Lone Star

“Good morning, Blake,” Jimmy said from the breakfast table, hands around a coffee cup. “How have you been? Looking forward to graduation?”

“Oh, absolutely, sir. Thank you. Very exciting. Yes.” Blake always talked to her father as if about to be arrested.

“Listen, I have a tree by the water that’s rotting, a willow.”

“Say no more. I’ll take it down for you. Do you have power out there?”

“By the lake? No.”

“I’ll bring my axe and my gas-powered chainsaw. Today after I bring Chloe home?”

“Anytime you can, Blake. It’s a big tree, though. If you help me knock it down, you can keep half the wood.”

“Thank you very much. My dad would like that. He gets cold cramps at night.”

“How’s he been?”

“Not too bad. Back keeps bothering him, you know.”

“I know,” Jimmy said, staring into his coffee cup.

“Yeah, well, um. Is Chloe ready?”

Chloe was ready.

Lang pulled her into the vestibule, that is, the very same short hall Blake had taken over with his broad flannel-clad frame. “You two have fun,” Lang said, “but come back before six.”

“Okay,” Chloe drew out. “Wheels is from eleven to one, and you know that, so.” She broke off. “That’s well before six. What’s up?”

“Moody is coming tonight for dinner,” Lang said reverentially, as if announcing the arrival of Queen Victoria. Moody was Chloe’s terrifying grandmother. “I hope you don’t have any prior engagements.”

Why would she? It was only Memorial Day weekend, when the kids from six towns would be gathering for the fireworks in North Conway, staying out, hanging around by the outlet shops, miniature golfing, eating ices, listening to the free bands in the old town square, making out, maybe other things. “Prior engagements? Who talks like that, Mom?” was all Chloe said. Moody was coming to dinner! Blake pretended to study the picture of Castlecomer on the wall.

“I just want to make sure you’ll be home.”

“So you talk like Edith Wharton? Why do I need to be home? Why is she coming?”

“She wants you to drive her to the cemetery to visit Uncle Kenny.”

“Ugh, no!”

“Yes. Plus she wants to talk to you.”

There it was. Chloe’s teeth set against each other as if in battle. Her antennae shot up, spring-loaded. “About what?”

“Am I Moody? How do I know?”

“I can tell you know.”

“Go. Just be back.”

“Mom! Is it about Barcelona?”

“Go!”

This was a futile conversation, and the fact that Lang allowed it as long as she did only spoke to Lang’s own anxiety about her mother-in-law’s upcoming visit. It was the first time in three years Chloe’s grandmother would be coming to their house. Chloe glanced over at her dad, to gauge his reaction to his mother’s arrival, but he was head down, buried in the newspaper.

“Blake, ready?” Chloe wanted to storm out of the house.

“It was nice to see you, Mrs. Devine. Have a great day. Chief, I’ll be by later to help you with that tree. I’ll bring some rope too.”

“Wait,” Jimmy said and got up. He handed Blake the keys to the Durango. “Take my truck. It’s easier to get in and out of than the Subaru.”

“Yes, it is, thank you very much, sir.”

“Dad, you’re giving Blake your truck?”

“Hardly giving.”

“You don’t lend it to Mason!”

“When Mason takes you to deliver food to the infirm instead of parking with you behind Subway, he can have my truck.”

“Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down in that regard, or any other.”

“I know, son.”

“One quick thing—where do you keep the siren lights? Somewhere in the truck?”

“Get out of here, Blake, before I change my mind.”

“Yes, sir.”

Six cold meals and six hot meals were delivered to St. Elizabeth’s on Main Street, the Devines’ parish church, by Petey, the Meals on Wheels delivery boy, who did not like to be kept waiting. Wheels didn’t usually deliver on Saturdays, but a dozen homes depended on Chloe, and that was the only day she could work.

“I’m surprised you still want to go,” Chloe said to Blake as he opened the Durango door for her. She was in a dismal mood. Moody was coming!

“I told you I would. I must meet this Lupe.”

“I don’t even know if she’s on the schedule today. Petey gives me a list. We should hurry. Sometimes she cancels. She doesn’t want me to go all the way out there just for her. Blake, what are you doing, what are you looking for?”

Blake was searching through Jimmy’s truck. “Looking for those damn siren lights. I want to slap them on top of the truck when we get on the highway. You said we should hurry. Turn the suckers on. Scare the shit out of the cars in front of us.”

“No! You can’t use them, Dad will throw you in jail for sure.”

“It’ll be worth it.”

On the way to the church, Chloe wanted to tell Blake she was happy for his company but didn’t know how to phrase it without sounding like an idiot, so she didn’t. She liked it when Hannah used to come with her. Chloe drove, Hannah navigated, though she was awful with directions, but they had some laughs getting lost. And the old people enjoyed seeing the girls. Chloe got dressed up a little, wore jeans without holes.

But today Blake was driving her. It was better. Until he said, “So why didn’t you tell me Hannah doesn’t come with you anymore?”

Chloe fake-studied the map. “You know, you should teach Hannah how to drive.”

“You should teach Hannah how to drive. I tried.”

“So did I.”

The two of them chuckled. “Let’s just agree she’s a reluctant learner,” Blake said. “But it’s in your best interest to teach her, not mine.”

“It’s in your best interest to teach her, not mine.”

“What are you, four? Stop mimicking me. Do you want to be driving her around Bangor when you two start college, the way I drive her around here?”

Chloe was very, very busy with the map. “Maybe she’ll get a car and I won’t have to.”

“Where’s she going to get a car from?” Blake said. “If she has any money saved up, it’ll be spent on empanadas in the Ramblas.”

So he was reading up on Barcelona too. That made Chloe smile, until she recalled Moody. Thinking of her grandmother coming for dinner and, oh God, going to the cemetery made Chloe tighten her spine, squeeze shut her lips and reveal to Blake nothing about her other anxieties: the lack of their funds, the lack of permission, the lack of passport, the lack, the lack, the lack.

She said, turn here, but Blake was already turning. He could find the dirt roads around Fryeburg and Brownfield blindfolded. He seemed to have an innate ability not to get lost even when the rural roads were unmarked. His navigation skills were pretty impressive. When she praised him, he replied by asking why she was dressed so nicely. She pretended she wasn’t dressed especially nicely; how to explain that the old people enjoyed looking at her? But the thing that was great about Blake was that no question lingered in his hyperactive brain for long, and often, when the answer was a few seconds in coming, he would make up his own reply, which was what he did now.

“The young girl,” he said in a dramatic voice, “who got all dolled up to feed the elderly vanished one Saturday afternoon. Where did she go? Perhaps her ironed jeans were found in the pond nearby?”

“Why would I lose my jeans in the pond?”

“That’s what I’m trying to get to the bottom of, Haiku,” he said, and guffawed.

He was so silly.

“What does my denim have to do with your story?”

“I don’t know yet,” he replied. “I’m merely collecting information.”

“So I’m not even the end of your story, just a random detail?”

“Nicely punned. I said I don’t know. Look in my notebook—no, not that section, the one in the back that says descriptions. See if there’s anything you like.”

He had written out fifty pages of notes on lakes, junk he had found, birds building nests during spring—and the garden by her house! He was incredibly prolific. Every minute observation was in his spiral.

“Why is my garden here?” In his random musings, he had written about her wine-red tulips, the coral knockabout roses, the orange nasturtium and the hot pink azaleas blooming outside her windows.

“Never know what I might need.”

“Before I vanish,” Chloe said, closing his notebook, “you might want to have me do something amazing or idiotic.”

“Losing your pants is both, don’t you think?” He poked her in the arm as he drove. “Why are you all freaked out about Moody? She’s your grandmother, not Freddy Krueger.”

“That’s what you think.” Chloe sighed. Everyone in the large Devine family lived in fear of Moody. She could not be argued with, or negotiated with. She could not be reasoned with. She believed what she believed, said what she said, commanded what she commanded. I’ve seen too much to bother arguing with the likes of you, was Moody’s standard reply to anyone in her family who dared raise a squawk in opposition. Only Chloe’s father had spoken out against her, and the result of that was that mother and son had been on the outs for the last seven years, since Uncle Kenny died.

The old people became notably enthusiastic when they saw that a tidied-up Chloe did not come alone. “Who is the young man?” Mrs. Van Mirren said with a meaningful smile.

This is Blake, Hannah’s boyfriend, Chloe would say to Mrs. Van Mirren, Ms. Rivers, Mr. Mann and Mr. Warner. They asked where Hannah was. They asked about Mason. They asked when the prom was, and when Europe was. They gave her money. Five dollars, two dollars, seventy-five cents. They would not take no for an answer. This is for your trip, they said. Take pictures. Write things down. Don’t forget. Life is long. You won’t remember if you don’t write things down or take pictures. Are you excited about college? We’ll miss you when you go. We love you. Blake, we love this girl. Take another dollar.

Lupe was last, because she lived the farthest, in New Hampshire, in a tiny hamlet called Jackson, ten miles from North Conway.

Just as Chloe had told Blake, outside a yellow painted storage shed sat Lupe, in a wooden chair planted outside her front door. In the window box under her one white window bloomed purple nasturtiums. “I planted those for her,” Chloe said. Lupe, shriveled like a bald bird in water, gummed a smile and waved. She was white from top to bottom, white hair, white shirt, white bracelets, white pants, white socks, white shoes. As usual, she wore most of her jewelry. If not all her jewelry. Three necklaces, a cross, a dozen jangling bracelets on each wrist, and rings on every finger. When she waved to Chloe and Blake, she trilled like a wind chime.

“Izh thish Mashon?” she said, as if she didn’t have her dentures in.

“No, Lupe, it’s his brother. Blake.”

While Lupe was vigorously shaking Blake’s hand and appraising him, Chloe pulled out Lupe’s lunch, the last one in the hot box, and stepped inside the woman’s one-room house to get a tray and some silverware. Though who was Chloe to tease Lupe about the size of her habitat?

“Lupe, Blake came with me because he’s entering a story contest.” She set the food on a tray in the old woman’s lap. “Did you read about it in the paper? The Acadia Award for Short Fiction. I told him about your box of jewelry.” Chloe poured Lupe some ice tea, put a napkin near her elbow.

“And what, he got interested? He wants it?”

“No, no.” Blake looked mortified. How amusing!

“Young man, I’m joking. Instead of looking for my jewelry, you should find yourself a sense of humor. It would come in more handy.”

“Um, yes, ma’am.”

“Where’s your brother today?”

“At practice.”

“Blake is Hannah’s boyfriend,” Chloe said.

“Who? Oh, Hannah.” The old woman studied Blake intently as she ate. The fork trembled in her shaking hands.

Blake smiled. “I know. She’s too good for me, Lupe.”

“That’s not quite what I was thinking.”

Chloe pulled on Blake’s denim sleeve, and the two of them perched on a nearby bench and kept the woman company while she finished her lunch.

“Has your mother agreed yet to let you go?” Lupe asked.

Chloe shook her head, keeping mum on Moody’s imminent visit.

“She will, though, don’t you think?” Blake said. “I keep telling her.”

Lupe shrugged. “The odds are about even. Don’t count on it, but don’t discount it. I’ve met mothers before. I was one myself until my sons got too wise for my help. Mothers can be an unpredictable bunch.” She took a swig of her ice tea, shielding her eyes from the sun.

“Let me ask you something,” she said to Blake after he had scintillated her with stories of his story, even offering her a peek at his journal. “You say you want to go to Barcelona for research.”

“That’s right, ma’am.” And to Chloe, out of the corner of his mouth, added, “And for other things.”

“Call me Lupe. But can’t the answer you’re looking for be found right here in New Hampshire and Maine?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Sure it can. Answers are found everywhere. And in anything. You just have to know where to look.”

“Barcelona will make for a far more interesting story, don’t you agree? Rather than writing about boring old North Conway.” North Conway, the biggest town in two counties was a two-mile stretch of a straight rural highway. Fifteen traffic lights and Applebee’s dueling it out with Burger King. Pizza Hut against KFC, Baskin-Robbins against Carvel. There were one or two antique shops, an outlet mall, an L.L.Bean, and gas stations. That was the town. And China Chef, of course, purveyor of hot and sour soup that Hannah supposedly placed on people’s tables. How do you find the answer in a town like that?

Lupe insisted. “You can. You can find answers anywhere.”

“I’d like to find them in Barcelona,” Blake said, and Chloe was proud of him for not being too intimidated by a ninety-something woman. Forgetting herself for a second, Chloe almost made a joke. Leaning to Blake, opening her mouth, she almost, almost said—we should introduce Lupe to Martyn, don’t you think? They’re about the same age—before slamming her hand against her mouth. What was wrong with her!

Blake must have liked Lupe because he talked to her for longer than any of the others. And she must have liked him because she kept asking him to do small chores for her. She pointed out that her chopped wood was too far from the fire pit. It was all the way in the back, near the river. Chloe and Blake carried the chopped wood and the iron rack to the front of her yellow house. They set it up near the fire pit, stacked the wood on the rack, covered it with a blue tarp. Lupe looked pleased by their efforts, especially Blake’s. She asked him to build her a fire. She’s my last one, Chloe told Blake, as they collected some branches for kindling. She always keeps me here. She’s lonely, he said, and she likes the company. I don’t mind. “Lupe,” he called to her, “do you know that your fire pit is eroding on one side? The stones have broken off.”

“I know,” she said. “Who’s going to fix it, me? Or my children in California?”

Blake motioned toward the mansion-like house. “Who lives there?”

Lupe shrugged. “A family. They don’t help me. They got their own problems. The husband is sick. He just don’t know it yet. Or don’t want to admit it.”

“How do you know?”

“Can you tell the difference between a healthy man and a sick one? They’re like two different species.”

To this, Blake bowed his head without reply. He knew the difference well. His own father had been a Hercules before the disaster that almost claimed him, and now was a husk.

“Maybe I can help you fix it,” Blake said to Lupe. “I’ll go to the quarry, pick up some stones.”

The woman shook her head. “Why don’t you come by after school next Thursday? I have a doctor’s appointment and no way to get to it. Usually I call for a taxi. Maybe you can drive me. I’ll pay you for your time, and then we can go to the quarry together. Pick out the stones. I’ll pay for them too.”

“You’re going to go to the quarry?”

“I’m ninety-two,” she said. “I’m not dead.”

On the way home Blake rained on Chloe with questions that at first sounded like research but perhaps weren’t. How long had she been visiting Lupe? When did the husband die? Why did she go to these twelve homes and not others? Why did she stay for five minutes in one home, but forty minutes with Lupe? What happened if she saw something suspicious? What if the people behaved erratically? What if they hurt her?

He had been slightly concerned about Mr. Gibson, a blind man with long scraggly gray hair who had grabbed Chloe’s hand and wouldn’t let go, not letting her leave or feed him. Blake gently, but not too gently, pried Mr. Gibson’s dinosaur fingers off Chloe’s white wrist.

“He’s fine,” Chloe said. “He’s just lonely. Like Lupe.”

Blake was off again about Chloe and her pants vanishing.

“Give it a rest, Blake. I’m not your project, I’m not your story.”

“But if you disappeared,” he went on, speeding invincible in her father’s siren-less off-duty truck, “that would be quite a story, wouldn’t it?”

“No! It’s only a story if there’s a reason why I disappeared.” She paused. “Also what does my disappearance have to do with your blue suitcase?”

“Maybe everything,” he said.

“You leave me out of your lunacy, Blake Haul.”

“It’s fiction,” Blake said. “In fiction, you can have everything to do with my lunacy. Isn’t that what you told me? I can use my imagination and have it all turn out exactly how I need, how I want.” Fiendishly he rubbed his hands together while driving with his knees. His expression was for once both serious and remote, as if he was thinking about something else entirely.

Covering her face, Chloe groaned.

It was a good afternoon.

11

Moody

SHE RAISED HER GAZE FROM THE TRASHY GOSSIP MAGAZINE, from sordid uncouplings and inappropriate attire of beautiful strangers, and focused the red dot of her anxious brain on her mother. Rather, focused on her mother’s back, while her mother’s studious front was forming tiny spicy Mediterranean meatballs with feta and fennel.

“So why’s she coming?”

“You shall see.”

“Why can’t you tell me?”

The eminently sensible Lang pointed out that if she told Chloe, then Moody wouldn’t need to come over.

The eminently sensible Chloe opened her hands to say, exactly! But it was done to her mother’s oblivious back. “I’m making meatballs,” Lang said. “Do you want to help me?”

“If I help you, will you tell me?”

“You will help me,” said Lang, “and I won’t tell you a thing.”

“It’s about Barcelona, right? She’s got some plan?”

“It’s about a man with a horse. Come here and help your mother.”

Their house had once been Moody’s summer retreat. Lochlan Devine built it with his own hands for his young bride back in the fifties so she could have a home by the lake as she had dreamed. Twenty years later Moody gave it to Jimmy and Lang as a wedding present.

“Why would she suddenly be visiting us again?”

“She says it’s been too long.”

“Tell me why so I can prepare myself.”

“Prepare yourself for what?”

Chloe wanted to provoke her mother. “She told me last Thanksgiving that she doesn’t come to us anymore because she’s mad we still blame Uncle Kenny for everything.”

“Well, that’s just silly,” said Lang, looking at no one.

Her father spoke his first sentence of the afternoon. “We do blame my brother for everything,” Jimmy said.

“Jimmy, shh.” Lang turned to Chloe. “Stop stirring the pot, young lady. Your grandmother wants to help, that’s all.”

“Help who?”

“Did we ask for her help?” Jimmy said.

“Yes, Jimmy, we did,” Lang said, one hand on her husband’s shoulder, one hand straightening out the errant lamp shade behind him. She had been feverishly cleaning as if preparing for an open house viewing.

“You did,” Jimmy said. “Not me. Chloe is right. My mother shouldn’t come if she’s still angry.”

Lang leaned her tranquil solemn face into a sitting and grim Jimmy. “She is putting away the bygones and coming for your daughter.”

Jimmy sat coldly. “They’re not bygones,” he said.

“Come on. We agreed.”

“You agreed. I’m resigned to it. Big difference.”

She kissed his forehead. “You promised you would be civil, kind, polite.”

“No. I promised only that I’d be silent,” Jimmy said, standing up. “And you’re not letting me keep my promise, woman.” He went outside to do some yard work.

The next three hours crawled by in epic time, in Thackeray time, every day lasting a thousand tragic pages. Blake stopped by to cut down the rotting willow. Mason stopped by. Hannah stopped by. Then her friends left to go have fun in North Conway with other young people who didn’t have horror-movie grandmothers. Jimmy left to go pick up his mother and bring her back to their house.

Finally six o’clock arrived like the executioner’s hour.

Sometimes Chloe thought of her grandmother as Zeus in his Athenian Temple, gargantuan and fierce. Sometimes Moody was like Tamerlane of Mongolia, murderous and crippled. Sometimes Chloe saw Moody as Siddhartha, half the size of China, wise but terrifying in his omnipotent silence.

On Memorial Saturday, Moody was just a kettle-sized white-haired woman. She had been married to Lochlan Devine since just after the war until his death, fifty years, four of them pretty good. She had given him six children, five surviving, all boys, though what she wanted was two measly daughters. Everybody knew it because she never missed an opportunity to say it.

She was nearly deaf in both ears, but denied she was hard of hearing in even one. She grew odd white fuzz on her face. She liked to drink whiskey and eat caramels and strange spicy sausages she said were from the old country. She smoked unapologetically. She spoke fluent English in a loud, heavy and indeterminate accent. She had occluded sight, which prevented her from driving, though didn’t prevent her from complaining about not driving. Hence her life’s motto about envying the good fortune of people who could push around their own wheelchairs, which she repeated again tonight as she walked through the front door. “They don’t know how lucky they are,” Moody said.

Behind his mother, Jimmy walked in without a word, dropped his keys on the side table and went to sit down. Lang, dressed in church clothes, fussed like a tumbleweed. After Moody hugged Chloe, she blurted without so much as a half-blind appraisal, “Why do you always look so dour, child? What is this awful thing you’re wearing? You’re a beautiful girl. Why are you hiding yourself from boys? Or is it one boy in particular you’re hiding yourself from? It won’t work. They all know what’s inside the hefty bags you wear for clothes. Come, let’s go. I’m not even taking my coat off despite your mother’s efforts. Take me to the cemetery. Don’t protest, better go quick before it gets dark. You don’t want to go to the graveyard at night, do you? I jest. Of course you don’t. Believe me. So let’s go pick some flowers from this famous garden of yours, and get to it. Jimmy, give your daughter the truck keys. You haven’t suspended her license for speeding—or other violations—have you?”

“You mean like Dad didn’t suspend Kenny’s?” Jimmy said, gesturing at the keys to Chloe. “Yeah, Chloe’s still driving. She’s also not speeding, or otherwise violating the good laws of all sane people.”

Moody stared coolly at Lang.

Lang glared at Jimmy.

Chloe rolled her eyes and quickly took her grandmother out of the house.