Mud Girl (13 page)

In her room, she pushes it all into a large plastic garbage bag. Maybe Colm will take it away next time he's here, to some charity. Will Dad notice? Yes, but when? Will he care? Should she ask?

She ties the top of the bag into a solid knot. She's not going to ask; she can't stand the thought of those sobs that poured out of him last night. This has to go, that's how it is. Then she has to fight her own sobs, because the funny thing – and no, it's not funny at all – is that it's Mum who taught her how to be at moments such as this. “Tough,” she'd say. “Sometimes there are things you must do…and you do them. Because you must. That's how it is.” And she'd get this set to her jaw, a jaw that was square enough already.

Before Abi lost her first tooth, the thing hung in her mouth for several days. She was terrified to lose it. She couldn't sleep for two nights, or was it three? Then Mum had that look. “It has to come out.” Abi can still remember the terror she felt as Mum took hold of the tooth with a towel wrapped over her fingers, and with a gentle twist it was out.
The terror turned to relief. Dad had had to leave the room. “Just let it be,” he'd said. “It'll come out on its own.” But when he asked if it was safe to come back in, and he saw Abi and she proudly showed him the gap, he gave her a hug. He said he was happy for her. He'd smiled at Mum. “Glad you can do that,” he'd murmured. What had Mum's smile been? Somewhat superior? Sad?

There are a few of Mum's things in a bottom drawer, too. Abi checks to make sure Dad is still at his post before she goes into his room again.

Underwear, winter socks, two pairs of pajamas, and underneath, a thick manila envelope. She stops at this; she hasn't seen it before. She doesn't take it out right away, but debates.

Her mother owes her answers, she decides, and she lifts it out, carries it to her room. Still, she takes her time opening the envelope, carefully spilling the contents over her bed. Here are photographs. Surely there'll be some answer here.

She rakes her fingers over them, spreading them out, then slowly picks them up one by one. Then faster, and faster, not caring about the edges, creasing some.

Trees – old trees, gnarled trees, stumps, bleached beach logs. Dried grass in late-summer-dead fields. Sunset burning over the water. Landscapes, scapes, escapes. Not a soul in any one of them. Not a one.
This is her heart
, thinks Abi.

There's a slim envelope among the photos that causes Abi to realize she was hoping to see even one of those slim blue airmail envelopes that came from across the Atlantic once in a while. But no – just this one white regular envelope. She opens it. Finally. A human being in one of the photos. A picture of Dad, taken from behind his chair. In fine ink, the word
dreamer
is written across the bottom of the photo. Across the wall, in the background, are Uncle Bernard's and Dad's collected replies to their bottle messages. Dad's head is tilted so that he is looking at them. Sunlight streams into the window from behind the photographer – Mum. The beams catch at Dad, try to lure him.

Abi fills the envelope and pushes it under her mattress. She puts the clothing from the drawer into another bag and knots it too.

What is the answer in all this, she thinks. She can fit piece after piece together, but ultimately she is always left with the two disparate people who are her parents. The south pole and the north. The hot and cold. The apple and the orange. There is nothing to compare. There's just her mother, with her need to be on time and live in a house with a deep foundation, and her father, who'd just as soon be adrift. He's a seagull, and she's a stone garden figure – of what? Together they had Abi. And what is she?

As far as the Rockies

T
hey're knitting, Abi and Ernestine, sitting on the old car seat out front, away from the sun at the back of the house. They have to raise their voices to speak to each other when the vehicles pass by. But it's not even mid-afternoon and the traffic is a bit less than usual.

“What do you think, Ernestine?” Abi asks her. “Do you think that if you never fall in love, then you'll never have to feel pain?”

When she looks at Abi, Ernestine's eyes are clouded, and she doesn't say anything. For the briefest of times, Abi can see her face as she'd looked that night of fireworks, at just that moment when she realized that Abi had come, but not with her. But this is something more, something that makes Abi want to back away.

“It just seems to me,” Abi mumbles, “that it might be like that.” Then she picks up her knitting again.

A
bi doesn't tell Ernestine about Jude, coming to the door the night before, just as the sun was setting, how he'd caught her arm, gently, but not letting go. “Let's go for a walk.”

“Dyl?” she'd said.

“With his grandma.”

She didn't ask how the grandma was; she didn't dare. There was some part of her that wanted not to feel this disquiet, some part of her that wanted to grab his hand and run, and if pain came later…Well. Let it be. It would be worth it. But no, there it was. That word of Dad's:
Mary.
It was like the little sounds that bats emit so they can listen for echoes, and know where they are.
Mary, Mary, Mary,
there between them, her and Jude.

So when he caught her to him, just round the blackberry bushes, and pressed himself against her, she fought. She pushed him, she pulled away.

“What's the matter?” he asked.

“I'm not ready,” she said.

“You're old enough.”

She hated to think there was something mocking in his tone.

“It's nothing to do with age,” she said, wondering what it did have to do with.

She realized how she'd been longing to curl up in his arms and just stay there. She hadn't realized it until that moment, and then she knew she couldn't. At least, not then.

As if he was reading her thoughts. “Then when?”

“I don't know.” It shouldn't be this confusing.

Mary, Mary, Mary…

B
ut that was last night, and now Ernestine isn't knitting with her, she realizes, at the end of the first row.

No. Ernestine is looking out to the roadway, her hands moving in her lap as if she should have needles and yarn there to occupy her fingers. “Oh, my,” she says, as always, but there's a truly desperate edge to her tone.

Don't get weird on me, Ernestine. Last night, Jude, was enough… Don't.

Then Ernestine says, “Maybe this wasn't a good idea. Maybe I shouldn't be here.”

Abi has poked at something in her; she's not sure what. She doesn't say a word. Last night, she pushed Jude away. She moved without thinking. Now, she sits still. Very, very still.

Even though Abi's not looking at her, she can feel Ernestine's eyes suddenly on her.

Ernestine finally says, “Do
you
want me here?”

Abi finds herself nodding dumbly, feeling pretty much like Dyl. Abi looks at her; Ernestine is pale and slow.

“Well,” she says, “then I'm here. This is about you, not me. So I'm here.”

When she says that though, Abi feels sad, even though she knows that's not Ernestine's intention.

Ernestine doesn't look at Abi as she speaks. “I'm not much for talking about love,” she says softly. “Not much at all. Though I expect you are. Being sixteen and all.”

“Seventeen…in the fall.”

“Seventeen,” Ernestine repeats, and then her eyes are on Abi. “I remember turning seventeen,” she says, and Abi feels an odd twinge of fear as she sees Ernestine's eyes change. The clearness – the steadfastness – is not there. Instead they are flat and dull. Abi feels panic pulling at her stomach, and pushing into her lungs.

Ernestine goes on, and her voice is different: bitter. “I thought the world was going to open up when I became an adult. I thought I'd travel, find my vocation…” Her voice drifts off, then abruptly she asks, “Do you know what a vocation is?”

“A career?”

She shakes her head vigorously, and not a hair moves. “It's so much more. It comes from the Latin verb –
vocare –
to call.
It's a calling. I wanted a job that felt more than just ‘good.' I wanted work that felt ‘right.' When it feels ‘right,' that's when it's a vocation.”

Abi suddenly realizes that Ernestine's never told her where she works, and she's never asked.

“Did you do it? Did you travel? Did you find your vocation?”

She laughs, a hollow sound. “I took a bus from Princeton to Vancouver. And I have a job I like.”

“Which is?”

She motions to what's in Abi's hands. “What do you think? A sewing and yarn store.”

Of course. Abi doesn't need to ask if it's “right.” She knows it keeps Ernestine's hands and thoughts busy.

“What else did you think?” Abi asks.

“I thought I'd find a wonderful person to share with, and we'd have a family and we'd have a house that felt like a home.”

“And?” Abi persists.

“You know…I've never been even as far as the Rockies,” Ernestine says.

F
riday, Jude waves to Abi from the field at lunch hour, and she grabs an apple and the blanket and goes to meet him. He takes the blanket and spreads it over the grass that has
finally stopped growing and is now browning in the July heat. They sit, and he opens his bag, takes out his sandwich. Swiss cheese again. “Trade you half for the apple,” he says, and she does. He takes the apple from her hand. “You know,” he says, “this was it.”

“What?”

“What started it all. Eve gave Adam the apple, and that was it – they knew they were naked.” His voice is playful, teasing.

And they knew right from wrong.
That's what comes into her head, and she likes to think it's a thought that comes from Ernestine, not from herself. At least she didn't say it aloud.

“There's blackberry leaves,” she says, pointing them out. “You could cover up with them.”

He grimaces. “You don't really believe all that, do you?”

She shrugs. “It's an old story. Maybe there's a bit of truth to it. More likely it was Adam gave Eve the apple, and whined for her to make a pie.”

To her surprise, he bursts out laughing. She can see the fillings in his upper teeth, and when he looks back at her, his eyes are bright. “I like you, Aba-with-one-b Jones. I like you muchly.” The words explode from him. Then: “I'm sorry about the other night. I didn't mean to scare you.”

“I know,” she says, though there are other words she wants to use; she can't think what, though.

He touches her fingertips on the blanket, and her body is suddenly alive.
Is this just “good” or is it “right”?
Maybe that's the question, not “Is it right or wrong?”

Strangely, it's Jude pulling away this time. “What?” he whispers.

She shakes her head to silence him, and leans over and kisses him full, like she's never kissed anyone. She wants to hear those voices coming back to her.
Mary, Mary, Mary… Just good…or right…or just good…or right…

She doesn't hear a damn thing, because the river suddenly roars. Wind catches the front of Jude's hair as they pull apart. He flattens it, his hand moving slowly.

They look at each other until she wants to look away,
has to
look away.

“I want to be…just us.” Jude's voice is husky.

She's a piece of glass, sitting on a window edge in Mum's greenhouse, waiting, watching the water rush away underneath, knowing she's going to fall any minute. There's no direction anymore. There's only down, and then along with the river to the west. When did she decide she has no choice?

“I know,” she says. It's not the same as saying what she wants, but for Jude it's enough. They gather up the lunch bag, the blanket. He takes her hand, releases it slowly as he walks away. By the time his fingertips leave hers, her entire body is
trembling. She's the piece of glass, falling now, falling into the current.

She doesn't want to have eyes that are flat and dull.

Leave 'em 'til They're Crunchy Dry