Little Lovely Things, page 15
Claire squeezed her eyes shut when she heard her sister’s voice.
“Claire? I haven’t seen this number in a while. You at the house?” Vicki’s voice rose with anticipation. “Is Glen with you?”
Claire held her breath a moment.
“Hello? Claire?”
“Yes. And no.”
“Are you okay? You don’t sound okay.”
“Vicki. Do you remember our giant?”
Vicki hesitated.
“Our backyard pool giant?”
“Uh, yes, of course.”
“Dad was on the bottom. Then you, then me.” Stacked up, all three of them, in their aboveground pool that had been placed too close to the maples so that it filled with helicopters in the spring. The last time they made the giant was the summer before their parents died. Their dad was the legs. Vicki the torso. Claire, the youngest and smallest, was the head and flailing arms. Their dad got too close to the edge and slipped and Vicki went down okay but Claire chipped her tooth on the hard rim of the pool. The giant broke into three. That was Claire now, all split up, no hope of recovery.
“What happened? Do you want me to call someone?”
“Vicki,” Claire said. “Glen and I are over.”
“Honey…”
“I’m okay, really. It’s okay.”
Getting up to leave, she felt a hard jab in her gut. The realization that she could now lose Glen, too, sank into her like a slingshot stone.
Chapter 14
Moira
“Stay inside this time.” Moira jerked the Buick toward the gas station air hose alongside the cinder-block building. “I don’t need you wandering around like always.”
“You mean exploring.” Colly cracked a mischievous smile.
“And no messing with the dials either.” Moira attempted to be stern but then shook her head and smiled back. That child! So curious, and by God was she smart. Sometimes too smart for her own good.
The Buick heaved and sputtered before turning off. Clearly, the end of its lifespan was fast approaching. Moira got out and crouched near the wheel well, turning her face to avoid the foul smell of hot rubber. Anchoring her shaky right hand, she twisted the snake-headed tube into place.
This was a hard life for sure. Living hand to mouth. Almost twice a week now, she was filling these near-treadless tires. But she’d kept her promise to Colly, tried to be just like a mam to her. Thank Jesu she was so independent. That girl knew everything—how to cook oatmeal, how to keep vermin at bay, and always, the last place where Moira left her cigs.
But recently, with Colly getting older, keener to wisecrack, Moira found her patience buzzing in alternating current. After all of Moira’s sacrifices, she was beginning to wonder if that child wouldn’t abandon her the way everyone else in her life had. Her mind went to Eamon. She bit her trembling lip against the surfacing distress she still suffered. Despite everything, she missed him so.
And part of Moira still longed for the feel of a larger family around her. Life as a Traveller had been like living in a pile of hamsters, always one on top of the other. The shock of sudden isolation after the shunning was gone, but a deep wound still festered inside. This life with just the two of them seemed beyond lonely; it felt unnatural.
Tap, tap. Moira looked up. Colly’s face was plastered against the window like a fish in an aquarium, her hand gesturing, finlike, toward the outdoor soda machine.
Moira shook her head. Did that girl think they were made of money?
Colly sank from view.
The tires took longer to fill each time. She yawned and glanced around. Nothing for miles in the slow Indiana landscape except acres of furrowed fields under a hazy sapphire sky. It was late spring and the heat, thank God, wasn’t yet razor sharp. She followed the robotic blink of lights on the outdoor soda machine, and then counted the rows of cinder blocks on the wall. Fourteen in all, from the roof to the tops of some shaggy-headed grasses, stiff and upright as sentinels. A quick breeze swept them to one side. Moira froze at what she thought she’d seen on the wall behind those weeds.
Could it be?
“Colly.” Moira banged against the fender. The top of Colly’s hair appeared in the window, like a thatch of green sod, followed by her thin face.
Moira swallowed hard, choking with emotion. “Come out.”
“Really?”
Before Moira uttered another sound, the car door flew open and Colly’s bare feet hit the ground.
“Here.” Moira motioned to her side. “Take over.”
“Do I get a root beer?”
Moira didn’t answer. Colly slid next to the tire, and Moira guided her grasp to the nozzle. A blast of air blew through the tube and across her wrist.
“Blanog.” Her hand quaked with wild energy. “Keep it steady.”
“Okay, okay. Am I doing it right?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. Great.” But Moira’s attention was on that spot on the wall. She had to be certain what she’d seen was real. She hustled away from Colly, leaving her to struggle with the hissing hose.
When Moira drew closer, she almost fell over. What appeared as nonsense graffiti to the untrained eye—a hastily chalked triangle with three slashes run through—was a clear, unambiguous sign to her. Jesu! It was the ancient Gaelic symbol used to indicate a stopover. Travellers were in the area.
“Moira, I need—”
“Go to another tire.” Moira barely turned her head.
“This one isn’t done.”
“Just do it.”
Moira ran her hand below the symbol, just above the dirt line, searching for a crack or crevice that should be there. Could it be her clan? No, not possible! She continued to search with great caution, because the anticipation actually hurt. If it was indeed her family, what would she do? A small piece of Moira’s heart swelled. She clutched her chest.
Don’t break. Not again.
“Hey!” Colly called.
Moira clenched her teeth and leaned back. “What is it?”
“This one too?” Colly pointed to a rear tire, clearly low and saggy.
“No. And shush now.”
“But you said—”
“Just get back in the car.” Moira’s mind clattered with the voices of family members, their laughter across the caravan park, the aroma of the simple meals prepared inside the little homes. The display of exuberant rowdiness, life fully lived.
Hearing the car door slam behind her, she placed her hand into a fissure in the wall. There should be a pencil in that hollow and scraps of paper. A crude mailbox system for messaging, most likely checked once or twice a day. And each piece of paper would have an insignia on it—a deer’s head, or a shamrock, or, dare she even think it, her own clan’s symbol.
She reached deeply and then brought a lump of folded paper into the light. Her whole body trembled as she opened it.
“Ach!”
There was no mistaking the simple lines, rudimentary as a child’s design: a wolf. With red chalk eyes. Her family was here. Somewhere. Nearby.
Her right hand lurched uncontrollably as she worked to smooth the creases against the wall. A series of straight lines—|||—with one crossed out. Three days total they were here. With only two remaining. Her legs weakened. Was it, could it be, Siobhan’s or her da’s writing? She couldn’t tell for certain. But one thing she knew was that they’d be gone soon.
Pearls of sweat gathered at her temples in the now overbearing sunshine.
“Moira!” Colly yelled through the car window.
Toppling from a squat onto her bum, Moira’s bones nearly leaped through her skin. Anger bordering on rage welled in her throat. You little…
“I’ve got my own money for root beer.”
She ignored Colly, just as she now ignored the fact that she had lost her family well before Colly came along. That child now seemed the reason Moira lurked on the edges of life—the tedious cash jobs, the operating under fake last names, the dull but nagging fear of discovery.
Clutching the pencil in her good hand, she positioned it over a clean scrap of paper. This moment, this simple decision, meant so much, almost too much. The weeds rattled in another swipe of breeze. Were they encouraging or warning?
She’d know that answer soon enough.
* * *
That night, the temperature plummeted, and Moira tossed beneath two meager blankets as thoughts of Eamon crashed through her head. She had seen the mangled Taurus on TV and now imagined his body swept away in the cold river, trapped somewhere miles downstream, disintegrating in the muck. It troubled Moira that he’d not had a proper burial, and she made certain she said a prayer every August in his memory. Even now, she barely wept. Life was too difficult for sentiment. Pulling the covers to her chin, she shuddered, thinking back to the cabin and those very first months with Colly, the effort it took to get her talking again. The one thing Moira was grateful for was that the girl remembered nothing of that day and of her previous life.
There had been, of course, no one to explain to Moira how things went with a child. She had to make it up as she went along. She had dreamed of it all so different, fresh smells like baby powder, wiping sweet drool from chubby cheeks and padded chin. Instead, she got this rambunctious creature, half child, half adult, running barefoot until the snow fell.
She thought again of the selkie myth. She’d never told Colly the whole story. The way the changeling child eventually swam away into the wild, returning to its creature shape without so much as a glance backward. Her legs thrashed against the covers, as if in defiance, as if suddenly acknowledging the uncomfortable parallel to the way Eamon had left her.
Hours, it seemed, passed before Moira drifted from restless anxiety to sleep. In her dream, she saw Eamon. But only his back—not his face. He was walking and she fell in behind, unquestioning, for miles on end. Exhausted, she finally sank to the ground. Eamon stopped and slowly began to turn, the tattoo on his arm apparent at first, then his rough profile.
Just as his face came into view, Moira startled awake to Colly’s voice. Crying. Many times, she had gone into Colleen’s room in the night. Her eyes were always closed, but she moved and made sounds as if she were in some far-off place awake. Some nights it was singing. A bright, lively tune about clouds and birds. Other nights she frowned and whimpered. Colly never knew the next morning that anything unusual had happened, and Moira never said a word. Tonight, once again, she called for a mother. “Mom-eee, Mom-eee.”
This time, Moira stayed put. It burrowed into Moira’s head, this terrible longing, and hurt like a betrayal after all she’d sacrificed for the girl. Soon she heard her own voice, echoing through her head, pleading for her mam. Like a silly little child. Moira clamped the pillow over her head. Shut up, Moira. Shut yourself up.
Colleen resumed louder. “Mom-eee, Mom-eee,” she called, in a high, lonely wail.
Sweet Jesu. Moira pulled the pillow down over her face. Make that child stop!
The morning sun brought air sheepishly warmed, as if recovering from a spanking, and yellow light mottled by the dirty kitchen window. Moira chipped last night’s dinner of dried SpaghettiOs from a pan. Rinsing the bowls, she pulled her hands from the water. They were red and chapped from the harsh detergents she used in her job cleaning rooms at the Motel 6. Everything about her, including the reflection of her face now stretched across the chrome toaster, looked older than her twenty-four years.
She turned toward the tiny TV set on the counter. Images from a commercial danced in black and white. With the volume button perpetually stuck on high, the voices blared. This time it was a man trumpeting about the world’s most versatile knife. As she brought a cup of instant coffee to her lips, Moira’s stomach teeter-tottered against the lukewarm liquid in her mouth—had she made the right decision about leaving a message?
Scree, scree.
Moira whipped around. Colleen was scraping her dry bowl of cereal with a plastic spoon. The sound shot through her like a loud demand. Instead of flesh and blood, all Moira saw for an instant was a stick figure with a mouth. And crazy blue hair. She blinked hard.
Scree, scree.
The man on the TV roared a toll-free number. Even the spring day was bursting through the trailer, tapping at cracks, imposing inward. Moira walked to the window. Birds everywhere, as if trees were nets that caught them. She drew a skewed blind tight against this chirpy season. She could just choke those damn trilling birds.
“Moira. We need milk.”
Empty milk cartons, broken TV dials, leaky tires. The list was endless. Exhaustingly so.
“You have Pop-Tarts,” Moira snapped. What a pretty penny they were too. “Here’s what you’ll do until I get back.” She held up a poster-sized photograph of trees she’d gotten at the dollar store. Maples and ashes in the height of autumn brilliance, scarlet, flame yellow, colors normally irresistible to Colly. “You’ll paint that exact, got it? Just a simple copy.”
That manager woman was right: they were making decent money off this stuff. Up to twenty dollars apiece. The woman also proved most helpful, kept taking finished canvases to flea market heaven, Michiana. The understanding was clear from the beginning; tourists only bought bright, sun-filled pictures. Lately—no matter how Moira cajoled—Colleen’s paintings were becoming abstract and desolate. A frozen creek here, stark stands of wintry birches there.
“Exact copy.” Moira held the door handle.
Colleen blinked back her surprise at Moira’s tone, which Moira softened as she continued. “I’m off, little one. Can’t be late for work.”
Climbing into the Buick, she felt Colly’s eyes on her from the window, eager and, as always, questioning. She backed away without a glance and gunned past the trailer, a great fatted pig of aluminum, kicking small tornadoes of dust in her wake.
Passing the exit where she should turn for the Motel 6, Moira’s anxiety rose each minute she grew closer to her new destination, the one she’d outlined in the note she’d left for her family. So many things bounced through her head. What exactly was she doing? Did they know about the abduction? Had they heard about Eamon’s death? While they weren’t ones for watching TV news or reading papers, bits of information easily became wild gossip.
And the most consuming thought of all—did she even dare to ask them to take her back? It was the soobya situation, consorting with her cousin Eamon that had gotten her into this mess. And that was now ancient history. If her family agreed, then what about Colly? How would she make them understand what Eamon had done and how she’d stepped in to help this girl and to keep her safe from a bad mother? Her mind crackled until she almost missed the exit and had to careen over a lane to catch it. At the end of the ramp was the meeting place. A Big Boy restaurant. Her heart smacked wildly against her ribs.
She prayed it would be her da and not Siobhan who was there.
Moira circled behind the building, parked and waited, drumming her fingers as she scanned the area. Only a pickup truck and a sedan sat in the lot, both empty. Ten minutes passed. No one came. The sun, too, was playing games, drifting behind a few striated clouds thin and wispy as harp strings. Moira picked one to track to keep her mind in place.
She checked the clock again. Almost twenty minutes now she’d sat past the appointed time. Disappointment began to froth in her soul, setting her thoughts to fester. She’d been a fool to get her hopes up, to even try for this. Leaning to start the car, she detected movement and a person appeared alongside as if from the very air. A slip of a woman, pale and thin with sharp dark eyes. Moira shoved the car door open to stand before a mirror image of herself. Siobhan.
“That damn Buick still, huh, Moira?”
Aside from the tiny mole to the right of Siobhan’s mouth, they were identical. But Siobhan’s eyes were steely and hard as bullets.
“Sister. It’s good to see you.”
An expression ran across Siobhan’s face, one that Moira remembered so well. The satisfied look of one more favored, one closer to their mam’s heartbeat, one whose actions pleased their da. Then she narrowed her eyes. “What have you been up to then, Moira?”
“Oh, workin’ here and there.” Moira’s throat constricted.
There was quiet between them. The noise of the highway grumbled in the distance.
“So, what do you want? We’re on the move again tomorrow.”
“Can you talk to Da?” Moira’s breath caught as she spoke. It took so much courage to continue. “About, dunno, maybe letting me travel with the clan again.” The question came from such a deep, hungry place inside her that the words hurt when she spoke them. She rose up on her toes and then back down again. She’d kill for a cigarette.
A police cruiser pulled into the parking lot and curved past the two women like a shark, hesitating momentarily before moving on. Moira felt her expression go flat. Her hand kicked wildly inside its pocket.
“When was it?” Siobhan asked. “The last you saw of Eamon?”
“Um…dunno.” The image of that river, the rushing water, the crushed Taurus flashed in Moira’s brain. “Years.”
“Hmm. What do you think was in Eamon’s head, Moira?” Siobhan kept her eyes steady. “Makin’ off with two girls like that?”
Moira felt blood flooding her face. She fixed her gaze onto a line of dark clouds crawling over the horizon. Just past Siobhan’s head.
“Look at me,” Siobhan demanded. “I mean in the eyes.”
Moira’s heartbeat battered like a ramrod in her ears.
“Tell me it was madness. What Eamon done.”
Blanog! It would be impossible to explain how things went down. That it was all Eamon’s idea and Moira was an innocent victim. Moira felt she was dueling with not only her sister but with Eamon as well, listening from wherever he now was, preparing to curse the words she was about to speak. “It was beyond horrible.”
