Once Upon a River (37 page)

Margo pulled herself up and followed her mother to a side window. Luanne pointed out a big green rectangle between this house and the next. A few stray leaves littered the tarp, but there was no snow on it. “We’re planning to build an enclosure so we can swim year-round.

“Don’t you swim in the lake?”

“Never.”

“Do you still lie in the sun?”

“God, no. I wish I hadn’t done it all those years. They’re saying now it damages the skin. You should be careful, too, wear a hat, if you want to keep from getting wrinkled. You think you’re safe in the winter, but the sun reflects off the snow, and it’s even worse. This has been a hard lesson for me to learn.” Luanne reached out and pushed Margo’s hair behind her ear.

Margo turned away. As soon as it didn’t seem rude, she shook her hair loose.

“How’s Cal?” Luanne asked.

Margo shrugged. She sneezed. She didn’t know what triggered it, her mother’s perfume or all that sunlight reflecting off the snow and pouring through the windows. From where she was standing, she could see the house to the north, a white one-story structure with a steeply pitched reddish roof. The big lake was built up as far as she could see, one house next to another. Many of the yards had pontoon boats or speedboats too big for the river up on sawhorses in their yards, covered with tarps.

“Why don’t you take a shower, and you can rest in the guest room if you like? I’ll make a phone call before the clinic closes.” Luanne touched Margo’s cheek again. It reminded her of the way Brian had touched her that first morning, as though she were made of clay that could be shaped. “You don’t use anything, do you? No mascara even?”

Margo had showered just the day before, but she wanted to use her mother’s bathroom. It had two sinks and smelled like strawberries. The pink towels were thick and fluffy. The hot water never ran out, though Margo stayed in the shower for half an hour. As she combed her wet hair, she could hear the television from the other room, and the droning made her feel dopey. She wrapped herself in the towel and moved into the guest room. She lay on the bed, on top of the covers. Maybe soft towels were something she might want on her boat. She’d have considered stealing one if she’d had her backpack with her.

When she next woke up, the sky through the window was dark. She sat up and felt startled to be naked on a strange bed. She remembered where she was, at her mother’s house, and convinced herself it was not a dream. The television still played in the next room. Her own clothes were not on the chair where she had left them, but had been replaced by a pair of women’s jeans and a white button-up shirt like the one her mother had been wearing. Her army knife and her wallet were on the dresser. A green parka was hanging on the back of the door.

“It’s sleeping beauty,” Luanne said when she entered the kitchen. “You slept almost four hours.”

“I didn’t mean to sleep so long.” Margo didn’t usually even sleep four hours at night without at least waking up to feed the fire.

“You’re talking to a woman who used to sleep all day. Do you remember that? That was a sign of depression, my doctor says. Look, I ordered us a pizza. I had them load it with everything. I remember that’s how you liked it.”

Margo smiled as Luanne lifted the lid.

“You look good in my clothes,” Luanne said when they were sitting at the kitchen table, built into the corner, four times the size of the table on the
Glutton
.

“Where’s my other clothes?” Margo said.

“I threw them in the washer and dryer, but maybe I should burn that jacket. Looks like something one of those Slocums would have worn. Oh, remember the Slocums?”

“That’s Daddy’s old jacket.”

“Well, it looks like it hasn’t been washed since . . . in a while, anyhow. We’ll see how it comes out of the dryer. I put another jacket in the guest room for you, a warm parka. You can have it if you like it. It makes me look dumpy. Do you want some wine?”

Margo shook her head.

“I don’t usually drink during the week, but this day is turning out to be quite a surprise.” Her mother took a sip of white wine. “Tell me something else about Murrayville. Anything.”

Margo swallowed and offered, “A lady with a mean dog lives in our old house. She smokes a pipe. And Junior went to Alaska.”

“I’m glad to hear somebody else got out of there.”

Margo hated how far away Junior was. She swept that thought away and decided this was the best pizza she had ever tasted. She devoured the piece before her and took another.

“Did Cal . . . ?” At first Margo wasn’t even sure what she wanted to ask. “Did Cal force you, Ma?” She watched Luanne’s face. “Is that why you left home?”

“Cal? Force me?” She laughed and put her hand over her mouth. Her fingernails were painted the same pearly color as the clinic nurse’s lipstick. “You couldn’t possibly have known. You were so young. Cal and I were . . . well . . .”

“What?”

“Cal and I were something. An item. Cal was the great love of my life back then, not your father, bless his heart. I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”

“You. Were with Cal? On purpose?”

“
On purpose
? I suppose you could put it that way.”

“Did Daddy know?” This kitchen was bigger than Joanna’s kitchen. The surfaces were not cluttered with containers, cutting boards, or piles of dishcloths. Joanna had a whole row of cookbooks under her cupboards, but Margo saw none here.

“He knew after a while. And so did Joanna. She promised she’d make my life hell if I didn’t leave. That woman is tougher than you think. Cal had said he would take me away from Murrayville, go out to California with me, but I realized he was never going to leave all that—his wife, his kids, his company. He had too much to lose. We had a lot of fun, me and Cal, but he would have thrown me under a truck to preserve his life as it was.”

“Daddy really hated Cal,” Margo said.

“Leaving you was the hardest thing I ever did, Margaret, but I had to go. I would have died otherwise or drunk myself to death. I never belonged there. The river stink drove me crazy. On the day I left, I found a blue racer snake curled around my damned clothesline. And the mildew. Every leather belt turned green, every leather shoe. It never bothered you or your father or the damned Murrays. I stayed as long as I could. You’ve got to give me credit for staying as long as I did. I waited until you stopped growing.”

Margo nodded so Luanne would keep talking, but the question must have shown on her face.

“Remember when you were fourteen and we measured you on that tree?”

“You left because I stopped growing taller?”

Luanne got up from the table and carried her glass and wine bottle into the living room. Margo followed, though she could have easily eaten more pizza.

“You didn’t need me, anyway, Margaret. I didn’t know anything about raising a kid when you came along. That’s why I let you do whatever you wanted. I figured you knew better than I did what a kid needed.”

“I didn’t mind if you didn’t know.”

“Those Murray women minded plenty. They said I would raise a wildcat or wolf cub. But look at you! You’re perfect.”

“A wolf cub? They said that?”

“Oh, I don’t know what they said. I don’t care about those people. I was crazy about Cal, though,” Luanne said and laughed. “But don’t worry, you are your daddy’s child. No doubt about that.”

“You said in that note you left that you wanted to
find yourself
,” Margo said.

“Well, I figured out soon enough that
myself
wasn’t who I was looking for. I was looking for somebody else, somebody who would take care of me.”

Margo looked behind her, out the living room window, at the lights giving shape to the darkness on the shore.

“Margaret, honey, look at me. You’re not old enough to understand why I left, but sometimes a woman has to start over, make a whole new life to try to find happiness. I know it’s selfish.”

“I worried that you forgot me when you went away.”

“Oh, Margaret, a mama doesn’t forget her child. You have to know that. It’s just that when I lived with your father, I dreamed of a house like this. Think how all three of us shared that one tiny bathroom with no tub, just a shower. Now I’ve got three bathrooms, four if you count the little one in Roger’s photo studio.”

“Daddy quit drinking,” Margo said. “Before he died, I mean.”

“I wish you could understand how I had to start over. A clean slate. Roger’s a good guy, when so many of them are pigs.” She poured another inch of wine into her glass. “How could you know? You’re so young.”

Margo shook her head. “I’m not that young, Ma.”

“It was dumb, what I did, to lie to Roger from the start,” she said. “Do you think I should tell him the truth? See what he does? Take a chance on losing all this?”

“No, that’s okay.”

“God, I just wanted to have some fun. I didn’t mean to get separated from you this way. But things snowballed.”

“You did sleep a lot in Murrayville.”

“I was a depressed drunk. You didn’t seem to notice, but everybody else did.”

“I just wanted to see you,” Margo said.

“You have every right to hate me for what I put you through, Margaret. Do you hate me?”

“No.” Margo tried to remember Smoke’s words. “You should live how you want.”

“You know, people think it’s the worst thing to abandon a kid,” Luanne said, “but I think there are worse things, like staying and ruining your own life and your kid’s life in the process. And look how fine you turned out, how beautiful. Oh, how I love this show. Watch it with me.” Luanne picked up the remote control from the coffee table and turned up the sound. She lay back on the couch and stuck a throw pillow under her head. She had turned off for the night. The pillow pressed against Margo’s leg.

They both remained on the couch without speaking for a long time. When Margo was sure her mother was asleep, she studied her face and figure. Her mother was very thin, Margo thought. In her life she had watched her mother sleep more than she had watched her do any other thing.

Margo hunted around the house until she found the washer and dryer in the basement and got her clothes. Then she went to bed in the guest room where she had slept earlier. She wondered if her mother might visit her sometimes, if they might sit on the deck of her boat and enjoy the river together. Margo fell asleep quickly, but then woke up after a few hours with her heart pounding. She was thinking about her father’s ashes and how far away from them she was. She got up and raised the window, but it opened only an inch. At about four a.m. she woke up again and couldn’t go back to sleep. She went into the living room, but found the couch empty. She ate two more pieces of pizza from the box in the refrigerator. Then she put on the parka, picked up some kitchen matches from the stove, and carried them outside. She gathered all the twigs she could find and made a little pile near the water as far as she could from the security light. She built a tiny fire on the frozen ground and crouched beside it. The fire was almost upon the water, and the reflected light warmed her.

She remembered how, at the Pokagon Mound Picnic Area and at her camp near the marijuana house, she had sometimes felt proud of getting through another day and night, of getting and preparing good food and keeping warm and comfortable. She felt a little that way now.

She lay back on the snow and stared at the three stars making up the man’s belt, almost directly overhead now. The constellations she had seen with the Indian—the swan and the dolphin—were gone. She had heard someone once mention a dog star; she would have liked to know where that was. Margo should have asked what Smoke saw in the stars, but the two of them didn’t tend to hang around outside at night. Margo already missed Smoke’s breathy voice and his cursing, the way he cheered up when Fishbone’s lanky figure appeared in the back yard. She missed the urgency of the river moving nearby. Compared to the river, the lake seemed almost dead.

“I’m not sure about this,” Margo said to her mother the following morning.

“You don’t have to be sure. The first appointment is just an exam. They’ll explain your options.”

“I was there already.”

“I told them you’d been there yesterday, but that you’d gotten nervous and left, and they let me make you another appointment. I’ll come with you this time.”