The Blue Girl (14 page)

Right away she starts on about Audrey, and I think,
She will tell, she will have to tell. How I love this girl for being the kind who tells
.

I open a carton of eggs and say,
Live long enough, my girl, and you'll find out how strange everyone is. All of us
.

Greg appears in the kitchen. It's as if one day the stomping ended and this is what the boy does now. He appears. He startles me, but I don't show it as I set the chocolate squares in the pot and start melting them.

He must have overheard our conversation because he picks up where we left off.
Audrey's the fucking strangest of all
, he says.
Audrey's seriously fucking strange
.

And I say,
You, boy, have nothing to say about weirdness in this house. You stole a fucking car
.

He says,
How the fuck do you know that?

I watch the chocolate start to bubble and stir it while they watch me.

I told you before
, I say,
I have my ways
.

Then I tell him to get out of my kitchen before I ground him for the rest of his life, this boy who steals cars and messes around with Rebecca in the woods behind the house and out on the back porch. I think about all those nights standing out in the lake when I was their age, David and I with our hands and mouths all over each other and that is why I stayed in this town, because of that lake and those hands. It all started there, and I don't want either
one of them to end up like that. Caught. Caught in a lake or in the woods or in a car stolen from a man who cannot drive because he fears his own television.

Plus the boy, this boy of mine, is failing biology, which is the one thing I wish he understood right now.

Caroline sits at the table and opens her notebook as I lower the flame on the stove and crack egg whites into a bowl and pour in the vanilla and sugar and set to mixing. Her hair has gotten longer all of a sudden. I didn't see it happen, even though I've been watching. She looks softer, my girl. It's clear I need to pay more attention. I wish she would smile more, show off those beautiful teeth. If Mama were here, she would get Caroline to smile. But I don't have a way with a joke the way Mama did, and Caroline's teeth are the last thing I should be thinking about when those kids are out there stealing cars. Libby, she has to worry about teeth, with Ethan and his biting, but I have a boy who has hands that move, hands that can do things, hands that are a cause for worrying.

Right now I want no worries. I want to assemble the moon pies.

As if reading my mind, Caroline closes her notebook and says,
I'm worried about Audrey
.

Well
, I say, putting down the mixer,
Audrey is someone to worry about
.

I check on the tops and the bottoms of the moon pies and wait for Caroline to talk. If there's one thing I learned from Mama, it's to act distracted. The trick is to not actually be distracted, and this is where I make my mistake. But still I try. I keep on with the mixing and the stirring and the spooning, and then I think about her, out there in the house, waiting. I can feel the rumble of her breath, her mouth always open.

And then Caroline is talking again. Whispering.

What?
I ask, looking up from the bowl.

I said we went out there
, she says.

Her hair falls in front of her face. I try to think what Mama would do at a time like this.
Be soft
, she would say,
you with the hard edge, why so hard all the time? This girl is one who needs softness
.

Mama would be right.
Not so brittle
, she would say.
A time and a place there is for everyone to be brittle, not now. Now is a time for soft
.

I walk over to the kitchen table where Caroline is sitting with her head down, hair falling forward. I wish I had one of the butterfly clasps she wore for weeks, even though she looks so much better without them. Softer.

I think of Mama and place one hand under her chin to lift it toward me, then smooth the hair back with the palm of my hand.
See, Mama, not so bad
, I think, as I hold the hair back with my fingers.

So you saw her
, I say to Caroline.
So tell me
.

And she does. She tells me about the car and Greg with Rebecca in front, about the dark trees and about the road, the road I know so well, the one leading up to the house. She tells me about the gravel spraying up under the car and the way the trees seemed to come down around them.
Like they were going to envelop us
, she says—her word,
envelop
, my girl with the ever-expanding list of words that will one day get her out of this town. She tells me about the sound of the water and Audrey running in the dark, about the girl in the water, face down, Audrey pounding again on her back. She tells me that Rebecca was the one to help Audrey to the door of the house with the girl's arm around her, how Audrey shivered the whole way home and said nothing, just like her father.

I take my time when she is done.

So you saw her for yourself
, I say.

I take a breath and smell the cookies cooling in the air. David will be home soon, asking about dinner, what I am doing with these cakes, as he calls them. I just need to be fast enough, fast enough with the plates and the dinner on the table, and then later in bed, with the television still on, I will be fast with my hands on him, always moving, moving so fast he hardly knows where I've been or whether I'm there or gone.

The trick
, I once told Irene and Libby in a moment of embarrassment,
is to move so much he hardly knows when you're gone. To know how to keep him breathless
.

When Irene looked away and Libby said she'd settle for just knowing her husband was still breathing, I knew I had said the wrong thing. But who else is there to talk to?

Her. There is the girl.

I need to finish up with Caroline before Greg comes back in and David pulls into the driveway and it starts, the stuff of families. I pour the chocolate onto the cookies and hope they will cool in time.

But you saw her already that day at the lake
, I tell her, hurrying now.
You saw her that day with Audrey. Just because we don't say it doesn't mean it didn't happen
.

I touch her hand then.
You see, Mama?
I think.
I can still be soft
.

Her lips part then, showing just the thinnest line of those beautiful teeth, and her chin moves up and down, fast. It takes me a minute to realize she is trying not to cry.

It's not that I didn't believe
, she says.
It's just that everyone is talking. Especially Greg
. She stops and sniffles.
He just kept saying he was going out there to get her. But it was Rebecca who said we should do it, like she didn't believe, and then I thought maybe I didn't, either. Maybe it never happened, that day. So I went
, she says.

And what did you see?
I ask.

She looks straight at me then. I reach up to wipe her tears with my fingers, rubbing them together in circles. I don't want to get up, but I must have forgotten to rinse the pot because what's left of the chocolate is starting to burn.

I didn't
, she says.
All I saw was Audrey. It was so dark that all I saw was Audrey running past. I didn't see her at all
.

The chocolate has singed the bottom of the pot, part of a set of cookware that's almost twenty years old, a gift from my parents when we got married.
For you to cook for that lanky boy
, Mama said, as if that was all I would ever do, all he would ever be. What strange dreams Mama had for me.

I pull Caroline by the hand and bring her over to the stove with me, holding her right hand down on the counter with one of mine, while I spoon what is not burned of the chocolate onto the last of the cookies that make up the tops and bottoms of the moon pies. She tries to pull away from me, but I hold her hand there against the counter, hard enough for her not to walk away, not even with the stink of burnt chocolate in the air. We stand there looking down at the burn marks on the pot, me and this girl child I call my own, this girl of mine with a head filled with words and too much softness, looking at the thick black ring on the old pot.

You didn't see her?
I say.

I am whispering now. Mama would not believe how soft I've become.

Not really, I told you, it was too dark
, she says.

Now she is pulling her hand away. I let it go.

Good
, I say.
It's not somewhere you should go, out there. You or Audrey, either. Don't listen to Greg. He has ideas
.

The telephone rings and rings. I hear the sound of my own voice on the answering machine, and then a click. I know it is Irene.

Audrey was the one who saved her, Mama
, she says.
I didn't do anything. I swear. It was Audrey
.

I realize I'm still holding the burnt pot in my hand.
I should throw it out
, I think,
buy new, or maybe
—and this is the first time I've thought this—
stop making the pies. Stop the feeding
. But the girl would starve, and the girl has done nothing except to be herself, blue as she is. It is we who have failed, we who have had to turn to the baking of these little pies. Then there is poor Audrey, always saving the girl, Audrey who cannot sleep.

Listen to me this one time
, I say.
Just this one time. If you never listen to me again about anything
, I say, my hand shaking around the handle of the pot,
then fine, but this one time, you need to listen
.

I always listen
, she says, and I can see by the line in her lips and the movement in her chin that the tears may come again.

Don't go out there again
, I say.

O.K
., she says. She's stopped herself from crying.
O.K
.

Promise
, I say.

She promises. She is a good girl. I hug her, and in the hugging I forget I still have the pot in my hands. As my one arm comes around I think that Mama is right, that I've lost my softness, the softness that all mothers should have, the kind I used to have, too, and that Mama was not one to hug, and neither am I. We have that in common.

The top of the pot lands on the floor, the burnt chocolate spattering in thick blobs of dark brown.

What the fuck was that?
Greg yells from the other room.

He appears then in that new way of his, his big feet and freckled arms hanging down in my line of vision as I take up the pot and bring it over to the sink, running water.

Ma
, he says, coming to hover as I scour the burnt section of the double boiler with a Brillo pad.
What the fuck is that smell?

I put down the pot in the sink and fill it with water that would scald my hands if I touched it. I think of the two of them when they were small, how I always kept them far from the stove, saying,
Hot, hot
, in that voice we mothers all learn to use. I've always warned them not to touch the things in my kitchen, the things that are too hot. Now everything feels that way, heated up. Scalding.

Before he can step away from me, because I am too fast for him—this boy has taught me to be fast, faster than he is—I wrap my hand around the back of his neck and lean into his ear.

I want to tell him I know what he's doing, that I know they sneak out to the porch at night, that I've seen the looks and the hands that are no longer in pockets fumbling around because there is someone else to touch now, that I was young once, too, and filled with heat, with yearning, with hunger.

But there is no time to say any of this, thinking about the hunger, because I can feel it inside myself now, pulling me out of the kitchen, out to the woods and to the girl, as if she alone is calling me.

Look at this fucking pot
, I say, which makes the boy laugh.

Jesus, Ma
, he says,
what the fuck did you do to it?

I laugh, too, for a minute, and so does Caroline, the three of us laughing in the kitchen while my moon pies are setting on the cooling rack and Irene and Libby are soon to be out at the woods waiting for me.

It's my pot, boy
, I say,
and what I do with it is none of your fucking concern
.

Neither of them says anything. Greg, the boy who held me here all those years ago, the boy with the freckled arms who has become lanky like his father, with hands
always moving, has nothing to say. Even Caroline has no words. Her mouth is open.

The two of them stand there watching me as I race around the room, putting away the mixer, cleaning the measuring spoons and the bowl, grinding the eggshells in the garbage disposal. Then I stand there and assemble the moon pies, one after the other, pressing them gently with my hands, careful not to let the filling squeeze from the sides and break them apart.

Caroline