The way people said, “she,” “you,” “I,” and they didn’t mean only bodies or faces, they meant her self, your self, my self.
And she could tell they were doing the same thing she was doing. They were looking for the self behind her changed face, as she was looking for the selves behind their changed faces.
“You look like disaster,” her mother said.
Mrs. Marini took Lina’s hands in her hands and then took Lina’s head in her hands. The old woman’s little nostrils opened wider; her lips flared, disclosing the gray teeth. Lina watched the eyes go opener, everything open, the face unmasked and savage. The old woman pulled Lina’s face to her face still closer. Maybe Lina was about to be bitten on the face. The wet breath of this woman on her skin. Lina’s own eyes going crossed. Then trying to pull away and the old woman yanking her face back closer still, to the face that belonged to the self of this person she had gone away from.
14
They walked out of the station. A crowd of smartly dressed Negroes was milling in Public Square under the candy-cane Christmas lights and the plastic holly boughs that were stapled to the trees. Snow was falling. In the center of the square stood a greenish black monument in which life-sized soldiers were carved wearing the garb of the last century. Some held rifles and some torches; others appeared to be tearing up a railroad. Perched atop the monument’s pedestal, a woman in stone, dwarfing the soldiers and the people in the square, gripped a sword in one hand, while in the other, the palm upturned and limp, a clump of snow had amassed; one of her breasts was exposed. At a corner of the square was a dais and banner that Lina couldn’t read through the darkness and the snowfall. They turned onto Coshocton Street, which led to the lake several blocks below, and the wind crashed into them, and the snow fell harder and laterally.
She was clothed for springtime and it was snowing, but she did not feel cold. The cloud cover was complete and low and orange with city light. Her mother was wearing a translucent plastic babushka. Mrs. Marini wore nothing on her head but a huge nimbus of a wig, which was snow speckled. Lina felt the snow melting on her shoulders. It stuck in her eyelashes. Her nose began to run. They walked in the street, using parked cars to steady themselves. The wind fell off momentarily. The snow continued to come down. She was going to have to see the boy soon.
Her mother drove them east, out of downtown, pulled into the parking lot of a VFW post, put the truck in neutral, and stomped down the parking brake, waiting for a snowplow to tail home. She asked some desultory questions concerning Had the trip been very long, Was it warmer in Pittsburgh than here, How about a little lip gloss on that kisser.
Mrs. Marini sat dumbly between them, crouching, sucking her teeth. The inquisition was coming, the target was within range. Lina perceived this as you perceive an invisible pursuer hunting you through woods in a dream. She was to be peeled and butchered; her parts would be arrayed, trimmed of fat, spitted, roasted, and consumed.
She could hear her blood rushing behind her eyes. She pressed her face against the window to cool it. She had made a purse to put herself in out of rag patches and chewing gum, and now they were going to try to spill her out.
A plow rumbled past, and her mother popped the brake and sped behind it. Twenty blocks of churchlike silence ensued.
Mrs. Marini twisted her knees to the passenger side of the gearshift so that they were pointed at Lina’s legs. Likewise, she dangled her right elbow behind the seat and turned her shoulders toward her. She took at least a minute to assume this position. Patrizia shifted the truck into third. Then, with the meat of her left hand, Mrs. Marini rapped the dashboard. “Now is the time when I am going to ask some questions and you are going to give some answers,” she said.
Lina said, “All right.”
“Where are your clothes.”
“In the back of the truck in my suitcase.”
“Where are the clothes that a rational person would wear in hostile weather such as this, such as woolen leggings and earmuffs.”
“I’m hot.”
“Are you experiencing the change of life.”
“I have been very, very hot for two days. No.”
“Do you have a fever? Let me check your head.”
“Yes, a little.”
“When was the last time you took Holy Communion.”
“Five years. Six years.”
“When was your last confession.”
“Six years ago.”
“What were you doing in Saskatchewan.”
“I had a job. It was Wyoming.”
“What kind of a job? I’ve heard rumors. I’ve heard ‘lumberjack’ and ‘stevedore’ and ‘football coach.’ I’ve heard all kind of innuendo, which I’ve had to go on because the horse’s mouth could not, evidently, pick up the telephone and give a call.”
“I was the cook at a school.”
“Were you unfaithful to your husband.”
Pause. “No.”
“Why would you allow yourself to leave the house in a state like this, without a little eye shadow, a little something to cover.”
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care about me? About—”
“About what a stranger says or thinks.”
“Do you know how tall is your boy and what is the hair color.”
“No. I am assuming still brown.”
“That’s right.” Pause. “Don’t you want to know how tall? The answer is, For a boy his age, he is titanic. Why did you never call.”
“I didn’t have a telephone.”
“Did you forget the phone numbers of your husband and your mother?”
“I didn’t have a telephone.”
“For how long was the time of your stay in oater-movie-land? Boise, Medicine Hat, whatever.”
“Four or five years. It was Casper, Wyoming.”
“Where you worked at a school during which time.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Which the school had an office, presumably.”
“Yes.”
“Where they would have had a telephonic device of some type.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Yet you did not ask permission to use this device to make contact with your husband or your mother or myself, nor write a postcard communicating the telephone number of this place where we might from time to time speak with you. You were too busy reading Riders of the Purple Sage and suchlike.”
“I wrote with the address.”
“I do not want to hear little stories which you believe to be excul patory. How often did you write?”
Patrizia piped in, “She wrote me every Christmas.”
But Mrs. Marini talked over her. “How often did you write to your husband or to the boy? I know the answer to this to be, Maybe every once in the cows-come-home.”
“Not regularly.”
“Why did you leave Tombstone or Santa Fe or whatever the place.”
“Casper.”
“Why.”
“I don’t know.”
“Make something up.”
“I had a friend, I had only the one friend, and they were going to fire her. She stole a can of potato chips, was all she’d done, and she was leaving, and she was passing through here, and I decided—”