Lunatic Fringe (7 page)

As though Blythe could read her
thoughts, she interrupted Lexie’s reverie. “You from around here,
Lexie?” Blythe said, her fingers still tangled in Renee’s hair.
“You seem like it.”

Lexie fidgeted, hating that her cover
was blown so soon. “How’d you know?”

Blythe shrugged.

“
Spent my whole life in
Wolf Creek,” Lexie replied.

“
Your parents still
there?”

“
My dad is. My mom’s
gone.”

Blythe nodded as though this made sense
of everything.

“
Mine too,” Renee said,
exhaling another plume of smoke. “What happened to
yours?”

Lexie looked away, afraid that her
mother would seem cruel, or worse, that the truth would expose
Lexie as undesirable, disposable.

“
Mine died,” Renee offered.
“Four years ago.”

“
Mine left. Walked out. I
was eight,” Lexie replied.

“
Your dad a tyrant,
too?”

Lexie laughed. “Hardly.”

“
Mine was,” Renee said, her
eyes fixed in the space before her, dragging her cigarette, casting
great chasms of shadow along her cheeks as she sucked.

“
They all are,” Blythe
said. She delved her fingers deeper into Renee’s mass of hair and
massaged her scalp. “Your mama sounds like a smart woman.” Lexie
looked at her, confused.

“
Not for abandoning you, of
course,” Blythe hurried.

“
Why did she leave, Lexie?”
Renee asked.

“
I don’t really know. Never
got the real story, if there even is one. It was so long ago. All I
remember is a kiss on the forehead in the middle of the night. When
she left, my father stood stock still in the kitchen, looking at
his feet. Didn’t say a word. He was so . . .
restrained.”

Lexie had replayed the scene
innumerable times. Each time it was the same: the kiss on the
forehead, her mother’s long, black braid grazing Lexie’s cheek,
then Lexie standing at the door as she watched her mother walk
away. She had watched her for as long as she could, the cold air
rushing into the house as tiny flakes of snow drifted down,
covering the ground in a diaphanous veil of white.

Beneath the night sky, her mother had
looked radiant, as though glowing with an inner moonlight. She took
that radiance with her as she walked away, heading west toward the
bus station, leaving tracks in the new snow. She never turned to
look back, though Lexie had tried to will it so. Instead Summer
Pace walked straight down the street until the night enveloped her.
After a long while, Lexie’s father walked wordlessly to the door
and pulled it shut, locking it before climbing the stairs to his
bedroom, where he promptly shut that door behind him. Not six
months later, the tree stand Ray had been working in collapsed, and
that was that. Recovery, unemployment, and a new life of tending to
one another in odd bursts: Lexie as she grew older, her father as
he healed. Lexie didn’t tell the girls that part.

The three women watched the rest of the
Pack work at the house, stacking cups, washing dishes, and picking
up trash from the dying party. Through the back door, Lexie spotted
Sharmlaee holding Hazel by the arm as she jumped up and down in the
trash bag, mashing the soiled cups and plates like a tiny,
hyperactive trash-compacter.

“
Why is she doing that?”
Lexie asked, squinting through the glass door at the
scene.

“
The trash men give us shit
if we leave too many bags out,” Renee said. “Lazy
sons-of-pricks.”

Blythe stood and brushed off her jeans.
“I’d best go help. Wanna make sure they take care of
everything.”

Renee smirked. “Yep, because we can’t
even take out the trash without your approval.”

A chill entered the air as the sun
disappeared behind the tree line, casting half of Blythe’s face in
shadow. She narrowed her eyes at Renee but said nothing as she
looked back to Lexie and reapplied her bright smile.

“
Lexie, stick around,
okay?” she said with a wink. Thunder rolled in the distance. “See
you, ladies.”

Blythe squeezed Renee’s hand in
goodbye. Lexie looked at their hands together and wondered what it
would feel like to hold Renee’s hand like that. Her eyes drifted
along Renee’s reed-like forearms to the gently curved muscles that
glided into her torso and up her neck, a series of perfectly
calibrated joints and pulleys. Blythe squeezed Renee’s hand so
tight, shadowed indentations haloed each finger. They smiled at one
another with their mouths, though not with their eyes. As Blythe
dropped her hand and turned to leave, Renee tapped her ashes into
the grass.

The day had escaped into evening as the
red coals in the barbecue faded into black chunks of soot. The
animated conversation of the women in the house carried out to
where Lexie and Renee sat and, for once, Lexie was pleased to have
something to fill the silence. She shifted on her chair.“Did you
ever try to track her down?” Renee asked.

“
Who? My mom?”

Renee nodded.

“
I googled her a couple
years ago,” Lexie said, fiddling with the frayed edge of her
sleeve. “You’d think a name like ‘Summer Pace’ would turn up
something, but nope.”

Lexie thought she saw a flicker of
surprise cross Renee’s face, but she only tapped her dwindling
cigarette before looking over at Lexie.

“
But your last name is . .
.” Renee said.

“
Clarion,” Lexie said.
“Yeah. My dad’s name. My mom never took it.”

“
Good on her,” she said,
looking out into the twilight.

“
Summer Pace,” Renee
repeated. “That’s a pretty name.”

“
She was half Cree. I guess
that’s where it comes from. Doesn’t really mean much to me, except
I have hair that doesn’t do what I want it to, ever.”

Renee raised her hand for a high-five
of solidarity. Lexie laughed and slapped it.

“
Check out that sunset,”
Renee said, gesturing to the west. “That’s what I call a Bajan
sunset. Hot pink, neon orange and purple-gray storm clouds. Love
that.”

Bajan?

Renee continued before Lexie could
ask.

“
Barbados. It’s where I’m
from.”

Lexie looked at her
apologetically.

“
The Caribbean,” Renee
replied, over her shoulder, in an offhanded way that didn’t make
Lexie feel so stupid. “In the rainy season, the sky would look like
this almost every night.”

“
Do you miss it?” Lexie
asked.

“
Nah. I don’t remember it
much, to be honest. Moved to the States with my mom when I was
ten.”

“
Is she the white one? Er,
the American parent?” Lexie cringed, but Renee just
chuckled.

“
No, ma’am. My dad is the
Jewish-slash-Uruguayan one. Hence, the last name ‘Krauss.’ When my
folks got divorced, my mom--the black one--” she said, smiling
askance, “decided it’d be a better life here.”

“
Why?”

“
Any life away from my
father was a better life.”

“
Where’d you end up?” Lexie
said.

“
Sahn Frahn Cees Co.” Renee
had a penchant for funny voices, Lexie was learning. She found it
disconcerting. She couldn’t tell if Renee was making fun of her or
just playing. Either way, Lexie had yet to make eye contact with
her, and she was growing nervous.

“
Wow. You’ve been all
over,” Lexie said.

“
I wouldn’t consider an
island, an American city, and a couple of trips to Uruguay and
Europe to be ‘all over.’”

“
Compared to my life it
is,” Lexie sighed.

“
You’ve never been
anywhere?” Renee asked between cigarette drags.

“
Well, Milton, if that
counts. And Wolf Creek, where I’m from, about fifty miles down the
road. That makes two. And I went to the Oregon Zoo with my mom
once, when I was kid. So there’s three.” She nodded once, more
self-mockery than self-satisfaction.

Renee exhaled a gray cloud of smoke.
“Seriously?”

Lexie nodded.

“
Is it a good zoo?” Renee
asked.

“
Meh,” Lexie replied,
shrugging.

They stared at the sky, squinting at
the sun’s curtain call. The fierce orange light set Renee’s face
aglow.

“
Would you mind rubbing my
head?” Renee asked, scooting over and dropping her head onto
Lexie’s lap.

“
Uh . . .” Lexie drew her
hands up to her shoulders, then relented and lowered them into the
soft suds of Renee’s hair.

“
Wow,” Lexie
said.

“‘
Wow’ what?”

“
Your hair. It looks soft
but it’s so . . .” Lexie flinched before she even finished the
sentence.

Renee raised an eyebrow. “‘So,’
what?”

“
Um . . . oily.”

Renee chuckled. “That, my dear, is
because I put oil in it.”

“
Wow.”

“
What?”

“
You put in your hair what
I wash out.”

Renee snorted. “That’s us black girls
for you. Always scrambling for what the white girls are throwing
away.”

“
I didn’t
mean--”

Renee waved away her protests. “It’s
cool.”

Lexie bit her lip, her heart leaping
against her throat. If Renee’s head weren’t in her lap, she’d be
inclined to run.

“
That Bajan sunset is
making me a little nervous. I should probably head home before the
weather hits.” Lexie cringed, realizing how much she sounded like
her father. She wanted to shake the voice out of her head like
water stuck in her ears.

“
Screw that. You’re staying
here. Why be cooped up in a dorm room when you can be chilling with
some of the finest ladies on campus, storms be damned?” Renee
flicked her cigarette onto the grass and rose to her feet. She
smiled as Lexie watched the cherry of the cigarette fade to black.
“I’ll get it later,” Renee said.

“
No. I should go,” Lexie
mumbled.

“
Girl, relax. Have a beer
with me. If we’re lucky, Blythe will tell us more about the
patriarchy.” Like everything, she said it with a knowing grin. To
Lexie’s naive eyes, it looked like Renee was flirting with her.
Lexie’s heart seized. Was she?Renee presented her arm for Lexie to
grasp. “Madame,” she said, drawing out the word between her lips.
Her arm was so long the negative space formed at its crux could
have circled Lexie’s torso. Yes, Lexie decided, taking her arm,
Renee was definitely flirting with her. And to Lexie’s surprise,
she liked it.

Chapter 5

Outside the Den, rain clattered on the
roof and leaves fell like early sacrifices to the impending winter.
Branches like witch fingers clawed at the windows, drawing tiny
squeals with each gust. The night sky was on a rampage, but inside
the Den, it was cozy and calm. When the storm broke an hour before,
Jenna and Mitch made a noble dash to cover the hot tub and rescue
the rest of the beer. Now Jenna lay on the living room carpet in a
bra and panties, her dress drying by the fireplace. Mitch had
changed into a fresh pair of khakis and a plain white t-shirt, and
he rubbed his hair with a dry towel while the rest of the girls
sprawled out around the living room in a loose circle. Candlelight
reflected off their faces in the otherwise darkened
room.

As was the norm in small Oregon towns
like Milton, the late summer storm had managed to knock out the
power. A half-hour into the tempest, the whole west side of town
was blacked out.

Blythe reclined on a pile of pillows.
Mitch finished with his towel and stretched out to rest his head on
her lap. She caressed his face with the back of her hand, staring
into the candle flames. Her glasses reflected the flames in each
lens, her irises like two uninhabited blue planets orbited by four
burning moons. The candles, already devoured nearly to their limits
when Sharmalee snatched them from the pantry in the darkness, had
melted to the tabletop. The flames shrank in their puddles of wax,
conserving their remaining fuel, holding out.

Corwin’s round face was aglow in the
blue light of her laptop. “It’s a storm,” she announced, to no one
in particular.

“
No shit, Corwin,” Renee
said from the kitchen. “Look outside.”

“
Well,” said Corwin,
snapping her computer closed. “Now we know for sure.”

“
I’m killing the wine,”
Renee called to the living room. Lexie frowned, wishing for the
taste of something juicy. Renee walked back to the living room,
barefoot and wearing a fresh pair of denim shorts. Lexie couldn’t
imagine how Renee wasn’t cold. The night had brought with it the
first chill of the season, and Lexie shivered inside her hoodie,
wishing the meager fireplace would cast more heat through the room.
Lexie stared longingly at a pile of throw blankets shuffled into
the corner.

“
Here,” Renee said,
snatching a blanket and two floor pillows. “Share with me.” She
eased herself cross-legged onto the carpet beside Lexie as she
poured the wine. “I don’t want a whole glass, anyway.”