She thought to pierce her nose, one of those tiny silver studs. She’d lighten her hair. She’d get a tattoo, something feminine. A bracelet around her ankle. She’d become an environmentalist. Maybe she’d become a vegetarian. Each new idea presented itself as she poured coffee, refilled water, distributed ketchup and ranch dressing.
It was as though she and Gordon had been childhood friends on the top of a dizzying precipice, and now he was falling down one side of it, and she the other. At the top there’d been summer rain and moonlight, and the thrill of exploring each other’s bodies and making plans. There had been intoxicating, aerial views of the world, all of it laid out for them to enjoy. Now her own view was so foreshortened, the strangers around her brought up so close, she could neither see past them nor make out their faces.
Years from now, she’d remember with a nameless unease the way the hot days of that June, July, then August unspooled as she dished out pie and ice cream and fried sandwiches and coffee and Cokes to travelers speeding down the interstate on their adventures and stopping in the diner where she, a ghost in a ghost town, was stuck in place to serve them. She’d remember the whole town in a state of decay as Jorgensen moved away, Gordon still collecting junk from Marybeth and setting it out in the yard beneath the sun with the strange faith of a man scattering seeds across the hard ground. A film of dust settling over the old, red-painted stoop before the closed hardware store.
Years from now, she’d sit alone behind the sugar beet factory as a single magpie dove from right to left in a sharp and angry V above her head, realizing she’d spent her entire life either excited or depressed. Seeing that the last days of her last true summer were ravished by craving. She’d try to imagine a series of events, or gifts, or situations that would have satisfied her at seventeen and eighteen, and then later at twenty-five, thirty. Truth is, nothing would have. Not recognition from all the world that the family she might raise would be bright and worthwhile, not a house in the hills, not the prairie with all the wild grass still in her, not the cold moon itself in her hands or all the metal-pointed stars at her command.
~ ~ ~
Gordon returned from the north country at midnight days before they were to leave for school, and woke the following morning in his room to the sound of Leigh’s voice. A distant buzz, the sheets over his bare legs. He understood she was speaking from far away. Downstairs. In the kitchen with Georgianna. Their white faces floating in the early morning light as they talked over toast and coffee. Their voices pulsed like a radio signal moving in and out of static.
“. . like his father. .”
“I know.”
“. . to be alone.”
“But supposing. .”
“. . a little patience.”
“But supposing.”
A silence. The ringing of spoons against coffee cups.
“. . John’s father, too. .”
“. . like a ceremony. .”
“. . like sleep. .”
“More toast?”
A silence, the scrape of wooden chair legs across the floor, and he went back under, the women’s voices leading him on a filament of words like a path that loses itself in the dark.
In his dream his father handed him a dull and dented old copper cup — the kind you’d find in the junk shop — and told him to drink. Gordon took it for whiskey, and perhaps it was.
“What is it?” his father asked when Gordon had tasted it.
“Bitter,” he said, and let the taste of it stain his tongue and the back of his throat. “And good.”
When he woke again, his mother was beside him. Shadows circled her eyes like holes burned through white paper.
“You slept all day again,” she said.
“I did?”
“Leigh was here.”
“I know.”
“I have a can of soup heated on the stove,” she said. “Tomato rice. You need to eat.”
He sat up. “Did you have any?”
She put her hand to her stomach and shook her head.
“Sick?”
“And a headache.”
“You look skinny.”
“So do you.”
“You need to eat.”
She drew her lips into her mouth and nodded. “It’s hard to be here in the house, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Shop, too.”
“He worked so hard, Gordon.”
“I know.”
“Too hard.”
“Maybe,” he said.
“No one appreciated it.”
“Sure they did, Ma.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes.”
“People say things about him.”
“No they don’t.”
“They say he wasn’t good to us.”
“You know that isn’t true.”
“They say he should have moved us somewhere better.”
“Did Leigh tell you that?”
“She wants the world, Gordon.”
“I know it,” he said. “It wants her back.”
“Have you asked her to stay?”
“I don’t think she can.”
“I always thought she’d be able to.”
He rose and left the room. He brought up two mugs of the warm, reddish-orange soup, and two slices of buttered sandwich bread. Two old metal spoons. He carried it up on the tray his father had used for Georgianna on Mother’s Day and her birthday, a golden brown wicker tray with woven handles of dried willow.
They sat in the quiet and ate their bread. The moonlight cast a slant, pale blue window frame across the scratched wooden floor. It was past midnight. No birds. No sound at all. Georgianna sat with her hands around the mug in her lap. Her hair seemed no longer steel and iron but silver and white. She used to clip up the sides, but now it hung all around her. It was so long. He’d never realized it was so long.
“I can’t sleep in that bed, Gordon.”
“It’s OK.”
“I’ve been sleeping here,” she said. “In yours.”
“I know.” He took her hand and pulled her from the chair and she curled up beside him. “It’s OK.”
“Sometimes I think I’m having a heart attack, too,” she whispered.
He shut his eyes and held his breath high up in his chest. “Me, too.”
When he was sure she’d fallen asleep, Gordon stood and crossed the yard to the shop where he stretched out on the floor, lengthwise beside the workbench.
Dock and Emery were there just after dawn, ready to work and knocking on the door. Gordon rose stiffly, rubbed his eyes, and opened the side door. He reached out to shake Dock’s hand, and Dock pulled him in for a hug.
“Where you been boy?”
Gordon smiled and hugged back. Emery stepped up for his turn, nearly crushing Gordon’s rib cage with his wiry arms.
“Sorry to barge in on you,” Dock said. “Emery’s been chomping at the bit to get in here.”
“I’m sure, I’m sorry.”
“You been out on the road some.”
Gordon nodded. They were almost of a height, but Dock was twice as wide.
“You holding up?” Dock let go, and surveyed his face. “Eating?”
“Some.”
“Sleeping?”
“Some.”
“Want me to pick up a customer or two you have out of town?”
“Nah,” he said.
Dock nodded. “OK. Look, no pressure, Gordon, but Annie and I talked all this through with your mother.”
“I know.”
“If you want to stay, you should stay. But if I were you I’d follow that girl. She knows where she’s headed, and she’s not bad-looking company.”
Gordon laughed and touched his forehead. Emery laughed and touched his forehead.
There were two unfinished projects on the floor out back: a spray rig and double tilt utility trailer.