The cot, wedged at the back of the shop, directly faced the gleaming metal station my father favored working at. Slitting my eyes, I could easily imagine him there. Images from the past layered over each other, two films running at the same time: him young and bearded, smiling, hacking into deer meat, and then the way I’d last seen him, splayed out and graying. Lifeless. What had he thought in those final moments? That the letter was explanation enough? Did he think I’d consider him another piece to stuff, something I could mount and set around the house? I fell into a fitful doze, dreaming of my father’s face stretched out eerily, as if the skin were ready to be tanned.
I woke groggy and aggravated at twilight, neck cricked into a thousand tiny knots that would only get worse as the night progressed. I pulled on my boots and then drove the short distance to my mother’s house, singing along to the radio in an attempt to wake myself up. The lawn was high with Bahia grass and daisy weeds. It had rained for two weeks straight and no one had mowed. The sod, neon green with new life, towered damply over the yards at either side. Lucinda’s car wasn’t out front and I felt relief that quickly morphed into dread. Rather than talk about things, I’d manufactured a situation where Lucinda would be upset I’d bailed on our plans, plus I’d have to deal with my mother’s art at the same time. I hoped Milo had bought beer.
Inside the house, Lolee sat on the floor in front of the television, scraping chipped polish off her nails and letting the flakes fall into the carpet. Milo and Bastien were on the couch, each holding plates full of roast and a cauliflower salad so saturated with mayonnaise it resembled pudding. By the sliding door, Travis Pritchard talked with Vera Leasey’s husband, Jay, who’d propped a boot up on an end table to show off a tiny hole near the heel.
“Snake bit.” He tapped at it with one thick finger. “Nearly pierced the skin.”
“What kinda snake?” Travis asked, leaning in close enough that his nose nearly bounced off the leather. “Rattler?”
“Naw. Moccasin. Out near the south end of the lake.”
Vera was in the kitchen with my mother and Travis’s wife, Bizzie Lee, whose hair was pulled back with a large purple butterfly clip. Bizzie was a very thin woman with a long nose that kind of curled under at the end, witchlike, but her eyes were sweet. Milo used to say that if she covered the bottom half of her face with a scarf, she probably could have gotten somebody a lot better-looking than Travis, because Bizzie was pretty nice and always gave out double candy at Halloween.
“What do you want in your coffee?” Vera held up the pot. She was wearing a bright blue dress that used to be my mother’s. They were friends that way, “girlfriends,” sharing clothes and trading recipes. Vera had been a fixture in our home since I was born.
“Black,” I said, already anticipating her response.
“Have a little of this cream, I got it out at the dairy today.”
It was no use telling Vera I didn’t want anything in my coffee. She heard only what she wanted, which was why she and my mother had been friends for so long. I wondered if Vera knew anything about the work my mother was doing. It seemed unlikely. She was conservative and drove around with one of those yellow CHOOSE LIFE license plates on the back of her car. I couldn’t see her getting into my mother’s gruesome animal porn.
“Grab a plate, everybody’s already eaten.” My mother pulled a couple of pies from the fridge. A big, gelatinous strawberry one sat on top of the stack, covered with a layer of blue cling wrap.
“Your mom seems like she’s doing so much better,” Vera whispered in my ear. “This art stuff has been good for her, huh? I know she’s always had such a creative way about her. So talented. What’s she doing, watercolors? They have that now over at the senior center. Got a class taught by this young guy with a ponytail. Wears jeans so tight you can see everything.”
I couldn’t think of something I’d like to hear less than what was in the male art instructor’s pants. I picked up a plate just to give myself something to do with my hands. “Her art’s a little more . . . sculptural,” I said, digging into a pot of mashed potatoes. Sculptural was one word for it. “Contemporary stuff.”
Vera groaned and leaned against the counter. “God help us, I hope it’s not some of those flowers that look like vaginas. Women get a certain age and they just fixate on that crap.”
It was going to be a lot more than that, but I wasn’t going to be the one to tell Vera. “Do we have any more gravy?”
“Lemme get it for you.” Vera dug the boat out from behind an open loaf of white bread. “She seems less sad. About your dad, I mean. She would just cry and cry all the time before. Now she looks better. Happier.”
I’d seen my mother cry only at the funeral. I remembered her leaking a little, like me. Milo had sobbed through the whole thing, burying his face in her neck like a little kid. She’d sat upright and I’d done the same. Both of us stoic. Disbelieving.
“Let me do that, honey.” Bizzie Lee took the scrubber from my mother’s hands when she went to tackle the roasting pan. “You’re gonna get your dress all filthy.”
My mother was wearing a strapless red dress that looked as if it had been made for someone Lolee’s age. Tight around the hips and chest. She’d slipped a silky scarf over her bare head. It had some kind of a paisley pattern, knotted at the base of her neck. If I’d seen her from behind, I wouldn’t have recognized her.
Someone knocked at the front door. It had to be Lucinda; anyone else who knew our family would’ve barged right in. I wasn’t sure how she’d gotten my mother’s art over to the house. I doubted the large-scale pieces would fit inside her tiny sedan, but then I remembered she’d asked me if she could borrow the truck the night before, right when I was drunk enough to say yes. Now I could count on her being upset with me for abandoning her and also her outrage over the fact that I’d left her no way to transport the art.
Thank you so much, this means a lot to me, she’d said, snuggling naked into my side. I’d run a hand across her stomach, flatter than Brynn’s, without the bumps and divots of childbirth to mar the flesh. Did she want kids? Was it something she’d talked about with her roommate, the woman she lived with in her condo? Her wife? There would never be kids for me. Never love. I’d rolled over to face the wall, trying to physically squash the ache in my chest. What a way to think of another human being. That they would love another person so much that there would only ever be scraps left for me.
More knocking. Louder, pointed. It was Lucinda, all right. “I’ll get it,” I said, dumping my plate on the counter. I’d eaten only two bites, but I was done with food for the night.
When I got down the hall, she was already inside, dragging a big cardboard box behind her. She stood up and huffed a swath of curly hair out of her face, reaching up under her armpits to yank at her bra beneath her suit coat. Turning, she saw me and made a sour face.
“Don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Kicking it the rest of the way down the hall, she stopped and fixed her hair again. “Just remember, I could have made this better. Whatever happens now, it’s on you.”