Dirt

Chapter 16

The chicken and dumplings. Finally arrived. The stew pot on the stove, lid open, and Galen loved the fluffy white dumplings floating on the surface like clouds. Pure and white, browned along their edges and peaks. He lifted one carefully with the serving spoon onto his plate. The underside slick with gravy. The entire stew a thick gravy with chicken and potatoes, carrots and onions, and he heaped his plate. This is what he would have instead of Jennifer. Food.

He couldn’t look at Jennifer, couldn’t look at his mother. All of them crammed at that small yellow table, and he kept his eyes on his food.

You’ve done yourself proud, Mom, Galen’s mother said. But there was no real cheer behind her voice.

I don’t know, his grandmother said. Something doesn’t seem quite right. But I can’t remember, of course, what it should be. I can’t remember anything. Sometimes I wish I could just die. I hate not remembering anything.

Mom, Galen’s mother said. Don’t say that.

Yeah, Grandma, Galen said. It tastes great. It’s just like before. And this was true. He was savoring the rich gravy and chicken, the onions and potatoes turned almost to mush after stewing all day.

I have this awful feeling about something, but I don’t even know what it’s about.

Everything’s fine, Mom.

It’s like I can’t remember what I have to fear. Like some mouse wandering around forgetting there’s a cat but feeling afraid of the cat anyway.

That would be Suzie-Q, Helen said. Suzie-Q is the cat.

Don’t start, Galen’s mother said.

Suzie-Q is taking you back to the rest home after this. Your health is fine, and you could live at home, but Suzie-Q doesn’t want you at home. She wants you in the rest home so she can take your money.

Galen’s mother slumped and looked down at her food.

Is that true?

No, Mom, it’s not true. Helen hates me, and she hates you, so she tells lies.

Helen doesn’t hate me. She’s my daughter. Why are you saying ugly things like that?

Galen’s mother put both hands over her face, elbows on the table, blocking out the world. Mom, I can’t do this, she said. Helen is the enemy. I’m not the enemy.

Look at that, Mom, Helen said. Calling me the enemy. Who calls her own sister the enemy? Is that how family treat each other?

She’s right, Suzie-Q. Apologize to your sister right now.

Galen’s mother’s face hidden in her hands, her back and chest caving between her shoulders.

You apologize right this instant, Suzie-Q!

Galen wanted to help his mother, but he didn’t know how. His grandmother was angry now, and she thought she was on solid ground. She thought she knew what the problem was, and maybe that was better than not knowing.

She already said she was sorry, Galen said.

What?

She already said she was sorry, but you keep asking her to apologize, so now she’s crying.

Oh, fuck me, Helen said. You can’t switch it around that easily. Suzie-Q needs to apologize to me, Mom. She hasn’t said she’s sorry.

Watch your language, Helen.

Fuck you, Mom. If your memory really is this bad, then it won’t matter what I say now. I can say something else tomorrow.

Helen!

Helen what? What are you going to do, Mom? You’ve already destroyed my life, and I’ve already taken your money now, so I don’t need you anymore. You’re the worst mother the world has ever seen. And do you know why that is?

Stop it, Helen, Galen’s mother said. You won’t treat her this way.

Focus, Mom. Do you know why it is that you’re the worst mother ever?

How can you talk to me like this? Aren’t you my daughter?

That’s the thing. I am your daughter, and you didn’t protect me. That’s why you’re the worst mother ever. Because I’m your daughter and you didn’t do anything to protect me.

You’re the worst grandmother, too, Jennifer piped in. You’re in love with Galen because he has a dick, but you don’t even know I’m here.

Galen’s grandmother was shaking her head. Her eyes were wet. No, she said. No.

This is that cat you were afraid of, Mom, Helen said. The cat is the truth. The truth about you and who you are.

We all want you to die, Jennifer said in a voice that sounded loving and caring, which made it all the more frightening. She reached out and touched her grandmother’s hand. We’re all waiting for you to die.

Galen’s grandmother jerked back as if bitten. She was on her feet, her chair fallen backward onto the floor. She was holding the hand that Jennifer had touched, holding it close against her, protectively. I have to get away from you, she said. I have to get away from all of you.

She opened the back door and ran out. She was fast.

Galen’s mother rose to follow, but Helen grabbed her arm and yanked her down onto the floor. No you don’t, she said. Galen’s mother tried to crawl, but Helen dove onto her and flattened her. No Suzie-Q to the rescue, Helen said. That’s never happening again.

Galen couldn’t believe any of this was happening. It was like some ridiculous Big Time Wrestling match, and he was supposed to tag-team. He tried to get to his mother, but Jennifer punched him hard in the side of the head.

Fuck, he said. That hurts. He turned away, and she punched him in the back.

Stop it, he said, and he tried to get away from her. He was backing toward the front door, his hands out, trying to protect, but she was slapping them away. How could you do that? he asked. I love you.

Jennifer laughed. Right there in front of him, only an hour or two after they had made love. She laughed, and she was enjoying this, enjoyed hitting him.

I don’t understand you, he said.

Oh, look at you, she said. How cute. She was talking to him as if he were a child or a small dog, her eyebrows way up and head tilted. This is how we show love in this family. Welcome to the family. Then she punched him in the neck.

Galen escaped out the front door and tried to breathe. He was staggering around trying to suck for air, and his throat felt crushed. He collapsed against the railing and just held on, and then he got a breath. The air rushed in, painful. He wasn’t going to die.

He needed to find his grandmother. She could be wandering around anywhere, and if she went too far, she’d forget which way she’d come. And it was cold.

Around the deck and past the shed, up through trees into the meadow. Moonlight a bright opaque white on every surface, the world turned into marble, become a solid. The cold air slipping. Grandma, he called, but his voice was weak, his throat damaged.

He humped across the meadow, bogged down in granite sand. Shadows everywhere, and the world could be seen two ways, the light or the shadows. Shapes born and landed, or the dark spaces around them, hollows that fell back infinitely. His grandmother could be either, and he didn’t know how to look for her.

The hillside was tilting as he ran, his arms out for balance. He was exploding through solidity, his feet breaking apart the marble and scattering it. Somewhere in this maze she was doing the same, and he needed to sense her, catch a glimpse of the spray she kicked up in the light. Wave patterns, and somewhere she was carving the pattern, setting up a counterwave, and that was what he needed to feel. He needed to extend himself into the pattern and feel the dimpling at an edge. Grandma!

Mired in place, pinned down by gravity. Too slow, too limited by breath, too limited by this clunky body, by chicken fat and dumplings. Galen stopped and bent over, purged, tried to free himself, tried to lose this mortal shell. The air cold enough she’d never survive the night.

Too difficult to run uphill, so he turned to the side, traversed. Light and shadow, the world veering in and out of focus. He stopped and tried to squint into the high contrast and turn slowly in a circle and just look for movement. But the forest was motionless, as if the planet itself had stopped rotating. A slow drift through space, so quiet, the only sounds his own blood and breath, the tilting coming from inside him. The forest had swallowed her in stillness.

Grandma, he called again, and he began to feel angry. He shouldn’t have to find her. He ran as fast as he could, running blindly now, no longer trying to see, crashing through branches and snags. She was out here somewhere, but with each moment, she became less likely.

He tried to listen, bent over and panting, and then he ran back the way he had come.

Farther than he had thought. Time wasted, and nothing looked familiar. He would spend all night searching, he knew, and he would never find her. She would be lost and gone.

But then he saw the big rock, staggered through the meadow, and realized where she must have gone. A path at the top of the meadow that led to other cabins and a trailhead. There was no other option, really. He’d been wasting his time, stupidly, and she’d be getting frightened by now. If she became frightened enough, she might leave the trail.

He followed this trail uphill, moving as fast as he could, passed cabins empty, boarded up, storm shutters all around, no glass to reflect the moon, only dull wood glowing white. He could smell this place, smell the dirt and weeds and pines, the familiar air and familiar path, and ahead, nearing the trail that went higher to the summit, he saw a figure passing from light to shadow to light.

Grandma, he called, and the figure paused, half in the light, herself become a half-moon. Grandma, he called again, wait for me.

She began moving again, and he ran after, tried not to lose sight of her. She could fade away so easily, a trick of the light. Wait for me, he called. And she disappeared, stopped in a shadow perhaps.

His lungs and throat ragged, no breath left at all, but he went as fast as he could toward where he had last seen her. The forest stretching, the space becoming farther. He thought he saw movement again, a dappling, but couldn’t know for sure because of his own movement.

Grandma! he called. Wait for me! But he’d lost her, vanished into the shadows. He was coming close to where he’d seen her, and there was nothing. Whatever he’d seen, he’d only imagined it.

The trailhead began here, a narrower path up through forest and then exposed ridgelines of granite. The trail went for miles, and she could be anywhere along it. Or she might have gone the other direction, down to the creek, and followed that, or could be walking along the highway, even.

Galen didn’t feel powerful at all, didn’t feel he could extend into this forest. He was limited to one tiny point. But he was committed now to this path, and he hoped she would be on it.

A path of memory, a trail he’d followed hundreds of times from when he first began. The tree at the first bend, the open section with low growth on either side, the boggy ford across a small creek, the cabbagey plants growing out of thick mud, wide curls and folds to their leaves. The short section of meadow, the trail turning uphill again and now the granite steps, loose rocks but these low shelves, wound with roots. The scraping of his shoes, grinding the same steps from his earliest memories, but never before in moonlight. A familiar place become foreign.

Galen climbed the granite, the twists and turns in a narrow chute with growth in close on both sides, and nearly stepped on his grandmother.

Aah! he yelled. Holy shit. You scared me.

Galen, she said. With her light sweater and slacks, sitting on the trail, she looked like a piece of granite, a small boulder.

Wow, he said.

I don’t know if I want to walk much farther, she said. I’m getting tired, and I’m cold. Why are we hiking at night?

We can go back.

But your mother is up ahead. We can’t just leave her. She won’t know to turn around.

She’s not up there.

Yes she is. She’s the one who wanted to go on this hike.

Grandma. It’s only me and you.

No. Your mother is just ahead of me.

Mom is back at the cabin.

But I was just following her. If she’s not up there, then what am I doing? Where am I going?

We’re just taking a hike, just me and you.

Galen’s grandmother stood up and looked away to the side, past all the small growth in close and out to mountain ranges that seemed to float on their own against the sky. It’s not a hike, is it, she said.

No.

I was lost.

Yes.

And I would have just kept going, thinking your mother was ahead of me.

Maybe.

And why did I come out here? Why did I leave in the middle of the night?

Because Mom and Helen were fighting. You wanted to get away, which was a good choice. I think you did the right thing.

Do you know what it’s like to not remember?

No.

It’s like being no one, but still having to live anyway.

Grandma.

It really is that bad. It’s like being no one. You think you’re someone now, but it’s only because you can put your memories together. You put them together and you think that makes something. But take away the memories, or even scramble them out of order, and there’s nothing left.

You remembered this trail. And you remembered the cabin when we first arrived. You remembered how to turn on the water.

Did I? Galen could see her smile for a moment. I can remember places, I think. I do remember this trail. And I can recognize people. I haven’t forgotten who you are. I just can’t remember anything that’s happened.

Well you’ve been a wonderful grandmother. I have a thousand great memories of time with you.

Galen’s grandmother put her hand up to her mouth and closed her eyes. Galen looked away and waited. The mountains floating independently. The air colder now.

A deep exhale from his grandmother, and another. Okay, she said. Let’s go home.