Sweet Jesus (21 page)

Does this mean it’s like two points worse than a Motel 8? Connie asked as they walked along the second-floor cement balcony to their room. Connie and Hannah had talked earlier about whether or not to get one room or two, and asked Zeus if he’d mind sharing because they were trying to economize. After hesitating for a moment, he said he was fine with it.

When they got to their room, Zeus lay down, fully dressed, silent, and closed his eyes. Connie looked at Hannah, and Hannah shrugged. How uncomfortable this must be for him. How uncomfortable for all of them. Hannah sat beside him on the bed and put her hand on his shoulder and said, We’re really sorry about Fenton. He nodded without looking at her. We’re sorry, she said, about
everything
. And he rolled over and curled up into a ball. She looked at her sister, and Connie seemed agitated.

I’m going to go for a walk, she said.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to go alone, Hannah said.

I’ll be okay. Just give me half an hour.

Let me come with you.

I’m tougher than you think, Connie said and left quickly.

She started off down the main strip, past the fast-food joints and gas stations. Neon signs blinked out of the darkness, and a string of coloured bunting hung artificially still above a used car lot. A boy outside a Denny’s tried to sell her a scooter for five dollars. His face was unnaturally red. Maybe an allergic reaction, she thought and kept on walking. It wasn’t until she was on the next block that she thought of the pregnant woman she’d seen hitchhiking in the rain and realized she should have helped the boy. He was just a kid. She hurried back, but he was no longer there. You had a mission field right there in front of you, she thought, and you didn’t even know it!

But then Connie started to feel like a mission field herself.
And where were the good samaritans in
her
life? How long had it been since
she’d
been ministered to? She felt like talking to her kids, but it was too late, they’d already be in bed.

On the way back to the motel, she saw a man bundled in a sleeping bag, sitting outside an all-night convenience store with his dog. He was blowing on a harmonica and there was a hat on the ground in front of him. Connie started to approach him. She took a toonie out of her pocket, then remembered she was in the States. All she had in her wallet was American twenties.

That’s a pretty nice coat you got there, he said.

I’m sorry, she said, I don’t have anything to give you.

Hey, bitch, he yelled. Don’t walk away. I’m talking to you!

Connie ignored him.

You’re a real classy lady, ya slut!

Connie looked back over her shoulder briefly as she hurried away. Three guys in leather jackets and chaps over their jeans were coming out of the store. Behind her, she heard them fire up their Harleys and rumble like tanks into the street.

Zeus and Hannah were already in bed by the time she got back to the motel. Don’t undress, Hannah said.

Why not?

The beds are kind of gross.

Connie checked the sheets and placed a towel from her suitcase across her pillow. She lay down, fully dressed, and willed her body to unclench itself. She was so tired. Zeus was a silent lump under the covers. Is he okay, do you think? she whispered to her sister.

I don’t know, Hannah said and hoped that her sister was okay. Good night, she said and patted Connie on the hip. Hannah would have liked some reassurance herself. Something about a motel like this made her uneasy. The sudden, sharp
noise of people passing outside the window. They sounded so close, it made the room feel flimsy, not protected at all. Outside, motorcycles growled incessantly up and down the main strip. She missed Norm. Life was better when he was around. She lay on her back for what felt like an hour, looking up at the dark shapes on the ceiling and trying to get a good memory going. She wanted to set it on play and rewind, luxuriate in it, but an argument on someone’s
TV
was penetrating the thin walls and distracting her. Furious male threats, then female noises of distress. No, it must have been coming up through the floor. It went on and on. Breaking glass. It sounded so real. And then sirens, as if they were outside. A red light flashed along the edge of the curtains. A door slammed, more shouts, angry, male. This fight was real.

Hannah sat up in bed.

What’s going on? Connie asked.

Something bad, Zeus said. He was propped up against his pillows like he’d been there for a while.

Hannah got out of bed and went to the window and peered around the curtain. Six police cruisers. Kankakee County Sheriff. Someone was getting arrested. A barefooted man wearing nothing but a pair of sweatpants was being escorted, handcuffed, over to a police cruiser. A blond mullet. An ambulance with its back doors open. Two medics with first-aid kits walked towards the motel and disappeared under the balcony.

Connie was wide awake now, leaning up against her elbow. She’d just had a dream about Harlan. He’d punched an old man in the face, for insulting her, and broken his nose, then come home with an Oscar for best supporting actor. When he took it out of his bag, the statuette was still cold and covered in condensation from being in the hold of the plane. Connie started thinking about her husband. She knew how
much worse things got for him when he was withdrawn. He found it hard to forgive himself at the best of times. She couldn’t bear that he felt so ashamed, full of self-loathing. Suddenly, she was worried for his safety and wanted to talk to him. But she was beginning to feel like this time apart was crucial, as well, that it was going to be good for both of them.

It’s all over, Hannah said and came to bed. You can go back to sleep, she said, and Connie lay down again, her anxious head on the pillow.

I
n the morning, things felt better. Even Zeus seemed a little sunnier. Bright, white solid clouds ferried smoothly across the blue sky. They got into the truck and after half an hour stopped at a busy gas station to fill up in a town of white bungalows with immaculate front lawns and flagpoles clanging in the wind. Over everything was a smear of campaign posters. Small red-and-blue flags fluttered on almost every car, railing, and post. Hannah was squeezing the trigger of the gas pump when a distant whine grew into a deafening, eerie drone. Connie turned to look at her through the rear-view window of the cab. What’s that noise? she mouthed. Hannah raised his shoulders. It sounded like an air raid siren.

People were filling their tanks as though they couldn’t hear it.

Connie got out of the truck and stood holding her elbows. This town’s a little
Twilight Zone
, she said.

Is it possible they can’t hear it? Hannah said.

On the other side of the pump, a couple was gassing up
their enormous pickup truck together. She held the hose while he leaned against the truck and talked. They were both overweight, the man balding, in jeans and a baseball jacket. His wife had short permed hair and a pink cardigan over a floral blouse.

Zeus jogged nervously back from behind the building, tucking in his shirt. He went straight up to the couple. What’s that noise? he asked them.

Oh, it’s nothing to worry about, hon. First day of the month they always give the sirens a test, she said, even at this time of year.

Zeus thanked the woman and returned to stand beside his sisters. Maybe there’s a mine, he said. Or some kind of power plant.

All three of them stayed together as Hannah went in to pay, and Connie asked the woman behind the cash.

Tornado warnings, she explained.

Oh, Connie said.

An older woman in sunglasses was standing behind them, holding a giant thermos and a stick of pepperoni. They used to come through here all the time, she said. Used to be Tornado Alley.

Is it just me, Connie said as they were leaving, or do the States seem like a particularly dangerous place to be?

They’re certainly on the lookout for their own safety, Hannah said.

Zeus had bought a stick of pepperoni as well, and they shared it in the truck. They left the town of Ashkum, and for an hour, the highway slid across the flat countryside like a dull knife blade. A string of farmhouses in the distance like metal charms. Silver silos. Silver barns. A man in a Hummer riding the tailwind of a semi so close it looked like he was being towed. Connie’s eyes were following the line of a wire fence
rise and fall between its posts in short, sharp waves. She saw a handmade sign in a field next to the road. Black letters on a white background.

CRIMINAL MENACING?

In fifty yards, they passed another one.

WOMAN ALONE?

Then another three.

DETERANCE REQUIRES
.

MORE THAN A PHONE
.

GUNSSAVELIFE.COM

Did you get that? Connie said.

Hard not to, Zeus said.

They turned west at Champaigne and drove until lunchtime. Just past Decatur, they bought sandwiches to eat in the truck. They talked carefully about Zeus’s life in Chicago, and about Hannah’s time in England, and Connie’s kids. Neither Connie nor Hannah mentioned their parents, and Zeus didn’t ask. They passed a field of small oil pumps pecking the ground like oversized chickens. Then a red farmhouse, close to the highway. A boy was stuffing something purple in through a ground-floor window. He swung around as if he knew he’d been spotted and swivelled his head, keeping his eyes on the truck as it passed. What do you think’s going on there? Connie said, and Zeus shrugged. Beats me, but there wasn’t enough room for him to turn around and look.

I think it’s going to rain, Hannah said, and a yellow school bus floated across the sky above them on a turquoise overpass as they sped towards darker clouds overhead.

Past Jacksonville, the Illinois River. The air and light had a pewter quality. First, a high view of the wide, flat brown basin and a tractor in the distance, trailing a streamer of dust, then two bridges flying back up out of the flats. A ship in the distance,
with a flag rippling from its tallest mast, turned out to be a mill made up of a cluster of silos connected by conveyer belts and grain elevators. A lot of hawks around New Salem, one perched at the tip of a dead tree like a weather vane, beak into the wind.

Late in the afternoon, they stopped in Hannibal. They parked by the river and stood watching a turtle poke around at the edge of the water. Connie swung her bag over her shoulder and said, So, are we going to see this town or what?

They walked to the intersection of Main and Church. On one corner stood the Mark Twain Hotel, across from an empty lot. Next to the lot, the Main Street Soda Fountain, now closed. Next to that, the Star Movie House, also closed down, the awning fringed with dark holes where the light bulbs used to be.

Zeus went over to the Soda Fountain and held his hands against the glass and peered inside. Everything was chrome and linoleum. There were booths upholstered in brown and blue. A classic American diner, just like one he and Fenton used to go to in Chicago. In the display window, plastic replicas of a plate of fries, a banana split, and a black forest cake on a tin cake stand, all of it covered in dust.

Three boys with jackets flapping over white karate suits and orange belts ran down the street. It was the first sign of life. The sisters followed the boys up Main Street towards the sound of piano music until they came to a ballet school. They stopped on the other side of the street and stared as a gaggle of little girls in jackets and pink tights, thin lycra skirts, swarmed out of the building and ran into minivans that were waiting in the parking lot around the corner. There was a sound like applause, or rain, only syncopated, and they realized there was tap dancing on the second floor. The parking lot emptied out and one small ballerina wandered back to the lobby, unmet by her parents.

Kids have such gorgeous bodies, Connie said. Who knew I’d love their company so much.

A red corvette ripped down the street. Two bleached blondes in the front seat, white flames painted down the sides. They took a corner, tires squealing, then faded into the distance, silence rushing in behind them to fill the empty space like water.

What a strange place, Hannah said.

Zeus came up the street now, walking pensively. When he was within earshot of the tap dancing, he did an understated little shuffle and flap, then went heavy again.

Connie looked like she was on the verge of tears. What’s the matter, Con?

Connie clutched her chest. I miss my children!

Let’s go get something to eat, Hannah said and put her arm around her sister. You’re hungry, is all.

It was nearly dusk when they got back on the highway. Connie let her head fall back against the headrest. She closed her eyes for a moment. They’d eaten hamburgers and fries and the smell still lingered.

It wasn’t until Fenton died that I found out he was a Buddhist, Zeus said, quite out of the blue, opening up for the first time about Fenton. I mean, the whole time we were together – I was pretty shocked to find out that something that was so important to him was something I didn’t know about. He never even told me how sick he really was. I didn’t even know.

Hannah glanced at Zeus, who was digging at a small scar on the back of his hand.

People are complicated, Connie said.

I just thought I knew him, Zeus said.

You probably did, Connie said. As well as anybody can know anybody else.

I don’t know. I still feel like I failed somehow, like I didn’t pay enough attention when he was alive, all the time we were together.

Well, what was he like? Hannah said. What are your memories of him?

He was a really funny guy, but he could get angry about things he didn’t believe in. He took his clowning very seriously. Once, when he was eighteen, he joined an army. It was the biggest mistake he ever made. He told me about it just before he died. We always worked together, until he got sick. Zeus’s voice trailed off.

You mean, with the kids? Hannah said, wanting to pull him back.

Yeah, but I’m done with that now. I’m just thinking about my own family now, and where
I
come from.