The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel (42 page)

It was freezing in the car. Jory sat huddled in the front seat, staring out through the windshield as her father tried vainly to adjust the heater. He finally gave up and sat back with a sigh. They passed the Day ’N’ Nite grocery store and crested and then rolled down the little hill. “Jory, do you have anything you want to say to me?” Her father stared straight ahead.

Jory was silent.

“No apologies? No excuses for why I find you at some sort of a dance you definitely don’t have permission to attend, with a boy I’ve never met before?” Her father shook his head and kept shaking it. “Right now, of all times, you choose to do something like this—knowing what your mother and I are going through? How worried sick we are?” His voice dwindled away, but his head shaking continued.

Jory noticed that there were single lights on in most of the farmhouses they passed. Solitary lights left on for someone’s comfort and security in the night. Left on so someone wouldn’t be scared of the darkness.

“You have nothing to say for yourself?” Her father gripped the steering wheel.

“I know where Grace is,” Jory said. And the moment she said it, it couldn’t be unsaid.

At Hope House, her father wanted to go up to the door by himself—in fact, he’d insisted upon it—but once he stepped out of the car and started walking toward the porch’s large kohl-painted eye, Jory leaped out of the car and ran up the steps behind him. He began pounding on the front door until finally the girl with the long red hair and teardrop tattoo opened it. She was now even more pregnant than before and she seemed to be wearing the same long white dress that she had been wearing on Halloween.

“Hey,” she said rather tentatively, and looked from Jory to Jory’s father.

“I’m here to get my daughter.” Jory’s father’s voice sounded horrible and strangled even to Jory. He took one step into the house, and the copper-haired girl couldn’t shut the door against him in time. “I’m not sure she wants to see you,” said the girl, still holding the edge of the door.

Jory’s father stepped around the girl and into the room. “Where is she?” he said.

“I could call the police,” the girl said, lifting her chin up.

“Go ahead,” said Jory’s father. “That might be a good idea all around.”

The girl stepped away from the door a little, but she didn’t move any farther into the room.

“I’ll just search until I’ve found her,” Jory’s father said. “So you might as well tell me where she is.”

The girl said nothing, but she turned and started walking through the living room and into the kitchen. Jory and her father followed close behind. They passed through the clacking red bead curtain and out through the kitchen and down a long hallway painted blue and silver with all the signs of the zodiac. The girl stopped in front of a closed green door. She knocked once and then again. The door opened and Grip stood in the doorway, looking tired, but happy. He saw Jory and her father and his face changed shape and he stepped back from the doorway. Jory’s father gave him a shove that sent him sprawling even farther into the room. Jory could hear her sister gasp and she saw Grace get up from a bed she had been lying on. “Dad,” Grace said. Grace’s head was now completely bald and she had a red dot in the middle of her forehead and her hands and arms were covered with interwoven and intricate drawings. Her father
strode into the room and gripped Grace by both of her elbows. He began shaking her, hard, and Jory watched amazed as Grace’s head flopped back and forth. Grip tried to insinuate himself between Grace and her father with no success. Jory put her hands over her mouth. Her father slowly stopped his shaking, but he still held Grace’s arms. “Get your things,” he said. “We’re going home.” Grace said nothing, but simply gazed at her father in awe. She was wearing a long flowered nightgown Jory had never seen before. It was unbuttoned part of the way down the front and Grace didn’t seem to be wearing any underwear.

“She’s not leaving,” said Grip. “Not if she doesn’t want to.”

Their father pointed his finger at Grip. “You,” he said, “have nothing to say about this.” He turned to Grace. “Go get in the car,” he said. “Now.”

“Grace,” said Grip.

“Shut up,”
their father said. Jory had never heard him use this phrase with anyone ever before. Their father still had Grace by the arms and he now began pushing her out of the bedroom. Grip tried to touch Grace as she passed by, but their father elbowed him out of the way. The girl with the tear tattoo was nowhere to be seen. Jory looked at Grip looking at Grace and saw for the first time what had been there all along. She didn’t think she would be able to stand this, she had been sure she would never be able to stand this, and yet here it was. She followed her sister and her father out of the room and down the hall and through the living room and down the front steps and into the car, and the whole time Grip was calling after them in a voice Jory had never heard him use before.
No
. He wasn’t calling after them, he was calling after her sister. He was calling after Grace.

Jory now sat in the backseat of the car. She watched Grace’s completely shorn head from behind as they drove ever onward, back toward the house they had lived in all their lives. For all the years of their lives except this one.

In silence, they drove down one road after another. They passed Mrs. Kleinfelter’s house, where a lone light still burned. Jory realized with a sinking sensation that Mrs. Kleinfelter was probably still up waiting to hear how Homecoming had gone.

Grace turned toward their father. “You can’t do this,” she said, in a voice that was as full of radiant bitterness as anything Jory had ever heard. Their father reached over and across Grace and pressed down the lock key on the passenger door. “I can do this,” their father said, “and I am.” He seemed utterly unperturbed by Grace’s brand-new voice.

Of all the silent car trips Jory had ever taken, this one was the worst. Grace was alive. She wasn’t hurt or dead or run over or lying in a ditch somewhere—but some part of Jory, the most selfish, horrible, and the very truest part, wished that she were. Jory stared out the window in a wide, unblinking, heart-pounding fury. She had previously wished Grace gone in a sort of halfhearted, abstract way, but this was different. If she had the power to do so now, she would wish Grace utterly out of existence. The toxic substance that had zinged through Jory’s veins back at the Homecoming dance had filled her head completely now—even her fingertips felt buzzy and electric with the full extent of her hatred for her sister. She sank down in the car seat and allowed herself to imagine Grace unlocking the car door and tumbling onto the unforgiving concrete of the roadway. Or floating down the Elijah drain ditch, her fingers catching in the reeds and cattails, her mouth and nose stopped with brackish water. Grace’s funeral was a dramatic affair that, as it grew, featured Jory in the starring and pivotal role. There were carpets of white flowers and weeping and the illicit thrill of seeing the now diminished and vastly lessened Grace laid out in her coffin—a sight that Jory lingered over and stared at unabashedly. It was a scene of strangely sensual proportions.

Jory bent her head down into the tightly knotted buds of her corsage and took a deep breath. The cluster of roses smelled as fresh and sweet as if they had just been picked or were still happily growing in someone’s garden. Jory felt her throat fill with tears. She swallowed and swallowed again. She hated Grace. She hated everyone in this car. The car’s heater, however, hummed steadfastly and her father kept his hands safely at the ten and two positions on the steering wheel. And the people in the front seat, Grace and her father, continued staring straight ahead, oblivious to Jory’s hatred, as the Buick’s headlights illuminated the familiar stretch of road leading back to the house on Ninth Avenue. Back to their old house. Back to their home.

E
ven before she woke up, Jory knew exactly where she was. Somewhere in her sleep, she had heard the familiar sound of the basement furnace coming on, roaring dustily to life in its warm, reassuring way, and her father clearing his throat in the bathroom as he did each morning after he brushed his teeth. She could smell the burned toast and her mother’s baked oatmeal that Frances insisted on having every day of the week. Jory opened her eyes and there was the wallpaper with the blue swans floating serenely down the unknown river and her sock monkey that seemed dirtier and slightly sadder than she remembered. Everything and nothing was the same.

Jory scrambled out of her bed and stood in her bare feet on the hardwood floor. Her Homecoming dress was in a heap next to the closet, the corsage Laird had given her still pinned firmly to its shoulder portion. One cream-colored suede pump lay on its side under her desk. Jory moved over to her dresser and pulled open a drawer and surveyed its contents. There were her cutoffs from last summer and her sailor top and two stretched-out T-shirts. She shut the drawer and pulled open another one. Her old blue sweater lay on top. She pulled the sweater over her head and then on the floor of the closet she found a pair of gray pants that almost still fit.

Her father was sitting at the dining room table in his teaching clothes, even though it was Saturday. He was writing something on a yellow legal pad that he had in front of him. Jory’s mother was scraping the burned portions off a slice of toast and not looking at Grace, who was sitting at the table with her hands folded. The red dot that had been on the center of Grace’s forehead had faded somewhat, but Jory could still see the swirled brown drawings on the backs of Grace’s hands.

“Good morning, Jory,” her father said. “Have a seat.”

“Where’s Frances?” asked Jory.

“She’s next door at the Hewetts’,” said her father. “We didn’t think she needed to be here for this.”

“This?” Jory stood by her chair for a second and then finally sat down.

Her father cleared his throat. Her mother put her butter knife on her plate, but still didn’t look up. Grace said nothing. Jory felt as if she had entered the stage with the action already in progress.

“There’s no point in beating around the bush here; this past month has been something of a revelation to me,” her father said. He picked up his pencil and traced a straight line back and forth on the pad of paper. “Over the course of the past three weeks I was forced to consider the terrible possibility that my oldest daughter might be injured or dead.” He cleared his throat again. “And then I discovered that all my worrying was for naught since she was alive and happily living with a strange man in a house full of hippies and unemployed drug users.” Grace made a noise, but her father held up his hand. “I also discovered that my middle daughter was attending dances and parties that I had never sanctioned, with boys whom I had never met.” Their father continued to trace the same line with his pencil, making an ever-deepening groove in the yellow sheet of paper. “And what I realized, among other things, was that I was partly to blame for these events because I had naively or foolishly put my two daughters in a situation where it was possible for things like this to occur.” Their father put his pencil down. “A mistake I’m not going to make again.”

“Dad,” said Jory.

“So I stayed up all of last night thinking, and I decided that it would be best if Jory skips these last few months of school.” Her father picked up his pencil and moved it an inch or two to the left on the table. “She can do correspondence work here at home just like Grace did.”

“Me?” said Jory. “Wait. You want
me
to quit school?”

“It wouldn’t be permanently,” said her father. “You can always go back next year, or maybe even later on in the spring sometime.”

“No,” said Jory, shaking her head. “Nope.”

Their mother glanced up, her head vibrating slightly the way it did when she was furious but didn’t want to show it. “Let’s be frank, Jory. You
haven’t exactly had a stellar year. Between the shoplifting and the cheating and the dancing and who knows what else.” She closed her eyes briefly.

“This is nuts!” Jory turned from her mother to her father, trying to appeal to whoever might be most amenable. “Everyone goes to school! And I didn’t shoplift anything—how many times do I have to tell you? I didn’t steal anything!”

“That’s really beside the point, though—isn’t it?—since all the rest of it is true.” Their mother’s head and hair continued to quaver. “I can hardly believe that you are the same girl who used to live in this house.”

“Okay, okay,” said their father. “All right, now. What we’re trying to do here is to make a plan for the future—one that will ensure you girls’ safety and well-being. And as your parents, we both have a responsibility to do just that. Do you understand?” He nodded, as if for all of them. “Of course you do,” he said. “So we’re all agreed, Jory will stay home just for the remainder of this school year, and then next year she can go back to Arco Christian.”

“I’m not going back to ACA,” said Jory. “You can’t make me.”

“Don’t you dare tell us what we can and cannot do, Jory.” Her mother put her napkin on the table. “This isn’t a debate. And it isn’t open to discussion.” Her mother’s face seemed more pointed and narrow than it had been just a month earlier. And she looked vastly more tired, as if the skin around her cheeks and eye sockets had had something vital and life-affirming sucked out from underneath. Jory felt suddenly shamed for her part in her mother’s exhaustion. Her depletion.

“Also,” their father said, as if he hadn’t even heard this last interchange, “and perhaps somewhat more importantly, I talked to some people on the phone and I found a place that is willing to take Grace in for the next few months and provide her with the type of care that she obviously needs.” Their father flipped over a new page on the pad of paper. “This is going to set us back a bit money-wise, but I think I can sell the house on Deer Flat back to Mrs. Kleinfelter, and if we just tighten our belts a little with the weekly groceries we’ll be fine.” Their father crossed something off the piece of paper with his pencil, an expression of grim accomplishment on his face.

Jory noticed that Grace was now sitting up very straight in her chair. She stared at their father, apparently incapable of speech.

“The care that she needs?” said Jory, her voice rising. “You mean you’re sending her to Blackfoot?”

There was a moment’s silence.

Grace finally spoke, her voice utterly composed. “I am not crazy,” she said. “In fact, I’ve never seen things more clearly. It’s you and your particular way of thinking that are insane.”

“What?” said their mother, her words spilling out like a sudden dam burst. “Just
look
at you, Grace. You’re bald! And you have some sort of absurd drawing or painting or something all over you. Not to mention that you’ve been living in sin with a disgusting long-haired
man
who’s probably twice your age.” Their mother was now twisting her napkin around and around in her fingers. “I still don’t believe any of this.” She shook her head. “I really don’t.”

“All right, now,” said their father. “Let’s try to stay focused on the positive.”

“But you’re sending her to the insane asylum!” Jory reached out and latched on to her father’s shirtsleeve. She suddenly remembered that it was just last night that she had wanted her sister dead. She dropped her father’s sleeve.

Their mother frowned. “Good grief, Jory.”

“It’s an unwed mothers’ home,” her father said. He flipped over a new page on the pad of paper. “The St. Agnes Home for Girls. It’s in Wichita, Kansas, and even though it is a Catholic institution, the woman I spoke to assured me that the Sunday services are quite Christ centered.”

“
Kan
sas?” Jory squeaked. “But that’s, like, a million miles from here.”

“It’s only for a while,” their father said. “And then Grace can come home and start her life as a college student. As a young adult woman with her whole life in front of her.” He tried unsuccessfully to smile.

“I’m not going,” said Grace. She had her hands folded calmly in her lap and was speaking in a voice that she seemed to have borrowed from someone royal or presidential. “Not to an unwed mothers’ home or to the loony bin or to anywhere else you try to send me. I’m nearly eighteen and
I can decide for myself where I’m going to live. My life is my own to do with as I please.”

A sort of hush fell over the table. Jory could see her father mentally regrouping, his forehead tightening. He pursed his lips and then visibly tried to relax his face. “You’re still seventeen, Grace. And a minor.”

“I turn eighteen in exactly one month.”

“Well, during that month you are still my charge and I will be deciding where you are going to stay.”

“I have rights,” said Grace. “About what happens to me.” She lifted her chin and smiled grimly at her father. “And about what happens to my baby.”

“Where are you getting these ideas?” Their mother shot a look at Grace. “Or do I even need to ask?”

“Grace,” said their father. “The law dictates that you are my child and my responsibility until you are old enough to take care of yourself. And even if you were eighteen, what would you do for money? How would you support yourself—much less a baby?” Their father gazed at his oldest daughter with infinite sadness.

Grace’s equanimity seemed to falter for only the briefest second. “I’ve thought of that.”

“And?” their father asked.

Grace paused. “I have my resources.”

Their mother made a brief expulsive sound through her nose.

“You just can’t count on someone like that, Grace.” Their father rubbed his hand across his forehead. He wore a sad and almost defeated look. “You don’t understand how the world works yet.” He lowered his voice. “How some men can be.”

Grace looked steadily at her father. “Oh, really?” she said.

“Don’t be disgusting,” their mother said.

“And even if you made me go, what makes you think I wouldn’t just run away again?”

Jory was amazed at Grace’s continued tone of defiance.

“Well, Grace,” said their father with a certain resignation in his voice, “you’ll be watched and essentially guarded every moment when you’re there.” He shifted in his chair. “That’s partly what I’m paying for.”

“Why not just send me to jail, then?”

“If I could, I just might,” said their father.

“Oren,” said their mother.

Grace leaned back in her chair. “I’m getting married,” she said. The note of triumph in her voice was unmistakable.

This idea seemed to take a minute to sink in across the table.

“You most certainly are not,” said their mother. “Not to that . . . that person.”

“Grip is not just a person,” said Grace.

“You’re not marrying him,” said Jory, staring at her sister. “I don’t believe you.”

“Girls,” said their father. “We will not be talking about that person anymore.”

“Would everyone quit calling him ‘that person’?” Jory could hear how childishly high her own voice had risen.

“‘That
person
,’” said their father deliberately, “is not to be discussed or mentioned in this house ever again.”

“He’s my best friend,” said Jory.

“And mine,” said Grace.

“He’s no one’s
friend
,” said their father. “Least of all, either of yours. And I am saying this one more time—we will not be speaking of him ever again. Is that understood?”

Jory and Grace said nothing.

Their father lowered his voice. “And if I ever find out that he has tried to contact either one of you, I will call the police. Immediately.” Their father leaned forward intently and smacked both of his hands flat down on the tabletop. “I do not want to involve the authorities in our personal family business, but I will if I have to. If you force me to. Do you understand? Is that clear?”

Jory felt a shock run down her spine. Her father never spoke like this. He never threatened anyone with anything. And he never slapped the table.

Their mother’s face had now taken on a look of dismayed fury that had finally reached its boiling point. “And, Grace, what on earth makes
you think that a grown man . . . an adult male . . . would do a completely absurd thing like that with a seventeen-year-old girl?”

Grace stared at her mother. “You mean, why would he want to marry me? Is that it? Is that what you mean—a seventeen-year-old girl like me? A girl as ugly and unattractive and unfeminine as me?”

“As
I
,” said their mother.

Grace gasped as if she’d been hit.

“Esther,” said their father. “That’s
enough
.”

Their mother suddenly seemed to deflate, to lose the fiery air that had kept her fury afloat. She rubbed her fingers against her temples. “I think I feel a migraine coming on.”

“Vengeance is mine,” said Grace.

Jory stared at her sister.

“Grace,” said their father, a note of shame in his voice. “Don’t.” Their father pushed his chair back and stood up from the table. “All right. I think we’ve talked about this enough for now. Grace, I’ll be taking you to the airport tomorrow morning. The woman I talked to said it’s still fairly warm in Kansas, so you’ll want to think about that when you’re choosing what to pack.”

Grace shook her head. “Oh,
Dad
,” she said. “Is that really what you want to say to me right now?”

“Don’t talk to your father like that.” Their mother gave Grace a look of saddened reproach. “He’s doing all of this for you—sacrificing everything so that your entire life won’t be ruined. So that everyone won’t know what you’ve done.” She shook her head and couldn’t seem to say anything more.

“What
I’ve
done?” Grace stared at her mother. “It’s like you think this is all my fault—that I somehow did this to myself just to humiliate you. Just to make your life miserable.”

“Didn’t you?” Their mother picked up her napkin and folded it carefully in half. She stood up and placed her napkin down on the table next to her plate. “I’m not feeling well,” she said. “I think I need to lie down.” She moved past the three of them and walked down the hall to her bedroom.