Disgraced (3 page)

FOUR

The smell hit Lola
when they walked into the unlocked house. She sat Margaret in a kitchen chair and ordered Bub to stay with her while she made a quick search, not knowing precisely what she was looking for.

Not a body, thank heavens; it didn't have the whiff of putrefaction with which she'd become all too familiar during her time overseas. Lola held her hand over her face as she ran from room to room, flinging open doors. The house was empty, the smell receding the farther she got from the kitchen. She retraced her steps, opening windows in each room so the wind could chase away the reek she at first attributed to the empty, unwashed cans of ravioli marching down the kitchen counter, and finally to a trash can under the sink, soupy with the rotting remains of what appeared to be most of the contents of those cans. The neck of an empty liquor bottle poked up through the glop, as if seeking oxygen. Lola thought of the blast-furnace temperatures of the last few days, of the pasta and sauce breaking down with the plastic confines of the trash can, of the microbes swimming through the stinking mess, multiplying exponentially every few
seconds. Even Bub, who'd crept away from Margaret's chair and across the kitchen floor to Lola, wrinkled his nose in fastidious distaste.

At least Pal had had the foresight to line the can with a trash bag. Lola gathered the crusted cans from the counter and tossed them into the bag, then knotted it and carried it out onto the porch and beyond, leaving it in the yard. She noticed a long-handled shovel by the front door, and gave a moment's thought to burying the bag. They'd left the house, what—three days earlier? Not a long time for such serious disarray. She searched for rubber kitchen gloves, thinking to scrub down the counters, but found none, determining only that canned goods appeared to be the sole form of sustenance in the house. The ravioli alone was new. The rest of the cupboards' contents, including several neatly labeled jars of home-canned jams and vegetables, were so outdated that Lola consigned them to a fresh trash bag. She turned her attention to the duffel she'd seen in the bedroom. She hadn't noticed the smell when she'd picked up Pal at the airport. But the bag had ridden in the bed of the truck. Now, in close quarters, it reeked. Lola unzipped it. “Pee yew, Mommy,” Margaret protested. Lola averted her face and upended the contents into the washing machine that stood in one corner of the kitchen. It was possible, she thought, that Pal hadn't washed her fatigues at all for her last few months in Afghanistan. “Bet she was a treat to be around,” she said aloud. Someone must have forced Pal to shower, to put on clean clothes for the trip home, she thought.

She located a box of laundry detergent that appeared prehistoric, its contents solidified into a sort of cement. Lola retrieved a paring knife and jabbed away at it, chipping off pieces into the washing machine. Pal didn't have anything in the way of delicates, as far as Lola could tell. Her underwear was industrial-strength cotton; her bras, yellowed sports varieties.

The screen door banged open. Lola spun around. Margaret slid from the chair and ran to her side. Bub stood his ground and barked. Lola couldn't hear Pal's words over Bub's racket, but had no problem at all making them out.

“What the fuck?”

Eyes boring straight through Lola as she said it, no concern whatsoever that a child was within earshot. Bub shut up, so that when Pal said it again, the words rang through the kitchen. “What the ever-loving fuck?”

Margaret tugged at Lola's jeans. “Quarter in the jar, Mommy.” It was their rule that whenever anyone cursed—
anyone
mostly being Lola—a quarter went into a jar. Every so often, Margaret was allowed to spend the quarters on a book.

Lola picked her up. “I don't think she plays that game.”

Pal stood backlit in the doorway, face in full shadow, but her fury palpable, not just in her words but her stance, leaning forward, balancing on the balls of her feet, hands clenched.

Lola threw some anger of her own right back at Pal. “Jan was worried about you. And with good reason. You've trashed this place in just a few days. It stinks in here. Don't you ever take out the garbage? Your clothes are disgusting. I'm probably going to have to wash them twice, just to get the smell out. You just cursed—twice—in front of my daughter. And speaking of my daughter, you've been drinking in here, too. That shit—sorry, Margaret—stops now. At least, not in front of my daughter. I don't know if you smoke. God knows, that's the one smell I didn't pick up on. But if you do, you're not to smoke around Margaret, either. In fact, not in the house at all. I'm going to stay here until I'm sure that you're eating decent food, wearing clean clothes, and generally taking care of yourself. And then, believe me, I will be gone as fast as I can drive that truck away from here. Are you getting all of this?”

Pal stepped into the room. The door slammed behind her. She wore a sweat-soaked tank top and abbreviated shorts and wide-soled running shoes. Lola gave herself a moment to be impressed. Pal didn't look as though she had the strength to run, especially given the ferocious hangover she had to have. The woman had grit. And some sort of discipline, which apparently fled the moment she stepped into the house and confronted the basics of nutrition and cleanliness.

“You need to leave. Right now,” Pal said.

Lola's ire flared anew. “We're not going anywhere. Margaret, you take your things into the bedroom where we stayed before. Bub, go with her.” As long as Margaret was safe, she reasoned, she could handle whatever Pal might throw at her—perhaps literally.

“What the—”

Lola cut her off before she could curse again. “Not in front of Margaret. I'm serious.”

“What gives you the right to do this?”

“Your cousin. She's a pain in the ass—it seems to be a family trait—but she's the closest thing to a sister I've ever had. Which apparently is how she feels about you. Here's why you're going to let me stay.”

Sweat ran into Pal's eyes. She swiped an arm across her forehead and shook the moisture from it, wincing.

Lola pointed to Pal's forearm. “That had to sting, right? All that salt in those cuts?”

Pal looked at her arm as though she'd never seen it before.

“Either we stay here until you're back on your feet—and that had better only take a few days—or I'm telling your cousin about those.”

Pal folded her arms across her chest, too late to hide the fact that she'd added two new scars across two of the old ones, three X's now marring the skin covering her scrawny forearm.

FIVE

Lola woke alone the
next morning. The single bed, in which Margaret and Bub had also spent the night waging an apparent contest to suffocate her, had gone roomy and cool.

Voices reached her. Margaret's declarative confidence. A low-pitched response, barely above a whisper—Pal. And, a man's. Lola hadn't heard anyone knock. She threw the covers aside and bolted for the kitchen in her nighttime attire of threadbare T-shirt and a pair of Charlie's boxers, sliding low on her hips. She hitched them up. Three heads turned. Four. Bub bounded to attention. Margaret sat in Pal's lap, comfortable in comparison to Pal, who held herself rigid as though Margaret were somehow breakable and that movement would send her shattering against the floor. The man at the table raised a hand in greeting. Before Lola had lived in Afghanistan, before she'd moved to Montana—dry places where sun and wind and dry air sucked moisture from skin, causing it to collapse upon itself in folds and crevices years before its time, Lola would have put his age at eighty. Now she knew better. Seventy, max, she figured, and likely closer to sixty. There may have been a stray tooth or two somewhere in his caved-in mouth, but if so, they were in the back, where they rarely saw the light of day. His nose had been broken so many times that whatever arch it once held had disappeared within a bulbous mass. The braids that hung to each elbow were woven with grey, his skin a darker brown than Charlie's, and certainly than Margaret's. No wonder she hadn't heard a knock. Indian people were far too polite to go around banging on other people's doors. Lola watched as his eyes strayed Margaret's way, the nod of recognition as he assessed her complexion, the hair that gleamed like onyx in the early morning light.

“Delbert St. Clair,” he said, when no one else spoke. So he did have a couple of teeth after all.

“This is Lola,” Pal said into the silence. “Delbert's already met Margaret
here.” She gestured stiffly toward the child in her lap, who turned a beatific smile upon her. Pal flinched and stretched her lips in return.

Lola stepped to the table and held out her hand, barely touching her fingertips to Delbert's, shaking hands the Indian way, not the hard handclasp and firm pump she'd have used with a white person.

Delbert pursed his lips. “Huh.” He clutched a paper sack in one misshapen hand. “Brought Pal here some breakfast. If I'd known she had company, I'd have made sure there was more. That girl down the convenience store gave me extra yesterday. She sees handsome and starts throwing doughnuts around like they're free.”

Margaret slid from Pal's lap and scooted to Delbert's side, eyes fixed upon the sack. Lola shook her head at her daughter, whose list of approved foods was far too short, at least as far as Margaret was concerned. Diabetes was rampant among the Blackfeet, the legacy of poverty and the lack of access to the fresh fruits and vegetables, whose price soared the farther they were shipped from cities. Charlie did most of the cooking in their own household and as a result, Margaret's diet was relentlessly healthy and Lola's had vastly improved. But Lola remained wary of the fry bread and fast foods that flashed enticements at every turn, and was determined that Margaret not succumb. On the other hand, there was nothing to eat in Pal's house but ravioli. And coffee. Lola inhaled in gratitude. Thankfully, it existed and someone had made a pot.

“That girl at the convenience store isn't a day over seventeen,” Pal said. “You're dreaming, Delbert.”

Lola started. She hadn't thought Pal capable of anything approaching humor.

“I'd say she's the one who's dreaming. Dreaming of what life could be like with a man who's done some living.”

Lola poured herself a cup of coffee and joined the mismatched group at the table that sat in the center of the large kitchen that also functioned as living and laundry rooms. Whatever feminine touches Pal's mother might have lent to the room had vanished upon her death. A garish green easy chair sat next to a worn brown couch patched with duct tape, facing a TV table absent its television. Jan had said that Delbert had taken care of Pal during the two years after Pal's parents died, and before she and Delbert's grandson had enlisted in the military. Lola imagined Delbert and his grandson batching it with Pal during those years, eating meals of canned food in front of the television in companionable silence. The TV, she guessed, had gone to Delbert's house during Pal's deployment.

“Delbert thinks he knows a thing or two about women,” Pal said now. “All evidence to the contrary.”

“Evidence to the contrary, my ass. I've buried three wives. Wore 'em right out. Now I'm fighting off one who fancies herself as Number Four.”

“Dolores Wadda still after you?” Pal said. “Woman needs her head examined.”

Lola thought she and Margaret must look like a pair of metronomes, their heads swinging back and forth from Delbert to Pal. Margaret almost certainly didn't understand the conversation, and for that matter, neither did Lola. The body language was all wrong for the banter, Pal staring a hole in the table as she spoke, Delbert peering just as fixedly at Pal, the pain in his eyes contradicting the smile that revealed a third tooth. It was almost as though the two of them were putting on a show for Lola and Margaret.

Delbert opened the bag, retrieved a doughnut, and pressed it into Pal's hand. He wiped his fingers, powdered with sugar, against his work pants. Pal held the doughnut without tasting it. She took a sip of the coffee. Red lines threaded the whites of her eyes. One cheek was crimson and flattened, as though she'd slept all night with her face pressed against the table. The sack rustled. “Here.” Delbert withdrew another doughnut and broke it into two uneven pieces and handed one to Lola and one to Margaret, who looked a question to her mother. Lola took a bite. It was stale. She considered a breakfast of ravioli, saw again the seething mass in the trash can, and forced a smile. “Go ahead. It's fine.”

Pal nibbled at her own doughnut, barely breaking the surface. Sweat beaded her forehead. Sweating out the alcohol, maybe, Lola thought. The night's cool still lingered in the kitchen.

“The Fourth's coming,” Delbert said. “Everybody'll be out at the cemetery.”

Pal ducked her head and rubbed at the scars on her forearm. The scab broke off one of the fresh wounds. Blood threaded its way down her arm. She bent her head and licked it away.

“The cemetery?” Lola asked. The silence lasted long enough for Lola to wish she hadn't posed the obvious question.

“Delbert's grandson—” Pal began.

“Mike. Got killed over there last year.”

The odds would have been against Mike, Lola thought. Proportionally, more Indians than any other ethnic group volunteered for military service, a warrior tradition dating back to the first World War, even though all the Indians living within the United States didn't get the right to vote until 1957. Send-offs and homecoming ceremonies for soldiers, Marines, and the rare sailor were common occurrences on the Blackfeet Nation. Lola covered them all for the
Daily Express
, thankful for each story that involved anyone completing a tour of duty without serious physical injury. The mental toll on those who returned—that was a matter she had yet to explore.

“Firefight?” she asked. “Or IED?” The questions were automatic, based on her own years in war zones, where the roadside bombs known in military jargon as improvised explosive devices seemed to claim as many casualties as actual battle.

“Neither,” Delbert said. “They say—”

Pal's doughnut fell from her hand. A mushroom cloud of powdered sugar puffed up from the table. “Never mind about that shit they say.”

Margaret opened her mouth. Lola shook her head at her. Delbert and Pal seemed to finally have strayed into the dangerous territory they'd been avoiding.

“You go on and eat all of that doughnut now,” Delbert said. Concern sharpened his voice. Pal picked it up, took another squirrel-sized bite, and changed the subject. “Delbert lives down the hill,” she told Lola. “On the reservation.”

Lola thought of the house she'd seen just before the turnoff to the two-mile gravel road that led up and over a series of hills to Pal's place. It was a typical Bureau of Indian Affairs shoebox, and just about as sturdy, barely a step up from a trailer, with a cone of tipi poles rising beside it. “What reservation?”

“Wind River. Arapaho and Shoshone. Historic enemies, assigned together to the same reservation. Maybe somebody thought they'd finish each other off.” Pal made a coughing sound that could have been a laugh. “Delbert here's Shoshone. There's about three times as many Arapaho as Shoshone.”

“But we're tougher.”

Lola looked again at Delbert's nose, the cauliflower ears. She was willing to bet he'd gotten the best of his opponents.

“Ladies'll be making the flowers,” he offered.

Once again, Lola was forced to ask.

“What flowers?”

“For the graves. They decorate them fresh for the holiday. Might be Mike won't get any flowers, though.”

Lola feigned interest in her doughnut, trying to disguise how badly she wanted to hear more about Mike.

“Enough about the cemetery!” Pal banged her hand onto the table, smashing her own unfortunate doughnut. Bub, alert to the burst of food scent, shot to Pal's chair. Pal swept the doughnut's remnants to the floor, where Bub hoovered them up. Breakfast was clearly over. Delbert pushed back from the table and headed for the door. One of his legs worked better than the other.

Lola hurried after him. “Nice to meet you, Mr.—” She needed to fix his name in her brain.

“St. Clair. Delbert St. Clair.”

She held out her hand to him again. Delbert's fingers shook in hers. His eyes were moist.

“Make sure she eats,” he said. “She tells me she's fixing herself dinner every night. But there's barely anything to her.”

Lola thought of the empty ravioli tins and the full trash can, as though Pal had dumped the cans' contents after a single taste. “Yes,” she said. “She's fixing dinner.” He hadn't asked whether Pal actually ate it.

“You take care,” he told her.

But he looked toward Pal as spoke.