Two Rivers (17 page)

And maybe because I wasn’t looking at her, the kiss startled me. But there she was, her eyes closed, her lips thick and soft and wet against mine. The water crashed below us, violent and loud. When I closed my own eyes, we could have been at home, at the river. She reached quickly, pushing her hand under my shirt. It was cold, and my stomach flinched involuntarily as she touched me. But by the time she started fiddling with the button of my khakis, her skin was warm. Her fingers were hot as they wriggled downward and touched me. I gasped, suddenly vertiginous, reeling with both desire and fear. Unbearable happiness and an intense need to get down off this ledge.

“We can’t do this out here,” I said, fearing my words lost in the noise of water below us.

But she must have heard, because she took her hand out of my trousers, and I jumped down off the wall, helping her down after me. “There’s an old mill. It’s abandoned,” I said, leaving the Vespa where it was, and pulling her by the hand toward the stone building with its crumbling walls and shattered glass windows. We crawled through one of the open doorways and once inside we ran, clinging to each other with both fear and excitement, through the industrial innards of the building, navigating the labyrinth of ductwork and plumbing, the rusted guts of neglected equipment. When we reached a small dark room, Betsy ran to the one window, which faced the falls, and leaned out, bent at the waist, her feet lifting off the ground for one terrifying minute.

“Do you miss home?” I asked. What I meant was,
Do you miss me?

“Je
suis
chez moi,”
she said, lowering herself again and coming to me.

“I am the house of me?” I asked. I had never had my mother’s affinity for languages. I spent most of the time I should have been studying my French lessons daydreaming about Betsy.

She smacked my shoulder. “No, not
I am the house of me
, you idiot.
Je
suis
chez moi.
I
am
home.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

Betsy grabbed me by the shoulders, like she was trying to shake some sense into me. “When I’m with you, I
am
home. Coming here, being with you.
This
is home.”

Something about this admonishment, this wonderful reprimand, made me fevered. I tore at Betsy’s clothes until she was naked. And her body, the splendid expanse of skin and hair and breath, looked even more human, more like nature itself, in this wasted place. Her skin was softer than grass, gentler than breeze, even as we banged our backs and elbows and knees against the concrete floor. Even as my wounded calf scraped against the exposed metal of a broken pipe.

We would both be bruised the next day. Scratched and battered, but it didn’t matter. Because we were home, if only for the night.
Home
. And outside the falls kept crashing and crashing and crashing.

I
dreamed about him. All night I tossed and turned on the couch, going in and out of sleep. In and out of those woods. In and out of that night. When I woke up in the morning, I swore I could smell pine in my hair; I half-expected to find it stuck with pitch. When I washed my face, there were scratches across my face and hands, as if I’d gotten tangled up in thick brush.

In the glaring light of the bathroom, I stared at my reflection. There were bruised half-moons under my eyes, which were bloodshot and teary. Her brother.
Her brother
. Was there any possible way that that man could have been her brother? I wracked my brain, trying to do the math. He was maybe twenty at the time; he would have to have been so much older than Maggie—at least sixteen or seventeen years. And how would she have found me? How could she possibly have known to come here? How could she have known about that night, about those woods? About me standing at the edge of that river? It was ridiculous. Only the thumping heart beneath the floorboards: just my own conscience, my guilt, my fear. And when I finally made it into the kitchen, Maggie didn’t say a word about our conversation the night before, as if it had, indeed, never happened at all.

“You like ham and eggs?” she asked.

I nodded. I wanted to say something to her about what she’d told me about the baby’s father. I had been so stunned when she said she was looking for her brother that I couldn’t focus on anything else. I had excused myself, disappeared into the bathroom, where I stood in the hot shower until my skin ached from the heat. By the time I came out again, she had gone to bed. But now, watching her flipping thick pink slabs of ham in the frying pan, her tiny feet bare on my kitchen floor, I was overwhelmed by the idea of someone hurting her. She was a child, a little girl. The violence of that baby’s conception made my eyes sting.

“Maggie,” I said.

She didn’t look at me.

“Don’t you worry yourself over it,” she said, turning around. She was smiling, but the corners of her mouth were trembling with the effort. “Folks do bad things. I known that for a long time now.”

For one panicky moment, I thought this was an accusation.
She knew, she knew.

Maggie turned back to the stove and cracked an egg against the cast iron skillet. “Besides, most folks ain’t bad at all,” she said. “Most everybody got love in their hearts. I got love in mine. And this baby gonna have lots of love in his too. Don’t matter
how
he got here.”

I wanted to go to her, to hold her. I wanted to tell her everything would be okay, that I’d make sure that nothing like that happened to her again. But I didn’t know how. And still, if she wasn’t looking for him, who was she looking for? Why was she here? And so I sat quietly, my heart and brain reeling, and filled my mouth with the salty ham and eggs, swallowed the orange juice she’d squeezed by hand so that I wouldn’t have to say anything.

It was Saturday, but I told Maggie and Shelly that I had to go into the station to catch up on some work that I’d put off because of the wreck. After breakfast, Maggie said she was feeling tired and went to her room to nap. Shelly’s Abraham Lincoln paper was due on Monday; she said she was going to the library.

“Can I go to Luigi’s after I’m done?” Shelly asked.

“I don’t want you seeing that boy again,” I said.

“What boy?” she asked, looking down at her open textbook.

“You know what boy. And if I find out that you did, you will not leave this apartment. Ever.” Even as I said it, I knew it sounded ridiculous.

I got on my bike and pedaled slowly out of town, noticing for the first time that the leaves had started to turn. It startled me. I never missed the change from summer to fall. I had no idea how I could have been so oblivious to something so pervasive, but here it was: a thousand shades of red and gold. Like some sort of spontaneous combustion had occurred.

I didn’t know whether or not I’d be able to go through with it until I was halfway there. Even when I rode up the dirt drive to the house, I could barely believe I was making this journey. It had been twelve years since I’d come up this path. Knocked on this door.

Rosemary stood behind the screen door, wide-eyed. “Harper,” she said, startled as much as I was by my arrival.

“Hi.”

“Come in,” she said. “It’s nippy out there.” She ushered me into the kitchen, which was warm and messy. The last time I’d been there, their son was a baby still. Now he was a year ahead of Shelly in school. Rosemary, on the other hand, hadn’t changed much at all. Other than a few wiry gray hairs springing from her ponytail, she looked exactly the same as she always had.

“You want some coffee?” she asked. “Cider?”

“Actually, could I just get some water?” My throat was dry from the ride.

“Sure, sure,” she said, going to the sink. She reached for a glass and turned toward me before turning on the water. “Saw you at the funeral,” she said.

I nodded, my throat going from dry to swollen. When she handed me the glass I took a long swallow, hoping it was only thirst rendering me mute.

“Ray at work?” I managed.

“He’s up to his sister’s. He’ll be here any minute.”

I sat down at the kitchen table, the table where Betsy and I had played cards with Ray and Rosemary a zillion times. I traced the cracked Formica with my fingernail.

“Brenda seems to be handling it okay,” Rosemary said. “It’s going to be hard, though, taking care of Roger on her own. At least she’s got Brooder’s disability checks to count on. Plus I think she does hair at Bobbi’s shop. I don’t know. We don’t know her too well.”

I glanced toward the door when I heard a car pull up the drive. I both wanted Ray to interrupt this awful conversation and dreaded what I would do when he did. I took another swallow of water when I heard him coming up the steps.

“Hey, whose bike is that outside?” Ray asked before the door was even all the way open. “Harper.”

Ray reached his hand out to me before I had time to think. He was good like that, making uncomfortable situations comfortable. I stood up, shook his hand. It was such a formal gesture. I would sooner have curtsied than shaken Ray’s hand.

“How are you?” Ray asked, peeling off his denim jacket.

“I’m good,” I said, nodding my head a little too emphatically.

Rosemary handed Ray a Coke from the fridge, taking his coat from him and draping it over her arm. “I’ll leave you boys alone to catch up,” she said, as if it had only been weeks since we’d last spoken. She smiled and disappeared into the other room.

I followed Ray out onto the screened porch, accepted the seat he offered me.

“Sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk to you at the funeral,” he said. “I heard you moved out of Paul and Hanna’s place? Folks are sayin’ you got a girl stayin’ with you to help out with Shelly?”

“Ray, we’ve got to talk,” I said. My pulse was beating hard in my temples and neck.

“Sure,” Ray said, forcing a smile. He popped the top on his soda can, and it hissed.

I looked out the window at the thick foliage surrounding their property. I squinted my eyes, and all of the individual leaves (orange, gold and red) became one fiery blur. “I think somebody knows something,” I said, careful.

“Whatcha mean?” he asked, glancing toward the open door to the house.

“About that night.”

Ray stood up and walked to the door, closing it gently. He sat back down in his chair and stared at his hands.

“I know it sounds crazy, it’s been twelve years, for Christ’s sake. Nobody was there. But all of a sudden this girl shows up on my doorstep. She says she’s on her way to Canada, and then I find out that her ticket was only to Two Rivers.”

“That don’t mean nothin’,” Ray said, shaking his head. He lowered his voice then. “Just cause she’s
colored
…”

“She says she’s looking for her brother, Ray,” I said.

Ray set the can down on the windowsill and put his head in his hands. It was peculiar to see Ray, now grown, using the same gestures he had as a kid.

“I’m a good man,” he said, looking up at me, as if he had to convince not only me but himself as well. “I ain’t never done nothin’ to nobody.”

“I know,” I said. “I know that.”

Ray and I spent the morning walking all along his property.

“Deer season’s comin’ right up,” he said. “Last year I got a nine-point buck. Over two hundred thirty pounds. We’re just now running out of venison in the freezer. J.P.’s gonna be fourteen come March,” he said. “He’s a good hunter. Can fend for himself out here.”

I nodded and followed behind him.

“Last summer I bought up thirty more acres from my neighbor. I own this,” he said, holding his arms out. “Far as the eye can see anyway.”

I looked out at the glorious land, the pastures and woods. I thought of my own small apartment, our few belongings. I owned nothing. I had nothing to lose—except for Shelly. Except for every dream I had for her. For us.

After a while, we came to the creek, where Ray bent down and washed his hands.

“Ray, I don’t know what to do,” I said.

A look of panic crossed his face. He stood up, wiped his hands on his pants. “You don’t even know who this girl is,” he said matter-of-factly. “You’re just bein’ paranoid.”

“Ray, what other explanation is there? Why
else
would she be here?”

Ray stood up. He was still so short, just up to my chin. He started walking again, looking out across his land, his hands shoved in his pockets. “For a long time, I thought he was coming back. Of course, I know that don’t make no sense. My head knew that anyway. But still, I’d be out here, in the middle of
nowhere
, and I’d catch something in the corner of my eye and swear that it was him. Hiding in the trees. In the bushes. I’d hear his voice, only it was just the wind. It nearly drove me crazy. I think that’s what got to Brooder. I won’t let it happen to me. You and me, we were there,” he said. “But Brooder was the one that done it. It was always Brooder.”

“I guess,” I said.

“You got to listen,” he said. “This girl shows up, says she’s lookin’ for her brother. Maybe she hasn’t even
got
a brother. You said she’s been lyin’ to you about just about everything. Why not this too?”

I nodded, wanting desperately to believe.

“All you got to do is get her on a train headed back down to where she came from. That’s it,” Ray said, kicking a rock with his steel-toed boot. “End of story.”

But as we made our way back to the house, and twilight settled over those autumn hills, we both knew that there was no real end to this story.