Smoke River (34 page)

“Ayeeee. Cherisse! Ayeeee!”

Helen lunges at the girl, and the body she wraps in her arms is frail, catgut and balsa.

Ruby hurries out onto the back porch, making the old door squeal with alarm, and then she too has a hand to her mouth. “Cherry, your hair! What’s happened to your hair?”

Helen waves an arm to shush her sister. “Get her some water, quick.”

Helen pulls the girl to the step, cradles her in her old, sun-brown arms and starts to rock. “You’re okay. We’re gonna take care of you. We’re gonna take care of you now.”

And the girl, she is like an eyeless pup, the way she curls up against Helen, the way she surrenders to the dream of safety.

T
he mayor has been sitting on the Bains’s patio for the past twenty minutes. Stephanie watches her from the kitchen.
Jesus, this is weird
, she thinks.

The mayor won’t leave. Stephanie offers tea. The mayor says, “No, thank you. I could use something stronger.”

Stephanie stays silent. The mayor wants to know if there is an open bottle of wine in the house. “Y’know, your mother and I were friends. Good friends. From the time just before you were born right up until you were five or six,” she says.

Stephanie nods. She finds a screw-top Grenache-Shiraz and pours a generous glass to take out to the patio. The mayor receives it with barely a nod and reaches for Stephanie’s hand.

“How long did you say your mother would be?” she asks.

“She’s at the hospital again. Las has some appointments.”

“I’ll wait,” says the mayor, and she looks at Stephanie, whose captive hand feels spongy in the sandwich of mayoral
flesh. “You must be a blessing to your parents. So smart, so nice.”

Stephanie can barely grunt. What could be more depressing than being a blessing to your parents? She wiggles her hand free. If only the mayor knew how she wakes up with her hair smelling like smoke, her body burning up.

“Is your brother okay?”

Stephanie starts. “His foot’s messed up,” she says.

The mayor nods. “Serious?”

Stephanie shakes her head. She doesn’t want to talk about it. Her mother has rules about family business, about discretion. She’d chalk it up to more of her mother’s control-freakishness, had she not once been a snoopy, bored thirteen-year-old who found an old tin tucked into the garage roof rafters filled with white-bordered photos, date-stamped like quaint artifacts. In one picture there were two squat, dark, kohl-eyed people, barely distinguishable from one another with their thick wrists, large hands, and wary stare into the camera. And between them this willowy girl with red-gold hair in a pale summer dress, reflecting light like fresh paint, as if for whimsy or prank she’d been Photoshopped into a
National Geographic
spread of rough, remote mountain peoples. Kneeling on the garage floor staring at the photo, Stephanie realized she was looking at an image of her grandparents, dead before she was born, with the unlikely child they produced. She felt an unaccustomed flicker of empathy for her mother.

“Do you have a good friend, a female friend?” asks the mayor. “One who matters to you?”

Stephanie considers the question. She shakes her head. The mayor waves at her to sit down. And because Stephanie is not sure whether protocol allows her the option of not sitting down with the mayor, or with her mother’s former friend, she slumps into the closest plastic chair.

“That’s a certain kind of loneliness for a woman, wouldn’t you agree, dear? Not having a decent friend. Women need their female friends, almost as much as they need men. Maybe even more.”

Mayor Redhill drains her glass and holds it out. Stephanie is tempted to tell the mayor that the way she framed the question is heterosexist, or androcentric – whichever one is worse. She’s tempted to say,
You just gave me a queenly wave to sit down
. But she can’t see that going very well. So Stephanie gets up and refills Peg Redhill’s glass.

In the kitchen, she plunks the two-thirds-empty Grenache-Shiraz plus a full bottle of Pinotage on a tray and fills a bowl with pretzels, another one with cashews. If she’s learned anything from the torture of health classes, it’s how food helps metabolize alcohol. And the mayor arrived in her
SUV –
the keys are on the patio table. At the last moment she adds a glass for herself and brings the whole shebang out to the patio. If the mayor is settling in, there are ways to make it bearable.

The night before, Nate told her about a bad feeling. Something in his gut told him he’d find the man who hurt Cherisse on the reserve, or even among the Warriors.
They’re friends of mine. I guess I’ve kinda infiltrated them. They’ve talked about her. Said some not-cool shit
.

Stephanie hesitated. She didn’t want to do any more investigative work, and she couldn’t tell him why. Nate’s eyes clouded.
You gotta understand something
, he said.
If she were white, and from the suburbs like you, do you think we’d have to do this? C’mon, your parents would raise fuckin’ Cain. There’d be an official investigation. There might even be news coverag
e.

Stephanie imagined her parents hovering over Las as if he were a colt with untried legs. What would they do if she told them about Gordo lying on top of her in the basement, his
palm pressing hard against her chin so it felt as if her neck would snap? She pictured her mother’s mouth made thin and bloodless by doubt and the inconvenience of justice seeking.

But this girl – Jeezus, she’s Joe Montagne’s kid. She works at a smoke shack, Steph. She’s not on anyone’s radar. She can’t cause political fallout ’cuz she’s native. And that makes it so much easier to ignore what’s happened to her, or shove it under the carpet, forget about it
.

Stephanie wondered if this was true. Weren’t there people who’d benefit from making a stink about what had happened? And why was so much of their time together focused on this other girl? She kissed Nate to push away this ugly, resentful part of herself, to make it untrue. She led her tongue over the changeable topography of his lips, chin, neck, sternum, belly. His body rose in response. But the redemption she chased across his skin couldn’t be caught; there was too much to worry about. To tell him would invite a withering heat upon these tender new feelings. Leaving it unsaid was easier. And worse too.

The mayor shifts in her chair, holding her refilled glass in one hand and a bitten pretzel in the other. She is a big woman. Her hair is teased and eggplant-coloured. The skin it frames looks bloated and windburned. Stephanie takes a long sip of her wine.
Please don’t let me become that
, she thinks.
Please
.

“The thing about women and their friendships is that they usually end with a whimper and not a bang,” says the mayor. “A bang would be better.” She takes a long inhale.

Stephanie wonders if this is one of the privileges of holding public office: you take your time saying things because you expect to be listened to.

“Your mother, for instance. She was so great when we first met. I mean, two babies! And she was stylish, fit. And fun. Migod, that woman made me laugh.”

Stephanie rolls her eyes. Her mother being hilarious – since when? She’s seen only the barest glimpse. Her mother’s face
flushed with wine, her twitchy frame uncharacteristically slumped on the basement sofa, and out of nowhere a story about her inexplicable parents and their storybook old European ways. How Stephanie’s grandmother stuffed bread in her pockets if she walked in the woods, to protect herself from the
mullo –
ill-intentioned ghosts and little people. Or how at ten, Ella, febrile and nauseated, was led out into the bush to shake a young tree.
Shake, shake!
Stephanie’s grandfather instructed his wilting child.
Fevers like movement. It will go to the tree
. But the quivering sapling did not get hot and sweaty, nor she any cooler. Still, when she vomited on its roots, Stephanie’s grandfather clapped his hands.
There, it is done. It is good
. Caught up in the reminiscence, her mother took another gulp of wine, giggled.
I did feel better. I hated him for that
. When her grandfather died, her grandmother packed his nostrils with wax so bad spirits couldn’t enter his body. She tucked screwdrivers and hairbrushes, warm socks and sugar cubes into his casket, despite the funeral director’s alarm and her mother’s adolescent humiliation. As she told these rare stories, Stephanie’s mother’s laugh became wet-eyed and was followed by a stretch of quiet.

Now the mayor’s eyes are similarly wet-rimmed. Stephanie squints and can see that those eyes were pretty once, likely her best feature.

“You know – and this is embarrassing to admit – I always thought your mother would turf me as a friend, because I was such a loser when we met. Fat. Struggling with being a mom. Married to an angry man.” The mayor turns in her seat. The red wine has made crumbs of her lipstick; they cling to her lower lip, the corners of her mouth. “As it turns out, your mother turfed me when I became more of a winner. I didn’t see that coming.”

The idea of her mother coming home to find them both warm-cheeked and talking loudly begins to both alarm and amuse Stephanie.

“And it’s not like she ever said, ‘I’m done with our friendship,’ ” the mayor continues. “She just sort of phased me out. Gradually. The way grocery stores get rid of an underperforming brand you rely on. Less shelf space every week. And then – whammo! It just disappears. As if it was never there.”

Stephanie reaches for more wine and tops up the mayor’s glass after her own.
If I am totally fucked up
, she decides,
I can’t be accused of betraying my mom
.

“You know, I racked my brain for months. What had I done? I went over entire conversations, how much I’d spent on birthday gifts, how quickly I responded to answering machine messages, whether I’d been too friendly with your dad. I left her messages apologizing for whatever it was. Nothing.” The mayor’s voice cracks. She pulls back into her chair.

My mom broke the mayor’s heart
, Stephanie realizes, surprised. “It’s getting hot out here. Let’s wait inside,” she says aloud. Late afternoon sun has chased shade from the patio.

The mayor gets up, holding her wineglass, opens the patio doors, and heads to the kitchen’s breakfast nook. She slides into a banquette seat and perches there awkwardly. The seats are unforgiving – Stephanie hates the way they make her even more conscious of her curves – and she wants to tell the mayor how her mother insisted on building the painful seats into the tight space so they are practical only for an ectomorph who wears size three jeans and has a tight coil of muscle for a bum. Like her mother. This would make the mayor laugh, possibly lighten the mood. But the thought of acting like besties with a woman her mother’s age feels pathetic to Stephanie. Even in her increasing tipsiness, she doesn’t want to feel pathetic. She takes the tray to the kitchen counter.

Peg sips and clock-watches, sips and clock-watches. It’s only a few minutes later that her glass is empty again. “That’s one long appointment,” she says.

The second bottle has only an eighth of its liquid remaining. Stephanie empties the last of it down the drain and then slips both bottles into the recycling bin under the sink so they won’t be the first thing her mother sees on their return. “We’re all out of wine,” she announces. “Can I make you some coffee?”

Her nod to sobriety has come too late. The mayor is suddenly holding up her head with the heels of her palms and sobbing. Her shoulders graze the ends of her near-purple hair, sending little tremors up to its roots. And Stephanie is very, very sure she is up shit creek for aiding and abetting this outburst of emotion. She fetches a box of Kleenex and slides back into the banquette across from the mayor, reaching across the table and rubbing the mayor’s arm and nudging the tissues towards her at the same time. She feels dangerously grown up in this act of comfort.

“Can I ask you something? If you’re not still friends with my mother, if she hasn’t been good to you, then why are you here?”

The mayor tries to gain control of her breathing and raises her head. Her eyes look wasp-bitten, as if they could disappear into the wet, swollen skin. Stephanie pulls a tissue from the box and offers it directly, hovering within an inch of the mayor’s nose. After an unembarrassed honk that makes the Kleenex sag, the mayor clears her throat.

“It’s my son,” she says with a waver. “I’m pretty sure the ass-clown has got himself into trouble. Serious trouble … it’s complicated. Your brother may know something. Maybe he even said something to your parents.”

The mayor starts to cry again, but this time in little whimpers. Stephanie drops her hands to her lap. It’s as if relief has cut the strings holding up her shoulders; all her weight collapses inwards. She wants to cry too. That scratch on Las’s neck – she’s only entertained one possibility. Now she sees what she has missed: Gordo, the verging-on-psychotic creeper, had been
there. And if this was true, Las likely intervened, pulling Gordo away from the girl who’d meant her nails for him. Las’s foot another casualty of that struggle. Stephanie feels seismic with gratitude. She lets out a laugh.

The mayor looks startled, girding for insult.

“I was worried my brother did it,” says Stephanie.

She will see in retrospect that this is when the wine and relief from the weeks of strain get ahead of her. She tells the mayor about gathering evidence: the pictures of the girl’s injuries, the girl’s broken fingernails, the scratch on her brother’s neck, the black baseball cap and camouflage kerchief that reeked of gas, the inexplicable foot injury. And how she convinced herself it was him. Because added together, the facts and artifacts sorted themselves into a story that was hard to ignore. More so if you’re a little sister, always in the shadow of your brother’s triple threat of good looks, athletic talent, and uncanny luck. Wouldn’t you be more likely to let your imagination go there, ignoring that facts and reason point to Gordo, who everybody knows is sketchy? “No disrespect,” Stephanie says to the mayor a few times.