Eleanor (3 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

T
he Anders lived in a house, not a trailer. It was a small house with a narrow porch. A white weathered fence surrounded the little lot at the edge of town with a knee-high gate. In the back, the fence was six feet high but still white. Parking was on the street, but they had no car. It had originally been a guest house for another, grander structure that had not weathered the blizzard of '48. The debris from “the big house” had been cleared and the land sold, but no one had yet bothered to build anything on the old place. They were waiting for the coming boom which never came.

The Anders had a single tree on the corner of their lot, a pine planted by a previous owner. It had matured into a tall, majestic green cone, a pillar landmark Eleanor could see across town over the low buildings even in the deepest snow. It beaconed her home.

The house stood alone on the street, the land on either side and behind and across the road were weed-choked and ignored. The Anders' house, however, had a kept lawn and single, vibrant flower bed, opposite the tree, just under the window where Tabitha could see it from her chair in the living room. It bloomed with red and pink tulips in the spring, scarlet poppies, then yellow daffodils, purple petunias, and gold gazanias in the later summer. It was hard to coax them all to grow in the cold windy Wyoming weather, but Eleanor tended the plants like loved children and spent precious money to make them live.

In the back of the house, away from the pine's shadow, Eleanor grew tomatoes in buckets in the sunny spots. She had ten plants as tall as she was and as cared for as the flowers. She'd planted them in old five-gallon plastic pales she'd found discarded in a dump heap. To support them, she made frames from whatever she could find. She used wood from fallen aspen trees and splintered posts, wire from a cast-off chain-link fence, and, for delicate string, threads of trimmed telephone wire she'd found under a green switch box behind the post office. The tomatoes themselves had been nursed from seed in the winter in the back window of the kitchen.

The plants thrived and gave the little family plenty of cherry tomato treats, which they munched like candy in front of the television. They ate succulent slabs of the rich delicious fruit with a little salt and pepper like pancakes all summer long.

A flimsy aluminum shed stood in the back corner of the lot and kept the yard tools that had come with the house. Some were older than two world wars, but the family kept them working with glue, tape, and the occasional scavenged bit or pole.

Each year, Eleanor planned to put some tomatoes away in jars for the winter, but each year there were none left, Tabitha and Eleanor having savored them all. They had talked seriously about putting in a vegetable bed this year to increase their harvest.

The magpies in the pine chirped in alarm as Eleanor approached the house. She could see the nest from her upper window. The house didn't really have two stories. But the attic had a window and they'd made it into a bedroom loft for Eleanor. Even with her new height, she could stand upright in the center of the room where the slanted eaves met at the top. Toward either side, she had to crouch to reach her bed, bureau, or trunk. It was fine. She only slept and dressed there. It was a retreat if she needed one. But she seldom did.

The house would need painting next year, Eleanor thought. The creamy eggshell of five years past was peeling. The gloss white trim and maroon door and window frames were also showing the wear of five Wyoming winters. Eleanor would need to keep an eye open for unwanted paint. Like last time, she'd prowl the new constructions up the canyons where the transplants overbuilt mansions they'd see once a year. If any of them weren't log cabins, she might be able “borrow” some extra paint.

Suddenly, Eleanor realized that she'd noticed the paint because she was looking at her home as another person might. And that other, she knew, was David Venn. She cared little for what others thought of her, her home, and her mother, as long as they left them alone. But Eleanor wanted David to approve of her home when he saw it. If he saw it.

She shook her head, feeling foolish, and went inside.

“Mom, I'm home,” she said quietly. She saw Tabitha sleeping in her chair, the television muted, a blanket over her legs.

The house was cool thanks to the shady pine, and Eleanor opened a window in the alcove to freshen the air in the room. Perhaps it would bring in some warm summer breezes across the flower bed.

Eleanor's keen senses had learned to tolerate the heavy scents of medicine and decay which filled the house more and more each week. It was impossible for her not to associate these smells with strong emotions. There was love, always love for Tabitha, but now, growing by the day, there was also fear.

She surveyed the room for changes, plotting the places her mother had moved that day. The couch—old, secondhand, threadbare, and mismatched—had been sat upon; a cushion jostled and a pillow moved. The coffee table, scratched and marred from the previous owner's cigarette burns, showed that Tabitha had read only a few pages of her book before laying it back down beside the box of tissue. The TV remote control, of course, had been moved, and Eleanor noticed the window curtains drawn closed where the afternoon sun would glare off the television screen.

Tabitha snored softly but slept deeply.

From farther in the house, Eleanor smelled the soup her mother had made in the kitchen only to be thrown up later in the bathroom. She sighed and felt some of her good mood fade away.

She kissed her mother on the cheek and tasted dry narcotic sweat on her skin. Eleanor adjusted her mother's headband where it had slipped up to expose an unnaturally bare patch of scalp above her ear, then Eleanor stepped quietly into the bathroom.

Leaving her backpack in the hall, she found the paper sack from the drugstore and slid the accordion door closed behind her. She was careful to be quiet, but knew it wouldn't matter. Tabitha would sleep all afternoon. She'd had a bad night. She'd woken late in the night, staggered to the bathroom, took a pill, and wept softly for half an hour. Eleanor had heard her, but stayed upstairs knowing she'd only embarrass her mother by offering to help. Eventually, Tabitha had returned to her room and fallen asleep. Only then had Eleanor done the same.

When Eleanor had woken up the next morning, Tabitha was already in the kitchen stirring a cup of cold tea.

“Morning, Mom,” Eleanor had said.

“Morning, cupcake,” Tabitha had said and smiled. Eleanor couldn't help herself and had smiled back, forgetting the terrible sounds of her mother's nocturnal weeping.

Eleanor put these thoughts aside and replaced the empty pill bottles on the shelf with the new ones from the drugstore and arranged the others so Tabitha would use the remnants of the old before starting the new. Efficiency was important when you didn't have much to begin with.

Checking that the door was sealed for silence, she knelt down and scrubbed around the toilet where Tabitha had missed. She'd thrown up twice today, Eleanor saw. She'd tried so hard to hide it. The odor of bleach was strong, but Eleanor could still sense the underlying smell. It must have hurt Tabitha to kneel so long with a brush and bucket. Eleanor tidied up and opened the window.

In the kitchen, Eleanor cleaned the pots and bowls and threw away the wrappers from the ramen Tabitha had failed to keep down. Again she opened a window and smelled the warm air.

It was not like her to want the windows open. She much preferred to keep them closed and locked, the curtains drawn. Today was so different. She couldn't wait to tell Tabitha about David. She'd know what to do. She'd explain to Eleanor why she was so excited to see a boy who hadn't seen her in half his lifetime and probably didn't even remember who she was.

Still, it had brightened her day and she inhaled deep and sighed long before starting her homework at the table.

It was past dark when Tabitha finally stirred. Eleanor put down her English book and said, “Evening, Mom. How you feeling?”

“Like a new woman,” she said. She stretched her arms out wide and rolled her neck. The TV remote slid off her lap and clattered on the floor. “Did I leave the TV on?”

“You turned the sound down, but, yeah, it was on when I got home.”

“Waste of electricity,” she chided herself. “Sorry.”

“We got money today,” Eleanor said brightly. “I got your pills and stuff. Oh, and the pharmacist said you may need a laxative. He gave me some. For free.”

“I won't confirm or deny his assessment,” Tabitha said. “Just tell me where they are.”

“On the shelf by the aspirin,” Eleanor said.

“Have you eaten?” Tabitha got up and went past Eleanor into the bathroom.

“No, but I'm not hungry.”

“You ate at school?”

“I had a salad.”

“Is that enough?”

“I didn't do much today,” she said. “I'm good. I'll have a tomato in a bit. How about you? Some soup?”

“My stomach's been a little edgy today,” she said from the bathroom. “I should be okay after one of the green ones. An hour?”

“Sure,” said Eleanor. “We'll eat something in an hour.”

Tabitha put a kettle on for tea. Eleanor heard her fumbling with the tea jars, ginseng, chamomile, and green, all supposed to help the immune system and create calm. After the antique kettle whistled, Eleanor heard the infusing spoon snap closed and the water pour over it. Today there was a tinge of lemon in the mixture.

“Why'd you open all the windows?” Tabitha asked tentatively. “Do I smell?”

“It was a beautiful day today, and I thought I'd let some inside.”

Tabitha carried her cup and saucer to the table and pulled out a vinyl chair next to Eleanor. She ran her fingers through the girl's hair and tucked her bangs behind her ear.

“So what made it such a beautiful day?” she asked.

Eleanor looked at the gaunt, pale face and into her mother's grey eyes. Eleanor's were usually hazel and she wondered, not for the first time, if she could change them to match the deep, wise dusk-pools her mother used to frame the world. She wanted to see as her mother did. She admired the fine web of lines around those grey eyes, and the deep smile creases in her cheeks. Her lips weren't the lush things she wore when they'd met, but they were still warm and beautiful. Age and sickness had thinned them along with the rest of her body. Eleanor kissed them.

“David came back,” she said.

“David? You mean the Venn boy? He's back in Jamesford?”

“Yes. He came in during first period.”

“Did you say hi?”

Eleanor shook her head. Tabitha didn't press.

“What does he look like?”

“He's grown of course. He has a new scar under his eye, and I think he sprained an ankle recently. He favors his left step.”

“Is he tall and handsome?”

Eleanor blushed. “Mom,” she said.

“Does he still have that mop of black hair?”

“Oh yes. That's how I knew it was him. Unmistakable.”

Tabitha sipped her tea and regarded Eleanor until she turned away to fetch something from her backpack.

“He might have changed you know. You mustn't hold it against him if he has. People change every day. You might not be friends anymore.”

“I know,” Eleanor said.

“How was Mrs. Hart?” asked Tabitha changing the subject.

“I upset her,” said Eleanor.

“How?”

“She called on me. She wouldn't let me alone. She went after me just when David was brought in.”

Tabitha looked at her with concern. “What did you do?”

“I told her that Indians are not the Noble Savages she made them out to be. She was going off on how American Indians were somehow saints. I shouldn't have said anything, but I did.”

“Because David was there?” Tabitha asked.

“No. Well, maybe a little,” said Eleanor. “But she was wrong. Just wrong. Indians were not noble shepherds or peaceful neighbors.”

“No, they weren't,” agreed Tabitha, again stroking Eleanor's hair. Eleanor leaned into her mother's hand, relishing the contact. Her hands were cold, but her fingers felt like love itself caressed her head and neck.

“People change. Attitudes change. Don't be prejudiced,” Tabitha said.

“Okay, but it's flat out ignorant to say the Indians were all rain dances and peace-pipes.”

“Still, they're your people,” began Tabitha and then stopped herself when Eleanor tensed. Tabitha dropped her hand down Eleanor's back and scratched it through her shirt.

“So did you get in trouble?”

“No. She just went on talking.”

“She probably won't call on you again for a while, huh?” offered Tabitha.

“I was thinking the same thing. So it's not all bad.”

“None of it is bad, cupcake. I'm proud of you.”

Tabitha leaned forward and kissed her daughter on her forehead. On her mother's breath, Eleanor could smell green tea and lemon, strong and hot, mingling with the nausea pill dissolving in her stomach. The medley of odors nearly covered the wretched underlying stink of the murdering cancer eating her away.

CHAPTER FIVE

R
obby Guide, the half-blood Shoshone, was the first boy to extend David friendship. Robby was the first to join David at lunch, and they talked about old times in the woods. Eleanor listened and watched, ashamed that she hadn't been the first to speak to him. She'd wanted to, but hadn't.

“Mr. Blake is new this year,” Robby told David, “if you haven't figured that out yet. We haven't had a foreign language teacher since that German chick left a couple of years back.”

Eleanor watched David with Robby. David was happy for the company. She knew he'd suffered under the silent-treatment. He'd reached out to several people, but in varied shades of rudeness from “quiet, here comes the teacher” to “bug off loser,” each had put him off; none had welcomed him.

Once, in chemistry, when David was ruining an experiment, Eleanor had actually taken a step toward his table to help, but she held back. If she was the first to welcome David, she might well be the only one. Eleanor's reputation for non-existence was not something David needed. He needed to belong as much as Eleanor needed to hide. His survival might depend on it.

“There's no negotiating with Mr. Graham,” said Robby. “If you're lucky and catch him on a full moon or something, he might let you do some extra credit, but once he enters a score in his book, that's it. It's over.”

Robby was one of the “nice boys.” There were basically two groups of boys in Jamesford. One, the nice ones, was a loose affiliation of kids who were behaved and decent and minded their own business. Then there were the bad boys. Tabitha had called them that back in elementary school when Eleanor told her about them kicking a dog at recess and pulling her hair when she cried about it. That group was a tighter circle of six or seven kids who were responsible, Eleanor knew, for all the vandalism and juvenile crime in Jamesford. The leader was Russell Liddle. He wasn't the biggest or the fastest or even the meanest, but he was cleverer than the others, and since every pack of wolves needed a leader, he'd stepped up to be it.

On the girls' side, there were ever-shifting circles of friends among the “regular girls” as Eleanor thought of them, and the “misfits.” Eleanor was a misfit. Midge, who'd fought weight issues as long as Eleanor had known her, was a misfit. So was Aubrey, who was only slightly less shy than Eleanor and wore a web of scars on her back no one had ever dared ask her about. Everyone else in the class was accepted and rejected regularly into teenage society circles and got along well enough for teenage girls.

“Barbara's a fox, but Alexi is the catch,” said Robby to David. “She wasn't here when you were before. Her father is some kind of millionaire. She has a car already, a red Range Rover, custom painted. She's snobby sometimes.”

David nodded agreeably and chewed his pizza. Eleanor saw that the rest of the cafeteria watched Robby and David. She could feel the sea change. Robby's acceptance of David Venn was the cue to end their hazing.

“What's with Russell?” asked David. “He keeps giving me the stink-eye.”

“He's the class bully,” Robby said. “Best to just keep clear of him.”

“Did he have a broken arm once back in second or third grade?”

“I don't remember,” said Robby.

Eleanor did. Russell's father had broken it in a drunken fit.

“If that's the same guy I remember, he was a real jerk.”

“Sounds like the same guy,” said Robby. “So what do you do for fun?”

“Video games,” said David. “But we don't have internet right now. Next month.”

“Do you ride?”

“Bikes?”

“Horses.”

“No. Not much call for it on an army base. I'm not really a cowboy.”

“Shame. There's a rodeo coming up,” Robby said. “County High School Rodeo. The Wild River Shoshone are coming up, along with the Dubois kids. It's not too late to enter.”

“Except I can't ride a horse,” said David. “Well, I guess I can maybe. The right stirrup is for ‘go' and the left is ‘stop.' Am I right?”

Robby laughed.

“Horseshoes,” said Robby. “If you can throw horseshoes you can get out of class to practice for the rodeo with the rest of us. The school will empty out next week with everyone practicing for Jamesford pride.”

“Seriously? Horseshoes?”

“They're trying to make it a broader competition. The Rez has better horsemen so they wanted more competition to give other schools a chance.”

“I can shoot,” David said.

“Perfect,” said Robby. “There's like five different events around guns.”

“Okay. Sounds like fun. Who do I talk to?”

Robby told him to talk to Principal Curtz after lunch. “Don't be fooled when he says there'll be try-outs and all that. We've never had a full team of anything as long as I've been here. If you want in, you're in.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

When they'd finished lunch, Brian Weaver invited them outside for a game of two-on-two basketball with Eric Collins. Eleanor watched them slip out the door into the sunlight.

The teachers sensed the change in attitude toward David and began to include the newcomer. They'd avoided calling on him out of courtesy, but now that the embargo was lifted, they made use of David's different educational experience.

“Did they not teach you science in Georgia?” asked Mr. Graham in a rare moment of student involvement.

“No, sir,” David said. “Not chemistry.”

“Nothing? Well, you're only a few weeks behind. Take a book home and study,” he said and went on lecturing. David would have to find his own answer about chemistry.

September slipped away in yellowing aspen leaves, and October heralded “rodeo practice release” time, but Eleanor didn't go for anything. The other girls donned their leather chaps and sequined cowboy hats and joined with the boys in barrel racing and roping competitions, but the misfits just watched. Because the school had scored so poorly the year before in the state's mandated testing, school excused rodeo practice was only twice a week and then only one class was skipped. The schedule was juggled around so classes would be skipped evenly. Serious participants were expected to practice after school and on weekends depending on their events.

With the exception of shooting, cooking, quilting, and horseshoes, new additions all, the students practiced for the upcoming tournament at the indoor city arena, where the rodeo would be held. David, Russell, and Tanner Nelson, another of the bad boys, were taken by Mr. Blake to the gun range east of town. The others got their own rides. Eleanor very much wanted to join, them but couldn't figure an unobtrusive way to do so. Instead, she watched the girls rope horned posts and dart around steel barrels from the highest bleacher and listened for the gunshots that told her David was nearby.

Early in October, Eleanor was at school when Mr. Blake brought the shooters back. They were late and the buses had gone already. Russell and Tanner trotted away together toward the truck stop. From her view inside the building, she saw Mr. Blake offer to drive David home, but he waved him off and headed north. Eleanor collected her bag and followed him.

She fell into the familiar muscle memory of silent pursuit. She padded softly behind David, keeping to shadows and running parallel when she could. She stopped and listened and watched, and kept a perfect distance, though she had to force herself not to close when she could.

David did not live far from school. Just a mile or so to the north, he disappeared into a trailer park which was the cheapest rental housing in town. She smelled dogs and pigeons, rabbits and cats. She stopped behind a dumpster across from the street and glanced down the gravel road and saw where David disappeared into an aluminum mobile home.

She waited for traffic to pass, got up, and loped across the street. She went behind the trailer homes, between them and a white plastic fence that kept the winds from filling the place with tumbleweeds and allowed the owners to up the rent for aesthetic reasons.

When Eleanor reached the trailer, she stopped to listen. The next trailer had a blaring television spewing an angry talk show. The neighbor on the other side was quiet and dark.

Eleanor was too short to look in the windows. The trailer was raised on blocks and a cedar porch extended in front of the door. Wires reached from a pole by the fence to the trailer's corner and an ancient metal television antennae stuck up at the other end. A full-size propane tank rested on a pad behind the trailer with black hoses connecting it to the house. Eleanor squeezed behind it and listened.

“What's for dinner?” she heard David say.

“How about a pizza,” a woman replied.

“Frozen or take out?”

“Frozen,” said the woman.

“Ah,” said David.

“Yes,” said a little voice. “Pizza!”

It was a girl. A little girl. Five or six years old.

“It's easy, and I have to go,” the woman said.

“Where you going?” asked David.

“I got a job,” the woman said proudly. “I'm starting at the grocery tonight. I'll be in the back for a week, but then I'll be a checker. It's easy work and steady.”

“That's cool, Mom,” said David.

“Bring home cookies,” said the youngster.

Eleanor placed the voice then and remembered David's mother from before. In startling half-forgotten detail, Eleanor recalled her height and weight, teeth, eyes, and hands, the part in her hair, the lilt in her speech when she called David in from play. Her voice had changed, grown weaker, tttwearier, but Eleanor was sure it was David's mother.

“We'll see,” she said. “Things going better at school?”

“Great!” said the little girl.

“Yeah, it's all right,” said David with less enthusiasm.

“It just takes some time,” the mother said.

“Yeah, but I have nothing in common with anyone. Really.”

“There's the shooting.”

“Big deal,” he said. “They don't know video games or movies or good music or anything. They're all a bunch of hicks. Russell talks about nothing but shooting animals and hoping someone tries to mess with him so he can gun him down with his dad's forty-five.”

“He's just one kid.”

“Yeah, he's the worst, but he's just an exaggeration of the others. Really, this is total Hicksville. I don't know how I ever lived here.”

“Don't be so dramatic.”

“I don't know who I am here,” he said.

“You'll adapt,” she said.

“You mean change,” he said bitterly. “What if I don't want to change? What if I want to stay who and what I was before? I liked who I was. I don't want to be a beer-swilling shit-kicker from Jamesford.”

“David!” his mother chided.

“Davie said a bad word,” chanted the little girl.

“David?” his mother said, a threat in her voice.

He hesitated and then said, “I'm sorry.”

“Adapting is not changing,” his mother said.

“That's not true. I either lie or I change, or they do, and they won't.”

“Everyone's different in every situation,” his mother said softly. Eleanor heard a moving chair and imagined her sitting beside him. “For example, at home, when dad's not here, I'm the boss—and don't forget it. But at work, I'm not. I'm an employee, and I take orders. I can be both people. I'm not changing. I'm adapting.”

“So I'm supposed to be one person at home and another in public?” he said.

“Aren't you?”

“I don't want to become a sh—turd-kicker.”

“Then don't,” she said and kissed him. “Inside you are who you are. Just get by. Survival is adaptation.”

“Glad you're getting something out of your biology degree, Mom.”

“A buck above minimum wage at Sherman's Grocery,” she said. “Everything's working out.”

They laughed.

“The shooting's fun though, isn't it?”

“It's all right. Yeah, it's fun. I'm good at it. Thanks to Dad.”

There followed a pause that made Eleanor uneasy.

“Do you have homework?” asked the mother.

“Of course,” said David.

“Take the garbage out before you start. I should make a sandwich for work.”

Eleanor saw that the garbage cans were in a nook next to the tank, and she jumped with fright. Keeping her head low as if dodging bullets, she scurried away behind the trailers, out the gate, and across the street.

Once clear, she made her way home carefully. Though she knew where she was with the familiarity of a long-time inhabitant, she looked for new secret places and paths between her house and David's. She knew she would make this journey again in the day and in the dark, and, as was always her precaution, she did not want to be seen.