Ordinary Beauty (6 page)

For seven years I lived a stable, routine existence in the blue house in town with Grandma Lucy, her memories, melancholy sighs and absentminded affection, her Michael Bublé CDs, ambrosia salad, and
Wheel of Fortune.
I had clothes, food, a bedtime ritual, Sunday school and a few friends, Halloween costumes and Easter baskets, a bookshelf in my room, winter boots and a chair at the kitchen table. The blue house was my home, and Grandma the woman waiting there for me, and I guess I could have loved her like a mother had it not been for the occasional whirlwind visits from Dianne, my real mother, the intense, unpredictable, dangerous, and exotic teen with the fast temper, smoker’s breath, kohl-rimmed eyes, and backroom broken-heart-in-barbed-wire tramp stamp, the girl who showed up unannounced and destroyed our peace, rummaged through Grandma’s purse for money, and strode around like she owned the place.

At first her visits unsettled me, left me nervous, angry, and strangely excited, but after a while, on those few occasions when she swept me up and sat me on her lap, left sticky, strawberry-scented lip gloss kisses on my face and fruity alcohol exhales in my nostrils, there was a stirring in my heart that made me brave and full of longing, made me plant shy kisses on her cheek, wind my arms around her neck, and bury my face in her shaggy, dyed-black hair, wanting to stay that way forever.

But the moment I gave in and clung she would withdraw and disentangle me, ignoring my cries to stay, tugging free of my stubbornly entwined arms, sometimes with the help of Candy, who didn’t care if the jagged edges of her bad French tips scratched my skin or her cheap bracelets caught in my hair, and finally, impatiently, telling me to stop being so fucking needy and shoving me back at my grandmother.

I’d be upset for days after she left, having stomachaches, snapping at Grandma, bursting into tears for no apparent reason. I wanted my mother, then I didn’t, then I did again. As I got older, I couldn’t understand why I didn’t see her more, why she didn’t live with me like other mothers did with their kids, why I couldn’t be with her.

When I asked that question on one of Grandma’s good days, she would say something like, “Because she can’t take care of you right now, Sayre, and besides, I would be so lonely if you weren’t here. You don’t want Grandma to be lonely, do you?”

On her dark days, when she was sunk in the murk of too much bitterness and coffee brandy, the answer would be more like, “If being here is so bad, then sure, go ahead, go pack your things and live with your mother. Make her take care of her responsibilities. See how she likes it. By all means, go ahead and go.” And when, hesitant, I said, “But I don’t know where she lives,” my grandmother gave a rude snort and said, “Well, that makes two of us, so I guess you’ll just have to stay here until she decides to come for you, and I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Do you?”

The truth was no, because only three times did my mother and Candy—always Candy, too—ever come and take me away with them for the weekend.

Three times, in seven years.

I shouldn’t have remembered that first time, given that I was not yet three, but I did remember parts of it, vividly. Grandma Lucy added to the story later, and at some point I heard my mother and Candy reminiscing, but there were fragments of that day that nobody knew but me.

My mother and Candy had hooked up with a couple of older guys, and thanks to good weather, a little gas money, and the rush of some kick-ass meth, they decided to head down to the Jersey shore. I don’t know why my mother thought I should come along. Maybe she felt it was time to show me off, or maybe she wanted the guy she was seeing to realize what a great little family the three of us could be.

I remember crying at being pulled away from Grandma Lucy, and being wedged in the backseat between Candy and the second guy, who stunk of garlic. I remember Candy feeding me soapy-tasting beer to shut me up, and later waking up alone on a blanket in the sand, terrified by the roaring ocean and the seagulls swooping over my head, being hungry, thirsty, and nauseous, sweating and screaming and getting sand in my mouth and in my eyes, pushing myself up and toddling off into the crowd.

I remember the Asian lady in the green one-piece bathing suit who was sitting on the next blanket picking me up and taking me to the lifeguard, who finally called the police when no one came frantically searching for me. I remember an EMS guy with a ponytail and glasses checking me out for heatstroke, the cool water he gave me, the lotion he smoothed on my scorched skin.

Somebody must have given the police descriptions of my mother and Candy and the guys because the police tracked them down in a bar off the boardwalk and arrested the guys for the remaining meth.

I remember how my grandmother, who’d had to drive all the way to that police station for me and my mother and Candy, got a stern, embarrassing lecture from the cops because my mother was underage, drunk, and carrying a pretty convincing fake ID.

I remember my grandmother taking one look at me, then whirling and slapping my mother right across the face and shouting,
Look at this baby! How could you be so irresponsible?
and my mother, cheek red and eyes crazy, screaming,
Don’t you EVER touch me! I wish Daddy was here! I wish he was alive and you were dead!

I remember the policewoman grabbing her arm and Candy taking the other one, and whispering something in her ear, some caution that made her furious but also shut her up.

That day, the one I was supposedly too young to remember, must have left a deep imprint because I still hate shouting, am afraid of the ocean, and will do almost anything to avoid the hollow terror of being left behind.

The second time they took me out I was four and my mother was nineteen. I remember standing in line with her at McDonald’s, clinging to her leg and her prying at my hands, trying to dislodge me. I remember her getting mad because I wanted a plain hamburger with no onions or ketchup, and how she got me a regular one anyway and scraped off the ketchup but it was still there and I couldn’t eat it without gagging, so all I had was French fries. I remember her leading me into a dark field with a big bonfire going and people everywhere, loud, thudding music and some guy smiling, holding a beer and crouching in front of me, taking my hand and hearing my mother say,
Go ahead, Sayre, give him a kiss,
but I didn’t want to because his breath stank.

I remember my mother got mad at that, too.

I remember the two of them disappearing and me not being able to find them in the sea of legs. I remember being thirsty and picking up a glass and drinking, and people laughing around me. I remember falling down and skinning my elbow and crying, and someone who smelled like burnt leaves picking me up, putting me in the back of a car, and covering me with a jacket. I remember waking up scared and disoriented, crawling out of the car and walking back to the smoldering remains of the fire where it was quiet now and Candy was on her knees in front of some guy sprawled in a camping chair.

I remember her seeing me, and me saying in a little voice,
Candy, I don’t know where’s my mother
and her lifting her head, pushing her hair out of her face, and saying,
Yeah, well, I don’t know, either, so why don’t you go look for her?
I remember starting to cry and saying,
Could I stay with you till she comes back?
and her, sloppy drunk, smirking and saying,
Sure, watch and learn, right?
I remember hurrying over while she lowered her head again and the guy closed his eyes and I stood behind her looking at how messy the back of her hair was and patting myself on the arm the way Grandma Lucy did when I was upset. Finally I went and climbed into a lawn chair by the dying fire and patted myself to sleep.

The third time I went out with my mother and Candy I was five and my mother was twenty, and that was the Cheerios and vinegar incident.

By the time I was seven I wasn’t cute enough to show off anymore and my mother wasn’t as pretty. She was skinny, too skinny, and pale, and had scabby lesions on her cheeks and at the edges of her mouth. She twitched and scratched and her eyes were sunk in dark hollows. Grandma was worried and kind of afraid of her, mostly because she would show up angry and tear through the house saying things like
Where’s the money, Mom? I know it’s here. You’re too cheap to have spent it all. Daddy wanted me to have it, now where’s the goddamn money?!

I would hide under the dining room table and Grandma would watch as my mother rifled through her jewelry box taking whatever she wanted, while Candy paced and said things like
Didn’t you used to have a sapphire ring, Mrs. Huff ? Yeah, Mr. Huff gave it to you after he slept with that barmaid over at the Red Fox, remember? Now where did that go?
and making everything worse.

It was then, watching Grandma cry and sit, helpless as they stole all her stuff that I hated my mother, hated her and her ugly friend with her pale, watery eyes, tiny, yellow teeth and too-wide gums, hated that she and Candy were always together, that when she smiled and laughed it was always with Candy and never with me, and that she never talked to me unless she had to.

I hated that she blew in like a bad storm, wreaked havoc, and then blew out again, leaving a trail of wreckage in her wake. And sometimes I hated Grandma, too, for not being strong enough to stop her.

When I was almost eight, Mrs. Carroll the neighbor came to school and picked me up in the middle of the day. She told me Grandma Lucy had passed away in an accident, that she had fallen down and hit her head on the cement back-porch step sometime that morning, that my mother and Candy had dropped in and found her, and that they were very upset and waiting for me at home right now.

And so my mother inherited everything, including me, and that was how we all came to live together in the old blue house.

I’M COLD AND TIRED, AND THE
bank seems steeper now and more slippery, but thanks to Candy pitching my stuff over the edge, I have to climb up it again to make another distress signal. It’s slow, hard going but I finally claw my way back to the top and drag the canvas bag into place at the edge of the snowy tracks. I don’t know if my ruby-blazer signal is going to work anymore because Candy’s tire tracks have crisscrossed and confused the ones going over the bank, making them way less noticeable.

She’d better call someone.

She really better or I don’t know what I’m going to do.

I look up and down the curving road.

No headlights, just darkness.

“Come on,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around myself. “Come
on,
somebody.” My fingers are numb inside Harlow’s gloves and my feet feel like chunks of frozen meat. How long am I supposed to stand out here waiting?

I glance back at the truck. See the ghostly outline of Evan’s face through the shattered window. I can’t tell if he’s watching me or has passed out, but I wave anyway.

I wait, but he doesn’t wave back.

That’s not good.

I’m going to have to get into that truck and see if I can find his cell phone. Fast.

I crouch and fumble the ruby blazer back through the bag’s handles. Spread it out to make it more noticeable. Is this futile? I don’t know.

Maybe I should have just gone with her. Candy is petty and spiteful and a little nuts. Not a good enemy to have.

She could drive all the way back to the hospital without even trying to call anyone for help, and later just say she didn’t have any cell service. She would do that, too, just to show me what happens when I cross her.

Candy’s a Fee, from the back mountain ridge Fees, and they’ll tell you themselves that they’re a really badass crew. They hate the government, the rich, minorities, foreigners, gays—well, unless they’re porn star Barbie-doll lesbians—vegetarians, suits, feminists, yuppies, cops, seat belts, and speed limits. They used to run a pretty profitable still but upgraded to a meth lab that blew up and left Candy’s daddy, who was fresh out of prison and still learning the trade, blinded and burned over the top half of his body.

And rearrested, and sent back to prison.

Within a month Candy’s brothers had stepped into the breach and rebuilt the lab.

My mother was their first customer.

There isn’t an animal in these woods the Fees haven’t poached, a bar in the county they haven’t fought in, and a law they haven’t broken. The men breed early and often, and Candy is the lone sister in a family of thirteen mean, hardscrabble, ridge-running brothers who walk through the world with fists clenched, chips on their shoulders, and nothing to lose.

“Hey . . .”

I blink and squint down at the truck.

Evan gives a slow wave, and I notice he’s wearing a watch.

“What time is it?” I call, holding up my own wrist.

He lowers his head. Shakes his wrist. “I don’t know. It stopped at twenty of three.”

Damn. Now I
have
to find his cell phone. “I’m coming,” I call and go back down over the edge of the icy bank. I’m moving too fast and slip near the bottom, sliding the last ten feet and almost going right under the truck. Instead, my shoulders hit the front tire and I grab on, haul myself up, panting, and step closer to the shattered driver’s window. “Well, that’s one way of getting back down here,” I mutter, brushing the snow off my jeans. “Okay, now I need to come in and look for your phone. Can you slide over to the passenger seat?”

“Uh, let me see,” he says slowly, and shaking, tries to shift by bracing the hand with the broken fingers against the wheel. “Oh, shit,” he groans, going white and slumping back in his seat. “No. God, this sucks.”

“Can you do it without using your hand?” I say.

“It was my knee,” he mumbles, eyes closed and grimacing. “I can’t move it.”

“All right, let me think,” I say, walking around the front of the truck just to make sure what I suspect is true. Although one of the trunks looks cracked, the pine trees on the passenger side are the only things holding the truck in place. They’re white pines, notorious for being soft and dropping limbs but without them he’d have careened all the way down the steep bank to the bottom of the valley. They’d saved him, but now they also make it impossible to gain access to the passenger door.

But I really need to get into that truck, first to make sure he isn’t bleeding to death or anything, second to find the cell phone and pray it works, and third because I’m so cold my knees are shaking and—

“Evan,” I say, walking around the driver’s side to the back-cab window. “This is a slider, right? I can get in through here.” Excited now, I grab the side of the truck, step up on the tire, and haul myself over into the snowy bed. Examine the sliding window. “It’s locked,” I say, tapping on the glass. “Can you get it?”

“Let me try.” He twists slightly, reaches his good hand back and fumbles with the lock. “Okay,” he gasps, slumping in his seat.

“Okay.” I pull off my gloves, wedge my numb fingers in the tiny crack, and slide open the window. “Wow,” I say, looking at the size of the hole. “This is gonna be a close one.” I drop my gloves onto the passenger seat, then strip off my coat and stuff that through, too. Stick one leg through the gap, then the other. Next my hips, which are the tightest fit. I scrape my backbone sliding in but I’m so cold I hardly even feel it. I slide the window closed, tug my coat out from under me, and, shivering, yank it on. “Whew.” Turn to look at him and find him looking at me.

“You made it,” he says.

“I did,” I say and feel really bad because one side of his face is normal looking, dark eyed and with a nice mouth that seems made to smile, but the other side is ravaged, bloody and swollen. The broken fingers on his hand are horrible, and there’s blood soaking through the knee of his jeans. “I’m really sorry about this.”

“Yeah, well . . .” He shrugs and stares out the windshield. “I just hope that lady made the call.” He glances back at me. “I couldn’t hear everything you guys were saying, but she wanted you to go with her, didn’t she?”

I nod.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” he says. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” I don’t know what else to say or do so I just sit there like an idiot, self-consciously rubbing my fingers to work the cold out of them and flicking my damp, snow-tangled hair from my face. The truck smells like oil, old leather, and warm pennies, which might be the scent of his blood spattered across the dashboard and the fractured driver’s window.

“So uh, where were you going, anyway?” Evan says finally, breaking the silence. “I mean it’s a bad night to be out walking.”

This is one question I really don’t want to answer. “I was, um . . . oh, wait. I have to find your cell!” I bend and run my hands along the truck floor until I find it. “Here. Now, please let there be coverage.” Avoiding his gaze, I punch in 911 and wait.

Nothing.

Hang up, do it again.

The screen says
SEARCHING FOR SERVICE
.

I hold my breath.

The screen says
SERVICE NOT AVAILABLE.

“Oh, come on,” I mutter, leaning forward, setting the phone on the dashboard and trying again. “I thought 911 was always supposed to go through on these things!”

The call does not connect.

“I can’t believe this,” I say, sitting back in frustration.

“I can,” he says, and the good corner of his mouth twitches into a brief, wry smile.

Oh. I was right. It
is
a great half smile, and I can’t help smiling back. “Stupid question, but how do you feel?”

“Like shit,” he says, tilting his head back against the seat and closing his eyes. “You wouldn’t happen to have an aspirin or anything, would you?”

“No,” I say regretfully, thinking how bizarre it is that less than two weeks ago I had over a hundred of my mother’s Vicodin in my purse and no good use for them, and now when there
is
a good use for one, I have nothing.

“Not even, like, a Midol?” he says.

“No,” I say, shaking my head.

“Really? I thought all girls carried that stuff.”

I shrug because what am I going to say; that Midol costs money I don’t have, so I just deal with it? That I have some weird, deep-rooted horror of taking pills, any pills, even vitamins, because I don’t know what’s in them? That watching my mother and Candy swallow handfuls of pills and still crave more has cured me of reaching for any of it, even aspirin?

“Sorry,” I say.

“It’s all right, don’t worry about it,” he says, shifting slightly and grimacing. “I just have to remember not to move.”

I study him for a moment, taking in the undamaged side of his profile, his olive green jacket with the brown leather collar, the straight, longish brown hair tucked behind his ears, and the haze of stubble on his chin. His jaw is tight and his breathing is heavy, but I think it’s more from pain than anger and suddenly, it seems very important to find out if I’m right. “You know, you’re being really good about this.”

He glances over. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you could be all pissed off and yelling or freaking out or, like, hating me or something . . .” I shake my head and gaze out into the swirling snow. “You do have that right.”

“Why? I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy about totaling my truck and screwing up my knee—it hurts like a bitch—but getting all pissed off isn’t gonna change anything. What was I going to do, hit you? It was an accident. I just hope this baby can be salvaged.” He reaches out with his good hand and pats the truck’s steering wheel. “Glad my insurance is paid up.”

“Yeah,” I say huskily because I was right, he
is
calm and kind and reminding me of someone I used to know, someone who hurts my heart just to think about.

He glances over at me. “So, you work down at the Candlelight, right? What’s your name?”

“Sayre,” I say, surprised. “You eat there?”

“Sometimes,” he says, closing his eyes again. “Sorry, but my knee is killing me.”

“Is it broken?” I ask.

“Feels like it,” he says. “Something’s all torn up in there.”

“Do you want to try to stretch it out? You could lay it across my lap,” I say.

He shakes his head, wincing at the movement.

“All right,” I say, trying to think. What should I be doing to help him?

I don’t know.

But I
need
to know.

Think, Sayre.

The truck lights are on but the engine’s dead, so we have no heat.

Harlow is two miles away and I could go back and get him but he has no phone and once we’re tucked up in the woods at his place, there’s even less chance of EMS finding us.

We could sit here and blow the horn until it dies, and hope someone hears it.

We could light the woods on fire and hope someone sees it and responds before it roasts us.

I could go back up on the road and try the cell again. Or light a fire in the middle of it, if he has any matches. That would make someone stop. Of course all the wood is cold and wet, and even if I manage to get a little fire going the wind is still wicked . . .

Or
I could go throw wood in the road. Pieces big enough to make someone stop, and once they do, we can blow the horn and flash the lights and yell for help.

That might actually work.

“I have to go back outside,” I say, putting his cell phone in my coat pocket. “Do you want me to bring in some snow for your knee, to maybe numb it?”

“Not yet,” he mumbles without opening his eyes. “I can deal as long as I don’t move.”

“Okay.”

Slithering out the slider window is easier than climbing in, and I’m back on the ground and zipped into my coat in a heartbeat, revved with a fierce determination to help him, to get back up that damn bank and block the whole road if I have to.

I tug on my gloves. Fight my way to the top of the steep, slippery slope and crawl out onto the road, panting. Stagger to my feet.

Wood. I need to find wood.

But first, I try the phone.

Still no service.

“Cancel
that
contract,” I mutter, shoving it back in my pocket and crossing to the mountain side of the road where there’s a rotten log frozen to the ground. I push, pull, and kick at it, but it won’t budge. “Good, then stay there,” I mutter, sweating, and move on to a big branch farther up the bend. This one is just lying there so I grab the thick part and drag it back, leaving it right in the lane by the tire tracks, near my bag. Trudge up and down the edges of the road, checking the cell, shoving it back in my pocket and prying loose as many branches and limbs from downed trees as I can, feeling shots of blunted pain as my nails are bent backward and knowing that when my fingers finally thaw again they’re going to hurt bad, rolling rotted logs and dragging chunks of wood onto the pavement, laying it all out there in plain view where it can’t be missed, can’t be passed by, can’t be ignored.

Ending up with a roadblock that nobody could fail to stop for.

I plop down, chest heaving, thirsty, exhausted, and sweating, on the side of the road. Scoop up a clean handful of snow and eat it, then another.

It’s got to be at least four o’clock by now.

So much for Candy calling the ambulance.

I wonder what she told my mother when she went back to the hospital without me.

She would never tell her the truth, especially if it made her look bad. No, what she probably said was
I found that little bitch of yours on the side of the road with Ben Greenwood’s boy, and she said she wouldn’t come without him, so I left her there.

“Great,” I mutter, shaking my head and checking the cell coverage one last time.

Nothing.

Okay, then.

The factory has already changed shifts and the bars are closed. Tractor trailers roll all night long to move factory product, but I have no idea if they’d take this steep, winding road in this kind of weather. And it’s not that I haven’t been out on these roads in the wee hours with my mother and whoever’s car we’re in, with the bleary-eyed driver creeping along trying not to get busted for drunk driving, and me, at thirteen, sitting right there next to him to catch the wheel in case he starts weaving off the road, but that was usually on a weekend.