Ordinary Beauty (20 page)

SCHOOL WAS STARTING THE DAY AFTER
tomorrow and I was worried about leaving Ellie.

I mean, I’d been with her every single day since she’d been born; how could I just up and leave? She wouldn’t understand why I wasn’t there in the morning playing a goofy game of peek- a-boo or blowing raspberries on her stomach after her bath. What if she forgot me, or worse, what if she thought I had abandoned her?

“Don’t worry, I swear I’ll say your name at least twenty times a day, all right?” my mother said with good-natured irritation when I whined my concerns one night at supper.

“Really? How are you going to . . . ?” I stopped, blinked, and shoved a whole piece of butter bread in my mouth to prevent myself from finishing that sentence because ever since that day we’d talked about friends, my mother had been leaving the farm early in the morning and coming home around four, breezing in, strapping on the baby sling with little Ellie in it, and bustling around with more energy than she’d had in the last six months combined, helping with dinner, toting laundry down from upstairs and then down again into the cellar to do the wash, vacuuming and sweeping the summer grit off the front porch. She hummed as she worked, her eyes bright, her movements quick. She was losing the baby weight, too, and came out of the bedroom crowing with triumph when she fit back into her skinny jeans.

The only thing was, I was afraid she was using meth, or at least drinking again. I’d seen her stagger once, and trip over nothing while wearing her flip-flops, spotted some sloppy hand gestures, and smelled it on her twice after she’d gotten home, the familiar vodka scent buried beneath layers of mint gum and toothpaste, perfume, and even garlic. We’d been alone with Ellie at the time, so I’d taken a second, louder sniff and looked at her funny. She’d ignored it but wouldn’t meet my gaze and that made me suspicious enough to check the calls received on her cell phone and sure enough, Candy’s number was there at least once a day.

She was still on the antidepression medication and I knew from reading the bottle that she wasn’t supposed to drink or take other drugs at the same time.

It worried me, but the family was happy again, and I was reluctant to wreck it.

“How am I going to do what?” my mother said curiously. “Say your name? Well, first I’m going to form the letter Essss . . .”

“Ha ha,” I mumbled and just kept on eating and watching her talk and laugh and pick at her food, and then hustle around clearing the table, shooing Aunt Loretta, Beale, and Ellie into the living room to relax.

“Thanks, honey, for being so nice to my mom,” Beale said, lingering in the doorway, catching my mother’s arm as she swept by, and giving her a quick kiss. “She’s been really wiped out these last couple of days. I don’t know if it’s the heat or just her refusing to take it easy for a while, but she really needed a break tonight. You’re the best.”

“Ah, that’s what they all say,” my mother teased, giving him a look from under her lashes. “You go relax, too. Me and Sayre will get this.”

“But I wanted to play with Ellie,” I said, sulking. “I don’t have hardly any time left to be with her, Mom.”

“You go ahead, Sayre. I’ll help your mom,” Beale said, giving my mother a mischievous look and a light slap on the butt. “Come on, woman. Let’s get it on.”

I slid out of my chair and ran into the living room, laid the white cotton sheet out on the floor, and eased Ellie out of Aunt Loretta’s tired arms. For the next hour me and my sister lay on that rug and played blinky-eyes staring games that made her dissolve in laughter, and tickling games that made her cackle and kick her feet, and near the end, when she was yawning and her eyelids were drooping, she caught hold of my finger in her little fist and, keeping her soft, hazel gaze on my face as if learning it by heart, listened to me croon,
It’s sleepy time, baby girl. The moon is out and the stars are shining. Sweet dreams. I love you so much, Ellie, Ellie. Good night, sleep tight.

And when she fell asleep and I drew away from her, I looked up and saw that Aunt Loretta had fallen asleep, too. I was glad because she’d been having headaches and dizziness for the last couple of days, and had even gotten nauseous for no good reason last night. She said it was nothing but the unrelenting heat and all she needed to do was go lie down in a dark room with the ceiling fan on, but I’d seen how hard she worked all day, usually right up to bedtime, both indoor and outdoor chores, and taking care of Ellie, too, didn’t help matters any.

I lay back down next to Ellie on the sheet. “Only one day left for us. I wish I didn’t have to go to school.” I snuggled closer, turning on my side so she was tucked into my body, and up against my heart. I kissed the top of her head and her wispy, brown baby hair. Closed my eyes and lay there drowsing until somewhere in my hazy subconscious I heard a murmured voice that sounded like Beale, and then someone took Ellie from me and the rush of air that followed was cool with loss. I frowned in my sleep and Beale whispered, “Sayre? Come on, sweetheart, you can’t stay here like this all night,” and then he lifted me into his arms and carried me up to bed.

I never forgot that. What it felt like to have the father I never had tuck me safely into bed, kiss my forehead just like I’d kissed Ellie’s, and whisper, “Sleep tight, Miss Sayre Bellavia.”

I FALL SILENT, LINGERING IN THE
residual happiness of that memory, but my mother is suddenly restless, agitated, her legs trembling and feet twitching, her palsied fingers plucking at the sheet, her head moving back and forth on the pillow. Her eyes roll wildly beneath the lids and she’s breathing faster now, in short, hitched puffs that sound as if something is happening inside her, as if she’s somehow struggling, and in a burst of panic I lean over her and fumble for the call button, have it right in my hand, thumb poised to descend when her body relaxes and her breathing slows to normal again.

“Mom, what is it?” I whisper, shaking, and after a while, when she doesn’t answer, only keeps on breathing, I set the call button back on the bed, rest my head on the edge of her pillow and heart pounding, speak to her of Ellie.

IT WAS WEIRD THAT FIRST MORNING,
having to leave the house so early and stand out in the hot, baking driveway waiting for the school bus. I kept looking back at the farmhouse where the rest of my family was—Beale packing his gear and getting ready to head upstate to the livestock auction, my mother barely awake and looking a little hungover to me, although no one else seemed to notice it, Ellie still sleeping, and Aunt Loretta in the kitchen making breakfast without me—and wishing hard that I could be in there, too.

But then the bus came and I got on and three girls liked my new shirt and I got all caught up in the whole first-day-of-school thing, getting my seat in homeroom and liking my new teacher, seeing Jillian in the hall and having lunch together, getting my schedule and then hopping the bus home again.

It was a good day and I chattered like crazy during supper, hogging the conversation, making Beale laugh and poor Aunt Loretta, who still didn’t feel good, try to smile. Finally, my mother told me to stop talking and start eating because if I wasn’t done by the time the table was cleared, I wasn’t getting any dessert and there was butterscotch pudding.

So I did, and the talk turned to Aunt Loretta. Beale made her promise to call the doctor tomorrow and make an appointment because her headaches hurt so bad sometimes that her vision got blurry, and he was worried and annoyed that she hadn’t done it yet. “I mean, c’mon, Ma, what’re you waiting for?”

“I know,” Aunt Loretta said, removing her glasses and rubbing the red mark on the bridge of her nose. “I was hoping the weather would cool down once September got here and maybe that would help but . . . I guess I have to. I’ve been wondering if they’re migraines but I’ve never had one before so I don’t really know.”

“That’s because you’re not a doctor,” Beale said with good-natured impatience. “Swear you’ll call Doc Goodwin tomorrow and make an appointment? I don’t want to come home from the auction and find you all laid out because of some stupid heart attack or something.”

And they joked a little more about it, but it wasn’t a heart attack, it was a brain stem stroke, and he wasn’t the one who came home and found her.

I was.

THE SECOND DAY OF SCHOOL WAS
as good as the first, except this time I got off the bus with homework in my backpack. The weather was still scorching, and my shorts were stuck to me from sitting on the sweaty, vinyl bus seat. All I wanted to do was get inside and eat a grape Popsicle, but when I started walking up the driveway I could hear Ellie crying from inside the house, the thin, forlorn sound echoing out in the still air and the closer I got the funnier it sounded, different than usual, hopeless and raspy and exhausted, like she’d been crying for a long time . . .

I started walking faster.

Beale’s truck was gone because he’d left for the auction and Aunt Loretta’s car was gone but my mom usually took that when she went to town or to Candy’s and there wasn’t any real reason why my heart should be pounding so hard and my blood thrumming in my ears—

I took the front-porch steps two at a time and the front door was closed.

And locked.

That’s when I knew something was wrong.

Aunt Loretta always kept the front door open from morning till night in good weather so the cross breeze could sweep through the screen door and cool the house.

I knocked hard on that door but ran back down the steps, not waiting for an answer. I could hear Ellie wailing upstairs, and that scared me even more because Ellie always napped downstairs in the afternoon where it was cooler, so why was she upstairs where it was so hot, and why was she crying and crying and no one was soothing her?

I raced around the house, shrugging off my backpack as I went and dumping it on the grass. The back screen door was unlocked and I yanked it open and went inside, calling, “Aunt Loretta? I’m home. Aunt Loretta?”

The kitchen was silent, deserted, and the dirty breakfast dishes still sat on the table.

“Aunt Loretta?” I yelled again, backing slowly out of the kitchen and into the hallway, my gaze glued to the remains of that ominous meal left lying there for what, almost nine hours now? No, no. Something was desperately wrong. Even the
air
was wrong, flat and still and empty. “Aunt Loretta?”

Ellie must have heard me, because her crying turned to screaming.

“I’m coming,” I called, and whirling, grabbed the banister and flew up the stairs. My legs were shaking, my knees like water. “I’m coming, Ellie! Aunt Loretta? Where are you? Aunt Loretta?”

I bounced off the walls running down that hallway and into Ellie’s room. She was lying in her crib, her face scarlet and her hair plastered to her forehead, wearing a diaper that reeked and the little teddy bear pajama top she’d been put to sleep in the night before. “Oh, baby, come on, baby, come on,” I babbled, picking her up and gagging at the smeary mess on the sheet and up her back. She was hot and crying with no tears, and her head looked weird, like the soft spot was kind of sunk in, and she stared up at me with such solemn, tragic eyes that I ran then, I took her and ran down those stairs and into the kitchen, shaking so hard I almost fell.

I wet paper towels and put them on her forehead, put water in a bottle and gave her a little and then a little more and called, crying now, “Aunt Loretta? Where are you? What happened? Where ARE you?” and then I couldn’t take it, so I picked up Ellie and the water bottle and went through every room looking for her, and was about to go down into the cellar when Ellie threw the water up all over me. I started crying even harder and was running back to the kitchen to call someone, my mother or Beale, when a car door slammed outside and I heard my mother’s rubber flip-flops slapping and scraping an uneven, stumbling tattoo across the sidewalk and up the wooden porch steps.

I flung open the door, Ellie crying in my arms, and my mother, in the middle of opening the screen door, reared back in surprise. “What the hell?”

“I can’t find Aunt Loretta,” I sobbed, catching a gust of alcohol in her exhale and too upset to care. “I came home and Ellie was upstairs all alone and she’s still wearing her pajamas from last night and I yelled and looked everywhere but she’s gone—”

“Let me see that baby,” my mother snapped and plucked Ellie, still screaming, from my arms. “Jesus Christ, look at her. Move, Sayre.” She swept in past me and headed straight for the kitchen. “Are you sure Loretta isn’t here? Did she leave a note or anything?”

“No,” I said, hiccupping and wiping my face on my arm. “The front door was closed and locked and look, Mom, look at the dishes on the table . . .” I started crying all over again. “She wouldn’t go away and leave Ellie all alone. She
wouldn’t
.”

“Shh, Ellie, shh,” my mother said, peeling the damp paper towel off her forehead and picking up the baby bottle. “God, she looks dehydrated. What’s in here, Sayre?”

“Water, and I only gave her a little at a time, but she threw it back up,” I said, wringing my hands.

“Water? That’s no good. Why didn’t you give her Pedialyte?” my mother asked, her voice sharp and rising.

“Because I don’t know where it is,” I cried, now really scared that I’d hurt my sister.

“Downstairs in the fridge. Go get it. Hurry.” My mother opened the water bottle and dumped it into the sink. “Hurry, Sayre. We might have to go to the hospital.”

Sobbing, I flicked on the light and ran down those steep, wooden stairs to the fridge. Whipped it open, and pushed aside all the juice and extra milk and eggs until I found the bottle of Pedialyte. Grabbed it, shut the fridge, and turned to go back upstairs.

And saw a foot.

Two feet in slippers, lying on the cold, hard, cement floor.

Two pale feet in
Aunt Loretta’s
slippers, lying over by the washing machine hidden behind the chimney.

The Pedialyte slipped from my hands. The plastic bottle hit the floor and rolled under the steps.

A small, quiet moan escaped me.
No,
I thought, rooted in place and unable to stop staring.
No, no, no.
Dimly, in the back of my stunned and bewildered mind, I knew I should go over there and see if she was alive or call to my mother or shout or do
something
but all I could do was stand there palsied and mute, staring at those bare ankles and the feet tucked into those slippers—

“Well? Did you find it?” my mother called impatiently from the top of the stairs, Ellie squalling in her arms. “Sayre? Come on, goddamnit, this is not a joke! This baby needs fluids! What the hell are you doing?”

My mouth opened but nothing came out.

“Sayre?”

I turned back to the steps, wanting to tell her, wanting to say, “I found her,” or “Help!” or even just “Mommy,” but before I could make myself form the words she said, “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing down there but I swear to God if anything happens to this baby . . . Goddamnit, Sayre. Do I have to do everything myself?”

And then she started down the stairs, fast and furious, rubber flip-flops flapping, my whimpering sister in her arms, and in one frozen heartbeat I saw it happen, saw her stub her toe and the other flip-flop come down too far over the edge of the step, saw her foot tip and skid forward through the front of it, snapping the T, saw her knees buckle and her free hand, the one not clutching my sister, fumble desperately for the railing, but she missed, she missed, and my hands reached out but I was too far away so I missed, too, and she pitched down through the air and hit the ground hard, hit the cement floor hard, hard on her face, she hit and Ellie hit and the sound of them hitting that floor, first Ellie and then my mother as she landed on top of her, the sound of the air bursting from their lungs and then the silence, the silence everywhere, in front of me, behind me, inside me . . .

The silence.

And then my mother twitched and I drew in a searing breath and ran for the phone.