Читать книгу Twister - Genanne Walsh - Страница 12

Louise pulled into the parking lot that morning at the same time as her coworker Dayana—8:25, just ten minutes after their boss. Dayana waved and cut the engine, and then slid out of her car holding an enormous travel coffee mug. She jutted her hip in its figure-molding skirt, hiked a knockoff designer bag over her shoulder, and leaned over to lock her car door. Louise knew that if the big bosses decided to save money by cutting a teller they’d most likely keep Dayana, twenty years younger, and cheaper in every way. Louise bared her teeth into the rearview to check for lipstick smears and chided herself. Dayana couldn’t help it. What did seniority and experience count for these days?

She took a breath and stepped out of the car, adjusting the waistband of her A-line skirt. They walked together to the glass door, waiting for their boss to let them in. “Bill’s cake is in my backseat,” Louise said to Dayana. “I’ll leave it there for now.”

“Oh damn!” Dayana smacked her purple faux leather bag with her free hand. “The birthday card’s in my other purse.”

“No big deal,” Louise said. They could do without, or make one.

“I don’t know where my brain is. The barometric pressure or something.”

Bill appeared through the glass, greeting them as he swung the door back and ushered them in. Louise had overheard him talking about plans to install another ATM machine. Their jobs, their very relevance, were in jeopardy. She went straight to her station and set to work—she was good at what she did, might as well remind him of that.

Louise moved through tasks she knew by heart. She tore open the plastic shrink-wrap around a roll of pennies, careful not to chip her nail polish, wound the pen chain at her teller window into a neat spiral, and checked her inventory of receipt slips and lollipops. Outside the thick glass, a few cars made their way down the street. They’d probably get a handful of customers before noon, nothing earthshaking. Either one of them could handle it alone. Dayana, too, was looking busy.

In his office, Bill rocked gently in his chair as he looked over a sheaf of paper, his own busywork. A glass house, Louise thought, home is where the…

“One minute,” Dayana said.

Louise flicked on the overhead lights as she went to unlock the door. “Hello, World!” she announced in her best Broadway voice. On the street, Stella Mondragon’s champagne colored sedan came into view. Stella was a fast, loose driver. She liked to go top speed even on poky Main Street, and she hit the brakes abruptly at stop signs as if she had no idea they were coming. The car jerked to a halt at the intersection in front of the bank. Stella’s hair was dark and shoulder length, her skin powdered. She wore plum lipstick, and a sparkly, too-youthful barrette held the hair over her left temple. Her face looked distracted, even harried; she scratched her scalp with one finger, gave a cursory check for oncoming traffic, and sailed on.

Louise’s fingers unclenched from the door handle—she’d been readying herself to face Stella—and she flipped the sign to Open. “Not a soul,” she said, reading Dayana’s questioning eyebrow. Dayana had seen her notice someone, and was probably expecting a catty comment. Though Louise was a perfectly competent bank teller, she was an artist when it came to knowing, understanding, and disseminating other people’s secrets. Some people looked down on it, called it gossip. She called it public service. What knits a random group of people together? What makes a town a community? Knowledge—shared knowledge—of what makes people tick, and what they’ve overcome and struggled with and succumbed to. Especially what they’ve succumbed to.

Soon a few customers came in and she and Dayana took turns providing the kind of customer service the Corporate Office couldn’t teach, no matter how many badly acted training videos and PowerPoint presentations Bill foisted on them. Louise was finishing up a deposit transaction when Nina Brown stepped to her window: tall and thin, with a long face to match the rest of her. She wore a gold cross around her neck, and a light pink sweatshirt with a calico heart on the chest. Nina’s hairstyle hadn’t changed since she was a girl—brown braid, tendrils held back at the temples with two serviceable black barrettes. Her hands were red and the skin along her nose was dry, as if she’d run out of moisturizer two weeks before and hadn’t made time to restock. Louise filled her lungs and smiled. They went to the same church, First Methodist. Even in a house of worship Nina seemed rushed, on her way to the next appointment—though so far as Louise could tell she spent most of her days on the Brown farm, shuttling between the house and the garden, usually only coming into town for Sunday and Wednesday services. She lived with her quiet teenage daughter and equally taciturn husband, Perry. And Perry’s father—Louise straightened her shoulders in sympathy at the thought of that flinty bastard.

“Nina, good to see you. How’s life?” Louise shut the cash drawer and gripped the counter.

Nina smiled, crinkling the eczema along her nose, and handed Louise a withdrawal slip. “Good, good. Fine. Yourself?” Nina was pleasant as pie, but she’d stretch on a rack before volunteering personal information.

“Same as ever.” Their conversation could have trudged along the expected track, but then, as if she were standing to the side and watching the words float up and dissolve into the air, Louise heard herself ask, “Have you seen Rose lately?”

Nina paused. “Rose?” She pulled a pack of gum out of her pocket.

“Yes.” Louise punched a code and opened the cash drawer. “How is she holding up?”

“Funny you should ask. We visited after the funeral and she wouldn’t…she’s not ready to talk.”

“God bless her,” Louise said automatically, picking up a stack of bills. “I saw Stella this morning, maybe that’s why I… How’s your girl, by the way? Good grades?”

“Decent. Could be better. And Ben? How’s he liking college?” Nina stuck the pack of gum back into her purse without offering a piece to Louise. Then she thought better of it, retrieved the gum, and held it out.

“No, thanks, I’m trying to be sugar free… Benji’s great! Having the time of his life, but he took the news about Lance hard, of course. They were so close.” This was largely speculation. Benji was only four hours away, and his reluctance to come home for weekends had stung. He wanted nothing to do with his parents, it seemed. Louise sighed and shut the cash drawer. “It’s a shame, that’s what it is. It weighs on a person. I still don’t understand it. Lance was…”

“Yes,” Nina said.

Louise handed her a receipt and eighty dollars in cash. They were both uncomfortable now; it was time to end it.

“Where does it all go?” Nina shoved the money into her jeans pocket.

Louise pressed on. “Will you give Rose my sympathies when you see her?”

“I will,” Nina said. “You know how prickly she is…” She paused, her fingers on the edge of the laminate counter, mirroring Louise’s, and her lips pulled into a frown, emphasizing the flaky skin around her mouth. Louise wanted to reach for the bottle of lotion she kept in her drawer and pat it all over Nina’s face. “She’s acting…she might not want…” Nina shook her head.

Bill walked from the corridor that led from his office onto the larger floor, headed in their direction. Louise leaned over and grasped Nina’s sleeve. “Maybe you should go see her?” she whispered. “Just to check up?”

Nina blinked. “That’s just what I was thinking.” She looked down at Louise’s fingers on her cuff and pushed her gum from one cheek to the other.

“All righty.” Louise let go of the sleeve and brightened her voice, pitching it toward the manager. “Thanks again, you have a great day!”

Weird, she thought, watching Nina through the glass as she walked to her station wagon. Bill, asking if she’d seen yesterday’s receipts, interrupted her thoughts. “I gave them to you,” Louise said.

“I know.” Bill held out the crumpled bundle. “But the report says you missed one.” Dayana pulled a sympathetic face behind his back.

They found the lost slip caught in a tiny hollow at the back of her drawer. “It could happen to anyone,” Louise said. She had to say it, because no one else would.

If Louise were to come face to face with Rose, what would she say? It would most certainly be a question: How are you? Is there a thing in this world that’s understandable? She shook her head. Really, what she would most likely ask is: How can I help you today? Withdrawal or deposit? Would you like to find out more about our CD interest rates, Rose?

All of this was speculation because if Rose came into the bank she’d pick Dayana’s window. This in spite of the fact that Lance and Ben had been best friends, playing junior varsity football together, not to mention countless Scouting trips. Rose never banked with Louise—not for years, ever since Louise had let slip that she knew the reason for Rose’s rift with Stella, that tawdry triangle. In spite of their sons’ friendship, their paths scarcely crossed—a mutually agreed upon avoidance. The weekend after news about Lance’s death had broken, she’d made a pot of stew and picked a bouquet of Lazy Susans and delivered them out to church; Pastor Bowen was going to pay Rose a visit. She didn’t deliver them herself. A visit from her would be unwelcome.

Louise looked over at Dayana, who felt her eyes and glanced up.

“I’m not myself,” Louise said.

“Colitis acting up again?”

Louise flushed and looked toward Bill’s office door. “No. I’m okay.” She took a breath. “I can run over to Mondragon’s during my break and pick up a birthday card.”

“You sure?”

“The walk would do me good.” It was a ten minute walk down a stretch of old Main Street to the one store, aside from The Bluebird Café and Rikker’s Liquors, that still seemed moderately successful. She could stop in at The Bluebird and get herself a sweet coffee drink, and then go see what Ward Mondragon was up to.

Before heading to Mondragon’s, Louise went around back to the employee parking spots and pulled the cake from her car’s backseat. It was a small square with white icing and blue cursive: Happy Birthday, Bill! When she’d placed the order she had asked them to make dollar signs and stars, but the message had been lost and there was a large clump of clumsy green frosting carnations right next to Bill’s name. She’d complained at the store and the sullen baker had added a few stars. Now the cake just looked cluttered and gloopy. She sighed. Bill wouldn’t care, and Dayana would scarcely notice. Louise took the box inside and set it on the counter behind her station.

She didn’t wear a jacket, just slung her purse over her arm and started walking. The sky was close to the earth, light filtering through the clouds in a gauzy haze. Louise passed The Bluebird without going in, waving to Emma Templeton through the window. She’d stop for a coffee on the way back.

Half a block on she heard an engine, and a tingling in her fingers told her not to turn around. From the corner of her eye she saw an old blue pickup. Rose. It had to be. As if she’d been summoned up from that awkward conversation with Nina Brown. Just feet away, the truck chugged past at a steady pace. Louise couldn’t help it—she looked at the woman behind the wheel. Rose’s hair was snowier than Louise’s mother’s, like a flash of something electric had passed through her and left a tip of ash. But her face—the nose that belonged on a statue, the square jaw, the mouth as set as ever—at least in profile, she was herself. Lance’s black dog sat in the passenger seat, his head hanging out the window. He smiled in Louise’s direction, baring yellow fangs. She stepped back, undefended.

The truck continued past, no indication that Louise’s presence had registered. She would bet her wedding china that they were headed to the same place—it would be just her luck. Her hand lit on her cell phone without thought and she pulled it out of her bag, checking the blank screen, empty of incoming calls. Well, she could make an outgoing.

She had learned to let it ring a long time. With each ring she pictured her mother moving a step closer to the phone table. The door to her room would be open, attendants and other residents moving along the polished industrial floors in the hallway. Her mother would be wearing slacks and lipstick and wide-soled leather shoes.

“Hi, Mother!” she said brightly, as soon as the receiver clicked.

“Hello?” The voice was thin and wavering. “Hello?”

“It’s just me, Mother.” Louise was out of breath. She stopped walking and stood against a shuttered storefront. The clock above the old town hall was broken—it read 7:20 and she had a momentary panic, as if she’d entered a time warp and leapt hours into the past.

“What is it? What’s happened?”

God, Louise thought, everything is an emergency—and I never gave her an ounce of trouble, not once.

“Nothing. It’s fine. I’m just on my work break and I’m walking over to Mondragon’s to get a birthday card for Bill.”

“Oh.” Her mother inhaled and coughed. For the second time that day, Louise felt dismissed.

“Mother, Rose just passed me on the street.”

“Who?”

“Rose. The one who—”

“The Anderson place? The old boarding house? That girl?”

“Yes.”

“That family never had what it takes.”

“No.”

“Anywhere they went, and it wasn’t just here. No sense of place.”

“Right. Her—”

“And the father! You know, he tried to talk me and Edna and some others into a fishy real estate deal. It was some sort of…what do you call it?…Pyramid. A pyramid scheme. He was as slick as they come. And his wife? Ha! Prancing around in four-inch heels and French perfume…you could hear the little gin bottles clacking around in her purse. Once even at the post office…” Her mother’s voice was stronger now, full of indignation, as if other people’s bad choices hurt her deeply.

Rose’s truck had given off a cloud of exhaust. Louise breathed a lungful of carbon monoxide, feeling calmer. Her mother could go on, and would, with minimal prodding.

“…The girls were pretty, though. What was the other one’s name? Stella. She had princessy ways, sticking out her finger when she drank tea like she was seeing whether she could hook a man on it… Once at a social I heard the mother telling the girls to act like they owned the place, building them up, you know, elevating their expectations—and of course they weren’t godly in the slightest, they just came to church on special occasions. What an inheritance: bad advice and bills!”

Louise straightened her shoulders and began walking, slowly this time. If there were any place other than Mondragon’s to buy a card she’d give up on that store. She pulled the phone a little closer to her mouth. “Her son died. Rose’s son died, Mother, remember? Just a few months ago. In the war.”

“He died? Well…that’s a shame. Really. What war?”

“Mother.”

Silence. The clock in the tower clicked its long hand forward a notch, and then back again. 7:20. A sedan drove by, the acquaintance behind the wheel raising a hand in effortless greeting. Louise waved back.

She shouldn’t have brought up the recent past, which was becoming foggier and foggier for her mother. Next visit, Louise would be sure to remind her that Benji had promised he would come home next month for Dave’s birthday, his first trip home since Lance’s funeral.

“How’s your day, Mother? Do you need me to bring you anything tomorrow?”

“I’m eating a sandwich,” her mother said. Louise added that to her picture: brown slacks, black shoes, pink lipstick, tuna on wheat, left hand pressing the red receiver to her ear, a look of impatience on her face and a few crumbs dotting the dry corners of her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Louise said.

“What for?”

“Interrupting.” She was moments from Mondragon’s and had to make a decision or she’d wind up face to face with Rose. Louise paused again, stopping under the awning of what had once been a dress shop. “I interrupted your lunch.” They had plenty to say face to face—her mother held court and Louise courted. But now she wasn’t sure where to focus her attention. Her mind felt as shuttered as the window at her back.

They were both relieved to hang up. As Louise stepped across an intersection she could see the ramshackle white clapboard on the corner down the block, the old Anderson’s B&B. The empty building looked even more rundown than it had when Rose and Stella and their parents had lived there. A dump, home to hapless travelers and wayward types, the down on their luck. The carpet on the stairs had been a threadbare crimson, a sign of better times, and the one time Louise had climbed those stairs her toe caught on a piece of buckled rug at the top—she’d pitched forward clumsily.

Louise had a sudden wish for winter—the punishing cold would clear her head. She shoved the phone into her purse, taking care to watch her step on the uneven sidewalk. Up ahead, just as she’d figured, Rose’s truck was parked in front of Mondragon’s. Louise crossed the street and ducked into Dunleavy’s Fine Shoes (&Shoe Repair), the sad, dusty little place directly across from Ward’s store. Scottie Dunleavy had run the shop into the ground. The bell tinkled above the door, but there was no sign of life. Through Scottie’s window she could see two people inside Mondragon’s: Rose moving in one direction and then another, Ward following at his respectable, polite pace.

“Can I help you?”

Louise turned. Scottie lurked over by the men’s dress shoes, his eyes not quite meeting hers. His hair was lank and gray, and his gauntness made him look taller than he was. There was a long, ugly red scratch on his forearm. He was clearly searching for her name, though he should know it. Scottie had always been a strange one, spiraling further down since his parents’ death. A tabby cat walked out from the back, sat at Scottie’s feet, and yawned. Louise cast a glance at the street. Rose’s truck was still there.

They had a stilted exchange about the type of shoe she was looking for, and Scottie slid away. Louise kept watch out the window so intently that she didn’t hear him return. She didn’t care what Scottie thought of her behavior. In the old days she would have—the Dunleavys were chic and fashionable; the most sophisticated couple in town, Louise’s mother had always said. Scottie took after the men on his mother’s side of the family, unfortunately. You could see his high-strung, seedy grandfather just in the way Scottie’s fingers shook as he held the shoebox. Blood will out.

The shoe he brought her had a dark stain on the canvas. She tried it on out of politeness, keeping an eye on the window as she sat on a bench to slip off her loafer. Scottie hovered a bit too close. Rose’s truck pulled away, finally, and Ward stood on his porch, patting his belly nervously. Good to know she wasn’t the only one who found Rose unsettling.

“What do you think?” Scottie asked, and she looked up, surprised. But he was only asking about the shoe she had set back into its tired box.

“Not quite right.”

In Mondragon’s, Ward greeted her and Louise plucked the first birthday card she saw from the rack, slapping it on the counter. A framed photograph of the President hung above Ward’s back counter, eyes gazing over their heads into nothingness, the man’s thin lips pulled back in a smile-grimace, a look that Louise recognized: I’d rather be elsewhere. Next to the President was a plaque that Ward had been awarded by the Chamber of Commerce: Small Businessman of the Year, dated fifteen years before.

Normally, she would have tried to get information from Ward, coming in at an angle and coaxing it out of him. Was that Rose I saw leaving? She looked so spent, didn’t she? It must be so hard for you and Stella… But she felt too flustered to pull it off today. Something in the way Ward slowly counted change into her palm made her hold her tongue. They exchanged a bit of halting small talk, and he reached for the phone before she made it all the way out the door.

Louise retraced her steps to the bank, eyes on her feet in their scuffed loafers, moving faster now. She felt but didn’t see the abandoned Anderson’s B&B as she passed. She could pace out all of Main Street if she wanted, and know where she was by feel and the cracks in the sidewalk. I might as well be blind, Louise thought. The horrible crows that had driven out the songbirds flapped overhead, and shadows stretched along the cement. She checked her watch—Bill and Dayana would be wondering where she was; there was no time to stop for coffee.

“My hair’s extra frizzy, is yours?” Dayana called as Louise swung open the door. An empty Cup o’ Noodles rested on the counter behind Dayana’s station. Though they weren’t supposed to eat at their windows, they both routinely broke that rule.

“Got it,” Louise said, patting her purse, a weak smile creeping across her face.

“You’re the best.” Dayana didn’t seem to notice Louise’s state. She shot a look at the back office, lowering her voice. “Bill wants to have meetings with each of us late tomorrow. You at 4:30, me at 5:00.”

“About?”

Dayana shrugged. They both knew: cuts, efficiencies, belt-tightening measures. The corporate office sent new memos every week. Dayana had the bilingual advantage, handling all their Spanish-speaking customers; and she could probably take on Louise’s workload without breaking a sweat.

Louise felt her face redden and shook her head, annoyed. She slammed her purse into the cabinet under the counter. They signed the card to Bill and decided they’d give him the cake mid-afternoon, during the usual customer lull. It was slow even now. Dayana had tuned the radio to the weather station at Bill’s request, and the slickest of the newsmen was on, pleased with himself as he nattered on about storm conditions—his voice was vaguely familiar.

For a couple of hours they looked busy and the sky thickened. The radioman mentioned storm conditions and alerts. One or two customers came in. Tom Muldoon was the last, his craggy face more creviced than ever; his eyes darted to Dayana’s cleavage as he stepped up to the counter. So predictable. Bill sat and swiveled on his office chair, building and then disassembling a tower of paperclips on his magnetized desk toy. Louise could still feel the path she’d walked on her lunch break, dull vibrations in the soles of her feet, and the faint shame she’d felt as she passed the old Anderson place.

“Yipes,” Dayana said, pointing at the plate glass. The sky outside, even considering the dim panes, was disturbingly dark. Bruised, Louise thought. Bill should have called the maintenance guy and had him board the windows. The clock on the wall read 3:15.

“You’d think it was closing time. Tell Bill to go ahead and open the vault,” she said to Dayana, “I’ll do the door and the lights.” A storm siren started to blare. Bill rummaged in the tiny employee kitchen next to his office, looking for the emergency kit—tardy in following protocol but of course he’d get away with it.

The birthday cake waited on the back counter. Louise opened the lid of the cardboard box, wondering if she should bring it into the vault and present it to Bill. It would give them all something to talk about: that time they celebrated Bill’s birthday surrounded by safety deposit boxes while the world spun outside. The green frosting was too bright, likely leftover from St. Patrick’s Day. She went to the front door and flipped the sign to Closed, sliding the bolt. There was no one to lock it against; the street was empty. On the corner up ahead, the streetlight turned from yellow to red, directing a nonexistent flow of traffic. Anyone in his right mind out there now would floor it through a red light.

In the back, Bill said something that made Dayana laugh. They got along pretty well, those two. Louise pressed her forehead against the glass. She shivered for no good reason, and thought of a soup she’d eaten at The Bluebird months before, a wonder of chicken and rice that had warmed her from the inside out. “I wish I were…” She closed her eyes. The thick pane wasn’t entirely still, and she wondered whether its faint vibrations were from the air pressure outside or from her own breath.

If I had the guts I’d say something to Rose. Her hair was a shock of white. It doesn’t seem possible, but I saw it. I’d walk right up to that truck, not shrink past. I’d walk up, rap on the hood, and make her eyes focus on something. Rose, I’d say. Rose, I know you thought you were special. But none of us are. He was a beautiful boy…If it were my son…But what you make of it is your choice—She shuddered and opened her eyes. The sky to the east was churning, a wall of gray. A finger dipped out of the clouds and her stomach lurched.

“Come on, Louise,” Bill called, and she hurried to her station, pulling her purse from its spot under the cubby.

She took one more look at the cake and picked up the heavy, multi-document stapler from the back counter, hoisting it six inches above the open box. If she let go, it would make contact with a soft slurp and lodge in the thick frosting at an angle, bisecting the lettering. The storm siren urged her on. That’s all the ugliness needed, to be rearranged. She set the stapler down and left the cake untouched, flicking off the lights as she went to the back.