The Alaskan Laundry (20 page)

“You said you wanted to learn to hunt—now is the time. Yes?”

Even if he made her uncomfortable, this was something she felt she needed to do. The season closed at the end of the month.

“Yes. I'd like that.”

They drove in his pickup to the shooting range at the end of the road. He showed her how to brace the stock of the rifle in the notch of her shoulder, breathe in, exhale, squeeze the trigger at the bottom of the breath. The gun lurched, the sound echoing against the mountainside. Betteryear looked down-range at the target with binoculars.

“You're up and to the left,” he said. “Which means you're squeezing the trigger too hard, pulling it.”

“The barrel's bent,” she said.

Betteryear squinted. The snow made everything bright. He walked the length of the range, at least a football field, and set up a can. “Let me see,” he said when he came back. He lined up on the stand, closed one eye, and pulled the trigger. The can hopped, making a tinny noise as it fell to the gravel.

“Not bent that much,” he said.

“Wow. Kickass,” she said, genuinely impressed. She had been shooting from twenty-five.

They spent another couple hours at the range. By the end she was hitting the can at fifty yards as often as she missed it. But Betteryear still wasn't pleased.

“You're distracted,” he finally said, picking brass shells from the gravel. “I don't hunt with people who do not have a clear head. It's supposed to snow again in a couple days. We'll go then.”

That night she crossed the river in the rain and started up the trail, cursing the old man and her whole situation. She had been dreading zipping into her damp sleeping bag, how clothes piled at her feet constricted her legs as she slept. The incessant chatter of the river grated on her ears.

When she climbed the hill she saw Frauke moping around the edge of the clearing, the woman's skull visible in the rain beneath her wet blond strands.

“What's wrong with her?” Tara asked Newt.

“Brown bear ate her dog,” he said, settling beside the fire.

“What?”

“The two of them were out Red Lake Road, came upon a sleepy sow. Ripped the dog open like a sardine can, apparently. Frauky-kins covered herself with the bike frame to save her own skin.”

Tara looked across the clearing. The woman was picking notes from her pouch, mouthing the words, then putting them in her mouth and chewing. Newt lifted his eye patch and swiped a finger.

“Don't scratch at that,” Tara said.

“You call your old man?” he asked.

“Nope.”

He nodded slowly, then rose and headed to the platform. “Don't be so stubborn. Or, be stubborn when it comes to the tug. Not with these things.”

As she went to sleep that night she got that lightheaded, thin sensation of dread that came right before she did something difficult. Although not as bad, and not as deep as she had felt it before.

Her friend was right. It had been a month. Tomorrow she'd make the call.

THE NEXT MORNING
she woke in the dark, dressed without making a fire, then picked her way along the trail. She walked quickly beneath the lights of Papermill Road. Huddled against the cold, the ocean a black sheet in the dark, she dialed Wolf Street from the library payphones.

“Hi,” she said, confused when a woman answered. “Is Urbano there?”

“I think he is sleeping,” the woman said in accented English.

It was almost nine in Port Anna, which would mean one in the afternoon in Philly.

“Who is this?” Tara asked.

“It is Eva. Tara?”

“That's right.”

“Oh. Yes. Please wait.” Static. Bizarre that Eva, with her grim lips and that flowered apron with the red fringe, who had been mopping tiles at the bakery when Tara left, was now answering the house phone.

Her father came on, huffing. “
Figlia.
I have been waiting to hear from you. You're back on land.”

“Yes. I am.”

Silence. “How are you?” he finally asked.

She flipped her hood over her head to better hear him. “Fine. How are you?”

He gave a small laugh. “I'm sixty-two now, and my belly grows. Your mother and I shouldn't have waited so long to have you. Did you celebrate Christmas?”

She had expected him to be angry she hadn't called sooner. And Christmas—it was always her mother's job to bring up cardboard boxes of ornaments from the basement, wrap gifts decorated with twine and twigs from the maple tree outside, and, of course, do the lights. It surprised her he would bring this up.

She couldn't take it anymore. “Pop, was there something you wanted to talk to me about?”

His voice grew even. “
Figlia
, I must ask you something.” He took a breath. She swallowed, a shiver moving up her spine. “Since you left town, I've talked to people. To Vic. He said something happened to you.”

And she knew.

It was as if winter accelerated through her body: leaves dropping, pond icing over. Such shame.

She took a breath.
If you're going to say it,
she thought,
say it.

“Is what Little Vic told his father true?” he asked.

She never thought she'd have to do this. Bile rose in her throat. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

An edge moved into his voice. “Don't lie to me, Tara.”

She exhaled to a slow count in her head, trying to remember that feeling of not being angry. “I've got to go, Pop.”

“Tara, you tell me what happened. As your father I have a right to—”

“I really need to go, Pop. I have stuff to do.”

“Do not leave me, Tara.”

And she hung up.

It was almost dark by the time she climbed the hill to the clearing. Thomas was busy pumping the knob on a red gas canister, trying to start a camp stove. Newt's voice floated out from somewhere between the trees. “Need to prime it first, goof.”

As she approached the platform, she smelled gas.

“What's up?” Thomas asked, taking a lighter from his ripped Carhartts and drawing up flame. Frauke kneeled beside him, watching the stove vacantly.

“Did you leak in the bowl, dumbass?” Newt shouted, stepping into the clearing. “If you didn't prime the goddamn—”

It was as if someone had switched on a floodlight. Frauke tumbled off the platform, slapping at her cargo pants. Thomas seized the pot of
glogg
he had been preparing and tossed it over the flames, which just roared higher. Fire clawed up the near wall, tarps melting in great yawns.

“You are one true fucking idiot,” Newt shouted, running toward them. Tara dragged her duffel from the platform, then tried to grab her sleeping bag, but it was already melting, the heat seeming to shrink the interior fabric. They used five-gallon buckets to douse the planks with water from the river until the wood was charred and steaming, the wool blankets ashed, their home destroyed.

She started to walk away. “Hey!” Newt shouted, breathing heavily. “Where you going?”

“I don't know,” she sighed. She waved a hand over her head. “Away.”

She could hear his voice at her back, but the river drowned him out.

As she walked out of the woods, and up the hill toward Betteryear's cabin, her father's question played over and over in her head.
Is what Little Vic told his father true?

In the end, she decided, the only person who really needed to know the truth was Connor.

It was time to write the letter.

27 January 1999

Dear Connor,

I had a phone conversation with my father that didn't end well. I don't know what people in the neighborhood are saying. But it's time you know something. I'm sorry it took me so long to do this.

Do you remember my 16th birthday when you had tickets for us to go see a play? “The Lovers” I think it was called. I ended up asking if we could do it some other time, some weak excuse. That night, March 18th, Friday, my birthday, I went out with these girls I met at the roller rink up in the northeast.

First off, as you know, I never really had girlfriends at St. Vincent's. (My mom kind of played that role, I spent so much time at the bakery.) So when this one older chick asked if I wanted to go out, I was all nervous. She could drive, and said she'd come by my house to take me out. I had on this mini-skirt and remember looking in the mirror, thinking it was cool. Adult. Putting on purple eyeliner like I had seen the girls wear. Of course when I came down the stairs Ma said no chance in hell, and sent me right back. So I found a skirt I could fold up and shorten when I got out of the house, and put the eyeliner and lipstick in my purse. Did my hair, then heard a honk.

I remember Ma holding the storm door open as I climbed in that Pontiac blocking traffic on Wolf. Already I could hear her in the morning. “Che cazzo fare with these cozze”—“the fuck are you doing with these ugly girls?” The back of that car smelled of car freshener. Zooming along Delaware Avenue out of the gravity of South Philly felt amazing. (Maybe it's how you felt after writing that letter to me. Like you were escaping some weight.) We drove under the El into Kensington, a neighborhood my father always said was forbidden. We pulled up to this building with a bass so heavy it made the windows of the car rattle. I remember half of me hoped the bouncer wouldn't let us in. But when we reached the front of the line, he just waved us through.

Inside it was the exact opposite of all those corny St. Vincent's dances, you know where the nuns came around with a ruler and told us to leave room for the Holy Spirit? Of course I tried to act all grown up, nodding my head to the music. When I opened my eyes this guy in a rugby shirt was asking me if I wanted a drink. I said no. “Take a bump from the stump,” he shouts, and shows me this mound of white on the back of his hand. I looked around for Christina. “Go on,” he says. What the hell, I thought, leaning over, sniffing. Immediately the world grew sharper, like my fingers were electrified. The guy said he wanted to go for a ride. I found my friend, making out with some dude in the corner, and told her I'd be right back.

You remember our senior year the time we drove to the shore, to Runnemede and took a blanket onto the pitcher's mound of that diamond? And I said I didn't want to take the Ben Franklin Bridge over the Delaware? Well, this is why—it reminds me of being in his BMW convertible. At first it was cool, watching the buildings grow small in the mirror. I had this soapy drip in my throat, my nose burned, the world seemed to be coming on so fast. He wore some sort of braided necklace and tapped the top of the gearshift to music I couldn't hear. His wrists made him look like he was on the wrestling team—I tell you this to try and explain. I remember him resting a hand on my thigh, and then I put my palm out and let it dip and rise with the wind. I remember thinking of you back on Manton Street, reading a play on the couch, or working on some stage set. “I'm taking you to Avalon,” the guy yelled. “My parents have a house there.” And that's when I started to freak out. I say I have a curfew and we should turn around, and he tells me to relax. And then my mind splits into like ten different interior screens, and I'm looking at them all at once. I can't figure out which to focus on. My body numb, like I'm slowly spilling out of myself. There in front of my eyes I see everyone I love—my mother, my father, Big Vic, my Nonna, Grandpa Joe. And you.

When we park the lifeboats pulled up on the sand are familiar. He takes my hand. Wind shifts the grass sideways. Rush of the waves, and the crash. It was a beach I had visited with my mother—we had come here and she had told me about Sicily, and how one day I would visit the island. “These people will welcome you as family,” she told me. And this—it sounds awful, in light of what I am about to write—made me think of you, wishing you were on that beach with me so I could tell you about this time with my mother and her stories.

We had just about reached the waves when he starts kissing me like he can't wait another second. He puts my hand on him. When I push back he tackles me, pinning my shoulders. Clamps a hand over my mouth. I scratch at his necklace and he shoves me down. I mean, strong. And then I'm looking up at the purple sky, the jerk and grind in the sand. Awful.

Why didn't I tell anyone? Here's why. The next morning, when I went into the bathroom I see a splotch on my neck. It hurt to walk. My mother called for me to come downstairs. I knew they were both waiting in the parlor, my father in his corner on the couch. She would yell at me for staying out after curfew, and for hanging out with these girls. And he would just watch.

I found a penny. I had heard at school rubbing it on your skin would make a hickey go away. Just as I started the door opened. And there was Ma. She got this cloudy look on her face, then came back a few minutes later with spoons chilled in the freezer, ice, and peppermint oil. She shook drops over the splotch and kneaded them in with her fingers. There was a plasticky smell left in my nostrils, and the peppermint oil took care of that too. With her fingers she smoothed on makeup. I could swear as she worked her hands had this language of their own. She caught my eyes in the mirror. Put your words in order, Tara. These things happen to women. I know about it. We all know about it. This is what I thought she was telling me.

When she took her fingers from my neck, the spot had disappeared. We went downstairs. What a nice birthday it had been with my new friends, I told my father. We got lost in Jersey. But no, I will not be seeing those girls again. And because she was not angry, he wasn't either.