Meteors in August (14 page)

Mom tugged at his arm. “It's just a little makeup, Dean. It doesn't mean anything.”

But my father and I knew different. Daddy's eyes were clear and pale, glacial ice reflecting just a hint of blue from the sky. Those eyes saw everywhere. He knew all about me and Zack. He saw us falling. He saw that I almost liked it, that I was already imagining it might happen again.

Damp rings darkened Daddy's T-shirt from his armpits halfway to his waist. I never understood how he knew things about me. Maybe we were too much alike. Maybe at the moment he left the mill a squawking crow flew high above him. As he raised his head to see why she was yammering, she swooped in the direction of the gully and the vision came to my father as clearly as if he had followed Zachary up the rickety ladder of the tree house.

“Go take a shower,” he said. “And find a decent dress before you sit down at my table.”

I climbed the stairs with all the dignity I could muster, knowing how Father judged me. I remembered the smear of orange lipstick across my swollen mouth and heard Zack say,
You're not too ugly
. But I was.

At dinner, dad wasn't talking to me and Mom wasn't talking to him. It was a four-word meal. Father stopped picking at his beans and chop, stood up, threw his napkin on the table and said, “Damn kitchen's too hot.” He was only looking for an excuse to go outside for a smoke.

I went straight to my room after Mom and I did the dishes. I opened my window wide and hoped to hear the first crickets of spring, but they were still months away, hundreds of miles south of Willis. I thought of Zack as he stood to leave the tree house. I had stayed on the floor, staring up at his long legs, at the damp spot in his crotch. He'd grinned in a way that made me think he might put his foot on my chest before he left, lightly, a threat, a joke from his point of view. But he hadn't bothered. And I'd watched his thighs as he squatted, easing himself onto the unreliable ladder. I covered my head with my pillow, but the memory didn't fade.

Later the screen door whined, and I knew Mother had gone out on the porch. I pictured her folding her arms, just waiting for Father to turn around and snarl, “What is it?”

Their two voices rumbled along at first, slow and soft, as if they tried their best to be polite and have a real discussion, giving each other time to think and time to speak. But before long their words jumped on top of one another. Daddy swung so hard in the porch seat that it groaned, and I thought it might fly clean off its hinges. The squabble didn't last long. Father won the quarrel by marching down the road and calling back to Mother, “You drive me to drink, woman.”

She sat for less than a minute before she came inside. I heard her on the stairs. I figured she had come to her senses and realized what a troublemaker I was, giving her one more thing to fight about with Daddy. I suspected she was on her way to give me the scolding she wouldn't let my father give me earlier.

She tapped at the door and said, “Lizzie, Lizzie honey, are you awake?”

I told her I was. Only the devil could sleep after doing what I'd done that afternoon. I was no better than Zachary Holler. I was impatient and much too hungry. I remembered how I felt as I shoved Gwen against the tree in the gully, strong and mean, thinking only of what I wanted. I felt my own brutal kiss and tasted blood where my teeth cut the inside of my lip.

“May I come in?” I got nervous when my mother was that polite. “Why are you sitting up here in the dark, baby? Come down and sit on the porch with me. Your father's gone.”

I didn't want Mother's company, especially if she was going to be so sweet with me when all the time I knew Daddy was right. Zack Holler never would have given me a second look if my lips weren't orange and my skirt wasn't tight. I would have been invisible, the same Lizzie Macon he'd always known, and nothing would have happened in the tree house.

“I've got something to tell you, Liz.” The way she said it gave me no choice, so I followed her downstairs to the porch.

She didn't start talking right away. She was thinking so hard that she didn't see how I watched her as we rocked together in the swing. Most times I kept myself from looking at her this way. Tonight I noticed her fingers were stiff, and she rubbed her knuckles one by one. I thought of Grandmother's hands, crippled by arthritis, her joints so swollen she couldn't remove the ring of the man who had deserted her. I wondered how long it would take before my own mother's hands grew twisted, too weak to hold a pot of soup. I saw her by the stove, saw the handle slip from her grasp.

I wanted to swear no boy would ever steal me away. I would be there to mop the soup off the floor, to chop the vegetables and start another pot. I wanted her to put her head on my lap so I could stroke her hair and face and tell her I'd never be a problem to her again. But I did nothing; it wasn't our way, not since Nina left, not since Nina stuffed all her easy love in a canvas bag and vanished in the dust on the road.

Mom patted my knee with her thin hand. “Your father loves you, Lizzie. I hope you believe that. He's rough with you, I know, but he's afraid. He doesn't want you to end up like Nina.

“He loved that girl too much. Sometimes I think he loved her more than he loves me. Men are strange that way. A wife has flaws and no one knows them better than her husband—but a daughter can be anything he wants to see. She looked like an angel, and that's all your daddy saw. He couldn't bear it when he found out. He couldn't forgive her. He still can't. That's the evil that can come of love.”

I saw Nina twirling down the stairs in her pink dress with the crinoline slip that made it float around her legs. She was fourteen, like me. Nina didn't have to tempt boys by painting herself like a bird. She was temptation itself. Everyone saw it, everyone but my father. “My baby,” he said, his voice a prayer, “my beautiful girl.”

“Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?” Mom said. “Your father wants you to stay his little girl. He says nasty things he doesn't mean. Promise me you won't be too hard on him.”

“I won't,” I said. Just an hour before, she'd been railing at my father to go easy on me. Sometimes I thought she wanted me to love him in ways that she couldn't. No wonder her soft cheeks were crossed with tiny lines. No wonder her long hair was streaked with gray.

We moved from the swing to the steps to look at the night sky. Once in a while Mom pointed and said, “Look at that!” Or, “There's another one.” But I never saw a shooting star. Maybe she was only pretending, or wishing. Maybe the stars in the blur of tears that swelled slowly in the corners of her eyes seemed to leave a trail in the night.

We sat for an hour or more, until Daddy appeared, swaying down the poorly lit street, his hands in his pockets, the whistling man. Mom gripped my arm. “Don't let him catch us,” she said. Even in his stupor he might sense we'd been talking about Nina.

I climbed slowly to my room, our room, Nina's and mine, the room where she had read to me night after night to help me fall asleep. I was restless even then, chased by dogs at the edge of my dreams. I thought of that last summer and how there were so many mornings when I'd wake to find her curled around me in my bed instead of sprawled across her own. She must have known she wouldn't be around that long; she was trying to say good-bye. At night the shadows in the yard were alive, swarming with boys. But I was only nine and didn't understand. I tossed in her arms, kicked the blankets from us both and let her soft kisses fall on me, thinking they would always be as plentiful and constant as the rain.

That night I prayed to a god I barely knew, and I made a bargain. I didn't want to be lost like Nina. We knew nothing of her life. I had no place to root her. In my mind, she drifted in a desert, parched at noon and frozen at midnight. I couldn't stop thinking that what Zack and I had done in the tree house could make what happened to Nina happen to me. I saw the stain in the crotch of Zack's jeans when he rolled away from me. I felt the pressure of his hipbones grinding into mine. Then I saw Daddy slapping Nina so hard I thought her jaw would snap and her teeth would clatter to the floor like the pieces of a broken teacup. I heard him call her those names, names I'd never heard before but understood at once; my father's tone could not be mistaken. I crouched on the stairs. He grabbed her yellow hair, twisting it around his hand. He told her not to show her face in his house again, and she thought he meant it.

I was no purer than my sister, no more virtuous than that loathsome cruel boy who could snap the neck of a cat. A grin could tempt me, muscled arms could hold me down, a boy's tongue in my mouth could make my hands numb.

That night I promised my new God that if He spared me, just this once, I would devote my life to His work. I'd never give Mother and Father cause for grief again. I would be good enough for two people: my sister and myself.

14

BY THE
end of April I knew I'd been spared this time. I wasn't going to end up like Nina, my stomach swelling so I couldn't hide what I'd done. I figured a girl wasn't going to get too many breaks in her life and that I'd better find a way to show God I was grateful. It wasn't easy. Zack took no interest in me, so I had no opportunity to resist temptation.

I kept my eyes on the ground when Father spoke to me. I wore baggy pants and long sweaters so that even I wouldn't notice my body. I set the table before I was asked, scrubbed the kitchen floor on my hands and knees, and scoured the toilet once a week. When I saw Marlene Grosswilder at school, I forced myself to think one kind thought. “That's a pretty dress,” I said to her one day. She peered at me through her thick glasses, suspecting some nasty intention, then hurried away without a word. I smiled to myself: virtue was its own reward.

Still, I wasn't satisfied. These were small changes. My knowledge of God's truth was one drop of rain in the river. I didn't want to
do
good things; I wanted to
be
good. The vast difference wasn't lost on me even in my ignorance. I was hungry for the Lord now that I was sure He'd heard me. He'd let my beautiful sister go to ruin, had cast her into the wasteland, a barren place that was only beautiful when twilight turned the horizon green for half an hour. But He had chosen to pardon me. I began to wonder if I'd been saved for some special mission. A girl like me had little chance of becoming a saint or martyr. I'd have to accept a more ordinary course, without glory or recognition. By chance, Aunt Arlen revealed the simplicity of my calling.

She plunked herself down at our kitchen table. “Dean can stop flogging himself over this Lanfear Deets business,” she said. “I saw him this morning pumping gas out at Ike's Truckstop, working every bit as fast as any two-fisted brute I ever saw. Thank God for Ike Turner, always willing to hire an Indian or a cripple. He took Miriam on too; she's waitressing on the morning shift. I have to say, Lanfear looked like a happy man. I believe there's a kind of person who's so common he takes a certain pleasure in being maimed. Sets him off from the rest, know what I mean?”

“That's the craziest thing I've heard you say all month,” Mom said.

“The lame shall enter first; says so right in the Bible,” said Arlen.

“No one wants to be deformed in a permanent way.”

I leaned against the stove, curling my fingers into a stiff claw to see if I could imagine a mangled hand making me feel special.

“Well, anyway,” Arlen said, “Dean can stop feeling responsible. Lanfear Deets most certainly is not suffering.”

“Dean knows he's not to blame.”

“I got eyes, Evelyn. I've never seen my brother so thin. And his drinking is no secret.”

“We can't all be fat and happy like Les,” Mom said. She made the word
fat
sound vile, something you wouldn't want to touch, but Arlen didn't choose to notice.

“Yes, he is happy, my oh my, don't I know. He gave Justin and Marshall the word—six months and they're out. Collin goes soon as he graduates. Fair warning. Les wants some privacy before we're too dried up to enjoy it.” Arlen had become an expert on marital bliss ever since she'd gone back to Lester. I didn't think it would last. I didn't think that loving my uncle would be nearly as satisfying as bitching about him had always been. She turned around to look at me. “You keep that in mind, Lizzie. Find yourself a decent job or a half-decent man when you get out of high school. Give your parents some peace.”

“She doesn't have to do anything of the kind,” Mom said. “There's room for her in this house as long as she wants to stay, till she's forty if it suits her.”

“Oh, Evelyn,
please
,” Arlen said, “I hope you aren't seriously wishing such a thing on your daughter. Look at Myron Evans living in that filthy house with his mother and those awful cats. Look at Eula and Luella Lockwood, the terrible twosome. For all the time they've spent part they might as well have been joined at the hips since birth. Siamese twins couldn't be more attached than the two of them. No one's invited them to dinner or tea for twenty years. No one can stand it—all that giggling and carrying on; you ask one of them a question and they both answer, same time, same words. They're always poking their heads over the fence, babbling at poor Jack Wright. They got him so rattled the other day he backed his car over his own cat. And I hear they do
everything
together, you know what I mean? One doesn't go to the bathroom without the other one trotting right behind. And they take baths together too—long, hot baths.”

“They're lucky to have each other,” Mom said.

“You're talking nonsense, woman. No one should live in another person's skin. I don't have to remind you what taking care of her father did to Minnie Hathaway.”

“No, you don't.”