Banished (8 page)

“I don’t think I said anything special,” I answered her carefully, “while I was taking care of him.”

Prairie nodded. “All right. Well, I’m glad he’s … better.”

“Yeah, it, um. I mean, he has that limp, you probably noticed. But that’s all.”

The waitress came along with our salads. We thanked her and just as I was about to pick up my fork, Prairie took a deep breath.

“I have some things to tell you, Hailey,” she said. “I’m sorry to have to do it now, when we’ve only just met, but I think it’s necessary.”

Bad news, then; she was about to tell me what she
really
wanted from me. But, honestly, how much worse could my life get?

“Whatever,” I said.

“Now I wish I’d ordered a drink,” Prairie said, smiling a little. “A really strong one. Okay, where to start? How about this—Alice isn’t as old as you think she is.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think she’s turning fifty this year,” Prairie said. “Let’s see, I’ll be thirty-one, and she was nineteen when she had me, so, yes, she’s still forty-nine, barely.”

I thought of the old pages, the names and dates written there.
Alice Eugenie Tarbell, 1961
. But Gram was old—she had the wrinkled face, the thin gray hair, the bent fingers that elderly people have. And she was weak. She could barely get up and down the stairs to the basement. She couldn’t do chores, which was why it was always me who mopped and swept and washed the windows and shoveled snow and carried the laundry and the groceries.

And she was sickly. She caught colds constantly, lying in her bed for days at a time, getting up only when her customers came calling. I found her hair in clumps in the shower drain, and her nails were yellowed and cracked. If she bumped into the furniture, she’d have purple and yellow bruises. Every time she lit up a cigarette, she hacked and coughed as though her lungs were about to fall out.

“That’s impossible,” I finally said.

Prairie sipped at her water. “I wish you could have known your great-grandmother. My grandmother Mary, Alice’s mother.”

I thought of the photo in the cheap frame, the woman’s bright red lips and sparkling eyes. My great-grandmother—I could barely imagine it.

“She died when I was ten,” Prairie continued, “but she was beautiful and strong and fun and smart … so smart. Most of the women in our family are.”

“What happened to Gram, then?”

“Well, here’s part of what I need to tell you, Hailey. Tarbell women—all your ancestors—are incredibly healthy and strong. It’s—well, it’s our birthright, I guess you might say. In our blood. Tell me, I bet you hardly ever get sick, right?”

“Uh … not much.”

“And you’re strong—stronger than the other kids. And more coordinated, right?”

I just shrugged.

“Well, like I said, it’s in our genes. Except that every so often, maybe every five or six generations, there is an aberration.”

“A what?”

“Someone born who doesn’t fit the genetic pattern. Like Alice. Where the rest of the Tarbell women have phenomenal genes, Alice has been in poor health her entire life. She’s aging much too quickly, her tissues are decaying. I don’t imagine she’ll live to see her fifty-fifth birthday.”

I thought of Milla and what she’d said about the necklaces, about how they were cursed.
How do you think your grandmother got the way she is?

I didn’t say it, but if it was true, and Gram had been cursed, I wasn’t sorry. Gram could die tomorrow for all I cared. I did the addition in my head—I’d be twenty. Twenty, and free of Gram—my heart lightened at the thought.

An idea came to me, a missing piece of the puzzle of my life that maybe Prairie could supply. “Did you and my mom have the same dad? Do you know who he is?”

Prairie shook her head. I’d wondered, sometimes, looking at Gram with her withered skin and bent body, if she had ever been young, if a man had ever loved her. It didn’t seem possible.

“Alice never talked about that part of her life.”

“What about my dad?” I asked. “Like maybe my mom had a boyfriend or something?”

Prairie gave me a look that was so full of sadness I almost wished I hadn’t asked. “Clover was my
younger
sister. When I left Gypsum, she was only fourteen. She was already pregnant with you. I never knew.”

Fourteen
. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I knew it was possible—they talked about it in Health enough.

“She would be … twenty-nine,” I said. Barely old enough to be a mother of a
kid
, much less someone my age.

“Yes … Clover, your mom, she was very shy. She didn’t really have many friends at school. And nothing like a boyfriend.”

So she was like me, then. I knew what it was like not to have friends. “But maybe Gram knows something.”

Prairie pressed her lips together for a moment as though trying to figure out what to say next. “
If
she knows, I’m afraid she’ll never tell.”

“Why not?”

“I know how hard it is to live with Alice,” Prairie said gently. “I … remember. She doesn’t have the power that she wishes she had, and the way she is … it’s left her angry and bitter. Maybe even unable to love anyone. I think it was hard on your mother, harder than it was on me. Clover was sensitive, and sometimes I think it bothered her more when Alice was mean to me than when she did something to her. I just … steeled myself, I guess. I decided a long time ago I wouldn’t let her hurt me, and for the most part it worked.”

I knew what she meant, though I didn’t say it. You told yourself her words were nothing. When she refused to talk to you, you reminded yourself that you didn’t care. You shut off the part of your heart that wanted a mother, a grandmother, and you made it through by remembering every day that she couldn’t hurt you if you didn’t let her, if you didn’t make the mistake of caring too much.

My mother hadn’t been able to do that.

“Whose child is Chub?” Prairie asked.

I felt my face get hot. “We got him from one of Gram’s customers. He’s Gram’s foster child.”

“For the state money,” Prairie said thoughtfully. “Right?”

I nodded, surprised that she figured it out so quick. “Yes, but I think she also wanted him to be like … a project. Something she could fix. He has, um, problems? I mean, he’s slow. He’s really great and all, but he isn’t really developing as fast as he should be.”

I felt disloyal saying it. I waited for Prairie to say something mean about him, to make some careless criticism, and I was ready to hate her if she said the wrong thing. But she just nodded, her eyes sad. “He seems like a sweet boy. You take very good care of him. That must be hard.”

“
No.
” The word came out harsher than I intended. “I mean, I don’t mind. It’s not hard, it’s fun.”

I didn’t tell her how Gram had acted different for a while, after she applied with the state. I didn’t want to admit that I’d been dumb enough to hope things had really changed during that brief time when Gram kept the house clean and cooked real meals and didn’t do any business out of the cellar. That I had almost believed she could change Chub.

“Do you know his real name?” Prairie asked gently.

I stared at my plate. “No. Just Chub.”

I’d thought about changing it. Charlie, I’d suggested to Gram, but she’d laughed and said she guessed he had a good enough name already. And the thing was, Chub
knew
his name, he answered to it. I figured he had enough confusion in his life that we didn’t need to go adding any more.

“That’s fine,” Prairie said. “What about a last name?”

“Gram knows it, but she never let me see any of the papers,” I said. “She just says he’s a Tarbell now.”

Prairie nodded. She had that look again, the one I was pretty sure meant a lot of thinking and figuring was going on.

The waitress came with our dinner, and I dug in. I couldn’t believe how good the steak was. Tender and buttery and salty—the best thing I’d ever tasted.

Prairie barely touched hers. She sighed and sliced off a tiny corner and slipped it into her mouth. She chewed and swallowed, but it looked to me like she didn’t even taste it. As hard as she was trying to seem calm, I could tell she was uneasy, almost frightened. I wanted to know why.

I set down my knife and fork. “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”

Prairie looked me right in the eye—something hardly anyone had ever done—and took a deep breath.

“I’m taking you with me,” she said. “You can’t stay here with Alice anymore.”

My heart did a little flip at her words.
Leaving
—even if it wasn’t the way I planned, even if it was with a stranger—the thought was almost irresistible. I wanted to say
Okay, fine, let’s do it
. To hell with school, with the stupid Cleans who’d made fun of me forever. To hell with our falling-down house, the weedy yard, the long walk to the grocery. Anywhere would be better than here. I was tempted to say “Sure, let’s go right now,” before she changed her mind.

Instead, what I said was, “I can’t leave Chub.”

Prairie didn’t look surprised. She dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin and set down her fork.

“Look,” she said, “I’ll admit I hadn’t planned on Chub. I was actually hoping to leave tonight. This complicates things a bit—but we’re still leaving. We’ll just go a little later than I planned, and we’ll take him with us.”

She said that last part kind of fast as I started to protest.

“But—but what about—”

She held up a hand to stop me. “Try not to worry. I want you to let me handle the details. At least for now. Okay? Look, I know you probably aren’t sure about me yet, and you may not completely trust me, and that’s—that stands to reason. It does. I understand. But I just—I’m not doing this lightly, Hailey. After you get to know me a little more, you’ll understand that I don’t take
anything lightly.
”

The way she said that, it sounded like a promise, but even more than a promise. Like something she’d worked hard to convince herself of and now she’d do anything to keep it true.

“I can’t just—”

“You
can.
” Prairie reached across the table and patted my hand, but I pulled away from her. “I have … resources that I’ll tell you more about later. I have some money. We can stay the night at the house and you can gather up a few things—not many, just one small suitcase. And we can’t let Alice see you packing. She doesn’t know. I told her that I was moving back to Gypsum so I could be closer to you. I told her I was going to look for a house here in town.”

“You told her … ?” There was no way Gram would believe that. There was no way
anyone
would believe a person would come back here to live if they had a choice. “I don’t have a suitcase.”

“A box, then. Whatever you and Chub need, we can buy.”

“And then what? Where would we go?” I knew it was crazy. But it was so tempting to believe in Prairie, in what she said she could do.

“I don’t want to say just yet,” she said. “I know I’m asking a lot from you, Hailey, but I promise you that soon I’ll tell you everything. Right now I just need to focus on getting us all out of here. And you need to help me make Alice believe what I told her. Do you think you can do that?”

I didn’t say yes—but I didn’t say no, either.

C
HAPTER
10

W
HEN WE GOT HOME
, I saw that Gram had made a few plans of her own. Dun Acey’s truck was pulled up in the yard, the back fender hanging a little lower since the last time I’d seen it, the result of some accident that had probably been worse for the other guy.

Prairie pulled the Volvo into the yard about as far away from the truck as she could.

“Whose truck is that?” she asked, voice neutral, but I could hear the tension underneath her words.

“That’s Dun Acey.”

“What a surprise,” she muttered, as if it was anything but.

“You
know
him?”

“I knew some Aceys.” She said the name like it was poison.

She walked ahead of me. I let her, glad to have a buffer between me and whatever waited inside.

In the kitchen, Dun was tilted back in a chair across from Gram at the table. Rattler Sikes was standing at the sink, a lit cigarette in one hand. He was pouring a glass of water down his throat.

He gave me a tiny nod and then slowly lowered the glass to the sink. Leaning against the counter, he put the cigarette to his lips and drew in on it and smirked as the smoke streamed lazily out of his nostrils.

There were eight beer cans on the table, and I knew without having to be told that six were empty and Dun and Gram were working on the others.

“Hel-
lo
, Hailey,” Dun drawled, letting the chair legs slam down on the floor with a thud. “You’re lookin’ hotter’n August. And who’s this you got with you?”

Behind him Rattler laughed, an abrupt, rasping sound accompanied by a ghost of a smile.

Dun looked Prairie up and down the way he usually looked at me—lingering on her breasts and her legs. Dun and Rattler were both probably about Prairie’s age, but Dun had always looked old to me, with a couple of missing teeth and greasy hair falling all around his face. After he’d stared her up and down, he gave a low whistle.

“Prair-ie Tar-bell,” he said, drawing out the syllables. “I’d know you anywhere. You look even better than the day you left.”

I could feel Prairie tense up next to me. “Hello, Dunston,” she said, her voice steely. “Rattler.”

“Damn—you recognize us after all, girl. Didn’t think you would, now you gone all uptown on us. But I guess you just couldn’t stay away from us local boys forever.” Dun laughed as though that was the funniest thing he’d heard in a long time. Gram laughed with him, lighting up a fresh cigarette and ending on a hacking cough.

“I remember you.” Prairie practically chewed off the words.

“Alice tells me you’re moving back here. Ain’t that nice. Course, if you come back to try an’ git in my pants, you’re a li’l late.” Dun’s words were slurred from the beer. “I got my eye on another girl.”

Gram laughed again and they both looked at me.

“Lucky her,” Prairie said icily. “Now, if you all will excuse us, Hailey and I are tired, and I’m meeting with a realtor first thing tomorrow to look at a house, so we’re heading to bed.”

“ ‘Hailey and I are tired,’ ” Gram repeated in a high singsong voice. She did that sometimes when she was drinking, mimicking what I said.

Something told me it was a mistake to do it to Prairie, though.

I waited for her to snap back at Gram like she had earlier, but she said nothing. She put her hand on my arm and steered me toward the hall. “Come on,” she whispered.

“Goin’ to bed, are you, Prairie?” Rattler’s voice came from behind us.

I could sense Prairie tense even more, but she didn’t say anything, just practically dragged me down to my room. Once we were inside, she shut the door firmly and leaned back against it.

I went to check on Chub. He was curled up in his crib, and I was grateful Gram at least had managed to get him put down. His little fist was pressed against his cheek. He always got hot when he slept, his face taking on a rosy color. I put my hand lightly on the back of his neck and felt his heartbeat—strong and regular.

Only then did I turn back to Prairie. “If Dun and Rattler knew about you, and probably a whole lot more people knew too, how come nobody ever said anything to me?”

“Keep your voice down, Hailey,” Prairie said softly. “A lot of people are scared of Alice. Or else Alice makes it worth their while to keep their mouths shut. Besides, other than Alice’s customers, not that many people in town would remember. Alice sent us to school in Tipton because she didn’t want us mixing with the local kids. And it’s not like we ever had friends over.”

“What about Dun and Rattler? Seems like they knew you pretty well.”

“There were a few families that Alice … socialized with. The Aceys and the Sikes, a few others.”

“From Trashtown. Her customers.”

“They weren’t always customers, but—yes. Alice knew they had a taste for illegal substances. And she figured out how to capitalize on it. She had to find a way to make money, after all.”

Prairie sighed and smoothed down the fabric of her jacket, the memories clearly taking a toll on her.

“But you got out,” I said. “And …”

I almost didn’t say it. I bit my lower lip and considered staying quiet, letting the past rest. It was probably the right thing to do. But in the space of a few hours I had learned that I had lost more than I ever knew I had. So when I spoke again, my voice was bitter.

“And you left my mom here to deal with Alice by herself.”

Like me
.

Prairie recoiled as if I had slapped her. “Hailey! I—It wasn’t like that. You have to know that I loved your mother more than anything in the world. I would never have left, if—if—”

“If
what?
”

“The thing that happened. It would have been dangerous for both of us, if I stayed.”

What could have been so bad that she had to leave town? “Did you kill someone or something?”

Sharp anguish flashed across Prairie’s face, and for a second I regretted asking. If she was a murderer, maybe I didn’t want to know.

“No,” she said quietly. “Nothing like that, but what I did made it impossible for me to stay here. You just have to believe me. And I
was
going to come for your mom.”

“It’s easy to make promises,” I said. “You told her you’d come back for her, and you didn’t. Now you’re trying to come in here and, what,
rescue
me? Because you feel guilty about what happened to my mom?”

I could feel my heart squeezing and hear my voice going high and thin. I knew I should stop. But it would be way too easy to give in to what Prairie promised—and way too dangerous. If I made the wrong decision, it wasn’t just me that would be hurt. It was Chub, too.

Before Prairie could answer, I turned away from her. “Forget it. I don’t want to know. I’m going to bed.”

“Hailey—”

“If you’re still here tomorrow, not that I expect you to be …”

I didn’t finish the sentence, because I didn’t know what to say. The truth was that I desperately wanted to believe in her. I wanted her to rescue me. But I was afraid that if I let myself trust her, she’d disappear like every other good thing I’d ever wished for.

Suddenly I was tired. Very tired.

“Hailey, we can go as soon as Rattler and Dun leave. Alice won’t wake up once she’s out. You know that.” Prairie sounded desperate.

“What I know is that I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I said, edging past her to the door. “I’m going to go brush my teeth.”

When I came back, Prairie took a small toiletry kit from the bag she’d brought with her and went to the bathroom without saying a word. She looked exhausted. While she was gone, I fixed up a bed for her as well as I could. I put my sleeping bag down as a pad and added some old quilts and gave her my pillow. I made myself a pillow out of a sweatshirt.

When Prairie came back into the room, she looked at the makeshift bed and gave me a little smile.

There was one more thing I needed to do—I had to see what Gram and Dun and Rattler were up to before I could sleep. I slipped into the hall and peeked around the corner into the kitchen. The beer-can pile had grown, and Dun was slumped way down in his chair. Rattler was sitting at the table with an ashtray loaded high with butts, drinking another glass of water. Gram was saying something to him, low and serious, but his expression was stony. I wasn’t sure Dun was even awake.

As I watched, something strange happened: Rattler suddenly raised his head and stared straight ahead, right toward where I was hiding. His eyes lost their focus and he squinted as though it hurt, and he held up a palm to Gram to make her stop talking.

“Who knows I’m here?” he demanded.

“Nobody,” Gram said, chugging her beer. Some dribbled down her chin.

“No, there’s—there’s—You got that back door locked?”

“Yeah.”

“Something’s not right. A car …”

“Nah, that’s just
her
car.” Gram yawned, not bothering to cover her mouth. “That damn foreign thing.”

Rattler shook his head. “Men. It’s
men
in it.”

Gram reached for a fresh beer, untangling it from the plastic rings that held the six-pack together. Even that effort was almost too much for her. I was always amazed that as frail as she was, she could drink so much.

“You’re rusty,” Gram said. “Ain’t nothin’ happened around here in so long, you’re seeing things.”

Rattler shook his head impatiently and scowled. I shrank back into the hall—I couldn’t believe Gram wasn’t scared of him.

“I ain’t rusty, you damn woman.”

“Okay, then you’re just plum wrong. It happens.”

“It happens to the
others
, Alice—not me.”

Gram cackled, a sound I knew well. When she was drunk she thought plenty of things were funny.

I eased backward as quietly as I could, my heart pounding. In my room, Prairie was sitting on the floor, a quilt pulled up over her knees.

“Prairie, Rattler was talking to Gram. He says—”

But what had he said, exactly? Nothing specific, but I was thinking of the rumors, the women stumbling home barefoot in the chilly dawn.

“He’s just so creepy,” I whispered.

Prairie nodded. She didn’t seem surprised. “I don’t want you to worry about him. Let me worry about it. I’d lay odds that Dun’s passed out by now—is he?”

I nodded, my heart thudding in my throat. “I think so.”

“Okay, so one down, and Alice probably isn’t far behind. Rattler’s going to get bored sooner or later.”

“I wish he’d just leave.”

“I know,” she said. “Me too. But let me worry about them. You need to rest, if you can.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I lay down and Prairie turned the lights out, but there was enough moonlight coming in the window that I could still see her outline. She lay on her back and I could see her chest rise and fall steadily as she breathed.

“Good night, Hailey,” she said. “I’m glad we’re together.”

I didn’t answer at first. Her words had a strange effect on me—even though she’d brought even more chaos into my life, her voice was soothing, and there was a part of me that wanted very much to believe she’d come to help us. That I had some sort of family besides Gram—
real
family, the kind that cared about one another, like other people had.

“Good night,” I finally mumbled.

A little later, before I drifted off to sleep, I peeked at Prairie. She wasn’t lying on her back anymore. She was leaning on her side, up on her elbow, and staring at the doorknob. I closed my eyes again.

The next thing I knew, a scream tore through my dreams.