The next morning, Rachel sat on the front porch and drank her coffee. She did not notice the rosary at first, only spotted it hanging from her doorknob when she returned indoors for a refill. She wasn’t sure who had left it—probably a religious fanatic determined to ward off her bad energy. She left it hanging, because it was a beautiful thing, the only decorative object on the entire property. Rachel fingered the yellow glass beads and drank more coffee.
It was a strangely warm day for February, and it revealed the swamp of a backyard. Lacy crusts of ice collected in the corners of the fence, and Rachel’s feet sunk in the muck as she examined her property. There was no lawn here. The mud was studded with blackened clumps of dandelions, frostbitten patches of clover, and skeletal stalks of tiny aspen trees, saplings taken root.
These were a new set of problems, these things she owned. In Missoula, she left behind Athena, her home group, credit card debt, the paycheck from cleaning hotel rooms, a house that smelled like urine even though it had been bleached and all the carpet pulled. She had left behind a weekly poker game on Sunday nights with a group of middle-aged women, a sober bowling league for which she had finally paid off her shoes, the keys to three different church basements—two Lutheran and one Methodist. Now she owned a trailer house, and guilt and shame. It had been her choice, and she had felt it necessary.
She looked up at the sky and was going to offer up a prayer, but she heard dim music and realized that she was not alone.
A boy was sitting on the roof of Bert’s house, squeezed into a tiny lawn chair. Rachel wasn’t sure what Bert’s disability was, but it had not stopped him from breeding. The boy wore an unzipped silver snowsuit, bright red moon boots, and a white kerchief tied loosely around his neck. He was so close to her that she could see the book he was reading: Lady Boss by Jackie Collins. She approved.
He was oblivious to her, his headphones blaring out tinny beats, pop music. His hair was so blond that it seemed silver, his face so delicate and his expression so dreamy that he could have been mistaken for a girl.
She watched him. He was a ferocious reader, and turned the pages so quickly that she briefly wondered if he was faking it. He clutched at the book as if it might be ripped out of his hands at any moment.
Rachel understood how it was to cling to things so desperately. She knew that she must cling to her sobriety, even if the pain rose over the banks, even if there was a deluge. She would find a way to float, find something to hold on to.
Hearts
The last week of February, and the nights were frigid, the air tight as a closed fist. The gales punched sideways, launching last week’s powder, made it sting like slivers of glass.
This was how all of Laverna’s weeknight shifts ended, playing hearts with the regulars as the washer whirred. The Applehaus brothers were drunker than usual, probably because she had offered shots at one o’clock, out of dirty shot glasses, because she wanted to start the dishwasher. Their fourth was Rocky Bailey, who didn’t drink but was retarded, so the playing field was level in her estimation. Rocky drank Mountain Dew out of a can and chewed great wads of grape Bubblicious at the same time. How he wanted to spend his grocery store wages was his business, but she feared he would develop diabetes.
Bert was the only other patron, silent and sullen as always. Laverna slid a pitcher and a pint glass in front of him whenever she felt like it. He sat far away from the others, in his usual spot, under the air conditioner. He never said a word, but tipped well, especially for an unemployed asshole.
Laverna had forgiven the Applehaus boys for their indiscretions with Rachel, all those years ago. The town was too small, and patrons were too important. Anything the Applehaus boys had done with her daughter would always be dwarfed by Rachel’s own betrayal. However, Laverna still held a tiny grudge and would mention her revulsion from time to time, especially when an Applehaus unloaded the queen of spades.
Talk turned to the completion of the new church. Last summer, Reverend Foote and his family had relocated from Kansas, and he had built the church by himself. He contracted out the plumbing and the electricity, so the citizens of Quinn took comfort in the fact that he wasn’t totally self-reliant. He had named his church New Life Evangelical—a denomination new to Quinn. Laverna loved the Catholic church in town—even though it was a small congregation, they drank heavily, and often. They already had Lutherans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Methodists. The Methodists were a bunch of backsliders, vaguely pious. Black Mabel sold the Methodist wives diet pills, so they were also vaguely wicked.