The Lies We Told (18 page)

T
HE PATH BETWEEN
S
IMMEE’S HOUSE AND
L
ADY
A
LICE’S WAS
barely a path at all, although I was certain it had existed for decades. It was so narrow that vines grabbed our arms as Simmee and I walked along it single file, and we had to duck beneath thick branches and step carefully over roots and rocks that jutted from the sandy soil. The light was dappled in places, nonexistent in others, and I walked gingerly, protective of my bad leg. Simmee was ahead of me, and I quickly lost count of all the times she said, “Watch out now,” as we dodged one obstacle or another, just as I’d lost track of how long I’d been trapped at Last Run Shelter. I’d spent many hours asleep, many more hours worrying, and still many more hours fighting my physical pain and sense of disorientation. Four days was my best guess. Maybe five or six, if I counted the days I’d spent in and out of consciousness when I first arrived. I didn’t know. All I knew now, as I followed Simmee through the claustrophobia-inducing undergrowth, was that I had turned a corner in my recovery. The dizziness had completely disappeared. The wound on my
scalp was still tender to the touch, but my head had finally stopped aching, and either the pain in my rib cage was improving or I’d simply grown accustomed to it. Lady Alice’s stitches on my shin were no longer infected, although I was still careful about taking the antibiotics. I was certain I’d screwed up the dosage, given my inability to tell one day from the next, but it didn’t matter. All in all, I felt better. Physically, at least. Emotionally, though, I was a bigger wreck with each passing day. I cried in bed each night, thinking about Adam and Rebecca and how worried they would be, and I spent my waking hours trying to come up with ways to get back to them.

I was more familiar with Simmee and Tully’s property now, and walking out the kitchen door no longer felt like walking into a green cage, but Last Run still seemed like another planet to me. I was a city girl—or at least a suburbanite—through and through. Behind their house was the large chicken coop Tully had built. Twelve hens laid eggs and scratched at the ground and ate feed that Tully made himself out of who-knew-what. On the other side of the house stood an ancient charcoal grill, a weathered picnic table and a charcoal smoker, which reminded me of a giant version of one of my antibiotic capsules. Although I hadn’t yet seen it, apparently there was a concrete fire pit a short distance from the house, which is where they burned their garbage. “We bury it after it’s burned,” Simmee told me matter-of-factly, “but critters get into it anyhow.”

My shin and ribs protested this trek through the woods, but I had two reasons for wanting to go to Lady Alice’s with Simmee. First, I needed to remind Lady Alice to tell her son, Larry, about me when he showed up. Lady Alice was sweet, but a little flaky, and I worried it might slip her mind. Second, I didn’t want to be at the house alone when Tully returned from hunting. We’d had a minor clash over supper the night before
that had left me uneasy. Up till then, Tully had been nothing but kind to me. Sensing my distaste for the game he’d been feeding me, he’d tried fishing the day before from the bank. He came home empty-handed and cranky, cursing the creek for stealing his boat. He grabbed one of the guns and a few hours later brought home an opossum.

I couldn’t bring myself to eat the greasy opossum at dinner, though, settling instead for a can of chicken and rice soup cooked next to it on the grill, and maybe my rejection of his food set the tone for our conversation.

“I’d like to see the creek,” I said as we ate in the pink kitchen. “Especially the part where Last Run Shelter is connected to the mainland.”

“What for?” Tully asked.

“In case it’s lower by now,” I said. I hadn’t seen
any
water in my time at Last Run. I could have been in the middle of West Virginia, for all I knew. “Have you seen it in the last couple of days?” I felt as though we weren’t exploring all possible means of getting me back to the airport. Simmee had said that
I
wouldn’t be able to wade across the creek, but maybe Tully could. Maybe he could even
swim
across. “There
must
be a way for me to get out of here.”

Tully’s eyes darkened, though, the blue nearly the color of a night sky. He set down his fork, and tension suddenly filled the room. I had the feeling I’d insulted his integrity as well as tested his patience.

“Listen, Miss Maya.” He bit off the words. “I’m sorry you’re stuck here where you don’t want to be, and I’m sorry your ol’ man’s probly worried sick about you, but
you’ll
be able to get out of Last Shelter when we can
all
get out of Last Shelter.”

I shifted my gaze from his eyes to my soup and felt the color
rising in my cheeks. For the first time, I thought of what my presence must be like for him. He had a very pregnant wife, no electricity, and no way to get supplies. I was another mouth to feed and an intrusion on their private life, and now I was badgering him to fix something he had no way of fixing. I wouldn’t bug him about leaving again.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just…I’m worried about what this is like for my husband and sister.”

“You know,” Simmee said abruptly, “I didn’t eat no ’possum till Tully come here.”

Her awkward attempt at changing the subject touched me, and I hurt for her. I felt her discomfort at the tension in the kitchen. The discomfort I’d caused.

“Really?” I said, and I was relieved to see, from the corner of my eye, Tully pick up his fork again.

Ahead of me now, Simmee carried a basket of smoked rabbit and flatbread she’d made from water and weevily flour and baked over the coals. When we were getting ready to leave for Lady Alice’s, she’d called me into her bedroom. Like the rest of the house, the bedroom was uncluttered. Two mismatched dressers stood against one wall. The double bed was covered in a hand-stitched quilt, and an old bentwood rocker sat in the corner. Simmee stood in front of the full-length mirror attached to the closet door. She was holding her dress, this one a pink-and-white stripe with cap sleeves, up to just below her breasts, and between the scrunched-up dress and her panties was her beautiful big beach ball of a belly.

“Lookit this little fella pitchin’ a fit,” she said, grinning at her reflection.

I moved closer to her, reaching my hand tentatively toward the taut skin. Simmee took my hand and placed it on one side of her belly. I felt the movement beneath my palm, the pointy
knob of a knee or elbow rolling against my own skin. The tangible proof of life relieved me. I don’t know what else I had expected. Women carried babies and gave birth to them long before obstetricians and hospitals and prenatal vitamins came into existence. I could already picture this infant. He’d probably pop out with an Apgar score of ten, a robust baby with a lusty cry that would rock the little house. Fair skin, like Simmee’s. A smattering of pale hair on his head. Soft blue eyes like Tully’s.

I met Simmee’s gaze in the mirror. “I think your baby will be perfect,” I said.

Simmee nodded. “Don’t need no doctor to tell me that.” She looked in the mirror again, turning a little to the side. “I already love him—or maybe her—so much.” She nibbled her thumbnail. “Feels like
too
much.”

“Impossible to love him too much,” I said. I understood, though. Oh, how I understood. Loving too much could only set you up for hurt.

Simmee dropped her dress over her belly, then sat down on the bed to tie on her sneakers. “How come you ain’t got no kids, Miss Maya?” she asked as she worked at the laces.

I watched her tying her shoes, wondering how to answer. Did I give her the simple answer I offered to strangers?
Not ready yet. Maybe someday
. Or did I give her the answer I saved for intimates. The people who deserved the truth.

“Tully says it’s on account of you’re a doctor,” Simmee said. “You ain’t got no time for them.”

I sat down on the beat-up bentwood rocker. “We’ve tried to have children,” I said. “It’s hard for me to get pregnant, and when I do, I miscarry.”

Simmee looked at me, her mouth in a little O. “Is that when the baby comes too early to live?” she asked.

“Exactly,” I said. “They came very early, and I lost them.”

Simmee toyed with the laces on her shoe. “And you want them bad,” she said. “I can tell by your voice.”

“My husband and I both do,” I said. “That’s one of the things that drew us together. We both wanted a family.” And what, I wondered, would keep us together if that family was never to exist?

“I’m so sorry I made you touch my baby,” Simmee said.

“Oh, no, honey,” I said. “I’m very happy for you.”

“Maybe you can adopt some kids.” She looked hopeful, and I wondered how to respond. All at once, I realized the truth I’d been hiding from myself: I did not want another pregnancy. I couldn’t go through it all again. I
couldn’t
. And I didn’t have to. The thought filled me with unexpected relief, mixed with a sudden, disconcerting anger at Adam for his unwillingness to consider adoption. I would take any child—older, special needs, foreign—
any
. I would fill his or her life with love, and I’d fill my own life at the same time.

I realized I was gripping the arms of the rocker, and Simmee was watching me intently. I wouldn’t malign Adam. Not to Simmee or to myself.

“Yes, we could,” I said simply.

Simmee leaned back on her elbows. “What’s your husband like?” she asked.

It felt like months instead of days since I’d seen Adam. “He’s handsome, like your Tully,” I said, picturing him. “I mean, he looks completely different, but they’re both good-looking. He has brown hair and big brown eyes.”

“I bet he’s real smart.”

“He is. He’s the kind of person who lights up a room when he walks into it,” I reminded myself, shaking off my unsettling feelings about him from a moment earlier. “He’s the kind of person everyone loves.”

“He’s good to you?” Simmee asked. “Treats you right?”

I pushed away the memory of his coolness toward me after he learned about the abortion and thought of the old Adam. The sweet guy I’d married. “He’s wonderful to me,” I said. “He puts up with all my quirks and neuroses.”

“What’s neuroses?”

“Oh.” I shrugged. “Just…anxiety. Worries.”

“I got them, too,” Simmee said soberly.

“Everyone does,” I reassured her.

“This baby is my neuroses.”

I was surprised. “Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Just—” she rubbed her hand over her belly “—I worry a lot about him. Or her.”

“That’s a totally normal mommy neurosis,” I assured her with a smile. “Every mother feels the same way.”

Simmee looked down at her stomach again. “Can you tell by looking how soon this baby’s gonna be born?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I’m not an obstetrician—a doctor for pregnant women—and it’s hard to tell,” I said. “But you look like you’ve got about another month to me.”

“That’s what I thought,” Simmee said. “Even though I can’t imagine gettin’ bigger. Lady Alice says you count weeks instead of months. That the baby comes at forty weeks. I pretty much know when it happened, and I was countin’ the weeks, but I lost track.” She suddenly got to her feet. “We should go,” she said. “You sure you’re up to walkin’? It’s not far, but I know your leg ain’t ’xactly in the best shape.”

I told her I wanted to go with her and that I felt fine, even though now that we were on the path, I thought my decision had been shortsighted. Still the thought of being alone in the house when Tully came home made me queasy after our tense conversation from the night before. Talk about neuroses.

Lady Alice’s house was a shack. There was no other word to describe it. It was a single story with a pitched roof made half of tin, half of some other material I couldn’t identify. The narrow boards that sided the building had once been white, but the paint had worn away to reveal the weathered wood beneath. Two small windows trimmed with fading red paint were on the side of the building, and a stubby brick chimney jutted from the roof. Most startling to me, though, was the small front porch. It was doorless, though some of the windows still held screens, and it had a shingled roof with a hole in one side, as though a giant had punched his fist through the rafters. Growing from the doorway were thick green vines. They spilled from the unscreened windows and climbed the front walls.

I grabbed Simmee’s arm from behind. “This is where Lady Alice
lives?
” I whispered.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “And it looks like she got some damage from the storm she didn’t tell us about.”

I wondered what part of the sorry mess in front of us constituted storm damage. Surely this monstrosity had been many years in the making. I felt at once sad and angry. Sad that this old woman who’d raised eight children had been all but deserted by them and was left to live in a run-down hovel, and angry that she had a son, this Larry-in-Ruskin, who wasn’t doing much to help her fix the place up.

We stepped onto the porch, kicking vines out of our way.

“Oh, Lordy,” Simmee said, and I realized what she’d meant about the storm damage. A huge tree limb jutted from the wooden floor. We looked up at the hole in the porch roof, and could see that the limb had served as a missile. What a bone-jarring sound that must have made, I thought. “Glad it came
through the porch and not the house,” Simmee said with a shudder. “I need to git Tully over here to fix this and cut these damn vines back. He does it every once in a while, but this time of year, it ain’t enough.”

I wasn’t listening to her. On the porch floor next to the door, beneath the leaves and detritus, stood an iron boot cleaner and I stared at it, stunned. It was identical to the one we’d had when I was a child, and the unusual filigree pattern in the metal transported me back to a house I had no desire to revisit. I’d never seen another boot cleaner like it, and could happily go the rest of my life without seeing one like it again.

Simmee knocked on the door that hung askew on its hinges. “Lady Alice?” she called.