Three Rivers (28 page)

Never, Genie thought.

Every day, Genie woke up and put on a dress, applied some makeup, brushed her hair. She did it to remind herself she was worth the attention, even if the only admirer she had was the one in the mirror. She did it to keep from sinking into filth and sadness like her mother. Her college classmates had moved on. They got married, got pregnant, not always in that order. Some were working in town. A handful headed off to California, searching for something they didn't even know they needed. Genie was locked in place. She couldn't move forward and she couldn't move away. She met Bruce that summer. He drove a truck for Grantham Feed & Supply, and he delivered pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer to her father's farm. He showed up every two weeks in the summer months, rolled barrels of poison from the back of his truck into her father's shed. She brought him sweet tea and he lingered longer than necessary. Her father did not approve, but Genie cared less and less about her father's approval. As long as her mother was sick, her father would not let Genie go.

Genie's father was leaving for two days. The members of the Delta Council called an emergency meeting to discuss the uprisings taking place across the region. Workers were demanding breaks and asking for better wages. He had to go. He gave Genie the keys to the shed and told her Bruce would be by with supplies. “Just lock everything up,” he told her. “Don't stand around talking to that redneck. Just lock it up and get back inside. Take care of your mother.”

Genie took the key. She put on her best sundress, crisp cotton printed with golden sunflowers. She brushed mascara on her lashes until her eyelids felt heavy, painted her lips bright red. She brushed her hair until her scalp felt charged with electricity. Then she went into the dark room. Sometimes her mother was more alert in the mornings, but today she was drowsy and despondent, glancing up at Genie with hooded eyes. “Why are you all whored up?” That voice, muffled and sharp at once, eliminated any doubt she might have.

“Here's your drink.” Genie pressed a glass of watered-down bourbon to her mother's lips.

Her mother slurped and some of the liquid dribbled down her chin. “Weak,” she said.

“Well, it's early. We'll save the strong stuff for later.”

She waited. Bruce pulled up at ten o'clock in the morning and Genie greeted him with a smile. She jingled the keys at him and explained that her father was attending a meeting in Cleveland. She hopped into the passenger seat of the truck and rode with Bruce to the shed around back, watched him unload the barrels from the bed of the truck, and asked him questions about each one. He explained which powder killed which weed and what to use for rodents. He asked her to stand back and he donned a pair of gloves, snapped a paper mask over his nose and mouth, and rolled out the last barrel. It was marked with a skull and crossbones on all sides and stamped with warnings about inhalation, ingestion, and dermal exposure. Genie locked the door to the shed and took Bruce inside. He was nervous, and when he was nervous, he stuttered. She served him a piece of lemon meringue pie and a cup of coffee. She let her hand rest on his forearm and told him someday the farm would be hers. “All of it,” she said. “All of this land will belong to me and to my husband.” She looked him right in the eye when she said the word “husband.” His face flushed red and she smiled.

She let him kiss her, tasted the sweet tangy lemon and bitter coffee on his tongue. He pressed himself against her, and his desire chased away any darkness that threatened her. She needed to be needed. He groped at her, grabbing at various parts of her as if clutching for a life preserver. She reached down and unbuckled his belt, unzipped his blue jeans. He sprang from them as if freed from prison. She lifted her skirt, pushed her panties down around her knees, and gasped as he thrust into her. It was over before it began. He convulsed and pulled away, leaving behind a sticky trail on her thigh. She knew nothing of sex and assumed that was it. They lay side by side on the cold tile floor of her parents' kitchen. Genie felt restless, dissatisfied. Bruce looked at her. “You're the prettiest girl I've ever seen.”

Genie shrugged. She knew she was pretty.

“I'm not rich,” Bruce said.

“I don't care.”

“I'm not handsome.”

“I'm sick of handsome people.”

He rolled on top of her, supporting most of his weight on his elbows. “I'm not good.”

“Neither am I.” She guided him into her and pressed herself hard against him until she felt something like pleasure.

She sent him off with another piece of pie and a thermos full of coffee. He promised to return in better clothes and with a good shave to talk to her father.

Genie waited until the dust from his truck settled before heading back out to the shed. She put on a pair of yellow kitchen gloves, pleased with the way they matched her dress. She tied one of her father's bandannas around her nose and mouth, and used a crowbar to pry open the barrel, the one with the skull and crossbones. She dipped a tablespoonful of the white powder into a clean glass. It looked like laundry detergent, nothing more. She closed the barrel, tamped the lid down all around with a hammer. Inside the house, she crushed a dozen of her mother's sleeping pills into a fine powder with a wooden rolling pin, the same pin she'd used to roll out the piecrust early that morning. She filled the glass half-full with bourbon and stirred until most of the cloudiness disappeared, packed in some ice and fresh mint leaves, and topped it off with sweet tea. She carried it upstairs right away, afraid that if she hesitated, she would lose her nerve.

“What have you been doing?” Her mother's voice croaked like a bullfrog.

“I made you a special drink.”

She held the glass to her mother's lips. Should she be wearing gloves even now? Her mother sipped and then took a larger gulp. “It's sweet,” she said.

“You like it sweet.”

Her mother nodded. Genie pulled the glass away; maybe it wasn't too late to stop this. Her mother grabbed for the drink.

“Is it too weak?” Genie asked. “I can fix a fresh one.”

Her mother pulled the glass to her lips, took long greedy gulps. “It'll do.”

Too late to stop anything, Genie realized, and better that way. Her mother was miserable, pathetic. Genie would do what her father couldn't; she would set her mother free. She would free herself. She stroked her mother's filthy hair, a film of grease against her palm. “Finish it up before the ice melts.”

Her mother did as she was told. Geneva, for she was Geneva now and not a frivolous Genie, waited. “It'll be better this way,” she told her mother. “You'll see. You'll be happier now.” Her mother's face turned gray and she clutched at her stomach. She gasped. She clawed at her throat, retched and convulsed. Her bowels released and the stench that filled the room sent Geneva to the window. She flung it open and allowed fresh air into the room for the first time in years. When she turned around, her mother was dead.

Geneva couldn't let anyone see her mother in such a state. Her mother deserved better than that. She bathed her with lavender-scented bath soap and a bucket of warm water. The breeze from the open window mingled with the clean scent of soap, and the stench of despair retreated. Geneva washed her mother's greasy hair, dried it with the softest towel she could find, and brushed it until it shone. She pulled her mother's finest nightgown from the closet, an ivory satin gown with lace around the hemline. It looked like a wedding dress. The soft fabric slid across her mother's limp body. Geneva pulled clean sheets over her mother and made the bed around her. Then she set to work on her mother's face. Moisturizer, a hint of cream rouge, a wash of pale pink lipstick, the barest brush of eye shadow; it was subtle but perfect. Geneva stepped back. Her mother was beautiful. For the first time in years, she seemed content, peaceful. Geneva draped a quilt across her mother's legs, folded the soft fabric prettily. In life, her mother was a terror. In death, she looked like the subject of a dreamy painting. Geneva kissed her mother's forehead and then, impulsively, pressed her lips against her mother's cold lips. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. “I didn't know what else to do.”

Geneva hauled the gloves, the old bandanna, and the soiled sheets out back, where she buried them among the graves of the family pets. Only then did she call the doctor and report that her mother had asked for her pills.

“How many did she take?”

“I don't know,” Geneva said. “How many did you give her?”

Geneva's father put a notice in the paper that said his wife had died after a long illness. He buried her in the Baptist cemetery and he got back to work. Geneva was too old to return to college. She'd seen too much to go back to the life where she was nothing more than a pretty girl. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she woke in a panic, certain that she could hear her mother's voice calling for her. She married Bruce against her father's wishes. She was pregnant when her father walked her down the aisle, her stomach filled with a secret weight. On her honeymoon in Florida, she miscarried. She stared down at the bloody mess in the toilet while her new husband begged her to hurry up. They had dinner reservations at a restaurant on the beach in Fort Walton. She flushed and fixed her makeup in the cloudy hotel mirror.

When they returned home, her father tried to teach Bruce how to run the farm. Geneva went to see Pisa. She told her about her mother's death, about the baby, about Bruce. Pisa laid hands on her stomach. “There are plenty more babies to be conceived. That one was not meant to live, just as your mother was not meant to live.”

“I didn't know what else to do,” Geneva said. “I thought it was the best thing. Now I don't know. Maybe I'm being punished. Maybe no baby will want me.”

“You should look to the future,” Pisa told her. “You cannot live your life if you are always looking back.”

*   *   *

She was twenty-six and heavy with a baby due any day. She waddled through the house, preparing meals for her father and husband. They teased her about being fat, but when she looked in the mirror, she knew she was more beautiful than she'd ever been. She rubbed her stomach with oils that Pisa gave her. The baby inside her turned over as if swimming with pleasure. “It's a daughter,” Pisa said. Geneva worried about raising a daughter. A boy, it seemed, would be easier. Geneva promised herself that she would never hold her daughter too close.

*   *   *

She was twenty-nine and her daughter was bouncing up and down on her bed. “Fatty fatty, two by four, can't get through the bathroom door.” The smell of Bruce's cigarettes made her nauseated. Geneva hoisted herself from bed and waddled into the bathroom. “Mine,” Geneva said, rubbing her hands against her swollen belly. A boy would be easier.

*   *   *

She was forty-one and her son was reborn as an angel. She loved him twice as much. Her daughter was someone she barely recognized.

*   *   *

She was fifty-one, and her life was slipping away. She opened her eyes and saw her daughter. “Mama.” Her daughter's voice came to her as through a canyon. She clutched at Bruce. Bruce would save her. She reached for his hand, but his bones crumbled to dust beneath her grip.

Her body was lifted up and set down again. God was trying to decide whether to keep her. She heard voices, and when she opened her eyes, she saw lights so bright they made her head throb. Angels or demons surrounded her; she could not distinguish. A cold pinch on her arm sent a wave of warmth through her body. It was the darkness that her mother embraced, the darkness she'd fought for so long. It was a comfort, and Geneva understood why her mother succumbed to it.

 

Chapter Twenty-five

AFTER THE FLOOD

The floodwaters receded, leaving behind piles of soggy debris and the threat of sinkholes along paved roads. A series of downed power lines sparked alongside the blacktop of Highway 49. The air filled with dangerous smells: sulfur, gasoline, ammonia, mold. Search and rescue teams abandoned their boats and moved across the land on foot or in recreational vehicles normally used for hunting game. Now they hunted bodies, dead or alive.

A child was found inside an antique armoire, his body curled like a comma around a stack of hand-embroidered dish towels. The child was unmarred by the water, and the firefighter who found him thought he was sleeping until he lifted the boy's stiff body. The firefighter, best known for his temper and his time as the star quarterback of the local high school a decade before, broke down and called out for his mommy.

An old lady, maybe the oldest lady in the whole county, rode out the storm on the roof of her house, shielding herself and her three basset hounds with a roll of gardening tarp meant to keep frost off tomatoes. She had to carry each of the hounds up to the roof, hoisting their saggy, heavy flesh through an open window onto a second-story balcony, and then pulling them up one at a time. Everyone laughed, imagining the ninety-pound, ninety-nine-year-old lady lifting the dogs with their long ears and short legs and woeful howling up onto the roof. And how did they get back down? Someone always asked this, chuckling at the very idea.

A man who'd been a drinker his whole life, who was well known as nothing but a sorry drunk, fell suddenly sober for the first time in two decades and saw the face of God in the storm clouds. He was cured of his craving for whiskey. “Just don't want it no more,” he said with a look on his face that told you that this lack of wanting was a miracle too big to explain.

Another woman, said to be eccentric by polite people and downright loony by folks who were less genteel, was discovered naked and filthy in bed with her dead husband. Her leg was broken and she was so dehydrated that her lips had turned white. Her hair—her thick, black, shiny curtain of beauty—had gone completely silver. Some people said she looked like a witch, something they'd always kind of suspected. Other people said she looked like an angel, like someone who'd seen God and then been returned to earth.