light fades from the sky.
There’s the problem of getting into the house and changing without Grand or Izzy seeing me soaking. I jog down the drive, down the sloping hill to where the pavement starts, then walk into the gathering dark and jingle into Red’s garage. He glances out from the truck he’s under as I grab the bathroom key and wave it at him. He nods and I walk around to the side of the painted brick and let myself in. It takes a good fifteen minutes to dry my shirt and shorts under the hand-dryer enough so you can’t tell they’ve been wet. I tiptoe across hot asphalt around to the door, hang up the key and wave to Red again on my way back out.
My feet are raw and prickly by the time I jog back up the porch steps. Grand is sitting in her chair, her face flickering with the light from the TV, so I pull three turkey TV dinners out of the freezer and heat them in the oven. I crimp the aluminum edges back, pull off the cardboard top, then carry Grand’s in on a tray as she finishes filing her nails and lays the manicure set on the table beside her. “Here, please,” she says, patting the coffee table without taking her eyes from the screen.
I eat my dinner at the table, then carry Izzy’s upstairs. She’s scribbling in a lineless notebook she keeps under her pillow and when I walk in she stops writing to stare at my still-damp hair. She raises a pale eyebrow at me, then points out the window and makes swimming motions with her arms.
“No—no swimming. It was just still raining when I went for a walk.” She scribbles on her notepad and holds it up to me. I heard shouting down there.
“Don’t know.” I shake out the thermometer and stick it in the corner of her mouth. She writes, Hair’s on fire!, smiling wanly around the thermometer.
“What’s that mean?”
She shoots me a mock-withering look and writes, Liar, liar.
“It’s pants on fire.”
She laughs. I like hair better.
“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t know a saying from a...” It’s an old game we used to play called “you-say-I-say.” One of us would start a sentence and the other had to finish it. If you guessed what the first person had been thinking, you won.
I stare at the second hand on my watch, waiting a full minute for the mercury to climb. Izzy ponders then writes, Silhouette?
It’s been so long since she’s guessed one I can’t even remember what it feels like, having someone else know what I’m thinking. I take the thermometer from her mouth and tilt it in the light to read, the thin silver line topping out at 100˚. “No, Izzy,” I say, swallowing against the fear rising in my chest. “Salt shaker.”
Must be something, that someone shouting down at the tide line. She’ll give away anything to prove she’s not hiding what she’s hiding. So long since I last heard her thinking I can’t quite guess. Yes, a someone, but someone so new to her, held so slightly inside her, I can’t see. So new she hasn’t learned how to wear this him or her, hasn’t learned how to show herself to her best advantage. A him. Must be. One she hasn’t touched, doesn’t yet bear a trace of. The image of him so thin inside her she’s fighting hard against forgetting, holding onto the memory wisp wrapped tight around her shoulders.
Five
Sunday, July 7, 1974
31 days
By the next morning Izzy’s temperature is 101˚. I give her two aspirin then wait by the kitchen window, my pantyhose whisk whisking as I rub my knees together. The older Carson brother pulls up at 9:20 on the nose, and Grand walks out of her back bedroom glittering with silver-dollar-sized clip-on earrings, piled necklaces, two rhinestone clips holding back the curls over her ears. She stops short when she sees me and I tug at the hem on my faded, floral dress, the princess waist riding up high on my ribs, the fabric pinching my armpits.
“You plan on attending church today?”
“Yeah, I um… thought I’d go,” I say, suddenly at a loss for an excuse.
“Well then. You know what sort of behavior I expect from you.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I open the front door just as Mr. Carson knocks.
“Carl,” Grand says, holding out her hand like she has a ring to kiss.
“Ailene.” Mr. Carson is so solid and sturdy he’s always reminded me of a metal girder: the perfect line of his hard shoulders, feet always waist-width apart forming one long rectangle. Usually his jeans and pearl-buttoned shirt are dusted with construction site dirt, but this morning his blue button down and brown church pants are as starched and sharply creased as a grocery bag. He takes off his white cowboy hat and gives Grand’s fingers a brisk shake, then steps inside and glances towards the stairs.
“And Miss Isabel, she’s… situated?”
I squirm and glance towards the stairs. “She’s fine,” Grand says, breezily waving her hand by her ear. Mr. Carson watches my face as Grand steps briskly out the front door and waits at the top of the stairs.
“Everything all right, Ansel?”
“Well, I think Izzy—”
“Carl, we’ll be late,” Grand says. Mr. Carson runs one of his big, calloused hands over his forehead and back over his wiry hair, then settles his hat back on before taking two long-legged strides to the door. Outside, he has to baby step to walk beside Grand. He wrenches open the passenger’s side of the rusty truck, taking Grand’s elbow to help her inside, then leaves the door open for me and walks around to the driver’s side. I squeeze in next to Grand and pull the door shut as he cranks the engine, popping the truck in reverse.
We drive down the hill onto Main Street, past the trees and the silent buildings and the one parked car in front of Pauline’s. Though they were open only yesterday, all the stores are dark, dusty, and hunkered so low it’s like no one’s been in them for years. Mr. Carson takes a left on Hill Street and passes a bar and a photo shop before the buildings give way to scrub brush and palmetto leaves. Then the asphalt runs out again and the truck bumps down onto a sandy road, the trees leaning close, draping the air in dusty tatters.
In this part of town the light feels thin and still, the windows of the few square, flaking houses strung up with faded bed sheets. Mr. Carson brakes hard to miss a squawking chicken that flaps back to where three others are pecking around a sagging porch. The house behind it is silent and a dark hand yanks the thin curtain back into place.
We drive to where the road dead-ends into dense trees and scrubby shrubs, pull up in front of the white clapboard church and park next to a silver Buick. Mr. Carson cuts the engine and I slide out of the truck, tugging my dress down so the hem covers my knees, then climb the concrete steps to pull open the heavy door. Grand takes her time, holding Mr. Carson’s arm, looking around the way a queen surveys her royal subjects, though we’re the only ones outside. She passes through the shadow of the steeple, then slowly climbs the steps, holding out her hand to Mrs. Jorgen who’s standing inside handing out bulletins.
“Good morning, Ailene,” Mrs. Jorgen says, stiffly shaking Grand’s hand.
“Inga,” Grand says, nodding at her with a droopy-lidded smile. “And how is your charming husband?”
“He’s fine, Ailene. Same as always.” Mrs. Jorgen exchanges a look with Mr. Carson, who
