Northern Lights

by Raymond Strom

  I took Kristina’s soiled clothes out into the backyard, laid them out on the cement beneath the deck, and sprayed them with the garden hose, a preliminary rinse before I put them in the washing machine. I tried to breathe deeply, remain calm.

  Back inside, I collected all the prescription bottles in a garbage bag and stuffed it under the sink. The other trash filled two bags: junk mail, cigarette butts, newspapers. Important-looking mail, those envelopes stamped with FORECLOSURE NOTICE, FINAL NOTICE, or PAST DUE, I stacked on the counter by the answering machine. I found the vacuum cleaner in the hall closet and, after closing Kristina’s door so the sound wouldn’t reach her, I took solace in raking the threads of the carpet this way and that.

  When the sheriff arrived I met him in the front yard and told him how the house looked when I got there, then I told him about our trip to Svenson’s and Jenny’s plan. He shook his head while he listened to how I had not done anything he had asked me to do.

  “No, I haven’t seen her,” he said when I finished. “Maybe she knew she was in trouble so she took the car and drove as far as she could make it.”

  That was the best possible situation, but we both knew this wasn’t the case.

  “She would never leave Kristina like this,” I said.

  “If this is true,” the sheriff said, “if he went after her, then I want you to stay the hell away from him. Don’t you go confronting him now.”

  The sheriff told me he was going to ask the neighbors if they had seen anything and walked off toward the house next door, so I went inside and finished vacuuming. Once I tied up the cord and wheeled it back into the closet, the place looked somewhat presentable. Unsure what else to do, I sat down on the couch and was met with the racing thoughts that my cleaning had displaced, images of Jenny twisted and beaten, stabbed through the neck. The wound deep into Sissy’s neck superimposed on Jenny, lying in a grassy ditch. I turned the volume on the television back up to where Kristina had it when I arrived but it was no help.

  The sheriff rang the doorbell when he returned to tell me that the neighbors hadn’t seen anything.

  “I’ll go talk to Svenson about her,” he said, “to see if he cracks, but without that evidence we don’t have probable cause. At this point it’s your word against his. We have a young woman with a history of running away who appears to have run away. I can’t go search his place because you tell me you think he did it.”

  I invited him in and he climbed the stairs to the living room, gave a quizzical look toward the couch.

  “What happened to the cushions?”

  “You don’t want to know,” I said.

  We sat down and went on with the missing persons report. Unlike with my mother, Jenny was still a minor so her disappearance was cause for immediate investigation. I didn’t know the make of the car but the sheriff did, he knew the license plate number and Jenny’s middle name and birthday. I would have had a lot of trouble filing this report with any other police officer. He also knew the information for next of kin. He used a few acronyms I didn’t understand, ATL and APB, and told me that every police officer within fifty miles would be on the lookout for her once he called the report into Claire. He was on the phone for a minute and it was done.

  “How is she? Kristina, I mean.”

  “The usual,” I said. “Drugged out. She’s got an entire pharmacy up here. She’s sleeping now and I’ll bet she has no idea Jenny is missing.”

  “Drugged out?” he asked. “What do you mean?”

  I went to the kitchen and came back with the bag of prescription bottles, held it open for him. He reached in and came out with three bottles, held them to the light to inspect the labels.

  “Jesus,” he said. “I’m going to have a talk with this doctor.”

  He dug through the bag for a while, took two bottles out, and set them on the coffee table before cinching the bag and tying it shut with a knot.

  “Do you think you could stick around here for a while?” the sheriff asked. “Watch over the place, take care of Kristina? I could give you a ride down to the Arlington quick if you need to pick anything up.”

  “Everything I own is already here,” I said.

  “You can tell her in the morning that if she wants these drugs back she can call me.”

  I was surprised that Jenny had been right, that a single visit from the sheriff would drum up his affection. He hadn’t even seen Kristina yet but was working to help her.

  * * *

  The sheriff was gone no more than twenty minutes before I felt the crush of emotions heading my way so I took another sip of whiskey and picked up the telephone. When the car pulled up a few minutes later, I hid the bottle under my shirt and ran across the front yard, keys jingling in my pocket. I opened the door and sat down, pulled the bottle from where it was hidden, and set it on the floor.

  “Nice haircut,” Russell said and put the car in gear. I ran my fingers through my hair, having forgotten about my trip to the barber. It felt like a lifetime ago, my mother and the Fisherman.

  He turned the first corner and I reached over to put my hand on his knee, sliding it up his leg until it hit metal, smooth and cool. A flask on the seat between his legs.

  “I thought you quit drinking,” I said.

  “I did,” he said, “but then I decided to quit quittin’.”

  I moved the flask to my right hand, returned my left to his knee, then tipped it back and drank until it was gone. I wanted to drown the parts of me that were calling out for Jenny, to retreat into the darkness of whiskey and Russell, with the hope that the sheriff would have it all figured out when I returned.

  “Thirsty?” he asked.

  “I brought more,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

  Russell turned left onto Old Main and a strange noise filled the car. At first I thought something was wrong with the engine, or maybe the sheriff had caught us speeding, but when Russell pulled onto the shoulder and turned toward me it became clear that it grew from deep inside my chest, a siren of sadness I didn’t know I was sounding, didn’t know I was capable of making, and was not able to control. Not knowing what else to do he put his arms around me, his hand on the back of my head to muffle my wails with his body. The car shook with my convulsions. I bit Russell’s shoulder until I felt it give and then the pressure behind my eyes began to fade in waves. I wiped my nose with the sleeves of my flannel shirt and we settled back into our seats.

  “What’s wrong?” Russell asked.

  “Everything.”

  “Beginning with?”

  “Jenny’s missing.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “If I knew that, she wouldn’t be missing,” I said, wishing I hadn’t, but Russell could tell I was upset and let it go.

  “Where do you think she is?”

  “I think Svenson did something to her.”

  “To Jenny? I doubt it. Unless you mean he put her on a pedestal. Dude is dopey in love with her.”

  We cruised the dark streets of Holm as I told him the story, beginning with the sheriff busting us smoking, through our plans to take Svenson down, and ending with my arrival to find the car missing.

  “What were you guys thinking?” he asked as we pulled up to an apartment building on Cypress.

  “You can’t stop Jenny when she has her mind set on something,” I said.

  As we got out of the car his pager went off. He looked down at his waistband and clicked on the light, then he took a key off his key ring and told me he was in 3A before he got back in his car, turned wide, and took off.

  Russell’s place was a single room with a stove and a sink along one wall. The smell of fresh paint hung in the air and my footsteps made a loud echo that reminded me of Svenson’s living room. Aside from a mattress in the corner near the window, a single suitcase lay flopped open in the middle of the room, all of Russell’s belongings spilling across the floor. I stepped to the window and saw the water tower in the distance, a silhouette a touch darker than the night s
ky, and seeing that the sill was wide enough, I perched there and watched the occasional car pass by on Center while I sipped from the bottle.

  Russell walked in twenty minutes later and I kept my eyes pointed at the window, watching his reflection as he approached, then stood when he came up behind me so that we were both looking outside.

  “I missed you,” Russell said, wrapping his arms around me and putting his chin on my shoulder. This was the first time he had acknowledged with words our shadowy moments together. It was simple, but I knew that it went against everything he believed to admit that to me. In the window I could see that my haircut made us look alike. Little blond twins. Whereas I had looked like Jenny before I went to my mother’s, I had come back looking like Russell. I turned toward him and he buried his face in my neck.

  “I missed you too,” I said and we sat down on the edge of his mattress.

  We passed the bottle back and forth while he told me of the latest falling out with his parents, disowned like he had predicted earlier in the summer, and how he had ended up moving in here a few days earlier.

  “I slept in my car for a while,” he said, now fully drunk. “I was pretty mad at the time, but it doesn’t seem like such a big deal now. I’ll get by.”

  “You’ll be fine,” I said, then leaned in and kissed him. “We’ll be fine.”

  He stood up and pulled from one pocket a huge wad of cash and a plastic baggie full of capsules from the other, then stood there for a moment, looking around the room. The windowsill, the unsheeted and uncovered mattress, the empty floor.

  “I need some furniture,” he said, and laughed.

  “You can put that stuff right here,” I said, holding out my hand.

  “You want one of these?”

  I didn’t want speed specifically but I needed something, some good feeling, comfort. Russell took a single capsule from the bag and placed it in my hand, then stuffed the rest into the corner of his suitcase. He had no surface, no mirror, so I wiped off the windowsill and prepared it there, breaking it up into eight thin lines. I asked Russell for a dollar, then rolled it up and took down a line, then stood and held the makeshift straw out to Russell as the tingly well-being washed over my drunken sadness.

  “I don’t know,” he said, but it only took a subtle nudge, a moving of the bill a little closer to him, and then with a quick sniff both of our sad moods vanished and we grew chatty. Russell paced between the window and the door, suddenly aware of why his business was booming, and I watched him from the bed as he tried to describe how he felt.

  “It’s like you realize you’ve never done anything wrong,” he said, arms spread wide, eyes toward the ceiling, “like all the guilt and shame is lifted away and you can be yourself without judgment.”

  We snorted again and passed the bottle and then it was my turn to pace while I told him about my trip to Michigan, about my mother and the Fisherman, the long ride home, and what had been waiting for me.

  “You shouldn’t have come back,” Russell said.

  “I have nowhere else to go. I didn’t want to stay there.”

  “You could have gone straight to Minneapolis,” he said. “I’m the one who has nowhere to go. I barely make enough money to pay for this place and my car. I’ll never get out of this shithole town.”

  “You’ll be fine,” I said, running my fingers through his hair, calming him to silence. “We’ll be fine.”

  We lay there for a time, staring into each other’s eyes until Russell could no longer hold back. He heaved his lips toward me, lurched his chest, but I held him down and the struggle became a dance, rhythmic convulsions of desire. When I finally dropped my hold it felt good to give in, to give myself to him. We rolled off the bed, onto the floor, around the room, in a speed-fueled storm until Russell took his mouth off mine. The moon shone a white rectangle on the floor next to where we lay in the dark.

  “I shouldn’t have gone and left her here alone,” I said. “Visiting my mother was a giant waste of time anyways.”

  “Look, she saved you,” he said, eyes wide in the moonlight, earnest. “If you had been in town I’m not so sure we’d be here talking about it now. I mean, if you’re right about what happened.”

  After a few more lines and shots, the pins and needles passed over my body in waves and I reached again for Russell, tore his clothes from his body, and tried to make every inch of my body touch every inch of his.

  “I hope you won’t have any trouble remembering this tomorrow,” I said.

  Then it was morning and Russell lay in the bed so peaceful and quiet as I found and put on my clothes that I didn’t wake him, but I couldn’t help pressing my lips to his and running my fingers through his hair before I left.

  * * *

  Kristina was awake when I got back, frying an egg in the kitchen, a hand to her eyes to block the morning sun that streamed through the little window above the sink. I was surprised when she spoke.

  “Thank you for cleaning up, Shane,” she whispered, having no problem identifying me in spite of her constant condition or my new haircut. “Can I have my pills?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “There’s something we need to talk about.”

  She took her egg to the table and, hand shaking, stabbed at it with her fork. She kept her eyes on her food as I told the story of how I found her, but crumpled her napkin and held her fist to her head, eyes closed, when I moved on to how I had cleaned her up. I thought it was her reaction to what I was saying, embarrassment, or the possibility of her daughter never returning. What she said next made clear her only concern.

  “The pills,” she said. “You can’t take away someone’s medication.”

  I stepped into the living room to grab the two bottles that the sheriff had left behind and set them before her. She read the labels, looked up at me with a scowl, then threw the bottles at the sliding door, each of them clunking against the glass with a hollow drum sound before falling to the floor.

  “Where are the others?”

  “The sheriff said you could call him if you want the other bottles,” I told her.

  “Sheriff Braun?” she asked. “When did he say that?”

  “Last night,” I said. “I called him when I got here.”

  She muttered something, then stood and brought her plate to the sink, throwing it in with a clatter. Breakfast done, she stretched out on her tiptoes to reach the cabinet above the refrigerator, took out another bottle of whiskey, and when she stumbled taking it down, I saw how the other bottle had broken but she saved this one. With a shaky hand, she took a glass from the drying rack near the sink, poured it half full of whiskey and ran some water from the tap to fill the rest, then she walked into the living room. The television came on and I heard Bob Barker asking his viewers to be sure to have their pets spayed or neutered.

  I went to the sliding door and picked up the prescription bottles, Lithium and Ferralet, and put them on the table. I had no idea what these were, but I assumed the sheriff had taken all the good stuff, those pills Jenny and I had taken that night and any other narcotics, leaving the pills she needed but now refused to take. To follow his line of thinking, I went to the cabinet above the fridge, took down the three remaining bottles as quietly as I could, and poured all the liquor down the sink.

  I had to wonder how Kristina lived like this, how she made it to the liquor store, the grocery store, and anywhere else and what money she used when she got there. I had no idea how she paid for anything: the house, the bills, the car. My father had been gone at work for most of every day to pay for a house much smaller than this one. Maybe alimony or child support, welfare or disability, maybe Social Security. The stack of past due bills on the counter caught my eye again, but I’d wait for the sheriff to discuss that. Instead, I spun the caps off the two prescription bottles, shook a pill out of each one, then walked into the living room and held them out for Kristina. She leaned around me so she could see the television but held her hand out, so I drop
ped the pills into her palm and took a seat on the couch so I could make sure she took them. A long moment passed but she washed them down with her whiskey and water.

  Kristina’s restlessness became impossible to ignore an hour later, when I looked up from the closing credits of The Bold and the Beautiful. Until then she had been quiet and still, as subdued as the other times I had been around her. Her symptoms were subtle at first. She reached across her chest to massage the muscles in her shoulder, moving on to sore points down her arms, and after a while she began rocking back and forth in her seat while she kneaded her thighs. Beads of sweat popped at her temples and she couldn’t get enough air. After a few huge yawns, she bent over at the waist with stomach cramps, her hair soaked, plastered to her head.

  “Kristina,” I said, stepping over to her and putting my hand on her cold, sweaty forehead. “Are you okay?”

  She looked up at me with wide, watery eyes, her irises a thin ring of blue around her growing pupils. I held my hand there until Kristina doubled over and puked egg and whiskey all over my feet. I had forgotten that running out of drugs could be so much worse than having them.

  “Should we go to the bathroom?” I asked and, receiving a violent nod in return, wove my arm under her shoulders and lifted her so we could walk down the hall together, setting her on her knees before the toilet.

  “Please shut the door,” she said, but it didn’t keep the sounds of her heaves contained.

  I called the sheriff and then, after changing my pants and socks, I went to work cleaning up the vomit. It was a quick job compared to the overhaul of the previous night and I was back on the couch watching the next soap opera when the sheriff arrived. He walked right past me when I opened the door, followed my pointing finger to the bathroom and knocked.