Henry tilted his head to one side, as if weighing my words. His eyelids lowered; he was looking at my mouth. “Your lip looks swollen.”
“Oh, right. Fisher banged into me.” I touched my upper lip, then let my hand drop. Henry was still looking at my mouth. He seemed oddly still, and in that moment I became aware that there was something between us. It was like a tiny green thing pushing its head up through rocky soil, so pale with newness that I had not noticed it before.
Before I could examine it, he took one step in to me and put his mouth over mine. It wasn’t a friendly kiss or a social kiss. It was too long for that. But it was so static that it seemed uncomplicated, like a cool drink of water meant to clear the taste of Jonno from my mouth.
Then it changed. It was only his mouth fitting itself against mine, but he eased in closer. Our bodies weren’t touching, and our hands were at our sides, but I could feel heat radiating off his skin, and I became aware of his body almost at the cellular level, feeling its differences.
He was much broader than me at the shoulder, a little narrower at the hip. He smelled of coffee, clean linen, and clean paper, and something under that, a warm and living smell that had the tang of copper in it. It was the smell of some lithe predator, toothy and dangerous. Then he moved even closer, his body meeting mine as he kissed me, hip to hip, breast to chest, his head turned left to my right, his mouth opening and opening mine.
He was kissing me like no one had kissed me but Jonno for over ten years. But it was not like Jonno, nothing like Jonno.
Jonno was a wall I leaned against, a wall with a hundred hands, each hand studied and sure, doing its assigned job with expedi-ency. That was Jonno, and this wasn’t him. This was Henry, wiry and sleek, with one hand resting lightly on my hip and the other reaching up to twine into my hair, tilting back my head. The hand at my hip snaked around my waist, bending me in to him.
It seemed to me I teetered on the brink of sinking back into something, the arch of my foot a fulcrum, no familiar ground under my heels. My eyes were closing, but I saw it again, that tiny shift, the flutter of wings to the side of me. I put my hands on his shoulders and shoved at him. He released me, and cold air leaped into the space that opened between us, touching my skin with chill. I jerked away from that coldness and overbalanced. I took one giant step backwards and immediately thought, absurdly, “Mother, may I?”
We stared at each other in the purple light.
As soon as I had breath back in me, I wanted to ask him, casually, lightly, “What the heck was that?” Standing by the terrarium, he seemed himself, unchanged, and I wanted in that single breath to match his mood. But when I opened my mouth, what popped out was “For fuck’s sake, Henry. I’m married.”
We faced each other, breathing hard and in unison. After a moment Henry straightened his immaculate collar and lifted one shoulder, trying for levity. “So, you see, ‘Are you done with Jonno?’ is a valid question,” he said.
I didn’t smile back. I stared at him big-eyed, shocked with myself, my hand coming up again to touch my sore lip. I traced the ghost of his presence against my mouth.
Henry said, “Maybe I should . . .” But he trailed off, and I didn’t have a way to finish his sentence for him. I shook my head helplessly. At last he said, “My mistake,” and he backed away from me and then turned, walking down the corridor of pipe and drape. He came to the corner and disappeared around it, heading toward the square of sunshine that would lead him back into the outside world.
CHAPTER 10
WHEN I GOTback to the store with everyone’s supper, it was almost six, and Bernese was closing up. She told me Mama had gone to lie down in one of the bedrooms in the rental property upstairs. Fisher and Lou had gone home, so I passed Bernese the bag with their dinners in it.
“I got Fisher a kid-chick plate,” I said.
“You better eat it.” She dug out the top box, sniff-tested it for chicken nuggets, then set it down on the counter. “Fisher’s got to have a boiled egg and carrot sticks tonight, with a fat-free yo-gurt.”
“This is verging on mentally ill, Bernese,” I said, but she waved me off, saying, “Get that food up to your mama while it’s hot.
Lock up tight behind you when you go.”
I went back through the office and up the stairs. I set Mama’s dinner down on the table in the square kitchen. As I came into the front bedroom, Mama was slowly pushing herself up into a sitting position. I drew my heart on her shoulder and sat down beside her on the bed.
Dinner smells good,
she signed.
It’s a lucky day for specials. Trude’s meatloaf. Want to eat here or
go home?
Here. So hungry, and that meatloaf is always good. I dreamed
about those dogs. Did you talk to Ona Crabtree? Is she having them
put down?
No. She is going to have her cousin drive over from Louisiana and
get them.
When?
I’m not sure.
But you are sure she is doing it?
Pretty sure.
I let my impatience stiffen my hands as I signed,
I
am working on it.
Mama started to get up, then sat back down on the bed.
I better have one of those pills with supper.
Your back is bothering you?
A little. And I bruised my hip, falling. Did you pick out a head?
Yes.
I had actually taken down three or four boxes at random, unwrapped each head, and then one by one put them back. Each one seemed impossible for Mama to part with. Then I’d picked out three or four more. Lather, rinse, repeat. I’d finally pulled out the first head I had grabbed and shoved it into my purse without upwrapping it or looking at it again or thinking. I remembered her, though. She was a flapper girl, and my mother had given her marcelled hair, tinted black and glossy. Her hands and her delicate arched feet were slender and luminous, solid pieces of porcelain. The head itself was hollow, so that her skin and hair glowed translucent and fine.
Who did you pick?
I started to spell
Josephine
into her hands, but as I got to the H, she pushed my hand away.
Not Josephine,
she signed.
I tapped at her leg, and she grudgingly put one hand over mine.
You asked me to pick—
She pushed my hands away again.
Not Josephine.
Her mouth was set in a mutinous line. Her hand drew a forceful slash through the air, closing the subject.
I’m hungry. I need my pill.
I gave up. I put one arm around her, careful of her injured shoulder, and helped her to her feet. I walked with her to the kitchen, letting her lean on me on her bad side. We walked to the table and I stayed beside her, supporting her until she found the chair back with her hand. She felt her way to the front of the chair and eased herself down into it. Her hands drifted lightly along the table’s edge and then crept their way carefully up onto its surface, mapping the placement of her fork, the Styrofoam box with her supper in it, and her fountain drink. She felt along the top of the cup to see if I had already put the straw in, then picked it up and put her hand out for her pill.
I’d gotten her prescription filled for her, so I had the bottle of Percocet in my bag. I got her one, and when I put it into her hand, she swallowed it, then put her hand back out.
I put my hand in it and signed,
You only take one.
She compressed her mouth and demanded the bottle.
You can only have one every four hours.
I can tell time,
she signed, annoyed, her index finger making an audible thump as she tapped at her wrist. I handed over the bottle, and she stuffed it carelessly in her pocket.
I told her I was going downstairs, and she nodded her hand.
She didn’t like to talk at meals because she couldn’t easily chat and eat at the same time, and she hated it when her food got cold.
I went back down to the store to make sure Bernese had turned the front lights off. She’d left the Styrofoam box with the chicken nuggets sitting out on the counter, either for me to eat or as a message to butt out of her plan to have Fisher bloom into anorexia before she turned ten. Probably both. I hadn’t gotten myself anything. Between choosing a head and trying not to think about Henry kissing me, I hadn’t felt hungry. There it was again, Henry kissing me. I was doing an indescribably bad job of not thinking about it.
I wasn’t sure how to take it. His comment afterward seemed to indicate he’d viewed it as some sort of litmus test, as if he’d licked the inside of my mouth so he could stand back and observe the chemical reaction: If my tongue turned blue, it would mean I’d tested positive for Jonno.
I wasn’t sure why I had never thought of Henry as anything more than, well, Henry. I’d somehow neglected to be affected by his beauty or notice his interest. I’d been married, but I hadn’t been dead. Maybe it was the Crabtree connection? But even if, by some miracle of previously untapped black-eyed and swarthy re-cessives, Henry was genetically a Crabtree, fourth cousins three times removed was such a distant link it didn’t count.
Except for his last name, he was everything my family would want for me. Mama and Genny already adored him for his manners, his book smarts, and his common sense, even his devotion to laundry starch. I realized he actually had a lot more in common with the Fretts than with the Crabtrees. Hell, his bed probably had hospital corners. I felt my cheeks flushing at the thought of his bed.
I dunked the chicken nuggets in Trude’s overly sweet barbecue sauce and tried to shelve Henry for now. The last thing I needed was another man when I wasn’t at all sure I was shut of the first one. But then I realized that the actual last thing I needed was to lose Henry’s friendship.
I threw away the rest of Fisher’s rejected dinner and went upstairs to get Mama. I could tell she was feeling low. As if her bad mood weren’t hint enough, her movements were languid, and she took the stairs one at a time, favoring her bruised hip. I offered to run home and get my Mustang and come back and drive her, but she insisted on walking.
We set out together, me in Genny’s normal place beside her.
She wanted to cut straight across the square. Usually, she stuck to the cobblestone walkway, but she was willing to trade a paved surface for a shorter walk. She leaned on me a bit more than usual across the springy grass, but her steps were sure, and she’d said she didn’t need me to carry her large handbag. She had it slung over her uninjured shoulder.
We paused to rest at the crosswalk, then crossed Philbert and passed the Crabtrees’ gas station. As we came even with the corner of the chain-link fence surrounding the parts yard, her pace slowed and she paused again.
I stopped as well. She let go of my elbow and took three long breaths, shifting her weight to her unbruised hip and leg. From behind a rusted-out Dodge, the two big male Dobies appeared.
They came slinking down to where we were standing, regarding us with their blank and soulless eyes from the other side of the fence.
I turned to look at her as she signed,
I smell them. Are they
barking?
No, they seem very calm.
It was always only Genny.
Let’s get you home. Can you keep going?
My mother gave her head a quick shake and then dug her left hand into her pocket. Into her other hand, I signed,
You can’t
have another pill for at least three more hours.
My mother’s eyebrows went up, and her mouth shaped itself into a concerned O of surprise. The hand in her pocket came out holding nothing but the cap to her Percocet bottle.
“Oh, good grief,” I said out loud. I signed,
Did you take it out
again at the apartment? Did you take another pill?
She shook her hand in a firm no.
Go find the bottle. I’ll wait
here.
I’m not leaving you here by these crazy dogs,
I signed. She was so close to the fence that she could have reached out with one hand and touched it.
Those dogs never minded me for a minute. I won’t be able to sleep
without another pill. Go find them.
I tried to get her to come with me, but she drooped by the fence as if she had taken root there. I finally let go of her and backtracked across the street, my eyes scanning the ground. In the middle of the road, I saw one of the pills and picked it up. I saw another in the gutter. The bottle, open and empty, was lying a bit farther on, and near it I found a third pill, almost completely hidden in the thick zoysia.
Mama had apparently been leaking pills all along our walk, like an outsize Gretel with narcotics instead of bread crumbs. If I was willing to be Hansel, I could follow them all the way back, and tomorrow Bernese could cook me up in Mama’s kiln.
I had found only a few of the pills, but I didn’t want to leave my mother standing between those dogs and the street for a second longer. Mama was never careless with physical objects, and the fact that she had casually stuffed the bottle in her pocket to begin with should have alerted me to how off she was feeling.
I’d found enough pills to get her through the night, and in the morning I could take on the exciting project of calling Dr. Crow and telling him I needed a refill on a controlled substance because my mother had sprinkled the first batch into the long grass. He would probably say, “I see! And I suppose the check is in the mail? And your little brother ate your homework?”
I looked over and saw my mother still standing in the same spot, her weight on her good leg. I hurried back and drew my heart on her arm, then stood beside her so she could get out her cane again and grasp my elbow.
We picked our careful way home, and I made a mental note to drive her to and from the square until she was back up to snuff.