Healer (5 page)

There is a large porch running along the front, with the broken remains of decorative wooden corner pieces at the joints between post and beam, resembling quartered wagon wheels. Four wide plank steps drop down to the land, which spreads in liquid undulations across eighty acres until it dives five or six hundred feet to the valley floor. Back when this county was first developed, first taken from the Indians, people probably considered the entire ranch their dwelling, at least seasonally. Back when the interior of a house afforded little more than protection from wind and rain.

There is a barn, too—the kind people stop to take photographs of on leisurely Sunday drives with no destination in mind. It is useless, really, but for nostalgia—it lists so much Claire has warned Jory not to play inside it alone for fear that it might collapse in the least wind. And beyond the aspen groves there is even a shallow stream that empties into a dredged cattle pond clean enough for swimming in the summer, when the earth blisters and the grass is so dry it sounds like the rustle of snake skins.

They had looked for property in the Okanogan area for more than two years, driven over a thousand square miles east of the Cascades. Addison seemed to have some particular vision in mind, a cutout that necessitated an exact fit, a missing piece for his entree into the privileged world. He wanted something bold, the seed for a family dynasty. Claire teased that he’d watched too many episodes of
Dallas
as a kid. But at least once a month they drove over the mountain passes to wind through the valleys and along the rivers that fed the Columbia.

Addison had finally found this place on a solo trip, a weekend Claire and Jory had stayed in Seattle for a ballet rehearsal. Claire knew the minute she answered his phone call that they would own it—Addison was ready to write the check, a cash-out deal. Claire didn’t even see it until after she’d signed the papers, a fact she now takes as a bitter example of how freely, even gladly, she had given up asking where their money went. The supply had seemed endless.

The house had been built at least ninety years ago, directly over a burned-down homestead cabin, one of the first in the region. In its time it must have been quite the showcase, with indoor plumbing and
a second story, sunk into a broad sweep of Idaho fescue; the original vegetable garden had long ago wasted to a scar of Barnaby and mustard tumbleweed that delineated the plowed rectangle as clearly as any deer fence. This land was so different from the rainy west side of the Cascades; with barely enough water to scrape by, the native bunch grasses reliably succumbed to opportunistic weeds anyplace the soil was disturbed. An apple orchard had been planted in an atypical era of heavier rains, and the trees, long gone to ruin, watched over the house like an audience of craggy old men. Jory said they looked like the wickedly enchanted trees in
The Wizard of Oz,
ready to throw rotting apples at these invading city folk.

The house had seemed familiar to Claire somehow, from the very first time they bumped down the winding, overgrown driveway. The cracked windows, the knob and tube wiring, the peeling wood siding, the very fact that it had lain untouched for so many decades conjured for her both possibility and reminiscence. She had walked through the chilly rooms trying to imagine the family that built this home—the Blackstocks—back when the land could be had for nothing; imagined how hard they must have worked these fields until too many years of drought forced down the harsh truths about dry-land farming. The ranch had been leased for cattle grazing after that, but the Realtor had no record of anyone else inhabiting the house. Claire wondered if there had been children, more than one; whether it was purely the shifting of climate and crop that drove them out, or if divorce or disease and death had emptied the house. It felt important, somehow, to believe that it had been abandoned because the settlers had moved on to good and hopeful things, that the bones and dust here remembered more joy than capitulation.

Claire takes a Costco-sized pack of Clorox wipes out from the box labeled
CLEANING SUPPLIES
, and starts scrubbing the counters and cabinet shelves, sweeping flecks of insect wings and mouse droppings into a garbage bag. She crouches to pull a package of paper towels from behind the steel P trap under the sink and abruptly scrambles backward, striking her head on the bottom of the counter when a mouse skitters across her hand and disappears through a gap in the cabinet panels.

The smell is overwhelming, the sour, yellow odor of mouse urine. The shrink-wrap around the paper towels has been gnawed into a ragged hole, and the towels themselves shredded into a cushioned nest of fluff and excrement. Three naked, fetal mice blindly claw the exposed air that was a safe universe only seconds ago. She crouches, breathes through the sweet wool of her sweater sleeve, trying to remember the incubation time for hantavirus. They would have to be alive, of course, she thinks. No longer than the end of her smallest finger, the color of a new pencil eraser. She gets to her knees and hunts out the plastic dustpan, angles it beneath the pipes to scoop up the infant mice. One rolls ahead of the flange, risks being crushed against the wall, and she uses the soft edge of a sponge to flip it gently into the pan, gives herself a minute to accept that she is going to jettison them into the snow.

She carries them far enough from the house so they will be invisible from the windows, but rather than fling the weightless contents out to scatter wherever gravity carries them, she deposits them gently, even considers burying them. It might be faster that way. The low sun angle shadows every wind-driven gully as deep as a cavern.

Coming back in she stamps the ice off her boots and turns to shut the door behind her, stifling a gasp when she discovers Jory standing there, wrapped like a winter bride in one of the white down comforters.

“What were you doing out there?” Jory asks.

Claire brushes her hair back, careful not to touch her own face with her contaminated hands. “Nothing. I’m cleaning.” She rests the dustpan against the wall. “I thought you were sleeping.”

Jory is silent, and Claire leans forward to kiss her forehead. “I’ve gotta get to the store. What do you want for dinner?”

Her habits are still city habits; running to Whole Foods for a single meal, expecting to find the flaked salt and saffron stems and arborio rice for the dish she’s craving. In Hallum it is eleven miles to the Food Pavilion where she settles for Morton Salt, McCormick curry powder and Uncle Ben’s. But there are advantages, too, she decides, to the rural truths of living out here. This store is amply stocked with mousetraps and poisons.

Claire stacks her cart with enough groceries to get them through the week. She buys all the basics—spices and oils and vinegars, coffee and flour and sugar and tea bags—too tired to remember if she packed the contents of her kitchen cabinets into the U-Haul or left them behind for the moving truck. The cart becomes so laden it threatens to careen at any subtle slant in the floor. When there is little room left she goes to the far corner and studies the choices for ridding their home of the rodents who have run freely for the last decade or more. There are all sorts of contraptions and devices—a whole science of extermination. There are those that trap and kill through starvation and thirst, those that quickly electrocute, those that flavor poison as nourishment for mothers to take back to their babies; and the Havaharts, for the softhearted souls who want to believe that throwing them out in the snow is not equally fatal. She puts two Havaharts on top of the food and heads to the checkout stand, but thinks again about the distance to town and the knot on the back of her head. She asks the clerk to wait while she runs back to grab a box of d-CON.

Hallum has folded up for the night. Other than the lone bar at the other end of town, the grocery store is the last business to close. Strings of tiny white Christmas lights are still draped around a few gift store windows, the single streetlight at the end of the block shines on empty parking spaces and deserted sidewalks—no theater, no neon, no cruising teenagers marking territory with booming music.

A fine mist has crystallized into a stinging cold. Her gloves lie on the front seat; she can see them through the window. By the time she’s packed the groceries into the trunk her fingertips have gone so numb she can’t puzzle the key into the front door slot, and every passing locked-out second makes her hands stiffer, clumsier, winds her up in frustration until she wants to kick the door.

“
Señora?
”

Claire jumps when she hears the voice, sucks in a draft of freezing air so quick and deep it burns and her keys fall into the snow underneath the car. A woman is standing in the gutter only a few feet from the car, dark-haired and darkly clothed enough to be nearly invisible in the icy fog. Claire’s heart pounds so hard she is startled into confusion.
The woman awkwardly backs up onto the sidewalk, nearly slipping on the icy lip of the curb,
“Discúlpame. Sorry!”

There is such a sincere apology in her tone Claire doesn’t need the translation. The voice is small—or rather, from a small person—and when Claire calms down enough to focus she can see the woman is compacting her slight body into a stanchion against the freezing night wind, her arms locked around herself. She is dressed in a buttoned-up cardigan and jeans. A knit cap, pulled low over her hair, and mittens are the only hint of seasonable clothing. Claire starts to ask her if she needs help, but the habits of the city rise up before logic and she looks down the block and behind her into the street, which is swallowed up by the night only a dozen yards from the store lights. A single set of taillights is just turning the corner. “Do you need something?” Claire asks. The woman shakes her head, seems almost embarrassed by the question. Claire glances another time over her shoulder and bends down to retrieve her keys. She unlocks her door and tosses her purse onto the seat beside her gloves, standing between the open door and the safe interior of her car. The store is closing—banks of fluorescent lights shut down in a series along the ceiling, from back to front, until only the glow of freezer cases and the green flickering of the registers show through the glass doors. The staff must have left through the back door. “They’re closed,” Claire says, then feels silly for stating the obvious. “Do you speak English?” The woman shrugs her shoulders. “
Habla inglés?”

The woman untucks one bare hand from beneath the other arm and holds her thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “I study.”

Claire looks up the street again. “Do you have a ride? A place to stay?” She searches her foreign vocabulary and pops up with a word for
house
. “
Un maison?
” French—what closet of her mind had that come from? She rummages her memory again, more strategically. “
Casa. Una casa?
” she asks, moving her finger in a little stirring motion she hopes will translate to “nearby.”

The woman’s eyes—remarkably large for her face—brighten, and she nods quickly. She leans down and picks up a canvas pack, holds it up briefly in front of Claire to confirm she has a purpose and destination. Then she hitches one strap over her shoulder and starts to walk
down the street, stepping cautiously in the narrow track of icy footprints compacted between storefronts and curb. Claire watches her for a minute, uneasy and considering, until her cell phone rings and Jory tells her the house is freezing and she can’t get the fire started.

The woman is at the end of the block when Claire passes her in the car. She stops and rolls down the passenger window, waits until the woman is close enough to hear her. “
Señora?
” Claire holds up a heavy red plaid lumberman’s jacket Addison used to wear in college. Jory had dragged it out of the closet to wrap around her feet and left it on the floor of the backseat. “
Por usted.
” The woman seems hesitant to approach, and Claire realizes that she herself is now the suspicious one. She drapes the jacket halfway through the window so it’s easier to reach and puts the car into Park, the heater blasting onto her aching hands. “
Por favor.
” She keeps smiling at the woman, wants to urge her to just take the jacket, finally, so she can go home. The ice crystals are beginning to turn to snow; lacy white wafers drift onto the hood of the car and dissolve into clear beads. At last the woman steps off the sidewalk and puts her hand on the wool, now flecked with snowflakes. Claire broadens her smile, ready to close the window and leave. But still the woman hesitates. “
Sí, por usted,
” Claire encourages, trying not to sound impatient.

At last the woman folds the jacket into her arms and leans down so her face is fully visible through the open window. “Thank you. Thank you. I will care for it for you.” The ungainly phrase comes out in a heavy Spanish accent, like that of someone who might have studied the language but rarely pronounces the words. It draws Claire’s attention, this solemn acceptance of responsibility for a piece of clothing Claire would have given to Goodwill the next time she cleaned out the car. And something she sees in this woman’s remarkable eyes, too. Thanks, surely, is there, but her obvious gratitude—and obvious need for a coat—is clearly tinged with shame. With a small wave, the woman turns away and begins climbing the steeper street that heads to the few residential blocks before the town disperses into fields and orchards and forest. At the top of the hill she disappears into the unilluminated night, still carrying the jacket in her arms.

• 5 •

Indeed, the house is freezing. It doesn’t help that the bathroom window upstairs has been left open for who knows how many hours, probably after Jory tried to clear the room of steam. Her underwear and T-shirt are soaking in a pool of suds beside the bathtub. Her hair is still wet and turbaned in a towel, and she is wrapped in both Claire’s and Addison’s velour bathrobes, reminding Claire of the way Jory would sweep through the house at the age of seven or eight, playing queen in a plastic gold crown and just such an oversized bathrobe. That was only six years ago. Turn around and it’s gone.