The Flood Girls (13 page)

She needed a meeting desperately. She smoked another cigarette as she fishtailed out of the gas station parking lot, rewound a Depeche Mode song as she drove. She heard only half of it; the library was a two-minute drive.

Inside, as she passed the librarian, Rachel turned her face away. That was Peggy Davis, and she had been the sole librarian in Quinn, the only employee since it had been built in 1954.

Rachel rushed past, through the stacks and the aisles and the rows of microfiche machines. She walked so fast that the pages of
Redbook
magazines ruffled in her wake.

Once she entered the room, Rachel's plans to pretend to be someone else were dashed. She knew every single one of these old men: Mr. Tyler, her former biology teacher. Mr. Fisher, the conductor of her high school marching band. John Fitchett, Ginger's former brother-in-law, who had always driven the snowplow in Quinn, which made him more invaluable than the mayor. Pat Garrison, Black Mabel's father. PJ Garrison, Black Mabel's older brother. Larry Giefer, the owner of the grocery store. And the Chief of the Quinn Volunteer Fire Department, who did not seem to possess a real name. He identified himself as the Chief, and just like in the fire hall, he did not fuck around.

Seven old men, and her. She felt like Snow White. She stared at the seven dwarfs around her; they weren't particularly short, just wizened and gnarled from years of hard drinking. She poured herself some coffee, sat down on a metal folding chair, and checked her watch.

John arranged the books carefully, passed a small wicker basket to Pat Garrison, who put in a dollar for the Seventh Tradition. When the basket was passed to Rachel, she dropped in a five-dollar bill. That was approximately the number of meetings she had chickened out of since returning to Quinn. John cleared his throat, and began. “Hello, my name is John, and I'm an alcoholic.”

“Hello, John,” said all of the men.

“I guess I'm chairing the meeting tonight.”

“Damn right,” uttered the Chief.

Larry read “How It Works,” and Pat read “The Promises.”

John looked right at her when he announced the topic. “This morning, I read out of the big book, like I always do, and I couldn't get any peace out of the damn thing. I just kept thinking about the fucking snow.” The men laughed at this. “The snow pays my bills, I guess. I've been really depressed since my daughter left. She was only here for two days, but she managed to bring up every single shitty thing I ever did to her. She hasn't seen me drunk for eight years. I guess she needed to poke the bear, or something. But I've been depressed ever since. So, this morning, I called my sponsor.” John winked at the Chief, who nodded. “He reminded me that my past is just a reference book, like here at the library. I can put it on a shelf and leave it there. I only take it down to open for a fellow drunk when I need to share my experience. I don't have to live in that shit. Thanks.”

“Thanks, John,” said all the men in the room. Rachel tried to avoid small meetings, because it meant that everybody had to share, or share several times. She discovered that Mr. Tyler's first name was Jack, and Mr. Fisher's first name was Jerry. She learned that two of the men in the room had served time in prison for felonies, and one had been committed to the state institution. Rachel knew this meeting would make her feel better, and wished she hadn't been so damn scared. She listened as each man shared how they dealt with their past, and looked at her watch. There were still twenty minutes left. She would have to speak.

“Hi. My name is Rachel, and I'm an alcoholic.”

“Hello, Rachel.” She had feared there would be an edge to their chorus, but there was not.

“Thanks for the topic, you asshole.” The men laughed, and Rachel knew that she had officially broken the ice, earned her chair in the room. “I'm back in Quinn because of my past. I've been sober for over a year, and I've worked all the steps, but I haven't found peace. I certainly haven't found joy. So, I'm back.” The men nodded their heads, and the Chief stared at her curiously. He did not seem like a man who had ever involved himself in town gossip. “You all knew me as a little girl, and then a teenager. I still get sad when I think about what I did to this town. I think about all the wives of the men I slept with, think about their children. I think about my mother, and Red Mabel.” Larry Giefer grimaced as Rachel mentioned the name.

“After I left, things got even worse. I went to college, and I should have been discovering who I really was, and who I wanted to be. Instead, I discovered that I could black out if I drank enough. It was the cure to the pain, I guess. I set my sights on being the prettiest girl at every punk rock show. If not the prettiest, the wildest. I thought I was hot shit. Tried to be my own parent, and sucked at it. But I kept going.” Rachel stopped, took a sip of her cold coffee, looked Larry Giefer directly in the eye. “And then I wasn't the prettiest girl at the punk rock shows anymore. People stopped writing graffiti about me. I thought I had all these friends. All I had was a bad reputation and a bunch of venereal diseases. I failed out of school, and took a bunch of shitty jobs, and kept drinking. Nobody could tolerate my bullshit, so I drank by myself. And I kept drinking. I didn't want to clean up the mess I made, so I kept drinking. I was scared. And finally, I ended up in these rooms.” Rachel paused and made eye contact with the Chief. “I came back here to make things right with this town. It took me until now to realize that I need to make things right with myself. Thanks.”

“Thanks, Rachel.”

She used the ladies' room after the meeting and regarded her reflection in the mirror. She combed her fingers through her hair and applied lip gloss.

Outside the library, the men were smoking, as eddies of dustlike snow swirled in the street.

Mr. Tyler had a cigarette waiting for her. Even though she had a pack in her purse, she accepted it gratefully, leaned in as he cupped his hand around the flame. He did not seem surprised to see her. Rachel wondered if she had given off a future-alcoholic vibe in biology class—she had refused to dissect things but would tear herself apart later in life.

The Chief spoke first. “Them Clinkenbeards ever pay your mother?”

“No,” said Rachel.

“Big mistake,” said Pat Garrison.

“We're all big fans of your mother,” said John.

“He's lying,” said the Chief. “Your mother scares the shit out of us.”

“I know the feeling,” admitted Rachel.

“You did something right,” said Larry Giefer. “You joined our favorite team.”

“The Flood Girls?” Rachel blew her smoke toward the street. “Why are we your favorite team?”

“My brother don't support Ginger,” said John. “I figured I could.”

“He talked the rest of us into it,” said Larry. “And we keep coming back, every year.”

“Thanks,” said Rachel.

“Nobody plays ball like the Flood Girls,” said the Chief. “It's never boring.” Rachel didn't know what to think. “Young Bucky says you need a plumber.”

“Word gets out fast,” said Rachel.

“Stay away from Bucky,” said the Chief. “He's too tenderhearted. I need him for chimney fires.”

“I'll remember that,” said Rachel.

“Listen,” said the Chief. “I know a few things about plumbing. Be happy to help you out.”

“I just got a job,” said Rachel. “I won't be able to afford it for a while.”

“I know,” said the Chief. “You don't need to worry about paying me. I'm happy to be of service.”

“He is,” said John. “He's so happy that we all hate him most of the time.”

At this, all of the old men laughed. Rachel couldn't help but smile. She had found her people. She said a silent prayer of thanks, took another drag.

A
fter a long, cold winter, Laverna knew the softball field was still frozen in spots, where the bleachers provided shadows during the day. The usually muddy field was full of unyielding ruts. There would be no sliding. There wasn't supposed to be sliding anyway, league rules, but sometimes the ladies on the other teams had a little bit too much to drink and just tried to get to the bags any way they could, occasionally headfirst.

She woke up that morning in pain, something she was now accustomed to. She would have to grit her teeth until the cursed casts were finally sawed off, discarded forever. Red Mabel arrived at nine, made Laverna coffee, and gave her a bath.

Before leaving, Laverna had Red Mabel dial Bucky's phone number and put the phone between her shoulder and ear. The cord stretched across the kitchen table.

“I need you to hit some balls today,” she said.

“I've got stuff planned,” he protested.

“I don't give a shit,” she said. “You owe me. Two hours.” She let the phone fall from her shoulder, knowing that she could not hang it up, not caring that her line would remain busy until the nurse returned.

Red Mabel arranged her pills as always, lined up in piles on the counter, so she could reach down and bob for them, like apples. She swallowed one of Black Mabel's bootleg pharmaceuticals and her blood pressure medication at the same time, a combination that pleased her.

Laverna eased herself down in her recliner just as she felt the pills kick in, and she floated in this way, lost in a plot to poison the Clinkenbeard family. Laverna had a long list of people she wanted to disappear from this earth. Unfortunately, one was going to be playing right field, and was blood kin.

Rachel was not athletic, or graceful, or coordinated. Rachel was good at destroying things, and flirting with her hair. Right field was the logical place to stick her, because nothing ever happened out there, unless there was a lefty at bat.

Laverna wanted to keep Rachel close, within eyeshot. Rachel claimed she didn't drink anymore, but Laverna didn't trust her daughter's sobriety. There was nothing trustworthy about Rachel. Thinking about Rachel made her start to panic, and before she knew it, she was bobbing for the antianxiety pill. In her experience, something always went wrong when she let down her guard. Laverna kneeled, the blood rushing to her head. She attempted to nudge the phone toward the linoleum, the carpet burning her shins as she was successful in moving it inches, and then a foot. She was sweating, and concentrated so hard on the phone that she forgot the cord had grown tight, caught by her shoe. The phone suddenly rocketed around her, came to rest even farther than she had dropped it. She would not give up. She wanted a beer, decided she would have Red Mabel bring the birdbath from outside and fill it with Bud Light in case of emergencies such as this.

It took ten minutes, and Laverna had finally sandwiched the phone between her breasts and the wall, standing slowly, easing the phone up, mindful of the cord. The phone clattered on the kitchen counter as she navigated it over the Formica. She was sweating obscenely now, and rested, could barely hear the busy signal over her panting. She dipped down and opened her mouth wide, closed her teeth around the receiver. When she stood, her casts knocked a cookie jar from the counter, and it smashed on the linoleum. It was an owl, a gift from Ginger, and Laverna stared down at the shards. A piece remained perfectly intact, and of course it was an eye, and of course it was staring right at her. Laverna was really high on pills now, but determined, and faint from breathing through her nose, she replaced the slobbery receiver in the cradle. Her casts always had a mind of their own, her arms deadened and unfeeling, and the heavy plaster had knocked into the things thumbtacked around the phone. A Chippendales calendar and a recipe for Ritz mock apple pie lay at her feet, half of the phone tree of the Flood Girls remained on the wall. The other half had been ripped free and was stuck to her sweaty neck.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Laverna said, and collapsed on the sectional. She was exhausted.

The phone rang, and Laverna screamed profanities from the couch. She could do nothing but let it go to the answering machine. Rachel seemed to know that Red Mabel was not around to run interference, and began to deliver a monologue.

“I just don't think it's a good idea. I don't work well with others, especially women. I know you're in a tight spot, but you've got a couple of weeks before the first game. There has to be somebody else who can play right field. Put Bucky in a dress or something.”

Laverna closed her eyes, tried to get the floating feeling back.

“I know that you're really serious about your team, and I know you've worked really hard to keep it going, and I appreciate that, I really do. Tabby said you guys won only three games last year, and one was by default.”

Laverna screamed and twisted her head, tried to bury it in pillows to block out Rachel, but only succeeded in further cementing the phone tree to her neck.

“I want you to win this year. I don't think you can do that with me on the team. I'm a distraction. Every woman in the county knows about me, and I'm afraid they are going to try to hit me with the ball. I don't want any more soft tissue damage. You would not believe how easily I bruise. I'm not the type that recovers quickly from a subdural hematoma—I think I have a vitamin deficiency, or maybe I'm a hemophiliac.”