Francie's Got a Gun, page 6
“Francie can go to church with you. Hey, Francie?” Luce waved at the Cadillac, and Irene turned and saw her granddaughter sitting in the front seat. Oh dear. A child her size shouldn’t be riding up front. Francie slid over and out the open driver’s-side door. She was not dressed for church, her t-shirt looked inappropriate, and her jeans were too big for her, dragging in the gravel. Already half-soaked.
Where to begin?
“Hurry!” Irene said. “Get in!”
Francie obeyed, climbing in behind Irene.
“Won’t you come too, Luce?”
He put one hand on the top of her car and tapped twice. “Not me, I’ve got work to do.” He winked at Francie as if Irene wouldn’t notice.
“Work? On a Sunday?”
“We had ourselves a bit of car trouble. I’m going to poke around under the hood.”
The lines around her son’s mouth were tight even as he smiled at her, his face streaked with rain. He was better-looking than his father had been, in some ways, superficial ways, but he was closed, even to himself, closed and foolish, she could see it.
“Thanks for the key,” he said. “I’ll get out of your way.”
He limped back to his car, and Irene watched him in the rear-view mirror. Such a helpless fury he raised in her. “Are you strapped in?” Irene listened for the seat belt’s click before putting the car into reverse. She waved at Luce through the window, but he didn’t see, he didn’t wave back. He was leaning sideways, looking for something in the glove compartment of his car.
“You shouldn’t sit in the front seat till you’re older,” Irene told Francie.
She wouldn’t get anything out of Francie and knew better than to try, but she kept an eye on the child in the rear-view mirror all the way to town. Sulky? Morose? Scared? Irene couldn’t guess the cause, but her granddaughter did not look happy.
At a stop sign in town, someone behind Irene laid on his horn. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she said. “I’ve half a mind to make him wait even longer.” She earned a smile from Francie for that.
Irene parked as close as she could to the church doors, to preserve her hairdo from the rain. She hurried Francie down to the ladies’ room in the basement, not the new part of the church. This bathroom was never busy. The ceiling was low, the walls a dull yellow, the stalls poorly lit and provisional. Irene used the little comb from her purse to fix her hair, which needed fluffing up, but she quickly discovered that Francie’s was beyond remediation.
“When is the last time your mother brushed this?” she whispered, the comb snarled in tangles, as Francie stared grimly into her own eyes in the mirror.
“I brushed it yesterday,” said Francie, which was the most she’d said to Irene all morning, and Irene gave her a quick, fierce hug from behind.
“Of course you did,” she said. Not your fault.
Audrey Shantz came out of the furthest stall, and Irene knew she must have been there all along, hearing everything, and before Audrey could say a word, Irene turned and smiled. “This is my granddaughter, Francie. Luce’s daughter. She’s visiting for the day.”
Audrey dried her hands on a paper towel and shook Francie’s hand, and Irene felt that it would be okay, they were safe, for now. “Aren’t you lucky?” Audrey whispered, giving Irene a little hug. Irene was quite sure that wasn’t the right word for whatever she was, on this particular morning, but it was preferable that Audrey be given that impression. It made Irene herself feel better.
They sat in a pew near the front, Irene’s usual spot, and Francie examined the church bulletin in detail. Behind the pulpit, the woodwork stretched to the ceiling: dusty. You’d need wings to clean it. Jean was playing the piano for today’s service, rather stridently, Irene thought, then corrected herself: with force, with certainty. Irene couldn’t help but inform Francie that sometimes this was her job—that she, Irene, played the piano for some services too; as if Francie were interested.
Francie fidgeted, gazing around the room, looking for children her own age, no doubt, and Irene pointed out the Bast boy on the other side of the church.
The great mystery was why Luce had come. Was it a blessing, seeing as it had given Irene this time with her only granddaughter, in this sacred space, or was it a cry for help, another cry for help? How was she to know the difference?
Oh, you will know.
She felt her spine steel itself against the hard wood of the pew.
“Go,” Irene whispered to Francie when the minister called the children forward for storytime, and despite a flicker of resistance, the girl obeyed, slumping down the aisle, the bottoms of her jeans frayed from dragging on the ground.
“Hello children!” It was singsongy Mrs. Krupf, who, to be fair, spoke to all God’s creatures—not just children—as if they were children. “Sit down, gather round!”
Irene held her breath as Francie plopped onto the polished wood floor, her head tilted back on her neck. From this angle, the tangles of her hair looked like spiderwebs or bird nests, something organized by nature for a purpose.
“This morning, I’m going to read you a story about welcoming visitors! And aren’t we lucky! We have a visitor with us this morning! What’s your name, honey?”
Oh no.
Francie’s lips touched the microphone and her voice boomed through the sound system: “Francie.” Of course, laughter followed. What was this, comedy hour? Give the poor child her dignity!
“Can everyone welcome our new friend Francie?”
The usual cadre of toddlers sat on their mothers’ laps picking their noses, babies squirmed. The sleep-deprived mothers said, “Welcome, Francie.” Where was the Bast boy? Irene spotted him sitting on the far side of the church, and her heart sank. She saw her error writ large and wondered at herself, having sent the child forward like an overgrown sacrificial lamb. Silently, she called Francie back to her.
Forgive me.
The story was not about visitors, trust Dolores Krupf to muddle the message. It was about a refugee child, on a boat, which sank, and the child was pulled from the sea, travelled for days hungry, separated from her family (mother and father and brothers), alone. Wasn’t this all a bit dark? Wasn’t this all a bit much, for the children’s story, even if the characters appeared to be depicted as animals?
Eventually, the child emerged from the woods (when had the woods come into it?) and knocked on a stranger’s door, and the stranger spoke to the child in a strange language. But when a bowl of hot soup was placed before the child, the child sat at the stranger’s table and ate till she was full.
Francie had her hand up. Uh-oh. “She shouldn’t talk to strangers.” Francie’s noisy voice did not require a microphone.
“This stranger is good,” said Mrs. Krupf, as if speaking to an idiot. “This is a good stranger.” She turned back to the page with the soup. “Even this tiny little mouse knew he could help the refugee child.” The refugee child appeared to be a cat.
Francie sat up defiantly, and the bejewelled letters on her shirt seemed to catch the light—LOVE. “The cat will eat the mouse,” she said, not even bothering to put up her hand. She sounded satisfied, like she’d fixed whatever problem she had with the story.
An uncomfortable ripple of laughter spread through the congregation.
“Oh my! That’s not a very nice way to say thank you!” Mrs. Krupf laughed and glanced at the pulpit. “Back to your seats now, and you can think about this important question: What will I feed the poor little child knocking on my door? Ask your parents!”
“Let’s pray!” said the minister.
“Wasn’t that nice?” Irene whispered to Francie, as Francie clambered over Irene’s black stockings, treading heavily on her foot.
“I’m hungry,” Francie whispered.
Irene rustled through her purse and handed over the roll of mints. Francie leafed through the bulletin and chomped on the candy. She could not seem to sit still. Rustling, shifting, crunching. Irene’s father would have said: Spare the rod, spoil the child. A lesson Irene had refused to repeat with her own son.
She’d refused to treat a child to such fear.
Had she been mistaken?
It was easy for Irene to sit still. She felt like a heavy sack of flesh and bones, sinking into inertia, even her heartbeat seemed to slow. She’d trained herself to turn toward calm, away from disaster, but it seemed also to turn her away from feeling anything at all. To become a breathing body, tethered by threads to the distant terror of her mind. That she’d done it all wrong. That she was being rebuked for sparing the rod, for not trusting the wisdom of her forebears. The evidence of her error trickling down through the generations.
“Did you like the sermon?” Irene asked on the drive home, wipers on high. “What about the scriptural passage?”
Of course, her granddaughter said nothing.
Irene wondered: Why did she demand that those she loved most prove themselves, or reveal their deficiencies, according to her measure? Was she of a challenging nature, stubborn and combative, pushing, pushing, pushing everyone away?
“The scriptural passage was on the Israelites wandering in the desert,” Irene heard herself saying. “They wandered for forty years until God showed them the Promised Land. It’s funny, Francie, but what I was thinking as the passage was being read was, Forty years—that’s not so long!” Irene stopped, but the stream inside her head continued. Twenty years, thirty years, forty years; a lot happened, but a lot didn’t happen, a lot repeated, and in the repetition there was comfort; if not peace, it could feel like peace. “Time is a circle, not a line.” Irene said this last bit out loud, but Francie was looking out the window.
As inscrutable as Luce. Of him. Of me too, thought Irene. Diluted.
“Why did your dad drive out here this morning, Francie? Do you know?” But she was pulling into the driveway. She shouldn’t have asked. The child had enough on her shoulders, that was clear, nests in her hair, LOVE on her shirt, hungry, apparently, and Irene hadn’t even thought to stop in town for ice cream after the service!
“Almost home,” Irene said. “We’ll make something nice for lunch.”
She pulled in beside Luce’s car, which was parked in the grass where it shouldn’t be, where it would leave tracks in the soft, saturated earth. The car was facing the wrong way, toward the road—she didn’t like what that implied. But at least it meant he was still here.
“You should visit more often,” Irene said to Francie as they unstrapped their seat belts. “I would like that.”
* * *
—
Irene didn’t want an argument. She wouldn’t choose an argument. She wouldn’t call it an argument.
Of course, Luce said he was in a hurry, couldn’t stay for lunch. He didn’t look like he was in a hurry.
“Did you get your car fixed?” she asked, and he said, “All good, nothing to worry about.” Francie was safely in the bathroom.
Irene said, “Do you need anything? Anything I can do for you?” She resisted the urge to paw at his sleeve, hold on to him.
“It’s just a visit, Ma. You always get yourself worked up over nothing.”
“Well, you can’t leave without something.” She meant food, but he laughed and showed her the gym bag he’d found in his old bedroom—“I’m taking this.”
“Oh?”
“Look.” He unzipped the bag and pulled out a pair of red shorts with the tags still on, unused. “Must have been from that last cross-country season, I never had a chance to wear them,” he said. High school. Last season. Interrupted season. Interrupted by—
Was Luce thinking what Irene was thinking? There was no way for her to know. He held up the shorts for her to see. They looked too small to fit him now, but he didn’t seem to notice. He seemed pleased, blurry, his pupils were pinpricks, she saw, switching on the overhead light in the kitchen. It was a dark day. She tried to interpret his mood, his emotions, but in that way he was just like his father, he hid himself from her, his intentions, his plans. It was enough to send Irene around the bend, fear clapping at her heart.
From the window over the kitchen sink, she could see the farmhouse where they’d lived as a family, up the long lane, across the wide front field, planted this season in corn; their home, before the interruption, before Frank’s death, before his passing.
You never got used to it, the fear.
“You must be hungry…” Irene’s hands moved automatically, mashing up three boiled eggs she’d found in the fridge, stirring in mayonnaise and chopped celery and onion, and spreading the mixture onto slices of whole wheat bread. Topped with a lettuce leaf. Cut in half. Wrapped in wax paper, and tucked into a grocery bag along with a reused yogurt container of homemade cookies, which she’d pulled out of the freezer.
Francie was taking a long time in the bathroom. Luce had put the shorts back into the gym bag. He kept checking his phone.
“Are you sure you can’t stay for lunch?”
“Don’t worry so much, Ma, it’s the worry that’ll kill you.” He looked up from his phone and smiled. It was such an easy smile. It looked so easy for him to let it break across his face. Why didn’t she feel easy in return?
It was only later she thought to check her purse. Later, after she’d waved goodbye from the front stoop in her slippers, still wearing her church clothes, after she’d closed and carefully locked the front door and the back, after she’d walked slowly down the hallway to Luce’s old bedroom, which she’d never in all these years cleared out or packed up, even though it had been his room only a brief while, that last year of high school, and a few unmoored seasons beyond that while he was finding his feet, before he’d left home for good (or for worse, Irene thought).
Irene turned the door handle, looked around the room, saw evidence of nothing in particular out of sorts: the curtains were open, the lighting dim, she let her eyes rest on the shelves of trophies catching dust, posters of bands tacked to the walls, pennants from sports teams, an empty room even when Luce had been here, like he’d been filling space, trying out whatever personality might suit to fit the void. The bed was neatly made up with a blue quilt, two pillows at the top, all a bit dusty, a rectangular dust-free spot on the floor where the gym bag had been, no doubt.
What was she missing?
She closed the door. What was this feeling? Like stone.
That was when she thought to check her purse; she’d been putting it off, she knew. She’d carried the purse to church, of course, removed several bills from her wallet and placed them into the collection plate, and when she’d gotten home, she’d hung the purse, zipped up with the wallet safely inside, on its hook beside the back door. She’d had her eye on Luce the entire time! Hadn’t she?
But there it was: the bad news. Hands, heart, steady, slow, numb. All her cash was gone.
Of course, that’s why he’d come.
Frank, how could you leave me here to deal with this crooked son, all alone!
Now, she knew this feeling. Fury. Its blast obscured that other feeling, lower down and underneath. Shame.
* * *
The day was a dark one. The sun hadn’t managed to burn off the fog and now the clouds were rolling in and it was really raining for real. Liane’s polish was taking forever to dry and Seth was going to be pissed that she’d stunk up the joint. She cracked the window over the sink for air, rain slapping in like fat, stupid tears, but the lacquer high lingered, poison gas.
Liane balanced on one of their two kitchen chairs, white moulded plastic with arms, and rested her feet on the tabletop. She spread her toes and admired the job—she could have worked as an aesthetician, her hand was steady and she had an eye for colours, her stepmom always said. Purple today, rich and almost black, like plums. Silver rings on two toes. Sweatpants, stretchy tank in sparkly thread. A good day for doing fuck all.
The dog came charging out of the back room with a bone to pick. He’d heard the knock on the door. She couldn’t see Seth from here, but she could see him in her mind’s eye, and he wasn’t getting up.
Liane slid her feet into her white flip-flops with the pretty pink straps, careful not to smear the fresh polish.
She had to haul the dog off by its collar. A tall man and a little girl were standing on the stoop, under the flapping plastic—the house wasn’t finished yet; in Liane’s opinion it never would be. It was nothing but a half-built skeleton on the other side, which guaranteed they’d have no neighbours and no hassle, suited Seth just fine.
“Here for Seth?” Liane said, the dog growling deep in its murderous throat. “Seth?” she hollered. “It’s for you!”
As if it would be for her. She had to go out to do her work. This place isn’t zoned for that, she thought, but the joke felt old, rattling around her head. She recognized this guy, he’d been around a bit too often lately, like he was thinking of moving in. You can have my half of the bed, she told him in her head.
The first time she saw this guy, she thought, Mm-hmmm, now here’s a fine specimen, like her stepmom used to say, but today he was nervous as the rest of them, making him ugly as the rest of them, greedy and desperate and a chickenshit to boot. “You brung someone,” Liane said to him, and she felt angry, could he hear it in her voice? Don’t go getting yourself into debt with my man Seth, she thought.
“My daughter, my kid,” said the man. He was in over his head, he was using the shit himself, he was not Liane’s problem—stop trying to save everyone, Liane, you’re too soft, you’ll get used, used up, her stepmother was saying inside Liane’s head.
The kid had on a sparkly shirt too, with jewels that formed the shape of a cat sitting above the word LOVE.
’Cause that’s what cats are known for.
The kid was staring at Liane’s toenails. “Do you like the colour?” Liane said, and the kid’s eyes turned into goggles. Liane remembered the colour was called Porno Purple, so she kept that to herself. “Seth!” Liane yelled again. “He’s wearing his goddam headphones,” she told them. “Pardon my French.”
