Give Me Your Heart (24 page)

Lizabeta ran.

In terror of what she’d seen, what she’d caused to happen at the Spill, Lizabeta ran.

Ran blindly, stumbling in the wet earth. Ran without looking back and without knowledge of what had happened, what had happened to John Henry, where the Spill had taken him. She hadn’t
seen, immediately she’d backed away, turned, and ran. Seeing how on the path before her the six-year-old Agnes had dared to follow her, but now Lizabeta seized Agnes in her arms, trying
awkwardly to run with the frightened child until her arms gave out, she had to let the struggling Agnes down, and now mother and daughter ran together, white-faced Lizabeta clutching at
Agnes’s small hand as they ran away from the Spill and back to the house a half-mile away.

5.

Days later the body was found, three miles downstream in the rubble beneath the Constableville bridge. Walter Braam identified the remains of his nephew John Henry Chrisman, and
the body was taken away and quickly buried. In local papers there was no explanation for the “storm accident” in the Spill, to be counted as one of several fatalities resulting from the
October 1951 flooding in the western Adirondacks.

In June 1952 Lizabeta Braam had a fourth child, the last of Walter Braam’s six children: a boy named Henry. By this time Lizabeta had become an intensely religious Christian who attended
both Sunday morning and Wednesday evening services at the First Methodist Church of Rapids. Though Lizabeta suffered from ill health for the remainder of her life—migraine, lightheadedness,
female ailments—everyone who knew her, or knew of her, was emphatic in describing her as a saintly woman like no one else of their acquaintance, utterly selfless, loving, devoted to her
family and relatives, and so it seemed she was, in the memories of her numerous grandchildren.

Grandma Braam, who adored us.

It was my mother’s older sister, Agnes, who told this story of John Henry Chrisman, in the years after Lizabeta died. A story told and retold, so it seemed sometimes that I had known John
Henry myself. My mother, Melinda, could not have remembered John Henry very clearly, yet she insisted that she did. Fifty-five years after her cousin John Henry died in the Spill, my mother would
say, with an inscrutable expression that might have been tenderness, or merely wonderment: “I can see John Henry plain as day, standing in front of me. His face—his face is a blur. But
his shaved head I can see. His hands—his big raw scraped-looking hands that had something in them, for me. John Henry is what we called him.”

Nowhere

1.

My mother, I wish . . .

The first time no one heard. So softly Miriam spoke. In the din of raised voices, laughter. In the din of high-decibel rock music. She was into the beat, sweating with the percussion. Shaking
her head from side to side and her eyes closed. Leaking tears but closed.
My mother, I wish someone would . . .
At the crowded table no one noticed. It was the Star Lake Inn, the deck above
the lake. Music blared from speakers overhead. Had to be the Star Lake Inn, though it didn’t look familiar. The moon was rising in the night sky. She’d lost her sandals somewhere.
Couldn’t remember who’d brought her here, six miles from home. Then she remembered: the boy from the marina driving the steel-colored Jeep. Not a local guy. He’d been flirting
with her all week. Her heart skidded when she saw him. Big-jawed boy with sun-bleached hair, had to be mid-twenties, father owned one of the sleek white sailboats docked at the marina, but Kevin
wasn’t into taking orders from the old man like a damn cabin boy, he said. Anger flared in his pale eyes. He was from downstate: Westchester County. Half the summer residents at Star Lake
were from Westchester County. He’d thought Miriam was older than fifteen, maybe. Gripping her wrist, not her hand, helping her up into the Jeep. A stabbing sensation shot through her
groin.

Had to be past 11
P.M.
The moon continued to rise in the sky above Mount Hammer. She’d gotten off work at the boathouse at 6
P.M.
In the Jeep she’d called home on her cell phone.
Left a message for her mother: she’d run into friends from school, wouldn’t be home until late.

Please don’t wait up for me, Mom. Makes me nervous, okay?

The boy in the Jeep didn’t know Miriam’s brothers, hadn’t known Miriam’s father.
Orlander
meant nothing to him. Maybe to his father, who owned one of the new
A-frames on East Shore Drive,
Orlander
meant something. In the Adirondacks there were local residents and there were property owners from downstate. If you were a local male, you worked for
the downstate property owners: carpentry, roofing, plumbing, hauling away trash. You paved driveways, you exterminated vermin. You fenced off property to keep out deer hunters like yourself. The
expensive new lakeside houses were always in need of upgrading: redwood decks, children’s rooms, saunas, tennis courts. Les Orlander had been a roofer. His brother-in-law Harvey Schuller
siphoned out waste from buried septic tanks and dug new septic fields.
YOUR SHIT SMELLS SWEET TO ME
was a joke bumper sticker Miriam’s father had had printed up, but Harvey kept it displayed
in his office, not on his truck. If you were a local female, you might work inside the summer residents’ houses: cooking, caring for children, cleaning. You served at their parties. You
picked up after their drunken houseguests. Uncomplaining, you wore rubber gloves to retrieve from a stopped-up toilet a wadded Kotex or baby diaper someone had tried to flush away. You wore a nylon
uniform. You smiled and hoped for a generous tip. You learned not to stack dirty dishes from the dinner table but to remove each plate ceremoniously, murmuring
Thank you!
as you took the
plate away,
Thank you!
you murmured as you served dessert and poured wine into glasses.
Thank you!
mopping up spilled wine, on your hands and knees picking up shattered glass. Your
employers called you by your first name and urged you to call them by their first names, but you never did. Ethel laughed to show she thought it was funny, such bullshit. Not that she was a bitter
woman, for truly Ethel was not.

Beggars can’t be choosers, right?

Miriam’s mother thought this was an optimistic attitude.

Three years of his five-to-seven-year sentence for assault Miriam’s father served at Ogdensburg men’s facility, and during those years of shame her mother worked for summer residents
and for a Tupper Lake caterer. Often Ethel stayed overnight at Tupper Lake, twenty miles away. It began to be said in Star Lake that she met men there, at the resort hotels. She took
“gifts” from them. At this time Miriam was in eighth grade and deeply mortified by both her parents. Her father she loved and missed so badly, it was like part of her heart was locked
away in the prison. Her mother she’d used to love but was beginning now to hate.
Wish! Wish to God something would happen to her.
When Miriam’s oldest brother, Gideon, confronted
their mother one day, Ethel shouted at him that her life was her own, not her damn children’s. Her “money life” and her “sex life” she said were her own business, not
some damn loser inmate’s who’d let his family down. Shocked then by the fury of the words roiling from her, Ethel had tried to laugh, saying it was a joke, some kind of joke, anyway
isn’t everything some kind of joke, the way life turns out? But Gideon would never forgive her.

Quit roofing, moved to Watertown and impregnated a woman he never married, and a few months later enlisted in the U.S. Marines and got sent to Iraq.

Even when their father was paroled and returned to Star Lake to live, Gideon avoided the family. Every time Miriam came home she steeled herself for news of him: he’d been killed in that
terrible place. Or for the sight of Ethel, disheveled, lying on her bed in the waning hours of the afternoon.

I wish. Why don’t you. Why, when you’re so unhappy!

“Looking lost, Miriam? Where’s your rich boyfriend?”

Miriam was a girl to be teased. A hot blush rising into her face. Her eyes were warm glistening brown with something shrinking and mocking in the droop of the eyelids. Her hair was streaked
blond-brown, the commonest color. Before meeting Kevin after work she’d hurriedly brushed out her hair, pursed her lips, applying dark red lipstick to make her appear older, sexier. Now it
was hours later and the lipstick was eaten off and her hair was in her face and so many guys were looking at her, laughing at her, all she could do was shake her head, blushing and embarrassed.

Oz Newell, who’d been Gideon’s closest high school friend, was calling down the table: “What’d he do, the fucker, take a leak and fall in? Want me to break his
head?”

Nervously Miriam laughed, shaking her head. She was scared of something like this. Older guys relating to her like she was their kid sister, wanting to protect her, and somebody getting
hurt.

Her brothers had gotten into fights at places like the Star Lake Inn. Her father.

The kind of work men did here in the Adirondacks, a belligerent attitude was natural. Drunk Friday night was natural. It was sheer hell to take orders from foremen, bosses. Rich men from
downstate, like Kevin’s father. “Manual laborer.” By age forty-five you’d be limping. By age fifty your back was shot. Natural to want to break some fucker’s head.
Miriam thought,
I had fists like theirs, I’d feel the same way.

Must’ve been Miriam had wandered past their table looking lost. Looking like a girl who’s been dumped by her boyfriend, trying not to cry. Also she’s underage. Also she’s
never had sex. Also she’s been feeling sick, gagging in the restroom in one of the smelly toilet stalls, but nothing came up. Whatever he’d given her:
Baby, you need loosening
up.
In the Jeep, a joint they shared that made her cough, choke, giggle insanely. At the Star Lake Inn, vodka and cranberry juice for Miriam. She was confused about where Kevin had gone,
exactly where they’d been sitting, couldn’t find the table, someone else had taken the table, but maybe Kevin was inside at the bar, maybe Kevin was looking for her? Cigarette smoke
made her eyes sting and blur, she couldn’t see. Somebody grabbed at her arm, grinning faces lurched at her: “Miriam? Miriam Orlander? What’re you doing
here?”

So she was sitting with them. Practically on Brandon McGraw’s lap. Like she was their little-girl mascot. Maybe because she wasn’t beautiful. She was fleshy, warm-skinned, but not
beautiful. These were older guys in their twenties who’d gone to school with her brothers or who’d worked with them. One or two of them might’ve worked with Miriam’s father.
And one or two of them with Miriam’s uncle Harvey Schuller. Where their girlfriends and wives were, Miriam wondered. When she asked, they told her it was boys’ night out. She figured
they’d come to the Star Lake Inn immediately after work to begin drinking. In summers you worked late, until 7
P.M.
Miriam’s father and brothers worked even later. The table was strewn
with dirty plates, empty bottles. The remains of hamburgers, deep-fried shrimp, pizza crusts. Onion rings, coleslaw, ketchup. A grease sheen on the Formica surface. The table was outdoors, above
the lake; still the air was heavy with smoke from their cigarettes. They were drinking beer, ale, whiskey. They were drunk, high, stoned. Miriam saw the red-rimmed eyes she knew to associate with
drugs: speed, crystal meth. These guys weren’t into smoking dope like the kids she knew. Beyond wanting to feel mellowed out and restful, like they could love mankind. She shivered to hear:
raw male laughter like the braying of coyotes. Their young faces were reddened, coarse, and prematurely lined from outdoor work. Their shoulders, necks, upper arms were thick with muscle. Their
hair was buzzcut short or straggling past their collars. Martin had worn his straggly hair tied back in a kind of pigtail. The loggers and tree trimmers, who worked with chain saws, were likely to
be scarred or missing fingers. If Miriam got drunker/sillier, she’d count how many fingers were missing from the table. Sex energy lifted from the men’s heated skins, frank as sweat.
Most girls would be uneasy in the company of so many men, but not Miriam Orlander, who’d grown up in a household with three older brothers she’d adored.

Well, mostly. Mostly she’d adored them.

And her father, Les Orlander, she’d adored.

“Drown the fucker in the lake, who’d know? His rich daddy can drag the lake for his corpse.”

This was Hay Brouwet. The subject seemed still to be whoever it was who’d brought Miriam to the Star Lake Inn, then abandoned her.

“What d’you say, Miriam? Pick out which one he is.”

Quickly Miriam said, “He isn’t here now. I don’t see him.”

Hay cupped his hand to his ear, not hearing. The rock music was so loud. The braying at the table so loud. Miriam caught her breath, seeing the smooth shiny stub of Hay’s right forefinger.
Hay was a logger, must’ve had a chain-saw accident. Miriam felt faint imagining having to kiss that stub. Suck that stub in her mouth.
If he asks me to, I will.

In the Jeep, in the parking lot, Kevin had made some joke about Miriam sucking him off; Miriam pretended not to hear. In the tussle she’d lost her sandals. He hadn’t meant to hurt
her, she was sure.
Hey, baby, I’m sorry—just joking.

Except Hay was married, wasn’t he? One of the older guys at the table, had to be thirty. Seeing Miriam’s eyes on him, winking.

“You see the asshole, let me know, okay?”

It was pretty clear Hay was high on something. That mean-happy red-eye-glittering look, and he’d sweated through his shirt.

Crystal meth. Each of Miriam’s brothers had instructed her individually never to try it. Not ever! Miriam was scared but intrigued. She knew that Stan, who was twenty-three, had had
something to do with a methamphetamine lab—a cook-shop, it was called—but he’d never gotten caught, and now he lived up in Keene. Ice was for older guys, not a fifteen-year-old
girl whose hope was to go to nursing school at Plattsburgh State. An immediate high, wired straight to the brain. Her brother Martin was back in rehab at Watertown.
Fries your brain like nothing
else. Makes you shiny and hard. Why’s that bad! What’s better you got to
offer!