The Unraveling of Mercy Louis (8 page)

“Not feeling hungry, I said.”

“But Dr. Lawrence says—”

“That man says a lot of things.”

“Okay,” she yields. Odd that her mother would refuse food, but Illa doesn't want to get into a fight on her first day of full-time work. It would cast a pall over an already bleak summer. “I'll get you a change of clothes, then,” she says, a little too loud.

After emerging into the hallway, Illa wanders to her mother's closet. When she kneels to rummage in the dresser for a shirt, her eyes wander to the shoe boxes in the corner. After Mama gave up on the physical therapy, she went through the house and collected all the old pictures of herself and hid them here, a kind of graveyard for her former self. She also stashed away her yearbooks, anything that reminded her of who she was. Illa missed the photos; she had been proud and a little envious of her mother's intelligent, hawkish good looks. The deep-set Mediterranean eyes and fine, high forehead over which she side-swept her straight dark hair. Illa had thought her mother's body was just as a woman's should be—not wiry and boyish, like Illa's, but voluptuous in a way that was both maternal and secretive.

Taking a seat on the floor of the closet, Illa slides a yearbook out from under the shoe boxes. She flips to the index to see where her mother appears in the book and is somewhat surprised by the long list of page numbers. She knew her mother had been well liked, but the number of times Mama appeared in the book suggests a level of popularity Illa can't believe belonged to someone related to her. One by one, she thumbs through the photos, most of which are blurry and crowded with other kids. A group outside the Pelican Club, one of the all-night roadhouse dance halls over the state line; kids cheering at the edge of the Red Dump while someone slides down the mud bank and into the mucky water below; Mama posing coquettishly, hand over her mouth in mock fear, next to a ten-foot gator that someone caught and killed. Seeing the ease with which Mama navigated high school life gives Illa a flash of that old pride; she keeps turning the pages.

Buried in a section called “Junior Life” is a photo of Mama and Charmaine Boudreaux, Mercy Louis's long-gone mother. They're at the beach, arms slung over each other's shoulders, the Gulf spread out like mercury behind them. Mama wears a white two-piece, her hair wild with the salt wind, the lids of her eyes drifting to half-mast, giving her a sleepy, sexy quality. Next to Mama's Brigitte Bardot, Charmaine is well scrubbed and guileless, a chambray shirtdress falling slackly around her thin frame, face turned toward Mama adoringly. The image makes Illa's heart beat fast. Was her mother friends with Mercy's mom, or were they just standing near each other by chance when the photographer passed by, the picture capturing a closeness that never existed?

Illa decides to ask her mother, even if it might pain her to look at the photo. Maybe Mama needs to be reminded of how strong and beautiful she once was so she'll have something to work toward. Remembering why she's in the closet in the first place, Illa stands to choose out a skirt. As she flips through the hangers, her hand lingers over the only serious outfit her mother still owns, a black jersey-knit dress with three-quarter sleeves that she wears whenever she leaves the house. In the past six months, there have been three such trips: two to the doctor's office, and one more recently, to last winter's memorial service marking the third anniversary of the refinery explosion. Tensing in her chair, Illa waited for her mother to cause some kind of a scene, but instead, Mama sat quietly in the shadow of the Praying Hands memorial with the other people who'd been injured that day, listening as Mayor Sanchez read out the names of the dead while the rest of the town looked on, heads hung in memory or prayer.

At the end of the ceremony, Mama remarked that Sands hadn't even bothered to send a representative. “See, Illa?” she said. “This is why I can't touch that money. Company pays everyone off, and then they can pretend like it never happened. If they started putting those suits in jail, you bet Sands would start giving a damn about safety.” And Illa wanted to say that no, actually, she
didn't
see, didn't understand for a second why Mama wouldn't use the money her agony had earned her and that they needed so bad. But there was no talking to her; she possessed the stubborn righteousness of the badly wronged.

What would happen if Illa took the dress to her now, demanded that she put it on, and then drove her downtown? Where would they go? Was there a place left in town where Illa could bear to be seen with her mother? Mama hadn't died in the explosion, not technically. Her heart still beat inside her body. Her brown hair still grew thick to her shoulders. She still insisted on holding Illa's hand when they watched rented horror movies together. Initially elated over her mother's survival, Illa hadn't acknowledged the change in her mother's personality. Only when it became clear that Mama didn't intend to resume the physical therapy to try to walk again did Illa have to face the truth that while her mother hadn't died in the blast, she hadn't emerged fully alive, either.

“Illa?” her mother calls now from the bathroom.

Illa exhales. “Coming,” she answers, leaving the black dress on the hanger but tucking the yearbook under her arm. In the bathroom, she sets it on the counter next to the sink. She helps Mama maneuver from the tub back into the wheelchair, then angles her mother's arms through the sleeves of her bathrobe. Once Mama is comfortable and clothed, Illa asks: “Were you and Charmaine Boudreaux friends?”

“Why? Who's been talking to you?” Her voice is defensive, and Illa notices she's gripping the wheelchair's armrests so firmly that the veins in her hands stand out.

“No one, I just saw that photo in the yearbook.” Mama relaxes her grip on the chair. Illa hesitates but then forges ahead. “So, were you? Friends?”

“We were,” Mama says. “Some people would say we were good friends.”

Illa smiles to herself; this seems like the best news. Like maybe because of this history, she and Mercy are destined to be close. “That photo in the yearbook. Why didn't you ever tell me? You've heard me talk about Mercy. You know she's on the team.”

“I . . . I don't know . . .” Mama stutters. “I guess I just never thought of it . . . it's been such a long time . . .”

“What was her deal?” For years, Illa's wanted to know more about Mercy, and all along, Mama's had the inside scoop on the girl's mysterious mother. “What was she like? Was she nice?”

“Nice? It was more than that. Charmaine was gentle. That's how I'd put it. People thought she was weird. Well, she
was.
It was like she'd been spit out of a time-travel machine. She had an old-fashioned quality to her. But that's what I
liked
. She was different from other people.” In the mirror, Illa can see Mama smiling with the memory. “She could be funny, too. Char wasn't anybody's fool, even if she was naive about some things. She didn't go out of her way to make people try to like her, just kept to herself, mostly.”

“When did y'all become friends?”

“My senior year, I guess? Which would've been Charmaine's sophomore year. Me and some of the other kids, we were kind of beach bums. That's where Char and I first met, at the beach. She saw us and came over and started talking about what we'd seen that morning, if there had been any dolphin sightings, and when the tide had gone out. The surfers in the group were real in tune with the water, so they got into it with her, talking about the weather, full moons and the tide, how it affected the chop. She knew a lot. God, I remember that day so clear. Someone offered her a cigarette and she shook her head at the same time as she reached for it, which made all of us laugh.” Her face hardens. “I knew she was Evelia's girl, but I didn't really know what that meant, not then. I took her to a couple parties. We'd get to talking, and pretty soon she was telling me all kinds of stuff, the way girls do, I suppose.”

“Like what, Mama?” Illa asks, greedy for Charmaine's secrets.

Mama tenses again. “It wasn't fair, her going away all of a sudden like that,” she says, voice rising. Putting a hand to her mouth, she turns away, shoulders moving with silent sobs.

Surprised by the violence of her mother's reaction, Illa says gently, “It's okay,” even though she has no idea what's wrong. She wants to continue probing about Charmaine, but she understands that would be cruel. She vows to bring up the subject in the future, once her mother has gotten over this fit of nostalgia, or whatever it is.

After a couple minutes, Mama collects herself, but her bottom lip quivers. Her expression, previously wistful, is now opaque. “I thank you kindly for your help,” she says. “I'll be in my room if you need me.” She motions Illa out of the way, then wheels herself out of the bathroom and down the hall.

I
'M KIDNAPPING YOU,”
Annie says when I answer the door Monday morning. She's wearing oversize red heart-shaped sunglasses, the halter strings of a turquoise bikini pulled tight behind her neck. Her skin gleams with suntan oil and smells of coconut. A red hibiscus flower tucked behind her ear brings some order to her muss of blond hair, frizzy from humidity. Crowned by the fan of banana plants growing by the stairs, she is summer incarnate. Looking at her, I can practically taste the salt of the Gulf.

“We're going to Crystal Beach. Grab your suit.”

“All right, all right,” I say, deciding to forsake the day's workout. Maybe the beach will shake me from this haze I'm in. “Wait here.” She pulls out a menthol cigarette, puts it between her glossed lips, and makes to light it. “
Annie,
” I hiss.

She grins at me. “Just trying to keep you sharp.”

She claps her hands, motioning me off the gallery and back inside the cool dark of the house. I scurry to the bedroom, where I throw my suit and a towel into a canvas bag. Maw Maw's still asleep, so I leave a note for her on the kitchen table. Ripping down the road in Annie's Mustang, radio blasting, I feel better. There's something healing about the beach. Dipping your head below the surf, listening to the waves whisper promises carried from other shores, letting the sun burn away the skin of who you were yesterday to make you new.

Since Friday I've been grinding my teeth over the message I delivered in church:
Find the one who did this.
I can't stop thinking of Charmaine, as if she's the one responsible for the baby, her letter and apology meant for that little one and not me. For some reason, this makes it easier to think about her.

I peer out my window at the sky unfolding to the horizon. It's shimmering blue like glazed china. Later there will be storms, thunder bouldering down from quick-forming cloud banks, sheets of sudden rain that will scatter swimmers and picnickers. I love summer showers, the warm bath of rain, the loamy scent of the washed earth afterward. As a child, I relied on the parents of friends to take me to the beach, since Maw Maw found the sight of women in bathing suits to be vulgar. Because of this, the shore has always held the special magic of something rationed, even now that I can drive myself whenever I like.

This early in the morning, the peninsula road is empty. We pass dozens of brightly painted vacation homes, all built up on stilts. At a gas station we stop to buy supplies. Annie grabs Cheetos and Funyuns, Dr Pepper and Skittles. Trying to stick to the meal plan, I pick cold-cut sandwiches in triangles of plastic, a package of peanuts, bottled water.

“Oh, oh, hold up,” Annie says before the guy can ring us up. He watches us from eyes like black beads pressed into the smooth white egg of his face. She takes a pair of pink-rimmed cat's-eye sunglasses from the rack on the counter and slips them on. “I'm so getting these for you,” she says, tossing the glasses onto the counter. “Remember my tenth birthday? At the roller rink? The sock-hop theme? My mom got those glasses for everyone, remember? Man, we looked cute as fuck.”

She pays for everything—when we're together, she always pays, says she needs help wasting her daddy's money. She hands the sunglasses to me, then breezes out the door. I follow her, sliding the glasses over my nose. They pinch a little, but I'll wear them in honor of Mrs. Putnam, back when she was happy. Annie used to be, too.
Here come Miss Silly and Mademoiselle Serious
, Mrs. Putnam used to say.

Eventually, Annie parks on the shoulder and scrambles out of the car. After making sure no one's coming, I struggle into my bathing suit, a ragged black one-piece I've had for ages, then pull my shorts back on. Once outside the car, I can hear the sighing of the waves, the call of gulls as they ride the updraft of wind off the water. From the sandbank, tall grass blows silver-green, changing direction with the snaking breeze.

Racing to crest the dune that separates the road from the beach, Annie squeals like a child. I follow behind, heart wild with blood, feet sinking deep into the warm sand. My flip-flops slip off along the way, but the sand feels so good against my toes that I don't care. At the top, we pause to take in the view, the water a muted blue, broken only by a few orange buoys that mark the end of the swimming area. The beach is empty but for a fisherman casting off a distant jetty.

“Last one in has to do a hundred clean-and-jerks!” Annie shouts, barreling down the dune, all legs and arms. I'm right behind her, and when she pauses to strip off shorts and T-shirt at the water's edge, I overtake her, running full-throttle into the surf. “No fair!” she shrieks.

“Prude's advantage!” I holler over my shoulder. I keep running, legs churning up foam, until the tug of the water gets to be too much. Then I throw my arms out and dive, and there it is, the beautiful quiet of losing gravity and all the sharp sounds that travel by air. I go limp and let the current carry me. When I run out of air, I surface with a gasp. Annie joins me and we swim out as far as we dare, then float on our backs for a while. In earth science, we learned that the sky isn't actually blue, its color a trick of light scattering as it passes through the atmosphere. Sometimes science ruins things. I wish I could unlearn this, but once a mystery is gone, it's gone.

While we're toweling off, I notice a red stripe stretching from Annie's right shoulder blade to her middle back, a belt-wide welt. I've seen these wounds on her before, in the locker room. I walk up behind her and ever so lightly kiss the outer ridge of the mark by her shoulder, then pull her into a hug. In my arms I feel her stiffen and then go soft, a sigh escaping to mingle with the sea breeze.

“I love you, Annie,” I breathe into her back, feeling the sentiment so powerfully that I imagine the words radiating beneath her skin.

“Love you, too, Mers.” She reaches back and scratches the top of my head, then clears her throat and shimmies away from me. “I'm starving,” she says, tearing into the bag of Cheetos. “The water sucks the juice out of you.”

I sit down to eat my peanuts. The grit of their salt mixes with the sand on my skin in a pleasing way, so that I rub my hand back and forth on my wrist just to feel the sensation. After we finish eating, we lie back on our towels, the day's heat building around us. We pace ourselves, take swim breaks when it gets to be too much, when we find ourselves starting to breathe through it like we're distance runners. Gradually, the beach starts to fill up, families spilling out of vacation homes and station wagons, boys knee-deep in the surf tossing footballs. When they pass by, they ogle, and for a moment I'm proud of the way we must look to these boys, beautiful and strong, the Gulf of Mexico stretched out at our feet like an offering. They know we're athletes, they can see it in the cut of our arms, the lines of our quads, even when we're at rest. If we were walking down the beach, they would remark on our strut, the gait we've perfected entering other teams' gymnasiums, the one that announces we are there to win, that we believe bone-deep we are the baddest ballers around.
Cocky,
we've been called, and I wouldn't disagree. You don't win championships by apologizing for yourself the way some girls feel the need to do. I have guarded such girls, girls with good fundamentals who lack the killer instinct. Blood roars in my ears when I realize my luck, I have eaten them alive, and God help me, but I enjoyed doing it.

After cruising by a couple times, a pod of guys stands over us, the long shadows cast by their tall bodies cutting through the sand. My heart thumps with the threat of them, they are little bombs of hormones and intent, there's something so honest about them and their needy, gawky bodies. But that bald need scares me, too, especially when I'm the object of it.

As usual, Annie is unfazed. She props herself up on her elbows and lowers her sunglasses to the tip of her nose. I see her movie-star body, the turquoise suit stretched tight across her hips, her Rapunzel hair, the way even her belly button winking out at them seems flirtatious, and for a moment my faith in her falters; she will accept their advances, she won't protect me like she always does. But then she speaks: “Dudes, you're in our sun,” she says, flopping back down on the towel and turning over onto her belly as if hoping the red stripe on her back will scare them off.

“How about a couple beers,” one of them says. “Need to cool you off, y'all are sizzling.”

Annie rolls back over and holds up a hand; the boy places a silver can into it. “
Grazie,
” she says, popping the top and taking a sip, nestling the can into the sand next to her.

“What about you?” a blond one with a blotchy face says to me. “You want some?”

I keep my mouth shut tight. If I don't, I might just say yes. There have been times before when I've wanted to say yes. With bite in her voice, Maw Maw says I have a face like an invitation. I pray:
Get thee behind me, Satan!

“Boys, don't take this the wrong way, but be dears and piss off?” Annie says.

“Whatever,” the dark one says. “Tease.”

“Not responsible for every boner, sorry.”

With a kick that sends sand spraying away from us, the boys continue down the beach. I exhale back onto the towel. Annie takes my hand and kisses the knuckles. Now we're even.

On the way back into town, Annie steers us into the Market Basket lot. It's late afternoon now, my body lazy with sun. I don't want to be here but don't have the energy to protest.

“I need some Tic-Tacs,” she says, cupping her hand in front of her mouth and exhaling. “Ever since that baby, Beau's been a Nazi.” She looks at me. “You know he actually had the gall to ask me if
I
did it? Like suddenly, just because I have a uterus, I'm a criminal.” She snorts indignantly. “Can you believe it?”

Actually, I can. Over the years, I've lost count of how many boys Annie has slept with. I don't even know if
she
knows the exact number.
Slut,
some kids call her, though never to her face. Beau Putnam is a lot of things, but he's not a fool.

“You've got to be kidding me,” she says. I realize that I haven't been quick enough to agree with her.

“No, no, what an idiot,” I say ardently, trying to make up for my mistake, but it's too late. Already she's out of the car. She slams the door, and I watch as she crosses the parking lot, legs scissoring angrily. Staring across at the dumpster, I see that a makeshift memorial for the baby has gone up, a pile of stuffed animals and a ring of candles. Someone has hung a handwritten sign on the dumpster: A
T
24
WEEKS
, I
COULD BREATHE OUTSIDE THE WOMB
. H
OW DO
YOU
DEFINE HOMICIDE
?

I don't really believe Annie did it, do I? She goes to that clinic in Houston to get pills, ever since the Walmart refused her. But I remember her confession in the parking lot:
I'm so fucking
hard.
Everything breaks against me
.

OVER BREAKFAST THE
next morning, Maw Maw says that Beau Putnam called and told her he'll be at church tonight.

“Whatever for?” I ask. The Putnams are fair-weathers, going to All Hallows for Christmas, Easter, and the occasional baptism so Beau can schmooze with the biggest congregation in town. As Annie puts it, her daddy prays only to the dollar.

“Said his soul needs some polishing up.” Maw Maw sniffs. “Says he wants to talk to me about something.”

Maw Maw dislikes the Putnams, Annie in particular; she disapproves of the tight jeans and dyed hair. If Maw Maw guessed at half the secrets I keep for Annie, she would take me straight to the river, rebaptize me, and forbid me seeing her again. As it is, Maw Maw only says,
Don't know why you spend so much time with that girl
. If I told her that I'm trying to save Annie, or that Annie's love for me is forceful and steady as the sun, would she understand then?