Winter Loon(10)

Ruby came up behind me. Her eyes were raw and pink. “We kept it just the way she liked it.”

“No keeping it the same ever brought her back, though, did it?” Gip said. He sat down on the end of the bed and smoothed the bedspread with one hand. “Once she was gone, she was gone. And now she’s gone for good.”

“There’s your things,” she said, pointing to a white bag on the bed.

I walked through the doorway, wary of the watchful eyes on me—the long-billed birds in knotted wood, the mysterious smiling boys, the grandparents I barely knew.

“Hold on a second,” Ruby said. “I got something for you.” She snapped her fingers and pointed at me, then disappeared and came back with a picture frame. She made a fuss out of putting it on top of the dresser. “There,” she said. My mother, leaning on a twisted piece of driftwood, barely smiling, her delicate hand posed on her cheek. One more set of eyes.



I CRAWLED INTO BED THAT first night—the bed my mother had slept in, too—and listened to my grandparents fight in their kitchen. Though pots and pans clanked and crashed, I was too frightened to get up for a closer look. But I could imagine them there, circling each other, blue-lit from the stove light. Ruby screeched like a tomcat and Gip slurred back at her in a dulled roar. I pulled the covers over my head, waiting for the fight to fizzle out.

The next morning, I surveyed the front room, half expecting to find chairs tumped over, fist holes in walls. To me, that was the aftermath of a fight. I had witnessed plenty between my parents. Both of them were shovers. When blood was drawn or bruises raised, they could claim it was a doorknob, a stumble and fall, a bash against a coffee table. My mother, being smaller, took the brunt of it. I’d never seen either parent throw a punch, but my mother would throw anything else she could get her hands on. She had good aim, too, or maybe my father was lousy at ducking. But in my grandparents’ house, there was no outward sign of fighting at all. Old wedding photos and sad clown pictures still hung cockeyed on the paneled walls. The couch was still ripped but not blood splattered. Gip and Ruby sat at the kitchen table in silence—Gip with his newspaper, Ruby eating a sugar-laced grapefruit, two lit cigarettes dangling in the bean bag ashtray between them. Neither had cuts or broken bones or black eyes. When my parents fought, one of two things usually happened: either my father would be gone, not to return for days or even weeks, or my mother would be wrapped around him, loving on him in a way that made me want to cover my eyes but peep through my fingers. Something about the way they loved each other had always made me feel a little bit dirty.

“Well, look who finally got out of bed,” said Ruby.

“Boy just got up, woman. Don’t go jumping down his throat.”

“No one’s jumping down no one’s throat. Jesus H. Christ. I’m just remarking it must be nice getting to sleep in, is all. Come sit down and have yourself some breakfast.”

I pulled out the vinyl-covered chair and sat down.

Gip folded the paper and pushed back from the table. “I’m working a double. You take that rent check over to Burt. Tell him I’ll have the rest by Friday.”

“Take it yourself,” she said. “I took it last time we were late. It’s your turn.”

So much went unsaid between them, like words didn’t matter when their contempt for each other was clear. Gip snatched the check off the counter. “And find that boy pajamas that fit, will you?” To me he said, “You’ll wear a shirt to the table from now on, you hear?” He grabbed his coat off a hook at the front door and walked out.

“Shut that door!” Ruby shouted after him. “Get up and shut that door,” she said to me. I complied.

We sat at the table in awkward silence. Ruby watched me pour cereal, then milk. She watched me sprinkle sugar and take bites like she’d never seen a person eat before. I set the spoon down.

“What? Am I doing something wrong?”

That seemed to break her trance some. “No. No. I’m just looking at you, is all.”

I went back to my cereal, but the second I did, she was back at me.

“She must have said something. Val. What’d she say?”

“I told you. She was scared.”

“But what did she say? What was the last thing she said?”

She didn’t apologize for being reckless or for trying to pull me in with her. She didn’t tell me to take care of Dad or Elizabeth. She could have said, “I love you, son.” She could have said, “Have a good life. Be a good person.” At least she should have pleaded with me to go back to the cabin, to be safe. But she had given me nothing, left me with nothing. And I resented her for it. Resented Ruby like she’d taken something that was rightly mine. The tears started in my chin, shivered up. “She said, ‘Mama.’”

Ruby tucked her head down and glowered at me. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not.” I craved for her to slap my face, to hurt me on the outside, to leave some kind of mark to go with the betrayal I felt on the inside.

The chair creaked when she sat back. The burning cigarette and her face turned to ash while I waited for her to say or do something. An image popped into my head of Ruby pulling my mother out, cradling her frozen body, brushing the soaked bangs out of her eyes, kissing her, making her warm again. But I couldn’t hold Ruby there. She didn’t seem like anyone’s mother to me, and I couldn’t imagine why mine would waste her last breath that way. Ruby walked her coffee cup to the sink and ran the water. She bowed her head over the basin and let it hang while the water went down the drain. She closed the faucet without washing her dish or even getting her hands wet. “I got work” was all she said.