The Girl from Charnelle (30 page)

Thrumming

I
t was a Saturday night in early August, and Laura baked pork chops and fried potatoes, her father's favorite meal. Manny was camping with his buddies that weekend, so she made less than usual, just enough for her father, Gene, Rich, and herself. As she scooped out the last batch of potatoes, the grease popping and splattering in the pan, her father waltzed into the kitchen, smelling of Old Spice and hair oil, dressed up in his red short-sleeved, snap-button shirt, jeans, and stitched boots.

“Mmmm-mmm,” he said and then leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “I'm starving.”

“When will you be back?” she asked.

“I don't know. Late, probably.”

“What band is playing?”

“I don't know. The Pick Wickers, maybe.”

She nodded.

Gene and Rich chattered through dinner, and her father told them jokes.
They kept laughing and spluttering with their mouths full. She watched silently.

He hadn't been dancing in a long time. She remembered that he used to take her mother dancing years ago. But he'd gone out only a couple of times in the last few weeks—for drinks at the Armory with his welding buddies and fishing once with the Cransburgh brothers. She wanted to believe his going out was a good sign—that he was returning to his old self, back to his normal life, that he could still find ways to enjoy himself even though her mother had disappeared less than three months ago. But she also felt uneasy whenever he left the house. She couldn't shake the unspoken belief that he was somehow responsible for her mother's leaving. He'd done something to drive her away, maybe they all had, but he seemed more responsible than the rest of them because he was her husband and their father, and it was too soon (wasn't it?) to be having a good time.

A shameful heat spread up her neck and over her chin and cheeks. She was as bad as those deacons at the church where they used to attend. It wasn't fair to her father, not at all. He was the one still here, taking care of them. Not her mother.
She
had disappeared. Not him. Right?

“I don't see why we have to go over to Mrs. Ambling's,” she said.

“I told you, I don't know when I'll be back. I may play some cards after.”

“I always watch the boys anyway. Why not tonight?”

“I just don't feel right you being here alone at night without me or Manny.”

“I'm not a kid,” she said. “Manny's just a year older, and you let him do anything he wants.”

She didn't like being treated like the younger boys. Yet she also felt somewhat relieved because she hadn't been in the house at night without her father or Manny since her mother had left, and she was a little afraid. She also wondered if he thought she needed watching. Maybe because Gloria had eloped and her mother had left a year later, he wasn't going to take any chances with the last female in the house.

“We already settled this, Laura,” he said. “You and the boys clean up, then go on over. I'll get you in the morning.”

“Yes, sir,” she said obediently.

“You mind your sister now. You hear?”

“Yes, sir,” Gene said.

“And be good for Mrs. Ambling.”

Rich had potatoes and ketchup in his mouth, but he nodded.

While they finished their meals, she started clearing the table. Her father
suddenly stood up and sang “Your Cheatin' Heart,” hamming it up until Rich and Gene spluttered again with laughter.

“Hey, good-lookin', whatcha got cookin'?”

He pulled her away from the sink, hugging her close to him, and they twirled quickly on the small kitchen floor.

“Sing for me, boys!”

Gene and Rich sang along and pounded the table. She and her father two-stepped, ended with an extravagant twirl, and then he held her close and dipped her dramatically like Fred Astaire did with Ginger Rogers. Gene and Rich cheered. She laughed and tried to push him away, but he picked her up and twirled her around the kitchen once again, almost knocking over the skillet full of still-warm grease. When he put her down, little sweat beads trickled along both their hairlines. It was hot outside, and despite the windows being open, it seemed even hotter in the kitchen.

He sat down. “Whoa! I need some more tea. Your sister's done wore me out.”

He poured himself another tall glass from the pitcher on the table, and they all watched him lift his head and the tea drain down his throat, his big Adam's apple bobbing. When he finished, he shook his head vigorously a couple of times, which made the boys laugh but sent a dark, cold shiver across the back of Laura's neck. The image reminded her, for some reason, of Greta and her puppies.

He reached out his hand to her, and she took it, and he gently pulled her into his lap and said, “Boys, your sister is our little sweetie. Don't you ever forget it.”

He nuzzled his clean-shaven chin into her throat and kissed her cheek. It felt rough. Quickly he was up, putting on his watch, patting the boys' heads. Then he was gone.

Watching him rumble down the road in his truck, leaving a gray-white plume of dust behind him, she felt empty. The word
forlorn
popped into her head.

“Gene, why don't you do the dishes.”

“It ain't my turn.”

“I don't care,” she snapped. “Just do it.”

On the front porch, she sat in the metal chair her father had welded and listened to the loud buzzing of the cicadas. The evening sun was still hot and bright. She looked at the hole where their old oak tree had been uprooted after it had been struck by lightning the day before her mother disappeared. Her father had not refilled the hole, and it looked like a robbed grave.

She went back inside and helped Gene dry the plates. The three of them went to the backyard, and Rich played in the sandbox and on the swing while she and Gene pulled the laundry off the line.

She checked Fay's food bowl. Still full. The dog hadn't eaten much in the past few months. Although her father said it was because of the heat more than anything else, Laura still believed that it was because of what happened with Greta, followed by the disappearance of their mother. He said that was foolishness. She stroked Fay's side and neck and rubbed her belly. Despite what her father said, she knew why Fay was upset.

 

She helped bathe Rich, and they all grabbed their pillows and sleeping bags and went next door. Mrs. Ambling answered the door in her nightgown. Her face looked blotchy, her eyes watery, her nose red and runny. She had a tissue in her hand.

“Oh, Lord,” she said. “I meant to call. I took some medicine, and it's made me a little dopey.”

“What's wrong?” Laura asked.

“I've come down with something. I don't know what. I've got a fever. Has your father already left?”

“Yes, ma'am,” she said.

“Well, I suppose you all can just come on in. I hope you don't catch what I've got, though.”

“We can stay at our house,” Laura said.

“Your father said he'd be out late.”

“It's okay. I watch the boys all the time.”

“But Daddy said—” Gene began.

“It's okay, really,” Laura said. “You don't feel good. We'll be right next door. We can come over if there's a problem.”

“Are you sure?”

Mrs. Ambling smiled weakly, clearly relieved, the door already closing on them.

“I'm sure.”

 

She left her father a note on the kitchen table, explaining about Mrs. Ambling, so he wouldn't be angry. The three of them listened to a baseball game on the
radio. Later, after Gene and Rich went to bed, she pulled out the letter she'd received from Gloria just this week. In it she'd included a picture of herself, the air force pilot she married, and their baby girl, Julie. In the background was the Mediterranean Sea with craggy cliffs rising dramatically in the distance. Gloria didn't know about their mother yet; they didn't know how to reach Gloria, and even if they could have, their father didn't like to talk about either her mother or Gloria. Her sister looked happy in the picture. Laura wished she could be with her, though she knew that if she
was
with her, then Gloria would have to know about their mother, and part of what made Gloria seem happy was the fact that she didn't know. Laura missed her sister, but she didn't feel sad anymore that she was gone. Just a kind of sweet longing to be with her again. It was more complicated with her mother.

She picked up the
Hollywood Star Gazette,
which she'd bought with her baby-sitting money. But the bright, thickly textured pictures of Janet Leigh and Deborah Kerr agitated her. She was only fourteen and felt she was still too boyish-looking, nothing like these glamorous, curvy women. They reminded her, strangely, of her mother, whose body had been made thick in the middle by hard work and children, but she was still womanly enough, and her face had not yet been too hardened by age or the West Texas wind. No movie star, but she was pretty, with large, dark brown eyes and a thin, perfect nose, and sometimes, when she was free from worry and her ash blond hair was loose around her face, she seemed radiant to Laura.

She didn't like to think about her mother too much, especially when she was alone, but sometimes she couldn't help it. The thoughts or images would be there in her mind and wouldn't go away. Her mother was like a ghost who might return at any time, but if she did, what would happen then? Laura tried to imagine where she was now, what she was doing, but without any context it all seemed like that huge hole in the yard. Laura feared she might forget what her mother looked like. She wished she had a photograph. It seemed odd to her that there were no photographs. Her mother had taken the wedding picture with her.

Laura got up, turned the radio to a music station, and sang along quietly to Patsy Cline and a Weavers song and Bob Wills, always Bob Wills and his western swing, and danced around the room. She closed her eyes and imagined herself with Charlton Heston, and then with her father on the sawdust dance floor of the Armory—the smoky, sweaty, sweet-smelling perfume of the couples, the skirts billowing out, the two-stepping, waltzing, fast-twirling, double-dipping couples. She couldn't wait until she was able to go dancing there
herself. In less than a month, she'd be starting high school, and she could go if someone asked her. She'd already picked out the dress she wanted to buy—a green-and-white-striped one with small white satin bows on the sleeves and waist. She was saving her baby-sitting money to get it.

She spun one last time before plopping down on the couch, sweaty again because it was so hot inside, even with the breeze blowing in. She sat there and listened to the radio until it signed off, and the house seemed eerily quiet, except for the cicadas and the occasional bark or lonely howl of a dog down the alley.

 

In bed, trying to will herself to sleep, she could hear the late-summer breeze whistling in the branches of the trees. She wondered if her mother had lain awake at night, preparing herself to leave, to not have to think about what would be left behind, toughening her spirit. Had she been planning it for a long time? It seemed so sudden, without warning. Mrs. Ambling said she'd just walked out to the road, carrying that brown suitcase. And she was gone, but of course she wasn't. How could she be completely gone when she was here right now in Laura's mind?

She opened her eyes, tried to keep them open for thirty seconds—one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi—which Gloria had told her was the secret to washing away bad thoughts or dreams. Then she closed her eyes again and told herself,
Fall asleep, fall asleep, fall asleep, fall asleep,
until the phrase seemed funny. So strange that word “falling,” like going over an embankment, standing on the unrailed precipice at Palo Duro Canyon, the vertigo of below, trying to stop the silly crazy foolish impulse to jump, jump, jump. Just an inch—no, not even that much—separating ground from air. And then falling into…where? Into air, into nothing. Like being asleep is the fall itself, not the landing. You don't fall
from
or
into
or
onto
sleep. You just fall asleep. Like disappearing. Like her mother. She'd fallen. But fallen where? No. Fallen away—away
from
them, but
to
what?
Into
what? Or maybe it was like sleep after all, neither away from nor to anything. It was the thing itself.

And then Laura was asleep, solidly, without thought or dream.

 

When she woke, it was to the sound of something being knocked over in another room. Gene lay curled on the corner of his and Manny's bed. Rich was stretched out with his feet hanging through the bars because he was too big for the crib.

She heard a laugh, then muffled whispers. She grabbed the pocketknife from her dresser and crept toward the hallway.

The lights were out, but the moon filtered through the sheer curtains. Her father's door was slightly ajar. She heard laughter, more whispering, and she knew then that her father was in the room with a woman.
Had her mother come back?
She hesitated in the hallway with the knife in her hand. No, it was not her mother's voice. She felt stupid. She started to return to bed and sleep, but then she heard a little high-pitched yelp, and she stopped and sat down, her back against the wall. The darkness of the house enveloped her. She scooted close to her father's door and sat there on her knees. She closed her eyes. Outside, the cicadas buzzed. The bed squeaked, rocking back and forth. She imagined a small canoe swaying in the troughs of waves. She squeezed her eyes tightly and thought she could hear their lips against each other. Her father's breathing seemed labored and deep and rhythmic, and the woman's voice swelled between his, higher-pitched and sharp, almost whistling.