Valentine(71)

Corrine rolls down the window and leans out to shout at them, but she sees Mary Rose’s car door swing open and lays on the horn instead. It is a long unbroken wail, not so different from the plant whistle, and it gets their attention. Jesse and D. A. stop and turn around, and after a brief pause, he bends down to say something to her. The child shrugs and rubs her eyes, and looks at her feet.

Mary Rose jumps out of her car and runs toward them, the rifle bouncing against her shoulder, bullets spilling onto the ground behind her. Corrine’s heart jumps as if she’s just grabbed an electric fence. She has been living across the street from this young woman for months, watching her grow thin as a mesquite leaf, noticing the dark shadows under her eyes when she sits on the front porch and watches her daughter as if she might disappear at any moment.

A few weeks before the trial, while the girls were giving the baby a bath and the women were having a cigarette on Mary Rose’s back patio, Corrine thought she saw in her neighbor’s eyes, ever so briefly, something that might have been despair.

Do you need anything? she asked Mary Rose.

No, Mary Rose said, I guess I don’t.

When was the last time you got a good night’s sleep? And Mary Rose let loose with a laugh that was more snarl than anything else. Well, she said, I’m one of those women who has to get up and pee every ten minutes, pretty much from the day I get pregnant, and the baby’s three months old, so I’d say it’s been about thirteen months since I slept through the night, give or take.

Honey, what about Robert? I know he’d come into town and help out, if you asked him to.

Robert’s busy with his cows. Mary Rose looked out at her lawn and kicked at one of the half dozen extension cords that were spread across the patio. And I don’t want him here anyway.

She walked to the edge of the porch and stepped on a large black spider. Keith Taylor was over here the other day helping me get ready for the trial, she said, and he asked me about living here in town, if I didn’t miss being with my husband, and I didn’t know how to answer him.

One of the girls shouted inside the house and both women stopped talking, ears pricking in expectation of being needed for one thing or another, being asked to solve the next domestic situation, however large or small, but the girls chattered for a few seconds and went quiet.

Because when I ask myself what is lost between Robert and me, Mary Rose paused and looked at her hands, turned them over and over. Well. How would I even know? Shit, I got my first cheerleading outfit when I was still in diapers. All of us did. If we were lucky, we made it to twelve before some man or boy, or well-intentioned woman who just thought we ought to know the score, let us know why we were put on this earth. To cheer them on. To smile and bring a little sunshine into the room. To prop them up and know them, and be nice to everybody we meet. I married Robert when I was seventeen years old, went straight from my father’s house to his. Mary Rose sat down on a lawn chair and leaned her head against the patio table and began to cry. Is this what I’m supposed to do? she said. Cheer him on?

Corrine stood and waited for the crying to stop, but it went on and on and after a while Corrine, embarrassed for her neighbor, touched Mary Rose’s shoulder. Call me if you need anything, she said, and let herself out through the side gate.

Corrine has run less than ten feet when her lungs seize and tell her no, no ma’am, should have thought about this twenty years ago. She doubles over in the desert, breathing hard, then stands up and takes a few steps. Her whole face aches from hitting the steering wheel, and a knot is rising on her forehead. She vomits a little into the sand, nothing but bile and water, and wonders if she might have a concussion.

Mary Rose is far ahead of her now, and Corrine begins to shout Debra Ann’s name again and again, each word a new challenge to her aching lungs, her parched throat and bruised head.

D. A. and Jesse watch the two women, one far ahead of the other and moving fast, the other lumbering behind like an old heifer, wishing she’d listened to Potter all those years when he said haranguing teenagers all day long wasn’t real exercise, no matter how many hours a day she was on her feet.

Let her go, Strickland. Mary Rose’s voice is a steel rod, and it pierces Corrine to the core. That’s not him, Mary Rose, she yells. It’s not the same man.

Mary Rose stops running and looks at the young man. Corrine knows her friend is close enough to see him clearly. They both are. See there, Corrine calls. That’s Mr. Belden.

Debra Ann frowns up at Jesse, and they see him stoop down a bit to gently take her by the arm. He stands up straight and waves toward the women.

Thank God. Corrine takes a step toward them.

No, Mary Rose says quietly. She lifts the rifle she calls Old Lady and snugs it against her shoulder and squeezes the trigger.

*

The rifle report tears the day in half. Debra Ann and Jesse fall to the ground and lie without moving. Mary Rose gazes at them calmly. Her head is cocked slightly to the side, as if she is trying to solve a problem. I missed, she says flatly. I fucking missed.

Both D. A. and Jesse are crying now, both of them repeating what’s going on, what’s going on, and although Jesse’s voice is louder and deeper than Debra Ann’s, it is still very much the voice of a child who does not understand.

Debra Ann, Corrine yells, get up and come here right now. The girl rises wraithlike from the dirt and hits the ground running.