Winter Loon(99)

My father nodded. “That’s right.” He motioned for me to pass the casserole.



HE AND I LEANED AGAINST the kitchen counter after the dishes were dried and put away. I tapped the birds dangling from the twig. He poured whiskey into a highball glass. “You remember giving me a mobile like this one? Mom threw it into the road.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“I tried to fix it. Couldn’t figure it out.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes it’s easier to build something new than it is to fix something broken.”

He flicked a bird with his middle finger. It bobbed awkwardly on the filament, bumping into another bird before settling into a flat spin.





EPILOGUE

IN MY LIFE, I’d gotten used to the sounds walls let through. The pad of feet in the hallway, the click of a carefully closed door, the sorrow of tears cried into a pillow, an engine turning over, winter birds mourning on the wire.

He took the work boots Aveline gave him and the wool blanket she gave to me. He took the diary and pen, which surprised me. He took back the work gloves he’d given to me, which didn’t. He took Elizabeth but left behind her soiled litter box. The mobile was busted up and crammed into the full garbage can. There was one last thing my father took from me—the photographs of Daisy. No matter what, she belonged to him.



WHEN ANNACLAIRE WOKE UP, AVELINE told her he was gone. She dropped the doll he’d given her and folded herself into a ball on the floor, screaming at me that it was all my fault, that I’d wrecked everything. Aveline tried to explain that some people are natural givers, some are takers, that my being there hadn’t changed what Moss was. “He never wanted anything and he never had anything to give.”

Mrs. Blue was in her chair, one eye closed, the other fixed in the kaleidoscope. She pointed it at Annaclaire. “Your mom needs a hug. Go on now.”

Annaclaire climbed into her mother’s lap, buried her head. The sobbing was unbearable. I turned away to keep from doing the same.

“This is so pretty,” Mrs. Blue said, tilting her head back and forth into the kaleidoscope. “You don’t have to look at a thing the way it is at all.”

I left them in the living room with their sadness, took my blame with me to pack my things. I listened to Annaclaire’s asking, asking, to Aveline’s soft there, there. I’d seen firsthand how to love a hurt child, not from my wounded parents, not from Gip and Ruby, whose decisions were cast from failure and despair, but from Mona and Troy, who’d taken Jolene in, who gave her love that was a constant, steady drumbeat. That drum was beating in my ears and chest. I stepped over my duffel, went back to the living room to ask Aveline if I could stay. I made solemn and careful promises. I would stay as long as she would have me, abide by the rules she’d already laid out. I would do more than she asked.

Over that next week, only Annaclaire talked about Moss, mostly wondering if he would ever come back. At first, I thought she was hoping he would, then I began to think she feared he might. That was a crushing thing, to see her fear. For me and Aveline, it was simple honesty to tell her he wouldn’t be back. Something about this leaving was final. We would never see him again. Mrs. Blue never mentioned his name, not once. It was clear to her who I was and who I was not. It would take me time to be so sure.

Jolene and I talked on the phone on New Year’s Day. We agreed that calls wouldn’t make sense anymore, that the time and distance would mean letter writing instead since neither of us could afford the bill. I had sent her a filigreed locket that Christmas. She sent me a picture of her wearing it, which I put in a frame so I could look at her face, talk to her as I struggled to write letters good enough to keep her writing back.

Maybe we were too young or maybe distance makes the heart break. We fought several times—mostly because I kept falling into my own traps, making promises I couldn’t keep. Then I would turn on her. Why couldn’t she look at colleges in Montana or, better yet, skip college altogether? We could get married. Start our own lives together. Why wasn’t I enough? And she’d snap back that I didn’t listen to her, that I did not consider her dreams, only mine.

The local high school where I enrolled was small and I kept to myself. I had no interest in joining and looked with some wonder at the way we humans fall into types. I saw Kathryn and her friends, the Drew Fullertons, even the Lester, who at this school was an affable wrestler and the oldest kid in a family that owned a car dealership. I did not find a Jolene, though I wasn’t looking. For me, that person could not be replicated or replaced.

Mostly I spent my time with Annaclaire. I played all the roles she would allow me—big brother, prince, carriage driver, pony, coach. I learned how much I loved reading out loud, a thing I had never done in my life and no one had ever done for me. It was the best part of most of my days, sitting with Annaclaire, reading whatever book she’d brought home from the library. I liked the weight and weave of the covers, the colorful pictures. I liked the sound of my own voice and could hear my own affection when Annaclaire’s hand rested on mine or on the page. She was a loved child, and her ease lifted me even when the letters from Jolene dwindled to almost none.



LATE THAT FIRST SUMMER, LESTER passed through Burden Falls on his way to Oregon, where he would follow Bull into the Coast Guard. We drove up into the canyon, drank beers, shot off bottle rockets. He told me Jolene was good, same with Mona and Troy and Mariah. He handed me an envelope with my name written on it in Jolene’s round script, then asked if Aveline had a boyfriend and whether I thought he had a chance with her.