Winter Loon(18)

There were no cars on the road, no lights on in houses or stores. It was too early for the early shift, too late for the late. In the morning gloom, I found a dumpster and discarded what remained of that girl in the picture and the sad images of what had become of her. I unsheathed the knife and pressed the point against my wrist, testing whether I could sacrifice myself right there. To be anywhere else. To be with her. And I let Gip sneak back into my thoughts, his want of her. What was I, anyway? Their blood ran through me—loser, liar, thief, cheat, brute, drunk, creep. Was there good at all? My neck still hurt from where Gip had pinned me. That stuck feeling, that flailing, caught. I let out a roar that shook my arms and my head free. I let the knife drop. What I wanted was to not crawl back in through the window I’d left open, to not be where I was, to not have my mother dead, my father gone, my drunk grandfather lurking in the dark. What option did I have? Go to Kathryn? Beg the Rooks to take me in off the street? Fat chance.

I pulled the bedspread back out of the dumpster and wrapped myself up in her for a while more, trying to find a hint of lemon from that girl long gone, though I must have known it was no use. And in that blossoming spring, I fell asleep alone on gravel and cold ground. I woke with the store manager’s boot nudging my ribs. I was told to get. I left the bedspread in a heap on the ground and went back to the only home I had. But I was not about to settle in. I took the knife, for defense, to help bide the time until my father came for me like he said he would.

I lifted the window quietly and pushed aside the curtain. Ruby was there, on the end of the bare mattress. Her voice was tight, grimaced. “What have you done?”

My foot caught up on the sill and I tripped into the room, quickly righting myself to stand against the wall. “I couldn’t take it.”

“Take what?” She looked around the room stripped clean of my mother. “What was to take? You couldn’t leave it be? I left it be fifteen years, longer even. You couldn’t leave it be for a few months?”

“You’re one to talk. It took you two days, two days! You threw everything that belonged to me away, and you left me in here with everything that belonged to her.” I sank to the floor and let my head fall between my knees. Did the dust in that left-be room contain fragments of her skin? Were the bitten fingernails tangled in the shag rug hers or mine? I’d never thought to ask why Gip and Ruby hadn’t done anything to change that room, hadn’t taken down the posters or thrown out the ratty teddy bears. It was a room stuck in place, a boot in a bog.

“Why didn’t you ever clean this room out, Ruby?”

The rattle of her stilled and she let her eyes drift to some middle space, out of focus. Her voice simmered and she mostly whispered, “Thought she might come back someday.”

I pressed my head against the wall and looked around the wrecked and empty room. Scraps of paper and scotch tape dangled from the maple birds on the paneling. She’d up and left. Just as sure as Ruby had left everything the same, my mother had rejected it all. What had she even bothered to pack if so much of her things were left behind? “Why do you think she left?”

Ruby put her hand to her mouth, dragged her jutting finger bones back and forth across her lips. “Well, there was the baby.” In her voice, I could hear the effort she was making to keep from breaking down.

“Daisy,” I said.

Ruby raised her brows, resting her eyes on that truth with a nod. “She’d taken up with your dad. Nothing but a carny, that Moss Ballot. Couldn’t believe she’d gotten herself pregnant that way. I told her . . .” Ruby shook her head, twisting her jaw to tap her teeth together. “Told her she didn’t have to have a baby, didn’t have to keep it. She was so pigheaded. No diploma even. Nothing at all.”

“I thought Daisy came after she and Dad were married.”

“Don’t mean she wasn’t made before. About the second Val could, she hitched herself to Moss, screaming at me, trying to tell me everything I’d done wrong.” Ruby put her hand up. “I didn’t want to hear it. I’d done my best and I figured she’d be back, figured Moss would leave her once the baby came. Thought I’d get a chance to do better. But I never did.”

“They never told me what happened to Daisy.”

“Died in her crib, they said. I never even got to see her. No picture. Nothing. They were living in Eau Claire. Your mom said we weren’t welcome. She was already pregnant with you by that time. You’d a been Irish twins, you and that girl.”

“Daisy,” I said.

“Why she chose that name . . .” She tapped her teeth again, as if she were sending a message in code.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Awfully fresh, is all. For a girl like Val, getting pregnant, running off.”

The image of Gip crawling into the twin bed where Ruby sat cropped back up. I could imagine my mother desperate to get out of this house, desperate to get away from whatever was happening here, desperate for something clean.

“I threw it all in a dumpster, down by the market.”

Ruby pushed on her knees to standing. Her robe fell open, revealing a threadbare nightgown with missing buttons, her deflated chest. “Doesn’t matter anymore. What’s done’s done.”

When I stood, my shirt bunched, revealing the knife at my waistband. I pulled my sweatshirt over it as Ruby eyeballed me and her lower lids drew up. She took a step toward me like she might not be able to stop herself from reaching for it. “What you got there?”