Red Lightning (7 page)

“So you're in fifth grade. And Libby is a nurse?”

“She's a real nurse now. Just recently. She was a nurse's aide for a
long time, but then she spent two years driving to Denver for classes. She works at the assisted care place. The only one around here.”

“Amber? Can I hug you? Just a quick hug?”

She gives a shrug and nods, and so I go up and hold her to me. She smells like honey and feels about as hollow as a bird. I close my eyes and duck my head enough that I can press my scraped cheek against her soft brown hair. It's softer than mine, even. I hold this moment, hugging this younger me that still has a chance. Like me, she's got a small tremor going through her, and I do feel a pang of sorrow that I'm causing this kid confusion and hurt. A new theory goes flying into my head: A person's best chance of forgiveness rests with a child, perhaps, but no one should take advantage of that fact.

She backs away from me before I'm ready, and we stand in an unwieldy silence. “Do you want to talk? Tell me about your life?” I clear my throat and start again. This is so hard for me, to keep words going. “Or do homework? Or what do you normally do now? Maybe I could help you with it. No stress, though. I don't want to stress you out. Whatever you want to do. I'm cool. This doesn't have to be some big huge traumatic conversation. Although, at the same time, it seems important. So, I'm just trying to . . .” But my words have run out; I have nothing more to say.

She stares at me, blinks. “I have chores. Then I relax. Then I do homework. That's what I usually do when I get off the bus. Usually Dad or Mom is here, but this is the first year that I can be left alone now, I'm old enough. For a little bit.”

“Does that scare you? To be left alone?”

She pauses. “Sometimes. The house makes weird noises. But I have Ringo.”

“Kay used to leave us alone. All the time.”

“I know. Mom told me. Kay was an alcoholic. Is an alcoholic.” She unclasps a barrette and twists a bit of brown hair in her finger and
then resets the barrette and snaps it. I remember Libby playing with my hair. Braids and twists and strange, random creations. I remember how I felt like a cat, purring, whenever she touched my scalp, that I thought it was one of the best feelings in the world. And Libby loved it because my hair was softer, finer, and since she couldn't have it, she said, at least she could play with it. “Mom says that when kids are abused, that they grow up to be adults who think, well, that somehow love is mixed up with hurt. So they keep looking for people who hurt them. Or ways to be hurt. So that they feel alive.”

I touch my cheek, smile to myself. “I guess your mom tells you a lot, huh?”

Her eyes shift away from me, her gaze locks on the mountains outside the kitchen window. “Ten-year-olds know about as much as grown-ups. Sometimes they just don't have the experience or the words. My mom thinks it's best to speak the truth, if at all possible. She says that you got messed up by Kay. That you drank a lot of alcohol and then did drugs and then sold drugs. And it's all because—”

“Yeah, yeah, it's always the mom's fault.”

She sucks in her cheek. “Well, sometimes it is.” Then she reaches out and touches my arm. Maybe to see if I'm real. “Kay was mean to you. Very mean. She's an okay grandma, though. She can be grumpy, but she's got good parts too.”

“She's improved?”

“She's calmed down. That's what my mom says.”

“She still living with Baxter?”

She considers this. Bites on her lip and twitches her nose, and I realize that that's a tic of hers. Leans on the kitchen counter. After a bit, she says, “My parents didn't tell you anything?”

“No. We didn't have that much time to talk.”

She puts down her fork, drinks some milk, wipes her forearm across her mouth. I really did forget what it's like to have those big
front teeth that don't quite fit your face. But she's going to be beautiful; I was beautiful, I really was, and she looks like a softer version of me.

“Baxter died. Or
passed
, if you want me to say it that way. About a year ago.” Here she stops to look at me, and I realize that she's probably thinking the exact same thing I am, trying to gauge how human I am. Does this news hurt or not?

“Oh, okay.” I put down my plate, pick it up, put it down again. “I didn't know that.” For her benefit, I add, “Good ol' Baxter.” I touch my heart and tap it. “He was a nut. A real nut. He sort of raised us. When Kay was on a binge or just not doing a very good job of it all. Well, I'm sorry to hear that.”

Amber examines her hand and then fingers it, running the tip of her finger down each rise of bone. A tear lands on the back of her hand, which she rubs in as well. “I miss him a lot. He was so nice to me. He left his ranch to that place . . . The Nature Conservancy. But Kay has the house and a few acres. She likes living there. She's sick, though—”

                    
Tess smiles, watches herself as if from above,

                    
zooming up to see her own self from different perspectives.

                    
Right now, Tess notices that Tess feels like a dog,

                    
thrusting its nose into someone's crotch.

                    
Not wanting to lose potential love or attention.

                    
Tess used to feel the same way about Baxter.

                    
Wanting to hold his kind attention.

                    
She never told him that, never told him goodbye.

I dig my fingernails into my wrist. “Sick with what?”

She scans the house, as if scanning her brain for the right words. “She stepped on a board with nails in it, and one went almost clear through her foot. This was last year. When she went in, it was all infected. So she was on antibiotics. And she would have been fine. But then she went into the river. She was fishing, and she waded in.”

“The Arkansas?”

“Yes.”

“What's wrong with walking in the river? I used to all the time.”

“Well, she got these bumps on her leg. And that's called staph.”

“Oh, boy. I know about staph.”

“Not this kind of staph. It's new. It's like that kind you get in hospitals, but worse.”

“Is that true? A new strain?”

“Yes.” She looks at her feet, as if they might be contaminated. “It's the kind that antibiotics don't work on. So she was in the hospital in Denver for a long time. Getting drugs through her arm. I got to go to Denver. I saw the botanic gardens and the art museum and the mint, where they make money.”

I have a sudden vacuum of a realization. All these places are places I took Alejandra to when she was about this age. My other daughter, the one I chose to bring into my life. I recover from the recoil and glance back at Amber. “So why is she still sick, then? After all that?”

“The staph keeps coming back. It won't . . . it just won't die.”

“And she's home now?”

“She lives in Baxter's old house. She's ready to die now. She won't go back to the hospital. She's got a bunch of big ugly sores. It's probably the grossest thing you'll ever see. Either Mom or Dad goes over there every morning and every night, to hook up the antibiotics to the IV. My mom scrapes off her skin once a week.” She takes a bit of cake and then regards it and takes another bite. “It tastes okay if you pretend it's not supposed to be cake. If you just tell yourself that it's some French dessert you never heard of, then you can enjoy it.”

A laugh dripfaucets out of me. “You're funny.”

“My parents say it's all in your perception of a thing. If I don't perceive it as cake, it's good. If I perceive you as a new acquaintance, and not a mother, then I can be friendly and suspicious of you at the same time. Which is appropriate.”

I reach out to touch her arm. “Clearly, you are very smart. You're already better set for the world than I ever was.” I don't say: this is exactly what I wanted to know.

Amber considers this. “But that doesn't for sure make me a good person. The trick is to be both smart and kind.” She digs out a piece of cake from her tooth with her tongue. “Let's sit at the table.”

We sit, and I trace the pattern of the bright tablecloth with my finger. A zigzag of red, a line of blue. “I don't know where you got your brains from. Not Simon. Not me.”

“My mom has always said you
were
smart. She says you were always inventing words and also coming up with theories on life, that you liked to look at big brushstrokes. Those are her words. She said that you couldn't ever be shallow, but you wanted to be. You could see big-picture stuff. You could be fierce. That's a simple fact. You just didn't
care
.”

I eat more of the not-cake. It's more like a flat white honey biscuit, and some of it gets stuck in the missing-tooth gap, which stings, but my tongue cleans it out, runs itself gently over the hurt. “Amber, I don't know how you feel about me being here. I feel like you're being very brave. I feel like you're being very generous. Thank you. But if you don't want to be, well, I'll leave if you want. You're the boss right now. But I'd like to stay and hang out for a bit.”

She headtilts and regards me. “How long?”

“How long will I stay?” I give her a calm look, which is a lie, a coverup for all the lightning going on underneath. “A coupla days?”

                    
Tess's STUPID FUCKING nerves

                    
attacking her again at random:

                    
throat closing up,

                    
pounding heart,

                    
dry mouth

                    
can't breathe.

I pop my neck and think: It depends, Amber. It depends on you. Because a gal can only be strong for so long, and sometimes she just needs to be saved. By someone who cares. Libby, for instance, the one person who helped. She helped in little ways while I grew up. She helped in big ways, by taking my daughter so I could get the hell out of here. So, you see, I'm asking for help without deserving it. And if you say
no
, well, then I have my Last Resort card in my back pocket.

“There are no extra rooms here,” she says, and then, because I'm spacing out, she says it again.

“Okay.” But I'm thinking: Do you see, Amber? It's my Last Resort backpocket card that keeps me trudging on in life, and coming home was the last thing I needed to do before I could play it. But now that it's down to the wire, I find that I'm scared. Afraid to pull it, afraid to play it.

“And I don't want to share my bedroom.”

“Okay. I totally get that.”

“Maybe you could stay with Kay?”

“Maybe.”

We both startle when a treebranch hits the roof. The wind is picking up. Her eyebrows suddenly furrow, and she stands. “Do you smell smoke? No one should be burning ditches.”

I follow her outside the door, and we scan the horizon, our eyes squinted against the wind. There are dry grasslands to the north and to the east, a field of milo to the south, and the dim outline of mountains in the far distance to the west, the haze of the brown cloud that hangs in the atmosphere from all the pollution from the Front Range.

                
Tess sometimes thinks:

                
You may not be clued in to the earth

                
But the earth is clued in to you.

I take a few steps away from the house so I can see the horizon. “It feels like a hundred degrees out here. It's always been too hot here on the plains. That's why I like the mountains.” I look off to them, which
is where the sun is hanging. “And the angle of the sun. It's so hard this time of year. It's always in your eyes. It smells like someone is burning out a ditch, or burning trash in a burn barrel.”

                    
Tess's body grows quiet

                    
and the world does too.

                    
Tess knows this feeling.

                    
It's when the universe is trying to tell her something,

                    
and she needs to hold still and listen.

“Oh, wow,” I say, my brain making vague connections. “I heard on the radio earlier in the day, when I was making that cake, there's a wildfire in the mountains.
That's
what we smell. That's why it's so hazy.”