Nearer Than the Sky (5 page)

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Authors: T. Greenwood

Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Family Life, #Psychological, #General

BOOK: Nearer Than the Sky
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“Hey,” I said. “I’m in Phoenix.”
“Hi. I’ve been thinking about you all day. How was your flight?” I could hear kitchen noises in the background. The familiar whirr of the dishwasher. The clean steel sound of knives on butcher-block cutting boards.
“It was okay. I had a couple of Bloody Marys.”
“I miss you,” he said. “Can I call you later . . . from home? It’s a madhouse here.”
“Sure,” I said. “Miss you.”
“Okay, talk to you tonight,” he said. His voice was muffled. I could see him with the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he pulled a full pot of soup off the burner using two hands.
When I walked through the sliding glass doors, the heat hit me like a wave. I gasped when the hot air reached my lungs. I had forgotten this intensity, the unbearable weight of the air here. Usually it isn’t this hot in Phoenix in November. I felt nauseated and wished I hadn’t had so much vodka earlier. The tomato juice was acidic in the back of my throat. Like vomit. The waves of heat and nausea were intensified by the smell of vinyl in the taxi. The sight of Lily’s house at the end of a street of identical houses made me almost shudder with relief. I paid the driver and opened the car door, letting in the hot air again, and then walked up the concrete walkway to her door.
“Come in out of the oven.” Lily laughed and held the door open for me.
Walking into Lily’s house was like walking into a hospital. Everything inside was white. Clean and antiseptic. But beyond the clean bright of blond wood floors, white leather couches, and white curtains was the smell of something sickly. It was cold inside. Refrigerated as if to preserve.
I set my suitcase next to the couch, and Lily gave me a small hug. She was thinner than I remembered. I felt the sharp angles of her ribs against my chest, and the bones in her fingers when she squeezed my hand. Her hair smelled like the perfume she started wearing after she married Rich.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said.
“Is she sleeping?” I asked, motioning to the bassinet in the corner of the room. The sound of the air conditioner wasn’t as loud as the sound of artificial breath being pumped into Violet’s oxygen tent.
“I just put her down a couple of minutes ago.”
I walked over to the bassinet and looked down at Lily’s baby. I had only seen her once, when Lily and Rich brought her to visit his mother in Boston and then to see us in Maine. She was eight months old now, but she looked as though she had just been born. Her hands were clutching the satiny edges of her blanket. The hair on her small head was only a few white feathers, her skin transparent. The only evidence of blood and breath were the thin blue rivers at her temples.
“How is she?” I whispered, afraid to startle her out of this temporary peace.
Lily shrugged. “The doctors are still doing tests.”
“She’s pretty,” I lied. She looked like the ghost of a child. Like the abandoned cicada skins in the backyard of our Mountainview house.
“We got her pictures done at Penney’s a couple of weeks ago. Remind me to give you one before you leave,” Lily said, gesturing to a photo on the end table. In the picture, Violet was propped up against a white velvet backdrop. The navy blue dress, all ribbons and lace, contrasted sharply with her colorless face. Inside the bassinet her breath was almost as still as it was in this photo. Frozen.
I sat down on the couch, sank into the cold white leather like the soft palm of a hand. Lily sat across from me in a hardback chair. She looked strange in this room. Strange inside the thin, pale pink sweater and long skirt. No matter how much time goes by, when I think of Lily, I think of her wearing the homemade sequined costumes Ma made, rusty baton in her hand and white vinyl boots. Here, in this white place, she looked like she was playing grown-up.
“How’s Peter?” Lily asked.
“Fine,” I said. I glanced around the room. The forced air blew the thin curtains. “Lily, how serious is this stuff with Ma?”
Lily looked down at her hands in her lap. “I don’t know.”
“What exactly is the matter with her?” I sat at the edge of the couch and willed Lily to look at me. “It sounds like one of her games, Lily. It sounds like she’s doing this for attention.”
Lily looked at me then, her face strained. “It’s real. Her doctor says it’s
attempted suicide.”
“Jesus,” I said, snorting.
Lily’s eyes opened wide. “How would
you
know? You don’t live here anymore.You don’t even know what’s going on in her life anymore. You probably didn’t know she’s lost like thirty pounds. That she’s been calling Daddy and hanging up. Maybe if you weren’t so stubborn . . .”
“It’s not my fucking fault,” I said. “This is all about Ma. This has nothing to do with me.”
“I’m just saying that she’s depressed. Think about it, Indie. Everybody leaves her. Daddy left her, you left her. I’m the only one who stayed. I’m the only one who . . .” Lily sighed and shrugged her shoulders, a gesture that could have been Ma’s. “She’s lost everything. She lost Benny and then she lost everybody else.”
Heat rose up the back of my neck. In the chill of this room, my skin was on fire.
“I’m just saying that it makes sense. She has nothing. She has nobody except for me. And now, with Violet sick, and me not able to go up there so much, she’s alone.”
“I’m not sure what you expect me to do,” I said.
“I expect you to help her get back home. I expect you to keep an eye on her until she gets a doctor up there. I expect you to be a goddamn human being, to have feelings. She’s our
mother.
It’s
Ma.”
It sounded like a small explosion, like a firecracker or the sharp crack of thunder.
Lily stood up and walked quickly to Violet’s crib. The sound came again, guttural and deep. Thunder, or the rumble of a train. Violet’s lungs not strong enough to expel whatever poison was inside. Lily checked the gauge on the oxygen tank and put her hands inside the plastic cocoon to rub Violet’s chest.
“Is she okay?” I asked.
“She’s
fine,
” Lily said, turning around and glaring at me. Standing in the middle of the white living room, she could have been some sort of suburban angel hovering above this sick baby. Her bare feet on the thick, pale carpet the only evidence of the child I once knew.
H
ere is Lily: grass-stained knees and purple shorts Ma got at the Methodist church rummage sale. Her halter top is stretched across her small chest and she is twirling her baton and walking on her hands. The portable record player is sitting on the front steps to the house, connected to the outlet in the kitchen by Daddy’s thick orange extension cord. The record is spinning around and around; the 45 of “Grand Ol’Flag” is scratchy. I know exactly where it will skip. I know exactly how flustered Ma will look when she lifts the arm and sets the needle back down.
Ma had dragged Lily’s stairs from the garage. On the side of the wooden prop, she had used a whole bottle of Elmer’s and a whole plastic container of silver glitter to write “Lily Brown” in her pretty handwriting. The steps themselves were covered in bright blue vinyl held down with shiny silver studs.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, trying not to get my legs tangled up in the extension cord, pretending to do math. Benny was under the table, peeling the wrappers off of Lily’s crayons.
Ma came in the room with a handful of mail. Through the window, I could see the mailman pulling back down our long driveway, waving to Lily, who was standing on top of the stairs waving.
“Where’s your brother?”
“He’s not doing nothin’, Ma,” I said.
“Benny, come out from under there right now. I am losing my patience.”
Ma was always losing her patience. I imagined it like a tennis shoe or an earring made of colored glass. Maybe she’d find it someday between the cushions of the couch or in the back of Benny’s closet. I don’t know why she needed him to come out. She was the reason he was there in the first place.
“Where’s your father?” Ma asked, sorting through the pile of bills.
“He’s out back,” I said, glad she’d decided to leave Benny alone.
It was Saturday, the only day that Daddy didn’t work. He owned a bar in town, called Rusty’s, and he was at the bar every day except for Saturdays, and sometimes even on Saturday afternoons he’d go in just to check on things. Sometimes he’d bring me with him to play pool. Today, he promised both Benny and me that we could go with him to work. Benny liked the onion rings and the jukebox. I liked the way the sunlight fell across the green felt on the table. I loved the sweet red liquid of a Shirley Temple and the sound of the balls falling after you put a quarter in the slot.
But now, Daddy was in the backyard trying to tame the weeds. The couch that his best friend, Eddie Grand, had brought to us instead of to the Goodwill was still sitting in the backyard. We couldn’t get it through the doorway, so Daddy put it out back. Sunflowers had first started to grow up around the couch in August, and by September had started to poke their way up through the cushions. It sat out there all winter and now it was completely tangled up in dead weeds.
Ma put all the mail down except for a manila envelope. She smiled and started to tear it open. She pulled out the contents and sat down at the table. She laid each sheet of paper out neatly across the table, making a shooing motion with her hand toward my math book. I slammed it shut and pushed it aside.
“What came?” I asked, trying to read upside down.
“Shhhh . . .” she said, scanning the first page and then the next.
“Ma . . .”
“It’s the entry form for that pageant in Phoenix,” she said. “Let me read.”
I could feel Benny under the table, hear each wrapper being torn and then discarded. I hoped he wasn’t eating the crayons again. Last time he ate Lily’s crayons he threw up Burnt Umber and Sea Foam Green all over my bedspread.
“What’s a pageant?”
“The Miss Desert Flower contest?” Ma said as if I were terribly dense or something. “For Lily?”
“Oh.” I shrugged.
Daddy came into the kitchen then with an armload of tangled weeds. He wrestled them into the garbage and sighed.
“Did we get the electric bill yet?” he asked, noticing Ma and the mail.
“No,” Ma said, distracted.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s the entry form for that pageant in Phoenix I told you about,” Ma said, smiling.
Daddy’s chin jutted out sharply and he sat down next to me. He put his arm around the back of my chair and peered over my shoulder at the forms.
“When is it?”
“June,” she said.
“You’re going to take her out of school for this?”
“No.
It’s after school’s out.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Daddy said and ruffled my hair as he stood up.
“They offer scholarships to the winners,” Ma said loudly, shaking the letter at him. Her face was getting red. I felt Benny get still beneath my feet.
“And how much does it cost to enter this damn thing?”
Ma looked down at her hands, and said softly, “It’s only three-fifty. That’s for everything including the room.”
“Forget it,” Daddy said. “We haven’t got it.”
“Ben, if we cut back a little. I can work some overtime at the home,” Ma tried.
“I said
no.
”
I could feel Ma shaking; the table was trembling ever so slightly with her anger. She put her palms flat on the table next to either side of the entry form and stood up.
“
You
said no,” she said incredulously.
“Yes.”
“You said
no.
And that’s the final word?” Ma’s voice was starting to grow. Like weeds growing around me, holding me in my chair. The sharp blossom of her words startling. “Asshole.”
Daddy looked hard at Ma and then turned his back. Benny held on to my ankle. I could feel his fingers digging into the skin right above my tennis shoe. I reached for my math book, but Ma beat me to it. She picked up the book and waved it over her head and then hurled it at Daddy. It whizzed over his head and hit the wall where her collection of spoons from around the world was hanging. The wooden case rattled and then fell. There were spoons from Japan and Spain and Canada all over the floor.
“I’m going to work,” Daddy said softly and kissed the top of my head. My eyes stung with tears. He’d promised he’d take me later so that I could practice my bank shots.
“You leave and I won’t be here when you get home,” Ma said, following him to the door. “I’ll take the money, and I’ll take Lily, and I’ll go to Phoenix.”
Benny’s hand released my ankle and I felt my blood rushing hot out of my face, down my arms and legs. I imagined it spilling in a pool of Brick Red wax at my feet.
When Ma ran out of the house after Daddy, Benny scurried out from under the table. There were toast crumbs from breakfast still at the corners of his mouth.
“Ma’s going to take Lily away?”
“Shhh,” I said and took his hand. We scurried quickly out the back door and around to the side of the house.
Daddy got in the car and slammed the door shut. I heard the engine rev and then he was backing slowly down the driveway. Lily was standing at the edge of the yard holding her rusty baton with one hand, sucking her thumb with the other.
“I’ll leave you!” Ma said. “I’ll leave this shit hole. I’ll go back to California!”
She stood in the doorway as Daddy and the Nova became just a small orange spot moving through the trees. And then she started to slam the screen door. Over and over. Each time it crashed against the door frame, Benny put his hands over his ears. Again and again she slammed the door until one of the hinges came loose and rattled down the front steps. She bent over and picked up the hinge. She looked at it for a second and then threw it into the driveway.
Ma sat down on the steps and Lily came over to her, still sucking her thumb, and curled up in her lap. She was too big for this. Her legs were long now; they dangled down to the very last step.
Benny had disappeared. Hiding, probably. I sat down with my back against the house, plucking at the thick blades of grass, listening to Ma croon,
We’ll go away, Lily. We’ll go away someday.

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