Dead Silver

45

Her name was Janie Gerhardt; she was Tina's younger sister. She led us back into the store, past the unwelcoming gaze of her rawboned, bespectacled mother.

"Where you going? I need help," Mrs. Gerhardt called after her, although there weren't any customers.

"I'll send the girls out," Janie said. Both spoke in sharp tones that suggested a long-standing battle for control.

Then Janie exhaled dramatically, stopped walking, and about-faced.

"Come on, Mom, let's talk to these people. How can it hurt?"

Mrs. Gerhardt didn't answer. We followed Janie on through the Phosphor Food Emporium's short aisles of modestly stocked shelves. I was reminded of the pretty good grocery market in Prairie Home Companion-if they didn't have what you wanted, you could get along without it.

The building itself was bigger than it looked from the street, with a newer addition built onto the rear. As we came to learn, the extra space had been intended to expand the store, during the days when the Dead Silver Mine seemed a sure bet to jack up the local economy and population. After that failed, Janie's father had been forced to take a truck-driving job to make the payments, and was on the road much of the time. She and her mother ran the store. The family had closed off the addition and converted it into an apartment-cinder-block walls and concrete floor-where Janie now lived with her two teenaged daughters. Her husband was long gone. This was a female dynasty.

The daughters were home when we walked in-one at a computer desk, the other lying on the couch surrounded by a spread of books and papers, both with an eye on the TV screen, which appeared to be featuring young celebrities misbehaving. Competing music pulsed from an open bedroom door. They were about thirteen and fifteen, with a resemblance to their mother and to each other; both were wearing skin-tight lowcut jeans that exposed their navels, skin-tight lowcut tops that made the most of their striving young cleavage, and enough makeup to put on a stage production of Grease.

"Turn off the noise and go help Gramma," Janie said. The girls responded with groans and eye-rolling, but no complaints. While the power struggle between them and their own mother had doubtless started, kids who grew up like this understood from an early age that the family was in the sea of life together, to swim or sink.

Their glances at me were only mildly curious-I was a kind of guy they were used to-but they lingered on Renee, sizing her up carefully. She was dressed much the same as them except with less flesh on display, but I supposed there were signals telling of her worldliness-another facet of that mysterious chain of female communication that endlessly passed me by.

When they were gone, Janie stepped to a shelf with several glassed photographs, and touched one.

"This is Tina," she said.

Tina Gerhardt had been an attractive young woman, with a chiseled face framed by soft, thick, light brown hair. There was a touch of Barbie doll about her, although some of that came from the generic studio portrait,

Janie wiped her hands nervously on her apron. "Nobody's brought this up for a long time," she said. "What do you want to know?" She seemed slightly accusing now, like she was wishing she'd listened to her mother after all.

"About Tina and her boyfriend, mainly," Renee said.

"Brent?" Janie shrugged. "He was sort of full of shit-liked to hear himself talk. But all right, except for cheating on Tina."

Then another woman's voice said, "He wasn't all right, and neither was that Astrid. Weren't for their little game, Tina would still be here."

I turned to see the elder Mrs. Gerhardt walking into Janie's apartment. She waved Renee and me toward the dining room table.

"Go on, sit down," she said. "I'll make coffee."