“Not to mention guilt shouldn’t cost more than five hundred dollars a month,” Mrs. Jorgen says, pulling the lever on the coffee maker, filling cup after cup.
“That much?” Mrs. Sibley asks.
“At least. Makes you wonder why she can’t pay her grocery bills.”
“Ailene Calvert could never pay for another thing in her life and no one in this old town would say squat. Remember that birthday party they had when she turned ten?”
Mrs. Jorgen snorts. “The rash, you mean?”
“The rash, and that God-awful solo.” Mrs. Jorgen laughs, presses her fingers to her lips and glances over her shoulder at Grand as Mrs. Sibley continues, “Up on that porch all dolled up in her lace and finery, face blistered as a strawberry, croaking out the Ave Maria while the rest of us stood on the ground below, solemn as church mice, just grateful to be there.”
“What was it she had, anyway?”
“Measles. Lord, Inga, you mean to say you didn’t catch it?”
“No.”
Mrs. Sibley shakes her head. “I don’t know how you missed it. They let Ailene pass out the cake, and a week after she coughed all over my slice I about died.”
Mrs. Jorgen sighs and fills another cup, puts it on her tray. “Any time I complained about Ailene as a girl my daddy would lecture me on how Cumberland wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for that family, blah blah blah. Well, I don’t care what her father did for this town—all the good deeds of one generation shouldn’t absolve the sins of the next. Honestly, Frances. Has anyone even seen that child since they first brought her home from the hospital?”
“Carsons have seen her.”
“Well, she ought to be in school.”
Mrs. Sibley clears her throat and around the corner of the kitchen door I can see her tapping her temple with one finger, whispering, and Mrs. Jorgen’s eyes widen as she shakes her head. “There’s a reason no one asks too many questions, Inga. Let it be,” Mrs. Sibley mutters, then picks up the tray and carries it over to just where Grand is pointing.
After fellowship hour Mr. Carson unlocks the passenger side of the truck and helps Grand in, then holds his keys out to me.
“Really?” I ask, my heart fluttering.
“Haven’t practiced none since school let out.” His face is blank but his eyes are twinkling.
I pluck the keys from his fingers and run around to the driver’s side as he squeezes in next to Grand and wrenches the door shut. I have to scoot my butt to the edge of the seat to reach the pedals, and when I turn the key in the ignition the truck roars then stops.
Grand sighs and says, “Carl…” I crank the ignition again, holding it longer this time, and the truck turns over and idles.
“She’s got it, Ailene.” I take a deep breath and stomp on the clutch, grinding the gears into reverse. “Mirrors,” Mr. Carson says, and I hit the brake as a tan car lurches to a stop right behind us. The driver gives a wave and pulls out so I can back up. Once we’re even with the road I stomp the clutch again, joggle the shifter into first and press down on the accelerator, slowly inching us forward. “Give it a little more,” Mr. Carson says, and when I press my foot down we pick up enough speed so we’re sailing down the sandy road, coasting, light as air, the sun flashing between trees. “Brake,” Mr. Carson says, and my feet hop around looking for the right pedal.
I find the brake as we jounce up onto the pavement, and Grand says “Oh!” half wounded, half appalled, like someone’s just burped into her champagne glass.
“Sorry.”
“Doing just fine, Ansel,” Mr. Carson says. I bite my lip and press down on the gas again as we ease forward, creeping to the end of Hill Street until we crawl to a stop. I put the blinker on and look both ways, then ease out onto Main Street, jerking the wheel a little to line us up with the white dotted line. There are a few cars parked on the other side of the street, but none on this side to worry about sideswiping. Truck tires whirring easily over the asphalt, I point us towards the end of the street, only a few blocks to go until the curve in the dirt road leads up the hill home. Next to me, Grand is seething, but I grip the steering wheel harder and lean forward, craning under the windshield until the light reaches my face.
Must have been a quick hit to the driver’s seat buckling grey matter, or so they all think. It’s the only reason they can figure why I don’t speak. All of them forgetting the one time I opened my mouth and the words came out sloshed and tumbled, how the quick eyes of the doctors caught across the room. I looked to her to know my thoughts, explain for me, but she stepped back as they wheeled me away, stuffed me inside machines, and then I knew. And the severing of that line with her thinking was worse than the severing of my spine. How to explain? They don’t know how speaking scatters thought like buckshot, or how much thinking every day you have to do when half of you is unfeeling, concentrating on anchoring in place. Like legs dipped in sunlit water, how I always confuse the real with reflection. Neither flesh feels, so how can you trust your eyes to tell? Why I’m in the habit of looking deeper than looking, to see what’s fleeting and what’s taking root. How the world tries to tear your attention away from even yourself, it seems. Better to be careful. Better to stay lip-locked against idle chatter that untethers.
Six
Izzy’s temperature is down to 100˚ so I give her two more aspirin then wander town for a few hours, hoping I’ll run into Everett. When I finally walk back into the house that evening the first thing I hear is Izzy crying. I bolt upstairs and through the door to where she’s bent close over the heavy art book, her tears raising measles on the slick paper. She looks up at me and heaves, the book so heavy it hits the floor beside her bed with a ceiling-rattling shake. Then Grand is calling up the stairs and Izzy’s screaming and scribbling on her notepad, tearing pieces off and handing me bits of sentences.
Hiding this from me
You have been telling didn’t tell me
All of this for how long years
And years all these long gone dead
They knew how to see beneath
surfaces I thought only I knew
Have to see everything have to now
So far behind hurry hurry
She lets out little shrieks as she writes, and all I can do is take the scraps of paper, watching the snot running into her mouth as she rips and keeps writing, gauzy hair standing out from her scalp, the walls all around us retracting. The book will hardly shut when I pick it up for all the bent and twisted pages, and Izzy holds her hands out so hungrily I shove it at her then take a few steps back.
She flips to a page and jabs her finger at a painting and flips again so fast the pages tear. “This painting, Izzy?” She nods and flips again, jabbing a finger and flipping before I can see and pointing, flipping, pointing, riffling through the pages like she’s lost something and then she wraps her arms around the book, hefts it to her chest and rocks. I sit on the edge of her bed and put my arms around her but she pushes me away, then shoves the book off her lap until it crashes to the floor. The house shudders and when I put my arms around her again she’s limp in my arms for a second, then starts pinching and scratching and shrieking. “Izzy, calm down—you’ll make yourself sick,” I say, grabbing her hands and holding her tight until the fight goes out of her and she sags against me. Her hands drop in worn-out heaps and she sobs into my shoulder.
“What on earth is all this racket about?” Grand is in the doorway, her eyes blazing.
“It’s