Judith, Peter’s secretary, buzzed me in the middle of class. There was a call for me in the office. As I headed there, I couldn’t imagine who would call the school, rather than my cell, with a message sufficiently urgent to require interruption.
On picking up, I heard the smoke-roughened voice of Harriett Spencer, a longtime friend of my aunt Becky, my father’s last living sibling. Harriett wanted me to fly to Pennsylvania as soon as possible. My aunt, nearly ninety and confused by multiple small strokes, was facing imminent foreclosure.
I wasn’t particularly close to Aunt Becky. She had worked overseas with American Friends Service Committee most of my childhood. But my father had loved her, and at any other time in my life I wouldn’t have hesitated to take family leave. I offered to handle things by phone, but Harriett insisted. Apparently, Aunt Becky was forgetting more than her mortgage. The prior week, she’d left a hamburger cooking on the stove and lay down for a nap, waking only when the fire alarm went off, the house filled with smoke. “Becky’s a tough one,” Harriett said. “She’s going to need some persuading, but if she doesn’t get into a special-care unit soon, I’m worried something far worse than foreclosure will happen.”
THAT EVENING, EVANGELINE PRATTLED ON ABOUT NATALIA. I was thankful that she was distracted and oblivious to my own preoccupations.
“Natalia said her mom makes the best tamales in the world. She’ll show me how to make them. Do you like tamales?”
She talked in an excited, girlish way I hadn’t heard from her before. These past weeks, she’d been so secretive and guarded. To see her relaxed, maybe thinking of my home as hers, helped to soften my bleak mood.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever had one,” I said, though of course I had.
Evangeline’s jaw dropped in feigned shock, newly playful, her cheeks flushed bright. I continued to exaggerate my lack of experience with Mexican food, and she gushed about its marvels.
“Could I go to Natalia’s this weekend? I could make you tamales for Sunday dinner.”
I told Evangeline about my aunt, my need to be gone. “I’ll try to get back as soon as possible, but it might take a week or so to find a placement for her.”
She stabbed a piece of cucumber, ate it, said, with forced indifference, “Why so long? I mean, couldn’t you just search online, make a few calls? Sounds like she won’t even recognize you.”
I must have looked surprised, because she scowled and said, “You’re the one who said she’s lost it, not me. You’re the one who’s just up and leaving because of some crazy old aunt you’ve never mentioned before. You haven’t even gone to your office to ‘reflect’ on it. I mean, you had to do your frozen-mummy-freak-show thing to decide if we could turn some lights on at night. But now, poof, you’re just hopping on a plane?”
It wasn’t the words so much as the savage way she flung them at me that made me see her as I had that first night—scared and wild and fierce.
“I’m coming back,” I said. “I promise. I’m coming back.”
She began gathering the dishes. “Hell yeah you’re coming back. You think I don’t know that? You’ve got this house and school to teach. I know how devoted you are to ‘your kids.’”
“You too. I’m coming back to be here for you.”
She went to the sink, muttering, “Like I give a fuck about that.”
I remained at the table, choosing to ignore the provocation while she snapped on the faucet, started banging dishes around.
“There’s the baby too,” I said.
She froze, then flipped round, flung suds across the floor. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? All this so-called generosity. You’re not looking out for me. You still think I’m carrying your grandkid. Well, what if I told you I’m not, that I thank God every day I’m not? What if I told you there were lots of guys and your son wasn’t one of them, that I hated your son? Then what? Would you be rushing back to make sure I was okay? Would I even be here now?”
She stood at the sink, her eyes filling with tears, her mouth mean and trembling.
I couldn’t respond. Not then, not without seeking Divine grace to mute the beast that had begun to prowl with the call this morning—a beast that used Evangeline’s incitements to break through my barriers, thrust me upright, and urge me to slap her hard across her face.
She stared at me, watching my struggle, and as she did, her lips transformed into an odd, self-satisfied smile. “That’s what I thought,” she said, and turned back to the dishes.
I left Evangeline and went to my office to engage in my “freak show.” Strange how it shook me, this materialization of part of my son’s hidden life. Her adamance that he wasn’t the father only increased my suspicion that he was. Her anger toward him, though played to wound me, felt visceral and real. And that, too, increased my suspicion, because it takes intimacy in one form or another to foster anger like that.
And I had my own anger to deal with. On a day when I faced yet more painful family traumas, I had to deal with the girl’s lies and outright hostilities.
EVANGELINE AND I TALKED LATER THAT NIGHT, not about her troubling statements—which I chose for the moment to ignore—but about logistics. She rejected my offer to find somewhere else for her to stay, pointing out that she’d survived on her own in far more challenging situations. Besides, she said, someone needed to take care of Rufus.
I agreed to let her stay alone if I could line up a responsible adult nearby. It needed to be a woman in the neighborhood, someone Evangeline could run to in case of emergency. There was old Janice Wilson, the neighborhood gossip, but I couldn’t bear Evangeline becoming the subject of malicious rumors. A couple of houses were rented by people I hadn’t gotten to know, leaving only Sharon Franklin at the end of the block and Lorrie next door. Sharon was a lovely woman, but she worked full time at the paper mill, and had three small children and a mother in hospice care. I couldn’t imagine adding to her burden.
The next evening, I kept putting off the request. Everything about it felt wrong. I had never called Lorrie to discuss the possibility that she might have a grandchild on the way. A couple of weeks back, I’d asked Evangeline if people knew she was pregnant.
“Gawd no!” she said. “That’s the last thing I need. You haven’t told anyone, have you?”
I assured her I hadn’t. “But at some point, won’t you—”
“That point is like months away. Winter is coming. I’ll be able to hide it for a long time. I may miscarry, right? That could happen.”
Did she want that? I couldn’t tell.
“Let me decide when I tell people, okay?”
I nodded. She stared at me fiercely, until I said, “Of course. It’s not my place.”
“That’s right,” she said. “It’s not your place.”
And even if Evangeline had granted permission, Lorrie had been avoiding me. Whenever she saw me at our mailboxes, she’d spin and retreat inside—behavior I found both offensive and thoughtful.
I MADE IT OVER TO LORRIE’S HOUSE around nine that night. The front doorbell was broken, and I went around back. She jumped when she saw my face at the kitchen door, and I was sorry to have scared her. Textbooks and notes covered the table, and the usual dark circles around her eyes were a deep purple now.
She opened the door, glanced back at the general disorder and the dishes in the sink, and said with obvious unease, “Isaac, come in.” She set about clearing the table, though I told her not to bother.
“Sorry everything’s such a mess. I have a microbiology test tomorrow. Oh my Lord, it stinks in here, doesn’t it?”
“Not at all.” Though of course it did. Nothing unsalvageable, no worse than cooked broccoli or a few days of food waste.
She offered me a cup of tea, which I declined. “I won’t keep you. It’s just that something’s come up, and I’m wondering if you could do me a favor.”
“Anything.”
She spoke with sincerity, almost urgency, and I understood that her avoidance of me had been for my benefit, not hers. I wondered if this urgency might be guilt, if she had seen me standing in the trees last September. But she couldn’t have, not with the dark and the fire twisting between us.
“I’m here to ask a favor for Evangeline.”
I realized too late that I didn’t know how much she knew. Nells was still in middle school. Without a link to the high school, Lorrie might not know that the girl was staying with me. As for a possible connection to the boys, that was less likely still.
“I have to fly to Pennsylvania. A family matter. I’ll probably be gone a week, maybe a little longer. There’s this girl who’s been staying with me . . .” I hesitated, wondering how to explain.
Lorrie looked at me curiously. “I know about Evangeline, Isaac. People talk.”
Strangely, coming from Lorrie, there was relief in that. “That so?”
She smiled. “That’s so.”
“Good. Good,” I said, collecting myself, trying to shake an unexpected shyness. “Evangeline’s remarkably self-sufficient, but in her condition . . .” I stopped, fearing I’d said too much.
“Is she sick?” Lorrie asked, a genuine concern there.
“Not sick exactly.”
She waited for more. When she realized, she said, “Ah. She’s pregnant.” Her tone was without judgment or alarm. I was glad. Evangeline had no need of that.
“It isn’t my place. I shouldn’t have said.”
“You didn’t say. But even if you had, you’d have been right in it. She needs an adult around who knows. There can be complications.”
We agreed Lorrie would stop by every couple of days to check on Evangeline, maybe bring her a green salad now and then as I was uncertain of her nutritional discipline in my absence.
When I stood to leave, Lorrie said, “Just wondering . . . when was it that Evangeline showed up?”
“A month or so ago, mid-October, I think.”
“And before? Where was she before?”
I hesitated. She sensed my discomfort. “No, it’s okay. Don’t worry. I’ll check in on her. In fact, if she’s scared by herself in that big old house, she can stay with us.” A thoughtful offer in my view, but she seemed suddenly aghast, mumbled, “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
She must have realized the only room available would be Jonah’s. I rushed to reassure her. “Or you and Nells could stay in my room. It’s a queen-size bed. There’s also a cot in the laundry room.”
“Well,” she said, straightening and looking directly at me with that stern dignity of hers. “If she needs us. We’ll see.”
ON THE WAY HOME, I went out the back gate, cutting through our joint easement. It was an odd decision. Though it was the shortest route, the wooded area had no clear path and was particularly treacherous at night. That evening, the trees cast shadowy figures that danced in and out of my vision. Halfway through, I stopped and stood very still, sensing someone near. Then I saw it, hidden in the shadows not four feet from me—a squat presence, solid and alive, a man or boy crouching there. Fear battered my chest, but I sucked in a breath and lunged toward him with a roar.
Nothing. Not even a flinch. But then, the presence wasn’t a man or a boy, wasn’t a creature of any type. It was a rusted barrel, the one that had shot late-night flames the week Daniel was missing.
I had struggled hard to forget that barrel in the past month. But that night, I made a decision, powered on my cell’s flashlight, and edged up to its dark lip. Terror gripped me again, as if the creature I’d first imagined were inside the drum ready to spring. It took me a minute to work up the courage to peek. Another to decipher what I saw.
Of course, I had known all along what was there.
Ashes. Nothing but ashes on a cold November night.