What Comes After (20 page)

“What about you?” I asked. “I heard you were in Portland. Are
you
OK?”

“I don’t know,” Beatrice said. “I guess I’m OK. I’m sort of still in shock.”

She said her dad had been having an affair. He confessed it to her mom.

“I didn’t even have time to call you when it happened,” Beatrice said. “Mom woke me up at about two o’clock in the morning. We practically had to carry Sean downstairs and throw him in the van. We drove down to my grandparents’ in Portland. Mom wouldn’t let us talk to Dad or call anybody for a couple of days. I just watched TV and went for walks. Sean acted like we were on a big vacation, but when Mom said we weren’t going back home, that she and Dad were separated, he wouldn’t stop crying.”

“So what now?” I asked.

“I already transferred to Portland High,” she said. “The Bulldogs! Can you believe that? And they already have a starting pitcher, so I’ll probably have to play right field or something.”

“Have you seen your dad at all?” I asked.

Beatrice erupted. “Forget him, Iris! He cheated on my mom. Forget him. I wish he’d just leave. Just totally leave, so we wouldn’t ever have to have anything to do with him again.”

As angry as I was at Mr. Stone, the thought of Beatrice not talking to her dad made me sad.

“I don’t know, B.,” I said. “Your dad used to come to all our games. He drove us to tournaments and stuff. He was our coach in seventh grade.”

“So what?” Beatrice said. “So the hell what?”

I couldn’t figure out why I was defending Beatrice’s dad. He’d always been nice enough to me, but I knew that didn’t really mean anything. He had lied to my dad about keeping me in Maine. He had lied to his own family, lied to Beatrice’s mom.

Beatrice lowered her voice. She whispered into the phone. “I think my mom is cracking up, Iris. I really do. She’s on these anti-anxiety pills, and sleeping pills. She’s in her old bedroom that she grew up in when she was a girl. I even caught her holding her old dolls.”

Just then I heard Mrs. Stone’s voice in the background. Beatrice muffled the phone for a minute, and when she came back on, she said she had to go. “My mom needs me. We’ll talk more later.”

I sat for a long time with the phone still in my hands. I’d forgotten where it went, which room the cradle was in, and didn’t think I had it in me to get up and look. I probably could have felt the earth move under me if I hadn’t been so numb — shifting tectonic plates, Maine separating from the rest of America, sliding off into the Atlantic, migrating toward some other continent, falling farther and farther away from me all the while.

On Saturday I asked the Tutens if I could go out to Aunt Sue’s farm to check on the goats. I hadn’t seen them in almost two weeks. I was frightened at the thought of being out there again, but I missed the goats terribly and couldn’t stop worrying about them — no matter how many times Mindy mentioned Animal Control.

Mrs. Tuten said no, she was sorry.

“Your aunt’s house is private property, Iris. You don’t live there anymore, and Mindy said it’s not allowed. We thought she already told you.”

I tried arguing with Mrs. Tuten, but she wouldn’t budge. Mr. Tuten looked at his shoes the whole time and didn’t say anything. The ferrets circled nervously, then Hob bit my shoe. I kicked him off and went to my room. Now that I had decided I was ready to go back to the farm, I was desperate to be there. The goats needed me. I couldn’t let them think I had abandoned them, too.

And nothing — not the Tutens, not Mindy, not Animal Control — was going to keep me away from them any longer.

My chance came the next day, a Sunday, when the Tutens went to visit Mr. Tuten’s great-aunt, who lived in a nursing home in Kinston, an hour away. They invited me to go, but I said I had to catch up on some homework, so they just reminded me to please look after the ferrets and said that they would be home in time for dinner.

As soon as they left, I filled the ferrets’ bowls, then went into the backyard. Mr. Tuten had a work shed out there, which I’d never been in. I pulled the door open, hoping to find a bicycle I could ride out to the farm, though I was determined to walk if I had to. I found what I was looking for right away, leaning under a dusty blue tarp — an old three-gear bike that probably hadn’t been ridden in ten years. The chain was rusty, but the gears still operated OK. The back brake didn’t work, but at least the front brake did, mostly. I adjusted the seat to my height. The frame was too long, but there was nothing I could do about that. The tires were flat. I searched some more and found a pump. Miraculously, both tires held air.

It took me an hour to get out to Aunt Sue’s farm. My ankle hurt from pedaling, and holding on to the handlebars made my shoulder ache. I ran out of breath easily and kept having to stop and rest. I refused to turn back, though. Pedaling got harder once I made it to County Circle Road, just outside the city limits. There were steeper hills but nicer scenery. More trees, less concrete. Finally, I turned onto Cocytus Road, a winding canopy road with hardly any cars.

The barn doors were wide open when I got there, and Patsy was standing next to the fence, as if she’d been waiting for me the whole time I’d been gone. I threw myself over the fence and hugged her and hugged her, and then the rest of them, too. I kissed their faces, let them butt me, danced with them in their pen, tried to chase Huey and Louie — who had grown so big! Just in the time I’d been gone! I curled up with them in their stall, nestled down in dry straw. Huey chewed on my shirt, and I let him. I pulled both of them on top of me, burying myself in a blanket of goats. Jo Dee had gotten bigger with her pregnancy and kept trying to nose the boys out of the way so she could nuzzle me and so I could hug her and scratch her chin the way she liked.

Patsy stepped back to let the others have their time with me, but she stayed close, too.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to her. “I’m so sorry I left.”

I could tell by her eyes that she understood and that she forgave me.

Gnarly wasn’t tied to the clothesline, and I was just wondering why I hadn’t seen him when I heard crazy barking out in the field. I wondered if he’d been roaming free all this time, and if so, how many of the neighbors’ chickens he might have killed. I pulled myself out from under the goats but only made it as far as the barn door before he showed up and threw himself onto me.

I staggered under his weight, then sat on the ground so we could wrestle while the goats looked on. We played for ten minutes, and I talked to him the whole time. I told him about the ferrets. I growled when I described them and Gnarly growled, too. I told him about the Tutens, and Mindy, and the football players, who I assumed were the ones who spat on my locker. Finally I had to stop. The goats wanted their turn again, so I checked on Gnarly’s food and water bowls by the back steps — both were half full, so at least Animal Control had been doing that much right — and went back in the barn.

I could tell by how swollen the goats’ udders were that Animal Control hadn’t been milking them, or at least hadn’t done it lately, so I got buckets and cleaning rags and grain and coaxed the goats into the barn. Jo Dee attached herself to me, even more anxious in her pregnancy than Reba had been. I hugged her some more and let her stay close during the milking.

I milked Patsy first, of course, and she nodded approvingly, but I moved Reba up to second because she was the fullest, since she’d kidded most recently. Even knowing that, I was surprised by how much she gave. After Reba it was Loretta’s turn, and finally Tammy, who didn’t seem as cranky or aloof as usual, but almost happy to see me. During each milking I pressed up against the goats’ warm sides with my face and shoulder. They were patient with me, and sweet, and the bucket nearly overflowed.

I led the goats outside afterward, back into the warm sun. The kids kept jumping higher and higher, and even tried to do backflips. I’d never seen them so excited. I rolled on the ground and they rolled, too. And butted me, and kept butting, knocking me down and down and down. I let them. And at some point I started crying. I let them push me over, and lick my face, and steal my tennis shoe, and every time I thought I was done crying, I cried some more.

Eventually I started singing to them, too. Dad used to sing “Hush, Little Baby” when I was little, but he changed it to “Hush, little
Iris,
don’t say a word. Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.” So I sang that, but faster, and louder, to hear myself over all the bleating and barking. Soon it was more like shouting —
And if that diamond ring turns brass, Papa’s gonna buy you a looking glass!
— and then something came over me and next thing I knew, I was full-on shouting at the top of my lungs, until I was hoarse and my throat burned and I was so out of breath that I thought I would faint.

But I kept shouting —
And if that looking glass gets broke, Papa’s gonna buy you a billy goat
— and the song got harsher and harsher until I was rasping it out, and the goats backed away from me and
maa
ed nervously, crowding together over by the fence. Still I kept shouting:

And then I lost my voice.

I stood there silent, waiting for something to happen. The goats watched me from a distance. Even Gnarly had backed away and was hiding under Aunt Sue’s truck. I’d never gone crazy like that before and didn’t know what was supposed to come next. There was nothing left inside me. Finally Patsy came back over and nudged me with her head.

I lay down in the middle of the field, as if that’s what she’d just told me to do — and maybe it was. I closed my eyes and let the last of the afternoon sun burn my face.

After a while the other goats came back. Jo Dee lay beside me in the short grass and rested her head on my stomach. She felt heavy and warm. The others inched over, too, and hovered nearby.

We stayed there until the sun touched the tops of the trees and it got cold out. I fed the goats again, and then I headed toward the house, Gnarly at my heels.

I found the key to the back door where Aunt Sue always left it, under a concrete block by the steps, and went inside to pack up some of my clothes. I looked inside the refrigerator and made myself a sandwich with some cheese and wilted lettuce and a couple of dry, white Wonder Bread heels. I opened the door to Aunt Sue’s room. She kept it so dark in there — lights off, thick curtains drawn — that I couldn’t see anything, and for some reason I didn’t want to turn on the light. I fumbled through things on top of her dresser — pictures, a hairbrush — until I found some money. I counted it in the hall. Twenty-five dollars in neatly folded bills. I put it in my pocket.

Book’s room — which I’d never been in, either — was surprisingly neat and clean. He had an East Carolina University Pirates football poster on one wall and a Carolina Panthers calendar on another wall. That was pretty much it — Book’s plan for his life: college and then the pros. His bed was made, clothes all put away, shoes and cleats lined up neatly on the floor. I kicked them all into a pile in the corner, then left.

The mail was all bills.

As I walked back through the kitchen, I saw the truck keys hanging on a hook by the back door, and I grabbed them. I didn’t think I had it in me to ride the bike back to the Tutens’. As awful as the truck was, Aunt Sue had bought it with my dad’s money, and that meant it was mine. Gnarly barked and barked while I loaded the Tutens’ bike into the back of the truck. Lifting it was hard. My shoulder ached. The excitement of being back with the goats had given way to exhaustion.

I shut the tailgate. “You take care of the goats,” I said to Gnarly. He looked sad, but I didn’t waver. I said it again, as a command: “Take care of the goats.”

I hugged Patsy and the others, then hugged Jo Dee a second time. I told them I’d be back tomorrow and pulled myself into the cab with my good arm. I adjusted everything I could find to adjust — seat, mirrors, steering wheel tilt — but it still felt too big for me.

I parked on a side street a couple of blocks from the Tutens’ and rode the bike back to the house, my bag of clothes balanced on the handlebars. I was so hoarse and tired and sore that I just wanted to crawl into bed, but that wasn’t going to happen: either I had miscalculated the time or the Tutens had come home early.

They were already back, and waiting for me in the liv ing room.