The Girl from Charnelle (41 page)

When Laura stepped out, Aunt Velma called, “My Lord, girl, what are you doing here?”

Laura paid the driver and gave him an extra quarter, which seemed extravagant, but he frowned and didn't even thank her.

“What are you doing here?” Velma asked again, hugging Laura.

“I just wanted to see you.”

“Where're your father and brothers?”

“Charnelle.”

“How did you get down here?”

“The bus.”

“Just to see me?”

“I missed you.”

“Well, come on in. Let me fix you some breakfast.”

 

Aunt Velma seemed almost back to normal. The left side of her face was still partially paralyzed, which made it difficult for her to articulate carefully, but she talked plainly enough, and she didn't seem confused by language, as she had before. She walked with a slight limp, but you might not notice it if you didn't know she'd had a stroke.

Laura's father had believed the doctors when they said that she would have to be put in a nursing home, but Aunt Velma had been adamantly against the idea, convinced that she would recover in no time, with willpower and prayer. She was right. The women from the church who took care of her after the stroke now came by only once a week to check on her, and Velma did most of her own chores around the house and the farm. There was a man from down the road who came every day and milked the two cows, taking half the milk for his labor, and he mended fences and helped feed the other animals in exchange for the use of Velma's pastures for his cattle.

The house was clean again, not the wreck it had been last Easter. Laura remembered her disgust from that time, the smell of animal crap and medicine, but none of those smells permeated the house, and even if they had, they would have seemed benign now after the motel Laura had been in, which had looked even more decrepit in daylight, though not as sinister. Velma even had her Christmas tree up and decorated, with a few gifts underneath for Laura and her brothers and father.

Laura had almost called the taxi in the middle of the night but had promised herself that she would stick it out, and she couldn't think what to tell Aunt Velma if she showed up at midnight, scared to death. With the daylight, she felt better. She had even gone back to the bus station and written down times of departure and prices, but for now she wanted to see a familiar face, someone she loved, someone to whom she would not have to explain herself.

Driving down the road to Aunt Velma's farm, however, it seemed inevitable that she would return to Charnelle. Who was she fooling? She had little money and no plan. It had been ridiculous to leave as she did, and she was still confused about exactly why she'd done it, except that she felt she
had to be gone from there, that in some crucial way she had given up her right to be in Charnelle.

Aunt Velma scrambled some eggs with cheese and Tabasco, fried some bacon, and toasted two pieces of bread. The milk was fresh from the morning milking, and though it had been put in the icebox, it was still warm. Laura ate heartily, still starving from eating so little the day before.

“Does your father know you're here?” Velma asked.

“No,” she said.

Velma smiled. “I'm glad you came to see me, sweetheart.”

“Can I take a nap?” Laura asked.

“You betcha. I'll take one with you.”

 

She slept through the morning and startled awake, disoriented at first and then relieved to find herself on the bed in Aunt Velma's spare room, where Laura's father (and when she was with them, her mother) usually stayed. She had never been to Velma's without the rest of her family. She was glad to be here now.

Velma was still sleeping, so Laura left her a note, telling her she had gone for a walk. She went to the barn, which smelled of hay and the stink of the animals. Only Ginger was in the stall. She wondered where Hayworth was. She stroked Ginger's nose and then grabbed some carrots from the box and fed them to her until she whinnied and snorted.

Laura opened the stall and put the bridle, a blanket, and the light saddle on her, cinched it, and then led the horse out of the barn. She climbed atop and then walked her past the orchards and across the pasture, which was still wet from the previous day's rain. Laura breathed deeply. She loved the smell of wet grass. She prodded the horse into a trot, and when she saw the pond a few hundred yards in the distance, she squeezed her legs against the horse's flanks, leaned forward, and heeled Ginger into a gallop. She loosened the reins and let the horse find her stride. The band on her hair fell off, her hair streaked loose behind her, and her shirt pressed tightly against her chest. It was still warm out, but a breeze had picked up and brushed against her cheeks and eyes.

She rode past the pond, over the wet grass, to the far north fence line, and, seeing the barbed wire ahead, she tugged the reins so that the horse angled toward the highway. As they approached it, they ran beside the
fence, racing one and then two and then three cars and trucks before she pulled on the reins and slowed Ginger to a canter and then a walk. The horse's red neck and mane were sweaty. Laura, too, was hot, but the sweat felt good in the breeze. She stopped the horse and watched the cars pass by. Ginger snorted, so Laura took her to the pond and let her drink.

Laura remembered that Easter, before her mother had left, and she closed her eyes and could still feel and hear and see that vivid moment when she was falling, falling, right before she hit the ground and was knocked unconscious. That was the last time she had ridden a horse. It was Hayworth then. Where was Hayworth?

She was proud of herself for not falling this time, and not being scared either. She had lost so many of her fears, or maybe they had been replaced with others. Maybe she needed another fall in order to knock what had happened in Charnelle, with the Letigs, out of her, to drive away the bad luck. Regardless, she was glad to be right here, right now, at this moment. It seemed almost as if everything that happened had led to this small happiness.

Ginger finished drinking, and Laura walked her back to the barn. She took her to the stall, unsaddled and unbridled her, and then brushed her.

“Thanks,” she said to her. Ginger stared down her long nose, those big, black marble eyes reflecting Laura back to herself.

Aunt Velma was out on the porch. “Did you have a good ride?”

“Yes,” she said. “Where's Hayworth?”

“She broke her leg. Had to put her down. What do you want to do now?”

Laura thought for a second and then said, “Can we go to a movie?”

 

G.I. Blues
was playing at the Paladian, and she remembered seeing the trailer at the drive-in many months ago, during spring break. It was odd seeing Elvis on that screen. There seemed something faintly sacrilegious about watching him on the same screen where she had seen
The Ten Commandments
. And she didn't like him as much in his uniform and short haircut. She preferred the younger, wilder Elvis of
Jailhouse Rock
and the sweet, light-haired Elvis from
Love Me Tender.
Here he was, brawling and flirting his way through Europe, and every once in a while he'd break into song. It was silly, but she enjoyed it nonetheless and liked seeing places where she thought Gloria might have been.

Afterward Aunt Velma drove them home. Her driving was precarious, and Laura found herself holding her breath during both the trips to and from the movie theater. Velma refused to signal when she was turning and seemed slow to react, so her old Studebaker jerked along. Twice other drivers honked at them.

It was time for supper when they got home, and Laura helped Velma make a chicken and noodle casserole and a pecan pie. They ate in silence, which was fine and comfortable. Laura didn't want to talk, and Aunt Velma seemed to understand that something had happened to her that necessitated silence. Laura had always admired this sweet patience about Aunt Velma, this intuitive awareness of when people needed comfort and when they needed to be left alone, and she felt bad when she remembered her own impatience with Aunt Velma last Easter, how she had been confused by her and John's relationship, and how Aunt Velma's incapacity disgusted her, made her feel ashamed and nervous and angry. Now Laura felt only gratitude toward this woman—for offering her a home, for asking no questions.

 

That night they looked through the old photo albums, and she found the picture of Aunt Velma and Uncle Unser when they were younger, at the beach in their bathing suits. She remembered how Velma had traced her finger over the photo. There were pictures of Laura's mother when she was a child, and Laura studied those, too. She didn't have any pictures of her mother at home, and except for her dreams she could not keep the image of her mother in her head. These pictures of her mother as a child were similar to the woman Laura remembered, but not the same. As she studied them, she tried to discover the seeds of the future in her face, some faint trace of loneliness or courage or anger or despair or shame or simple cowardice that had prompted her mother to leave. She thought for a moment that she could see the clues, but then she lost them, and it amazed her that the girl in the picture could be her mother at all, that like some molting insect her mother had transformed into something so different.

“Your mother was a beautiful girl,” Aunt Velma said.

“Yes.”

“You know, she came to see me after she left Charnelle.”

“What?” Laura said. This news stunned her.

“She came and stayed here for a night. I thought she had just come to Amarillo for a visit. She had breakfast with me before she left the next morning. I didn't know she hadn't gone back to Charnelle until your father showed up.”

“I never knew that. How did she seem?”

“No different.”

“
Really?
No different at
all
?”

“Oh, I knew she was upset about something, but we ate supper and talked like we usually would. I think it was just a farewell for her.”

Why, Laura wondered, had her father not told them? He never said a word about it, made it seem as if there were no clues whatsoever. Perhaps he thought it would make them feel worse, knowing that she had not said anything to them but had said good-bye to Aunt Velma. It made Laura believe that her mother was alive somewhere, and it also made her strangely happy that her mother had not left without saying some final word to a member of the family. It was not a complete escape. Laura now regretted that she had not left a note for her father or brothers, had left just as her mother had done, without a clue.

“Laura, can I ask you a question?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“What are you running away from?”

She looked at Aunt Velma but did not answer.

“You don't have to say.”

Velma circled the back of Laura's chair and kissed her on top of her head. “I'm going on to bed, sweetheart. We'll go to church in the morning. That'll make you feel better.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“You look at those pictures. They are full of people who love you. Turn off the light when you're done.”

Laura flipped through the photos of her family but then stopped and stared at one of herself as a tiny girl, standing on Aunt Velma's porch. She studied the face, the eyes, but, as with the picture of her mother, she could hardly recognize this girl in the person she was now.

 

When she and Aunt Velma arrived back at the farm from church the next morning, Laura's father was waiting for them in the driveway.

He was not angry, nor did he ask her any questions while they were at Aunt Velma's, and for that she was thankful. He was gentle and patient, as if her trip to Amarillo was something they had agreed upon, nothing out of the ordinary. She wondered if Manny had told him what he knew. Or maybe her father had called the Letigs and asked if they'd seen her, and Anne Letig had told him what had happened, though it was difficult to imagine that conversation. She figured that Aunt Velma had called him not long after she showed up at the farm and assured him that everything was all right, perhaps even encouraged him to wait a day before coming down, and to go easy on her, not push.

That afternoon her father helped with chores around the farm—mended a fence, caulked the bathtub, cleaned out the drain, checked the septic tank. Laura helped Aunt Velma make supper—fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, coleslaw, biscuits, and apples baked in cinnamon—and then they sat down to eat, Aunt Velma holding her and her father's hands and leading them in a simple blessing that made Laura's eyes blur with tears. Afterward they wrapped the leftovers in tinfoil and Tupperware, and at dusk they said their good-byes. Velma told them to hold on a minute, and she retrieved the photos Laura had been looking at the night before, the ones of her mother and herself as children, and one more of her family, all together, when Rich was just a baby, all of them lined up by the old Ford in Aunt Velma's front yard, squinting against the sun, smiling as best they could.

“I figure you need these,” Aunt Velma said, putting them in Laura's hands and pulling Laura tightly to her. “An early birthday present.”

“Thank you,” Laura whispered, and then she put the pictures between the covers of her diary and closed it up in her bag.

“See you at Christmas,” her father called as he backed out, and by the time they hit the main highway leaving Amarillo, the sun had fallen below the horizon, and the sky was soon pitch-black. They drove in silence for a while, her father smoking a cigarette, Laura staring out the window to the dark horizon ahead of her.

She remembered that trip home from Aunt Velma's more than two and a half years ago, shivering in the back of the truck with Manny and Gene and Fay, staring up into the night sky and naming stars, then sitting up and looking into the cab of the truck at her mother, who held Rich and stared out the side window, thinking her own dark thoughts. Laura remembered the
feeling of isolation that overwhelmed her then, her own yearning to eavesdrop on her mother's thoughts, to understand the unsettling silence that had descended on her and seemed to preface, now that Laura thought about it, the silence to come.