Alyeska moved in beside her father. “Don’t you give up on him, Leni. He’s a tough kid. He made it through Mom’s death. He’ll get through this, too.”
“How will I know how he’s doing?” Leni asked.
“I’ll give updates on the radio. Peninsula Pipeline. Seven P.M. broadcast. Listen for them,” Mr. Walker said. “We’ll bring him home as soon as we can. He’ll recover better around us.”
Leni nodded numbly.
Mama led her out to the truck and they climbed in.
On the long drive home, Mama chatted nervously. She pointed out the extreme low tide in Turnagain Arm and the cars parked at the Bird House Tavern in the middle of the day and the crowd of people fishing at the Russian River (combat fishing, they called it, people stood so close together). Usually Leni loved this drive. She’d search the high ridges for specks of white that were Dall sheep and she’d scour the inlet for the sleek, eerie-looking white beluga whales that sometimes appeared.
Now she just sat silently, her one good hand lying in her lap.
In Kaneq, they drove off the ferry, rumbled over the textured metal ramp, and rolled past the old Russian church.
Leni took care not to look at the saloon as they drove past. Even so, she saw the CLOSED sign on its door and the flowers laid in front. Nothing else had changed. They drove to the end of the road and through the open gate onto their property. There, Mama parked in front of the cabin and got out. She came around to Leni’s side, opened the door.
Leni slid sideways, grateful for her mother’s firm grip as they walked through the tall grass. The goats bleated, packed in together, and stood in a clot at the chicken-wire gate.
Inside the cabin, buttery August sunlight streamed through the dirty windows, thickened by motes of dust.
The cabin was spotless. No broken glass, no lanterns fallen on the floor, no overturned chairs. No sign of what had happened here.
And it smelled good, of roasting meat. Almost exactly when Leni noticed the scent, Dad came out of the bedroom.
Mama gasped.
Leni felt nothing, certainly not surprise.
He stood there facing them, his long hair pulled back into a squiggly ponytail. His face was bruised, a little misshapen. One eye was black. He was wearing the same clothes Leni had last seen him in and there were dried flecks of blood on his neck.
“Y-you’re out,” Mama said.
“You didn’t press charges,” he answered.
Mama’s face turned red. She didn’t look at Leni.
He moved toward Mama. “Because you love me and you know I didn’t mean any of it. You know how sorry I am. It won’t happen again,” he promised as he reached for her.
Leni didn’t know if it was fear or love or habit or a poisonous combination of all three, but Mama reached out, too. Her pale fingers threaded through his dirty ones, curled in to take hold.
He pulled her into his arms, held on to her so tightly he must have thought they’d be swept away, one without the other. When they finally pulled apart, he turned to Leni. “I heard he’s going to die. I’m sorry.”
Sorry.
Leni felt something then, a seismic shift in her thinking; like spring breakup, a changing of the landscape, a breaking away that was violent, immediate. She wasn’t afraid of this man anymore. Or if she was, the fear was submerged too deeply to register. All she felt was hatred.
“Leni?” he said, frowning. “I’m sorry. Say something.”
She saw what her silence did to him, how it shredded his confidence, and she decided right then: she would never speak to her father again. Let Mama slink back, let her twine herself back into this toxic knot that was their family. Leni would stay only as long as she had to. As soon as Matthew was better she would leave. If this was the life Mama chose for herself, so be it. Leni was going to leave.
As soon as Matthew was better.
“Leni?” Mama said, her voice uncertain. She, too, was confused and frightened by this change in Leni. She sensed an upheaval in emotion that could move the continents of their past.
Leni walked past them both, climbed awkwardly up the loft ladder, and crawled into bed.
*
Dear Matthew,
I never really knew the weight of sorrow before, how it stretches you out like an old, wet sweater. Every minute that passes with no word from you, without hope of word from you, feels like a day, every day feels like a month. I want to believe that you will just sit up one day and say you’re starving, that you’ll swing your legs out of bed and get dressed and come for me, maybe carry me off to your family’s hunting cabin, where we will burrow under the furs and love each other again. That’s the big dream. Strangely, it doesn’t hurt as much as the little dream, which is just that you open your eyes.
I know what happened to us was my fault. Meeting me ruined your life. No one can argue with that. Me, with my screwed-up family, with my dad, who wanted to kill you for loving me and who beat my mother for simply knowing about it.
My hatred of him is a poison burning me from the inside out. Every time I look at him something in me hardens. It scares me how much I hate him. I haven’t spoken to him since I got back.
He doesn’t like that, I can tell.
Honestly, I don’t know what to do with all these emotions. I’m furious, I’m desperate, I’m sad in a way I never knew existed.
There’s no outlet for my feelings, no valve to shut them down. I listen to the radio every night at seven P.M. Last night, your dad broadcast how you’re doing. I know you’re out of the coma and not paralyzed and I try to make that good enough, but it’s not. I know you can’t walk or talk and that your brain is probably irreparably damaged. That’s what the nurses said.
None of it changes how I feel. I love you.
I’m here. Waiting. I want you to know that. I’ll wait forever.
Leni
*
LENI SAT IN THE BOW of the fishing skiff, leaned over, fluttering bare fingers through cool water, watching it cascade and pool. The cast on her other arm looked starkly white against her dirty jeans. Her broken ribs made her conscious of every breath.
She could hear her parents talking softly together; her mama was closing the cooler, full now of silvery fish. Dad started up the engine.
The boat motor started; the bow planed up as they sped for home.
At their beach, the boat crunched up onto the pebbles and sand, made a sound like sausage sizzling in a cast-iron pan. Leni jumped into the ankle-deep water, grabbed the frayed line with her one good hand, and pulled the skiff aground. She tied it to a huge, limbless driftwood log that lay angled on the beach and went back for the dripping metal net.
“That was quite a silver Mom landed,” Dad said to Leni. “I guess she’s the day’s big winner.”
Leni ignored him. Slinging the gear bag over her shoulder, she headed up the steps, making her way slowly to dry land.
Once there, she put her gear away and headed to the animal pens to check that their water was okay. She fed the goats and the chickens, stayed to turn the compost in the bin, and then started hauling water from the river. It took longer with only one strong arm. She stayed outside as long as she could, but finally she had to go inside.
Mama was in the kitchen making dinner: pan-fried, fresh-caught salmon, drizzled with homemade herb butter; green beans fried in preserved moose fat; a salad of freshly picked lettuce and tomatoes.
Leni set the table, sat down.
Dad took a seat across from her. She didn’t look up, but she heard the clatter of chair legs on the wood, the squeak of the seat as he sat down. She smelled the familiar combination of perspiration and fish and cigarette smoke. “I was thinking we would head over to Bear Cove tomorrow, pick blueberries. I know how much you love them.”
Leni didn’t look at him.
Mama came up beside Leni, holding a pewter tray of the crispy-skinned fish, with bright green beans tucked in alongside. She paused, then set it down in the middle of the table next to an old soup can full of flowers.
“Your favorite,” she said to Leni.
“Uh-huh,” Leni said.
“G-damn it, Leni,” her father said. “I can’t abide this moping. You ran off. The kid fell. What’s done is done.”
Leni ignored him.