The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo (21 page)

McKenna chews.

Alone in the house on Moriarty Street.

From her bedroom, she watches unshapely tourists come and go.

They point. They snap photos. They bang the metal porch door with their umbrella handles. “Hello? Hello?” They ring the bell once, twice, three times. They cup their hands and peer into basement windows. They chisel hunks of cement from the front steps and stuff them into their purses. Then scurry to their minivans.

At night, McKenna watches television. She drinks tea. She prays. Writes. Prays. Chews. Writes. Prays. Writes. Chews.

She talks to Grandma Pencil on the phone. She talks to Murray on the phone. She talks to Toby on the phone. She tells them every thing here is fine. They never discuss Audrey.

A new millennium has dawned. The world remains unended, for now.

What’s left of Audrey resides in a plot next to Misty, at peace. She might eat her way out of the coffin. Then they’d believe. Then she’d get that statue.

Except Audrey is ash now, so this would truly require a miracle.

She died on the last Christmas Eve of the twentieth century. No one knows how or where.

One morning, her body was seen blowing down the middle of Main Street like an empty plastic bag. At least that’s what some people say.

Some people had honestly believed that nothing could kill her. Some people wrote books about her immortality.

What’s certain is that there was enormous pressure from all sides to perform an autopsy. Huge sums of money—seven, eight figures—were offered for her body. Everyone wanted to take a look. Everyone wanted to put her in jars.

Murray has recently relocated to Arizona. Put himself up in a modest house with a view of a butte or two. Audrey’s death hit him pretty hard. He hadn’t expected it. The only other girl in his life, snatched away. Maybe that’s how he saw it. He never said it in so many words, but it’s worth thinking about.

McKenna was never much of a girl, never the daddy’s girl a daddy likes to fawn over. McKenna knows this. She accepts it.

Early retirement from Hanson Mold pays some of Murray’s bills. He also lives off Misty’s life insurance, which has grown in a mutual fund for ten years.

Toby lives in the south side of Grand Rapids. He still supervises lawn furniture at Lowe’s and frets about his puny muscles. His steady girlfriend Amber, plucked hot and steaming from the cradle at nineteen years of age, manages his fading bodybuilding career.

Grandma Pencil did suffer a stroke in 1999. McKenna hadn’t lied to Audrey about that. Grandma recovered, mostly. She sold her house and most of her possessions and was taken in like a stray puppy by the geezers.

The stroke put half of her face to sleep. It also wiped out half of her memories. A happy occurrence, really. Some experiences are better left forgotten. She doesn’t even remember what Audrey did to her, how for five years Audrey took away everything she treasured, including her will to live. How she’d had to resort to the same mental numbness that had allowed her to survive internment camp and the agonizing mystery of her father’s fate. How she’d learned to view all of her possessions as temporal, insignificant,
already gone
. How she’d learned that loving
things
was always a dead end.

Grandma doesn’t remember these valuable lessons, so there’s no immediate need for McKenna to apologize for unlocking the back door, for letting the monster inside every time.

A confession wouldn’t hurt, though. Next week.

In time, the tourists stop coming.

2005.

McKenna celebrates her thirty-third birthday with a bowl of instant pudding. Tapioca. She doesn’t need much. Canned soups, bread, eggs, milk. She makes everything last. She turns the thermostat as low as she can stand it, spends evenings curled up in Misty’s old quilt, fills pages by candlelight. Her hand cramps.

When Grandma sold her house and moved in with the nuns five years ago, McKenna lugged all of Murray’s inventions back here, stored them in the attic. Sometimes she goes up there and picks through the boxes, reconnects with something. Murray doesn’t know she has these things. He’d be embarrassed. They phone each other every month, although both of his ears are quite deaf now, and he hates his hearing aids, so conversation is awkward. He calls to make sure she got the check.

Her faith has deepened. Some days, it feels like she really is in harmony with her creator, like she has given herself, body and soul, to Jesus. She knows she must serve Him. She knows, in fact, that she is blessed with the chance to serve Him. He will forgive her sins. Even when she confesses that she deceived Grandma for so many years. Even when she confesses that her last words to Audrey, her words about Grandma’s change of heart, were a lie meant only to fester like an open sore. Jesus will forgive her when she confesses.

Other days, McKenna is certain God will never love her. Not until she changes. Not until she stops destroying the temple. Her teeth are sensitive, stripped. Her throat is hot agony. Dark green welts form on her thighs from the slightest stove bump. Her menstruations have stopped. She is officially not a woman. The nuns visit, pray with her, urge her to seek help. The ones McKenna grew up with—Sister Pee Vee, Sister Max, Sister Juliet—all of them are gone now, but fresh ones, young ones, some younger than McKenna, have taken their places.

If you won’t see a doctor, they say, at least change your lifestyle. The Dominicans, they say, are a good order. They are always looking for new sisters. Your silence, your reflectiveness, will be put to a divine purpose. This house is unhealthy, they say. It is killing you.

One morning, Sister Pauline comes by. Her knock is softer than usual.

“Annabelle went to be with God last night,” she says, taking McKenna’s hand. “She’s at rest.”

McKenna smiles. Swallows.