Annie DeWitt - White Nights in Split Town City

“We ate fresh carp,” she said.

“Crappie,” Father said. “We went swimming and fried crappie over the Bunsen and camped out on the dock. We never made it all the way out to the ocean. You said you wanted to avoid the salt.”

“Right,” Mother said. “I never can get the water out of my eyes. That was it.”

“I don’t know what you kids call camping,” Otto said. “All I know is I came home from the butte that night with a six pack under one arm and a hard-on under the other despite the liquor. I haven’t been that horny since I was a teen. I went to take a piss and caught myself in the zipper. Wilson comes in and I’m curled up on the floor with my head over the bowl. Scared him shitless. All that smoke and wide open air.”

“Cocksucker,” Ray said then from the rocker. It was hard to say if this was intended as a comment on the conversation or if it was just some gesticulation.

“Get back to your sleep, old man,” Otto said.

“Well,” Father said to Otto. “I guess I’ll have to button you up better next time. I took you for a man who could hold his liquor.”

“That’s what being out in the daybreak will do to you,” Mother said, pausing for a moment to stare at Father. “It messes with your sense of the day.”

“Sure,” Otto said. “The sunrise spoils everything.”

They both laughed. They both seemed easier then.

“Speaking of fresh air,” Granny Olga said and nodded down at me. She was talking about my age and the conversation. She’d given up trying to get me to dress. She was on to smoothing my hair.

“There’s no use waterproofing her,” Mother said, nodding towards me. “She’s got a good mind. A little love and squalor isn’t gonna change that. A little love and squalor isn’t going to change anything.”

There was a knock at the front door.

“Be a doll and get that,” Mother said to me. She tapped me on the bottom as she excused me from the room. One day her daughter might have a figure too if she just gave it the right attention.

Callie had come to visit the scene of Mother’s crime. All Callie’s desires had been laid there in our house in Mother’s absence. Callie glanced into the living room through the open door. She looked tired. Her breathing was heavy. Her hair smelled of ointment.

“I heard from the barn hand,” she said. “The horses came home without any riders. I saw him leading them in.”

“How are they?” I said.

“Who?” she said.

“The horses,” I said.

“Fine,” she said. “The horses are fine. The vet’s there now.”

“Thanks for staying with them,” I said.

“Sure,” she said.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Sorry for what?” she said.

“That you’ve put so much into looking after them.”

She was gazing at the eagle, the small one in the painting over the wooden chest where I kept my sleeping bag for those mornings I waited on the Steelhead mother’s Impala.

“Where’d she pick that up?” Callie said nodding toward the painting.

“Junk shop,” I said.

“Ah,” she said. “I thought maybe it meant something. I thought maybe he’d painted it for her.”

“Who?” I said.

“No one,” she said. “Your old man.” I knew then how much Callie’d thought on Father. How much of herself she’d wasted away hoping. Like most things that were sinking, she’d seen something shift here and had hoped to grab hold of it. I looked in at Father. His face was puffy and blue. He was smiling with all the teeth he had. I could tell by the way he ignored the door, that Callie was a thought that had not yet occurred to him. Her image was still stuck there developing somewhere in the ether. He was a good man. All he’d wanted to do was fix her pipes.

“Oh,” I said. “Father doesn’t paint much anymore.”

Callie took my chin briefly in her hand and tilted it toward her face so that she could shove her smile into my eyes. I swallowed that too.

“You look like her,” she said.

“Who?” I said.

“Your mother,” she said. “She’s nearly glowing.”

“Yes,” I said. “Mother’s quite well.”

Callie looked at me then with a new sort of terror. There was something welling up in her eyes. It looked almost like laughter.

“Happy to hear it,” she said. “I’m sure she’s happy to see you.”

“I suppose,” I said. “It’s been a long day. She’s been traveling.”

“Well,” she said, “Tell Otto His Helene’s been asking for him. Tell him I put a pot of coffee on.”

“Is she in a bad way?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose she is in a bad way.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll tell him.”

“Well,” she said. “I best be getting home.”

“Are you sure?” I said, opening the door a little further to let her have one last look at them.

“I’m sure,” she said. “I have my boys.”

“Who was that?” Mother said when I came back to the couch.

“No one,” I said. “The stable boy. He came to let us know about the horses.”

“How are they?” she said.

“Who?” I said.

“The horses,” she said.

“They’re fine,” I said. “He said the horses are fine.”

Otto was the last out the door that night. He’d wanted to make his presence felt. He’d roll up his sleeves. He’d helped with the dishes. He’d even taken Granny Olga for a little turn in the kitchen.

“The key is to let the cat out the bag and be done with it,” I overheard Otto saying to Father as Father turned down the lights and showed the old man out.

It was late by the time Mother appeared in the doorway to my little room. I’d taken my time getting ready. I didn’t want to appear as though I was waiting. We’d gotten along well enough on our own.

There was something deflated about Mother that evening. The way she leaned against the doorframe for a moment peering in at me, I could tell she wanted to feel something. I wanted to feel it too.

“Come in the bathroom for a minute,” she said. “I want to show you what I found.”

The tile under my feet was firm and reassuring. The night cast around what little courage it could. I could tell from Mother’s stance that this was a speaking opportunity. She wanted to impart something that only she could demonstrate.

“Is it yours?” she said leaning over the plastic wastebasket next to the toilet.

The basket was thick with paper. On top of the mountain of white there was a sanitary napkin. K’s I supposed.

“No,” I said. “I haven’t gotten it yet.” There was a pause then as we both stared down at the thin strip of blood barely visible in the light. I thought of the underwear I’d buried between the rocks in the stone wall under the trees of knowledge.

I looked at Mother’s face over the toilet in the dim light searching for some signal of recognition. All I saw was a tiny barefoot woman with a far off scare in her eye. Her chest was thin and hollow. For some reason I felt like crying. I had disappointed her, not because of what I had done but because I was still a child hanging on her belt who hadn’t grown up and out yet.

“Good girl,” Mother said again. “That’s all right then.”

A rush of shaking and tears started quietly and then lit into me all at once. I couldn’t get the air in. This was all the reason Mother needed. She took me into her arms.

“It’ll come,” she said pulling me close to her.

“Anyways,” she said, “Any half decent woman would know enough to bury it a little under the paper.”

When I was sure the house was good and quiet, I made my way downstairs. Granny Olga was sleeping in the room next to the laundry in the basement. Her door was open a crack. Her snoring was regular. The hall smelled of Vicks and patchouli.