Lake People (14 page)

Alice liked to call to animals, like the moose she saw one day as she stood in the window. She spoke to it silently:
Come here, I won’t hurt you, come inside
. The beast loped across the lawn and was off. None of the animals—there were a lot, like deer, and the coyotes she heard howling in the night—would respond to her. None but the squirrel who now came to the back door each morning and waited for her to put breakfast out. She fed it toast spread thickly with jam. But she had yet to befriend any other animal. Even Josh’s dog, Dorie. When Alice tried to bring her along for a walk she would show her teeth and faintly growl. For friendship Alice stuck to the squirrel.

And then one day she was walking through the field across the road and speaking in her head to a deer she was sure she heard over at the edge of the thin line of woods, by the road. Josh wanted to call it off. He had moved to his own bedroom. Alice could call it off. She could, couldn’t she? She cinched her rain cap tighter and took big, heartfelt steps, though her hip was still sore.

“Martha!” a woman called.
Maatha
. Not a deer at all. “Martha up the street! That’s me!” The woman moved quickly through a patch of brambles and ran across the field to Alice. Under her sweatshirt her massive chest heaved.

“It’s Martha up the street,” the woman—sopping wet, with no hat or coat or boots—managed between breaths. “Alice! I been meaning to see you, I says to my husband, I says Ronny, that over in the Blaisdells’ old place, that is Miss Alice Thorton, nicest girl I ever knew. I says that! Course I see you gots yourself a man, so you isn’t Thorton no more, but all the same I says it was you and sure enough plain as day it is, I ain’t so stupid as Ronny says, but of course I don’t get out much, first day really, the kids, you know Christy? Fourth grade already! And Jason first and today I say, what the hell. Ronny’s sleeping the day over at the factory, your husband work there, too? Course! Why else we come to this forsaken place! My Ronny works nights and sometimes he sleeps there, just a little cot they got, but here I am gabbing on and you ain’t said one word. Gabbing Martha, that’s what my sister says. Shut your trap! Ronny says that. Just shut up. Alice.”

Alice Thorton, it was still her name. She had not had the courage to take Josh’s, had thought it would be too much for him and would make him leave her. Now she wondered if the name would give her a bit of authority. The wind shifted and a deer took flight out of the woods. Alice watched as it cut across the field and was gone. That was it. “Martha.”

“Martha Paquette,” Martha said.

Martha Hill, she had been. In Kettleborough nearly all the Hills—no one knew just how many—lived up there by the dump. Hill Country, they called it. Not the Hills themselves but others about town, because the road seemed as though it was its own country. Across their spread of land were strewn houses and shacks and even teepees. A thin stand of pine trees
lined the road before their property, so to see in one had to try. And people did, momentarily, slowing down and edging toward the side of the road, peering but pretending not to. There were rumors about how the Hills guarded their land with shotguns, so no one ever dared pull in. So Alice hadn’t really known Martha, not until they had been placed together for a school shop project. In spite of herself Alice had loved Martha’s unflinching ways. “Kids don’t like me, ain’t that life?” she would say. That year there had also been rumors about Martha, of her home and the kind of meat she ate, raccoons mostly, and then those terrible things, her doing it with Jay Hubbard one minute and his brother the next, on the old railroad bed with a makeshift condom of plastic wrap and a rubber band. Alice had done nothing to stop those rumors, though in shop class she and Martha had laughed together so much that whispers started to circulate about her, too, ones that said that Alice was finally with her own kind. Still, when Martha would wave in the hallway or the cafeteria, Alice would turn the other way. This was public, after all, where Hills were only friends with Hills. It wasn’t long before shop class ended and so, too, their friendship.

“I always thought of you,” Martha said now. “I says to Ronny, I says, I know I got me a friend in Alice Thorton. And up here we need a friend, don’t you say? My family ain’t up here, course you know that. I know you always was nice. I says, Ronny Paquette, just because you can’t stand me don’t mean no one can. You leave this house, he says, and I’ll whoop your ass. And he will, too, ain’t that the truth.” Here she turned her bare face into the wind and made a whistling noise, yes-sir-ee. “But today I says what the hell, Martha Paquette, we is taking ourselves for a walk. And here I run into you! Our house first one up from the gully, you know that? You seen it? You’s the nicest friend I ever had, you know that, Alice Thorton?”

“I’ve seen your house, Martha,” Alice said. Each day she
passed by it, a small turquoise house down in the gully, with rooms built on from the center so sloppily it looked like a house of playing cards that would surely blow over in the wind.

“Sure,” Martha said, responding to nothing. “I would love to take a walk with you tomorrow.” At the edge of the field Martha called Alice’s name once more, and it came to Alice not like the insistent voice of this strange old friend but like a welcome song, or a bell. A warm wind came up behind Alice and her hair blew forward, caught in her mouth. She turned southward, knowing that if she crossed those mountains she could just go a distance and then fall right into the lake, home.

While Josh split firewood in the dark, Alice fished through the kindling box for another old newspaper to cut the crossword from. Already they had a pile of firewood big enough to last two winters, but still he wouldn’t quit. Over the kindling box Alice sharpened her pencil with a knife. When the phone rang she was startled, and the knife slipped, and she nearly sliced her finger open. In a daze Alice counted the phone’s rings and imagined what may have happened had that knife slipped differently, or just a little more. She may have sliced her wrist right open. She may have bled to death. Then what would Josh have thought? They had no answering machine, and at thirty the phone still rang.

“Yes,” she said. Not the way she typically answered the phone but this is what came out.

“Martha up the street,” the voice on the other end whispered. “Martha. You there? Alice? It’s Martha up the street!”

“Yes.”

“Thank the Lord for that. I gots to tell you something, Alice. You know my husband, you know Ronny. I gots to pack his dinner
and sometimes his lunch, too. You ever been to the mill? Over past town? Alice? They got those machines there to buy some boxes of soup but I say Ronny! Alice? Hello?”

“Martha.”

“I thought you dropped right off the planet!” The whisper vanished. Martha talked full-speed now, told Alice that tomorrow she needed to make cookies for her husband’s lunch—and of course she’d slip two each into her children’s packs, too—but she was out of flour. Did Alice have a few cups of flour? A little more than that? Enough for the week? “You know Ronny. He says I leave this house my ass is grass. Dead meat. Dead as a doornail? You remember that from school? Dead As A Doornail!”

“Yes, Martha. I’ll bring it up in the morning.”

Alice set the phone down, fed the fire, drank a glass of water. The room was big and empty around her, and when the phone rang—Martha again—she was thankful. “My clothes all wet from our walk today, you remember?” Martha said she could not have her husband catch her with wet clothes. Could Alice come over and take them, just hang them to dry for the night at her own house?

“Martha,” Alice said. “Isn’t your husband home now?”

“You think I’m on the phone when Ronny’s home? He works nights, I got to tell you twice!”

“Then can’t you dry the clothes at your own home?”

“What if he comes in for a surprise! Alice, use your brain!”

Alice agreed to do it. In truth she was relieved to have a task. She put that big-brimmed hat on and Josh’s thick jeans, the ones lined with flannel. She pulled her feet into her boots. There was something the matter with her car, it had not started for weeks, so she took Josh’s truck keys from his coat pocket. She would go to Martha’s first, get the wet clothes. And then to the grocery store, where she would buy the woman her flour. Before leaving,
Alice went to look in the mirror. How many days had it been since she’d been in public? Her face looked different, tired, the skin pale and blotchy. She pinched her cheeks until they filled with blood and then she went out, passed by Josh without a word. He did not look up from his work.

There was a small wooden porch that led to Martha’s front door, and Alice went up it and knocked, but there was no answer. She could hear the television, and see its flashes of light through the curtains. She knocked again, and called out, “Martha!” and that was when she heard a pounding on the window, followed by the holler of a little boy. Alice moved toward the window where he had knocked, but the curtain had been pulled shut again.

“Get,” she heard. It was a low sound, a sort of hiss. It had come from Martha, her head stuck out the front door, darting back and forth like a bird on watch. With her foot she pushed the door open farther, and opened her arms. The pile of wet clothes dropped. “Get,” Martha said once more, and pulled the door closed.

Alice considered leaving the clothes there on the porch, but then what else did she have to do? She took the clothes and though Martha had been cruel she went to the store for her all the same, bought a big bag of flour. At home she realized that she could have gone to the store first, then dropped off the flour when she picked up the clothes. The way she had chosen to do things was probably more difficult. But at least this way filled up more of her time. Carefully Alice hung the sweatshirt, T-shirt, and jeans on the dry rack. They were still soaked and wrinkled, and they already smelled of mildew. It seemed Martha had taken them off and stuffed them away as they were. Alice took them back off the rack and put them in the machine to wash. She
unlaced the sneakers and pulled the tongues up and she set them by the woodstove.

Josh’s father called him that night. What they talked of Alice never knew exactly, though some of it had to do with money. His family lived all the way in Idaho, where he had grown up, and Alice knew nearly nothing of them. Only that his mother prayed, that his father was a businessman, that he had two sisters. When he hung up the telephone and came to the kitchen he took the crossword out from under Alice’s pencil, put her coat on her lap, and told her they were going for a walk. She wore that hat, too—for some reason she would always remember that detail. That hat fastened under her chin, keeping the rain out while they walked down toward the gully. There was an old freezer down there, on the side of the road. It had come from Martha and her husband—Alice would learn that soon. It had broken down and Martha and Ronny meant to take it to the dump, so they hefted it up into that flatbed truck and Martha told her husband no, that will fall right out the back, we need to fasten it. Shut your trap, he had told her. Shut your damn pie hole. And it fell out! Martha would say repeatedly, when she told the story to Alice. Fell out right there at the base of the gully, right as they started up the hill.

On the walk Josh talked of his father, how he was aging. Alice knew then that the spell was over, he would come back to her today. Her hip hurt dreadfully and at first she had made an effort to make sure he knew that, but now she did the opposite. When the rain collected in the rim of her hat she reached up and let it pour out slowly, right down the middle of her face. With her eyes crossed she watched these drops in the dim moonlight. Josh leaned in, his hands tucked inside the opening of her large coat,
and rolled himself a cigarette. They shared this though Alice never smoked. The lights were on in Martha’s house, and when Alice stopped to look on at it Josh stopped with her. He didn’t know about the walk, the phone call, didn’t yet know anything about Martha. For now Alice kept this, something for herself. Flickers from the television found their home in the curtains.

Josh said, “Some asshole lives there.” Alice said nothing, they walked on, and in time he said, “We’re having sex tonight.”

And they did, with the lights on. “I want to remember you,” he told Alice.

In the morning Alice got up quickly and bathed, got dressed as though she had somewhere important to go, though in truth it was only up the hill to Martha’s. Still, it was something. She had considered keeping the flour to herself, waiting for Martha to apologize, but what good would that do? She put the bag of flour in a big wicker basket, along with Martha’s clean and dry clothing, and she laid a plastic grocery sack over the top to keep it all dry and she walked up the hill humming.

It was raining still, of course it was. Out of habit Alice cursed the rain, but in truth didn’t it make those woods green? Such brightness in winter—for that alone the rain was worth it. And the water, the way it rushed down the hill and even her own body. Perhaps, Alice thought as she walked down toward the base of the gully and past that rusted freezer, she and Martha could take a walk in all this rain. Perhaps they could walk over the mountains and down, all the way to the big lake.

“Shh,” Martha hissed when she opened the door. Alice had the basket hung from her arm. Martha’s head shot out the window and looked in both directions, again a terrified animal. “Leave it,” she snapped. She pointed and then pulled the door
closed. With something akin to shock Alice moved to set the clothes and flour where Martha wanted them. When she bent forward there was a slight tap at the window. She turned and saw Martha rush that curtain tight once more.

Alice walked slowly toward home. It was going downhill that made her hip hurt the worst. Josh was at work and before Alice lay one more empty day. With those logs missing from the walls the house was too cold to move about in. She could sit by the woodstove or she could get in the bathtub. Or maybe she would just get back into bed. Curl up. Die.

No. No, no, no.