The Story Keeper (20 page)

“Him lotta purdy, Mama,” Sissy added earnestly.

“You’re a-hurtin’ his feelin’s.” Deedee gave Friday a hug to bolster his flagging self-image. Friday wagged his tail. Actually moved it rapidly from left to right in direct response to human contact. I didn’t know he had it in him.

“I hope it’s all right to bring him in here.” I returned to the table. “I was afraid the coon dog would eat him.”

“He might.” Coral Rebecca looked toward the bluetick, now hovering beyond the screen with a bitter expression on his face.

“Friday doesn’t have fleas or anything,” I assured my sister.

“Oh, we got fleas in the house all-time anyhow,” Coral Rebecca said casually as we reclaimed our chairs. Culture shock struck me again. Back home, if your dog even sat down to
scratch
in the dog park, people gave you dirty looks.

Coral Rebecca and I each sipped from our tea glass, an
awkward lull threatening as the laughter faded. My sister broke the stalemate, mustering a cheerful look. “Marah Diane’ll be on up here’n a minute. I knew she’d wanna see you.”

I closed my eyes, swallowed, felt myself being backed up against a cold, hard moment of truth. “I can’t send money, Coral Rebecca. I changed jobs, and so there’s a gap between paychecks and . . . I just don’t have it to send.”

She blinked rapidly, the first hint of tears moistening the soft, pink rims of her eyes. She turned her face away so I wouldn’t see. “But you make all that money, Jennia Beth. You got a big-deal job and everythin’.”

I felt sick. How was I going to do this? How could I go through with it?

Yet how could I not? “Listen, the truth is that I’m already so far in debt, it’s ridiculous. I have to stop. It costs a lot to live in New York City, even in a tiny apartment like mine. That’s just the way things are. My expenses eat up most of what I make, and then . . .” How could I be saying this? How could I be saying this to my sister? She was in the same position I was in. Worse, because she had children to worry about.

I rubbed my forehead, trying to smooth out the thoughts with my fingertips, searching for a nice frame for them, but there wasn’t one. Finally I just let it spill. “Every time I start to get caught up on my own bills, a letter comes, and somebody’s on the brink of disaster.”
In fact, I never even hear from anyone unless there’s a money request on the way.
I didn’t say it. I wouldn’t. But we both knew.

Her hands left the tea glass, then rested on the Formica tabletop, one kneading the other. “I understand.” Unspoken words trailed those two:
But Marah Diane won’t and neither will Daddy.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.” A long, slow breath deflated her until her thin shoulders protruded like a clothes hanger inside the sweater. “I know you love us, Jennia Beth. I do.” A tear slipped from beneath her pale lashes and traced the long marionette line trembling at the edge of her mouth. At just twenty-seven, my sister looked like she was in her late thirties. This place, this life, was slowly breaking her down. Draining everything from her.

There was so much I wanted to say before Marah Diane showed up. “And I think you and Levi need to do the same. I know it sounds harsh, but you can’t keep letting them bleed you dry. You have your own family to take care of. Your own kids to worry about.”

She grabbed a napkin to dab her nose. “Kin looks after kin. You know that’s how it is.”

“I know that your
kin
should care as much about your well-being as they do their own,” I snapped, even though I shouldn’t have. This wasn’t Coral Rebecca’s fault. As always, she was the quiet victim here. The nice one. The sweet one. The one who went along. The one who tried to make peace. “I
know
that, if people love you, they support you. They don’t sit around making excuses about why they can’t work while you’re working yourself to death to support
them
. Your husband has one day a week off, Coral Rebecca. One. How many days does Daddy or Marah Diane’s husband get up and pack a lunch pail and head off to work . . . anywhere? And the last I heard, Evie Christine’s husband had quit his job too.”

“His truck broke down and he couldn’t get there n’more.”

“It’s always something.” I sounded like an ogre. I felt like one. But I was just so tired of all this, so sick of being trapped in the same cycle, even though I’d moved hundreds of miles from here.

Leaning away from me, my sister pulled her hands off the
table as if the angst were a toxic spill and she feared she might be contaminated. Sin was leaking into the room. Anyone who criticized the way of life on Lane’s Hill was sinful. “Roy and Waylon are workin’ the farm for Daddy . . . and they help him with the dogs and the mules. Daddy can’t do as much since the accident.”

“The farm isn’t a
living
, Coral Rebecca. Particularly not for three families.” It never had been, really. Growing up, we’d barely managed to scrape by on farming, trading, money won at coon hunts, and the sale of the dogs and mules. Never once had I seen my father look for regular work of any kind.

“And Daddy’s busy with the church a lot, bein’ a deacon now,” Coral Rebecca added, in full defense mode.

“Don’t get me started on the Brethren Saints.”

Coral Rebecca pulled a breath, her eyes wide, her chair scooting back a few inches. “Jennia Beth!”

I was conscious of my nieces now frozen by the door.

“Girls, go on outside and wait for Marah Diane and the kids. Jus’ play in the yard whenever they git here. Leave the little dog inside. He’ll be all right.”

“But, Mama, I can lock up our dogs in the pen
 
—”

“Go
now
!” Coral Rebecca shrieked, and the girls hurried out the door. My sister turned to me with the fire of righteous indignation in her eye. “I will
not
have you speakin’ that way in front a my kids. How dare you!”

I swallowed the venom, but it burned going down. There was so much I wanted to say to her about the things I learned after leaving Lane’s Hill behind and the things I was only now beginning to learn. Rand’s journey and Sarra’s had started to weave itself inside me, creating a tapestry of thought and understanding.

“I’m not trying to offend you, Coral Rebecca. I just . . . see things differently now. I don’t agree with what the Brethren Saints tell people.”

“And I pray for you about that. I do.” Her mouth was set, her body rigid in the chair. “I wish all the time that you never did go away, Jennia Beth.”

“I’m glad I left.” Tears welled up and spilled. My sisters and I would always be yelling to one another from opposite sides of a mountain, our voices little more than echoes in the trees. We’d never understand each other. “It was the best thing I ever did.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Yes, I do.” I couldn’t even look at her. Her voice was so sad, so steeped in misery. Was she realizing what I was realizing
 
—that we’d never be the way sisters were supposed to be?

She reached across the table, laid her hand over mine, one trembling circle encompassing another. “You can come back, Jennia Beth. If you repent and turn from your ways, Daddy and the elders might
 
—”

“These people made Mama’s life miserable. Don’t you remember any of that? No matter how hard she tried, she wasn’t good enough. They didn’t show her any mercy. Any kindness. She wasn’t
holy
and
pure
enough for them.”

“Jennia Beth!” A hand flew toward her mouth, stopped in midair, and smoothed escaped wisps into her plait instead.

“Besides, if I came home, we’d all starve to death apparently and
 
—” I clamped my teeth over the rest, reminded myself again that Coral Rebecca was just as trapped here as I had been. But there was a small, very human part of me that struggled with the fact that the same family that criticized and condemned me was perfectly happy to take my money.

“That’s not fair. Daddy just wants you to be right with God.”

“Have you ever wondered
why
Daddy and the Brethren Saints are in charge of God? Doesn’t God get to decide for himself?”

“It’s not for a woman to know what’s in the mind a the Almighty.”

“But it is for Daddy? He and the elders are right, and the whole rest of the world is wrong?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yes, you did.” We’d been told that a thousand times. Approval from the Brethren Saints
was
approval from God. The rest of the world was condemned, doomed to eventually burn in the fiery pit. “You just said that it was up to Daddy and the church to decide whether God would have me back or not.”

“I don’t wanna talk about this.”

An old, rust-colored truck rattled up in the yard and saved us from having to go any farther, not that there seemed to be anywhere to go from here.

I recognized Marah Diane crossing the yard as four kids squeezed out of the front seat and conferenced with Deedee, Sissy, and the stray puppy.

“You shouldn’t say them things to Marah Diane,” Coral Rebecca warned nervously.

But it was evident from Marah Diane’s stiff arms and determined stride that she’d come ready to do battle.

“There’s no point in my saying those things to her.” If I said
black
, Marah Diane would say
white
. “She won’t listen.”

“She can’t.” Coral Rebecca cast a sad look my way, and for just a minute, I thought,
She knows. She knows how twisted all of this is.

Marah Diane was in the doorway a moment later, slightly off-balance as she fought the wind to close the crooked storm door. Friday moved off the linoleum and positioned himself under an
end table as if he sensed the presence of an incoming missile and felt the need of a fallout shelter.

Seeing her face was a shock at first. When Coral Rebecca sent photos, the adults were almost never in them. Just the children, all lined up on a fallen tree limb or the front steps or back porch or a picnic quilt at a coon hunt or at the holiday dinner table in the old farmhouse. The scenes were all serene, the background information carefully controlled.

Marah Diane had aged to the degree that I almost wouldn’t have known her, but for the honey-colored hazel eyes. Her once-brown hair, now darkened almost to black, was pulled tightly back in a plait, the look as severe as the downturned curve of her mouth. Her face seemed puffy, deep circles framing her eyes. Mostly, she just looked . . . tired. She had always taken after my grandmother, but now the resemblance was startling. That was my grandmother’s ever-present facial expression
 
—angry, weary, impatient.

Heavy pants of breath escaped her as she moved through the door. After four babies, and with another on the way, she’d put on a lot of weight.

“It really
is
you.” She blinked, blinked again, either to indicate that she barely recognized me too or that she hadn’t fully believed Coral Rebecca’s phone call.

Or perhaps she was just waiting to see what kind of greeting I would offer
 
—letting me make the first move.

“It’s really me.”

Coral Rebecca stood, so I did too. Marah Diane moved in only far enough to close the door behind herself. She glanced at Coral Rebecca, and from the corner of my eye I saw our younger sister shake her head. “Jennia Beth just changed to a new job, and she can’t afford to help out right now.” Her voice was barely a
whisper in the room. A peace plea with a white flag so threadbare you could see right through it.

Marah Diane’s lips clamped, wrinkles forming around the edges. My mind flew back to a thousand little-girl arguments. We’d so seldom had kind words for one another, Marah Diane and me.

“You told her
no
,” she wheeled toward me. “You came here and let her
ask
you so you could have yourself the fun of tellin’ her
no
to her face. And there, Coral Rebecca’s always been nothin’ but sweet to you. She always made sure and kep’ you up on everythin’, even if it’s not like you cared one little
bit
’bout this fam’ly. She probably hugged your neck when you got here. You shoulda saved your trouble, Coral Rebecca. She don’t care nothin’ about her kin. She didn’t come here to help. She just come here to have a good laugh at us.”

I felt my teeth grinding so hard they were loosening at the roots. “I came here for
work
. I came to Looking Glass Gap about a manuscript that crossed my desk.”

Her head jerked and her face tightened like I’d slapped her. “Well, listen at
you
, Miss High-and-Mighty. It figures you’d be over there with the rest’a them crazy people in the Gap. You oughta be ashamed. Momaw Leena would turn a loop in her grave. You always were just like Mama. You got a dose a her sinful nature before she went away.”

I gripped the back of the chair, felt my eyes bugging out of my head. In a way, Marah Diane was doing me a favor, I guessed. Every word from her mouth was like a stepping stone, making it easier to walk away.

“You’re selfish, just like her.”

“Marah Diane, that’s not fair!” Coral Rebecca’s voice rose to a shriek, rattling the rusty ceiling fans. It stilled both of us
momentarily. Long enough for me to gather my wits. I hadn’t been prepared for Marah Diane’s full frontal attack. I suppose I hadn’t thought she’d really do it after all these years of not seeing one another.

“Well, at least I guess I know what all of you think of me.” The words came out measured and clear. Calm. Surprising, since my chest felt like an emotional cyclone was at work, churning up layers of debris I thought had decomposed years ago.

Something warm touched my shoulder. I realized it was Coral Rebecca’s hand. “We don’t feel like that, Jennia Beth. We’re grateful for all you done to help. We are.”

“Fff
f
!”
Marah Diane spat. “Stop tryin’ to make her feel better. She’s just afraid she’ll have to give up some Botox or another fancy coat like that one she’s got there. She oughta feel bad. Kin looks after kin. That’s how it is.”

“For how
long
?” I took a step toward her, the movement so sudden that it startled Friday into action. He bolted to the center of the room, positioning like a referee in a prizefighting match. “How long am I supposed to keep paying your way? And Daddy’s? And now Evie Christine and her husband are on the farm too? Why doesn’t somebody go to
work
?”