Burn Our Bodies Down(62)

“A picture of what?”

Gram gets up, crosses the room in stockinged feet and reaches out to tug on the bodice of my dress, smoothing a wrinkle. “A picture of your mother.”

Everything in my life, a gift and a wound at the same time. When will anything just be what it is?

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s get some curls in that hair.”

It’s too hot in here, worse than in my room, even with the ceiling fan going. The blinds are drawn so low over the windows that I can’t catch a glimpse of the sunlight or the fields outside. I follow Gram to the vanity. Its bench is plush and velvet, out of place in Gram’s house, where everything is simply what it needs to be and nothing more. Nothing much on the vanity besides some old perfume, brown and dried along the sides of its glass bottle, and three tubes of lipstick. I reach for one of them.

Gram knocks my hand away. “Those colors won’t suit you.”

I sit still as she works the elastic out of my hair and undoes my braid. So carefully, each lock of hair laid gently over one of my shoulders. I shut my eyes. I’m afraid I might cry.

“Today’s important,” Gram says in my ear, her hands careful against my scalp. “I’m counting on you to keep things tidy.”

I open my eyes, meet hers in the mirror. “Tidy?”

“As in,” Gram says, “do not make a mess.” She separates my hair into sections and strokes it with a stiff brush, smoothing it. I watch in the mirror as she sweeps it back from my temples, the gray streaks there stark. I don’t know why—they never have before—but they set a blush going in my cheeks. Gram presses the back of her hand to my skin, cool against my rising heat.

“Just like a Nielsen,” she says, something wistful to her voice. A dreaminess.

She picks up the curling iron then, and the whole world stretches out as she works it through my hair, piece by piece. Slow, pulling, the hum of the fan, the air beating against my skin. This is what being hers means. This is what I wanted.

I let it sink into me, wrap around my heart, until she finishes the last of my curls, sets down the iron. I lean back against her stomach. Matching dresses, matching hair.

“Look at you,” Gram whispers. She bends down, kisses the back of my head, and she’s holding my shoulders so tight that I can feel bruises setting deep under my skin.

I don’t mind. It’s about time love left a mark on me.



* * *



—

Once my curls have cooled, Gram herds me out to the truck. I still don’t want to leave Fairhaven, but she won’t be convinced, and besides, it feels good to walk next to her, looking like her girl. This is what I wanted when I came here.

Gram takes off her heels to drive. I hold them in my lap as she steers us down the highway, past the burned fields and into the center of town. Phalene looks just the same, but it feels entirely different seeing it through the window of Gram’s truck. I know she’s looking at everything and seeing something else. Seeing what it used to be when this was Nielsen country.

Is that how it looked to Mom when she got here? I know she won’t be at the fundraiser—I can’t imagine anything that would draw her there—but I feel a flutter of nerves anyway. What if I see her on the street? What if we pass wherever she’s staying, a motel, or just our car parked by the side of the green? What am I supposed to do then?

But wherever she is, we park in the lot without seeing her. And I have other things to worry about. Tess, for one, the sting of our fight still fresh, and the police, for another. There’s the station on the opposite side of the pavement, and for a second I wonder if Gram’s really bringing me there, if she means to put me in the morgue alonside the girl she let burn, but it passes as Gram leads me in the other direction. Around to the front of the town hall, past the church with its broad marble steps and tall, arched double doors. Next to it, the town hall looks tiny and ordinary. Just a two-story brick building, its small, single door decorated with a pair of drooping balloons and propped open by a garbage can.

I’d think we couldn’t possibly be in the right place if it weren’t for the handful of people lingering outside, dressed up, like me and Gram. Farther down the sidewalk, a mother speaks sternly to her daughter, whose dress is about as wide as the girl is tall. Near the door, a collection of boys my age in blue sport coats and khakis are passing a cigarette around. Strangers, all of them, and I think it’s the most people I’ve seen in this town. I wonder if they know who I am. If they care the way everyone else I’ve meet seems to.

I get my answer as Gram marches me by, her hand clamped around my elbow. The boys watch us approach, wide-eyed, and as we pass, the one nearest the door whispers to the others, smoke trailing from his open mouth.

Vera Nielsen, in the flesh.

I know how they feel.

Gram doesn’t give them a second look. She ushers me inside and across a shabby beige lobby, following a sign tacked to the wall with an arrow pointing toward another door. I barely get a glimpse of the offices branching off the lobby before we’re in the concrete stairwell, the only sound the echo of Gram’s heels with every step.

“What am I supposed to do at this thing?” I ask, straightening the fall of my dress. “?‘Don’t make a mess’ is kind of vague.”

Gram ushers me down the second flight of stairs, into a small foyer with a flickering overhead light. A warped maroon door is just open, and inside I can hear the build of voices and music. “You and Theresa—would you call yourselves friends?” she asks, pulling me around to face her.