“No,” I said, gazing up at him.
“Well, it’s a beautiful name for a beautiful girl,” he said and his smile made me feel like a flower in the sun, and so we got our pizza and took it to headquarters where I ate four whole slices and immediately conked out on a cot in the coffee room.
When I woke up, a lady from social services was there to take me to somebody’s house because Candy had been arrested for trying to hit me with a hammer, my mother had been arrested for the meth they found on her when she got up in the face of the cop who was trying to arrest Candy, and Sims had been arrested for violating the terms of his parole, which, because of his third-tier sexual-predator status, specifically stated that he could not reside in a domicile with any children under the age of twelve.
Two days later, when my mother was released with a court date and I was returned to her, she came home, got high, and with an unnerving burst of manic energy, packed up all of Candy’s things and called one of the many Fee brothers to come and get them because, as she said while she was polishing the bathroom doorknob with the front of her T-shirt over and over and over, “I hate to do it, but she must of got hold of some baaad shit because she’s totally out of control and I can’t have her here kicking up drama all the time, especially with the cops and that nosy old Carroll bitch next door. That cat of hers better not set foot on this property or I swear to Christ she’ll never see it again,” she added in an ominous mutter and catching sight of herself in the mirror, scowled, abandoned the doorknob, and started raking her bitten-down nails over and over through her stringy hair. “Maybe I should go blond again. Do you think I should go blond? Maybe I should go blond. How would I look with blond hair? Like Cameron Diaz? Do you think I’d look like Cameron Diaz? I’m thin like her. It’s just my hair. You could do it for me. Yeah. Go ahead. Go down to the drugstore and get me hair color.”
“Mom,” I said. “I have no money.”
“Did I say anything about money?” she said and barked a laugh. She leaned into the mirror and picked at a sore, her once pretty face sallow and sunken. “Shit, if I’d waited till I had money to get what I wanted, I’d never of had anything.” The sore started to bleed and she stopped. “Fucking bugs are killing my skin. I got to get out of here.” She skimmed past me and clattered down the stairs.
I followed.
“Stay inside and don’t go anywhere,” she said, grabbing her battered purse. “You’ve got to lay low because they’re watching us. Don’t talk to anybody, don’t answer the phone, and don’t let anybody in unless you know them. Do you hear me?”
I nodded.
“Say it,” she said.
“I heard you,” I said.
“Good, because it’s just you and me now, so don’t fuck it up.” She headed for the door and stopped. “Get me a beer, would you?”
And I did, feeling a small flutter of hope as I trotted back and pressed the cold can into her trembling hand, and stood waving from the doorway as she hurried out into the night.
Just her and me now.
I had finally gotten my wish, and in the days to come I certainly lived to regret it, lying awake many nights that winter huddled under my coat because we had no money, no heat, and my mother was cranked up to full throttle and heading for a spectacular crash.
And then in February, one month short of a year since Grandma Lucy died, the sheriff came and escorted us off the premises because we’d lost the blue house to foreclosure, and so we ended up out on the street.
Chapter 12
EVAN WAKES UP SCREAMING.
One minute I’m near drowsing next to Red in the front seat of the plow truck, watching from beneath heavy lids as the wipers swish back and forth, back and forth, and according to a glance at the battered CD case, listening to some old folkie named Jorma Kaukonen singing a quiet, kind of sad “Genesis,” and the next minute Evan is thrashing and grinding out the most horrible, ragged sounds filled with pain.
Red jumps and hits the brakes, and the plow truck fishtails down the road.
I turn and scramble straight through the gap between the seats and crouch on the floor, dodging Evan’s swings and somehow grabbing his arms, babbling, “It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re all right, Evan, you have to stop, please, you’re going to hurt yourself,” but he doesn’t, he keeps moaning and writhing until the bad knee that was lying crooked shifts from inward to outward and then he just stops and deflates, sweating, tears streaking his cheeks, and shaking, covers his eyes and turns his face away.
“What the hell was that all about?” Red says, glancing back at me.
“I think we had his knee laid out the wrong way,” I say in a low voice, and am so freaked by that kind of agony, agony we might have caused by laying his leg down wrong that I feel sick. What if we’d twisted his tendons or a vein and had cut off his blood supply? What if pieces of shattered bone were sticking him or had cut into an artery and he was bleeding inside? What if—
“Sayre?” Evan whispers.
I lean close to his pale, pained face. “I’m here,” I say, taking his hand and trying to smile.
“Is this the ambulance?” he says weakly.
“No,” I say, and give in to the urge to stroke his poor, battered forehead. There’s no reason not to—he’s in pain and I’m the reason for it, and besides, once we get to the hospital we’re never going to see each other again anyway—but I’m afraid of how badly I want to comfort him, and that somehow by doing it I give myself away. “It’s the plow truck. It came just like we hoped it would.”
We. I used that word without thinking and it’s a strong one, big and obvious, like I’m joining us together in a secret hope made public.
“Good,” he mumbles, his dark gaze holding mine, searching for reassurance just like a little kid. “I don’t remember . . . Oh no. Shit, I’m gonna puke.”
“Wait—” I say, and then he starts gagging and I have to try and lean him gently over the edge of the seat and he does throw up, down onto a pile of old coffee cups and other mud-spattered debris.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers when it’s over, wiping his chin on the back of his hand and turning his face away from me. “God, what a mess.”
“It’s all right,” I say, trying to hold my breath because the smell is awful.
“Hold on.” Red cracks his window and stops the truck. Opens his door, gets out, goes around to the bed of the truck for a snow shovel, and while I hold Evan up and away from the back door, Red shovels out everything on the floor, throwing it all in the back of the truck. “Poor bastard,” he says, getting back in, closing the door, and cranking up the heat. “How you doing back there, buddy?”
“Like shit,” Evan manages to say as I ease him back down against the door.
“Well, just hold on because we got about seven miles to go,” Red says, and hands back a bottle of Snapple. “Here, let him take a slug of that. Clean out his mouth.”
I open it and give it to Evan, watching as he takes a shaky drink. He hands it back and closes his eyes. Reluctantly, I climb back up front into my seat.
“Quite a night,” Red says, glancing over at me. “How are you holding up?”
I shake my head, staring out into the swirling snow lit by the headlights. The winter woods are stark, barren, and offer no real shelter, no safe haven for the lost or wounded. It’s a beautiful, dangerous, lonely place, and I have never been so thankful to be on my way out of it in my entire life.
“Bobcat,” Red says, pointing up the road.
There, up ahead, caught in the glare of the truck’s lights is a big, raggedy bobcat standing belly deep in snow at the edge of the road.
“Seen a lot of them around this year,” Red says, downshifting. “Must have been a big rabbit population this summer. Too bad, because they’re probably starving now.”
But not all of them. Not the one by Harlow’s trailer. That piece o
f pork I gave him might keep him going for a while and maybe, when I go back for my money and Misty, I’ll bring some more food. I’ll just leave it by the side of the road and he’ll find it. I’ll never know if it’s enough to save him because bobcats are solitary, secretive, and self-sufficient; they live alone, sleep alone, and die alone, and that thought makes me even more determined to bring back food for him.
Our approach sends the big cat leaping across the snowy road and off into the night.
Red reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a pack of gum. Offers it to me.
“No thanks.” And then I surprise myself by blurting out, “So, uh, what have you been doing since I last saw you? Are you still a youth minister down at the church?”
“Sure am,” he says, glancing at me.
“I used to go to Sunday school there when I was little.”
“Oh yeah? Why’d you quit?”
“Long story,” I say, sorry I brought it up.
“Well, I’ve got the time,” he says, and turns up the volume as the Beatles’ “Let It Be” flows out of the CD player.
“Nice touch,” I say with a wry smile.
He chuckles. “Never say God—and the Beatles—don’t have great timing.”
I sit mulling that over, letting the quiet grandeur of the song surround me. It’s a quarter to five in the morning, the darkest hour before dawn, and the cab is warm and cozy. Evan is sleeping. My mother is in the hospital, and Beale is forever beyond my reach.
There is nothing left to stop me from talking.
I catch my breath.
There is nothing left to stop me.
What remains of my heart, curled so tight for so long, cracks open, and pain, raw and undiluted by time, unfurls with an ache that leaves me breathless.
I clear my throat and before I lose my nerve, say in a rush, “I’m sorry I never thanked you for being so nice to me back then.” I don’t look at him but I can feel the air in the truck’s cab change. “I mean, I know it was a long time ago but it meant a lot.” He remembers, I know he does, because he was there at the end, in the graveyard, his blue eyes clouded with helpless sorrow, his gentle hand holding my limp one. I will never forget how sad he looked standing by Beale, whose eyes were swollen from crying, whose whole wonderful face was drawn and devoid of life, whose hands were shaking and who burst into terrible, wracking sobs as I crept to the edge of the gravesites and laid both wild, ordinary, beautiful, sparkling-with-tears bouquets of Queen Anne’s lace on the caskets.
“You’re welcome, Sayre. I just wish I could have done more,” he says quietly, tucking the gum back in his pocket. “I was sorry to hear that your mother and Beale had split up afterward, too. That must have been really hard for you, on top of everything else.”
I nod, throat tight.
“I came out to see you after the funeral, you know,” he continues, like since I’d brought up the past, it was now an open subject. “I heard that you and your mom had moved into that old cabin Candy Fee was renting outside of town, so I dropped by once to see you, thinking maybe you needed someone to talk to besides family, but you weren’t home. I spoke with your mom for a couple of minutes but she had friends over and was in a hurry, so I told her I’d come back to see you another time. She said not to bother because you were doing just fine.” He pauses. “I was hoping that once she told you I’d been out there, maybe you’d stop down at the church sometime, just to say hello but—”
“I never showed up,” I say in a low, rusty voice. “Because she never told me.” About him, or anyone else who’d cared enough about me back then to come looking. No, that information had only surfaced during our big fight over Christmas when, sick, furious, and too weak to really hurt me with her fists, she’d done something far worse, taunted me with a betrayal I hadn’t even known existed, a revelation so cruel and unforgivable that it knocked my legs out from under me, dropping me to my knees in despair and leaving my mother crowing in triumph.
Red glances at me, surprised, and says, “Well, then, it’s a little overdue, but tell me, Sayre, how have you been doing?”
I stare down through blurred eyes at my battered hands and the too-long sleeves of my bulky, donated sweater. “Not so good,” I whisper, and start to cry.
Rock Bottom
MY MOTHER DID NOT LEAVE THE blue house peacefully.
She yelled and fought and screamed at the bank’s foreclosure guy and the sheriff’s deputies about fascists and conspiracies, and while they were trying to calm her down, I ran through the house with a garbage bag, skirting the mountain of unopened mail that had accumulated in the corner of the dining room floor all these months, and throwing in whatever we had that seemed worth anything: my mother’s purse and cigarettes, the few remaining family pictures, clothes and shoes off the floor, the stuff in the bathroom medicine cabinet, the file in Grandma’s credenza with my birth certificate, half a bag of pretzels, the beer, the last of the afghans, and the top of my too small but much beloved Hello Kitty pajamas.
My mother’s needles and all weren’t lying out in the open, so I never gave them another thought, a fact that almost got me killed when we were downtown on Main Street and she finally found out.
“What do you mean you didn’t go under the fucking couch? That’s where I always keep them! Under the couch behind the tinfoil!” she shouted, grabbing me by the hair and yanking me back toward her. “What the hell is wrong with you? How could you be so goddamn stupid?” She released me and slapped the side of my head. “You bring your stuff but you leave my stuff behind?” The thought seemed to enrage her and her blows fell faster, making me huddle and cringe but not cry. I had learned that lesson all too well. “What’re you, the only one who matters? I don’t mean shit, is that it? Is it?”
“Excuse me, but you really need to stop hitting that child right now.”
All of a sudden the beating stopped and I heard my mother growl, “How about you mind your own business, bitch, and take your fat ass and ugly kid out of here before—”
“If you hit her again, I’m calling the police,” the woman said and I looked up in time to see my mother take three quick strides and knock the woman’s cell phone right out of her hand. “Hey!” the woman said, but her voice was shocked and wobbling now because my mother was right there in her face, and she obviously hadn’t been expecting that. “You’re going to have to pay for—”
“Fuck you,” my mother said, and gave the woman a hard shove.
The woman stumbled backward, astonished. “Stop that! Are you out of your mind? You can’t touch me!”
“Oh no?” my mother said and shoved her again.
Her chubby little kid began to cry.
“Mom,” I said, standing back up.
“Stop it,” the woman said again, gaping at her. “You’re a grown woman. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing that kicking your ass won’t fix,” my mother said with a grim smile and, closing a fist, jabbed her hard in the arm.
“I don’t believe this,” the woman said, and then to her crying kid, “Run back in the store and tell Mrs. Jameson to call the police right now.”
“Don’t move, kid, or I swear to Christ I’ll make your mother bleed,” my mother said.
The kid hesitated.
“Go,” his mother said, flinching as my mother slapped the side of her head.
The kid took off wailing.
“Mom,” I said, mortified.
“If you don’t stop it I’m going to sue you for assault,” the woman said, voice quavering.
My mother laughed, harsh and unpleasant. “Oh yeah? And what do you think you’re gonna get? Here, I’ll save you some time.” She strode over and tugged the garbage bag from my hand. Dragged it to the woman and dumped it at her feet. “There you go. It’s all yours. Fuck you and have a nice day. C’mon, Sayre.” She walked away without looking back a
nd I had no choice but to follow, skirting the woman with an apologetic look and scurrying down the sidewalk after my mother.
The cops caught up with us, of course, and my second time in the back of a police car was nowhere near as kindly as my first. The cop wasn’t mean to me, but my mother had a lot to say about pretty much everything, her tone strident and her words insulting, and all I could do was huddle there, scared and silent and embarrassed because of all the people in Sullivan who had seen us getting arrested, and seen how crazy my mother looked, twitching, waving her arms, and running at the mouth.
Finally, the woman my mother had punched changed her mind about pressing charges and just wanted it all over. She’d left our bag of things with the cops, and so they gave it back to my mother, let her call Candy for a ride, and released us with a warning to stay out of trouble. That was fine with me but my mother did not appreciate their advice to get clean and start taking care of her business, so she told them to go screw themselves as she stalked out, with me and the garbage bag once again dragging along behind her.
We had no money and nowhere to go, so we stayed up at the big, ramshackle Fee farmhouse on the back mountain ridge for the rest of the winter, the late spring, and into the beginning of summer. I learned to move silently in the background, a dirty, neglected little kid with no voice, no wants, and who made no trouble so as not to call the wrath of the eight or so tweaking adults who lived there down on me. I drifted, faded, and became a listless, ghostlike scavenger who took what she could get. I lived mostly in my head, and for a while actually convinced myself that I was a survivor of one of those catastrophic earthquakes or tornados I used to see on the Weather Channel, a dazed, bewildered, and emotionless girl picking her way through an endless landscape of foul and stinking rubble to try and come out on the other side.
Most of the Fees used their own meth, but they still made money selling it, and my mother moved into Candy’s brother Bobby’s bedroom with him, became his woman, so she had some money then, too, and of course all the high she could ever need. I was left to curl up wherever I could find a spot and so at first I tried to sleep in the little bedroom with four of the nine other kids but the room was a horror of stacked junk, peed-on sheets, torn window screens, cockroaches everywhere, burps, farts, kicking, pinching, and the ever-blanketing stench of the unwashed.