River Angel (13 page)

Cherish was seven years older than she'd been the last time her father had seen her. Sometimes she wondered if he'd even recognize her. Sometimes she wondered if she'd recognize him. Now, cutting across the frozen field toward County O, she pulled up the hood of her coat. With her scarf concealing everything but her eyes, she was completely, deliciously anonymous. No one who happened to see her would recognize last summer's Festival Queen, the beautiful doll everyone admired: active in charity work and school fund-raisers, upbeat and cheerful, confident, out
going. The brave girl whose father had died a terrible, pointless death. Ruthie Mader's daughter.

Ruthie never suspected that Cherish was sneaking out this way, night after night, walking to town. Often, Cherish only had to make it through the field to where Randy would be waiting in his Mustang, the thud of the bass from his stereo like a living, beating heart. Sometimes, after sex, he'd push his face between her breasts, breathe deeply, whisper, “Precious.”
Precious
. As Cherish turned north onto County C, following the plow drifts along the shoulder, she imagined Randy speaking her name. Randy lighting a joint, releasing the smoke into her mouth. Randy moving wet between her thighs. Her breathing sounded hollow inside her hood, as if she were walking under water. The wind gusted at her chest. When you were with Randy, anything might happen. Anything was possible.

That night, driving home from Milwaukee, Randy started mimicking Lisa Marie, talking about how everything was
juvenile bullshit
, how
every damn weekend was the same damn thing
. By the time they reached the Solomon strip, Paul and Cherish were laughing too. He took the D road over to Ambient, but instead of turning south onto Main, where Lisa Marie lived, he continued on to the River Road. The whole time, Lisa Marie stared out the window. She refused to look at any of them, to speak.

“A girl needs a little excitement once in a while,” Randy said, making his voice high and silly.

“A girl needs variety,” Paul added from the backseat, “not just the same old juvenile bullshit.”

Randy laughed so hard that the car swerved across the yellow line, and Cherish had to grab the wheel to steady it. She felt sorry for Lisa Marie, but at the same time, she didn't. The truth was that none of them really liked Lisa Marie that much anymore. She was always getting her feelings hurt, leaving parties early,
complaining about Paul and Randy. She worried that things were getting too wild, that her parents were going to find out.

“We're sorry, Lisa Marie,” Randy said. “Really. Let us make it up to you.” He turned into one of the residential neighborhoods north of Cradle Park and drove up and down the streets, slowly, as if he were looking for something. “I know!” he said, snapping his fingers dramatically. “We'll get you a present. Something special. Something that will make this a night to remember.”

“What about one of those fat ladies?” Paul said. They were passing a small brick bungalow. A plywood woman was bent over beside the mailbox, as if she were planting flowers in the snow, her fanny aimed at the road. The headlights bleached her panties a brilliant, blinding white. “Come on, Lisa Marie. Lighten up. You want us to get you one of those?”

Cherish said, “Yeah, let's collect a whole bunch. We can stick them in front of the railroad museum.”

Randy pulled over beside the mailbox, looked back at Lisa Marie. “Do you accept our apology?”

“Just say yes,” Paul pleaded. “Seriously. We were just kidding around.”

The whole thing could have ended there. But Lisa Marie said nothing.

“Guess not,” Randy said. “Lisa Marie is holding out for something better. A lady of taste, our Lisa Marie.”

“Aw, cut it out,” Paul said. He sounded tired of the game. Cherish was too, and she said, “Let's just take her home.” But Randy ignored them both. “Our Lisa Marie won't settle for any old reproduction. Our Lisa Marie demands the real thing.”

Paul got very quiet then. “What do you mean?” he said.

Randy pulled away and continued down the street. Behind each living room window, the blue square of a TV screen poured its odd, insistent light into the darkness. Sleds and hunchbacked
snowmen were scattered over the lawns. They passed a woman out for a walk, enjoying the quietness of the evening. It was early still. Barely nine o'clock.

“I think you know what I mean,” Randy said.

“Wait a minute,” Paul said, “You said last time was
it
; you promised.”

“What are you talking about?” Cherish said.

“You're going to get us arrested, man.”

“Our Lisa Marie is worth the risk, don't you think?” Randy said, and he rounded the corner, where two little girls were standing beneath a streetlight. The oldest was eleven or so, and she wore a woolly stocking cap with a tassel on the end. Randy threw the car in park, and like something in a dream, he slid from behind the wheel, leaped the curb, and had one steel arm around her before she or the younger girl understood what was happening. Paul jumped out then and held the door, calling, “Hurry, hurry,” as Randy half carried, half dragged the girl the last few feet, her stocking cap pulled down over her eyes. “Quiet and no one gets hurt,” he said, and she tumbled in against Lisa Marie. Paul squished in beside her, Randy got behind the wheel again, doors slammed and locked, and off they went—it was as simple as that. The younger girl watched them go, stock-still, as if she thought she might have imagined the whole thing.

“Are you crazy?” Cherish said. She couldn't believe they'd just kidnapped somebody. “What are we going to do with her?”

The girl had her arms wrapped around herself; she breathed loudly through her mouth. The ridiculous tassel bounced against one shoulder.

“That's up to Lisa Marie,” Randy said.

Lisa Marie was crying. “Let her go,” she said.

Randy said, “What? You don't like your present? After all the trouble we went through? I thought you wanted some excite
ment, sweetheart. I thought you wanted a night to remember.” But after another block or two, he pulled over, let the little girl out. She fled between two houses; Lisa Marie jumped out and ran down the street.

“Lisa Marie!” Paul called after her, but Randy pulled him back inside. A porch light flickered on. “Don't worry,” Randy said, peeling away. “She'll get over it.”

But Lisa Marie hadn't gotten over it. Instead she'd gone to her mother, just as Cherish had worried she might do. She'd been avoiding Paul and Randy and even Cherish ever since. And when she opened the door and saw Cherish standing on the steps, she looked anything but pleased.

“Hey,” Cherish said. “I was worried about you. What's going on?”

“Nothing,” Lisa Marie said. She was wearing sweatpants and a stained sweatshirt. Her hair looked unwashed, her permanent frizzy.

“Nice hair,” Cherish said. “Aren't you going to ask me in?”

“OK,” Lisa Marie said doubtfully, but she led Cherish down the hall to the kitchen, where she opened the oven door. A frozen cheese pizza bubbled on the top rack, releasing its greasy smells. “This'll be ready in five minutes,” she said.

“Great,” Cherish said. “Afterward, maybe we can take a walk down to Cradle Park, see who's there.”

“It's freezing out,” Lisa Marie said, setting out paper plates. “I'm staying in.”

“Or we could find a ride out to International Harvester.” There was usually a party going on at IH, and if your feet started going numb, you simply built a fire out of the cardboard boxes, paper, and furniture that people dumped there. Cherish hoped that Lisa Marie would suggest they call Randy and Paul to drive them. Then she could tell her that, well, actually they were already on their way. Things would get back to normal.
She could stop worrying about what Lisa Marie might tell her mother next.

But Lisa Marie shook her head. “I'm done with all that,” she said. “I know it sounds hokey, but I've been washed by the blood of the lamb. If you want to hang out with me, you're going to have to respect that.” She laid out two forks, two knives, a couple of potholders. “My mom left a couple of movies,” she said. “We can watch them, if you want.”

“Movies,” Cherish said. “Oh, boy.”

“We used to watch movies together all the time,” Lisa Marie said. “We used to do our homework together. We used to help our moms with stuff at the Faith house. We used to date boys who didn't get us thrown out of every place we went.”

“And we used to complain about how boring it all was,” Cherish said.

“Well, maybe it was boring then,” Lisa Marie said. “But it's different, now that I've found God.”

Cherish stared at Lisa Marie. It was like talking to a complete and total stranger. Before Lisa Marie got saved, they might have risked hitching out to the Hodag, flirted with some old married guy until he shared his pitcher. They might have met up with Randy and Paul to set off firecrackers in the millpond, or else to get blasted in the parking lot of the Moonwink Motel, or else to play mailbox baseball along the River Road. Sometimes they'd race the freight train across the tracks just past the highway bridge; sometimes they combed the fast-food dumpsters after closing, gorging on bags of cheeseburgers and lukewarm apple pies. Sometimes there'd be parties at the homes of kids whose parents were away. But now God sat between them, the same way he sat between Cherish and her mother: an immense, warty toad, bloated with importance.

“There's this story,” Lisa Marie finally said, “about this little boy who always takes five minutes to ride his bike to church
before school. Every day, he kneels down at the back of the church and says,
Hello, God, this is
—” Lisa Marie stopped. “Wait, I can't remember his name.”

“Timmy,” Cherish said. “I know this one.”

“
Hello, God, this is Timmy
.” Lisa Marie didn't seem to care if Cherish knew the story or not. “That's all Timmy ever says, and he does this for, I don't know, years. Then one day, as he's biking away, he gets hit by a car. And as people gather around his lifeless body, they hear a voice, and it says—”

Cherish broke in, making her voice deep and solemn. “Hello, Timmy, this is God.”

She waited for Lisa Marie to laugh, but Lisa Marie said, “I'm serious, OK? The point is that if you take time for God, He'll take time for you.”

Cherish gave Lisa Marie a flat, disbelieving stare. “Or maybe if you take time for God, He'll shove you under a car.”

“That's not what it means, and you know it,” Lisa Marie said.

The pizza, which had smelled so good just moments before, now smelled like the slab of bubbling fat that it was. Cherish said, “I can't believe anyone would be stupid enough to believe a story like that.”

“It's a
story
,” Lisa Marie said. “It's not supposed to be, like, literal or anything.” She finished setting the table, then began slapping dirty dishes from the sink into the dishwasher. Cherish couldn't remember the first time she'd heard the Little Timmy story, but as a child she'd loved it, begged her mother to tell it over and over. She'd sit in her mother's lap, her forehead tucked into the notch of Ruthie's neck and shoulder, feeling the soothing vibrations of her mother's voice. Then, she could not have imagined a time when she wouldn't believe that story, any more than she could have imagined a time she wouldn't be close to her mother. Mornings, she'd linger in bed just to hear the happy music of Ruthie making breakfast in her breezy kitchen, the bacon's
sizzle and spat, the sound of the back door opening as Ruthie let the cats in and the whining dogs out. Next came the sound of toast being made, the slap of the jelly jar on the table. The crack of eggs stolen from the quarreling hens. The splash of milk from the nanny goats, thick with butterfat, stored in wide-mouthed jars.

Eventually, she'd get up and wash her face, coming down the stairs with her hair parted neatly and tucked behind her ears, her face still wet and smelling of Ivory and already lifted to receive her mother's kiss. Outside, the dogs barked and scuffled to get in. The cats leaped onto the counters, got shooed down again, tangled underfoot. Toast popped up, eggs shimmied in the pan. Suddenly Dad was there to make wet fart noises against the top of Cherish's head. “Daddy!” she groaned, but he was already letting the dogs back in, and the dogs were nosing the cats' rear ends and chasing them round and round, and her mother was filling Dad's plate, then Cherish's, then her own. After breakfast, there were beds to be made, and Ruthie and Cherish made them together, Cherish playing parachute with the sheets. There were dishes to be washed, dust bunnies to be corralled with the handmade broom, more dust to be wiped from the windowsills. And then it was time for chores, the dogs dashing ahead of them to the barn, doubling back to greet them as if there were no greater happiness than their company. Inside, the nanny goats were already waiting, and as soon as Ruthie shoved the heavy door aside, they'd clamor up onto the milking platform, bleating, blinking their strange gold eyes. Winters, the air was thick with dust and the stinging smell of urine, the odor so intense Cherish had to climb into the sheep pen and pull down her snow pants to pee. There was such pleasure in that. The sheep crowding close and closer, sniffing wetly at the air. The hens clucking tenderly from their roosts. Even now, as Lisa Marie twisted in front of the mirror, Cherish could feel the first warm, brown egg taking shape in
her hand. It was enough to bring tears to her eyes, except that Cherish never cried anymore, couldn't have, now, if she'd wanted to.
It's selfish to be sad when Dad's so happy in heaven
. The egg shattered, the yellow yolk popped, the sharp shell stung Cherish's palm. She and Lisa Marie had been best friends ever since second grade. She wanted to apologize for what had happened. Wanted to, but couldn't.