The Pines

herself staring at the velvet blood that spotted the floor around the litter. “There’s worse things than scars.”

“How’s it going back there?”

“Just a second, Doris.” Setting down the bandages, she met Larry’s eyes. “Can you do the rest of this yourself?” Her voice sounded unsteady, but the sympathy in his face only irritated her. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me today.”

“’Thena-honey?”

Siren faltering, the rig moved down the highway at a good clip.

“I said, just a second.”

“You know, if you wanted to, Mrs. Sims,” Doris suggested, “you could go back and sit with your daughter now.” Slumped in the seat beside her, the woman looked up, wordlessly pathetic as Athena approached. She stood, absently smoothing her shapeless and wrinkled dress, then wobbled with tiny steps toward the rear.

“She’s a prize.”

“You don’t know the half of it, kid. Least she’s quiet now.” Doris spoke softly. “You heard all that screaming a while back? Halfway to the highway, the stupid bitch wants me to turn around.”

“Some people shouldn’t be allowed to have kids.” With an angry sigh, Athena plopped down into the seat. Behind them, the woman’s weepy mumbles drowned out Larry’s low-voiced reassurances.

“You look tired.”

“I’m fine.” She peered through the window into the gathering darkness.

Doris raised an eyebrow. So something had finally gotten to her, she thought. It didn’t take much to figure out what—the kid had to be about the right age. “So how’s Matty doing?”

Her voice was ice. “Matthew’s as well as can be expected.”

Shaking her head, Doris returned her full attention to the road.

“I’m sorry,” Athena said after a long moment. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“I understand, honey.” She nodded toward the rear. “This woman—what makes it almost comical is I had her in here once before. She has another kid that got hurt a couple months ago. She carried on just the same as now. Take him to the hospital. Don’t take him to the hospital.”

“People don’t learn from the past. They live in it.” Her eyes never wavered from the window. “Doris, would you do me a favor? Are you going to the diner to night? If you see Barry, would you tell him I had to go home?”

“Sure thing. Listen, honey, why don’t you take it easy for a couple days? I’ll cover for you. The leg bothering you? I’m telling you, the way you been pushing yourself…”

Athena clenched both hands into tight fists and held them in her lap.

Despairing of ever learning to keep her mouth shut, Doris turned down the high beams and drove quietly a moment. Then something occurred to her. “Matty was bit by a dog once, wasn’t he?”

Finally alone, Athena drove like a madwoman. What’s wrong with me? Everyone had noticed, she felt sure. She wondered why she’d become so agitated, couldn’t even understand her own decision not to meet Barry. She hadn’t been home this early in months. Too early to go right to bed.

Through the dark blue lens of the sky, the stars looked enormous. No traffic to night. Ahead, a few red taillights, small and faraway, kept distant company, smugly hurrying home. Back to the city, probably. Home from the shore. For one aching moment, she longed to be going with them. They don’t even know I’m here. Her headlights flashed off a discarded beer can. They drive through the wilderness and don’t realize it. It seemed she’d almost spoken aloud, and her mother’s face rose in her mind. Me, my whole life, I don’t exist for them. She gripped the wheel tighter—it grew slippery with sweat.

She reached her turnoff. At the mouth of the dirt road, the night seemed to thicken. Tree shapes flowed on either side, and she imagined herself to be piloting a one-woman submarine. Headlights sank only a little ways, twin bars of cold white, swirling across thick bracken.

Her house stood solid, an ugly thing in the night, but bright points leaked through a hundred chinks in the lower story. Pamela’s still here. Quickly, she suppressed the wave of gratitude.

The car rattled to a stop. Picking up the scanner, she pushed open the door, and the car’s interior light surprised her. That hasn’t worked in months. The dim glow spilled onto the ground. Crickets surrounded the house. Her footsteps on the gravel—first the proud, crunching step, then the grating hiss of the lame foot—sounded humiliatingly loud.

As she climbed the steps to the porch, she felt the boards sag beneath her. A yellow brightness seeped under the back door, and she could hear the prattling domestic buzz of the voices inside. They sounded happy. She stood outside for a long time, listening, somehow hearing how her aunt and cousins had always sounded from the room next to hers, voices that had always become just whispers if she’d approached.

The door swung open before she could reach it. The glare from the kitchen caught her eavesdropping, and she flushed.

“You’re home early!” Pamela sounded breathless and guilty, her plump face dark with concern. “Matty’s not in bed yet.”

“That’s all right.” A small object lay in a cloth lump on the porch, and Athena stooped to pick it up, examining it curiously as she entered, keeping her eyes averted as she pushed past her sister-in-law. She blinked at the brightness of the kitchen, at the peeling walls and fractured chairs. “You’re letting mosquitoes in, Pamela,” she said, neither turning to her nor moving any farther into the room. “Do you want me to drive you home?” She stared at the mottled yellow walls, at the pebbled mold where they met the low ceiling. She looked down. Tongue lolling, the dog sprawled on the floor planks.

“Now, you know the road to my place is all overgrowed, ’Thena.” Giggling, Pam closed the door. “You can’t get a car through there.”

“I could drive you partway.”

“Why? I mean, don’t be silly. I’ll tell you, first thing I’m gonna make that man do when he gets back is clear out them damn little pines. Well,” she sniggered, “maybe the second thing.”

Athena looked away in embarrassment.

“Least it’s a little cooler,” Pam went on. “Did you have your dinner? I never expected to see you this early. Soon as I heard the car, I said to Matty, ‘That can’t be your mother,’ I said.” She paused. “Where’d he get to, anyways? He was just here a second ago. He was sitting right at…”

“It’s all right.” She stepped over the unflinching dog.

Pam blushed. “I don’t know how that dog got in here. I know he’s s’posed to stay in the yard. I’ll put him out now.” She took a few steps forward. “Come on, Dooley, you big ugly thing.” The dog barely rolled an eye in her direction. “Come on now.” She stood there, not knowing what to do with her hands. “I guess I’ll just go on home now.”

“No.” Athena spun on her, really looking at her at last. A dishwater blonde, Pamela missed being pretty by a wide margin—nose too broad, eyes too small. The thick makeup with which she tried to cover a large strawberry birthmark on her cheek did not enhance her doughy complexion; yet the overall effect managed to be not unpleasant. She smiled a lot. Athena forced a smile of her own. “Why don’t you stay a little while?” Appalled by her own desperation, she turned away quickly when Pamela beamed. “Is there any coffee?”

“I just made some fresh.” Pam bustled over to the butane stove, lit it and began to reheat the cold mud left over from breakfast. “I’ll rinse out some cups. What’s that you got there?”

“I found it on the back stoop.” Athena held it up. “Is it yours?”

The other woman took a closer look. “Matty musta found it.”

“Matthew was out?”

“Just…for a minute.” Pam shuffled her big feet. “I brung over some more fresh eggs,” she added. “They’re in the icebox.”

Pushing aside a Ouija board, Athena cleared a spot amid the dirty dishes on the table. When she dumped out the contents of the string bag, bobby pins spilled, scattering like insects, and out tumbled a hairbrush, makeup, a bathing suit. “No name,” she said. “Must’ve been dropped from a car.”

“Can I have it?”