Shelter (1994) (34 page)

Like she can't stop complaining about Bird. Alma peers ahead and sees Delia turn smoothly in stride, wheeling around to look up into the trees, as though relieved of any care. Like a soul could fly up in this place. Resurrection, Alma thinks, means back to life, and she keeps moving, barely fast enough. Easter was a long time ago now. That was the weekend Delia got so angry at Bird. Alma had stayed with the Campbells, Lenny had stayed with Cap, and Wes was gone too, so Audrey had gone away as well. She said it didn't matter where she went, as long as she got away from all the lilies and the florists' trucks that were ever present on the streets of Gaither, even along the country roads, as though each house had to have one of those three-headed monstrosities with its pot swathed in bright green foil. Mina seemed to like lilies; the Campbells had three or four in their living room, ribboned and foiled and tagged with somber little cards. Nickel Campbell's grave still looked new. and Mina had left one of the lilies beside the big headstone. The stone had a crest carved over his name, discreetly, Mina said. Very discreet, Bird remarked, you had to read it with a magnifying glass, and anyway, a lot of good it did these kids for his folks to spend all that money on a gravestone. If they wanted to help, why didn't they pay off Mina's mortgage?

Delia began screaming at Bird to shut up, what did she know about it, shut up and leave them alone. Delia was carrying all the eggs they'd colored the night before, three dozen nestled in egg boxes, and she opened one of the boxes and started lobbing eggs at Bird. Bird actually crouched down behind the gravestone because the eggs were as hard as little rocks, and Delia kept throwing them, dodging Mina until Mina finally caught up to her and grabbed her. Delia had thrown mostly her own eggs, screaming at Bird all the while; there were still plenty to hide for John-John. The night before, she'd marked each one carefully with an initial in wax crayon, so there'd be no confusion and they'd each have twelve eggs when the hunt was over. Alma and Delia had both done six for Johnny, hunched over the kitchen table with paints and stencils.

The kitchen of the Campbells' house seems years away. Alma looks back along the trail, with the sound of the river falling away, and thinks the trees seem flattened shapes, like someone has stenciled them black against the deep blue dusk, and the blue keeps darkening, purple as a bruise. "Johnny won't know where we are," she says aloud, because she knows Delia's too far ahead to hear. "He'll think we're never coming back, like your dad didn't. Delia? Delia, where's your dad. Where is he?"

Wherever he was, that's where Audrey was. She only pretended to be at home still. She let Alma stay with Delia anytime, but she never quite cooperated, and she avoided ever speaking to Mina on the phone. All the arrangements were made by the girls themselves, and Audrey would forget to send the dress or the toothbrush, or the homework Alma needed to do, until at last Alma packed her own overnight bag, and by then she had her own toothbrush at the Campbells' anyway. At Easter, Audrey had still made a pretense of organization, but she'd forgotten to send Alma's good clothes, so Mina ironed one of Delia's dresses for Alma. And while she ironed the girls dyed eggs, and Delia complained. Why did she have to go to the beauty shop every day after school, why did Bird have to go everywhere with them, why couldn't they get a car of their own, like the one they used to have, instead of using Bird's old station wagon, with Bird in it, and Mina said back to her, Why why why. She said why and it was like Audrey was behind the ironing board too, and the Campbells' kitchen was moving the way the room of the car had moved on the trips to Winfield.
It seems terrible that I tell you so much, but is it always terrible to tell a child the truth? When I married at twenty I believed all the fairy tales, and they didn't get me very far. I knew Lenny would hold herself apart, like Wes always has, they were born that way, like animals with protective coloring. You're so like me and I don't ever want you to fade away and then have such trouble coming back from the dead, have to deceive and turn yourself inside out.
Back from the dead. No one could come back, but Audrey thought she had. Well then, that was a resurrection, like Easter, like Jesus, and it should be forever. It shouldn't be over because of the river, because Nickel Campbell died in his car. Alma remembered painting over the mistakes on Delia's eggs, while Delia got madder and madder at Mina. You don't need to be mad at Bird, Mina kept telling Delia, nothing is Bird's fault. But Mina never looked up from the ironing and no one ever said whose fault it was, and Delia never asked. John-John sat in his highchair in his pajamas and banged his spoons and opened and shut his hands over his ears; he thought the change in the way things sounded was funny. Alma wished she could cover her ears that way, or that she was too little to be bothered about anything, like Johnny, and then she imagined herself a baby and Lenny a little girl, both of them in the car with Audrey on the way to Nickel Campbell, with all the windows rolled down and the wind so loud it seemed like a hurricane.
He didn't hesitate, just answered like he'd been waiting for my call, Yes, I'll see you then. He said nothing for a moment, I
said nothing, but maybe I sighed, some sound I couldn't stifle, and he said, so calmly, It's all right. Alma, you don't know what feeling is, comfort, gratitude, until you've reached a certain point, and then you'll tear out your soul for it.

"Delia, Delia," Alma calls out suddenly, her voice rising nearly to a scream. "Delia, wait for me!" And she hears Delia stop ahead, reverse direction, come running back. Alma presses both hands to her mouth to keep from calling out again; she wants to bury her face in John-John's feathery hair that smells of baby powder, she loves Johnny more than Delia does, she knows it, why is it true, and she thinks about the new part of the graveyard where no one was buried yet, the part they ran to while Mina cleaned eggshells off the gravestone and talked to Bird about Delia, how the soft ground was all long grassy sweeps, cleared and gently rolling, drifted with loose grass the mower had left, and how John-John kept pulling up handfuls to throw at the girls, and they hid what was left of the eggs for him to find in the short grass, and Alma helped him peel them. She helped him and the colors cracked apart but the membrane underneath fit tight as a glove, and it was hard to get it off without running water.
Being with him was the worst wrong I ever did but it felt the most like belief; I still believe things he said. I don't have any shame in my mind about that time, just a still white calm, like there's snow over all the pictures and the words.
"Delia!" Alma screams, and she sees Delia running toward her, her white blouse, her white socks and shoes glowing up in the near dark.

"What is it," she says, "what's wrong?" And she pulls Alma's hands down from her face and grasps them hard, searching Alma's eyes. "You're scared, aren't you. But it's only bats. And they're flying way high up over the water. Come and see. Like a flock of birds. And Lenny is there. By the diving rock. We're all going to go swimming."

And they are both running then, through the woods, and the dappled beech trees before Turtle Hole are stalwart and massive, bending this way and that, dense with boughs. The oaks and overhanging willows are heavy and green, as though their miles of roots have drunk the deep heart of the water and forced it through their hmbs. Just here on the shore the land is bare, the soil moist, pounded flat like an earthen beach. Cap stands gazing toward them, smiling, and nods her recognition. Alma looks for Lenny and finds her, standing in water to her knees, her clothes wet, her hair streaming. She raises both arms in greeting and presentation, as though to give Alma this place, this water and the colors mixing above it. The girls have made piles of stones, Alma sees, waist-high towers that stand in a staggered line, stacks of single stones that are still and blank, like markers, like a place for a ceremony. Alma moves among them, delighted, careful not to touch.

Delia and Alma came running out of the trees, suddenly apparent in the same white shirt and dark shorts, like troops, excited and released, escaped perhaps, and Lenny gestured they should come closer, as though some mystery or secret would make itself known in the shallow water. She raised her arms high and felt the delicious pull of her muscles, reached higher until it hurt, and the younger girls had arrived.

"Good, you got my note," Cap said softly, pleased. "We're all here now. We're just waiting for someone."

Lenny looked into Alma's face, saw her expression lighten and darken almost in the same instant. She thought about picking Alma up, how it had felt, struggling to carry Alma back and forth to that red wagon they'd played with in the field, the one that always got stuck in the tall grass. Audrey would have to come from the house in her apron and pull the wagon for them, telling Lenny to put Alma down, she'd drop Alma and hurt her, Alma was too big to be carried now, she could walk on her own, put her in the wagon and pull her and stay up in the yard, what if she got separated from you in these weeds, she could wander off and you'd never find her.

"No," Alma said now. "We're the only ones."

"What do you mean?" Cap asked.

Lenny watched Alma pause and consider, but she was thinking about the field, how high it had seemed when they were small. The towering blades of the rushes and the fat milkweed had moved in one piece, like water, like the sea must move. Audrey should have known about the field; how any movement in the grassy depths made a wavery trail and left a flattened swath anyone could see from the yard, from the porch, from the air, even. It wasn't possible to get lost; someone could always tell where you were.

Alma's gaze met Lenny's. "I just know," she said then. "I have a feeling." She looked up, searching the sky for the jagged movements of the bats.

"They're like birds flying," Delia said, "all coming up from behind the rock."

Far above, bats continued to flare into the sky, nearly silent, dispersing high in the air. Moving, they flickered and seemed to contract, shaken like creatures compelled to rise by some power in the sky itself. A few stragglers veered low over Turtle Hole, out over the trees.

"So who else do we need?" Lenny found herself smiling. She walked out of the water and began to step carefully among the stones, between the low totems, her arms dramatically outstretched, and she saw the others begin to follow her, laughing.

Delia stepped along on tiptoe, drawing herself up haughtily and holding her folded arms before her to represent a burdensome decolletage she didn't possess. "In
deed,
" she drawled, raising her brows in unmistakable reference, "we can now appreciate our experience here in a new and larger way." She snuck a glance at Alma.

But Alma only nodded, extending a chivalrous hand. "Mrs. T., what a pleasure to encounter you in this unexpected place."

Cap moved near them in an exaggerated glide. "We'll discuss this further tomorrow morning," she said, pirouetting, "and
everyone
is required to participate in that discussion."

"What was that, dear?" inquired Delia, lifting her chin and sniffing.

"Would you care to repeat your remark," Alma said slowly, in her normal voice, "to all of us?"

Delia advanced on Cap in a threatening mince and raised her voice in a morally superior rendition of hysteria, enunciating with precision, "
Never
cut a fresh roll with a knife, girls, it
ruins
the
dough!
"

Cap held her ground, batting her lashes and staring down into Delia's narrowed eyes. "Is
this
the way you handle responsibility, by
shrieking?
"

Delia smiled and stepped to the side, swaying, provocative. "If our food is bad or tasteless, we wish for better food." She pursed her lips and grasped Cap's hand, holding it up for inspection.

Alma slipped between them and intoned reproachfully, "Dear, you are not at the races. Put your food"—she trapped Cap's palm in both of hers—"back on your plate. You have a knife. Please pick it up."

"My knife! My knife!" Delia flung herself at Cap and grabbed her around the waist in mock frenzy.

Alma pretended to comfort her, firmly, reasonably. "In private, we speak to each other," she reminded them all. "At table, we speak to the group."

"What," said Delia, "are we at table?" She indicated the series of silent piled stones with outspread arms, and the water beyond seemed to move subtly, as though it were breathing.

Trick of the light, Lenny thought, and she began to sing, softly and deliberately, "By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea..."

"You and me..." answered Alma.

And they all began to turn and move in easy, seeming ignorance of one another, like members of a tribe. Lenny turned toward the water, closing her eyes, sensing Alma's movements between the stones. Alma seemed to move within her; Lenny didn't have to know about her, or look at her. It was as though she didn't have to think about this one thing; she could live separately from Alma without ever leaving her, the way people left people. People did leave, like Wes had left, whether he was off somewhere or sitting in the kitchen with them. He would sometimes shake his head and complain in irritation, half mockingly,
Too many women,
as if sheer numbers explained his difference from them. Too many
men,
Alma would retort under her breath, glowering, as though even one were too many. Her hair was brown, like Delia's but without curls, average, Cap would say, but her brows and lashes were darker, as though she hadn't yet grown into her face and something more dramatic might evolve.
Don't frown,
Audrey was always telling her, and Alma would try to recompose her expression, smooth the minor scowl of concentration she fixed on nearly any object of her attention. But she wasn't frowning now. Turning, lifting her arms, Lenny framed a round window with her hands and saw her sister glide away from her within it, expressionless, spellbound, perhaps. They were all moving in measured, circular steps, relaxed and drowsy, and above them the bats were as silent, flaring up again into the dark violet sky, and this time they seemed to rise more slowly. It was all very slow, wasn't it, then, and Lenny thought she heard echoes, her thoughts were so clear. She heard herself tell Alma, as an excuse for bossing her,
I'm supposed to take care of you,
and Alma would snap back,
No,
I'll
take care of
you. How she could ignore Alma for what seemed months, all the time depending on her to exist and be exactly as she was.