River Angel (23 page)

“I miss you already,” Ruthie said, knowing it was the wrong thing to say.

“I'm not even leaving the state.”

“But I worry—”

“I'll be fine.” Cherish bounded down the stairs.

They ate a light breakfast before they left. Cherish had already unlocked the door to the shrine, put out the basket of angel pendants and a box of “What to Do in Ambient” brochures, which Lucy replenished from time to time. A raft of swallows glided out into the sunlight, bellies flashing rust. How Ruthie missed the smells and sounds of the sheep, the waxy feel of their fleece, their patient, placid eyes. But she'd sold them to the Farbs, along with
the goats, to meet her co-payments on Cherish's medical bills. The chickens had died, one by one, or wandered off. Old Mule had disappeared abruptly—she hated to think he'd been stolen, but clearly there was no sense in keeping animals with so many people coming through. Last weekend alone, there had been sixty-five pilgrims.

“Mom?” Cherish called. She was already sitting in the truck. “If my roommate gets there first, I'll be stuck with the top bunk.”

And so that was it. As Ruthie drove down the driveway, toward the J road, she waited for Cherish to look back or, at least, sneak a glance in the rearview mirror. But she didn't, and when they got on the highway, she turned on the radio as if this were any other day, as if they were just going into town to pick up groceries at the Piggly Wiggly. Ruthie sneaked a sideways glance at her daughter. How could a child you had carried inside your own body grow up to become a mystery? They passed the new billboard that marked the edge of the Carpenters' land:
I BELIEVE! REMEMBER GABRIEL AT THE RIVER ANGEL SHRINE
. They passed what had once been the Faith house. It hadn't taken Roland more than a week to rent it out to an auto parts dealer, and of course they'd whitewashed Cherish and Maya's mural from the walls. It was a shame they'd never finished it. It was a shame that Cherish didn't paint or draw anymore. What would she do with an English degree if, as she claimed, she didn't want to teach? How Ruthie envied Margaret Kirsch, whose daughter was already an assistant manager at the Wal-Mart. Lisa Marie was learning real skills, a life trade. Lisa Marie was staying close to home. Close to her mother.

They turned onto County O, passing the spot where Tom's body had been found, the white cross weathered to the color of sorrow itself, gray as bone. The fields were scorched the color of honey; the horizon shivered with heat.
There is no longer any reason in what happens, no longer any love in what happens to you
.
The sentence had stuck in Ruthie's mind like a terrible song, going round and round. “No wonder that poor man went insane,” she said, more to herself than to Cherish.

“Which man?”

“The one who wrote that book.”

“Nietzsche.” Cherish looked annoyed. “What did you do with it, Mom?” Then she shrugged. “I'll get another copy at the library.”

“How can anyone think there's no reason for all that we see?” Ruthie gestured at the brittle fields, at the dust boiling over the highway and the shocked blue heart of the sky. “Somebody did this, somebody made this, just like somebody made us all. If you found a watch lying on the sidewalk, would you think all those intricate pieces had assembled themselves on their own?”

“The world isn't a watch, Mom.”

“The things you believe,” Ruthie said. “It simply breaks my heart. I wish we could talk about this, sweetheart.” They were coming up on I-90/94; she exited onto the cloverleaf and headed west. A highway sign urged people to give themselves a hug-buckle up, and stuck beneath the seat-belt graphic was a river angel bumper sticker:
HONK IF YOU BELIEVE
! Ruthie truly hated those things, but there wasn't anything she could do about them. People sold them in town along with T-shirts and mugs and pins. Maya Paluski was in Seattle visiting friends for the summer, and she'd sent Ruthie a photo she'd taken of a Jaguar with California tags and
THIS CAR PROTECTED BY THE RIVER ANGEL
plastered across the bumper.

“Fine,” Cherish said. “Let's talk.”

“Good,” Ruthie said, surprised.

“I'll start,” Cherish said. “You say what I believe breaks your heart. But if you believe in what you
say
you believe in, then isn't what
I
believe in simply part of God's will?”

“Oh, honey,” Ruthie said. The first sign for Eau Claire appeared: 185 miles. Two crosses stood tall in the mown grass of the easement, fresh pink carnations braided around their necks. “There must have been an accident,” she said, trying to change the subject. Talking now would be a mistake; she could see that. They'd only spend the morning fighting. But Cherish wouldn't let it go. She said, “I thought you didn't believe in accidents.”

Ruthie looked at her. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean,” Cherish said, “you believe that everything is God's will, right? So nothing can be an accident. People die, people live—but either way, it really doesn't matter. So what if two people lost their lives back there. So what if some poor family is grieving.
Give thanks in all circumstances
. How many times in my life have you told me that?” The hot wind rippled through her hair.

“You're twisting my words, and you know it.”

“Am I? All right. Let's talk about the carnations, then. What a waste of money!” Ruthie winced; Cherish was mimicking her. “Dead people live with God; they have everything they need. If you're going to give flowers, give them to the living.” She dropped back into her regular voice. “You told me that too, remember? Come on, Mom, you wanted to talk. We visited Dad's grave every single Sunday for
years
, and we never once left flowers or pictures or anything.
Anything
. Didn't you care about him? Didn't you love him? Don't you ever miss him?”

Ruthie was stunned. “How can you ask me that?”

“You've never acted like it. You never talk about him. You never even
cried
, not even at the funeral. And whenever I cried, you'd tell me that he'd only been on loan to us anyway and that he really belonged to God, and it was selfish to be unhappy when he was so very, very happy in heaven. Fine, OK, that's what you believe. I guess I can deal with that. But
then
you get after
me
for reading
Nietzsche
. Mom, your ideas are more depressing than any
thing Nietzsche ever wrote. More fucked up too, if you want to know the truth.”

Ruthie gripped the steering wheel. She said very softly, “Don't you ever, ever say that word to me.”

“
Fucked up
,” Cherish said, and she turned up the radio.

One hundred miles to Eau Claire. Gradually, the flat fields rolled themselves into wooded hills, rock formations rising between them, unexpected, ungainly as dinosaurs. The highway cut between granite walls; pink flecks ran through the veins. Seventy-five miles. Another white cross by the roadside: wildflowers dead in a clouded jelly jar, snapshots wrapped in plastic, a pale blue ribbon the color of ice. Someone's life flashed past and was gone, was resurrected as Ruthie imagined the hands which had tied that ribbon, a woman's hands, rough and shaking like her own. And the long weekly drive with the children to place the flowers at the site, and then the longer ride back, tempered with the promise of McDonald's or Dairy Queen, salt and fat and sweetness that fooled nobody's hunger.
Where is Daddy and why has he gone
? The woman's tears brighter than her wedding diamond. The stares of the people in the restaurant. The children hushing themselves after spills. The same scene, week after week.

Ruthie hadn't wanted Cherish to grow up in a house defined by grief. Death was a natural part of God's plan; she didn't want Cherish to fear. If Ruthie needed to cry, she went to her room and shut the door, sobbed into Tom's bathrobe, which still hung from its wobbling hook, feeding the worn flannel into her mouth until she choked on its dust, gagged, spat it out. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes at most, and then it was over, her hair freshly combed, her throat and tongue raw with Listerine. Sundays after Mass, they walked from the church to the cemetery unburdened. No flowers. No photographs. Nothing but a small American flag, which blew away between their visits. Cherish always hunted it down in the ditch that ran alongside the gravestones, returning
with the mementos and memorials of others: cards and letters, plastic flowers, angels, saints, and pinwheels. None of that was necessary, Ruthie explained, for Daddy had absolutely everything he needed. “Doesn't he miss us?” Cherish said once, and before the tears could spill over, priming the wetness behind Ruthie's eyes, she replied, “Of course not—he knows we'll join him soon.” And yes, she had said it: “It's selfish for us to cry.”

Selfish—also human, she realized now. Yet if one weren't careful, grief could take over completely. The way Ruthie had nearly allowed it to do during those terrible months just after Tom's death, a time she'd always hoped Cherish wouldn't remember, would never discover on her own.
Dear Lord
, Ruthie prayed,
tell me what to do
. Forty-six miles. “Cherish,” she began, and she turned off the radio. And at last she felt the grace of God assembling the words she needed, placing them one by one, like mints, upon her tongue.

“A week or so after your father's funeral,” she said, “I was driving down County O when I saw a car pull up by your father's marker. A little red sporty thing. Something about it made me look twice. When it pulled away, I chased it in that old Ford we had—you remember it? But I couldn't keep up. I turned around and came back home.” It had been a long time since Ruthie had talked about that red sports car. Lorna and Jolena and Shelley knew the story. And Maya. The founding members of the Circle of Faith. “But I couldn't stop thinking about it. During the day, while you were in school, I'd bike out to the Neumillers'. I made myself a blind beneath a stand of hickory trees—the cows would gather round, and I'd flap my arms to scare them off—and I waited. The more I thought about it, the more I was absolutely certain that the driver of that sports car was responsible for your father's death. I'd only caught a glimpse of him, but as time passed I began to see him clearly. He was handsome, in his late thirties, with blond hair turning silver and a gold ring on his hand.
He had blue eyes and creases starting around his mouth. A thick neck. A leather watchband. And he was thinking he'd gotten away with something. Maybe even laughing about it—I knew there were people in the world who didn't care what they did. Your grandmother was that way. Once, when I was a kid, she clipped a dog that was crossing the road. It had a silver collar, and I saw it spinning with its jaw smashed open—alive and everything, just badly hurt. But Gwendolyn told me, ‘Hang on, baby,' and she shot right out of there, and when we got out to where the Badger State Mall is now, which is where we lived back then, she turned to me and said, ‘Looks like we got away with that one.'”

The little dog tumbling end over end. Like a punctured football. Like a knotted-up, worthless rag.

“And if you don't think what goes around comes around,” Ruthie said, “let me tell you those words haunted me after Tom's death. It got so I could hear that man's voice in my ear.
Got away with that one
, he'd say. That's when I took Tom's thirty-eight from the attic. You think I'm making this up? I wrapped it in plastic and stashed it in the blind. By then school was out, and I sent you into town every chance I got: summer school, swimming lessons, sleep-overs, church camp. Do you remember?”

Cherish nodded. For once, she seemed to be listening. “I thought you didn't want me around.”

“I didn't. All I could think about was that man, how I'd be ready for him the day he came back, and when Stan Pranke stopped by the house one morning, I told him I'd found the suspect, I'd identified him by his little red sports car. And do you know what Stan said? The paint they found on your father's car, on his body—it wasn't red. It was white. From an older-model sedan. It had been in all the papers. And then Stan said he had Tom's thirty-eight and he was going to hang on to it for me, until I felt better, and he hoped that would be soon. That's when I
started the Circle of Faith. That's when I turned my anger over to God. And it was like my life was given back to me again.”

“I wish you'd told me,” Cherish said.

“How could I tell you something like that?” Ruthie said. “I didn't want you feeling like you couldn't have a normal life, like you had to think about him every minute of the day.”

“But when you don't talk about someone, you lose the memory. That's when a person is really dead. I can barely remember Dad anymore….”

For a long time, she looked out the window, and Ruthie was afraid she wouldn't say anything more, that their last morning together would be spent in a silence as thick as gauze pressed over a wound. But then she said, “I never told you this, but that night on the bridge? I thought I saw him.”

“You saw Tom?” Ruthie's voice rattled over his name.

“He was running toward me like he wanted to save me, and I was so glad to see him because it meant that I was wrong and there was a purpose to everything, we'd go on living forever, just like you'd always said. Something told me, OK, you've seen, now close your eyes. But I had to be certain. I kept my eyes open. Everything was spinning, but I didn't shut my eyes.”

“What happened?”

Cherish laughed, a short, bitter sound. “It was only Paul,” she said. “That's all I remember—except for you, in the hospital. And I remember thinking, Well, good. She finally knows the truth about me. And I finally know the truth about Dad.”