“I want you to like me. Sometimes you’re the only thing … Oh, shit … forget it.” He shook his head, started crying again. “I’m a loser.”
“No. You just need some help,” she said. “Who wouldn’t? After what you’ve been through.”
“My aunt in Fairbanks wants me to come live with her. She thinks I should play hockey and learn to fly and see a shrink. I’d get to be with Aly. Unless…” He looked at Leni.
“So you’ll go to Fairbanks,” she said quietly.
He sighed heavily. She thought maybe it had already been decided and he’d been waiting to tell her all along. “I’ll miss you.”
He was going. Leaving.
At that, she felt an aching sense of sorrow expand in her chest. She would miss him so much, but he needed help. Because of her father, she knew what nightmares and sadness and a lack of sleep could do to a person, what a toxic combination that could be. What kind of friend would she be if she cared more about herself than him?
I’ll miss you, she wanted to say back to him, but what was the point? Words didn’t help.
*
AFTER MATTHEW LEFT, January got darker. Colder.
“Leni, would you set the table for dinner?” Mama asked on a particularly cold and stormy night, with wind clawing to get in, snow swirling. She was frying up some Spam in a cast-iron skillet, pressing down on it with her spatula. Two slices of Spam for three people was all they had.
Leni put down her social studies book and headed for the kitchen, keeping her eye on Dad. He paced along the back wall, his hands flexing and fisting, flexing and fisting, shoulders hunched, muttering to himself. His arms were stringy and thin, his stomach concave beneath his stained thermal underwear top.
He hit his forehead hard with the heel of his palm, muttering something unintelligible.
Leni sidled around the table and turned into the small kitchen.
She gave Mama a worried look.
“What did you say?” Dad said, materializing behind Leni, looming.
Mama pressed the spatula down on a slice of Spam. A blob of grease popped up, landed on the back of her wrist. “Ouch! Damn it!”
“Are you two talking about me?” Dad demanded.
Leni gently took her father by the arm, led him to the table.
“Your mother was talking about me, wasn’t she? What did she say? Did she mention Tom?”
Leni pulled out a chair, eased him into it. “She was talking about dinner, Dad. That’s all.” She started to leave. He grabbed her hand, pulled so hard she stumbled into him. “You love me, right?”
Leni didn’t like the emphasis. “Mama and I both love you.”
Mama showed up as if on cue, put the small plate of Spam alongside an enamel bowl of Thelma’s brown-sugar baked beans.
Mama leaned down, kissed Dad’s cheek, pressed her palm to his face.
It calmed him, that touch. He sighed, tried to smile. “Smells good.”
Leni took her seat and began serving. She poured herself a glass of watery, powdered milk.
Mama sat across from Leni, picked at her beans, pushed them around on her plate, watching Dad. He muttered something under his breath. “You need to eat something, Ernt.”
“I can’t eat this shit.” He swept his plate sideways, sending it crashing to the floor.
He shot up, strode away from the table, moving fast, grabbed his parka off of the wall hook, and wrenched the door open. “No g-damn peace,” he said, leaving the cabin, slamming the door behind him. Moments later, they heard the bus start up, spin out, drive away.
Leni looked across the table.
“Eat,” Mama said, and bent down for the fallen plate and glass.
After dinner, they stood side by side, washing and drying the dishes, putting them away on the shelves above the counter.
“You want to play Yahtzee?” Leni finally asked. Her question held as much enthusiasm as her mother’s sad nod.
They sat at the card table, playing the game for as long as either could stand the pretense.
Leni knew they were both waiting to hear the VW rumble back into the yard. Worrying. Wondering which was worse: him being here or him being gone.
“Where is he, you think?” Leni asked after what seemed like hours.
“Mad Earl’s, if he could get up there. Or the Kicking Moose, if the roads were too bad.”
“Drinking,” Leni said.
“Drinking.”
“Maybe we should—”
“Don’t,” Mama said. “Just go to bed, okay?” She sat back, lit up one of her precious last cigarettes.
Leni gathered up the dice and scorecards and the little brown and yellow fake-leather shaker, and fit them all back into the red box.
She climbed up the loft ladder and crawled into her sleeping bag without even bothering to brush her teeth. Downstairs, she heard her mother pacing.
Leni rolled over for her paper and a pen. Since Matthew had been gone, she’d written him several letters, which Large Marge mailed for her. Matthew wrote back religiously, short notes about his new hockey team and how it felt to be in a school that actually had sports teams. His handwriting was so bad she could barely decipher it. She waited impatiently for each letter and ripped them open immediately. She read each one over and over, like a detective, looking for clues and hints of emotion. Neither she nor Matthew knew quite what to say, how to use something as impersonal as words to create a bridge between their disparate lives, but they kept writing. She didn’t yet know how he felt about himself or the move or the loss of his mother, but she knew that he was thinking about her. That was more than enough to begin with.
Dear Matthew,
Today we learned more about the Klondike Gold Rush in school. Ms. Rhodes actually mentioned your grandma as an example of the kind of woman who set out North with nothing and found—
She heard a scream.
Leni scrambled out of her sleeping bag and half slid down the ladder.
“There’s something out there,” Mama said, coming out of her bedroom, holding up a lantern. In its glow, she looked wild, pale.
A wolf howled. The wail undulated through the darkness.
Close.
Another wolf answered.
The goats screamed in response, a terrible keening cry that sounded human.
Leni grabbed the rifle from the rack and went to open the door.
“No!” Mama yelled, yanking her back. “We can’t go out there. They could attack us.”
They shoved the curtains aside and opened the window. Cold blasted them.
A sliver of moonlight shone down on the yard, weak and insubstantial but enough to show them glimmers of movement. Light on silver fur, yellow eyes, fangs. Wolves moving in a pack toward the goat pen.
“Get out of here!” Leni yelled. She pointed her rifle and aimed at something, movement, and fired.
The gunshot was a crack of sound. A wolf yelped, whined.
She shot again and again, heard the bullets thwack into trees, ping on metal.
The screaming and bleating of the goats went on and on.
*
QUIET.
Leni opened her eyes and found that she was sprawled on the sofa, with Mama beside her.
The fire had gone out.
Shivering, Leni pushed back the pile of woolen and fur blankets and restarted the fire.
“Mama, wake up,” Leni said. They were both wearing layers of clothing, but when they’d finally fallen asleep, they’d been so exhausted they’d forgotten the fire. “We have to check outside.”
Mama sat up. “We’ll go out when there’s light.”
Leni looked at the clock. Six A.M.
Hours later, when dawn finally shed its slow, tentative light across the land, Leni stepped into her white bunny boots and pulled the rifle down from the gun rack by the door, loading it. The closing of the chamber was a loud crack of sound.
“I don’t want to go out there,” Mama said. “And no. You’re not going alone, Annie Oakley.” With a wan smile, she pulled on her boots and put on her parka, flipping the fur-lined hood up. She loaded up a second rifle and stood beside Leni.
Leni opened the door, stepped out onto the snow-covered deck, holding the rifle in front of her.
The world was white on white. Snow falling. Muffled. No sounds.
They moved across the deck, down the steps.