In the small booth, Dorothy was coming to the bottom of her limited supply of produce.
She had a long, low table set up, draped in newspaper—the Sunday comics this week—and
dotted with boxes that held this week’s crop: bright red apples, plump raspberries,
baskets full of herbs, and the vegetables: green beans, tomatoes, broccoli, and summer
squash. Of those, only a few remained; lonely apples in the bottom of an otherwise
empty box, a handful of green beans.
She was out of almost everything. The sky—cloudless and blue—was a bright backdrop
to the melee as she packed up her boxes and carried them across the aisle to the Cascade
Farms stall.
The owner, a big, wild-haired man with a potbelly and a hook of a nose, gave her a
smile. “Looks like a good day for you, Dorothy.”
“Really good, Owen. Thanks again for letting me use part of your booth. The raspberries
were gone in a nanosecond.”
She handed him the stack of wooden boxes. He took them from her and put them in the
back of his rusted pickup truck. He would drop them off at her house later. “You sure
we can’t give you a ride home?”
“Naw. I’m good, but thanks. Tell Erika hi. See you guys later.”
She walked back to her part of the shared stall, feeling a slight tingle of sweat
along the back of her neck. A bead slid down her spine, dampening the waistband of
her baggy pants. She unbuttoned the ragged plaid shirt that was basically her uniform—she
had at least six of them—and took it off, tying it around her waist by the sleeves.
The ribbed red tank she had on underneath was blotched with sweat beneath her arms,
but there was nothing she could do about it.
She was sixty-nine years old, with long gray hair, skin that looked like ten miles
of dry riverbed, and eyes that held all the sorrow she’d experienced in her life.
The last thing she cared about was whether she smelled. She retied the red bandanna
across her forehead and climbed onto the rusted bike that was her only mode of transportation.
One day at a time.
The guiding tenet of this new life of hers. In the past five years, she’d turned her
life around, pared down and stripped away until only what mattered remained. She left
almost no carbon imprint on the planet. She composted everything. She grew and tended
and sold her organically grown produce, and she ate only organic food. Fruits, nuts,
vegetables, and grains. She was not pretty anymore, and she was as thin and stringy
as her beans, but none of that bothered her. In fact, it pleased her. The life she’d
led showed on her face.
She was alone now. It was how it always should have been. How many times had her father
told her that?
You’re cold as ice, Dotty. You’ll end up alone if you can’t thaw
. It was criminal that his voice was still in her head after all these years.
She put a rubber band around her pant leg and climbed onto the bike. With a flourish,
she was off, pedaling through town with her cash box banging around in the basket
between her handlebars. Cars honked at her and came too close, but she barely noticed.
She’d learned that people were uncomfortable with old hippies in general, but especially
those on bicycles.
At the corner, she held her arm out to indicate her intention and turned onto Main
Street. It gave her a small bit of pleasure, just following the rules, indicating
her turn. She knew it sounded odd and most people wouldn’t understand, but her whole
life had been spent in the wildlands of anarchy, and the peace that came with rules
and fences and society had proven to be unexpectedly comforting. She parked her bike
in one of the stands outside the pharmacy. The newer residents of town, the hipper
suburbanites who’d chosen this once-sleepy town as their home because it was thirty-some
miles from downtown Seattle, would lock their bikes up in bright red tubing and protect
their investment.
It always made Dorothy smile, seeing that sort of care being taken for
things
. Someday, if they were lucky, they’d learn what needed to be held close in life,
and what wasn’t worth worrying over. Retying her bandanna as she walked down the cracked,
uneven sidewalk, she was surprised by the number of people in town today. Tourists
moved in flocks in and out of the antique stores that had become Snohomish’s raison
d’être. On this street, once the only one in town, banked on one side by the wide,
flat ribbon of the Snohomish River and on the other by the start of the new part of
town, the storefronts retained the frontier look of the old days.
She went into a brightly lit pharmacy and strode directly to the prescription counter.
Along the way there were plenty of pretty things that caught her eye—brightly colored
barrettes, coffee mugs with inspirational sayings, greeting cards—but she knew that
less was more. Besides, she had no money left and her check from Tully hadn’t come
in yet this month.
“Hey, Dorothy,” the pharmacist said.
“Hey, Scott.”
“How was the farmers’ market today?”
“Great. I have some honey for you and Lori. I’ll bring it by.”
He handed her the medication that had made such a difference in her life. “Thanks.”
She paid for her pills, pocketed the small orange bottle, and headed out. She went
back out to the busy street, climbed onto her bicycle, and pedaled the three miles
home.
As always, going up Summer Hill kicked her ass, and by the time she reached the top
and turned onto Firefly Lane, she was sweating hard and breathing heavily. At her
driveway, she wheeled left and hung on tightly as the old bike rattled down toward
the house.
There was a note pinned to her front door. Frowning, she got off her bike, let it
clatter to the ground. When was the last time someone had left her a note?
D—
Tully is in Sacred Heart Hospital. Johnny says to hurry. Cab fare under mat. 426 E.
M
Dorothy bent down and lifted up the black rubber doormat. A dirty white envelope lay
on the damp potato-bug-dotted cement beneath. Inside the envelope was a one-hundred-dollar
bill.
Dorothy hurried through the rambler that had once belonged to her parents and now
was owned by her daughter—the same house a much younger Dorothy had once lived in
with a fourteen-year-old Tully. The only place they’d ever lived together.
In the last few years, Dorothy had done a little work on the place, but not much.
The exterior was still beige and in need of paint; the roof still grew a green moss
in places. Inside, she’d ripped up the avocado shag carpeting and found hardwood floors
beneath, which someday she intended to refinish. The kitchen was still the Pepto-Bismol-colored
apocalypse some renter had chosen in the early seventies, but the hideous gingham
curtains were gone. The only room Dorothy had really gutted was the master bedroom.
She’d ripped down the cheap blinds, pulled up the gold sculpted carpeting, and painted
the walls a pretty cream color.
Dorothy opened her prescription bottle and took her pill, washing it down with a handful
of warm tap water. Picking up the old-fashioned corded phone in the kitchen—an antique
in this cell phone era—she opened the phone book, looked up the number, and called
a cab. There was no time to take a shower, so she just brushed her hair and teeth.
Braiding her stringy gray hair as she walked into the bedroom, she caught sight of
herself in the oval mirror above her dresser.
She looked like Gandalf after a bender.
A cab horn honked out front. She grabbed her purse and ran out. It wasn’t until she
was in the smelly brown velour seat, staring through a dirty window, that she realized
one pant leg was still rubber-banded to her ankle.
She stared at her farm as the cab pulled out of the driveway. More than four years
ago—when she’d finally accepted the idea of true change—this place had saved her.
She often thought that her tears had been the moisture that made her vegetables grow.
She was grateful for the prescription drugs in her system. The veil they provided
was chiffonlike, a softening of the world around her. Just a little. Enough so that
her emotions—her unreliable and dangerous moods—were calmed. Without them, she knew
she could spiral downward now, into the darkness that had been home for most of her
life.
Memories clamored at her, pushing, demanding until she couldn’t hear the cabdriver
breathing or the engine purring or the traffic zipping past them.
Time unspooled and wrapped around her and she had no will to resist. She gave up,
gave in, and for a split second the world went utterly, completely still.
Then she heard a dog barking, a chain snapping taut, and she knew where she was,
when
she was: 2005. November. She was sixty-four years old, a woman who called herself
Cloud, and her daughter was one of the most famous people on TV. Cloud lived in a
broken-down trailer on a muddy lot off a logging road near Eatonville. The sweet,
cloying smell of …
marijuana engulfed her. She was high, but not high enough. Lately, there wasn’t enough
weed in the world to protect her.
Maybe a drink would help. She climbed out of the ripped brown Barcalounger and stumbled
into the Formica coffee table. Pain bit deep into her shin and beer cans rattled and
fell to the floor.
She moved cautiously through the mobile home, wondering if the floors were slanted
suddenly or she was higher than she thought. In the kitchen, she paused. What had
she come in here for?
She glanced dully around, noticing the stack of dirty dishes on the stove. She should
do those before Truc got home. He hated it when she didn’t clean up … Were those
flies
buzzing around the pizza boxes?
She shuffled over to the fridge and opened the door. The light came on, illuminating
some leftover sandwiches, a case of beer, and milk that looked vaguely green. She
slammed it shut and opened the freezer. A fifth of vodka lay in the rack on the door.
She was reaching for it with a trembling hand when she heard the throaty purr of a
diesel engine.
Shit
.
She should start cleaning, but she was shaking badly and she felt sick to her stomach.
Outside, the dogs were barking, snarling. She could hear them leaping toward him,
straining their collars, snapping against long coils of chain.
She had to meet him. She ran shaking hands through her long, tangled hair. When had
she showered last? Did she smell bad? He hated that.
She shuffled to the door and opened it. At first, all she saw was a gray afternoon
that smelled of diesel smoke and dog crap and wet dirt.
She blinked, focused.
There was his big red truck parked by the woodpile.
Truc climbed out of the cab, his steel-toed boot splashing down in a pothole. He was
a big man, with a belly that entered the room first and straggly brown hair that framed
a boxy, well-traveled face.
The truth was in his eyes. They were small and black and the light in them could go
dark in an instant.
“H-hey, Truc,” she said, snapping open a beer for him. “I didn’t think you’d be home
until Tuesday.”
He came into the light and she knew he’d been drinking. There was a glassy look in
his eyes, a slackness in his mouth. He paused to pet his beloved Dobermans, fishing
dog treats out of his pockets. The snapping of their jaws seemed terrifyingly loud
in the quiet night. She winced, tried to keep smiling.
Truc took the beer from her and stood there in the pale rectangle of light. The dogs
were quiet beside him now, servile, slobbering their affection. Just the way he liked
them. Behind them, the grassy field disappeared into a fog that cleansed the yard
of its rusted cars and broken refrigerators and discarded furniture.
“It is Tuesday,” Truc growled. He finished the beer and tossed the can to the dogs,
who immediately began fighting over it. He reached out and pulled her into his big
arms and held her tightly. “I missed you,” he whispered in his gravelly, slurred voice,
and she wondered where he’d been since his shift ended. At the Lucky Spot, probably,
drinking boilermakers and complaining about cutbacks at the paper plant. He smelled
of pulpwood and grease and smoke and whiskey.
She tried to stand very still, hardly daring to breathe. He was touchy lately, and
getting touchier all the time. She never knew what would set him off. “I missed you,
too,” she said, hearing the slur in her voice. Her mind was moving slowly, thoughts
pushing through sludge.
“You’re not wearing the blouse I bought you.”
She drew back slowly. What blouse? Honestly, she couldn’t remember. “I … I’m sorry.
I’m saving it for nice. It’s so pretty.”
He made a sound, maybe disgust, maybe acceptance, maybe apathy. She couldn’t tell.
Her thoughts were too fuzzy, and that was bad bad bad. She held on to his hand, squeezing
it as she led him into the mobile home.
The place reeked of pot, she realized suddenly. And something else; garbage, maybe.
“Cloud,” he said, so quietly that the hair on the back of her neck stood up. What
had he seen? What had she done or not done?
Cleaning. She’d forgotten to clean. He hated dirty dishes in the sink.
She turned slowly, unable to even think of an excuse.
He kissed her lightly on the lips, so lovingly that she released a sigh of relief.
“You know I hate a mess like this. With all I give you—”
She pulled back. “Please—”
Before she could even lift her hands in defense, he punched her in the face. She felt
her nose crumple beneath his fist; blood sprayed everywhere and she stood there, bleeding
down her shirt. Crying only made it worse.
* * *
She woke to the sound of heavy breathing. For a second she didn’t remember anything,
and then pain reminded her. She pried open one eye and immediately winced. Pale light
from the TV stabbed at her, made her blink. Her mouth was dry; she was trembling uncontrollably
and everything hurt.