The Shelter Cycle (14 page)

Next she came to a short metal ladder, bolted to the inside wall, which led to the lookout, the periscope where she and Colville had once played. Another twinge, sharp in her stomach, a shifting ache inside. What time was it? She had no watch, didn't have her cell phone to tell her the time or to call anyone. Did Maya say she was definitely coming? Francine waited, let her body settle, her breathing slow.

Number 7. She passed their room again. At number 4, she tried the door, stepped inside, flipped on the light. Nothing except bed frames. No mattresses or clothes or books left behind. This had been Colville's family's room, before the Messenger called them away to the shelter at the Heart.

Francine sat on the lower bunk, which must have been for Colville. His name was written on the wall, in pencil, the graphite reflecting the light. Next to it, a few small flying saucers were scratched, hovering over a kind of figure. She leaned closer. It was a person with long hair, an enormous belly. She sat up at once, hit her head on the bunk above, then realized that it was not supposed to be her, that Colville hadn't been here for years and years. The drawing was of Colville's mother, of course; Mrs. Young had been expecting Colville's little brother back then. Moses.

Francine returned to the kitchen, took a chair from the top of a table. She sat down, closed her eyes. It made her so happy, and it also made her so tired. All the work and then all the years after, this space becoming so empty and lonesome and misguided. It would feel different if it had been used, if the bombs had come. And then her parents might still be here.

 

•

 

Footsteps, descending the stairs, and then the slight creak as the door opened.

Maya's voice called: “Hello?”

“Down here,” Francine said. “The kitchen.” She stood, brushed back her hair, felt the tangles, the sticky spider webs. Maya walked toward her, into darkness, under a light again, back into shadow. She wore her heavy boots, her tan Carhartt jacket, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail.

“You all right?” she said.

“I was resting.”

“Your face is dirty. You look terrible.”

“It's dirty in here.” Francine took the bottle of water Maya held out.

“So many things,” Maya said, “when you're growing up, you go back and they look so miniature. But this place still feels so big.” She looked past Francine, down the hallway. “You've already been through our room?”

Francine twisted the cap onto the bottle, handed it back. “I was waiting for you.”

They headed along the hallway, the brass numbers on the doors counting up.

“You didn't have to wait.”

“I know.”

“Couldn't go in alone?”

Maya opened the door, holding it so Francine could squeeze past, inside. There was the click of the light switch. The darkness remained.

“Hold on.” Maya brushed past, swore as she unscrewed a light bulb in the hallway. Returning, she passed the hot bulb from hand to hand. She stood on the edge of the bunk, her hand on Francine's shoulder.

The room flickered as she screwed in the bulb tight. Brighter and brighter, the blue spines and red stripes, the gold numbers of the encyclopedias, the dusty framed photographs, the bare mattresses chewed by mice, cotton batting pulled loose onto the floor.

“Here we are,” Francine said.

“This room actually does feel smaller than I remember.” Maya pointed to Francine's bunk, perched above the door. “And that would have fit you for how long? It's tiny.”

Francine squinted upward. The two dark knotholes in the ceiling were still there, staring down at her. She looked away, bent over to reach for an empty plastic bucket with a lid. Sitting on it, she pulled out a box from under the bed, opened it. Shoes, sneakers and leather boots, growing in size from left to right, from 6 to 11.

“You would've been wearing my hand-me-downs the whole time,” Maya said. “Seven years of them.”

“I did, anyway.”

Maya brushed off the mattress, then lay down on her side, cradling her head on one arm. “Did you go downstairs?”

“No,” Francine said.

“That's the part that always gets me. Those little desks and chairs, the way Mom painted those windows onto the walls so it seemed like you could see outside. The sun, the trees, the river. What are you looking for?”

“Nothing,” Francine said. “Just looking.” She pulled out a plastic box that held socks, balled up tightly in pairs; shoelaces, sorted by length and color; fingernail and toenail clippers. She pulled out a sheepskin jacket, then a pale blue sweater with a glittery horse on the front.

“Beautiful,” Maya said. “Awful.” She rolled over, staring up at the slats of the bunk above. “I don't know, Francine. It's just—it's always like this. Every couple years I come back down here, have a cry, and then I'm good for a while. It's the classroom that gets me, all the Montessori shit, the felt board and sandpaper letters, all of Mom's work. Dad, he was having a great time. He always said it was like building a big fort. He could really see it that way. He could make people believe.”

Francine turned her back, shifting herself off the plastic bucket to the floor. Opening a cabinet, she found pads of blank paper, piles of documents, envelopes with writing on them. She checked behind her; beneath the shadow of the bed, it was hard to tell if Maya was watching. Then her sister picked up a framed picture from the bedside table, held it to her face. Francine carefully pried the lid from the bucket, slipped some of the papers inside. Next, a notebook with her name on the cover in her mother's perfect cursive. She slipped in a knit scarf, a pair of mittens connected by a length of yarn.

Maya set the framed picture back on the table. It was a photograph of their grandparents.

“I remember that night,” she said, “thinking about all the people like Grandma and Grandpa we'd left behind because they were on the outside and didn't understand how things were. I remember thinking about all the beautiful places I'd been to that wouldn't be there anymore.”

“You were so upset about your friend, Courtney,” Francine said. “That's what I remember.”

“What are you doing with that bucket? What are you putting in there?”

“I thought, for the baby, I'd take a few things. Maybe clothes that were meant for me, my baby would use them.”

“I think you should leave those things here,” Maya said.

“What?”

“Mom and Dad put them here. I don't know.”

“It's not getting used down here,” Francine said. “It never will.”

“Still. That's how I feel.”

Francine looked away, at the line of encyclopedias on the shelf, the textbooks and notebooks, the books about the impressionists and King Arthur.

“I talked to Wells this morning,” Maya said.

“What?”

“I called your cell and he picked up. You left it behind.”

“You told him I was here?”

“If you'd told me he didn't know,” Maya said, “that you didn't want him to know. You told me you'd call him—”

“It doesn't matter, really.”

“He asked if you were alone.”

“Alone?” She imagined Wells, alone in the house, holding her phone, asking Maya all these questions.

“Francine?” Maya said. “What does that mean?”

“All I wanted was to come back here by myself,” she said. “I didn't want to have to talk and explain all about it. I just did.” Reaching for the bedpost, she pulled herself up, stood. “I think I'm ready to go now.”

“You're sure?”

“I've been down here longer than you have.”

“Okay.” Maya swung her legs around, her feet on the floor, and stood up.

Francine followed her sister into the hallway. They closed the door with the brass 7 nailed to it, then walked through the kitchen, switching off lights as they went. Under the gaze of Cyclopea, onto the steps of the antechamber with the bright sky framed above, ahead the sound of wind. Francine climbed toward them.

“Key?” Maya said, behind her.

“What?”

“Do you have it?”

“Here.”

Francine went ahead. She held the plastic bucket in front of her, where Maya wouldn't see it, even if Maya had already seen it.

Outside again, the day felt colder, the wind sharper, and the sun not so bright. The truck was parked next to the shelter; Maya had driven it off the road, through the scrub.

“I brought you a sandwich,” she said. “I figured you'd need it.”

“I do.”

The sisters sat in the truck's cab, out of the wind, looking through the windshield at the wide valley spread out below. The highway, the river, thin clouds blowing past.

Maya wiped at her mouth, then set her sandwich on the dashboard. She reached into her jacket pocket, held out her phone.

“What?”

“You should call home.”

“Later. I'll do it.”

“You want me to go outside so you can talk?” Maya opened her door; the wind whistled everywhere, blowing napkins around the cab. “Here.”

“No,” Francine said. “Really. I don't want to, right now. Not here.”

Maya slammed the door, slouched down. “It's not like you can keep them separate,” she said.

“What?”

“It's not like you can come back here and solve it and leave it behind, then go back and start your family or whatever. It's all connected—all this, and you, and what you're doing now, and Wells, the baby, everything.”

“I'm not saying—”

“How do you think Wells feels?”

“I just wanted to come back for a day or two. It doesn't have to be that big a deal.” Francine stared out at the rickety blue and purple houses below, at the cars on the highway, the dark river, and, far away on Emigrant Peak, the pattern of trees and snow that still looked like a seahorse. “Didn't you ever do something without knowing why?” she said.

“Are you talking about coming back here? Or everything you've done since you left?”

“I'm just asking you a question.”

“Sometimes,” Maya said. “Sometimes I do what I want or have to even though I know it's hurting someone, and then later I say I couldn't help myself, or I had no control over it.”

“That's different.”

“Is it?”

Frowning, Maya turned in her seat and faced Francine. “You, you moved away. You didn't come back. That was smart, in a way. I'm reminded all the time—places, people. You need a plumber or electrician, half the contractors in town are ex-members, people who came to work on the shelters. It's crazy-making. It's how we grew up, I know, but still. If you think too much about it, you can get either really confused or really angry.”

“I like to think about it, though,” Francine said. “Sometimes, I think that was the happiest I've been.”

“When you were ten? Of course you were happy.”

“You sound mad,” Francine said.

“I'm not mad.”

“When I think about it, sometimes I feel just the same as I did, then.”

“Sometimes,” Maya said, “when I'm stressed at work, or I'm driving in a snowstorm, I'll hear my voice decreeing, saying the Archangel Michaels, and I can't even stop myself. I hate that, like it's inside me, just waiting.”

She fished the key from her pocket and started the truck, shifted into gear. They jerked across the plateau, back onto the road and down the slope, toward where Francine's car was parked. The only sound was the gravel beneath the tires.

“I wish we didn't have two cars,” Maya said, “that you didn't have to drive all the way back to Bozeman.”

“I'm not.”

“What?”

“I'm not going back with you.”

“What?”

“I'm headed home.”

“That's too far. Francine, sleep over, then start out in the morning.”

“I'll get a room at Chico, tonight, or down in Gardiner, and then tomorrow I'll go back through Yellowstone. It's shorter that way.”

“If the road's still open.” Maya pulled over, next to Francine's car.

“Thanks for coming,” Francine said. “It helped.”

“Call me tomorrow. Let me know you're home all right. Here, give me a hug.”

Francine climbed down, then reached into the bed of the truck and lifted out the white plastic bucket. She stood beside her car, watching the brake lights of Maya's truck blink as they rounded the curve and dropped out of sight. The truck reappeared, after a moment, going down the switchback below, and was gone again.

I
N THE LOBBY
of Chico Hot Springs resort, children ran back and forth, screaming; they wore bathing suits, clutched white towels, disappeared down shadowed hallways. A fire burned, casting shadows from the hearth. Out the windows, the afternoon had turned cold and dark.

Francine stood at the desk, checking in. This was all so much fancier than she remembered, from back when she had come to the hot springs as a girl. She held her white plastic bucket in one hand, the papers almost weightless inside it, its lid snapped on tight. A man in a red mackinaw walked past, smiled. He seemed familiar; this kept happening, as if someone might suddenly know her, as if everyone knew her and she could not quite recognize them.

Upstairs, her room had ruffles on the bed and the curtains. Small and cozy, it might have been decorated by a pioneer wife. She kicked off her clogs, set down the bucket. She pressed her forehead to the cold window, looked up a slope to where a ramshackle A-frame stood, where right now someone could be looking down, might see her pale face. Below the A-frame, black pipes snaked down the hillside, forked this way and that, went underground and resurfaced again as they brought hot water from the springs.

Drawing the curtains, she turned, brushed her teeth in the bathroom, set a glass of water on the bedside table. Then, before she climbed into bed, she pried the lid from the white bucket. She set the small pile of papers on her pillow.