River Angel (7 page)

But the same sort of thing was happening to Ambient. Once, Solomon Public had stood alone on Country O, the only building north of the D road. To the south was the school bus parking lot and repair shed; farther down the road, well out of sight, was an International Harvester dealership. Now the IH stood empty, but new homes were sprouting up haphazardly as mushrooms, and the D road, which continued out past the Badger State Mall toward the interstate, had been transformed into what was now called the Solomon strip: outdoor malls and fast-food restaurants, gas stations and minimarts, video stores, electronic shops, outlets. The couples building homes in the developments around it
weren't rich weekenders like the millpond people: They had to commute to Milwaukee, or even Chicago, five days a week, morning and night. If you asked if the drive didn't bother them, if the smell of the fertilizer plant didn't get into their hair and clothes on days the wind was wrong, they said it was worth it to own their own house, to live where the money went further, to have their kids grow up in the country, away from guns and drugs.

The bell rang. Anna Grey blew her nose into the tissue she kept tucked inside her sleeve. The truth of the matter was that what she really wanted, more than anything, was a cigarette. She could
see
that pack of Salem Lights tucked between her car registration and an emergency box of Kotex. But there simply wasn't time to walk to her car. Besides, somebody might catch her smoking.

Inside, Gabriel was sitting at his desk. His hands were folded; his eyes were closed. The child was praying, and this time, the image twisted like a hook in Anna Grey's heart. Hating herself all over again, she got her purse from her desk, dug through it until she found a half-eaten roll of cherry Life Savers.

“Here,” she said. She meant to let her fingers touch his hand—an apology—but instead she dropped the roll on his desk. It landed with a hard, metallic sound. “That'll get the taste out of your mouth.” Kids were coming in from recess now, bringing with them the mildewed odor of wet wool. Anna Grey swallowed three more Tylenol before calling them to order; still, by the end of the afternoon, her headache clutched her skull like a heavy knit cap. And perhaps the headache could have been blamed for the peculiar thought that bobbed to the surface of her consciousness as she drove home from work: Why not just keep on driving? Why not just?

Milly
, a responsible voice replied, but Anna Grey ignored it and lit a cigarette. She had her checkbook, credit cards, a map
if she chose to look at it. Maybe she'd just drive until she got good and hungry; then she'd stop at an all-night diner, where she'd buy more cigarettes from a machine and order steak and eggs. If she wanted pie, she'd damn well have that too; the hell with her spreading thighs. In her mind's kind eye, a man—the hitchhiker with the buttermint smile—took the stool beside hers. “Coffee,” he told the waitress. “Just coffee.” And then, seeing the concern in Anna Grey's face, he revealed to her that he had nothing in the world but what he carried with him on his back. “I'll help you,” she told him. “I'll take you wherever you need to go,” and his windburned face flushed darker as he realized his good fortune. Together they discussed the possibilities—Atlanta, Florida, Mexico, Baton Rouge—but even as they tried to choose, Anna Grey was startled by the sight of Bill's car parked in its usual spot in the driveway, the Graf Funeral Parlor logo stamped on the driver's-side door. Habit had brought her home.

Inside, Bill was watching TV. He did not turn around as Anna Grey hung her coat in the hallway closet. President Bush was being interviewed by reporters about the effects of environmental terrorism; he looked ten years older than he had when he'd given his speech in Cradle Park. Anna Grey stared helplessly as images of the Persian Gulf flashed on the screen, the terrible black smoke of the oil wells rising, unchecked, into the sky. Experts said it would affect the level of air pollution worldwide, and some even predicted increased incidents of cancer, birth defects, and infertility. There was nothing anybody could do about all the civilians who were dying in the aftermath of the bombings with no drinking water, no medical care. But if Anna Grey said anything, Bill would say, “OK, OK, can't a fella watch the news?” He liked things quiet when he came home. He was tired. He wanted some peace.

“Look at 'em burn” was all he said now. The fine hairs tangling above his balding head were haloed with light.

Anna Grey went into the kitchen, where Milly already had the table set and was now chopping tomatoes for a salad. She was tall and plain, painfully shy, the sort of girl the Cherish Maders of the world never gave a second thought. It broke Anna Grey's heart to think about it. Suddenly she lifted her daughter's ponytail and kissed the soft, sweet skin beneath it.

“
Ma
.”

“You're a good kid, you know that?” Anna Grey said. She started browning the ground beef while Milly emptied the dishwasher. “Anything new?” she asked, expecting Milly's usual shrug. But when Milly spun around and beamed, Anna Grey realized she'd been waiting for the question.

“I tried out for the summer play.”

“You did?” Anna Grey was shocked. Every summer, the Ambient Community Center put on a musical, but Anna Grey could no more imagine Milly climbing onto a stage than she could imagine her skydiving. Still, Anna Grey had surprised Milly singing around the house, and what a beautiful voice she had! Anna Grey quickly learned not to mention it, though. If she did, Milly got embarrassed and was careful not to sing for a while.

Milly nodded. “Actually, I tried out last week.”

“How did it go?”

“Pretty well.” She was trying to be nonchalant. “I got one of the leads.”

“Congratulations!” Anna Grey said. Her voice rose with emotion, the way Milly and Bill both hated. “Why didn't you tell me? Mercy, Milly, I can't believe it!”

“Don't have a heart attack, Ma,” Milly said, but she was smiling. “I can't believe it, either, OK?”

The ground beef sizzled and popped. Too late, Anna Grey pulled it off the burner. A cloud of smoke enveloped them both
before she could turn on the fan. “It's all right,” Anna Grey said, turning her head so she wouldn't cough into the meat. “It's just a little singed. Tell me about your play.”

The musical was
The Music Man
, and Milly told Anna Grey all about it as they spooned the burned bits out of the ground beef. “Rehearsals start this Saturday,” she said. “We're just going to do a read-through first: That means everybody sits in a circle and says their lines so we all get a sense of the characters. I'm the young teacher the music man falls in love with, and—”

The kitchen was open to the living room, and suddenly Bill appeared in the doorway.

“Could you keep it down in here?” he said. He fanned his hand through the air. “Good grief, what's going on?”

Before Anna Grey could say anything, Milly jumped up as if she'd been slapped. “We were talking—what's so bad about talking?” she screamed. “All—we—were—doing—was—
talking!
” Then she ran down the hall to her room and slammed the door. Anna Grey stared at the familiar lines of Bill's face: the soft chin with its velvet stubble, the shaving scar on his left cheek, the eyes that could be green or gray or blue, depending on what he was wearing, held in place by crow's-feet neat as fancy-sewn pleats. She stared at his sloping shoulders, the way his worn jeans hung low on his hips beneath the bulk of his belly. His hair, which was still full and curly in the front. That streak of gray.
The devil's kiss
. His feet were long and slender, graceful; as always, they pointed slightly out. She removed his shirt, his undershirt, his jeans and socks and Jockeys. She removed the silver four-leaf clover that had hung from his neck since he'd turned sixteen, a gift from his mother. She turned him around, spun him over and over like a piece of meat on a giant spit, and still—the thought came to her with the rush of a sparrow fluttering in through a window accidentally left ajar—she knew nothing about this man. And she
wondered if it was truly possible to know anyone in the world.

“What?” Bill said to her, clearly bewildered. “All I did was ask a question.” And then he sniffed at the air near her forehead. “You've been smoking, haven't you?” he said.

That night, she went to bed early, and when she lay down in the double bed that had once belonged to her grandmother, she imagined having all that space to herself for the rest of her life. She opened her arms, spread her legs, until her hands and heels hung over the edges. As a child, she'd always worried that something might come up out of the darkness and sink its teeth into her dangling limbs. She'd slept with her arms at her sides, her legs tucked against her stomach, and even as she dreamed, some part of her stayed alert, watching with a parent's eye, keeping her aligned in the center of the bed. Now, try as she might, Anna Grey could not close her eyes until she'd pulled her arms and legs back in and turned on her right side, facing the place where Bill should have been. She dreamed she was walking along an unfamiliar highway. In the distance, she could see the figure of a man; it was the hitchhiker, the real hitchhiker, the one with the harelip. “What do you want?” she asked, and he said, “One small act of kindness will appease me.” But she knew one kindness would lead to another, and then another, and it would never, ever be enough. And then she saw he held the semiautomatic in his hand.

The alarm woke her. She felt confused, cotton-headed, as if she hadn't slept. Bill had already come and gone, and when she went downstairs to fix breakfast, she saw he hadn't even bothered to close the cover of the cereal box, let alone clear his dirty bowl and coffee cup from the table. She fixed two more bowls of cereal, buttered toast, poured orange juice, hoping routine would salvage the day. When Milly came into the kitchen, she gave her a cheery “Good morning!” But Milly had retreated into her usual silent shell.

“How late will your rehearsal run on Saturday?” Anna Grey asked.

Milly shrugged, sipped her juice.

“Are you nervous?”

Another shrug.

“Maybe I could come watch you rehearse sometime,” Anna Grey said, and Milly said, softly, angrily, “Ma, it's no big deal, OK? It's just a stupid play.”

Still, when the bus came, Anna Grey waved from the doorway as if nothing whatsoever were wrong. Then she threw Bill's coffee cup across the kitchen and into the sink, enjoying the splash of broken china, the crisp, charred, ringing sound.

At school, the children sensed her mood, stayed on their best behavior. Midmorning, she set them back to work on their ecosystems and stepped out to reserve a movie to carry them through the afternoon. So far so good, she thought. I can handle this day. But at lunchtime she remembered she'd been scheduled for recess duty weeks earlier, and no sooner did she get outside than she saw Robert John and his gang backing Gabriel up against the school wall. How she hated Gabriel for his weakness, that passive acceptance of all that befell him, so much like her own. She hated him fully and purely, in a way she would not have dreamed possible. She blew her whistle and marched over to where the boys had assumed postures of fearful defiance, gloved hands wedged into their pockets. Gabriel stood with his head down, waiting for whatever was going to happen next to happen. He didn't even seem to notice when Anna Grey grabbed the shoulder of his coat.

“I don't have the patience for this,” she screamed at the boys. “If you're still here in three seconds, I'll slap your goddamn little punk faces bloody, do you understand English?”

They did. After they'd dispersed, she spun Gabriel around and slammed him hard against the wall. He didn't even blink. “What's wrong with you,” she shouted, “that you don't stand up
for yourself? Do you want to live this way all your life? Is that what you want?”

Gabriel didn't answer. What child could answer stupid questions like that?

She kept her hand on his shoulder, took a few deep breaths. She could feel the bones in his shoulder all the way through his coat, through his fat: the V of his clavicle, the flat patch of scapula. For all his bulk, he was a very small boy. If she squeezed hard enough, she could crush everything in her fist like a handful of potato chips.

“Trouble?” someone said. It was Marty Klepner. Without saying anything, Anna Grey let go of Gabriel and walked back to her classroom, leaving her section of playground unattended. She opened the coat closet, and her red eyes fixed on the mess of toys and games and random supplies that were always threatening to spill out onto the floor. By the time the kids came in from recess, she had everything stacked in piles along the wall and was wiping down the shelves.

“Spring cleaning!” she announced. “Everybody empty out your desks!”

It was barely February, but what else could they do? Even Gabriel lifted the lid of his desk and began scooping the contents onto his seat. They scoured every surface with Comet. They washed every window, soaped every blackboard, organized the bulletin boards. They finished just as the librarian arrived with the antiquated film projector, and Anna Grey let
The World of Volcanoes
carry them right up to the three o'clock bell, when the kids—Gabriel included—flew out of there like buckshot.

She didn't know how much time passed before she heard a knock at the door. “Come in,” she said. Of course it was Marty, the last person in the world she wanted to see. She started packing up the projector so she wouldn't have to look at him.

“What's going on?” Marty said.

Anna Grey tucked the film into its box, held it out to Marty. “
The World of Volcanoes
,” she told him.

“Can I help with anything?”

“Oh, you could return this to the library, if you're headed that way,” she said airily.