“I don’t know, maybe—”
“Shut up, Pink. Sometimes you are so stupid. Clarence’s uncle is stealing those suits off the dead bodies before he buries them! Christ, Pink, why didn’t you go down to Connor’s Department Store like I told you and rent something with nice lapels and a cummerbund!”
“A cummerbund?”
Isabelle pulled Pink out of the bathroom by the sleeve. Claire, her maid of honor, was standing in the back of the church, chewing gum. “Get rid of that, Claire, dammit.” Isabelle looked around, not really surprised that her father hadn’t shown, but disappointed nonetheless. She had known all along her mama wouldn’t come.
“Go get your daddy,” Isabelle had told Pink. When Pink came back with Buck, Isabelle asked Buck if he would walk her down the aisle.
Buck adjusted his glasses and shook his head. “I can’t do that, Isabelle. I didn’t even want to come. Mattie made me.” As Buck turned to leave, he gave Pink a look so hard it forced Pink back a step, like he was about to be hit. But Buck spun away, then went and took his seat next to Mattie. Mattie looked as though she were crying.
“You still want to do this, don’t you, Sweet Potato?” Pink had asked.
“Yes,” Isabelle said, wiping her eyes. “And don’t call me that anymore. I hate it.” Almost as much as she hated her next thought. “Pink, go get Clarence and tell him to get his ass back here. You go back up and wait with the groomsmen.”
“But Clarence is my best man.”
“Shut up, Pink, and do what I told you, okay?”
Pink walked away down the side aisle. Claire was giggling with the other girls, pulling her dress up to expose her new nylons, then squeezing her breasts upward in her dress until they shined like domes.
When the music started, Isabelle flew into a rage, calling the organist an idiot, throwing her hands in the air. People in the last few pews turned around at the commotion.
“He’s not supposed to start yet!” she’d said to Claire. “That’s not even the right song!” She sent the flower girl down the aisle, then the ring bearer, then herded the bridesmaids into a line and forced them down the aisle.
Everyone was in place at the altar, and Isabelle could see Pink whispering something to Clarence. Clarence looked toward the rear of the church, craning his neck like he’d heard a wild turkey in the bush, then strolled down off the altar with a confused look on his face. He said hello to everyone he recognized with his customary thumbs-up greeting as he walked by. “Pink said you wanted to see me,” Clarence said. Isabelle proceeded to push his hair off his forehead and straighten his tie. “Tuck in that shirt, Clarence,” she said. “You look like a damn hobo.” Clarence raised one shoulder then the other, shoving his hand down his pants, working the tail of his shirt into the waistband of his trousers. Isabelle shook her head when she noticed the sandals on Clarence’s feet.
“What the hell are you wearing?”
“Found them at Sadie’s Thrift Store,” he said. “They keep the fungus from growing between my toes.”
“Come on,” she said, hooking his arm through hers. “Don’t look anywhere but at the altar, and don’t say nothing to nobody.”
Isabelle and Clarence were halfway down the aisle when eyes shifted from them to the back of the church. Women put hands over their mouths or looked away. Men stood up as if there was going to be a fight, others peeked around the ones standing. A few people gasped, and Isabelle turned to see her father standing at the back of the church, his shirt and pants covered in blood. He shuffled toward her down the aisle. Clarence untangled his arm from Isabelle’s and took a few steps back. People near the ends of the pews moved away, but her father’s eyes were only for Isabelle. He stood in front of her, his eyes burnished and raw, his hands dangling at his sides big as shovels, dripping blood. “You’re wicked, child,” he said, drawing a deep breath, then backhanding her across the face. “You’re Satan.”
The memory made Isabelle close the magazine and drop it on the floor. She felt tired, ready to nap. After scooting down in the bed, she pulled the blankets up over her breasts, pausing a moment to touch them. Pink hadn’t touched her breasts in over five years, even when they made love, which they hadn’t done in a long time. She couldn’t blame him though; she was death itself lying there. She wouldn’t look in the mirror, afraid of what she might see staring back.
“Want your hair brushed?” Claire asked, poking her head through the doorway. Isabelle wiped her eyes.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” Isabelle said.
“Thought I’d drop by on the way to the store. See if you needed anything.”
Claire came over to the bed, taking the brush off the dresser, and sitting next to Isabelle. She pulled up a thick sheaf of Isabelle’s hair and combed it out, then gathered up another. Isabelle cried harder with each stroke of the brush.
“I’m thirty-eight years old and I look like a hundred,” Isabelle said. “Why can’t I get better, Claire? Why won’t I get well?”
Claire laid the brush on the quilt and eased Isabelle’s head to her chest.
“It’s gonna be okay, baby,” Claire said softly, running her fingertips along Isabelle’s scalp. “It’s gonna be okay.”
Chapter 10
“I called the police, Michelle! I thought somebody stole my fucking car! Christ, what did you think I would do? What were you thinking?”
Michelle absently put away the groceries she’d purchased, the phone wedged between her cheek and shoulder, listening to her sister. She bought the food with cash in case Cliff checked their credit card account online.
“I’m sorry, Darce,” Michelle said into the phone. “I need answers. I was going to ask you to bring me up here but . . . I panicked when Cliff called. I’m sorry.”
“What am I supposed to do now, Michelle? How am I supposed to get to the store in the mornings to open up?” Darcy’s voice trembled, breaking. “Had you thought about that?” Darcy burst into tears. Before Michelle could say anything, Darcy screamed into the receiver, “Goddamn you, Michelle! Why did you take my fucking gun? What are you planning to do with that?”
Michelle waited for Darcy to calm down, trying to harness her own thoughts into a cohesive response.
“I was just scared, is all, coming alone. You remember how dark it is up here. I’d never use it.” Michelle was almost able to believe some of that was true. Yet there was no way to explain the other reason for taking it. There was no way to tell her sister that if she couldn’t figure out what had happened the night she went looking for Cliff, if there was no explanation, rational or otherwise, for Cassie being alive when she’d left the cabin and dead in this new version of reality, she was prepared to end her own life.