Ordinary Beauty (3 page)

“DID YOU HEAR ME?” HE ASKS
when I don’t respond.

“No,” I say, which is wrong because of course I heard him, heard Candy’s message delivered just as hard and sharp and hateful as if she was standing right in front of me, slapping my face.

I heard it, and my first reaction is a fierce, panicked
no
.

No, I am
not
jerking around. I left because my mother wanted to be free of me my whole life, and now she’s getting her wish.

I’m not going back.

I’m not.

I can’t.

I mean, I couldn’t even if I wanted to, not after what happened between us the week before Christmas Eve, the raw, unforgivable night that drove me out the door in a move I never thought I could or would make.

So no, there’s no going back and no, I am
not
getting my ass in gear just because Candy says to. She’s my mother’s best friend, not mine, and that’s been obvious since the night she said, “Oh, c’mon, Dianne, this party’s gonna kick ass and we’re not missing it just cause of her. Jerry’s kid is old enough to babysit. Just leave her, she’ll be all right.”

And I was, if you don’t count Jerry’s kid tying me so tight to a kitchen chair that my hands turned blue, force-feeding me vinegar and Cheerios, and then leaving me sobbing in my own puke until the next morning when Jerry, whoever the hell he was, finally stumbled home from the party. He spanked me for making such a stinking mess, called over and woke Candy up, and told her to tell my mother to come get me before he set me outside and shut the door on my howling.

Three and a half hours later when no one had claimed me, he loaded me, swollen eyed, snuffling, and exhausted into his truck and took me to the site of the party, where we found my mother, Candy and five guys outside drinking beer, eating hot dogs and playing poker.

I got spanked again that day, for ruining Candy’s car seat on the way home with my soggy drawers.

I was what, five?

And no, Candy’s wrong when she says my mother isn’t going to be around much longer because that’s the same exact thing my mother says every long, cold, lonely winter, after she either takes
less
than her normal forty-three Vicodins a day to kick off a really ugly withdrawal, or takes
more
so she’s barely breathing and one step from comatose. Either way, the payoff for the last six winters has been a strategically scheduled trip to the emergency room where, for at least a couple of days, she gets a clean bed and hot food, free drugs, sponge baths, and people taking care of her round the clock.

This is the first winter since we left Beale’s house that I haven’t walked in and found her either sweating, panicked and throwing up, or cold, blue, and collapsed, and had to run to find her phone to call the ambulance.

No, this year that terrifying moment was Candy’s Christmas gift.

“All right then, listen,” Harlow says. “Candy wants you to get your ass in—”

“I heard you,” I say.

“Yeah?” Scowling, he props himself up on one arm and gives me a look. “Well, you’re not moving too fast and I’m not seeing any tears, so . . .”

No tears?

He hasn’t got a clue.

“Why did you do that?” I cried on the slow walk out, violating all the rules and taking my mother’s arm in a desperate, bewildered gesture. “That was your only chance, Mom, and you blew it on purpose! Why?”

Oh, God, I can’t go see her. I won’t.

And I’m not a prima donna, unless that means someone who desperately wants better and more than she has, who lives with just one beautiful, golden memory as proof that it hasn’t always been this way—

“Hey!” He reaches over and whacks my leg. “I’m talking to you.”

I see him down there on the floor, drunk, sweating, stomach bulging out from under the bottom of his T-shirt, pants smeared with Dozer’s blood, and it’s like he’s not real anymore, he’s just another past somebody in the long, dark list of past somebodies my mother’s gone off and left me with.

“Ah,” he mutters, struggling to his knees. “I knew this was gonna happen.” He pulls the overturned chair closer and, using it as leverage, hoists himself to his feet. Panting, he swipes his hair from his eyes and wipes his hands on his pants. “Get your stuff together and come on.”

My stuff. Oh God, my stuff. Where is the ruby velvet blazer? My gaze snaps to the canvas bag hanging by the door and suddenly, dizzy with dread, I lurch over and grab it from the hook. If Candy stole the blazer along with Harlow’s penny jar, I might as well lay down and die right now, as that blazer is the only thing I’ve managed to hold on to all these years, the only thing my mother hasn’t taken and sold to get high, the only thing we have left of Beale and that time when we were a family.

Frantic, I sink to the floor and rummage through the bag, pulling out underwear and my other jeans and sweater, mascara and socks . . . There, on the bottom, my fingers grope the familiar soft worn velvet, brush against the small white Queen Anne’s lace flowers Beale’s mother Aunt Loretta had embroidered on the lapel.

“I hope you won’t think it’s silly, but in the language of flowers, Queen Anne’s lace represents sanctuary, and that’s what I hope you and Beale and Sayre always find in each other, Dianne,” Aunt Loretta had said, smiling as she patted my mother’s hand. “This is a one-of-a-kind piece now, and when Sayre grows up you can hand it down to her, and then she can wear it, too. That’s how family heirlooms begin.”

“Hey.” Harlow nudges me with his foot. “Come on. Put your stuff away and let’s go.”

I gaze blankly up at him. “Where?” And why is he wearing his coat?

He jingles the quad key. “I’m gonna take you down to the end of the road. The factory changes shifts at three and this way, once you’re out on the main drag, somebody heading to work will pick you up and get you that much closer to the hospital.”

“Oh.” He actually thinks I’m going to hitchhike down to the hospital tonight, thirteen long and lonely miles in the frigid cold and whipping snow, in the dark, alone, and exhausted just because Candy gave the order? “Uh, not tonight. I’m really tired. I’ll go in the morning.” The minute the words leave my mouth I want to take them back.

“In the
morning
?” he echoes in a tone so ominous a chill rips through me, and I start shoving things back into my canvas bag. “You’re gonna wait until the
morning
? She could be
dead
in the morning, or don’t you even care?”

“I care,” I say, fumbling to latch the bag and stand up again.

“No, I don’t think you do,” he says, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He’s wearing lug-soled hunting boots and one kick would be devastating. “If you cared you’d be moving heaven and earth to get down to that hospital.” He shakes his head. “You got a real cold streak, you know that? There’s something missing in you, kid. You’re more concerned about that cat than you are your own flesh and blood.”

“No I’m not,” I say, rising on trembling knees and slinging the bag’s strap over my shoulder. I edge sideways and snag my purse from the table. I want to give the place a quick once-over to see if I’m leaving anything but I don’t dare take my eyes off him. I can always steal another toothbrush. What I’m worried about is getting my money. “And you don’t have to go out in this cold to give me a ride, Harlow. It’s all right. I’ll just walk.” Sweating, I reach behind me for the doorknob.

“You see, you got no concern for anybody but yourself.” He steps closer, his eyes small and red and mean with drink. “Here I am trying to do you a favor and you throw it back in my face. What am I, a piece of shit? My feelings don’t mean anything?”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” My heart is pounding and I can hear the weird wobble in my voice. “I just—”

“Then get on the goddamn quad!” he screams, spittle flying and his rank breath hot in my face.

He grabs my arm, opens the door, and shoves me through. Excited, Dozer rushes past me, bloody nose forgotten. The wooden porch is slippery and I almost fall, barely finding the railing in time. The snow lightens the darkness and I go down the stairs fast, hoping for a chance to grab the coffee can but he’s right there on the porch behind me so I have to go over to his four-wheeler instead. It’s an old battered Honda, the only vehicle he has, and it’s covered with snow. I quickly brush it off and climb on, sitting as far back on the seat as I can.

He climbs on in front of me, clumsy and slow. Turns the key and the motor chugs but doesn’t start. He curses and tries it again and again while I sit behind him shivering, trying not to breathe him in, trying not to move a muscle while he gets angrier and angrier, trying not to freak when Dozer sticks his nose into the hole in the trailer skirt and barks like thunder.

“Sic ’em!” Harlow snaps, and then to me, “If I see that cat, I’m shooting it.”

Misty.

And then the engine
vrooms
to life and he shifts gears and the bald tires spin and we’re creeping through the littered yard to the mailbox where he pauses, snags his government check, then moves onto the road where he guns it and I have to grab on to his waist or be thrown off backward. The frigid wind is searing, my eyes are tearing, and every couple of minutes I have to duck my head and hide behind his massive shoulders just to clear my vision.

I
have
moved heaven and earth to be with my mother. I have. I’ve stuck by her through hell, tried to help, to be near her, make her smile, save her, tried to keep up when she walked away, to be good enough and not cause trouble, trying trying trying, but it was useless, she’s impossible to reach, and you can’t get close to someone who doesn’t even like you, who doesn’t want to hear what you think or know how you feel, who at best tolerates you because you’re useful and at worst betrays you in a way you can still hardly bear to think about.

How can you make someone love you when they won’t?

How long are you supposed to keep trying?

We roar down the road with Dozer barking and limping frantically along behind us, jouncing over ruts, fishtailing over slick, snow-covered ice. Harlow laughs and spins the quad, almost sending us over the bank and down into the dark ravine. My stomach lurches, queasy. My hands are numb and my head is pounding.

He slows to make a turn and I peer straight up the mountain to where Sunrise Road is, the high road, the road where Beale lives, the road I haven’t been up on
once
since we left when I was eleven.

Doesn’t
that
make me a real daughter, Candy? Following my mother’s unspoken orders, never asking questions, knowing, without her even saying, that they will never be answered, finding out the hard way that she will never,
ever
talk about what happened? That I live knowing it doesn’t matter to her if the open wound inside me never heals, that we left Beale without saying good-bye but with a bag stuffed with things that didn’t belong to us, things my mother decided were our due and I didn’t even know we had until we landed back at Candy’s, and she and my mother went through it all to see what they could pawn. The first to go was Aunt Loretta’s beautiful amethyst promise ring, which bought them two cartons of cigarettes, a case of vodka, three dozen painkillers, and a bag of Doritos.

The only thing my mother took from our time with Beale that was actually hers was the ruby velvet blazer, and scared that it, too, would be hocked, I stole it out of her bag one night when she was out.

She never mentioned its disappearance, so I have no idea if she ever even missed it.

I haven’t talked to Beale in six long years, so I still don’t know why he never had us arrested. Maybe he was too deep in mourning to even care. Or maybe by that point he was just glad to see us go, whatever the price.

That thought still hurts, and is why even if I did have the chance to ask him, I wouldn’t. How could I ever face him again, knowing how badly we’d betrayed him, how we had robbed him of so much, and left him to suffer the aftermath?

How could I face him, knowing my mother had threatened him with the unthinkable?

No, my life hasn’t always been this way.

We reach the deserted, main-road intersection. Harlow stops the quad and stands so I can climb off. Watches as, shaking with cold, I step away and fumble to shoulder my purse and canvas bag. “You should have worn gloves.”

“I don’t have any,” I say, unable to stop myself from glancing at his.

For the first time all night, his mouth thins into a smile. “Yeah, well, life’s a bitch and then you die, right?” He revs the engine, turns the quad in a wide, slow circle back toward Churn Road, and pauses beside me again. “Okay, look. Uh, tell your mother I said she’d better hurry up and get out of there so we can hang out again, okay? Tell her it sucks without her.” He hesitates, then tugs off his gloves and hands them to me. “Will you do that for me?”

“Sure.” I fumble them on and the lining is still warm from his fingers. “I’ll tell her.”

“Good,” he says, and heads back up into the woods.

WHEN I WAS TEN, AFTER WE
lost our home to foreclosure but before the wondrous year we lived with Beale in a haze of unaccustomed happiness, before the inevitable, irreversible destruction of all things good and promising, my mother and I ate our meals down at the Mission of Mercy soup kitchen on Main Street behind the Shell station, along with Dug County’s other down-on-their-luck unfortunates.

The Mission was nothing on the outside, a cinder-block building squatting on a barren, graveled lot strung with potholes in the front and spent .22 shell casings in the back, a grim reminder of its years as a no-frills dog pound, when being homeless did not get you a hot meal and a supportive Unitarian blessing but a one-size-fits-all choke collar, a walk out into the weeds, and a bullet to the head.

On the inside, though, through those smudged and crooked doors life trudged on. Up until I met Beale, the only love I can remember came from my grandma Lucy, and then from Miss Mo, a retired Walmart cashier and street preacher from outside Atlanta who’d turned foster parent and mission volunteer, a short, stout, shelf-bosomed lady with kind eyes, generous hands, and a voice that made my name sing like a hymn.

She would smile when she saw me and ask how I was doing, like she really cared, like she was so happy to see me again that she would hold up the whole line just to hear, and while I squirmed and blushed and stammered an answer, she would wink and slip an extra pancake or scoop of mac ’n’ cheese onto my plate.

One morning, when a junkie in line started freaking out over some invisible torment and using his bony elbows like javelins, Miss Mo leaned right over a steaming vat of home fries and talked him down before he could do more than bruise me, catching him up in a safety net of comfort words and soothing him the way you would a panicked dog.

“Lord have mercy, that boy needs more than this place can give him,” Miss Mo said, after he finally calmed down and reeled off. “How you doing, honey? Did he hurt you?”

“No,” I said, rubbing the tender spot on my shoulder where his elbow had hit the hardest. My knees were still shaking, but that would pass. It had before. “I’m okay.”

She gave me a disbelieving look and glanced across the dining room to where my mother was hunkered down at a back table shoveling in her breakfast, oblivious. “Someday that woman’s gonna look up and see what she’s got,” she said, as if to herself. “And, Lord, I just pray it isn’t too late. You hang in there, Sayre. Sometimes the hardest people to love are the ones who need it the most.” She handed me a plate heaped with scrambled eggs and Tater Tots, winked, and became my benevolent Miss Mo again, seeing promise everywhere, and nourishing the world one plate at a time with a faith that never seemed to waver.

She nodded and I nodded back, as though we had reached some profound agreement, and I took my tray and wove through the hot, crowded room to a seat near my mother who, jamming the last bit of toast in her mouth, leaned around the frail old wino trembling between us and with crumbs clinging to her lips, said, “Why the fuck does it always take you so goddamned long to eat?”

So maybe Miss Mo knew what she was talking about, but maybe she didn’t because she was murdered that night, ambushed in the carport right outside her house, punched, kicked, and stabbed in the stomach with a bone-handled skinning knife, then left on the dirt to die by her daughter’s psycho ex-boyfriend Harlow Maltese, who was off his meds, blind, raging drunk, and blaming her for their breakup.

He was arrested staggering down the side of Route 40 with the knife in his belt and her blood under his fingernails. He spent the next five years up at the county mental hospital, and then went on to a local halfway house because the Maltese clan, trouble though they were, had lived in Dug County since the Civil War, and around here deep roots, no matter how diseased, still counted for something.

When he got out he started working construction and drinking again, got laid off, and claimed a bar stool down at the Colonial Pub, where he met my mother. The town of Sullivan had twenty-eight hundred residents in it then, too big to know everyone but still small enough for word of Harlow’s return to get around, and most people crossed the street when they saw him coming. My mother had never spoken to Harlow before but she knew him by sight, knew exactly what he’d done, and still she smiled, sat down next to him, and said that first hello. Still she took him back to Candy’s cabin to party, the hard gleam in her eyes daring me to protest, to make a scene over the side she’d chosen, but I was almost sixteen by then, my face trained to the shape of an indifferent mask, and so all I said when my mother introduced him, while my stomach roiled and cold sweat broke out along my hairline was, “Well, if it wasn’t for him, you never would have met Beale.”

That twisted truth had haunted me for years but I hadn’t known I was going to say it until it came out. The shock was mutual but the instantaneous rage at my speaking that forbidden name was hers, so the slap I got across the face, then her whirling and dragging him back out into the night was not unexpected.

“Could you be any fucking stupider?” Candy said, casting me a scornful look, grabbing her car keys, and following them.

I didn’t care: I’d chosen my side, too. I’d loved Miss Mo, her kindness, her strong, safe hugs and generous smiles, and so the tears in my eyes were not from the lingering sting of the slap but instead, from the small triumph of the stand.