Momma says she don’t remember Toomey River, even though she knows she was there, even though she has the scars to prove it. I think she’s lying, but she says it’s just like being born. You don’t remember that neither, but you know sure as the sun come up you were there.
“Too much mess,” Momma says, exhaling and flicking the loose ash from her cigarette. Blue smoke curls around her auburn hair and she takes another long pull, ragged breath raking her blackened lungs. “Too much pain and too much mess. Ain’t nothin’ worth rememberin’ ‘bout that and your mind knows it, so it forgets it for you.”
That’s what she says about Toomey River. Too much pain and too much mess, so her mind just forgets it. Mine will, too, she tells me.
“You’ll see,” she says, one hand on the steering wheel, the other pointing her cigarette at me between tobacco-stained fingers. I can see her pink lipstick on the end of it, a perfect imprint of her thin, papery lips. “One day it’ll just be gone. Poof!” – she flicks her fingers – “Just like that!” And then she laughs, a thick, damp laugh like she’s swallowed a sponge. “Your mind’ll clear it out just like it cleared out the mess of your birth ‘fore you was old enough to realize it went missin’.”
I shove my hands under my skinny legs and stare at the ash falling like snowflakes at my feet. “Oh, what,” she says, pinching me. “You think I’m lyin’? You think I don’t know? Well, you mark my words, Tillary Ames Brick.” And she is suddenly hard, the laughter gone from her eyes, her flint-like voice willing truth into her words. “Soon you won’t remember it at all. You mark my words.”
Momma is wrong, though. I remember everything.
*******
She walks quickly, purposeful but unsteady in her heels, shoulder-bag clutched tightly at her side, a cloud of dust rising at her feet. Coils of tightly-wound razor wire snake like silver ribbons along the top of the concrete wall, glinting in the light of the bright, high sun. She glances up at them, green eyes squinting into the light, and touches one trembling hand to the wall to steady herself. She presses the back of her other hand to her face, blotting sweat from her brow and her cheeks, and draws one long, anxious breath.
At the security gate, she exchanges her shoulder bag for an ID badge and, heels clicking, follows the path worn into to the mottled gray tile by other feet, around the corner to the right, then down a long corridor to another checkpoint. Beyond that checkpoint, a set of thick steel doors clang open and then shut behind her with a tiny, anti-climactic click. She looks around in surprise. She didn’t expect there’d be so many people, or such bright, warm light. She didn’t expect to see giggling children, unfettered by fear or unanswered questions; or loyal friends; or steadfast wives, cloaked in forgiveness and love. She expected a place of reckoning, of repentance and regret.
She pulls a yellowed photograph from the back pocket of her jeans and studies the face in the picture once more, then looks around the room again. And there, like he’s slipped in through a crack in the water-stained wall, sits a gaunt, spectral man, gray tufts of hair sprouting from a pasty, faintly freckled crown. The beard is gone, the hairline higher and the creases around his mouth much deeper, but there is no mistaking him.
She looks at the picture again and it strikes her that, in the flesh, he looks more like a photograph than the one in her hand; like some pale facsimile of reality, with all his color stamped out. She watches him, transfixed. The bony fingers of his left hand pick reflexively at his yellow teeth, the bony fingers of his right clasp a photo of his own. She knows without looking it is a photo of her, the one she sent him when he agreed to meet, and she wonders, with a twinge of disappointment, why he is not right now studying it, searching each visitor’s face for its match. She is suddenly, irrationally self-conscious about her outfit and begins a frantic, surreptitious examination of each piece, shoes first.
She feels it the instant she looks down: the subtle weight, like breath, of a stare. She looks up and sees him, blinking bald eyes regarding her, then the picture, then her again. She takes a breath.
“Well,” she says finally and steps towards him. “Hi Daddy.”
******
I didn’t know my father in his youth. He wasn’t present for my birth, having disappeared within hours of Momma’s announcement that she was pregnant. And he reappeared only once more, three years later, briefly and violently at Toomey River which, despite Momma’s willful insistence, I remember with terrifying if disjointed clarity, and always the same way: I remember my dress, yellow like the sun, with tiny button trim around the collar and lace ruffles at the hem. It was a new dress, for my birthday, the only dress I’d ever worn that Loma hadn’t worn first. We were playing on the river bank that day, Loma and me, dancing and skipping in circles, our sweaty hands clasped tightly and slipping, slipping, slipping; singing “Here We Go ‘Round the Mulberry Bush,” our laughter like wind chimes.
I think that’s why I didn’t hear it. Didn’t hear Momma screaming; didn’t hear the pop!, like hot corn exploding in Mr. Culpepper’s fancy machine at carnival; didn’t hear the dull thud that followed. Because we were laughing; I was laughing. I just saw my dress, yellow like the sun, with a new, fine spray of red polka dots across the front.
I remember laughing louder then, thinking how lucky I was; thinking I’d been given the most beautiful dress in the world, with tiny button trim and ruffled lace hem that changed colors at will; thinking nobody had a dress like mine, not even Loma.
I didn’t notice that Loma’s hands had slipped from mine, or wonder why she was no longer laughing. I didn’t even see her lying there – her own pink dress puddled at her knees, and a single darker, redder polka dot spreading across her chest – until his rough hands gripped and lifted me. That’s when I saw her, with Momma crouched beside her, gathering her into her arms and pressing her pale, still face to another florid polka dot now blooming on Momma’s shoulder.
I remember seeing them shrink before me, Momma and Loma, disappearing in the bright light reflecting off the river, as the strange man with the scratchy beard and burnt-toast breath ran, yelling at me to hush, his sharp ribs pressing against the flesh of my belly while I twisted and kicked at the air in vain. I could hear Momma’s screams now, and my own. And the strange man’s labored, panting breath. And then Abel Brick’s black, angry shouts as he ran to his truck for his hunting rifle.
And then I remember silence, and glass falling like rain all around me, and the strange man’s bony arms pulling me tighter, covering my head, my face, my arms, his wet cheeks pressed to mine, rocking me, murmuring gentle words I could not hear or understand.
*******
It was this single act of tenderness, of unconscious paternal instinct in the wake of his desperate, craven violence that prompted me to visit my father at the prison so many years later.
Momma was gone by then, dropped dead at thirty-nine, during my freshman year of college. She was in the kitchen baking bread when she collapsed – from the weight of her too many fictions, I was convinced – her final cigarette still stuck to her pink-lipsticked lips and burning a hole in the yellow linoleum floor on which Abel found her sprawled. “I kept tellin’ her to quit,” he told me when he reached me in my dorm that night. Officially, it was a heart attack, caused by a tiny pellet of birdshot buried in her shoulder, expelled from my father’s shotgun at Toomey River, which migrated to her heart and pierced the pericardium, then lodged itself in the heart-muscle wall.
And Abel, too, the only father my mother ever claimed for me; he followed Momma two years later. It was lung cancer that took Abel, a swift, aggressive cancer that wasted his strong, sturdy frame with savage speed. He had never smoked a cigarette in his life.
I was thirty-six when I went to the prison, a single mother with two small children of my own and a store of sorrows grown too heavy to bear alone. As my father stood to greet me, laboring to pull his thin, rickety frame upright, I saw right away the ghost my mother was running from all those years; I saw it in the long neck, the narrow hips, the knock-knees – my neck, my hips, my knees – and in the hollows of his cheeks and the strength of his chin.
I reached out, without thinking, and touched his face. As my fingers traced his thin lips, so like my own, I thought of the wounds that just my face inflicted on my mother’s heart; and I thought, then, of how fiercely she claimed me as solely her own and then, later, Abel’s. I thought of her necessary fictions, her deliberately selective memory, and the daily battle she waged to love the very picture of the one who had rent her heart in two. I thought of all these things, and marveled at my betrayal, at my cowardice in coming here, and I wept.
And then my father – stooped with age, vanquished by guilt, crippled with regret – wrapped his bony arms around me and pulled me close, pressing his wet cheeks to my own, and held me tight. And a grace I could not have known nor dreamed he possessed, lit my father’s pale, sunken face, shining brightly; shining yellow, like the sun.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Snow
Agnes cocks her head and peers out her windshield at the wide, blank sky in search of the sun. It is nearly four o’clock in the afternoon and since she watched it set over St. Louis the day before there has been no sign of it. No grand symphonic sunrise, no mighty crimson ball bleeding boldly into the welkin. Just the ink-black sky of the pre-dawn morning gradually fading to a pale, sooty gray.
She has been driving for two days now – nearly thirty-one hours total – stopping only for gas and one brief fitful nap in the backseat of her Nova when her eyes, burning behind heavy lids, could no longer resist the persistent tug of sleep. She checks her watch and reaches for the Styrofoam cup wedged between her seat and the emergency brake and swallows the last of the bitter black coffee she purchased that morning. Noble saguaros flash past her windows, glowing eerily in the gray light, against the gray sky. She shivers, fumbles one-handed with the buttons of her jean jacket, then reaches for the heater and turns it up as high as it will go. She checks her watch again.
James will be back from Omaha by now and will have found the note. She knows the first thing he’ll do is check for the gun, and that he’ll be both surprised and relieved when, heart pounding, he pulls the loose brick from its place under the sink and finds it there, still empty, the box of ammunition still wedged behind it and gathering dust.
They fought for weeks about the gun, Agnes insisting she needed it to feel safe, James insisting she only needed him to feel safe. “You don’t understand,” she yelled, stamping and snorting around the tiny room they shared. “Yes, I do,” he said quietly, his huge calloused hands closing around the gun in her own small ones. She was shaking, her breath coming in short, panicked bursts. His gray eyes studied her, measured her desperation. “I know what it’s for, Agnes,” he said, prizing it from her fingers and setting it on the writing desk that doubled as their breakfast table. He touched her weary, faintly-lined face. “You don’t need it. Not anymore.” She collapsed against him then, her clenched fists beating against his barrel chest, fifteen years of unshed tears soaking his shirt.
In the end, though, Agnes could not let it go. And James, because he could not let her go, let her keep it. She found the loose brick under the sink a few weeks later when she was fixing a leak, a single, orphaned key – like for a briefcase or a strongbox – behind it. She emptied the gun of its bullets and tucked it in the small hollow, along with the box of ammunition, then tied the key on a string and gave it to James that night. He promised he would never take it off. When she found it a week ago, it was hiding in the folds of the sheets of their bed, the string so frayed it fell apart in her fingers. He’d dressed in the dark that morning, hurrying to make up the minutes he overslept. By the time he realized it had fallen off he was in his rig ten miles past Hagerstown and too far behind schedule to turn around.
He called her when he got to Omaha, though, to tell her that he missed her, that he didn’t need a key to remind him how much, and that he’d tell anyone who’d listen, just watch him. His Agnes, he’d called her. His Agnes from Arizona. She’d smiled in spite of herself, then cut a new length of string and tied the key around her own neck. She was holding it as she slept the night the call came, pressed so tightly to her chest that it left a perfect imprint on her breast. She didn’t hear the phone until the fourth ring, just as the machine picked up. It was her uncle.
“Agnes,” he said, his voice tight. “Your mother’s sick. It’s time you come home now. It’s been long enough.” He paused then, as if to say something else, but only managed a low rattling sound in his throat, and hung up.
Agnes lay in bed for almost three hours, staring up at the ceiling and contemplating the message. She sighed and turned James’ key over in her hands. She could feel the darkness closing in around her and drew her knees to her chest, flexing her bare feet, like she might somehow push it away. Finally, she sat up, swung her legs to the side and ran her fingers through her tangled brown hair. She touched her feet to the cold concrete floor and reached for a dingy canvas bag hanging from the back of a nearby chair, her breath forming damp clouds in the chilly pre-dawn air. She fished a pair of jeans from the bag and wriggled into them, then pulled on a long-sleeved t-shirt, a sweater and a pair of scuffed boots. She switched on the lamp beside the bed, boiled some water in the one pot they owned and warmed her hands around a mug of instant coffee, her legs folded under her on the chair, her left elbow resting on the desk.
She sipped her coffee slowly, composing the note she would leave for James in her mind. When she was satisfied, she rummaged through the desk for a pencil and scratched it on a blank page she tore from the back of a nearby paperback. She placed it, with his key, in the center of the desk, then rinsed the coffee cup and pot and straightened the bed. She packed her canvas bag with the few things in the room that were hers – her clothes, a pair of tennis shoes, two paperback novels, a few simple toiletries. When she finished, she threw on her jean jacket, hoisted the bag on her shoulder and switched off the light.
She took a step towards the door then stopped, switched the light back on and took a long look around the room. The bed, a lumpy full-size mattress mounted on a thin piece of plywood and four cinderblocks, was tucked in the back left corner across from the desk. There was a sink under a low-hanging eave in the corner furthest from the door and beside that a rolling coat rack she’d scavenged from an alley behind a hotel, her pink apron uniform still hanging forlornly on the end. Next to the coat rack, an electric burner balanced precariously on a large wooden crate stacked neatly with dog-eared paperbacks.
“You can stay as long as you need to,” James had said the night he first brought her here, his big hands twisting the key in the lock. “It’s not much but” – he pushed open the heavy door – “I’m on the road most of the time anyhow.”
“Yeah, it’ll prolly be just a couple, few days,” she said, stepping around him and surveying the neat, spare room. “Can’t stay anywhere too long, y’know? Get restless.” She threw her arms out, wiggled them comically, and laughed, a tinny, girlish giggle that surprised her. His was not the first stranger’s bed she would make her own, nor the first to bring her to his home, but he lacked the same self-loathing shared by all the others, the same despair she plucked with expert fingers to get whatever it was she needed. He was at home in the world and this self-possession unnerved her.
“There’s a cot under the bed,” he said, ducking in the doorway and tossing his keys on the desk. “I’ll sleep on that. You can take the bed – it’ll be much more comfortable.”
Agnes turned to him, confused. “Oh! Oh, no. No – don’t be silly,” she said, recovering. “The cot will be just fine for me. Besides,” she added, dropping her bag on the floor, “I don’t guess you’d likely fit on it.”
He nodded then, smiled, a wide, unselfconscious smile, and reached under the bed for the cot. “Well, let me just get it set it up for you then.”
Agnes looked at him, noting the kindness in his gray eyes, the graceful, cursive way his giant body moved, and his low, gentle voice, and knew right away she could not stay. “Y’know, I should go, actually,” she started, bending over to grab her bag. “It’s prolly better if I just find a mo – ”
“Please stay,” he said. Just like that – no pleading, no desperation. And so she did. Stayed for ten months, sharing his bed – the cot was folded and put away the next morning without a word between them – and as many of her secrets as she dared. It was the longest she’d lived anywhere the last fifteen years.
*****
It is late when Agnes pulls into the empty parking lot of a cheerless, ramshackle motel, peeling red paint like tiny scales on its façade, weathered boards creaking in the desert wind. It’s been nearly three months since Christmas, but a single strand of colored lights still hangs loosely over the door, blinking feebly, a plastic wreath scratching the glass. She taps the service bell at the front desk and a slight, withered woman shuffles in, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Agnes pays for her room, takes the key, and trudges up the metal stairs to number twelve.
She steps in through the doorway, shaking the dust from her boots, and tosses her keys and her bag on the nearby table; it wobbles on uneven legs. She steadies the table with her hip then slides her hands into her back pockets, her knuckles pressing against the firm flesh of her bottom. She hooks her right foot behind her left knee, a blue-jeaned flamingo, and looks around the room. It’s pretty much what she expected – dreary faux wood-paneled walls, tattered yellow curtains printed with tiny green leaves, faded orange carpet.
It reminds her of Uncle Morty’s house, of his finished basement with the orange shag rug and rabbit-eared television and the green and yellow paisley pull-out couch with its matching green and yellow knit afghan. She feels her stomach tighten, a sick dread catching in her throat. Reflexively, she waves her hand, as if to push away the memory of his hot breath, his sagging, pasty white body pressed against her taught, youthful one. A skinny fat man, she’d always thought, the weight of his soft, flaccid belly bowing his back and casting a shadow over his twiggy thighs. The shape of lazy.
Once, after he’d finished with her and lay panting on top of her, his body slick with sweat, she took hold of the dimpled flesh around his waist and, before she could stop herself, she giggled. He hit her, then – so hard her cheek swelled and darkened. She was so startled she didn’t even cry out, just looked at him blankly, then pushed him off her, gathered her clothes and left without a word.
“What in the hell…” Shirl had murmured when Agnes scuffed in to the kitchen the next morning. She set down her coffee cup and peered at her daughter through bleary, bloodshot eyes, then grabbed her by the chin and yanked her face upwards. “Aw, shit, Agnes. What did you do?”
Agnes had considered lying to her mother, knowing Shirl never believed the truth when it issued from her lips, until she spied the contents of her “coffee” cup and smelled her sharp, fermented breath and realized her mother was too drunk to discern her bacon from her eggs, never mind the dubious claims of her peculiar youngest daughter against her favorite brother, so she went with the truth.
“Uncle Morty did it,” Agnes said, wincing slightly from the pinch of her mother’s fingernails on her skin, and before she could say another word Shirl had grabbed the car keys and her purple terry robe and was stumbling out the door, robe flapping in the wind, screen door clapping behind her.
“Don’t you worry, Agnes!” she called over her shoulder as she yanked open the rusted door of their maroon Eldorado. “I’ll take care of your Uncle Morty!” She jammed the key in the ignition and pumped the gas. “Sonofabitch thinks he can slap my daughter around?” she hollered, blue eyes blazing. The engine spluttered and coughed, choking on the excess fuel flooding it; she turned the key and pumped again. “I swear to God, I’ll – shit!” she shouted and thumped the steering wheel, “Shit! Shit! Shit!”
Agnes stood in the doorway of their slumping blue house, right foot hooked behind her left knee, and giggled, her pink mouth hidden behind nail-bitten fingers. She could hardly believe it. In all her thirteen years she’d never known her mother to react so swiftly in her favor. Despite Shirl’s obvious impairment, Agnes felt a rush of filial gratitude. She watched her mother kick and thump some more, until the car finally started, then she turned back into the house and hurried into the tiny bathroom.
She switched on the bald yellow bulb swinging from the water-stained ceiling and examined her face in the tarnished mirror. An angry, purple bruise spread from her left temple to the rounded peak of her delicate cheekbone, a red welt blooming in the center just beside her eye. She leaned in closer; the light from the swinging bulb reflected off her shiny, distent skin, a tiny silver sliver appearing, disappearing, appearing, disappearing, in time with bulb’s arc. Agnes touched her cheek lightly, reverently, then took a deep breath, gritted her teeth, and slapped herself as hard as she could, right where the silver sliver appeared. Her eyes watered and the room spun around her, but she grasped the lip of the sink to steady herself, took another deep breath, and slapped herself again. And then again; and then again; and then again. She slapped herself, over and over, until the purple splotch turned almost black and her rapidly swelling cheek began to squeeze her eye shut.
She stepped back and stared at her lumpy, misshapen face, then smiled triumphantly. It was the only visible evidence of his habitual violence against her and, at the moment, it felt it like a medal. She knew that no one who saw it would ever make her go back there again. She threw her shoulders back, lifted her chin and turned to leave.
Nonie was standing in the doorway, arms folded, eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?” she asked, suspicious, and crossed one long leg languidly over the other, flaunting – in that single move – all the world-weariness, perspicacity and vaunted teenage wisdom that came with her three extra years. Agnes cocked her head and tucked her hair behind her left ear.
“Oh my God! Agnes!” Nonie shrieked, seeing her sister’s full, tumid face. She grabbed Agnes by the shoulders and hustled her back into the bathroom, slamming the door behind them. “What the hell did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Agnes snapped, defensive. “Uncle Morty did it.”
“Uncle Mo – ? Oh, Jesus, Agnes. Come on,” Nonie said and pushed her down on to the toilet seat. “I saw you hitting yourself.” She grabbed Agnes’ face and tilted it towards the light. “Jesus Christ,” she murmured as she peered at the gnarled, discolored skin. She shook her head. “You are one sick sicko, Agnes. Seriously. Why would you do this to yourself?”
Agnes slumped on the toilet seat and started to cry. “I didn’t do it to myself, Nonie! He did it first! He hit me! Right after he did all the other stu – ”
“Shhh!” Nonie hissed and clamped her hand over Agnes’ mouth. “What did I tell you about that? You never ever talk about that, you hear me? Never.” Nonie kept her hand pressed to Agnes’ mouth and leaned in, her bubblegum breath hot and close. “Never ever, never ever. Understand?” Agnes nodded, fat tears leaking from her frightened brown eyes. Nonie pressed harder. “Do you. Under. Stand.” Agnes nodded again, her hands clutching Nonie’s bony forearm, her whole body shaking. Nonie pulled her hand away and brushed a loose tangle of hair from Agnes’ face, gently wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Ok then,” she said, exhaling. “Ok. You’ll be ok, Agnes. I promise. It’ll all be over soon and you’ll be ok.” But now Nonie’s own strawberry lips were quivering, her blue eyes shining. “It’ll all be ok,” she said again and Agnes threw her arms around Nonie’s neck, buried her face in her sister’s lilac-scented hair and sobbed harder. “Shhh,” Nonie whispered, fighting the growing lump in her throat. She wrapped her spindly arms around Agnes and rocked her. “Don’t cry, Agnes. Please don’t cry. It will all be over soon. I promise.”
Agnes curled herself more tightly around her sister. “I just want it to stop,” she whimpered. “Please make it stop.”
Nonie pressed her lips to the top of Agnes’ head and held her close. It would stop, she knew, but she couldn’t make it. It would stop only when he decided, when his rapture turned to revulsion and she could no longer satisfy him. And then he would discard her, like so much chattel, with no ceremony or explanation, and move on to the next one. And she would feel a burden lifting, breathe a cautious sigh of relief, and slowly, carefully labor to reclaim herself, to settle back in to her child’s skin only to realize she had shed it the first time she shed her clothes for him so many years ago. And she would feel lost. And she would marvel at the ache that pressed against her ribs, at the longing that consumed her – the longing to be, again, something for someone, even him.
Finally, Nonie pulled back, forced a cheerful, conspiratorial smile. “C’mon,” she said. Let’s get out of here.” She took Agnes by the hand and led her out of the bathroom, down the hall, and out the front door through the buffel grass and brittle bush in their front yard. Soon they were skipping, then running, giant tumbleweeds chasing them all the way into town. They licked ice cream cones, rode a penny horseback ride, and stole two lipsticks – candy apple red for Agnes, bubblegum pink for Nonie – from Emory’s drugstore. In the picnic park at the town center, Nonie took the scarf she had wrapped around her wrist and tied a blindfold over Agnes’ eyes, then spun her around in circles until she was dizzy with laughter. They collapsed onto each other, hands clasped, breathless and heaving.
It was dark when they returned home, eyes bright, skin glowing from their afternoon of girlish indulgence. Shirl was back – the Eldorado was parked in the carport, along with a battered old pick-up they knew belonged to Dendy, Shirl’s on-again-off-again boyfriend. The light from the front room glowed orange in the windows and they could hear Dendy’s hoarse, squawking laughter all the way outside.
Agnes pushed open the screen door and felt her stomach drop. Dendy was draped lazily in an armchair, his back to the door, Uncle Morty across from him on the couch. Uncle Morty was leaning forward, feet splayed, a can of beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other; he was telling a story, a scornful, mocking story. It was a minute before Agnes realized it was about her.
“Blam! Right smack in to it!” he finished, snorting and slapping his knees. “Can you believe that? Right into the goddamned pipe!” He shook his head. “I’ll tell you this” – he took a long puff on his cigarette, exhaled – “she may be pretty, but she’s not very bright.” Dendy hooted. Uncle Morty took another puff and eased back in to the cushions, twin clouds hissing from his narrow, pinched nostrils.
“Ain’t that right, Eleanor,” Uncle Morty called, spying the two sisters huddled in the front hall by the door. His lips curled lasciviously around her name. El-ean-or. Nonie felt her cheeks color. No one called her by her given name, except for Uncle Morty, and only when he needed her, which he hadn’t for almost two years now. “Dumb as a post, that one,” he said, gesturing towards Agnes with the beer can before taking a swig. He swirled the bitter brown liquid in his mouth, working his tongue. His eyes traveled from Nonie’s bare, golden-brown shoulders to her wide hips and down the length of her lean, slender legs. He laughed. “Well, come on now, girls. Don’t be shy. Come and say hello to your uncle.” Agnes inched closer to Nonie and reached for her hand; neither one of them moved. “Jesus, Shirl!” he barked over his shoulder in to the kitchen. “Ain’t you taught your daughters any manners?”
Shirl ambled in to the living room, a beer in one hand, a bottle of scotch in the other; she had the limp, tottering gait of a new foal. “I guess not,” she hiccupped and handed the beer to Dendy. “Seems I’ve raised a pair of insolent, ungrateful brats,” she said, sinking into the armchair on top of him. “Not to mention deceitful little devils. Say hello to your Uncle, Nonie. And you,” she said, turning and pointing at Agnes, “You tell him you’re sorry for lying to me about this he-hit-you nonsense.” She folded herself into Dendy’s burly frame and nuzzled his neck.
Agnes blinked and her mouth went slack. She looked at Uncle Morty, who was smiling smugly, then the back of her mother’s bobbing head; her eyes narrowed. She stood up straighter and squeezed Nonie’s hand tight. “No,” she said finally.
“Excuse me?” Shirl said, twisting her neck to look at Agnes, her face dark.
“I said, No,” Agnes repeated, stepping towards her. “He hit me. I didn’t walk into a pipe, if that’s what he told you. He hit me. And that’s not all he did,” she said, suddenly bold. “Is it.” She shot Morty a taunting, threatening glance. He shifted in his seat, his pale skin shining with nervous sweat, but he held his tongue. She turned to Nonie. “Tell them, Nonie. Tell them what he did to me. And to you.”
Nonie looked stricken; her eyes flickered from Agnes to Uncle Morty to her mother and Dendy, still entwined on the armchair. She bit her lip. “Agnes – ” she started.
“Tell them!” Agnes pleaded. “Tell them about the basement and the pull-out couch! And, and, and ‘poker night!’ Tell them – tell them why Auntie June left him!” she spluttered. Agnes was frantic now, rage burning like hot coils in her belly. “Nonie, tell them!”
But Nonie was silent, a victim of her own longing. She looked away from Agnes and stared at her feet. She wouldn’t tell; she couldn’t tell. It was her secret, too, after all. And she would keep it even as it devoured her, even as it swallowed her whole.
“Oh, you are a prize,” Shirl slurred, rising. “I mean, you really are a prize, Agnes.” She shook her head, poured herself more scotch. “Just like your goddamned father. Always telling stories. You oughtta find something constructive to do with that imagination,” she said. And then she laughed, poking Dendy, who laughed, too.
Agnes grabbed a flannel shirt hanging from the coat rack nearby and dabbed violently at her wet cheeks, then threw open the front door. “Agnes – ” Nonie said, reaching for her. “Go to hell,” Agnes snarled, slapping her hand away. “Go to hell with the rest of them. I hate you!” And she ran out the door into the night.
If only she’d known, Agnes thought later, as she watched them carrying Nonie’s body away, her hands still sticky with Nonie’s blood, her clothes still wet where she’d pressed her sister’s limp body against her own, her opened veins soaking Agnes through to her skin. If she’d known, she would have kept their promise; kept their secret. If she’d known, she would have taken it all back and sealed it away for good, then taken hold of Nonie’s proffered hand and run away with her forever.
If only she’d known.
*****
Agnes sits on the edge of the creaking motel bed and eases her feet from her boots. Her stomach rumbles. She is famished, but the restaurant has already closed and the vending machine is broken so she fills the ice bucket with water from the tap and drinks until her belly pushes out against the waistband of her jeans. She feels the water sloshing around her stomach, like some stormy sea, and pictures all her regrets as tiny boats tossing around inside her, capsizing and sinking under their grim weight. She is restless. She peels off her clothes and climbs into the shower, the hot water like needles on her skin. She thinks of Nonie and her blood, and scrubs her body until it is red and raw; she thinks of Shirl, drunk and slurring; of Uncle Morty and the pull-out couch. And then she thinks of James and the gun, and of how he thinks he knows what it is for. He thinks it was meant for Uncle Morty; he doesn’t know that it was meant for her. It has always been meant for her.
In the morning she wakes to find herself sprawled on top of the bedcovers, naked, a scratchy threadbare towel bunched and twisted around her waist. Her limbs are heavy and her head feels thick, like she’s been drinking. She does not remember turning off the water; she does not remember coming to the bed; she does not remember sleeping.
She dresses slowly, methodically, each action careful, as if she might break from the effort. Her hunger, so acute the night before, has been displaced by another kind of ache, this one more pervasive, less precise. She makes herself a cup of coffee and pours it out without drinking, then folds the towel, straightens the rumpled bedcovers, and rinses out the mug. She knows that someone will come after her to do these things – someone with fresh towels, new linens and a clean mug – but she needs the mundanity of these actions; she needs the order they impose on her chaos.
She leaves the motel just before dawn, her Nova the only vehicle on the road for miles. It is still early when she enters Brill, and she decides to take the long route to the house, through town – past the ice cream parlor, past the penny horseback ride in front of Emory’s, past the picnic park. She is surprised by how untouched each seems, how unspoiled. She’d expected visible scars, or at least the flash of ghosts. But each place is exactly how she left it, no more affected by her personal tragedy than a brick or a stone might be.
She drives aimlessly, by rote. She has not been here in fifteen years but she knows these streets like she knows her own body. She names them: Hickory, Hayduke, Silverleaf, Blackbird… She turns, finally, down Palo Verde, and pulls up in front of the house, car still running, her hands tight on the wheel. She steps on the gas pedal lightly, inching forward. Nobody knows she is here, she tells herself. She could just turn around and head right back. Instead she turns the car off and exits, cold wind whipping her hair, dust kicking up in swirls around her feet.
The house – still slumping, still blue – strikes a lonely figure against the chalky, sunless sky and seems to groan with each icy gust. She pulls her jacket tight and shuffles up the walk to the front door, her muscles quivering. She glances back at her car, the engine ticking as it cools, then knocks - softly, tentatively - her right foot on the stoop, her left still on the walkway. She waits, arms crossed, shivering.
The door opens a crack and a stooped, paunchy man peeks out. He looks tired, careworn, his spotty jaundiced skin hanging loosely over his jaw like saddlebags. “Can I help – ” he starts, then his baggy eyes widen slightly. “Agnes,” he says finally, though he does not sound surprised. If anything, he seems relieved. He pushes the screen door wider and steps aside. “Come in.”
Agnes stares at him, unmoving, and her face flames. Come in?? She feels her anger rise up from where she's hidden it all these years; it tastes like lead in her mouth. "I'm sorry," she says suddenly and steps down off the stoop. "This is - this was a mistake."
"Agnes, please..." he says.
Agnes stops and turns to face him. She can't decide if it's pity or revulsion she feels.
"Please," he says again. Just like that - no pleading, no desperation. She looks back towards her car, still ticking in the cool, gray light, and then again to him. She touches her hand to her throat, searching instinctively for the key she'd been wearing around her neck when the call came. James' key. Her fingers curl instead around the collar of her jacket and she glances one last time at her car. She sighs.
"Well," she says, throwing her arms up. "I've come this far."
Inside, the house is dark and hushed; it seems bigger than she remembers. As a girl the walls had seemed always to be closing in on her. Now, they seem to be sagging outward, full of too many secrets, too many sorrows.
“She’s back here,” Morty says, and leads her down the hall to the back bedroom – Nonie’s room – his stiff, lumbering gait slow. Agnes feels her knees buckle and she steadies herself against the wall. “There’s more light comes in there than her room,” he rationalizes. “Though not lately, with the weather we been having.” He turns to her as they approach the door. “She’s been in and out of consciousness for days now,” he says, pushing it open quietly. “Doc says it won’t be long.” Agnes leans around him to peer inside. Shirl’s wasted frame makes a barely perceptible lump in the middle of the bed, her white hair spread out on the pillow. A petite nurse, defiant blonde curls escaping her headband, places her fingers on her mother’s thin wrist, searching for signs of life.
“You go on in if you like,” Morty says. “I know she’d appreciate the company.” But Agnes is still, her back pressed to the doorjamb. She is quiet, her eyes fixed on her mother’s sunken face, on the slight rise and fall of the yellow blanket on her chest.
“How long has she been sick?” she asks.
“This time? ‘Bout six weeks, I reckon. This one came on fast,” he says. He is looking at Shirl, too, his eyes pained. His grief hovers around him like a cloud. They stand that way for what feels like hours. “Well,” Morty says finally, turning to Agnes. “You go on in whenever you’re ready.”
“Let me just – I think I’m just gonna go get my things first,” Agnes says, then turns abruptly and runs down the hall and out the front door to her car, chest heaving. She feels woozy, and braces herself against the hood, fumbling for her keys, then collapses. When she comes to, she is staring into the worried face of the blond nurse.
“Are you ok?” the nurse asks. “I came out to my car to fetch a sweater – Can you believe this weather? – and I saw you lying there. Are you ok?”
“I’m fine,” Agnes says, struggling to her feet. “Just a little hungry, I think. Haven’t eaten much the last few days.” She ducks in the driver’s side door, reaching for her canvas bag, and wobbles. The nurse looks at her, raises an eyebrow. “No, really – I’m fine,” Agnes insists.
“You’re white as a sheet,” the nurse says, taking the bag and grasping Agnes’ elbow to steady her. “C’mon. I’ll make you a sandwich.”
In the kitchen, Agnes sits at the round Formica table and sips juice. Her entire body is buzzing, like a colony of bees inhabits her skin. The nurse sets a sandwich in front of her. “Thanks,” Agnes mumbles and takes a bite.
“Don’t mention it,” the nurse says. She is young and smiling, with the sort of sweetness that not even a job ushering the dying to death can corrupt. “I’m Edith,” she offers.
Agnes swallows, wipes her mouth. “Agnes,” she says. She takes another bite and studies the tiny blue flowers on the edge of her plate.
“Maybe you want to lie down for a minute, after you’ve finished,” Edith says, touching Agnes’ arm lightly. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you look like you haven’t slept much the last few days either.”
Agnes nods. The blue flowers look like they’re dancing. “Thank you for the sandwich,” is all she says.
When she finishes, she carries her plate to the sink and stares out the cracked window pane at the neighbor’s house, at the barrel cactus growing by the drain wall, at nothing at all. I should lie down for a minute, she thinks. I haven’t slept much the last few days.
She drifts down the hall to her old bedroom and pushes open the door. There are a few boxes stacked in the corner, and the old television from the living room sits on her desk, but it is otherwise the same as it was the day she left – same ruffled curtains, same peeling wallpaper, same Tiger Beat posters hanging from the walls. She sits on the edge of her bed, glimpsing her face in the mirror above her dresser. It is warped slightly, like a funhouse mirror. Her nose looks squished and flattened, and her eyes, each stamped with its own blue half-moon beneath it, droop comically. She looks like a basset hound.
She flops backwards and stares up at the loosening plaster in the ceiling. She imagines it caving in on her, a great white avalanche crushing her, squeezing out her breath. She tries to scream but when she opens her mouth it is full of tiny silver keys. She claws frantically at the rubble, gasping and kicking, but she just keeps sinking, sinking, sinking, until a large, calloused hand – James’ hand – reaches in and pulls her out and she is suddenly upright, heart pounding. She looks around. She has only been dreaming.
She checks her watch – it is after eight – and rises, pulling the patchy quilt off and wrapping it around her. It is freezing. She parts the ruffled curtains hanging over the window by her bed and looks out. The sky is a bright ghostly silver and the earth glows white. It is a minute before she realizes it, but it is snowing, fine powdery flakes that fall like sifted sugar and blanket the earth. Agnes opens the window and sticks her head out, feels the downy flakes on her skin, tastes them with her tongue. Agnes loves snow; loves the way it softens sharp edges and swallows sound. But mostly she loves the clean, blank canvas that a new snow brings. No matter how dirty or scarred the earth is, a new snow makes everything appear whole again.
She walks down the hall to Nonie’s room. Morty is beside the bed, holding Shirl’s frail hand; Edith has been replaced by the night nurse, a stout Mexican woman who bustles around, fussing over Morty and plumping pillows. She gathers an armload of wadded linens from the floor and starts towards the door. She sees Agnes and stops, studies her face.
“She is you mother?” she asks. Agnes nods. “Ees good you here now,” she says, patting Agnes’ arm. “Tha one” – she points at Morty – “He needa break. He neber leeb her side. All day, all night, he ees holdeen her hand. Hace penitencia,” she says, crossing herself. Agnes looks at her quizzically. “Hees dooween penance.” She shakes her head. “Hees dooween penance for sonesing.”
Agnes watches her as she walks away, her ample bottom swinging, white clogs squeaking on the wood floors. We are all doing penance for something, she thinks.
She steps cautiously into the room, finds a spot on the west wall by the window. She hooks her right foot behind her left knee, leans back.
“Maybe you’d like to sit down?” Morty asks after a few minutes.
“I’m good right here,” Agnes says.
He nods. “Well, you’ve at least set foot in the room now.”
“Just be glad I’ve set foot in this house now,” she snaps. He flinches. Hunched in his chair, he looks almost as frail as Shirl, hardly the hulking monster she remembers. Agnes sighs; she doesn’t have it in her anymore. She looks out the window through the part in the curtains. “It’s snowing,” she says.
He looks up. “Snowing? Since when?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I’ve been sleeping.” She presses her cheek to the cool glass of the window.
“Imagine that,” Morty says. “We’ve never seen snow in these parts, especially not this late. Shirl won’t believe it.”
Agnes smiles sadly – she’d scoff if she had any anger left – and turns to him. “That was always the trouble, Morty. Shirl never believed anything I told her.”
Morty looks away, shame coloring his face. Agnes turns back to the window. They are quiet, the only sound the soft whoosh of Shirl’s shallow breathing.
“I’m sorry, Agnes,” he says, finally. “I know that’s not enough, but it’s all I’ve got.”
Agnes wraps the quilt tighter, walks to the bed. She sits on the edge, opposite Morty, and takes Shirl’s other hand in her own. She brushes her mother’s white hair from her white cheek.
“I know,” she says.
*****
Agnes is sitting in Morty’s chair next to Shirl, knees drawn to her chest, still bundled as she was the night before in the quilt from her bedroom. Morty, after some prodding by Edith, has gone to the kitchen for a sandwich. It is still snowing.
Agnes picks up a picture frame from the table beside the bed. It is of her and Nonie, when they are four and seven years old. They are laughing, arms around each other, Nonie’s tongue red from the cherry popsicle in her hand and Agnes’ face smeared with chocolate. Agnes remembers the day it was taken. It was the Fourth of July and they were having a picnic in the park at the Brill town square. They were happy.
“Y’know, if you talk to her, she can hear you,” Edith says, swabbing Shirl’s mouth with a damp sponge. “She may not be able to respond, but she can definitely hear you.”
Agnes shrugs, sets the photo down. She’s not much for conversation with the living, never mind the dying. “I wouldn’t really know what to say,” she tells her.
Edith tucks an errant curl behind her ear. “That’s the thing,” she says, leaning over and lifting Shirl’s head gently. She flips the pillow underneath it and smoothes the cover. “You can say anything you want; anything at all. It’s really just the sound of your voice that matters.” She lays Shirl’s head down on the cool side of the pillow, then straightens. She searches Agnes’ face. “I’ll tell you what,” she says. “I’m just gonna go make myself a cup of tea and check on your uncle. Maybe give you some time, just the two of you.”
Agnes watches the door close softly behind Edith. She waits. Then takes Shirl’s hand in both of hers and exhales slowly. “Hey Shirl,” she says, after a minute. “It’s me – Agnes.” She rolls her eyes at herself. “I don’t really know how to do this,” she says. “But Edith – that’s your – she’s your nurse – says maybe I should try talking to you. Except I don’t really know what to say.” Shirl’s breathing is quick, labored. Agnes swallows. “You’d think after fifteen years I could come up with something, but there’s just…” She trails off, looks out the window. Her throat aches. “It’s snowing,” she offers, finally. “Right here in the lowest part of the Arizona desert, if you can believe it. It’s beautiful.” Her breath is now coming as quickly as Shirl’s and she tugs nervously at the blankets around her mother’s small body; her eyes fill. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, pushing back from the bed. “I can’t – I don’t know how to do this.” She yanks the quilt up around her shoulders and over her head, making a tent against the window; the draft from the window feels cool on her wet face.
She is still standing there when Morty ambles in. “Everything ok?” he asks.
“Fine,” Agnes says, wiping her eyes. “Everything’s fine.”
“She stir at all?” he asks. Agnes shakes her head. Morty reaches for the bench seat from Nonie’s old vanity and drags it to the bed, groaning as he settles his creaking frame on it. Shirl’s eyes flutter briefly and she lets out a low moan.
“Shirl?” Morty says, leaning closer and touching her hair.
Agnes turns from the window and steps towards the bed. “Mom,” she says.
Shirl opens her eyes and turns towards Agnes. She breathes in and makes a sound like gravel crunching. “Agnes…” she murmurs, lungs wheezing. “They found you.”
“Yeah, I’m right here,” Agnes says, taking her hand.
Shirl smiles and closes her eyes. She squeezes her daughter’s hand weakly. “Agnes,” she says. “Tell me about the snow.”
*****
It is almost three and the snow is long since gone, having burned off when the high Arizona sun finally came out from hiding that morning. They are standing at the cemetery, beside Shirl’s grave, the sun glinting off Morty’s balding head. Shirl’s coffin has been lowered into the ground next to Nonie’s; the priest has said his final words. Morty is staring down into the yawning hole, a small prayer card in his hand.
“It’s good you were here,” he says to Agnes.
Agnes nods. She turns to him, putting a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. “How did you find me?” she asks.
“Oh, we been looking for you for years,” he says, still staring down at the box. “Dendy had a cousin was a PI up in Phoenix. Fella named Hoke. When you left, Shirl hired him to try to track you down. After Nonie, well…” He trails off, clears his throat. “Couple times it looked like he had something but it never panned out. After a while, Shirl just gave up hope. That’s about when the first cancer came.” He folds the card in his hand, slips it in his pocket. “Then last week, we got a call out of the blue. It was Dendy’s cousin. He’d been doing some work in Omaha and overheard some trucker going on about his girlfriend. ‘Agnes from Arizona,’ he kept saying. Hoke knew it was a long shot but he remembered this favor he’d promised his cousin so he did a little poking around and ended up with a phone number for us.”
“Huh,” is all Agnes can manage. And then she smiles.
Morty looks at her. “So you got a boyfriend then?”
She squints at him, the sun bright. “Yeah,” she says, nodding.
“Well, good for you, Agnes,” he says, meaning it. He turns back to the grave. “Good for you.”
Agnes watches him for a minute then heads for her car and climbs in. She peers out her window at him. He is crouched beside Nonie’s headstone now, fists clenched, body shaking. He is weeping.
She turns the key, steps on the gas and pulls away slowly. We are all doing penance for something, she thinks. We can only hope for a fresh new snow to blanket our souls and make us whole again.
She has been driving for two days now – nearly thirty-one hours total – stopping only for gas and one brief fitful nap in the backseat of her Nova when her eyes, burning behind heavy lids, could no longer resist the persistent tug of sleep. She checks her watch and reaches for the Styrofoam cup wedged between her seat and the emergency brake and swallows the last of the bitter black coffee she purchased that morning. Noble saguaros flash past her windows, glowing eerily in the gray light, against the gray sky. She shivers, fumbles one-handed with the buttons of her jean jacket, then reaches for the heater and turns it up as high as it will go. She checks her watch again.
James will be back from Omaha by now and will have found the note. She knows the first thing he’ll do is check for the gun, and that he’ll be both surprised and relieved when, heart pounding, he pulls the loose brick from its place under the sink and finds it there, still empty, the box of ammunition still wedged behind it and gathering dust.
They fought for weeks about the gun, Agnes insisting she needed it to feel safe, James insisting she only needed him to feel safe. “You don’t understand,” she yelled, stamping and snorting around the tiny room they shared. “Yes, I do,” he said quietly, his huge calloused hands closing around the gun in her own small ones. She was shaking, her breath coming in short, panicked bursts. His gray eyes studied her, measured her desperation. “I know what it’s for, Agnes,” he said, prizing it from her fingers and setting it on the writing desk that doubled as their breakfast table. He touched her weary, faintly-lined face. “You don’t need it. Not anymore.” She collapsed against him then, her clenched fists beating against his barrel chest, fifteen years of unshed tears soaking his shirt.
In the end, though, Agnes could not let it go. And James, because he could not let her go, let her keep it. She found the loose brick under the sink a few weeks later when she was fixing a leak, a single, orphaned key – like for a briefcase or a strongbox – behind it. She emptied the gun of its bullets and tucked it in the small hollow, along with the box of ammunition, then tied the key on a string and gave it to James that night. He promised he would never take it off. When she found it a week ago, it was hiding in the folds of the sheets of their bed, the string so frayed it fell apart in her fingers. He’d dressed in the dark that morning, hurrying to make up the minutes he overslept. By the time he realized it had fallen off he was in his rig ten miles past Hagerstown and too far behind schedule to turn around.
He called her when he got to Omaha, though, to tell her that he missed her, that he didn’t need a key to remind him how much, and that he’d tell anyone who’d listen, just watch him. His Agnes, he’d called her. His Agnes from Arizona. She’d smiled in spite of herself, then cut a new length of string and tied the key around her own neck. She was holding it as she slept the night the call came, pressed so tightly to her chest that it left a perfect imprint on her breast. She didn’t hear the phone until the fourth ring, just as the machine picked up. It was her uncle.
“Agnes,” he said, his voice tight. “Your mother’s sick. It’s time you come home now. It’s been long enough.” He paused then, as if to say something else, but only managed a low rattling sound in his throat, and hung up.
Agnes lay in bed for almost three hours, staring up at the ceiling and contemplating the message. She sighed and turned James’ key over in her hands. She could feel the darkness closing in around her and drew her knees to her chest, flexing her bare feet, like she might somehow push it away. Finally, she sat up, swung her legs to the side and ran her fingers through her tangled brown hair. She touched her feet to the cold concrete floor and reached for a dingy canvas bag hanging from the back of a nearby chair, her breath forming damp clouds in the chilly pre-dawn air. She fished a pair of jeans from the bag and wriggled into them, then pulled on a long-sleeved t-shirt, a sweater and a pair of scuffed boots. She switched on the lamp beside the bed, boiled some water in the one pot they owned and warmed her hands around a mug of instant coffee, her legs folded under her on the chair, her left elbow resting on the desk.
She sipped her coffee slowly, composing the note she would leave for James in her mind. When she was satisfied, she rummaged through the desk for a pencil and scratched it on a blank page she tore from the back of a nearby paperback. She placed it, with his key, in the center of the desk, then rinsed the coffee cup and pot and straightened the bed. She packed her canvas bag with the few things in the room that were hers – her clothes, a pair of tennis shoes, two paperback novels, a few simple toiletries. When she finished, she threw on her jean jacket, hoisted the bag on her shoulder and switched off the light.
She took a step towards the door then stopped, switched the light back on and took a long look around the room. The bed, a lumpy full-size mattress mounted on a thin piece of plywood and four cinderblocks, was tucked in the back left corner across from the desk. There was a sink under a low-hanging eave in the corner furthest from the door and beside that a rolling coat rack she’d scavenged from an alley behind a hotel, her pink apron uniform still hanging forlornly on the end. Next to the coat rack, an electric burner balanced precariously on a large wooden crate stacked neatly with dog-eared paperbacks.
“You can stay as long as you need to,” James had said the night he first brought her here, his big hands twisting the key in the lock. “It’s not much but” – he pushed open the heavy door – “I’m on the road most of the time anyhow.”
“Yeah, it’ll prolly be just a couple, few days,” she said, stepping around him and surveying the neat, spare room. “Can’t stay anywhere too long, y’know? Get restless.” She threw her arms out, wiggled them comically, and laughed, a tinny, girlish giggle that surprised her. His was not the first stranger’s bed she would make her own, nor the first to bring her to his home, but he lacked the same self-loathing shared by all the others, the same despair she plucked with expert fingers to get whatever it was she needed. He was at home in the world and this self-possession unnerved her.
“There’s a cot under the bed,” he said, ducking in the doorway and tossing his keys on the desk. “I’ll sleep on that. You can take the bed – it’ll be much more comfortable.”
Agnes turned to him, confused. “Oh! Oh, no. No – don’t be silly,” she said, recovering. “The cot will be just fine for me. Besides,” she added, dropping her bag on the floor, “I don’t guess you’d likely fit on it.”
He nodded then, smiled, a wide, unselfconscious smile, and reached under the bed for the cot. “Well, let me just get it set it up for you then.”
Agnes looked at him, noting the kindness in his gray eyes, the graceful, cursive way his giant body moved, and his low, gentle voice, and knew right away she could not stay. “Y’know, I should go, actually,” she started, bending over to grab her bag. “It’s prolly better if I just find a mo – ”
“Please stay,” he said. Just like that – no pleading, no desperation. And so she did. Stayed for ten months, sharing his bed – the cot was folded and put away the next morning without a word between them – and as many of her secrets as she dared. It was the longest she’d lived anywhere the last fifteen years.
*****
It is late when Agnes pulls into the empty parking lot of a cheerless, ramshackle motel, peeling red paint like tiny scales on its façade, weathered boards creaking in the desert wind. It’s been nearly three months since Christmas, but a single strand of colored lights still hangs loosely over the door, blinking feebly, a plastic wreath scratching the glass. She taps the service bell at the front desk and a slight, withered woman shuffles in, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Agnes pays for her room, takes the key, and trudges up the metal stairs to number twelve.
She steps in through the doorway, shaking the dust from her boots, and tosses her keys and her bag on the nearby table; it wobbles on uneven legs. She steadies the table with her hip then slides her hands into her back pockets, her knuckles pressing against the firm flesh of her bottom. She hooks her right foot behind her left knee, a blue-jeaned flamingo, and looks around the room. It’s pretty much what she expected – dreary faux wood-paneled walls, tattered yellow curtains printed with tiny green leaves, faded orange carpet.
It reminds her of Uncle Morty’s house, of his finished basement with the orange shag rug and rabbit-eared television and the green and yellow paisley pull-out couch with its matching green and yellow knit afghan. She feels her stomach tighten, a sick dread catching in her throat. Reflexively, she waves her hand, as if to push away the memory of his hot breath, his sagging, pasty white body pressed against her taught, youthful one. A skinny fat man, she’d always thought, the weight of his soft, flaccid belly bowing his back and casting a shadow over his twiggy thighs. The shape of lazy.
Once, after he’d finished with her and lay panting on top of her, his body slick with sweat, she took hold of the dimpled flesh around his waist and, before she could stop herself, she giggled. He hit her, then – so hard her cheek swelled and darkened. She was so startled she didn’t even cry out, just looked at him blankly, then pushed him off her, gathered her clothes and left without a word.
“What in the hell…” Shirl had murmured when Agnes scuffed in to the kitchen the next morning. She set down her coffee cup and peered at her daughter through bleary, bloodshot eyes, then grabbed her by the chin and yanked her face upwards. “Aw, shit, Agnes. What did you do?”
Agnes had considered lying to her mother, knowing Shirl never believed the truth when it issued from her lips, until she spied the contents of her “coffee” cup and smelled her sharp, fermented breath and realized her mother was too drunk to discern her bacon from her eggs, never mind the dubious claims of her peculiar youngest daughter against her favorite brother, so she went with the truth.
“Uncle Morty did it,” Agnes said, wincing slightly from the pinch of her mother’s fingernails on her skin, and before she could say another word Shirl had grabbed the car keys and her purple terry robe and was stumbling out the door, robe flapping in the wind, screen door clapping behind her.
“Don’t you worry, Agnes!” she called over her shoulder as she yanked open the rusted door of their maroon Eldorado. “I’ll take care of your Uncle Morty!” She jammed the key in the ignition and pumped the gas. “Sonofabitch thinks he can slap my daughter around?” she hollered, blue eyes blazing. The engine spluttered and coughed, choking on the excess fuel flooding it; she turned the key and pumped again. “I swear to God, I’ll – shit!” she shouted and thumped the steering wheel, “Shit! Shit! Shit!”
Agnes stood in the doorway of their slumping blue house, right foot hooked behind her left knee, and giggled, her pink mouth hidden behind nail-bitten fingers. She could hardly believe it. In all her thirteen years she’d never known her mother to react so swiftly in her favor. Despite Shirl’s obvious impairment, Agnes felt a rush of filial gratitude. She watched her mother kick and thump some more, until the car finally started, then she turned back into the house and hurried into the tiny bathroom.
She switched on the bald yellow bulb swinging from the water-stained ceiling and examined her face in the tarnished mirror. An angry, purple bruise spread from her left temple to the rounded peak of her delicate cheekbone, a red welt blooming in the center just beside her eye. She leaned in closer; the light from the swinging bulb reflected off her shiny, distent skin, a tiny silver sliver appearing, disappearing, appearing, disappearing, in time with bulb’s arc. Agnes touched her cheek lightly, reverently, then took a deep breath, gritted her teeth, and slapped herself as hard as she could, right where the silver sliver appeared. Her eyes watered and the room spun around her, but she grasped the lip of the sink to steady herself, took another deep breath, and slapped herself again. And then again; and then again; and then again. She slapped herself, over and over, until the purple splotch turned almost black and her rapidly swelling cheek began to squeeze her eye shut.
She stepped back and stared at her lumpy, misshapen face, then smiled triumphantly. It was the only visible evidence of his habitual violence against her and, at the moment, it felt it like a medal. She knew that no one who saw it would ever make her go back there again. She threw her shoulders back, lifted her chin and turned to leave.
Nonie was standing in the doorway, arms folded, eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?” she asked, suspicious, and crossed one long leg languidly over the other, flaunting – in that single move – all the world-weariness, perspicacity and vaunted teenage wisdom that came with her three extra years. Agnes cocked her head and tucked her hair behind her left ear.
“Oh my God! Agnes!” Nonie shrieked, seeing her sister’s full, tumid face. She grabbed Agnes by the shoulders and hustled her back into the bathroom, slamming the door behind them. “What the hell did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Agnes snapped, defensive. “Uncle Morty did it.”
“Uncle Mo – ? Oh, Jesus, Agnes. Come on,” Nonie said and pushed her down on to the toilet seat. “I saw you hitting yourself.” She grabbed Agnes’ face and tilted it towards the light. “Jesus Christ,” she murmured as she peered at the gnarled, discolored skin. She shook her head. “You are one sick sicko, Agnes. Seriously. Why would you do this to yourself?”
Agnes slumped on the toilet seat and started to cry. “I didn’t do it to myself, Nonie! He did it first! He hit me! Right after he did all the other stu – ”
“Shhh!” Nonie hissed and clamped her hand over Agnes’ mouth. “What did I tell you about that? You never ever talk about that, you hear me? Never.” Nonie kept her hand pressed to Agnes’ mouth and leaned in, her bubblegum breath hot and close. “Never ever, never ever. Understand?” Agnes nodded, fat tears leaking from her frightened brown eyes. Nonie pressed harder. “Do you. Under. Stand.” Agnes nodded again, her hands clutching Nonie’s bony forearm, her whole body shaking. Nonie pulled her hand away and brushed a loose tangle of hair from Agnes’ face, gently wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Ok then,” she said, exhaling. “Ok. You’ll be ok, Agnes. I promise. It’ll all be over soon and you’ll be ok.” But now Nonie’s own strawberry lips were quivering, her blue eyes shining. “It’ll all be ok,” she said again and Agnes threw her arms around Nonie’s neck, buried her face in her sister’s lilac-scented hair and sobbed harder. “Shhh,” Nonie whispered, fighting the growing lump in her throat. She wrapped her spindly arms around Agnes and rocked her. “Don’t cry, Agnes. Please don’t cry. It will all be over soon. I promise.”
Agnes curled herself more tightly around her sister. “I just want it to stop,” she whimpered. “Please make it stop.”
Nonie pressed her lips to the top of Agnes’ head and held her close. It would stop, she knew, but she couldn’t make it. It would stop only when he decided, when his rapture turned to revulsion and she could no longer satisfy him. And then he would discard her, like so much chattel, with no ceremony or explanation, and move on to the next one. And she would feel a burden lifting, breathe a cautious sigh of relief, and slowly, carefully labor to reclaim herself, to settle back in to her child’s skin only to realize she had shed it the first time she shed her clothes for him so many years ago. And she would feel lost. And she would marvel at the ache that pressed against her ribs, at the longing that consumed her – the longing to be, again, something for someone, even him.
Finally, Nonie pulled back, forced a cheerful, conspiratorial smile. “C’mon,” she said. Let’s get out of here.” She took Agnes by the hand and led her out of the bathroom, down the hall, and out the front door through the buffel grass and brittle bush in their front yard. Soon they were skipping, then running, giant tumbleweeds chasing them all the way into town. They licked ice cream cones, rode a penny horseback ride, and stole two lipsticks – candy apple red for Agnes, bubblegum pink for Nonie – from Emory’s drugstore. In the picnic park at the town center, Nonie took the scarf she had wrapped around her wrist and tied a blindfold over Agnes’ eyes, then spun her around in circles until she was dizzy with laughter. They collapsed onto each other, hands clasped, breathless and heaving.
It was dark when they returned home, eyes bright, skin glowing from their afternoon of girlish indulgence. Shirl was back – the Eldorado was parked in the carport, along with a battered old pick-up they knew belonged to Dendy, Shirl’s on-again-off-again boyfriend. The light from the front room glowed orange in the windows and they could hear Dendy’s hoarse, squawking laughter all the way outside.
Agnes pushed open the screen door and felt her stomach drop. Dendy was draped lazily in an armchair, his back to the door, Uncle Morty across from him on the couch. Uncle Morty was leaning forward, feet splayed, a can of beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other; he was telling a story, a scornful, mocking story. It was a minute before Agnes realized it was about her.
“Blam! Right smack in to it!” he finished, snorting and slapping his knees. “Can you believe that? Right into the goddamned pipe!” He shook his head. “I’ll tell you this” – he took a long puff on his cigarette, exhaled – “she may be pretty, but she’s not very bright.” Dendy hooted. Uncle Morty took another puff and eased back in to the cushions, twin clouds hissing from his narrow, pinched nostrils.
“Ain’t that right, Eleanor,” Uncle Morty called, spying the two sisters huddled in the front hall by the door. His lips curled lasciviously around her name. El-ean-or. Nonie felt her cheeks color. No one called her by her given name, except for Uncle Morty, and only when he needed her, which he hadn’t for almost two years now. “Dumb as a post, that one,” he said, gesturing towards Agnes with the beer can before taking a swig. He swirled the bitter brown liquid in his mouth, working his tongue. His eyes traveled from Nonie’s bare, golden-brown shoulders to her wide hips and down the length of her lean, slender legs. He laughed. “Well, come on now, girls. Don’t be shy. Come and say hello to your uncle.” Agnes inched closer to Nonie and reached for her hand; neither one of them moved. “Jesus, Shirl!” he barked over his shoulder in to the kitchen. “Ain’t you taught your daughters any manners?”
Shirl ambled in to the living room, a beer in one hand, a bottle of scotch in the other; she had the limp, tottering gait of a new foal. “I guess not,” she hiccupped and handed the beer to Dendy. “Seems I’ve raised a pair of insolent, ungrateful brats,” she said, sinking into the armchair on top of him. “Not to mention deceitful little devils. Say hello to your Uncle, Nonie. And you,” she said, turning and pointing at Agnes, “You tell him you’re sorry for lying to me about this he-hit-you nonsense.” She folded herself into Dendy’s burly frame and nuzzled his neck.
Agnes blinked and her mouth went slack. She looked at Uncle Morty, who was smiling smugly, then the back of her mother’s bobbing head; her eyes narrowed. She stood up straighter and squeezed Nonie’s hand tight. “No,” she said finally.
“Excuse me?” Shirl said, twisting her neck to look at Agnes, her face dark.
“I said, No,” Agnes repeated, stepping towards her. “He hit me. I didn’t walk into a pipe, if that’s what he told you. He hit me. And that’s not all he did,” she said, suddenly bold. “Is it.” She shot Morty a taunting, threatening glance. He shifted in his seat, his pale skin shining with nervous sweat, but he held his tongue. She turned to Nonie. “Tell them, Nonie. Tell them what he did to me. And to you.”
Nonie looked stricken; her eyes flickered from Agnes to Uncle Morty to her mother and Dendy, still entwined on the armchair. She bit her lip. “Agnes – ” she started.
“Tell them!” Agnes pleaded. “Tell them about the basement and the pull-out couch! And, and, and ‘poker night!’ Tell them – tell them why Auntie June left him!” she spluttered. Agnes was frantic now, rage burning like hot coils in her belly. “Nonie, tell them!”
But Nonie was silent, a victim of her own longing. She looked away from Agnes and stared at her feet. She wouldn’t tell; she couldn’t tell. It was her secret, too, after all. And she would keep it even as it devoured her, even as it swallowed her whole.
“Oh, you are a prize,” Shirl slurred, rising. “I mean, you really are a prize, Agnes.” She shook her head, poured herself more scotch. “Just like your goddamned father. Always telling stories. You oughtta find something constructive to do with that imagination,” she said. And then she laughed, poking Dendy, who laughed, too.
Agnes grabbed a flannel shirt hanging from the coat rack nearby and dabbed violently at her wet cheeks, then threw open the front door. “Agnes – ” Nonie said, reaching for her. “Go to hell,” Agnes snarled, slapping her hand away. “Go to hell with the rest of them. I hate you!” And she ran out the door into the night.
If only she’d known, Agnes thought later, as she watched them carrying Nonie’s body away, her hands still sticky with Nonie’s blood, her clothes still wet where she’d pressed her sister’s limp body against her own, her opened veins soaking Agnes through to her skin. If she’d known, she would have kept their promise; kept their secret. If she’d known, she would have taken it all back and sealed it away for good, then taken hold of Nonie’s proffered hand and run away with her forever.
If only she’d known.
*****
Agnes sits on the edge of the creaking motel bed and eases her feet from her boots. Her stomach rumbles. She is famished, but the restaurant has already closed and the vending machine is broken so she fills the ice bucket with water from the tap and drinks until her belly pushes out against the waistband of her jeans. She feels the water sloshing around her stomach, like some stormy sea, and pictures all her regrets as tiny boats tossing around inside her, capsizing and sinking under their grim weight. She is restless. She peels off her clothes and climbs into the shower, the hot water like needles on her skin. She thinks of Nonie and her blood, and scrubs her body until it is red and raw; she thinks of Shirl, drunk and slurring; of Uncle Morty and the pull-out couch. And then she thinks of James and the gun, and of how he thinks he knows what it is for. He thinks it was meant for Uncle Morty; he doesn’t know that it was meant for her. It has always been meant for her.
In the morning she wakes to find herself sprawled on top of the bedcovers, naked, a scratchy threadbare towel bunched and twisted around her waist. Her limbs are heavy and her head feels thick, like she’s been drinking. She does not remember turning off the water; she does not remember coming to the bed; she does not remember sleeping.
She dresses slowly, methodically, each action careful, as if she might break from the effort. Her hunger, so acute the night before, has been displaced by another kind of ache, this one more pervasive, less precise. She makes herself a cup of coffee and pours it out without drinking, then folds the towel, straightens the rumpled bedcovers, and rinses out the mug. She knows that someone will come after her to do these things – someone with fresh towels, new linens and a clean mug – but she needs the mundanity of these actions; she needs the order they impose on her chaos.
She leaves the motel just before dawn, her Nova the only vehicle on the road for miles. It is still early when she enters Brill, and she decides to take the long route to the house, through town – past the ice cream parlor, past the penny horseback ride in front of Emory’s, past the picnic park. She is surprised by how untouched each seems, how unspoiled. She’d expected visible scars, or at least the flash of ghosts. But each place is exactly how she left it, no more affected by her personal tragedy than a brick or a stone might be.
She drives aimlessly, by rote. She has not been here in fifteen years but she knows these streets like she knows her own body. She names them: Hickory, Hayduke, Silverleaf, Blackbird… She turns, finally, down Palo Verde, and pulls up in front of the house, car still running, her hands tight on the wheel. She steps on the gas pedal lightly, inching forward. Nobody knows she is here, she tells herself. She could just turn around and head right back. Instead she turns the car off and exits, cold wind whipping her hair, dust kicking up in swirls around her feet.
The house – still slumping, still blue – strikes a lonely figure against the chalky, sunless sky and seems to groan with each icy gust. She pulls her jacket tight and shuffles up the walk to the front door, her muscles quivering. She glances back at her car, the engine ticking as it cools, then knocks - softly, tentatively - her right foot on the stoop, her left still on the walkway. She waits, arms crossed, shivering.
The door opens a crack and a stooped, paunchy man peeks out. He looks tired, careworn, his spotty jaundiced skin hanging loosely over his jaw like saddlebags. “Can I help – ” he starts, then his baggy eyes widen slightly. “Agnes,” he says finally, though he does not sound surprised. If anything, he seems relieved. He pushes the screen door wider and steps aside. “Come in.”
Agnes stares at him, unmoving, and her face flames. Come in?? She feels her anger rise up from where she's hidden it all these years; it tastes like lead in her mouth. "I'm sorry," she says suddenly and steps down off the stoop. "This is - this was a mistake."
"Agnes, please..." he says.
Agnes stops and turns to face him. She can't decide if it's pity or revulsion she feels.
"Please," he says again. Just like that - no pleading, no desperation. She looks back towards her car, still ticking in the cool, gray light, and then again to him. She touches her hand to her throat, searching instinctively for the key she'd been wearing around her neck when the call came. James' key. Her fingers curl instead around the collar of her jacket and she glances one last time at her car. She sighs.
"Well," she says, throwing her arms up. "I've come this far."
Inside, the house is dark and hushed; it seems bigger than she remembers. As a girl the walls had seemed always to be closing in on her. Now, they seem to be sagging outward, full of too many secrets, too many sorrows.
“She’s back here,” Morty says, and leads her down the hall to the back bedroom – Nonie’s room – his stiff, lumbering gait slow. Agnes feels her knees buckle and she steadies herself against the wall. “There’s more light comes in there than her room,” he rationalizes. “Though not lately, with the weather we been having.” He turns to her as they approach the door. “She’s been in and out of consciousness for days now,” he says, pushing it open quietly. “Doc says it won’t be long.” Agnes leans around him to peer inside. Shirl’s wasted frame makes a barely perceptible lump in the middle of the bed, her white hair spread out on the pillow. A petite nurse, defiant blonde curls escaping her headband, places her fingers on her mother’s thin wrist, searching for signs of life.
“You go on in if you like,” Morty says. “I know she’d appreciate the company.” But Agnes is still, her back pressed to the doorjamb. She is quiet, her eyes fixed on her mother’s sunken face, on the slight rise and fall of the yellow blanket on her chest.
“How long has she been sick?” she asks.
“This time? ‘Bout six weeks, I reckon. This one came on fast,” he says. He is looking at Shirl, too, his eyes pained. His grief hovers around him like a cloud. They stand that way for what feels like hours. “Well,” Morty says finally, turning to Agnes. “You go on in whenever you’re ready.”
“Let me just – I think I’m just gonna go get my things first,” Agnes says, then turns abruptly and runs down the hall and out the front door to her car, chest heaving. She feels woozy, and braces herself against the hood, fumbling for her keys, then collapses. When she comes to, she is staring into the worried face of the blond nurse.
“Are you ok?” the nurse asks. “I came out to my car to fetch a sweater – Can you believe this weather? – and I saw you lying there. Are you ok?”
“I’m fine,” Agnes says, struggling to her feet. “Just a little hungry, I think. Haven’t eaten much the last few days.” She ducks in the driver’s side door, reaching for her canvas bag, and wobbles. The nurse looks at her, raises an eyebrow. “No, really – I’m fine,” Agnes insists.
“You’re white as a sheet,” the nurse says, taking the bag and grasping Agnes’ elbow to steady her. “C’mon. I’ll make you a sandwich.”
In the kitchen, Agnes sits at the round Formica table and sips juice. Her entire body is buzzing, like a colony of bees inhabits her skin. The nurse sets a sandwich in front of her. “Thanks,” Agnes mumbles and takes a bite.
“Don’t mention it,” the nurse says. She is young and smiling, with the sort of sweetness that not even a job ushering the dying to death can corrupt. “I’m Edith,” she offers.
Agnes swallows, wipes her mouth. “Agnes,” she says. She takes another bite and studies the tiny blue flowers on the edge of her plate.
“Maybe you want to lie down for a minute, after you’ve finished,” Edith says, touching Agnes’ arm lightly. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you look like you haven’t slept much the last few days either.”
Agnes nods. The blue flowers look like they’re dancing. “Thank you for the sandwich,” is all she says.
When she finishes, she carries her plate to the sink and stares out the cracked window pane at the neighbor’s house, at the barrel cactus growing by the drain wall, at nothing at all. I should lie down for a minute, she thinks. I haven’t slept much the last few days.
She drifts down the hall to her old bedroom and pushes open the door. There are a few boxes stacked in the corner, and the old television from the living room sits on her desk, but it is otherwise the same as it was the day she left – same ruffled curtains, same peeling wallpaper, same Tiger Beat posters hanging from the walls. She sits on the edge of her bed, glimpsing her face in the mirror above her dresser. It is warped slightly, like a funhouse mirror. Her nose looks squished and flattened, and her eyes, each stamped with its own blue half-moon beneath it, droop comically. She looks like a basset hound.
She flops backwards and stares up at the loosening plaster in the ceiling. She imagines it caving in on her, a great white avalanche crushing her, squeezing out her breath. She tries to scream but when she opens her mouth it is full of tiny silver keys. She claws frantically at the rubble, gasping and kicking, but she just keeps sinking, sinking, sinking, until a large, calloused hand – James’ hand – reaches in and pulls her out and she is suddenly upright, heart pounding. She looks around. She has only been dreaming.
She checks her watch – it is after eight – and rises, pulling the patchy quilt off and wrapping it around her. It is freezing. She parts the ruffled curtains hanging over the window by her bed and looks out. The sky is a bright ghostly silver and the earth glows white. It is a minute before she realizes it, but it is snowing, fine powdery flakes that fall like sifted sugar and blanket the earth. Agnes opens the window and sticks her head out, feels the downy flakes on her skin, tastes them with her tongue. Agnes loves snow; loves the way it softens sharp edges and swallows sound. But mostly she loves the clean, blank canvas that a new snow brings. No matter how dirty or scarred the earth is, a new snow makes everything appear whole again.
She walks down the hall to Nonie’s room. Morty is beside the bed, holding Shirl’s frail hand; Edith has been replaced by the night nurse, a stout Mexican woman who bustles around, fussing over Morty and plumping pillows. She gathers an armload of wadded linens from the floor and starts towards the door. She sees Agnes and stops, studies her face.
“She is you mother?” she asks. Agnes nods. “Ees good you here now,” she says, patting Agnes’ arm. “Tha one” – she points at Morty – “He needa break. He neber leeb her side. All day, all night, he ees holdeen her hand. Hace penitencia,” she says, crossing herself. Agnes looks at her quizzically. “Hees dooween penance.” She shakes her head. “Hees dooween penance for sonesing.”
Agnes watches her as she walks away, her ample bottom swinging, white clogs squeaking on the wood floors. We are all doing penance for something, she thinks.
She steps cautiously into the room, finds a spot on the west wall by the window. She hooks her right foot behind her left knee, leans back.
“Maybe you’d like to sit down?” Morty asks after a few minutes.
“I’m good right here,” Agnes says.
He nods. “Well, you’ve at least set foot in the room now.”
“Just be glad I’ve set foot in this house now,” she snaps. He flinches. Hunched in his chair, he looks almost as frail as Shirl, hardly the hulking monster she remembers. Agnes sighs; she doesn’t have it in her anymore. She looks out the window through the part in the curtains. “It’s snowing,” she says.
He looks up. “Snowing? Since when?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I’ve been sleeping.” She presses her cheek to the cool glass of the window.
“Imagine that,” Morty says. “We’ve never seen snow in these parts, especially not this late. Shirl won’t believe it.”
Agnes smiles sadly – she’d scoff if she had any anger left – and turns to him. “That was always the trouble, Morty. Shirl never believed anything I told her.”
Morty looks away, shame coloring his face. Agnes turns back to the window. They are quiet, the only sound the soft whoosh of Shirl’s shallow breathing.
“I’m sorry, Agnes,” he says, finally. “I know that’s not enough, but it’s all I’ve got.”
Agnes wraps the quilt tighter, walks to the bed. She sits on the edge, opposite Morty, and takes Shirl’s other hand in her own. She brushes her mother’s white hair from her white cheek.
“I know,” she says.
*****
Agnes is sitting in Morty’s chair next to Shirl, knees drawn to her chest, still bundled as she was the night before in the quilt from her bedroom. Morty, after some prodding by Edith, has gone to the kitchen for a sandwich. It is still snowing.
Agnes picks up a picture frame from the table beside the bed. It is of her and Nonie, when they are four and seven years old. They are laughing, arms around each other, Nonie’s tongue red from the cherry popsicle in her hand and Agnes’ face smeared with chocolate. Agnes remembers the day it was taken. It was the Fourth of July and they were having a picnic in the park at the Brill town square. They were happy.
“Y’know, if you talk to her, she can hear you,” Edith says, swabbing Shirl’s mouth with a damp sponge. “She may not be able to respond, but she can definitely hear you.”
Agnes shrugs, sets the photo down. She’s not much for conversation with the living, never mind the dying. “I wouldn’t really know what to say,” she tells her.
Edith tucks an errant curl behind her ear. “That’s the thing,” she says, leaning over and lifting Shirl’s head gently. She flips the pillow underneath it and smoothes the cover. “You can say anything you want; anything at all. It’s really just the sound of your voice that matters.” She lays Shirl’s head down on the cool side of the pillow, then straightens. She searches Agnes’ face. “I’ll tell you what,” she says. “I’m just gonna go make myself a cup of tea and check on your uncle. Maybe give you some time, just the two of you.”
Agnes watches the door close softly behind Edith. She waits. Then takes Shirl’s hand in both of hers and exhales slowly. “Hey Shirl,” she says, after a minute. “It’s me – Agnes.” She rolls her eyes at herself. “I don’t really know how to do this,” she says. “But Edith – that’s your – she’s your nurse – says maybe I should try talking to you. Except I don’t really know what to say.” Shirl’s breathing is quick, labored. Agnes swallows. “You’d think after fifteen years I could come up with something, but there’s just…” She trails off, looks out the window. Her throat aches. “It’s snowing,” she offers, finally. “Right here in the lowest part of the Arizona desert, if you can believe it. It’s beautiful.” Her breath is now coming as quickly as Shirl’s and she tugs nervously at the blankets around her mother’s small body; her eyes fill. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, pushing back from the bed. “I can’t – I don’t know how to do this.” She yanks the quilt up around her shoulders and over her head, making a tent against the window; the draft from the window feels cool on her wet face.
She is still standing there when Morty ambles in. “Everything ok?” he asks.
“Fine,” Agnes says, wiping her eyes. “Everything’s fine.”
“She stir at all?” he asks. Agnes shakes her head. Morty reaches for the bench seat from Nonie’s old vanity and drags it to the bed, groaning as he settles his creaking frame on it. Shirl’s eyes flutter briefly and she lets out a low moan.
“Shirl?” Morty says, leaning closer and touching her hair.
Agnes turns from the window and steps towards the bed. “Mom,” she says.
Shirl opens her eyes and turns towards Agnes. She breathes in and makes a sound like gravel crunching. “Agnes…” she murmurs, lungs wheezing. “They found you.”
“Yeah, I’m right here,” Agnes says, taking her hand.
Shirl smiles and closes her eyes. She squeezes her daughter’s hand weakly. “Agnes,” she says. “Tell me about the snow.”
*****
It is almost three and the snow is long since gone, having burned off when the high Arizona sun finally came out from hiding that morning. They are standing at the cemetery, beside Shirl’s grave, the sun glinting off Morty’s balding head. Shirl’s coffin has been lowered into the ground next to Nonie’s; the priest has said his final words. Morty is staring down into the yawning hole, a small prayer card in his hand.
“It’s good you were here,” he says to Agnes.
Agnes nods. She turns to him, putting a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. “How did you find me?” she asks.
“Oh, we been looking for you for years,” he says, still staring down at the box. “Dendy had a cousin was a PI up in Phoenix. Fella named Hoke. When you left, Shirl hired him to try to track you down. After Nonie, well…” He trails off, clears his throat. “Couple times it looked like he had something but it never panned out. After a while, Shirl just gave up hope. That’s about when the first cancer came.” He folds the card in his hand, slips it in his pocket. “Then last week, we got a call out of the blue. It was Dendy’s cousin. He’d been doing some work in Omaha and overheard some trucker going on about his girlfriend. ‘Agnes from Arizona,’ he kept saying. Hoke knew it was a long shot but he remembered this favor he’d promised his cousin so he did a little poking around and ended up with a phone number for us.”
“Huh,” is all Agnes can manage. And then she smiles.
Morty looks at her. “So you got a boyfriend then?”
She squints at him, the sun bright. “Yeah,” she says, nodding.
“Well, good for you, Agnes,” he says, meaning it. He turns back to the grave. “Good for you.”
Agnes watches him for a minute then heads for her car and climbs in. She peers out her window at him. He is crouched beside Nonie’s headstone now, fists clenched, body shaking. He is weeping.
She turns the key, steps on the gas and pulls away slowly. We are all doing penance for something, she thinks. We can only hope for a fresh new snow to blanket our souls and make us whole again.
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