Timothy Johnston - The Current

IT DOESN’T TAKE long for the drug to find the dog’s bloodstream, his heart, his brain, and she carried her tea to the living room and sat in her chair so he would find his spot under her legs, turn an unsteady circle on the rug, and sleep. Usually she would get him upstairs and into the bedroom before the drug took effect, but she was not ready to go up there herself, not ready to be alone in that bed with nothing but her thoughts of those two girls, and anyway it was easier for both of them, her and the dog, to carry him up when he could not feel all the pain of being carried.

She aimed the remote and turned on the TV, looking for something, anything, but it was all that late-night noise—jokes and bands and studio audiences and famous people talking to famous people and all the happy beauty of a wealth you couldn’t even imagine, and she turned it off again and picked up her novel and found her place and began to read. But the page never turned, and in time she understood she wasn’t reading, she was listening for signs of Marky upstairs, his heavy tread on the hardwood floor as he passed from his room to the bathroom, the sound of him at the toilet, the heavy stream of a grown man and not her little boy, a sound she’d never gotten used to. What did he do with that body when she wasn’t around? What did he think about? What did he think when he saw a good-looking girl—or woman? What did he feel? The boys had both stopped talking to her about such stuff when they turned twelve. Like some switch had been thrown. Danny would never tell you what was between him and Marky, but they must’ve talked about it; there must have been much that Danny, who even then never lacked for the attention of girls, could’ve told Marky about how the world worked. Men and women. Sex.

What could she herself have told him? Not much. A virgin when she married, she’d carried that innocence well into adulthood. Surprised, shocked, by the things other women knew. The things they said.

Oh, honey , Meredith Burke said one night, I could tell you stories .

And Rachel, surprising herself, had answered, I dare you to .

Meredith had refilled Rachel’s glass, then her own, and looked toward the house and listened. Gordon had taken Roger to the basement to talk about turning it into a playroom for the kids, and she and Meredith sat alone on the deck with the wine. The babies all sleeping in the playpen just inside the screen door, the twins and little Holly. The bellies of insects pulsing green in the pinewoods. It was Rachel’s second glass and Meredith’s third, not that Rachel was counting… although if Meredith didn’t slow down she’d begin to get that look in her eye, that edge in her voice that said the night was over, that it was time to go home.

When I was a junior in high school I slept with one of my teachers, Meredith said, and Rachel felt as if a notorious man had just grinned at her.

What kind? she said. Of teacher.

Art, said Meredith. Mr. Beckman. Mr. B. He’d thought Meredith had talent. She thought he was a fairy. Everyone did. He passed her one day in his car, an Oldsmobile. She was wearing her best skirt.

Meredith was quite a bit smaller than Rachel—had snapped back to her original size after pregnancy—and she had the most beautiful skin. At sixteen—Lord, Rachel could not even imagine.

They talked about Dalí, Meredith said. They parked. He had a mustache that tickled. He wanted to see her again. He stood behind her in class, as she drew. He began slipping her these little drawings—very good, very dirty. An artistic fever, he said into her ear. She showed the drawings to just one person, her best friend, but that was enough. Two days later a substitute teacher came to Mr. B.’s art room and stayed. The halls hummed with low voices, with stories. Meredith’s father heard it at the plant from some other kid’s father, came home and slapped the living crap out of her.

My God, Meredith. Rachel put her fingers on her friend’s bare forearm.

Her dad had all these brothers, Meredith went on. One of them, Uncle Terry, was a piece of work. In and out of jail, drunk at Christmas, fuck this and fuck that. One day, about a month after the Mr. B. scandal, in the middle of a snowstorm, Uncle Terry came by the house. He was there just a minute, barely said hello, and the next day they found Mr. B. walking down the middle of the highway. His head was cracked. His teeth were busted. All his fingers were broken.

Laughter came to them from the house, from the basement, making them both turn to stare. Meredith lifted her glass again and Rachel heard it clink against her teeth.

She waited for the cops to come, Meredith said, resuming. She stopped eating. She couldn’t sleep. She typed a letter at school and sent it anonymously, but no one ever came. Mr. B. was in the hospital a long time but he couldn’t recognize you, they said, so what was the point of going up there? His parents came and took him away, finally, like a child.

My God, Meredith, Rachel said. She could barely see her friend in the dark. Her heart was beating with pity and love. After a while she said, What do you do with that?

Meredith was silent. A long, unnatural silence. Fireflies like little bombs going off in the pines and spruces. Men coming up the stairs, loud and huge, forgetting about the babies. Finally Meredith lifted her wine and said, gazing at Rachel over the rim of the glass, Not a God damn thing, honey. That’s what you do with that.

Such thoughts, such memories, as Rachel gathered up the drugged old dog in her arms and carried him up the stairs.

THE NEXT MORNING, driving back to the farmhouse after dropping Marky off at work, she searched the radio but there was nothing but music and DJ jabber and ads, nothing about the accident, nothing about those two girls. The drive was ten miles coming and going—south and then north along the Upper Black Root, crossing it twice on the old trestle bridges, and why not just drive up there? Why not drive up to Rochester, leave some flowers with the nurses at least? But the thought of running into Tom Sutter, those eyes of his, those lawman’s eyes, made her shudder, and she drove on toward the farm.

Ten years. Like yesterday. A cold, clear day like today. She would’ve been going in the opposite direction then, five miles almost exactly from the Plumbing & Supply to the Edendale Mall, where she worked. Looking forward to seeing Gordon Burke later that night. Thinking about Danny, the way he’d taken off in the middle of the night. Hunting with Cousin Jer? What the heck was that all about? Mysterious boy! The morning at the store passing like any other: Rachel in the back room tagging sweaters to the muted bursts of ringtone from the jackets and purses of the salesgirls. At ten o’clock she’d walked to the far end of the mall, to the building’s—maybe the world’s—last pay phone (the cell phone Danny and Marky had given her for her birthday— Look, it takes pictures! —sitting dead in a kitchen drawer, next to the dead camera). She intended to call Gordon, tell him the new plan, but at the last moment she dialed Danny’s cell phone instead, got his voicemail. She asked him to leave her a message at home, just to say he’d arrived at Cousin Jer’s OK, then she hung up and began the long walk back to the store. She would call Gordon later, on her lunch break. It was Thursday, and they had a date.

But back at the store something had happened. Leslie stood alone on the sales floor, her thin arms folded over her thin stomach. Fifteen years younger than Rachel, she would talk about things like chakras and third eyes and orgasms. Now she came toward her as if Rachel were some teenager with a hundred-dollar blouse stuffed up her shirt. In the door of the back room Rachel saw two salesgirls, heads down and thumbing feverishly at their phones.