Now she was supposed to wait. It was dark in the room. When the people came they wouldn’t be able to see. She went to the light switch and flipped it. She saw her father on the bed and flipped it off again. She put her hand to her mouth and made an animal sound. She stood there in the dark, shaking. There were pill bottles on the bed. She hadn’t noticed them before, though she must have jostled them when she tried to rouse her father. She flipped the light back on. It would be terrible for the people to see the pill bottles. What would they think? Her father would be mortified.
Once she’d come home from a date to find him passed out in his truck in their driveway. She’d helped him inside the house; he was barely conscious enough to register she was the one supporting him. The next morning, she woke to an angry exchange between her parents, her mother spitting words like daughter and ashamed, and then her mother slammed out of the house with, it turned out, Milo. Her father came into her room and pulled the desk chair over to her bed and sat there with his head bowed in the early morning light and he cried and cried.
“Oh, Daddy,” she was saying as she gathered up the bottles, hastily, dropping one and picking it up again. “Oh, Daddy, don’t worry, it’s all right, it’s all right.”
I’m a bad father, he’d said, that time, and she said, “You’re not. You’re a wonderful father. You’re doing the best you can.”
I love you so much, he’d said, and she said, “I know you do. I love you, too.”
She had all the bottles now, but what was she going to do with them? Would the people search this room? Would they check the drawers? Would they look in the bathroom trash? She went out of the room, clutching the bottles to her chest, and in the kitchen she found a plastic grocery bag to contain them. She grabbed a few paper towels off the roll, crumpled them, and arranged them over the pills. The bag went into the kitchen trash. Now she needed to go back to the bedroom.
But would they look in the trash? The bag couldn’t stay there. She fished it back out. The bag couldn’t be in the house. She went out the front door. No sign yet of the people. No sign of her mother and Milo, either. On the other side of the street the neighbor’s pickup truck was parked in the driveway. She ran across, with a hasty glance both ways, and tossed the bag in the truck bed. She stood there a moment, waiting to be caught. Then she looked into the bed. The bag lay splayed in the middle, hints of orange showing through. She pushed herself up, pitched forward, and grabbed the bag, tossing it to the back right corner. There were a few pieces of scrap lumber in the truck. She dragged one of them on top of the bag, then added a second one. That would have to be good enough. She didn’t want the neighbor to come outside and catch her. She didn’t want the people to find her here.
She ran back across the street, forgetting to look both ways until she was already on the other side, when, though it was too late, she did it to make up for not doing it before.
Where was her mother? It was always Milo she took with her when she left.
She didn’t know where she was supposed to be when the people came. In the bedroom with her father? She would rather not go back in there. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, he said. Maybe it was all right to be waiting outside. She found that she didn’t want to go back inside the house at all. She sat down on the front lawn. Really, her legs gave way—she didn’t sit so much as drop. It had been dry—it was almost always dry—and the grass was prickly and brown at the ends. She brushed her palm over it, letting it tickle her hand. She felt that it made a sound as she brushed her hand over it. Shhh, shhh, it said. It was probably not all right to lie down.
The ambulance came. She answered the questions she was asked. The paramedics went inside. Then she lay down. It was all right to lie down now. The blue bright sky showed her the most beautifully sculpted cloud. Look what I made, it said.
She put her hand in her pocket and found the balled-up hair. She pulled it out and stared at it, utterly confused. The sun sparked it, so that it shone with little specks of gold. That was when she realized this was all her mother’s fault.
Orphan
This morning I went to the Smoke House in Monteagle for breakfast. I so rarely eat out. I thought it would be a treat, even if I managed only a poached egg and a few bites of bacon. A biscuit, maybe, and coffee someone else made, and a little silver pitcher full of cream. But all I got for cream was a small white bowl filled with those little plastic pots with the peel-off lids. I said to the waitress, “You used to bring cream in a silver pitcher.”
“No, ma’am, we’ve always used these, long as I worked here,” she said. Her name was Danielle. “I can bring you milk in a pitcher though. It’s a little white pitcher.”
“How long have you worked here?’
“About five years.”
“Well, I’ve lived here twenty, and I remember those pitchers.”
“Yes, ma’am. Would you like me to bring you some milk?”