The Great Alone: A Novel (36 page)

“You won’t run off in the middle of the night again?” he said to Mama. “Your mother … barely survived it.”

In those few words, carefully chosen, Leni heard sorrow. There was hurt between these people and her mother, hurt and regret and mistrust, but something softer, too.

“No, sir. We won’t.”

At last, Grandpa smiled. “Welcome home, Coraline. Lenora. Let’s get some ice on those bruises. You both should see a doctor.”

Leni saw Mama’s reluctance to step into the house. She took Mama by the arm, steadied her.

“Don’t let go,” Mama whispered.

Inside, Leni noticed the smell of flowers. There were several large floral arrangements positioned artfully on gleaming wooden tables and gilt-edged mirrors on the walls.

Leni glanced into rooms and down hallways as they walked. She saw a dining room with a table that accommodated twelve, a library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a living room in which there were two of everything, sofas, chairs, windows, lamps. A staircase with carpet so plush it felt like walking on muskeg in the summer led to an upstairs hallway that was paneled in mahogany and decorated with brass sconces and paintings of dogs and horses in ornate golden frames.

“Here,” Grandma said, finally stopping. Grandpa hung back, as if maybe doling out rooms was women’s work. “Lenora, you will sleep in Coraline’s old room. Cora, come this way.”

Leni stepped into her new room.

At first all she saw was lace. Not the cheap eyelet she was used to seeing at Goodwill; this was fine, almost like cobwebs strung together. Ivory lace curtains framed the windows. There was more ivory lace on the bedding and lampshades. On the floor, pale oatmeal-colored carpeting. Furniture that was ivory with gilt edges. A small kidney-shaped desk had an ivory-colored cushioned stool tucked up underneath.

The air felt stifling, unnatural, bathed in a false lavender scent.

She went to the window, lifted the heavy sash, and leaned out. The sweet night welcomed her, calmed her. The rain had stopped, leaving a glittering black night in its wake. Lights were on in all the houses up and down the street.

There was a small patch of wet roof in front of her. Below that, the well-tended yard, with an old maple tree tucked in close, its branches mostly bare, only a few red-gold leaves still hanging on.

Trees. Night air. Quiet.

Leni climbed out onto the shake-covered roof below her room. Although there were lights on in the house, and houses with lights on across the street,
she felt safer out here. She smelled trees and greenery and even a distant tang of the sea.

The sky was unfamiliar. Black. In Alaska the night sky in winter was a deep velvet blue and when snow covered the ground and cloaked the trees, ambient light created a magical glow. And then, sometimes, the northern lights danced overhead. Still, she recognized the stars; they weren’t in the same place, but they were the same stars. The Big Dipper. Orion’s Belt. Constellations Matthew had shown her that night when they’d lain on the beach.

Her fingers closed around the heart necklace at her throat. She could wear it openly now and not worry about her father asking where she’d gotten it. She would never take it off again.

“You want some company?”

“Sure,” Leni said, scooting sideways.

Mama climbed through the open window and made her way onto the roof, then sat beside Leni, drawing her knees up to her chest. “I used to climb down that tree and sneak out on Saturday nights in high school to hang out with boys at Dick’s Drive-In on Aurora. Everything was about boys.” She sighed, dropped her chin into the valley between her knees.

Leni leaned against her mama, stared out at the house across the street. A blaze of wasteful lights. Through the windows, she saw at least three televisions flashing color.

“I’m sorry, Leni. I’ve made such a mess of your life.”

“
We
did it,” Leni said. “Together. Now we have to live with it.”

“There’s something wrong with me,” Mama said after a pause.

“No,” Leni said firmly. “There was something wrong with him.”

*   *   *

“I
T’S THERE
, believe me. Right there,” Mama said five days later, when their bruises had healed enough to be covered with makeup. They had spent almost a week huddled in the house, never venturing outside. They were both going a little stir-crazy.

Now, with Mama’s hair cut in a pixie and dyed brown, they finally left the house and took a bus into busy downtown Seattle, where they merged into the eclectic crowd of tourists, shoppers, and punk rockers.

Mama pointed up into the cloudless blue sky.

Leni didn’t care about The Mountain (that was what they called Rainier down here—The Mountain—as if it were the only one that mattered in the world) or the other landmarks Mama had pointed out with such pride, as if Leni had never seen them before. The bright neon
PUBLIC MARKET
sign that looked down on the fish market booth; the Space Needle, which looked like an alien spacecraft placed on pick-up sticks; the new aquarium that jutted defiantly out into the cold waters of Elliott Bay.

Seattle was beautiful on this sunny, warm November day; that was true. As green as she remembered, and bordered by water and covered in asphalt and concrete.

People crawled like ants over all of it. All noise and movement: honking horns, people crossing streets, buses puffing smoke and grinding gears on the hills that propped the city up. How could she ever be at home here, among all these people?

There was no silence in this place. For the last few nights, she’d lain in her new bed (which smelled of fabric softener and store-bought laundry soap), trying to get comfortable. Once an ambulance or police siren had blared all of a sudden, red light snapping on and off through the window, painting the lace bloodred.

Now she and Mama were north of the city. They had taken a cross-town bus, found seats among the sad-looking travelers out this early, and walked through the busy “Ave” and uphill to the sprawling University of Washington.

They stood at the edge of something called Red Square. For as far as Leni could see, the ground had been layered in red brick. A large red obelisk pointed up at the blue sky. More brick buildings created a perimeter.

There were literally hundreds of students moving through the square; they came and went in laughing, chattering waves. Off to her left, a group dressed all in black was holding up protest signs about nuclear
power and weapons. Several demanded a shutdown of something called Hanford.

She was reminded of the college kids she’d seen in Homer every summer, clots of young adults in REI rain gear looking up at the jagged, snowcapped peaks as though they heard God calling their names. She would hear whispered conversations about how they were going to chuck it all and move off the grid and live more authentic lives.
Back to the land
, they’d said, as if it were biblical verse. Like the famous John Muir quote—
The mountains are calling and I must go
. People heard those kinds of voices in Alaska, dreamed new dreams. Most would never go, and of the few who did, the vast majority would leave before the end of their first winter, but Leni had always known they would be changed simply by the magnitude of the dream and the possibility they glimpsed in the distance.

Leni drifted through the crowd alongside her mother, clutching the small backpack she’d had since she was twelve years old. Her Alaska backpack. It felt totemic, the last durable remnant of a discarded life. She wished she’d been able to bring her Winnie the Pooh lunch box.

They arrived at their destination: a sugary pink Gothic building with sweeping arches and delicate spires and intricately scrolled windows.

Inside was a library unlike any Leni had ever seen. Row upon row of wooden desks, decorated with green banker’s lamps, were positioned beneath an arched ceiling. Gothic chandeliers hung above the desks. And the books! She’d never seen so many. They whispered to her of unexplored worlds and unmet friends and she realized that she wasn’t alone in this new world. Her friends were here, spine out, waiting for her as they always had.
If only Matthew could see this …

She walked in step with her mother, their clunky boot heels clattering on the floor. Leni kept expecting people to look up, to point them out as intruders, but the students in the Graduate Reading Room didn’t care about strangers in their midst.

Even the librarian didn’t seem to make any judgments about them as she listened to their questions and gave them directions to another desk, where another librarian listened to their request.

“Here you go,” the second librarian said, handing them a collection of bound newspapers.

Mama said, “Thank you,” and sat down. Leni doubted the librarian heard the tremble in Mama’s voice, but Leni did.

She sat down on the wooden bench next to Mama, scooted close.

It didn’t take much time to find what they were looking for.

KANEQ FAMILY MISSING

FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED

State authorities released information about a missing Kaneq family. Neighbor Marge Birdsall called State Troopers on November 13 to report her neighbor, Cora Allbright, and her daughter, Lenora, missing. “They were supposed to visit me yesterday. They never showed. I worried right off that Ernt had hurt them,” said Birdsall.

On November 14, Thomas Walker reported finding an abandoned truck not far from his homestead. The vehicle—registered to Ernt Allbright—was found at Mile Marker 12 on the Kaneq road. Authorities reported finding blood on the seat and steering wheel, as well as Cora Allbright’s purse.

“We are investigating this as both a missing persons and as a potential homicide,” said Officer Curt Ward of Homer. Neighbors reported that Ernt Allbright had a history of violence and they fear he killed his wife and daughter and ran off.

No additional information is available for release at this time, as the investigation is ongoing.

Anyone with information on any of the Allbrights is asked to call Officer Ward.

Mama leaned back, sighing quietly.

Leni saw the pain Mama carried and would now always carry—for all of it, for staying when she should have left, for loving him, for killing him. What came of pain like that? Did it slowly dissipate or did it congeal and turn poisonous?

“Dad says they’ll declare us dead at some point—but it might take seven years.”

“Seven years?”

“We have to go forward, learn to be happy, or what was it all for?”

Happy.

The word had no buoyancy for Leni, no lift. To be honest, she couldn’t imagine ever being happy again, not really.

“Yeah,” Leni said, trying to smile. “We’ll be happy now.”

TWENTY-SIX

That evening, after dinner, Leni sat on her twin bed, reading.
The Stand
by Stephen King. In the past week, she’d read three books by him and discovered a new passion. Goodbye science fiction and fantasy, hello horror.

She figured it was a reflection of her inner life. She’d rather have nightmares about Randall Flagg or Carrie or Jack Torrance than about her own past.

She was just turning a page when she heard voices, lowered, moving past her room.

Leni glanced at the bedside clock, one of dozens in the house, all ticking in time like the beat of a hidden heart. Almost nine
P.M.

Usually her grandparents were in bed by now.

Leni set the book aside, marking her page. She went to the door, cracked it open just enough so she could peer out.

Lights were on downstairs.

Leni slipped out of her room. Her bare feet made no sound on the plush wool carpeting. Her hand gliding down the smooth mahogany banister, she
hurried down the steps. At the bottom, the black-and-white marble felt cold beneath her feet.

Mama was in the living room with her parents. Leni carefully edged forward, just enough so she could see:

Mama sitting on the burnt-orange sofa, with her parents sitting across from her in matching paisley wingback chairs. Between them, the maple coffee table was decorated with a forest of ornate china figurines.

“They think he killed us,” Mama said. “I read the local paper today.”

“He easily might have,” Grandma responded. “I warned you, you recall, not to go to Alaska.”

“Not to marry him,” Grandpa said.

“Do you think I need I-told-you-sos?” Mama said. She sighed heavily. “I loved him.”

Leni heard the sorrow and regret that eddied between the three of them. She wouldn’t have understood that kind of regret even a year ago. She did now.

“I don’t know what to do from here,” Mama said. “I’ve screwed up Leni’s life and my own, and now I’ve dragged you into it.”

“Are you kidding?” Grandma said. “Of course you dragged us into it. We’re your parents.”

Grandpa said, “This is for you.”

Leni wanted to peer around but didn’t dare. She heard the squeaking of a chair, then heels clicking on hardwood floors (Grandpa always wore dress shoes, from breakfast to bedtime), and finally a crumpling paper sound.

“It’s a birth certificate,” Mama said after a moment. “For an Evelyn Chesterfield. Born April 4, 1939. Why are you giving it to me?”

Leni heard the squeaking chair again. “And here’s a falsified marriage license. You married a man name Chad Grant. With these two documents, you’ll be able to go to the DMV and get a license and a new Social Security card. I have a birth certificate for Leni, too. She’ll be your daughter, Susan Grant. You two will rent a house not far from here. We will tell everyone
you are a relative, or our housekeeper. Something. Anything to keep you safe,” Grandpa said, his voice rough with emotion.

“How did you get these?”

“I’m a lawyer. I know people. I paid a client of mine, a man of … flexible morals.”

“That’s not who you are,” Mama said quietly.

There was a pause, then: “We are all of us changed,” Grandpa said. “We’ve learned the hard way, haven’t we? By making mistakes. We should have listened to you when you were sixteen.”

“And I should have listened to you.”

The doorbell rang.

The sound was so unexpected at this time of night, that Leni felt a clutch of fear. She heard the sound of footsteps, then the rustle of wooden blinds.

“Police,” she heard her grandpa say.

Mama hurried out of the living room and saw Leni.

“Go upstairs,” Grandpa said, following Mama out of the living room.

Mama took Leni’s hand and led her up the stairs. “This way,” Mama said. “Quiet.”

They hurried up the stairs and tiptoed down the unlit hallway into the master bedroom—a huge room with mullioned windows and olive green carpet. A four-poster bed was dressed in lace that matched the carpet precisely.

Mama led Leni to a heating vent in the floor. With care, she pulled the vent out and set it aside.

Mama knelt down, motioned for Leni to scoot beside her. “I used to eavesdrop on the nuns when they came to expel me.”

Leni heard footsteps echo through the metal vent slats.

Men’s voices.

“Detectives Archer Madison and Keller Watt. Seattle PD.”

Grandpa: “Is there something amiss in the neighborhood, Officers, at this late hour?”

“We’re here [something they couldn’t hear] behalf of Alaska state troopers.
[Words that blended together] your daughter, Cora Allbright … [something] last seen her … Sorry to say … presumed dead.”

Leni heard her grandma cry out.

“Here, ma’am, let us help you sit.”

A pause. Long. Then a scuffling sound, a briefcase being opened, papers withdrawn. “The pickup truck found … cabin full of blood, broken window, obvious crime scene but the evidence was destroyed by animals … tests inconclusive … X-rays that showed a broken arm … broken nose. Search being conducted, but … this time of year … weather. God knows what we’ll find when the snow melts … keep you informed…”

“He killed them,” Grandpa said. These words were loud, angry. “Son of a bitch.”

“Many reports … his violence.”

Leni turned to her mama. “So we got away with it?”

“Well … there’s no statute of limitations on murder. And everything we’ve done—and will do at the DMV—will be evidence of guilt. He was shot in the back and we disposed of the body and ran. If he is ever found, they’ll come looking for us, and now my parents have lied for us. Another crime. So we have to be careful.”

“For how long?”

“Forever, baby girl.”

*   *   *

Dear Matthew,

I’ve called the rehab facility every day this week. I pretend I’m your cousin. The answer is always the same: no change. It breaks a little more of my heart every time.

I know I can never send this letter and that even if I did, you couldn’t read it or wouldn’t understand the words. But I have to write to you, even if the words are lost. I told myself (and have been told repeatedly by others) that I need to move on with my new life. And I’m trying to do that. I am.

But you are inside of me, a part of me, maybe even the best part. I’m not talking only about our baby. I hear your voice in my head. You talk to me in my sleep so much I’ve gotten used to waking with tears on my cheeks.

I guess my mama was right about love. As screwed up as she is, she understands the durability and lunacy of it. You can’t make yourself fall in love, I suppose, and you can’t make yourself fall out of it.

I am trying to fit in down here. Trying hard. I mean, Susan Grant is trying to fit in. The streets are jammed with cars and the sidewalks are wall-to-wall people and pretty much no one looks at anyone else or says hello. You were right about the beauty, though. When I let myself see it, it’s there. I see it in Mount Rainier, which reminds me of Iliamna and can magically appear and disappear. Down here, it’s called The Mountain because really they only have the one. Not like home, where mountains form the exposed spine of our world.

My grandparents care about the weirdest things. How the table is set, what time we eat, how well I tuck the sheets into the bed, how tightly I braid my hair. My grandmother handed me tweezers the other day and told me to pluck my eyebrows.

But we have a nice little rental house not far from them and we can visit if we are careful. I think Mama is surprised to find that she likes to be with her parents. We have plenty to eat and new clothes and when we all sit around the dinner table, we try to knit our lives together, dropped stitches and all.

Maybe that’s what love is.

*   *   *

Dear Matthew,

Christmas here is like an Olympic event. I’ve never seen so much glitter and food. My grandparents gave me so many gifts it was embarrassing. But afterward, when I was in my own room alone,
staring out the window at neighbors we stay away from, looking at houses strung in twinkling lights, I thought of real winter. Of you. Of us.

I looked at the picture of your grandparents and reread your grandmother’s newspaper article.

I wonder what it’s like for our baby. Does she feel how uncertain I am? Does the song of my broken heart play for her? I want her to be happy. I want her to be the child of our love, of who we were.

I think I felt the baby move today …

I’m thinking of her as Lily. After your grandma.

A girl needs to be strong in this world.

*   *   *

Dear Matthew,

I can’t believe it’s 1979. I called the rehab facility again today and heard the usual. No change.

Unfortunately, my mother overheard my call. She blew her stack and said I was being stupid. Apparently the police can trace the call if they wanted to. So I can’t call anymore. I can’t put us all at risk, but how can I stop? It’s all I have left of you. I know you’re not going to get better, but every time I call, I think, maybe this time. That hope is all I have, useless or not.

But that’s bad news and that’s easy. You want good news. It’s a new year.

I am going to the University of Washington. My grandmother pulled some strings and got Susan Grant registered with no evidence of graduation from high school. Life sure is different in the Outside. How much money you have matters.

College isn’t what I expected. Some of the girls wear these fuzzy Shetland sweaters and plaid skirts and knee socks. I guess they’re sorority girls. They giggle and clump together like sheep and the boys who follow
them around are so loud a bear could hear them coming from a mile away.

In class, I pretend you’re beside me. Once I believed it so much I almost wrote a note to pass you under my desk.

I miss you. Every day and even more at night. So does Lily. She’s started to kick me awake sometimes. When she does get all squirrelly, I read her Robert Service poems and tell her about you.

That quiets her right down.

*   *   *

Dear Matthew,

Spring here is nothing like breakup. No earth falling away, no house-sized blocks of ice snapping free, no lost things seeping up from the mud.

It’s just color everywhere. I’ve never seen so many flowering trees; pink blossoms float through the campus.

My grandfather says the investigation is still open, but no one is looking for us anymore. They assume we are dead.

In a way, it’s true. The Allbrights vanished into nothing.

At night I talk to you and Lily now. Does that mean I’m crazy or just lonely? I imagine all three of us huddled in bed, with the northern lights putting on a show outside our window while wind taps on the glass. I tell our baby to be smart and brave. Brave like her dad. I try to tell her to protect herself from the terrible choices she might someday face. I worry that we Allbright women are cursed in love and I hope she will be a boy. Then I remember you saying that you wanted to teach your son the things you had learned on the homestead and … well, it makes me so sad I crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head and pretend I’m in Alaska in the winter. My heartbeat turns into wind pounding on the glass.

A boy needs a father and I am all Lily has.

Poor girl.

*   *   *

“T
HOSE
L
AMAZE CLASSES
were
bogus
,” Leni yelled when the next contraction twisted her insides and made her scream. “I want drugs.”

“You wanted natural childbirth. It’s too late for drugs now,” Mama said.

“I’m eighteen years old. Why would anyone listen to what I want? I know nothing,” Leni said.

The contraction ebbed. Pain receded.

Leni panted. Sweat itched and crawled across her forehead.

Mama picked up an ice chip from the plastic cup on the table by the hospital bed and popped it in Leni’s mouth.

“Put morphine in it, Mama,” Leni begged. “Please. I can’t take this. It was a mistake. I’m not ready to be a mother.”

Mama smiled. “No one is ever ready.”

The pain began building again. Leni gritted her teeth, concentrated on breathing (like
that
helped), and clutched her mother’s hand.

She squeezed her eyes shut, panting, until the pain crested. When it began—finally—to subside, she sank back into the bed, spent. She thought:
Matthew should be here
, but she pushed the thought aside.

Another contraction hit seconds later. This time Leni bit her tongue so hard it bled.

“Scream,” Mama said.

The door opened and her doctor came in. She was a thin woman wearing blue scrubs and a surgical cap. Her eyebrows were unevenly plucked, which gave her a slightly askew look. “Ms. Grant, how are we feeling?” the doctor asked.

“Get it out of me. Please.”

The doctor nodded and put on gloves. “Let’s check, shall we?” She opened the stirrups.

Normally Leni would not be relieved when a relative stranger sat between her spread legs, but right now she would have splayed herself at the observation deck of the Space Needle if it would end this pain.

“It looks like we’re having a baby,” the doctor said evenly.

“No
shit
,” Leni shouted at another contraction.

“Okay, Susan. Push. Hard. Harder.”

Leni did. She pushed, she screamed, she sweated, she swore.

And then, as quickly as her pain had come, it ended.

Leni collapsed into the bed.

“A baby boy,” the doctor said, turning to Mama. “Grandma Eve, do you want to cut the cord?”

As if through mist, Leni watched her mother cut the cord and follow the doctor over to an area where they wrapped the newborn in a pale blue thermal blanket. Leni tried to sit up but she had no strength left.