The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel (7 page)

J
ory and Frances weren’t allowed to go. Their father was going to go pick Grace up from the airport and drive her straight to the doctor’s all by himself. Their mother wasn’t going because she was still lying on her bed with a wet washcloth over her eyes, the shades pulled down, and the bedroom door shut. And Jory and Frances weren’t going because, as much as their father would love to have both of his favorite girls along, as much as he’d love to have their company, it was going to be a longish trip with nothing much to see or do in the way of fun. It would just be a lot of bag carrying and boring medical stuff, and they’d be glad they’d stayed home. They would. But he would be sure to tell Grace they loved her and they could see her as soon as Dr. Henry gave her a clean bill of health. As their father told them this, he glanced occasionally at the three-by-five card on which he had made notes, and then kissed the top of Frances’s head and told Jory again to call Mrs. Mangum at the church office if she had any problems, any at all, and not to bother Mom because she needed to rest. And then he was gone.

It was hot outside, but there was nothing else to do, so they sat on the curb with their bare feet in the gutter and shot stones at the streetlight with Jory’s slingshot.

“Hey, watch, Fran.” Jory lowered her sights and took careful aim at one of Mr. Garmendia’s cats. “Take that, Afro Cat.”

“Don’t!” Frances shrieked and swatted hard at Jory’s arm.

Jory turned and pointed the slingshot at Frances’s face and pulled the rubber band back as far as it would go. “You are so stupid sometimes.”

Frances stared at the slingshot. “Mom will kill you if you shoot me.”

Jory turned away from Frances and watched the furry black tomcat
pick its careful way through the weeds that bloomed wildly in the empty lot across the street. She sent a rock sailing toward the portion of its backside she could still see. “Mom can’t kill me if she won’t ever get out of bed.”

“She’ll get up. She’s not supposed to yet because of her sick headache.”

“Oh, yeah, right—her
headache
.” Jory aimed at the rear wheel of Mr. Garmendia’s old blue Plymouth. The rock made a wonderful pinging, denting sound as it hit and then ricocheted off the car’s metal hubcap. Her mother’s headaches coincided unsurprisingly with anxiety-producing events or any activity she strongly disapproved of. And they always involved closed doors and wet washrags and blue pills of some sort.

Frances swirled her big toe through the muddy trickle of water that ran down the gutter. “Dad says that animals have their own special kind of heaven—a different place or section or something—but why would they?” Frances shaded her eyes with her hand. “Jory, what’s typhoid?” She squinted against the noontime brightness. “What is it?”

“It’s something Grace doesn’t have.” Jory tied and then retied the knots in the slingshot’s rubber band.

“Is she going to die?”

“Yes, and so are you—when you’re ninety-two.” Jory made a lunge for Frances, grabbing her around the waist and tickling her underneath the ribs where she was the most susceptible. “Ninety, ninety-one,
ninety-two
!”

Frances screamed, tossing her head back and forth—she was terribly ticklish. Suddenly she gasped and wrenched Jory’s hands away. “Wait—stop it, Jory, stop it—listen!” Frances jumped up and pointed down past the end of their block, where the little white truck could be seen coming around the corner. “I heard him before you did!”

The truck inched toward them incrementally. It swerved a little and seemed about to stop every few feet even though there was no one on the street but them—its loopy music winding up and back down again like the tail on a broken, tree-caught kite.

Today he had a hat on. Jory could see it through the windshield of the truck: a weird brownish-looking hat like the kind newsboys in old TV shows wore. His red hair crinkled out from the sides and back of it.

“Well, Mother Mary,” the ice cream man said. He had pulled the truck to a stop right by their feet and was leaning out from the driver’s
seat. “And here’s Sister Susan too.” He grinned broadly, revealing a set of beautifully white teeth. “What’ll it be today, madams?”

“I’m not Sister Susan,” Frances said, staring at a spot near her toes, but Jory glanced directly up into his face. “We won’t be buying anything today,” Jory said, still looking at where tiny red whiskers were sprouting all along the bottom portion of his cheeks and jaw.

“Why not? Not hungry?”

“No,” Frances said, standing up. “We don’t have any money. Our dad went off to the airport and didn’t give us any.”

“Hey, okay. Well, how about two of the house specials on the house? We’re having a sale, you know—anything red and carcinogenic.” He lifted his hat and turned it around, front to back. “That is, anything technically cherry or strawberry flavored is so marked down that it could for practical purposes be considered, um, actually free.” He stood up and bent partially out of sight, his large red-haired hands lifting and reaching inside the silver freezer’s door.

Frances had moved closer to the doorway of the truck without Jory noticing. “Our sister is dying,” she said, and took the Good Humor bar the ice cream man held out to her.

“No, she’s not.” Jory stood up, but she couldn’t figure out where her hands should go now. “She’s not.”

“Okay.” The red-haired man squinted his eyes at something off in the distance. “Say, do either of you ladies know anyplace nice to take a swim? The kind of place where dogs can go too and nobody squawks much?”

“Like the lake?” Frances broke off a piece of the ice cream’s cherry coating with her fingers and placed it flat side down on her tongue. “Do you have a dog?”

“I used to. Where’s the lake?”

Jory was standing next to Frances now. She stared up into the truck’s interior, quickly memorizing the clear green beads hanging in a loop around the truck’s rearview mirror, the transistor radio that sat on the dash in a black leather case, his blue-striped shirt with
ROGER
embroidered in red above one pocket. “Don’t you live here . . . Roger?” She could feel something in her rib cage tightening and burning a little. She closed her eyes. Maybe he hadn’t heard her.

“Ha!” He hit the spot where the name tag was with the flat of his hand. “Roger! Wouldn’t that be something? Roger Mylander.
My land, Roger!
” This last he said in some high, squeaky lady’s voice.

Jory took a step back. “I know Roger Mylander,” she said. She now dared to look at the ice cream man’s yellow-brown eyes. They had tiny crinkles at the corners that made him look like he spent a lot of time smiling. Or else squinting. “He sells houses for Reddish Realty.”

“He goes to our church.” Frances had squatted back down on the curb in order to eat the ice cream bar with greater ease.

The ice cream man sat down too. He got down from the driver’s seat and perched on the truck’s metal step and held his hands out in front of him. He spread his fingers wide, as if examining the backs of them for dirt or scars. For an instant, Jory could see the small blue tattoos between his fingers. They looked like fish tails or maybe tiny hooks. “Where do y’all go to church?” he said.

“Garden of Gethsemane Church of the Nazarene.” Frances reeled off this information proudly.

Jory glanced away, pretending a sudden interest in something on the Reisensteins’ front porch. Her shame at having to discuss their churchgoing with him was like a live thing—a small wriggling worm that left a red-hot trail as it climbed higher up her throat and face.

“Bible-thumpers, hm?” he said, looking at Jory for a long moment. “I’m not from around here, so I don’t have the foggiest notion where the lake is. What do you think? Could one of you draw me a map, maybe?” He pulled a small paper napkin out of his shirt pocket and after fumbling around in all of his pants pockets he finally produced a pen. He handed them both to Jory, and she held them out in front of her as if she’d never had any contact with either before.

“I’m not very good at drawing directions.” She wrinkled her nose. “I could probably tell you how to get there, though.”

“Hey,” he said and slapped himself in the forehead like the man in the V8 commercial. “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you two ride along with me, and you can show me how to get there?”

“I don’t know.” Jory had no idea what to say—was he serious? “It’s pretty far from here.”

“Really? Shoot.” He took his hat off and turned it around and around in his hands. He looked different without it—younger and a little forlorn—like the dog that used to live in the alley behind Albertsons. “That’s too damn bad. It’s so hot, you know—I was really looking forward to some swimming.”

“Well, there’s the canal. The Elijah drain ditch. It’s a lot closer.” She knew that she was moving deliberately down a road her mother had told her never, ever,
ever
to go on.

“Hey, great! And y’all have to come too.” He stood up and put his hat back on, and then he held his hand out to Jory.

She reached up and took it.

The water in the canal was freezing cold. Frances wisely sat on the grassy bank, making dandelion chains and eating another cherry Push Up. Jory, however, did not want to look like a baby, so she had waded out until the water reached her waist, and there she stood, feeling the current pull and tug at her legs.

“C’mon in,” the ice cream man yelled at her from the middle of the canal. He was stroking furiously against the current, going nowhere. “Wow!” he shouted. “This is incredible!” He ducked under the water and then came up in a different spot, his red hair all dark and slicked to his head like an otter’s.

Jory had no idea what she was doing here. The whole thing was like some really strange dream that was sweeping her along and would end with her living someone else’s life way across town somewhere. He used bad language and she had seen several silver beer cans rolling around in the back of the ice cream truck. Plus, he was out there in the water in a pair of blue cutoffs. Only a pair of cutoffs, no shirt or anything. Her father always wore a T-shirt when they went swimming. He said it kept him from getting sunburned. Jory had never seen a man with his shirt off before, except for maybe once or twice when old Mr. Garmendia was mowing his lawn. The ice cream man had slightly curly red hair on his chest. It traveled in a V down to the top of the blue cutoffs, and he had two terribly pink nipples that reminded her of raspberries. And whenever he came up on shore, like he was doing now, his wet shorts dragged
down and exposed some small, rounded, muscly place above each of his hip bones.

“Hey,” he said, plowing toward her through the shallow water. He stood up next to her and gave his head a shake, squeezing at his hair to get the water out. “Don’t you want to come in? It’s not that cold when you get used to it, plus the water’s pretty clear. You can see almost to the bottom.”

“No, that’s okay.” Jory held her arms tight to her chest. “I’m really not that good of a swimmer.”

“Well, you know what? How lucky for you, because I just happen to be a certified swimming instructor.” He flexed his arms and struck a muscle man’s pose. “Junior lifeguard, third class. So here we go, tadpole, time for your first lesson.” He tried to take her hand, but Jory pulled back from him, her feet sliding a little on the canal’s muddy bottom. “Okay, okay,” he said in a quiet voice, “don’t panic. I won’t let anything happen to you—we’ll take it nice and easy. What’s your real name, blue eyes?”

“It’s Jory.
J-o-r-y
.” She took another step away from him in the water.

“Well, alrighty then. How do you do?” He bowed and held out his wet hand. “I’m Grip.”

“Grip?” She examined his face to see if he was teasing her.

“Yup, and I have a brother named Early. My mother was a strong believer in going with her first impressions. She told fortunes too.” He had his arm around her waist now and was walking her slowly toward the deeper part of the canal. “She thought intuition was the thing. ‘Always trust that stone in your gut,’ she would say. ‘It will never steer you wrong if you pay attention to which way it’s twisting—sharp or smooth, sharp or smooth.’” The water was up to Jory’s chin, but Grip was holding her tightly with both of his arms. She tried to turn around to look at the shore, to see if Frances was okay, but he whispered, “Sharp or smooth,” and then in one quick movement he lifted her up and took a big breath of air and they were floating. They were in the middle of the canal, where the water went down, down, black, blackest, and he was floating on his back and she was floating on top of him, his arms still wrapped around the waist portion of her wet cutoffs. The water barely lapped over her stomach as they moved with the current. She let her head lie back on his
chest, watching the clouds in the sky move past, and the tiny holes where the stars were sleeping, each with one eye open. She could feel his legs under hers warm and wet and him moving his feet a little bit, but everything was so gentle that it was as if he and she weren’t really moving at all, as if the sky was the thing sailing past all slow and easy, as if they were merely resting on the water. “Hold your breath,” he said in her ear, “and keep holding it.” And then he had slipped out from under her and she was alone in the water, floating like before, only slightly heavier now, her legs hanging free in the cool of the water, the darkness below her still pulling her smoothly along on its current, until suddenly, just like that, her body twitched in recognition of its untetheredness, its terrible precarious freedom in this deep volume of water, and she jerked and thrashed and fell. She had taken in only a mouthful or two of water when he got her. He held her up and kept treading water until she quit choking. “Put your arms around my neck,” he said, so she did. He turned around in her arms until he was facing away from her and then he began swimming. “Let your legs hang free behind you,” he said as he pushed his arms through the water. She rode on his back to the shore.