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Authors: Laura Wiess

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BOOK: Ordinary Beauty
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Chapter 10

“MY KNEE,” HE GRINDS OUT. “JESUS,
Sayre, don’t move! My knee . . . oh
God.
” He slams his good hand into the dashboard and tries to push himself up off me. His face is pale and the veins in his neck are corded with the effort. “Are we going over?”

“I hope not,” I mumble from beneath his jacket, which is covering half of my face. “But I think it’s time to get out of here, just in case.” A curious calm has come over me, like everything bad that I’ve ever been afraid of is finally happening and I’m stuck right here in the middle of it again . . . only this time all that fear has somehow turned into white noise because when the worst actually happens, then there’s nothing left to be afraid of, is there?

Or maybe I’m just in shock. That’s also a possibility.

Moving carefully, I push his jacket off my face so I can breathe again.

“I can’t move without twisting my knee,” he says in a strained voice, trying to keep himself propped up off me with only one hand. “I can’t do it, Sayre, I’ll pass out or really screw it up and—”

“We’re not going to screw it up,” I say, touching his arm to get him to pay attention. “Listen. Your good leg is braced, right? Now, I’m going to put my hands here,” I slide the other one up and flatten them both against his chest, “and I’m not going to move anything but my arms, okay? When you’re ready, I’m going to push you up and back real slow, and when you want me to stop I will. I’m not going to move my legs. I’m not gonna bump your knee.” I hold his dark gaze, keeping mine steady. “Okay? Think you can do it?”

“I don’t know,” he says, the hint of panic still in his voice.

“You can,” I say calmly, as his heart races beneath my hand. “We’ll just go easy. Ready?”

He takes a deep breath and exhales. “Shit. All right.”

“I’m gonna start to push,” I say and begin to straighten my arms. He’s heavy and I’m suddenly grateful for carrying all those trays stacked with dirty dishes. “So far, so good?”

“Yeah,” he grunts, jaw clenched. “Keep going.”

I push some more and he braces his good hand against the back of the seat, and hooks the forearm of his bad hand around the steering wheel. He’s sweating, muttering under his breath, and my arms are beginning to tremble because they’re not fully extended yet and I can’t lock my elbows until he—

“Oh Christ, my knee, stop,” he blurts out.

“I don’t think I can,” I say. “You’ve got to keep going, Evan. Sit up!”

And with a Herculean effort he does, pulling himself back into the driver’s seat and slumping against the door. I see his shattered knee bump the steering wheel, hear his swift, indrawn breath and I quick sit up, too, slide open the cab window, and shimmy up and out.

I pull myself over the high side of the dangerously tilted bed to the snowy ground, and reach for the driver’s door. Yank it open, completely unprepared for Evan’s wild yelp and then he comes falling out at me backward, and I try to catch him but he’s panicked, thrashing and heavy, so I can only grab him around the waist as his bad knee whacks the side of the truck, as he slides all the way out and we both go down.

Chapter 11

“EVAN?” I SQUIRM OUT FROM UNDER
him. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think—”

He’s unconscious, and his leg is lying at a hideous angle.

“Okay, oh God, that’s bad, that’s really bad,” I whimper, leaning over him, my hands fluttering over his knee but too terrified to touch it, so instead smoothing the blood-matted hair off his forehead. The cut is nasty, puffy and angry looking, but it’s still not as bad as that grotesque, swollen knee. “Evan? Come on, no sleeping. I need you. You have to fix your leg. I really don’t think it should be crooked like that. Wake up.” I pat his cheek over and over, and finally stop, my fingertips resting on his skin. “No, you know what? It’s all right. Better you don’t wake up until I figure out what I’m going to do with you.” I look around, frantic because we’re out in the snow and the wind, on the ground with the teetering truck right next to us, and we have no blankets and he can’t climb but he can’t just lie out here or he’ll freeze to death.

I look up at the truck. It’s tilted bad but—

Lights sweep the trees in front of me.

Headlights.

My heart leaps and I scrabble around on my knees and look up the bank.

It’s the plow truck, slowing because of the branches in the road, and with a hoarse, desperate animal sound I push myself up and start waving my arms and shouting, “Help! Help! Down here! Help!” I reach up into the truck, grab the steering wheel and lay on the horn. The blare splits the night, splits my skull, and down on the ground Evan shifts and groans but I keep it going, keep shouting until the truck stops. I can hear the rumbling idle and it’s the most beautiful sound in the world. “Down here! Help! Please, help us!”

And then a big, husky figure appears at the edge of the road and I let off the horn in time to hear the guy say,
Sweet Mother of God.
I run out next to Evan’s still form and yell, “He’s hurt! We need to get to the hospital! Please don’t leave us here!”

“Stay right there,” the man says and starts down the bank. “I’m coming.”

“Oh, thank you,” I say, only it comes out like a prayer and that’s when I realize I’m laughing and babbling and the relief is so huge it makes my head spin.

“What’s wrong with him?” the guy asks, picking his way carefully down the slope.

“He might have a concussion and a shattered knee and broken fingers but I don’t know if that’s all,” I say, sinking down in the snow next to Evan and cradling his cold, limp good hand between mine. “He just fell out of the truck and passed out.”

“Good,” the guy says, striding the last few feet and crouching next to us, “because he isn’t going to like this part at all.” He slides his beefy arms under Evan’s back and the curve of his knees, and ignoring my frantic warnings, grunts and rises, lifting him like he’s nothing more than a little kid. “You go on up ahead of me.”

“Okay, okay,” I say, and reach into the truck, grab the keys, slam the door, and start up the bank. “I know you. You’re Red Ganzler, right?” I would recognize him anywhere, partly because we’ve met before and partly because he looks like a lumberjack with his buffalo plaid jacket, fuzzy orange beard, and huge, meaty hands. But he’s not a lumberjack, he’s on the township road department and is the youth minister over at the Methodist Church, a fact my mother always thought was a real hoot, seeing as how he was a stoner in high school and the first thing he did when he got back from fighting in Iraq was to go on a five-day bender, the highlight of which was his skinny-dipping at noon in the creek off the Main Street Bridge, singing “California Girls” at the top of his lungs and unabashedly sloshing out of the water when the openly amused police showed up.

“Yeah, that’s me,” he says, huffing along behind me. “Listen, when you get up to the truck, clear off the backseat so I can lay him down.”

“Okay,” I say, trying to find the best footholds because Red has no free hand and if he slides backward or falls . . . “Be careful here. It’s really slippery.” I stop, watching him struggle, and when he gets close I grab his arm and try to help pull him along.

“Keep going, I’m all right,” he says, glancing at me.

“Okay.” I scramble the rest of the way up the bank and run to the truck, yank open the back door and with one sweep shove the crushed cigarette packs, empty Yoo-Hoo bottles, magazines, Yodels wrappers, old coffee cups, and newspapers down off the seat and onto the floor.

“Watch out now,” he says, coming up behind me.

I dart around the other side of the truck, open the back door, and climb in. Red leans over and eases the top half of Evan onto the seat. I wedge my hands under Evan’s armpits and pull until he’s as far in as he can get.

“I hate to do this,” Red says, grimacing and shaking his head, “but I’m gonna have to bend his knees to shut the door.”

“No, wait,” I say and making sure his head is still far enough in the truck, quick climb in and shut my door. “Here,” I say, shrugging out of my jacket, wadding it up, and sticking it against the door. “Now let me see if I can pull him higher.”

“No, you’ll hurt yourself,” he says. “I’ll do it.” He climbs into the back of the truck as I scramble between the front seats and plop into the passenger side. Red takes hold of Evan and, grunting with effort, slides him up until he’s propped against my coat and both of his legs are stretched out on the seat. “There.” Red shuts the door, then comes around and climbs back into the driver’s seat. He picks up the township walkie-talkie and tells them he’s coming in and taking two kids from an accident scene to the hospital. Waits until he gets confirmation and then says, “Now let’s get moving.”

“Wait!” I cry as he shifts gears and we creep closer to the roadblock. “My stuff!” I throw open the door and slide out, run to where my bags and my ruby velvet blazer still sit, grab them, and am scrambling back up into the truck before the snow starts to sting my bare hands. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. We still have to get down there in one piece.” He studies my face for a moment, recognition dawning in his eyes. “Sayre, right? Okay. I knew I knew you. You all right?”

“Yeah, just freezing,” I say, shoving the bag and purse down by my feet but keeping the blazer on my lap. The lacy, fragile snowflakes are already melting and leaving glistening, tearlike droplets on the worn velvet. I brush them away before they soak in.

“Well, we can fix that,” he says and turns up the heat. Shifts the truck back into gear, and lowers the plow. “Did you make that roadblock?”

“Mm-hmm,” I say, holding my hands out in front of the heating vent. “We needed to make someone slow down long enough to see us.”

“Smart,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say as the truck surges forward and all that debris I’d dragged out into the open is enveloped by a rising mountain of snow and swept aside in one steady push.

Without Grandma Lucy

SOMETHING SET MY MOTHER OFF TWO
days after Grandma Lucy was buried, but I didn’t know whether it was discovering the bowl of leftover ambrosia salad in the refrigerator, or the “Children Learn What They Live” poem by Dorothy Law Nolte I’d brought home from Sunday school months ago and posted on the refrigerator with little fruit magnets.

It didn’t really matter, as the end result was the same.

“Now what the hell is this shit?” my mother said, the covered bowl in her hand, the poem plastered in front of her on the fridge door.

I was sitting in my chair at the kitchen table because it was lunchtime, I wasn’t even eight years old yet, and I guess I still thought someone was going to feed me.

“‘If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn,’” my mother read, and her lip curled in scornful amusement. “Oh, for . . . Hey, Candy, did you know that if a child lives with hostility, he learns to fight? And if he lives with fear, he learns to be apprehensive?”

Candy pushed herself up off the couch and wandered into the room holding a can of Bud. “Yeah, so?”

“Wait, there’s more,” my mother said in a false perky voice and held up a finger. “ ‘If a child lives with encouragement, he learns to be confident, and if he lives with acceptance,’ guess what?”

“What?” Candy said, smirking.

“He learns to
love,
” my mother cooed, and with a sharp snort, pulled the poem off the fridge, scattering magnets all over the floor. “If this is the kind of artsy-fartsy bullshit my mother’s been feeding you all this time then you’re gonna be in for a really rude awakening, kid,” she said, glancing at me. “Welcome to real life.”

“That’s from Sunday school,” I whispered.

“What?” my mother snapped.

I could feel the tears gathering in my eyes because she’d crumpled up my paper and now there were banana and apple and grape magnets all over the floor. Candy was wearing Grandma Lucy’s pink flowered bathrobe and had already spilled beer down the front of it and that was the last present Grandpa ever gave her and now it was ruined. The sink was full of empty, smelly, crusted casserole dishes from all the neighbors and no one was washing them or making me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich cut into triangles with potato chips and pickles and that’s what I
always
had on Thursday, but no more, no more, just like no more good night kisses or clean clothes left folded on my bed or Cricket the parakeet because no one remembered to give him water, so he died of thirst on the bottom of his cage with his tiny, gentle feet curled into clawed fists, and instead of letting me say a prayer and bury him, my mother just took his body and tossed it into the garbage. “Sunday school,” I said again, sniffling and not much louder than the first time.

“Jesus Christ, don’t you ever do anything but cry?” my mother said, tossing the poem onto the counter, setting down the covered bowl, and peeling back the tinfoil. She stared at the ambrosia salad for a moment too long and then with one fierce motion the bowl went flying across the kitchen past Candy and hit the wall, splattering mushy pineapple and marshmallows and maraschino cherries and Cool Whip everywhere, knocking Grandma’s clock to the floor, and breaking the bowl in two. “You know, I’ve always hated that shit,” my mother said into the resounding silence, and started to laugh.

Candy joined her.

I sat frozen and aghast, barely breathing, nose running and tears pouring down my face.

“There she goes again,” Candy said, snickering and jerking a thumb in my direction.

But instead of my mother laughing at me, too, my tears made her mad. Really mad because her face grew hard and her gaze cold and in a low, threatening voice she said, “Stop it right now. I mean it.”

But I couldn’t because the sorrow was too big, and it overwhelmed me. I was just beginning to understand that Grandma Lucy really
was
dead and nothing would ever be the same again, that the solid, familiar ground had crumbled and fallen away, leaving me in alien terrain, a rough and treacherous landscape with no familiar paths.

“Stop it,” she said angrily. “I’m warning you, Sayre. Stop crying or I swear to God I’ll
really
give you something to cry about.”

That just scared me more, and sobbing, I moaned, “I want Grandma!”

She crossed the kitchen and had hold of me in a flash, her fingers digging into my arm, yanking me out of the chair with a jerk that snapped my head back and stole my breath, and started spanking me. “What did I just tell you? What did I tell you, huh? You think because my mother never spanked you that I’m not going to? You think you don’t have to listen to me? If you want to cry, I’ll give you a
real
reason to cry!”

“No, don’t, let me go,” I howled, shocked, twisting and squirming in her grasp, which only made her hit me harder. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, ow, Mommy, I’m sorry, I’ll listen, I promise, owww.”

“Then next time I tell you to do something, you’d better do it,” she ground out, releasing me and walking back to the fridge. “Now
shut up.

I collapsed on the floor, gasping, my butt burning and stinging, my hair hanging damp and scraggly in front of my eyes, nose running, and my mind, oh my mind, was like a crazed, panicked animal darting, frantic, in a hundred different directions, wounded and searching desperately for safety.

“There’s nothing to eat in this goddamn house,” my mother said, slamming the fridge door with disgust and glancing at Candy. “Want McDonald’s?”

“Sure,” she said, heading for the stairs. “Give me five minutes to change.”

I lifted my head, breath hitching, and swiped the hair from my face.

“Not you,” my mother said, giving me a look. “I want this mess cleaned up by the time we get back. And don’t you
dare
cry or you’ll be punished even longer,” she added, and grabbing her purse, she walked out.

I stayed where I was until I heard Candy go, too, and the car leaving the driveway, then burst into a fresh storm of weeping, and ran upstairs. I passed my mother’s room, the guest room where Candy was staying, and my room because the one I really needed to be in was Grandma’s.

I opened the door, intending to throw myself on the bed and beg God to send her back, but the sight stopped me cold.

The room had been ransacked, the bureau drawers emptied on the bed, the jewelry boxes opened, the books pulled from the bookcase. Grandma Lucy’s hope chest was open and all the old, delicate, handmade doilies she’d inherited from her mother were flung aside in piles. Her wedding veil was lying on the floor. The pictures of Grandpa and me on her night table had been turned facedown and instead of the room smelling like her lily of the valley cologne, it smelled like sweat, stale beer, and smoke.

“Oh no, Grandma,” I whispered, sniffling and patting my arm. “Oh no.”

I knew they’d been looking for money because that was all my mother had talked about since Grandma died. The thing was, I knew where Grandma Lucy had hidden some of her dollars because she’d shown me on purpose, and said it was our money, hers and mine only, and never to tell anyone about it, especially my mother.

I wondered if they’d found her secret hiding place.

I was afraid to go in and look, though, afraid they would somehow know I’d been in there, like my footprints would glow, telltale, on the carpet or my fingerprints on the doorknob or even worse, on the old mahogany bedpost knob that secretly unscrewed and had just enough room inside the hollow post to harbor a small roll of cash.

So I never looked, afraid I would somehow give the secret away, and ten days later I came home from school to see two guys with a big box truck carrying the mahogany bed out the door because my mother had sold it, along with the matching bureaus and the dining room set, all antique family heirlooms.

My mother was in the house, drunk and livid, because she’d finished going through Grandma’s desk and had then gone down to the bank, where she’d discovered that Grandpa had lost most of his investments in one of the big banking scandals. The only funds left were a couple of small IRAs, Grandma’s checking and savings accounts, and a savings account she’d started for me when I was born, which my mother promptly withdrew the money from and spent.

Home turned into an angry, scary place.

When Grandma was alive, I drew bright pictures of the two of us and Cricket the parakeet. Wore shiny pink rubber boots with daisies on them when it rained and had Hello Kitty pajamas. I took chewable vitamins every morning with my scrambled eggs and toast, and when I got sick she tucked me in under the prettiest crocheted afghan and fed me ginger ale and chicken noodle soup. I went to Methodist Sunday school and sang “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” played with Mrs. Carroll’s nieces whenever they came to visit, learned my ABCs, and always had bedtime stories. We watched cartoons and took the bus to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes at Christmas. We went to the library every Friday night, then picked up Chinese food, went home, and curled up with our dinner and our exciting new books.

When she died, it wasn’t just her physical presence that ended, but I didn’t understand that at first. I had never gone without food or heat, clean clothes, or a set bedtime before, never even realized those things could stop, so I guess I thought that when my mother came back to the blue house to live, I would still have all those things, just not Grandma.

No one explained that it wasn’t going to be that way, and so each unhappy shock—and there were dozens—was like a punch in the chest, leaving me aching, bewildered, and lost as to what to do next.

No one did anything for me, with me, or because of me anymore. I would be right in the room and it was like I wasn’t even there. No matter the topic, the conversation wouldn’t change, nor would the activity around me, which was usually my mother, Candy, and a bunch of guys doing stuff I’d never seen before.

I saw Candy grind a cigarette out on my grandmother’s living room rug, take off everything but her thong, and dance on the coffee table, shaking all her lumpy flab and making some pimply guy kiss the mouse tattoo high on the inside of her wobbly thigh. I saw my mother lick the end of a needle before she stuck it in her arm, saw the needle go red with her own blood and then saw her lick the spot on her skin after she pulled it out. I saw screaming fights, naked people having sex on TV, Grandma’s picture torn in half, and Candy slapping my mother, hard, across the face when she had passed out and wouldn’t wake up.

The atmosphere was sharp, driven, and erratic now, and all I could do was swallow my fear and stay quiet in the background because I never knew what would get me in trouble. Sometimes it didn’t take more than just the sight of me to ruin my mother’s good mood and make me feel as sorry that I’d been born as she was. I started taking hot baths when everyone had gone out, not only because I always felt dirty but because the water was soothing and gentle, a place of warmth and peace.

There was no schedule anymore, no one helping me with my homework or making breakfast or even being around in the morning. I was on my own, so I started trying to figure out how to do it all for myself.

I kept going to school, most mornings hungry, sometimes wearing the same clothes as the day before and without brushing my hair or my teeth because I would wake up late, miss the bus, and have to run just to make it before the late bell. I was always tired, so it was hard to concentrate, and I started getting Ds in everything, even reading and penmanship.

Did anyone notice how badly I was falling apart, that I trudged around disheveled and neglected and lonely, or did they chalk it up to a little girl mourning her grandmother? I don’t know, but some of the teachers seemed kinder and gave me extra help, which was nice because going back to the blue house and being ignored every day was hell.

No one cut the grass, trimmed the hedges, or shoveled the sidewalk when it snowed. No one cooked, cleaned, did laundry, or shopped for food. No one paid the bills until the water and electricity were cut off, and then swearing and furious, my mother would storm down to the local office and throw cash at them, cash she had from selling all the antique furniture and emptying Grandma’s bank accounts. No one answered the phone when it rang because everyone knew it was either bill collectors or local busybodies. All of my mother’s friends had her disposable cell phone number.

No one did much but talk, laugh, drink, fight, get high, get paranoid, hallucinate, sell more of Grandma’s stuff, and have guys sleep over in their bedrooms. I discovered the sleeping-over part for the first time one morning before school when I was in the bathroom peeing, yawning and rubbing the sleep from my eyes when the door swung open and some tall, skinny, naked, hairy guy walked right in on me. I stared at him, frozen and mortified, and he peered back at me sitting there, mumbled, “Yo, sorry,” and backed out again, leaving the door open behind him.

I saw him naked again, at least four more times, because he was Candy’s boyfriend and he had moved into her room with her. His name was Sims and he didn’t work, but Candy did down at the hardware store, and so she paid his rent to my mother, too.

He was always there when I got home from school, sometimes just him and my mother, sometimes them and other stragglers looking to party, and he always smiled and said hi. A couple of times he brought me back food when everyone went out to McDonald’s, and sometimes when I got home from school my mother would be passed out on the couch but he’d be awake, and we’d go sit on the porch and he would ask me things about school and my lack of friends. I would answer, shyly at first but then eagerly because he was doing what Grandma Lucy used to do, sit with me for a while, ask questions, and be interested in whatever I had to say. I was hungry, no,
starving
for someone to care and he was there with attention, smiles, and an occasional hug.

He talked about himself, too. He said he had a little three-year-old daughter who lived in Utah but her mother was a bitch and so he hardly ever saw her. He said he missed her a lot, and hanging out with me made him feel better. He looked so sad that on impulse I leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek, and then he hugged me and told me I was a smart, beautiful girl and if it was up to him, I would live like a princess and have everything I ever wanted.

BOOK: Ordinary Beauty
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