Iona Moon (32 page)

“We've been looking for you all night.” He gestured toward the doorway with his head. Willy backed into the shadows of the hall. He saw mother and son through a haze, as if a veil had fallen in front of him, and he couldn't find the place where it parted to let him in. He realized she had spared three lives tonight, that he and Jay had been saved, pulled from the freezing river at the last moment.

He hurried toward the door, his own footsteps so loud they frightened him. He glanced back as he stepped outside. The house was quiet, but the light burned in the kitchen, fierce and steady.

20

Eddie found Iona a 1966 Plymouth Valiant for two hundred. “Takes a long time to warm up,” he said, “and it idles too fast.” The passenger side had been rammed and never repaired. Now rust bloomed where the metal creased. “Don't open those doors,” he told her. “Tank's full and tires are good. She's no beauty, but she'll get you home.”

Iona packed her suitcase. She was leaving with the same things she'd brought: poncho and denim jacket, three pairs of jeans and two sweatshirts, four tops and a pile of underwear. She took the red shirt off the legless doll and hid the wild-eyed baby in the closet. It felt right, somehow, to travel so lightly, to forget towels and sheets, spoon and bowl, to abandon the hard plastic doll.

Firs stood stark and black on mountain slopes as she crossed the Cascades. She felt small, alone in her car and unbearably human.

Snow fell on the rolling hills as she drove south and east. Snow fell on solitary farmhouses. The earth was white; the houses were white; Iona's hands on the wheel, white. The road was gray and long, a ribbon of memory unfurling one blank mile at a time. She saw a house, barn, toolshed, chicken coop—a clump of trees, an endless field of dark ground pocked with snow. She saw a man walking in the distance. He carried a shovel over one shoulder. His gait was slow, uneven, his head bare.

The heater in the Valiant blasted warm air in her face, but her feet were cold. She imagined standing on her father's porch, knocking on her father's door. It would be rude to go to the back door, to enter the familiar kitchen—now she was a guest, almost a stranger—so she would wait at the front until someone answered, until someone said:
Come in
. Through all the open doorways she saw her mother at the sink, back curved, arms weary. She spoke her mother's name, and Hannah turned but did not answer.

She had counted out sixty-two dollars plus three dollars interest. It was right there in the pocket of her jacket, the left one over her chest. If Frank asked about the money that was missing the morning she disappeared, Iona could put the bills in his hand and be done with it.

She knew how Leon would look at her, from feet to head, then back to her belly. He'd wonder what had brought her home. She was too skinny to be pregnant. Rafe and Dale wouldn't care about her reasons as long as she cooked biscuits and eggs in the morning, as long as she milked the cows and scoured the tub.

How could she explain?
I
haven't come back for that
.

Her heart was fragile as ice on the river in late spring, so thin a pebble thrown by a careless boy could shatter it. She was glad for the cold outside, glad to be alone, away from the water, traveling on the hard ground of winter.

Snow fell, light and dry, on the backs of cows in the fields. Wind whipped white swirls across the road and dropped them in shallow ditches. Snow fell over the Cascades behind her and across the Rockies beyond her vision. Snow fell on an unmarked grave at the edge of a potato field and on the blue lids of her mother's eyes.

When Iona reached South Bend, she knew she'd meant to stop here all along. She was scared now, imagining how she might find Matthew, strapped in a chair at the window, drugged and docile, his hair shaved close to the scalp, eyes milky, spittle at the corner of his mouth and down his chin.

Too late to see him tonight—no visitors allowed after dark, she thought; everything's safer in the light. She checked into the South Bend Hotel. She was just going to lie down for a minute, rest, then go out again, get something to eat. But as soon as she closed her eyes, her brothers came to the foot of her bed. They were smiling, all three of them in a row, waiting for her to wake. They raised their arms and she saw that their hands were gone, cut off at the wrists. No blood spurted from the stumps. These were old wounds.

She jerked up in bed and flicked on the lamp. She was alone. The hotel was quiet. If she opened the door, she knew no one would be standing in the hall outside her door.

She lay back down but left the light on. The pillow smelled of someone else, faint oil from a man's hair. She remembered now. Rafe and Dale made gifts at school, pressed their hands into wet plaster, pressed so hard every line of their palms was revealed; and when the white clay dried, each finger's imprint, each fingertip's unique whorl was rendered distinct and unmistakable. Hannah hid the plaques in a drawer.
Nice present for a woman who lives in town
, she said. They reminded her: one brother's hand mangled by the thrasher, the other brother's fingers black at the root, blown off, a firecracker held too long. Plaster spilled blood in the brain. Iona made a cast of her hand too. Everyone did. But she didn't bring it home. She smashed it on the road and kicked the pieces into the gutter.

Now she thought her mother was wrong. It was not a bad thing to remember the lost limbs of mutilated boys. She hoped that somewhere, a long time ago, Eddie Birdheart had found a sidewalk smeared with soft cement. She hoped he had taken off his shoes and walked across it, leaving behind the perfect prints of his two bare feet.

Just before dawn, Iona's father came to her and stood in the doorway. He was black with mud: hands and face, boots and hair—his whole body dripping, only a ring around each eye wiped clean. All afternoon he'd been in the field, trying to pull Belle from a sinkhole. He'd tied ropes and chains, had gotten her to the brink twice but lost her again both times.
Belle, my beauty
. She was the cow he'd named himself:
because she's the most beautiful and knows it
. When Iona saw him look at Belle's sad face, she thought he loved the animal more than he loved her. Now he stared at Iona but didn't see. Now he said:
Get me my gun
.

“That boy's long gone,” the woman at the desk told Iona the next morning. A little white hat perched on her head like a child's paper crown.

“What do you mean?” Iona said.

“Just what I said.” The woman pushed her glasses up her nose with her middle finger.

“He was released?”

“Not exactly.”

“Tell me,” Iona said, “
exactly
.”

“All information on our patients is confidential.”

“I'm his sister.”

The woman gave herself a push and her chair rolled backward toward the file cabinet. She wore white shoes and heavy white stockings. Her legs were thick, shapeless as sausages in pale casings. She stood to open the top drawer: A–F. The key was on a chain around her neck, and she didn't take it off, she only bent over to free the lock. The tiny crown never moved.

Iona wondered if Matt was well and strong, gaining weight and speaking in full sentences.
Not exactly
. She wondered if they'd sent him somewhere else, a place for wild boys who needed separate rooms with padded walls, a place where you could scream all day and not be heard.

The woman pulled a folder from the drawer, leafed through the thin file, then slid it back in place and closed the cabinet. The lock clicked, a final sound, and the woman dropped heavily into her chair, wheels squeaking as she scooted across the floor. She peered down at her desk and started making tiny red
x
's in the squares of a chart. “What's his middle name?” she said.

“Delancey.”

“Yes.” The woman looked up and nodded. “That's right. That's very good. But Matthew Delancey Fry doesn't have a sister.” She went back to her charts. “One brother—deceased.”

“Please—I need to know where he is.”

“Confidential.” The woman kept making
x's
.

“I'm his only friend.”

“He's gone. Climbed the fence and walked away. But you didn't hear it from me.”

“Where'd he go?”

“Look, I don't know and I don't care. You're his friend. You tell us.”

Iona walked toward the river and stood on a cliff overlooking the dam. Ice jutted from the shore. She was his friend, but she didn't know where he'd go. The roof of the cave collapsed, the shed burned to the ground, the basement windows were boarded shut. She hoped he really was free this time, and hated herself for what she knew that meant.

Sometimes she wished she were as brave as Matthew. She saw him gun the engine and plunge his mother's Buick into the Snake. The windows were rolled up tight; the boy in the bubble howled with laughter. He had time to decide:
Do I want to die?
The car floated for a moment, hung in the water, then sank, nose first, the weight of the motor pulling it down to the bottom. Matt saw the riverbed, churning water, jagged rocks, jagged teeth in his brother's mouth. He stayed calm, rolled down the window an inch at a time, let the water pour in slowly, so there was no fierce wave to drown him, no rush of current to toss him senseless. When the window was down and the car full of water, he simply swam away.

Iona imagined his face and hands, his naked feet, pale and bright as the crescents of little moons in the dark water.
What have you done with your shoes, you little shit?
His mother slapped him, as if the shoes were the most important thing, more valuable than her car, more precious than a boy's life.

Perhaps he'd thrown himself in the river without a car this time. You can always stop the pain if you're willing to make the jump. Now he was trapped beneath the ice near the bank. He'd rise up with the first thaw, bloated and blue.

What else would this river give up in the spring? She saw the skinny yellow cat with its spiked fur, bobbing among beer cans and used condoms. She saw a dog with a bony white head, paddling upstream, exhausted, afraid. She was seven years old. His head went under and came up again, his eyes dark and terrified as her own eyes in the mirror hours later. The dog disappeared a second time and never broke the surface again.
A stray
, Hannah said,
don't waste your tears
. She wiped Iona's face with the corner of her green apron. The cloth was rough and smelled of the fish her brothers had caught and her mother had gutted.

Iona stared at the ice. She saw dark shapes forming beneath the surface, the shadows of clouds moving across the sky, the vague outlines of drowned animals.

21

Jay Tyler made himself walk, hobble, that was more the truth, though he hated the word, that image of himself. He remembered a child's riddle: What walks on four legs in its youth, two when grown, three when old? Now he knew the simple answer. He banged his cane into the cement—he'd just gotten to the last stage faster than most.

A week ago he'd seen Matt Fry scuffling across the bridge, miles from home. Jay was driving that day, and he pulled over, said: “Hop in—it's cold.” Matt kept moving. He was thicker than Jay remembered, still thin but no longer frail—a grown man. “It's on my way,” Jay said, which was true, since neither one of them seemed to be going anywhere in particular. But Matthew didn't answer, didn't even nod.

Now Jay limped from one end of town to the other, till every muscle ached, till his bones hummed like tuning forks struck hard, ringing through his body. Sometimes he stole Darvocet from Delores when he got home, to numb the pain, and sometimes he stayed awake with it, to feel the throbbing, to know his body again.

This morning was raw and clear, the gusts on the bridge fierce as they whipped down the canyon of the Snake. He saw how people looked at him, quickly and with disgust, as he himself had looked at Matt Fry. His denim jacket was flannel-lined, not nearly warm enough. Even so, the armpits of his T-shirt would be ringed with sweat when he got home. His jeans hung loose in the butt. He no longer bothered with underwear, and the wind seared through the cloth, shriveled him—that was the part no one saw, his only secret. He wore fingerless gloves, like a beggar, a wool watch cap, sneakers, two pairs of socks. When he got home his toes would be stiff and cold, bright red. His hair stuck out from under his cap, long light hair, not just blond, streaked with gray now, already, old man.

Cars buzzed past him, swerved close enough for him to feel the rush of air pushing him toward the rail of the bridge. Day after day, he imagined himself falling—but, didn't fall—kept walking instead, growing stronger, hoping to be muscular and lean, his old self, though he knew that was impossible, that he might be strong enough, in time, but he would never again approach his former elegance, never shoot toward the water, limbs perfectly aligned.

The little girls reminded him—Dory, Kim, Tina, dark eyes, honey hair, little hands—they drove past on Main Street, big in their car and safe. They honked to scare him because they were afraid. People moved out of his way as he lunged down the sidewalk. He took up more than his share of space, wild man with a stick, so women cringed against buildings, averting their gazes, clutching children to their thighs.

Sometimes he saw Willy Hamilton rolling past him in the cruiser. He thought he caught Willy looking in his rearview mirror, not once but many times, even blocks away, when Jay would be small as a broken toy in the distance.

He knew he looked mean, lurching along the street—eyes narrowed, teeth clenched, stick jabbing. When the women cowered, he wanted to whack them with his cane, to give them what they expected. But he longed for one to speak to him, to look at him as she would look at any other man, with kindness. He wished to be among the living, to pass close enough to the bodies of others to feel their warmth. Where shoulders rubbed or thighs brushed some small part of him might be healed, some tiny bit of rage might drop away. He was startled by the way he understood Matt Fry—clever Jay, who was going to college; pretty Jay, loved by the girls for his beauty; graceful Jay, who could spin toward water and fill the crowd with awe—how had he fallen so far? He remembered Iona Moon, what he'd heard about her and Matt when they were kids, and he wondered if she might be merciful enough to lie down with him too.