Dividing Earth: A Novel of Dark Fantasy (12 page)

Chapter Eighteen: Rough Life

1

Robert called in a substitute teacher. The pain in his hip was excruciating. He could see only patches of light and colors. He phoned Matt, who had no idea, only telling him to give it a day, it might pass. Matt was lying. Give it a day, and he might pass.

Next, he called Jenn’s school to tell them she wouldn’t be in, that she was under the weather. Jenn giggled as he hung up. “What?” he asked.

“Daddy, I’m not sick!”

“Honey,” said Robert, winced, tried to get up, but slumped back on the couch. “We need to talk.”

“Yup,” said Jenn, hopping up next to him. Her tiny hand patted his leg. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sick.”

“I know. Are you going to die? Amanda Louise’s mommy died last year. She had a heart attack.”

“I know,” said Robert. Amanda Louise’s mother had been nearly four hundred pounds. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to me,” he said, scanning his daughter’s face.

“I’ll take care of you, Daddy. Okay?”

He grimaced. “Okay,” he said.

“Are you hungry?”

“Sure.” In fact, he was nauseous.

“Pancakes!” Jenn leapt from the couch, her feet slapping into the kitchen.

Jenn prepared two meals that day. To his surprise, the pancakes turned out perfectly: browned on top, cooked in the middle, moist and fluffy. For lunch, ham and cheese sandwiches, but with a nice twist: she toasted slices of bread in a skillet sizzling with butter. To his additional shock, he ate and kept it all down.

All afternoon and evening they sat on the couch together, Jenn watching television and Robert drinking in his daughter’s reactions to each program.

After Jenn went to bed he labored upstairs, still in considerable pain. Finding his room too quiet, he lifted the latch on his French doors and stepped out on the porch overlooking the neighborhood. Cicada’s rang out, failing brake pads signaled a distant car, Ted Damion’s weekly bonfire filled the air. Although disappointed by Veronica—and horrified by her silence toward Jennifer, which confirmed a narcissism he had only suspected—he didn’t miss her but for the customary sounds of her presence. He knew now why bachelors and widows found televisions such necessary company. He shut his useless eyes, breathed deeply of the bonfire. He’d been thinking about calling his father, who had moved to Puerto Rico with Juanita ten years ago. They rarely spoke, though not out of a dislike or because of a falling out. He didn’t really know why. They simply didn’t.
Tomorrow,
he thought.
I’ll call him tomorrow.

He stood on the veranda for a while, listening, smelling, thinking about whatever remained of his life, but then the thought rammed into him: What did your mother think about as she died? He opened his blurry eyes, thought of the last volume of her diary. He hadn’t read that one often. As her condition had worsened her writing became fevered. Because of the nature of her tumor she’d suffered endless migraines and hallucinations, and they had only increased as the end had neared. But she hadn’t stopped writing. He stared out at the fuzzy mirage of his neighborhood, feeling faint, his hip pulsing with pain. The throbbing in his eyes increased. He suddenly longed to read that last volume, and he smashed his fist on the ledge. “I can’t see it,” he whispered. Jennifer, though, could read it to him. He turned from the railing, set on waking his up.

A tremendous pain seared into his eyes.

Stifling a scream, he cupped his hands over them, but the agony worsened. Collapsing to his knees, he curled into the fetal position, writhed on the floor, kicked his feet against the bed, bruised his shin on the dresser. His mouth snapped open and shut. Then, as abruptly as it had begun, the torment subsided. He lay on the floor for he didn’t know how long, breathing in gasps. He took his hands away from his eyes. The room snapped into focus. Not only was his sight back, but it was perfect, better than it had been in years. (Years from now Robert would reflect on this day as a rebirth. The day he had shed his cocoon. The day he’d been made to see.) Looking down, he opened his hands. “Oh my God,” he said. In each of his palms was what appeared to be a scale. The cataracts had the feel of a snake’s shed skin. He carefully dropped one into his right palm, felt along the ridge of it, shook his head in disbelief. They were rigid, taut, and in the shape of his eyes.

2

When Mary and Grady arrived in Simola Straight, her parents weren’t home. They’d propped a note up on the kitchen table. It read,
I’ll be back for dinner. Mom
.

Grady was behind her, a garbage bag in each hand. “Which way’s your room?”

“The one with two beds,” said Mary, smiling ruefully. Freddie would have gone out, bought another bed. She hated to appear less than classy.

They unloaded the Toyota. Mary disposed of Grady’s trash bags after they unpacked, but by the time they finished, the McDylan’s hadn’t shown. It was after six.

“Anything to eat in this joint?” asked Grady, tearing off for the kitchen.

Mary rushed after her. “What are you hungry for?”

Grady turned her head, a quizzical expression on her face. “Why are you so nervous?”

Mary stopped. “I’m not. I’m trying to show you around.”

“No, you’re not. You’re nervous.” They stared at each other. “Are you embarrassed of me? Afraid your mother might smell the trailer park?”

“No, I—“

“I might smell the home owner’s association on her. It’s combustible.”

“No, it’s not that—“

“Yes it is, and it’s fine. I’m here for you, and I’m here for me. I needed to get away from a lot of shit.”

Mary nodded.

“Don’t you get it?”

She shook her head.

“I’m never going back, never gonna speak to them again.”

“Grady, you don’t have to do that. Are you sure you—“

“I’ve needed this for—” said Grady, pausing, her eyes filled with memory. “A long, long time.”

Mary reached out, rubbed Grady’s arm. Grady put her arm around her, and they walked, like lovers or old friends, into the kitchen. The pantry was full. There was macaroni and cheese, tuna, spaghetti, cans of chili. And chips, lots and lots of chips. Mary had never realized that her diet, when she ate at all, was junk.

They cooked two boxes of macaroni and cheese. Mary topped the pasta with cheese and a load of hot sauce, per Grady’s request, and her friend loved it, shoveled heaping spoonfuls into her mouth. Mary thought then that she loved her, this rough girl from some world she would probably never even visit, much less understand.

They were at the kitchen table when the front door opened. Freddie entered first, and Mary was taken aback: Her mother’s eyes were puffy, baggy underneath, and a sharp foundation line ran beneath her jaw. Freddie smiled wanly, carefully, as if her face might crack. “Oh, you’re back,” she said, dumped her purse on the kitchen island, then picked up a stack of mail and thumbed through it, taking hesitant steps.

“Mom?” asked Mary, rising.

Freddie stopped short of her daughter, who had opened her arms, and Mary blinked, rocking back on her heels. They shared a silence and Grady watched, still seated at the table. “This is Grady, Mom,” Mary said, pointing over but not looking.

Freddie nodded. “Gathered that,” she said, then lowered her eyes, her voice, clenched her fists by her jeans and growled, “Mary, how could you do this to—“

“To who, Mom?”

“Us, you, the whole family!” shouted Freddie.

“That’s my mom, worried about her reputation,” said Mary to Grady, who shrugged, looked away, fiddled with the plastic table mat.

While Mary’s face was turned Freddie smacked her. “Don’t you make light of this!” she screamed.

Mary stumbled back, touched the quickly reddening hand print and blinked back the tears.

Grady surprised them both. She smashed her fist on the table so hard all the silverware jumped. Then she stepped between them, pressed two fingers into Freddie’s chest, and pushed. Hard. Freddie stumbled back into the kitchen’s island, her eyes wider than before. “How dare you—“ she began, but Grady stepped forward like a warrior, her face red, her hand raised. “Try me, bitch,” she said, and Freddie shut her mouth, stood there motionless, leaned back on the counter as if to rest.

And that’s when George strolled in, holding a six pack of Heineken keg-cans. “What in all of hell?” He set the cans on the counter behind Freddie, joined her. “Are you Grady?”

“Damn straight, I’m—“

“Sit down, please,” he said, staring right into her furious eyes.

Grady eyed him a moment, then sat, crossing her arms.

George glanced at Mary, who was still rubbing her cheek, then back at his wife. “Did you hit her?”

“George, you don’t—“

“Take a seat and shut up,” he said. Freddie did as she was told. “You too, Mary.”

When they were all seated, George stood at the head of the table, his knuckles set on the wood-grain. “Listen, I do not care what happened, only that it doesn’t happen again. If any one of you touches another, you will all be out of a place to stay,” he said, straightening up. “I’m talking to you too, honey,” he said, then smiled broadly, as if the incident was all but forgotten. “Grady, I apologize you were greeted in this way. Welcome to our home,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind sharing a room with Mary.”

“No, not at all,” Grady said respectfully.

“You two hungry?”

The girls shook their heads. Freddie turned, stared out the sliding glass door into the backyard.

“Call it a night, then. There’s a television in your room.”

They walked across the house, Mary listening to her father chide her mother, she and Grady sharing looks.

3

Robert forgot all about his mother’s diary until the following morning. His hip felt better, and his eyesight was clear. He put the last volume in his briefcase, saw Jenn to her bus, and drove to school. He taught his courses on autopilot, not listening to himself, not remembering a word he’d said.

At lunchtime, he skipped the cafeteria line, headed straight to a table near the back, and opened the book. As they had before, the passages struck him as decreasing in lucidity. His mother had been a woman of intelligence but little schooling, a cynical autodidact, and as her condition had grown worse she had struggled to make sense of it all. All her life she’d believed in magic, but as the tumor grew, she harkened back to the stories she’d told in the earlier volumes—the tales of an ancient lineage of witches, their bloodline barely intact. Instead of retelling old stories, though, she spoke of this bloodline’s history—how anyone who’d ever had an extrasensory gift had undoubtedly been one of them. It struck Robert as even stranger than the earlier tales—which he’d taken merely as a mythology of her early childhood—because she was naming names and listing dates.

Perhaps he’d been wrong about her mind. But what did it all mean? Exactly how was she cloaking the facts with these tales?
Well, shit,
he thought.
Maybe she really did go apeshit.

* * * * *

He let his next class out early. Before descending the steps to the parking lot, he glanced over the balcony wall. The man wasn’t down there. Only kids cluttered the courtyard. Some were studying quietly on the grass, sitting Indian-style, hunched over thick books. A girl lay belly-down, kicking her legs, scanning a text with her index finger. A group of artists sat around a large pine tree. Its shadow stretched over them.

Robert didn’t remember much of his own college career. Two years into it, he’d made the decision to teach; at the time, he’d thought he wanted to because campus life was so exhilarating with fresh ideas and new minds. Now, watching the bright courtyard house the next generation of dreamers and burnouts, a nameless feeling returned. During college, he’d gravitated toward artists and intellectuals. Future bureaucrats galled him, and now he understood why. He admired those who possessed true courage, envied their drive and ambition, needed to be around their passion. In turn, he loathed and spurned those flawed like him. Looking over the courtyard, he longed to yell out, to tell them not to be afraid.

* * * * *

Later, he pulled behind Dan’s Chevy. Dan took his cigarette from his lips. His eyes widened. “You look like crap.”

“Got in a fight with God.”

“Pity, seeing how you don’t believe in Him.”

He sat beside Dan, lifted the pack of Camel’s from Dan’s thigh, plucked out a cigarette, positioning it between his lips. Twenty years ago, he’d taken a single puff from a Lucky Strike.

Dan surveyed him, then slapped a match across the book’s scratch, lighting the cigarette; then he waved the match into smoke. “When the hell did you get a life?”

“Dying tends to focus a guy.”

Instead of the surprise Robert had anticipated, Dan’s face registered nothing.

He took a drag, exhaling without so much as a cough. “Cancer.”

Dan leaned over. “Christ.”

“He’s got zero to do with it. Dumb luck is the only god I know, and she’s a real cunt.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I hope so,” Robert said.

“I don’t know if we can understand the Divine, but it works mysteriously.”

“I don’t read you.”

“You didn’t get hit with the cancer stick, Robert. It’s not dumb luck. You’re just not seeing the pattern.”

A minute smile spread over Dan’s face at this, and Robert stared at him, nearly through him. The bookseller spread over his chair like an explosion, his face carpeted in stubble, his eyes darting over his thoughts, a cigarette slanting from his drawn lips. All this, and yet there was an air about this man, vague as the smoke disintegrating around him, of sorcery. “It’s not for a lack of looking, I’ll tell you.”

“Anything out of the ordinary going on? I mean besides being ill.”

Robert thought of the scales, his regained sight, the Charles Manson look-alike. “Plenty.”

“Well, I don’t believe that God, or the Divine, or whatever it is that comprises the universe has a plan for humanity, but I do subscribe to the order of the strange. Sooner or later, things will add up.”

“No, they won’t,” said Robert, pausing. He thought a moment, then slowly said, “The Divine is, as it always has been, only what we cannot explain, or cannot accept.”