart. He intuits the pieces of me I’ve shoved down deepest. He asks me about myself, and when I’m evasive, he asks me, “Why so secret?” He only wants to know me.
“You’re inscrutable,” he says. “Unknowable.”
I hate him for making me remember that I’m insufficient. I hate him for not knowing me, for not guessing.
JESUS COW
Christmas morning, and Paula is up to her elbow in a cow’s vagina, feeling around for a head or a hoof, something to grab hold of. The calf is breech. Jared called this morning because the vet is out of town, and with Dinah beside herself, he could think of nobody else who’d have the stomach for this.
She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull a face. The woman has nerves of iron. Her whole body is made of iron. The heifer is lying on her side, she won’t stand, and Grandma Dinah fears she’s injured herself while thrashing. Jared and Steve squat to hold on to her legs, trying to still her kicking, to keep her from further harm. Derek sits with his legs folded, the cow’s head in his lap. Paula crouches behind her, her free hand braced on the ground. Jared watches that hand, focuses on it as if it will anchor him to this world. The back of her hand is very tan, the veins protruding. Even in the cold of the barn, Jared has worked up a sweat. It streams from his hairline into his eyes, but he doesn’t dare mop his brow.
“I’m going to have to turn the calf,” Paula says.
“All right,” Jared says.
“And mamma’s going to kick.”
“All right.”
“Hard,” she says, and both Jared and Steve brace themselves.
“Oh,” Linda says from behind them, turning her face away. She has her arms wrapped around her belly, not because she’s cold—she’s been hot ever since she got pregnant—but because she’s wondering whether her own baby is positioned right. At twenty-three weeks, she’s just beginning to feel the baby kick. Derek wishes he could cross the barn and hold her.
Most of the family has gathered in the barn, because that’s where Grandma Dinah is. Even the dogs are here, pacing back and forth outside the door. D
inah is in the barn because it’s where Maribel is, her prized cow, the one whose milk used to win ribbons at the county fair. She knows she should get in there and get her own hands dirty, but she’s too emotional. Inside this stall, Dinah feels the space press in on her. It isn’t an entirely unpleasant feeling. It comforts her, in fact, this closeness, her family gathered together.
* * *
• • •
In the kitchen, Christmas dinner prep has fallen to Deborah, the only one not outside. She thinks there must be a joke in there somewhere: How many idiots does it take to birth a calf?
Paula, she understands. The woman isn’t much of a homemaker. Hell, she’s really more man than woman. But where’s Linda? She isn’t needed out there. When Deborah was pregnant with each of her children, she never once slacked off like Linda does now. Worse yet is Paige, who hasn’t even shown up yet. No doubt she’ll arrive when supper is ready, and she’ll disappear soon after. Those girls are nothing but leeches, just like their mother. The longer Deborah thinks, the madder she gets. How pathetic that Jared is still hung up on Paula, that he’s put his life on hold for twenty years to raise another man’s kids, even after his wife up and left. The family could say whatever it wanted about Steve, but at least he’s still here.
Deborah visits her mother’s house maybe four times a year: Mother’s Day, Dinah’s birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas. But for years now, she’s been kept from handling the turkey, the beef roast. Ever since she married Steve, a man her mother disapproved of—loudly and often—Deborah has been cut out of holiday preparations.
Now, suddenly left to cook dinner for all these people, she feels another kind of exclusion. Deborah works slowly, peeling and chopping potatoes, in her head hearing her mother suggest—not tell, for she would never say it outright, but suggest—that Deborah is doing it wrong, and how could she, a grown woman, not know how to make a simple Christmas dinner?
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