The Ash Family, page 22
I told myself that by the summer, I would be happy again. I would try to be good. I would understand how to break myself open—I imagined cracking a geode, the dusky crystals inside—and let the world rush in.
* * *
Bay brought me dinner right before sunset: cold sheep ribs and whole milk. He pulled me out of bed. “Get the blood moving,” he said. My head rocked. We sat side by side on Dice’s velvet sofa, but I didn’t turn to him. The milk was in a tin cup. The cream was yellow, the milk beneath it was blue. Sad, I was thinking, how milk is only white around the edges, where we see it, and inside it’s black. “Thank you,” I said.
He knocked his hand against my cheek. I felt sick looking at him. I pushed his hand away. “Did you kill her?” I tried to say. But the words came out not as words but as a hiss, a sigh. I worked my jaw like a dying fish.
“I want to make you feel better,” he said.
I didn’t look at him. “Did you kill her?” I tried again.
He took my face in his hand and turned it toward him. “Come on.” He didn’t give me a chance to pull on my sweater. Outside it was achingly cold. It was evening, murkily teal, precisely the time of day when the sky isn’t light enough to silhouette the trees, and pale shapes seem to float. The long house glowed bioluminescently. We sat in the spotty snow under the hickory, where we could almost be seen.
He gazed at me from the nest of his face. I wondered if Bay had left my mother slumped by the wall or prostrate on the floor, her solar queen waving goodbye. Who had found her—found her gaping? I’d thought Bay was the solution to everything.
He touched my shoulder. I jumped away, feeling skittish as a cat. “Harmony,” he said in frustration. “Don’t worry.” Once even a brush of his hand could send me reeling for days. I was wondering about when the sterilization hurts more than the wound, when the victory costs more than the defeat.
He got close to my ear. “She’s not really gone.”
“What?” I said.
His voice was sharp in my ear. “She didn’t die. We didn’t even see her.” Then he kissed my ear.
“Why are you messing with me?” I said, and my voice broke.
“Dice was not telling the truth. I am.” His breath was hot; the night was cold. “You’re too sad, you’re sadder than I expected.” He pulled back. “Don’t tell Dice I said that.” I didn’t know why Dice would lie to me. I was used to Bay’s being Dice’s hands, and it was uncomfortable to sense him venturing out alone—I didn’t know where the truth was. The yard spun, and I pressed my cheeks with my hands.
“Are you okay?” Bay said, his expression faltering.
I didn’t speak, because I didn’t know the answer.
Bay looked around uneasily. “I mean to say”—his tone grew more confident—“there is no definite self.” There was the Bay I recognized. The sure one, the one who was always loyal. The one who’d never contradict Dice.
“ ‘Come, my soul, and let us try,’ ” he said, “ ‘for a little season.’ ” My swollen heart darted in his direction. He belonged to the milk cow and the bees, with all that tough gentle knowledge stored up in his hands. It wasn’t too late. In that moment, I chose to believe Bay. My mother was alive. Bay grabbed my hair and pulled it down, exposing my neck. I opened like a gate. I was sure he liked total surrender. It was the kind of feeling that wiped out all possibility of escape. For the first time I touched his scarred arms, and the skin was slippery and soft as liquid.
* * *
Deep winter roosted in the holler. The snow came down like white wings. The trees froze to the heartwood.
We sang “China.”
Why do we mourn departing friends?
Or shake at death’s alarms?
I was thinking about Valentine’s Day. I could count the days from when Dice put the February plaque in place. I felt that my mother was alive—it was the torment Bay had seemed to feel when he’d diverged from Dice’s story. But how did he know she had a gun? Maybe he was guessing. My mother would have known—from Isaac—that I was connected to these people. There wouldn’t have been crossfire. So this meant that Dice was lying to me about my mother’s being dead. Maybe he was lying, but because he had to teach me something. To teach me that if my mother had to die, so be it—that was what needed to be done to keep the family together. To teach me to stop thinking of the fake world as an option. I should let Isaac come to town and leave. I would not see him.
I was passing Dice’s test. Not fleeing, but recommitting.
At night I listened to my heartbeat, which sounded like a drum way down in a mine, and I wondered if this was what it meant to be one with nature, a passive and ceaseless tranquility.
Dice’s after-dinner stories took a winterly turn and struck deep into my winterly heart. At the bottom of the Earth in the center of Antarctica at Vostok, he said, the coldest place in the world, glaciologists were drilling an ice core, and they had to stop before they drilled as deep as they wanted to, because they found underneath all that thick ice a pristine lake the size of Lake Ontario that was filled with pure clear water that had been sealed below for millions of years. There was an island in the lake.
I felt Dice was seed-bombing me with ideas that would grow next season. I told myself that the family was enough. Dice was enough.
* * *
The night before Valentine’s Day I lay awake for hours. When I fell into a half sleep the breathing of my family became beating wings. I rose like the heron and fell with a jerk, like when Queen shot it, resurrecting and falling again and again. Out the window the owls were swooping in and out of the barn. I remembered my mother crying in the kitchen. “Of course you didn’t ask to be born,” she was saying. “Of course you didn’t ask to be born.” I remembered the Sacred Harp song that went, “And will the judge descend, and must the dead arise?”
For the first time in my year and a half on the farm, I went out at night, creeping out of my bottom bunk, away from the heavy air and the noises of breathing like frothing waves, through two more bedrooms of the hall-less long house, and out into the courtyard, in my nightgown over my long johns. The wind caught me, and I seemed to be floating a few feet above the ground. Who was I? What was I looking for? The questions were beside the point. Dice had ripped me out of my body, reducing me to something less than an animal, less than an idea, down to just wind.
I could find Isaac and learn for certain whether my mother was dead or alive. I imagined settling into a chair across from him at the coffee shop in Asheville. Plastic and letters and money and flimsy tables, all the fake-world things. Hot cocoa in Styrofoam. There was so much Isaac didn’t know, would never know, would never understand, but that was how I wanted him, wasn’t it, wasn’t that my revenge, because you who know nothing, love nothing. I could see him once more and say goodbye forever.
CHAPTER 27
It was Valentine’s Day. In the night I’d planned out how I’d get to Isaac. I considered three options. One was to leave and try to hitchhike and hope no one noticed, but I dismissed that; the dogs would sound the alarm and I’d look like I was running away. Another was to volunteer for some errand. The bait shop, the hardware store, something. Maybe Dice would let me go to town alone. And the last option was to try to get Bay to drive me. I knew now that I had some power over him.
Dice sat next to me at breakfast but he did not eat. I had never seen him eating, not our buttercream cakes, not our rib stew. I followed him onto the porch after breakfast. “Dice,” I said, “do you trust me?”
“Yes,” he said. He looked me up and down. I felt him peering into my head, watching my plan to see Isaac unfold.
“I was hoping you’d let me drive to Mars Hill today,” I said, “to run an errand.” It was our first private conversation since he said my mother had died. He wanted me to believe that my mother was dead, and he wanted me to join with the protests. He always had a plan, an intention. And I loved him for it.
“An errand?” he said, peering at me. His brow was like the falcon’s brow, heavy and bony to protect his eyes if he dive-bombed a rhododendron.
“A latch for the sheep gate,” I said.
“Gemini can fix it,” Dice said. “I don’t trust you that way yet.”
* * *
So I could turn to Bay. I thought about how to manage it. We’d start the hour-and-a-half drive to Asheville right at lunchtime. When Bay drove to the first Dumpster—I knew he had a whole circuit in Asheville, unlike in Mars Hill, where only the Ingles was worth scavenging—I’d cajole my way into going on a private errand. I could ask Bay if he needed me to pick anything up at a hardware store, perhaps, or if he wanted me to buy him some chocolate. Then I would walk to Isaac. I didn’t have money for a bus. Maybe I was walking right into a trap. But I was getting used to walking into traps.
Eventually I’d find my way back to Bay. I’d return to some predetermined meet-up point and apologize that my errand had taken so long. I’d say I got lost, and he wouldn’t be mad. We’d drive back, and I’d know for certain whether my mother was dead or alive, and once I knew that I could finally calm down and be worthy of the family, and the spring would arrive, and now that Dice trusted me I would be able to take action for the land. I imagined spiking trees, sleeping high in a tripod, smashing windows, lighting fuses, throwing bombs. I wanted all of it. I was ready for it.
* * *
I found Bay in the tool room in the barn, screwing a pitchfork back onto its handle.
“Can we drive into Asheville this afternoon?”
“Why would you want to do that?” I watched him sort through the screws so carefully.
“It’s Valentine’s Day.”
He said nothing, focused on his work.
I continued, “Remember last year, how we went to the Dumpsters? That was my first time in town as a family member. It was such a special trip.”
He reached out his hand and caught it in my sheared-off hair. I felt like the owl that calmed under Dice’s hand. “All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
But I was supposed to find Isaac at two p.m. It was too early still. I wanted to leave here after lunchtime, so I’d have at least an hour with Isaac, if he came.
“I think we should leave in a few hours,” I said to Bay. “You know, when we’re more tired. So we can relax in the car.”
“This afternoon I’ve got to help Gemini with some lumber project,” Bay said.
“Can you wait an hour? I should milk.”
Bay said, “What’s up, Harmony?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Hey, Bip!” he called as Bip went to ring the breakfast bell. “Can you milk this morning?”
Bip nodded. How different the family must have felt to Bay, who was able to boss people around. I thought how the longer I stayed with the family, the better off I’d be. In a few years I’d be like Gemini. In a dozen, I’d be like Sara.
“Can we at least eat a snack?” I said.
Bay gave me a sloppy, appeasing kiss on the cheek. “I’ll buy you a nice snack,” he said. “Maybe some pancakes. For my valentine.” He unlocked his car.
* * *
Bay ordered French toast for me at the diner in Woodfin. I saturated the thick triangles with artificial maple syrup. I got a coffee, which I marbled with plastic thimbles of cream. I was sure I had never tasted anything so delicious. On the farm they were probably eating heavy cornmeal cakes with sorghum syrup, and tea from the land. Bay ordered eggs and toast and only ate the eggs. He wouldn’t eat that fake-world bread. When I was done, I regretted that I hadn’t dilly-dallied to slow our progress to town. So I ate Bay’s toast as deliberately as possible.
The waitress called me sweetie. “He’s been giving you enough to eat?” she said. She kept trying to catch my eye when Bay wasn’t looking. The clock read only half past ten.
I went to the bathroom to gather myself, and to stall. I couldn’t resist the mirror, though I knew it was a bad idea. I hadn’t seen my own face since the bait shop. I looked strangely gaunt. No wonder the waitress had been so concerned. I had a line now between my eyes, and pitted cheeks, and my sunspot had darkened. My hair had grown over my ears into a shaggy bob. I splashed water on my face and slapped my cheeks. Isaac would not like the way I looked.
I rejoined Bay. He whistled as we headed to our first Dumpster in town. We pulled up to the Aldi’s parking lot. The store reliably didn’t spray bleach over the food waste. Bay handed me a headlamp and nodded toward the Dumpster. “I’ll be the lookout,” he said. Below a layer of scummy mushrooms I found bell peppers, raspberries, Butterball turkeys, and box after box of cream cheese. We piled our haul into bins in the backseat. Now I smelled terrible, along with everything else. I started to worry about how my plan could go wrong. I imagined finding Isaac and looking so dirty that he’d call the police. I slumped in the seat as we drove to Amazing Savings.
Bay looked at me. “Hey, you’re the one who convinced me to go on this trip,” he said.
“I don’t feel well,” I said. Maybe now was the time to sneak away. “Actually, I wondered if you have any errands you’d like me to run while you do the rest of the Dumpsters.”
“I need you as a lookout,” he said, “even if you don’t want to get in.”
“I’m sure there are some things you want around town.” He nodded, with a slightly mocking smile, which I loved. “Can I turn on the radio?” I did, without waiting for his reply. I shifted the dial till I found a pop song. “Do you not think so far ahead?” a man sang in falsetto. “’Cause I been thinkin’ ’bout forever.” I’d forgotten the sound of fake-world music—the soft electronic layers, the drums.
I glanced up at Bay to see if this was all right. He was still smiling.
“So what do you want?” I said. “Potato chips? Twix?”
“Sure, why don’t you go off on your own little mission?” he said. I couldn’t tell whether he was joking. He gestured expansively at the little bungalows we were passing. Dice wouldn’t permit this, I was sure of it. But I no longer knew, after our conversation about my mother, whether I could predict Bay’s actions.
I watched the snowy landscape swoop by the windows. I admired the flamingos, gnomes, and plastic play castles in the yards, all vacant now, and I let myself imagine all the things inside the houses: lunch boxes and crayons, spaghetti-strap sundresses, Pop-Tarts on porch swings, and so on. All the many things to which I’d bid a permanent goodbye, without thinking it through.
“I knew you’d understand,” I said, though I wasn’t sure whether he understood, or whether he was yanking me around. “Now that I’ve been with the family so long,” I said, reminding him, “sometimes I just feel like I need to get away a little, by myself.”
“Not enough solitude in Ashland?”
He turned up a new road. Bay’s face was marvelously cool, roaring yet expressionless like an overfull creek. Meaningless as rushing water.
“Of course, Harmony,” he said. And he slammed down the brakes.
My heart split. The car that had been following behind us swerved, horn blaring. And then we were alone on the road. Everything was silent, except for the radio. I punched it off. I put my hands up to cover my face.
“I’m sorry,” I said, into my hands. “I shouldn’t have . . .”
“Have what?”
“Shouldn’t have asked . . .”
His face was trembling. All these months I’d never gotten a good look at it. I always looked at his lips, or his neck or chest. He was giant, rough, blazing. He was not beautiful at all. When he found me, at the bus stop, had I looked at his face? If I had, would I have come with him? He had hidden himself from me all this time.
He lifted my forearm to his face and kissed it. I closed my eyes. Soon this terrible fear would pass, but for now I couldn’t stop trembling. Then, scarcely after becoming aware of the soft sensation of the kiss, he circled my forearm with his hand and dug his nails in as deep as they could go. I was too surprised to cry out. When he dropped my arm, five livid crescents had begun to bleed. I clamped my thighs together to try to stop trembling.
“Ah, come on, Harmony,” he said. “I kissed it first.”
A few cars passed us, driving over the yellow line. My door wasn’t locked. I could get out. I could stumble up to one of the silent houses and ring the bell. But he could follow me. Queen had told me family members who went into the fake world tended to die out there. I hesitated. Isaac’s proposal seemed so far off now, like a dream. I might have left, but I needed to be fleeing from and fleeing toward, and I could not discern the toward.
Finally Bay put his foot on the gas. The car leapt forward, as though it too had been wounded. I felt relieved that I didn’t have to decide anything anymore.
“You want the radio?” he said.
I shook my head.
“Don’t be a brat,” he said. He put on the same Top 40 channel, turned up the volume.
“Let’s just go home,” I said.
He ignored me.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
I wouldn’t see Isaac again. Oh, why couldn’t I just be content with what I had? I was always looking for more. Maybe I would never be satisfied. The fake world was not enough, and neither was the real world, and I didn’t know what to do; I hated myself. I wanted to jump twenty feet, a hundred feet. I wanted the chestnut trees, the passenger pigeons, the Coosa and their endless palisaded gardens along the French Broad, the bonnet-headed oxen and jaguars and mastodons, I wanted to be able to cancel out my nattering consciousness and just float on air. I had to exhaust myself. I had to throw my body into something. I kept pressing the place where Bay had slashed me, to keep the pain sharp. Dice had told us that, at a certain point, superstorms off the warming sea can’t keep their centers, they fall apart. We’d have more big hurricanes, but we’d never have a hurricane that took up the entire planet. Bay must have known I was the same; this mood was not stable.
We went to the Amazing Savings and then Food Lion. We took clementines, limes, cans of tuna, pork chops, Grape-Nuts, peas, mayonnaise, maple syrup, ginger, turmeric, cranberry juice, and brownie mix. Soon I felt dreamy, anaesthetized. My whole body felt weightless, like that children’s game where, after you press your arms hard against the door frame, they float up of their own accord.
