by Amy Harmon
It wasn’t Molly. I don’t know why that relieved me.
People had talked, especially when they’d found Molly Taggert’s remains near the overpass. They said Moses had to be involved. They speculated that it was gang related, that he’d brought his violent affiliations with him. I’d just kept my head down. I’d just stayed silent. And I tried not to believe the things they said. I tried to focus on the life inside of me and the days in front of me. And in the back of my mind I kept the door open, waiting for him to come back.
Last night the wall had been perfect. Pristine. But now there was a face in a sea of white. I turned from the wall, scooped up my photo album and left the house.
Moses
THE LITTLE CLEANING GIRL was sitting on the front steps when I finally made it back to Levan with Tag driving my truck, bringing up the rear. Luckily, my truck hadn’t been towed and Tag had been released with some cash and a signature. She rose when I stepped out of her van and hurried down the walk toward me.
“Can I go now, Mr. Wright? I’m done,”
I nodded and reached for my wallet, pulling out seven, one-hundred-dollar bills and I laid them in her shaking hand. With a nod and a tight grip on her windfall and her bucket of supplies, Lisa Kendrick ran for the van like she had dogs on her heels. She leaped inside and started it up, while Tag and I stared after her, a little surprised at her skittish behavior. She rolled down her window a few inches, and her words came out in a jumbled rush.
“Her name is Sylvie. Sylvie Kendrick. My cousin. She used to babysit me when I was little. She lived in Gunnison. She disappeared eight years ago,” Lisa Kendrick said. “It was a long time ago. And I was only nine . . . but I’m pretty sure it’s her.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, and I started to question her, only to have her hit reverse and peel out of my driveway as if her nerve had finally failed her.
Moses
“WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO SAND IT DOWN OR SOMETHING.”
Tag and I stood looking at the face that peered out of the white wall, a face that hadn’t been there the day before. I was guessing, from what Lisa Kendrick had said as she’d rushed off, that the face belonged to Sylvie Kendrick.
“There’s just something off in this house, Moses.”
“It’s not the house, Tag. It’s me.”
Tag shot me a look and shook his head.
“You seeing things that other people can’t doesn’t make you the problem, Mo. It just means there are fewer secrets. And that can be dangerous.”
I walked toward the wall and pressed my hand over the face, the way the girl had done the night before. She’d touched the wall, demanding that I see her.
“I think we need to get out of here, Moses. We need to sand that down, slap another coat of paint on that wall, and we need to go. I have a bad feeling about all of this,” Tag insisted.
I shook my head. “I can’t go yet, Tag. I turned away from the wall and faced my friend.
“Yesterday you wanted to leave. You were lined out, ready to go,” Tag argued.
“That girl knew her. Lisa, the girl who cleaned. She saw this face, she recognized it. And it freaked her out. She said it was her cousin. But she disappeared eight years ago. What does that have to do with me? What does that have to do with anything? I’m sure I saw her last night because of the connection with Lisa. That’s how it works.”
“But you painted her before last night,” Tag argued.
“And I painted Molly before I met you,” I responded, my eyes returning to the wall.
Tag waited for me to say more, and when I didn’t, he sighed. “Molly and that girl,” he pointed to the wall, “and now another one. Three dead girls in ten years isn’t all that remarkable. Even in Utah. And you and I know it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with you. You’re just the unlucky son-of-a-bitch that sees dead people. But people here have already decided you had something to do with it. I heard those guys last night, and you saw that girl take off out of here like you were Jack the Ripper. You don’t need that shit in your life, Mo. You don’t deserve it, and you don’t need it,” he repeated.
“But I need Georgia.” There. I said it. I’d known it since she’d shown up the night before with a photo album clutched to her chest. She’d opened the door just a crack and she’d stuck an olive branch through.
Tag couldn’t have looked more surprised if I’d slapped him across the face with that olive branch. I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me too, and I found myself gasping for breath.
“It looks like the stick-figure kick to the head knocked some sense into you.” Tag whistled. “Just seven years too late.”
“I can’t run this time, Tag. I’ve got to see it through. Whatever that means. Maybe I just end up making peace with my skeletons. Making peace with Georgia. Getting to know my son in the only way I have left.” I couldn’t think about Eli without feeling like I was caught in a downpour. But water had always been my friend, and I decided maybe it was time to let it rain.
“I can’t stay, Mo. I’d like to stay, but I have a feeling if I hang around here too long with you, I’m going to be a liability. There’s something about this place that isn’t agreeing with me.”
“I understand. And I don’t expect you to. I may be here for a while. The house could use more than just a little paint and some new carpet. It’s been empty a long time. The bathroom is ancient, it needs a new roof, the yard looks like crap. So I’m going to fix it up. And then I’m giving it to Georgia. Maternity expenses, four years of child support, funeral costs, pain and suffering. Hell, the house probably isn’t enough.”
“Salt Lake is two hours away, less than that the way I drive. You’ll call if you need me, won’t you?”
I nodded.
“I know you, Mo. You won’t call.” Tag shot a hand through his mop and sighed.
“I’ll call,” I promised, but knew in my heart Tag was probably right. It was hard to need.
“You want my advice?” Tag asked.
“No,” I answered. He just rolled his eyes.
“Good. Here it is. Don’t go slow, Mo. Don’t go easy. Go hard and go fast. Women like Georgia are used to holding the reins. But you broke her, Mo. And then you left her. I know you had your reasons. You know I get it. But she won’t let you break her again. So you have to take her. Don’t wait for her to say please. ‘Cause it won’t happen.”
“We’re not talking about a horse, Tag.”
“The hell we aren’t. That’s her language, Mo. So you better learn it.”
Moses
GEORGIA CAME BACK AGAIN that night, knocking on the door, carrying another offering, only this time it wasn’t the photo album. I tried not to be disappointed. I wanted more, but when I’d arrived home that afternoon the book was no longer on the kitchen counter, and I had no doubt that Georgia had come and taken it away.
She shoved a pan of brownies in my chest and said in a rush, “I took the photo album.”
I nodded, the brownies in my hands. “I saw.”
“I just wanted you to know. I’ll put together a book for you. I have so many pictures.”
“I would like that. Even better than homemade brownies.” I tried to smile but it felt forced and I told her to hold on as I set the brownies down on the kitchen counter and joined her on the front steps, wishing I knew what to say to make her stick around.
“I didn’t make them. The brownies, I mean. I’m a terrible cook. The only time I tried to make brownies, Eli took one bite and spit it out. And he ate bugs. I was sure they couldn’t be that bad, until I took a bite. They were pretty terrible. We ended up calling them frownies instead of brownies, and we fed them to the goats. It’s a wonder Eli survived.” She stopped abruptly, a stricken look washing over her face. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and tell her it was okay. That everything was okay. But it wasn’t okay. Because Eli hadn’t survived.
Georgia stepped back off the steps and tried to pull herself back together, smiling bright
ly.
“But don’t worry. I bought those brownies from Sweaty Betty. She makes the best baked goods in the state of Utah.”
I didn’t remember anyone named Sweaty Betty, and I had my doubts with a name like Sweaty Betty that they would taste any better than Georgia’s frownies. In fact, I was pretty sure I would be letting Tag eat them all.
“You’ll have to try again sometime,” I suggested as she turned to leave. I was talking about her frownies, but I really wasn’t. And maybe she knew that, because she just waved and she didn’t pause.
“Goodnight, Stewy Stinker,” I called after her.
“What did you say?” Her voice was sharp and she stopped walking, but she didn’t turn around.
“I said goodnight, Stewy Stinker. Now you say, goodnight, Buzzard Bates.”
I heard her gasp and then she turned toward me, her fingers pressed to her lips to hide their trembling.
“He keeps showing you kissing him goodnight. And it’s always the same.” I waited.
“He shows you . . . that?” she whispered brokenly.
I nodded.
“It’s from his book. He . . . he loved this book. So much. I probably read it to him a thousand times. It was a book I loved when I was little called Calico the Wonder Horse.”
“He named his horse—”
“Calico. After the horse in the book, yes,” Georgia finished. She looked like she was about to collapse. I walked to her, took her hand, and gently led her back to the steps. She let me, and she didn’t pull away when I sat beside her.
“So, who’s Stewy Stinker?” I pressed softly.
“Stewy Stinker, Buzzard Bates, Skunk Skeeter, Butch Bones, Snakeyes Pyezon . . . they were the Bad Men in Eli’s book.” Georgia said Pyezon like Popeye would say poison, and it made me smile. Georgia smiled too, but there was obviously too much grief in the memory to make it stay, and her smile slid away like the tide. “So if they were the bad guys, who were the good guys?” I asked, trying to coax it out again.
“They weren’t the bad guys, they were the Bad Men. It was the name of their gang. Stewy Stinker and the Bad Men.”
“No false advertising there.”
Georgia giggled and the shell-shocked expression she’d worn since I called her Stewy Stinker faded slightly.
“Nope. Simple, straightforward. You know exactly what you’re getting.”
I wondered if there was hidden meaning in her statement and waited for her to clue me in.
“You’re different, Moses,” she whispered.
“So are you.”
She flinched but then nodded. “I am. Sometimes I miss the old Georgia. But in order to get her back, I would have to erase Eli. And I wouldn’t trade Eli for the old Georgia.”
I could only nod, not willing to think about the old Georgia and the old Moses and the fiery way we had come together. The memories were burned in my head and coming back to Levan made me want to revisit them. I wanted to kiss Georgia until her lips were sore, I wanted to make love to her in the barn and swim with her in the water tower, and most of all, I wanted to take away the wave of grief that kept knocking her over.
“Georgia?”
She kept her eyes averted. “Yeah?”
“Do you want me to go? You said you wouldn’t lie to me. Do you want me to go?”
“Yes.” No hesitation.
I felt the word reverberate in my chest and was surprised at the pain that echoed behind it. Yes. Yes. Yes. The word taunted. It reminded me of how I had shunned her the same way that last night in the barn. Do you love me, Moses? she’d asked. No, I’d told her. No. No. No.
“Yes. I want you to go. And no. I don’t want you to go,” she amended in a rush of frustrated, pent-up breath. She stood abruptly, threw her hands in the air, and then folded them across her chest defensively. “If I’m telling the truth, then both are true,” she added softly.
I stood too, bracing myself against the impulse to bolt, to run and paint, like I always did. But Tag said I was going to have to take her. He told me not to go slow. And I was going to heed his advice.
“I don’t know what the truth is this time, Moses. I don’t know,” Georgia said, and I knew I couldn’t run this time. I wouldn’t run.
“You know the truth. You just don’t like it.” I never thought I’d see Georgia Shepherd afraid of anything. I was afraid too. But I was afraid that she really wanted me to go. And I didn’t know if I could stay away. Not again.
“What about you, Moses? Do you want to leave?” Georgia threw my words back at me. I didn’t answer. I just studied her trembling lips and troubled eyes and reached out a hand for the heavy braid that fell over her right shoulder. It was warm and thick against my palm and my fingers wrapped around it tightly, needing to cling to something. I was so glad she hadn’t cut the braid. She had changed. But her hair had not.
My left hand was wrapped in her braid and my right hand snaked around her waist and urged her up against me. And I felt it, the same old charge that had been there from the beginning. That same pull that had wreaked havoc on our lives . . . her life even more than mine. It was there, and I knew she felt it too.
Her nostrils flared and her breath halted. Her back was taut against my fingers and I splayed them wide, trying to touch as much of her as I could without moving my hand. Her eyes were fixed on mine, fierce and unblinking. But she didn’t resist.
And then I bent my head and caught her mouth before she could speak, before I could think, before she could run, before I could see. I didn’t want to see. I wanted to feel. And hear. And taste. But her mouth filled my mind with color. Just like it always had. Pink. Her kiss was pink. Soft, sunset pink, streaked with gold. The rosy blush swirled behind my eyes, and I pressed my lips more firmly against hers, releasing her hair and her body to hold her face in my hands, to keep the colors in place, to keep them from fading. And then her lips parted beneath mine and the colors became leaping currents of red and gold, pulsing against my eyes as if the soft sweep of her tongue left fire in its wake.
The color popped like a needle to a balloon as Georgia suddenly wrenched herself away, almost violently. And without a word she turned and fled, along with the colors, leaving me panting and drenched in black.
“Careful, Moses,” I said out loud to no one but my sorry self. “You’re about to get thrown.”
Moses
WITH ONLY THE ONE VEHICLE BETWEEN US, I had to take Tag back to Salt Lake the next morning. I spent two days away, one day clearing my schedule for the next month, and for those who were insistent on keeping their appointments, making arrangements to have them come to me in Levan. If the people weren’t talking already, I’m sure they would be when I started holding painting séances in my grandmother’s dining room.
I spent the next day shopping at a furniture store to outfit the house with the bare necessities. I wasn’t sleeping on the floor and sitting against the walls indefinitely, so I bought a bed, a couch, a table and four chairs, a washer and dryer, and a chest of drawers. I spent enough money that the furniture store gave me free delivery, even to Levan, and I gladly accepted. In addition to the furniture, I gathered some clothing, some painting supplies and blank canvases, and the picture I’d painted for Eli before I’d even realized who Eli was. I was going to give it to Georgia. She had shared her pictures with me. I was going to share my pictures with her, if she would let me.
The trip back to Salt Lake had been fruitful in other ways too. Eli was back. I’d seen him for a second in my rear-view mirror as I’d driven away from Gigi’s house. I had turned back immediately, slamming on my brakes and yanking on the wheel, turning my truck around and drawing questions from Tag that I couldn’t answer. But Eli hadn’t reappeared, and I finally gave up and headed out of town once more, hoping that I hadn’t just seen him for the last time. I thought I caught a glimpse of him the next morning from the corner of my eye, watching me as I loaded some of my paintings in my truck. And then, last night he’d appeared at the foot of my bed,
just like the first time, as if leaving Levan had forced an intervention.
He showed me Calico running in the fields and Georgia reading to him and tucking him in, just like before, but he showed me some new things too. He showed me chicken noodle soup, the noodles so fat there was hardly any broth. And he showed me his toes curling in the dirt, as if he liked the way it felt. I knew they were his toes because they were short and childlike, and as I watched, he made his name above his toes with one small finger, tracing the letters carefully in the dark earth. Then I watched as his hands built a colorful tower, struggling to snap the Lego pieces one on top of the other.
It was the oddest thing, little snippets and snapshots of the life of a little boy. But I watched them, with my eyes closed, letting him pour the pictures into my head. I picked through the images, trying to understand him better. I didn’t want to miss something important, though it all felt important. It all felt absolutely vital, every little detail. I fell asleep dreaming I was helping him erect a wall made out of a million colorful plastic bricks. A wall that would keep him from leaving for good, the way Gi had left for good.
Georgia
AFTER I LOST ELI, I would come out to the horses, and without fail, the horse I was working with would end up lying down in the middle of the corral. Sackett, Lucky, or any of the other horses. It didn’t matter. Whichever horse I was working with or interacting with would lie down like they were too tired to do anything but sleep. I knew they were reflecting what I was feeling. The first couple of times it happened, I just laid down too. I couldn’t change the way I felt. Self-awareness wasn’t enough. The grief was too heavy. But as I forced myself to get back up, the horse would get back up too.