Part 29 (1/2)

The nextI coy yellow seat of an old director's chair, the final pages flipped over to the back She's staring at her bare feet

She glances up to say, I can't believe I was such an asshole

You suffered the torments of the damned

But you saw that, didn't you? All that tiht I was so alone I wasn't alone at all, not with you and your sister I nificently

We're a lot of fun to be with, I say The shoulders I put irl's You did a lot of things right, I add

When Lecia's turn co a vast sofa of a car that I wheel through es The child-abuse tour, she jokes it is, for ainst the old landscape or school records or anybody we can drag up But to say she's skiet is an understateh to verify scenes, but it's all been packed away She didn't have to go into therapy, she's always claihts thatthe volu one

In the mountains while Lecia reads, we revisit the town that held the suside the falling-down ring where our horses ran a gymkhana We find the house where Mother left us with the stable owner's family when she ran off to side a trout pond where we once called Daddy sobbing because we'd forgotten Father's Day

Each tinize a spot, it's like soe falls across the old landscape, the green scene rising up articulately around us-a 3-D pop-up We get littler at those ti closer like we used to as kids, and the hoots and hollers we've beento stay brave-those dwindle down We dwindle dooain

In the car, Lecia slides on her sunglasses, saying, I alotten down every dot and tittle

She cheers the ht to h board, and that pat on the head et I'd only really wanted her and Mother not to be pissed off

Midafternoon, I steer the car across the Rockies to the tohere Mother's bar was and where ent to school That place left the most shadowy specters in Lecia, since it's no doubt where she gave up being little once and for all The day she called Daddy collect and announced to hiet us out of there, so out on theWe flew froain-alive or dead There was no visitation plan, no schedule of phone calls set up Just aze of an opiu black phone in its cradle before telling et closer to the town, and Lecia starts rifling her purse for hand unguents and lip gloss and chewing gum She wants a coke She wants to stop and check in with her office by pay phone I'd expected all this The e-has the only vacancy this last minute At the check-in counter, the pinwheel one set cable, and the bathrooive you for antiseptic In the dusty sills lie papery grayoff her shades, Lecia peels back the flowered spread and stares down at a rough blanket the color ofto take a nap, she says, but there must be all species of bed louse here

So when I head off to find our grade school, she shoulders her , Let'sinto battle

War'd be easier forsunshi+ne

It's strange She's always been our navigator You could lower her into a jungle with nary a compass, and she could machete her way out Yet here, I have an uncanny sense where things lie There's noone direction or another I follow a path straight as a spear to the pale brick schoolhouse, which now houses town offices The heavy door closes behind us, and we're sealed in with the odor of floor wax

As we look up the short stairway leading to a wall of coat hooks, it so exactly matches my recall that I feel a shock It happened It happened Lecia seeo back to thehalfway decent to eat

I knew this would be hard for you, I say

She stares at , Then why the fuck did you bring leefully buying fool's gold and Indian arrowheads and turquoise earrings The house we lived in burnt to the ground, we find out A neighbor lady doesn't recall us, but she na back to the hotel, I walk us sift shop now Or I claim it's the same bar Lecia says it isn't hell no

(I remember one day at the bar: A horse had thrown Lecia, and she showed up with a broken collarbone, the sharp edge poking the thin flesh Her blond hair was tugged back in a smooth ponytail, and her round eyes were dry of tears Mother told her, Go stand under the wall dryer till it feels better Does anybody have an aspirin? Go stand under the wall dryer till it feels better Does anybody have an aspirin? nobody did, so I stood alongside her, the hand dryer blowing its hot wind on her clavicle) nobody did, so I stood alongside her, the hand dryer blowing its hot wind on her clavicle) On Lecia's big black sunglasses, the bar's doorway floats as if projected across a blindfold She says, This isn't it Let's go She's rooted before the door as if a force field holds her back

I point to the pink stucco hotel where we first stayed before Mother bought the house We walked there with snow on our hooded fur coats

Back and forth we quibble Still she refuses to go in She'll wait on the curb while I check with the shop owner Yes, it used to be a bar, the lady says fro eyes Her capped teeth are big as chiclets

I step inside, thinking, How rown up, e have car keys and credit cards This was a harin mill once

The clerk confirms the layout in my head, that the bathroou The raw hardware of its back plate faces across from a modern paper-towel holder

In soes, and while I'e of sadness for us all-the place can't overwhellance up at a ha Soon as I see it, the pattern fits in a sisawed space in reed squares and sprouted vines I reel back, and for an eyeblink's tie as it once did when our youngvodka by theI can see her slis crossed, one purief has beentirace You're so damn pretty, I'd tell her if she'd turn around

I step back out into the sunshi+ne, saying to Lecia, Check out the tin ceiling

She holds out her hand like a blind girl, and I take it C'h it's rare for her to follow, she letsher in On this expedition only, I'et too close to a cliff edge, then another, till she's a few feet inside She cants her wondering face up at the ceiling, then gasps, a hand covering her -deep, sucked-in huff you'd take, say, finding a rat running the baseboards of your kitchen

Outside in the sunlight, I keep holding her hand Though her eyes are devoid of feeling, fat tears strea her to this Godforsaken place- therapy and passion for the old crap I didn't know it'd be this hard, I tell her Inside, I'ive-a-daood we can face this place together, good that she got us out of here when she did

Within the hour, I'ue of a vehicle back toward the far side of the ht hotel room for us because there are no other rooms at any inns, and the sun can't set on her in that town

She grabsto bound off the pool's edge together

Yes, she finally admits in the car, that was the place

I recount to her how Mother told me she was surprised we didn't have fun in the mountains Lecia shakes her head

The next day at the airport, she kisses my hair and holds -up job I did, but she's not in her eyes anye eleven Months froalley, she'll read it andworks better with the scene of Mother at the fire, which is the exact same chapter she'd read in Colorado The publisher set type fro from that first draft Was I sure that ritten in the version she saas

41

It Makes a Body Wonder I ans-Czeslaw Milosz, ”Come, Holy Spirit”

Toby facesstuff fro out that with my current spiritual construct, only stuff that happens to me firsthand counts as divine intervention With total faith, I cling to the notion that God sent me-little Mary Karr, sinner deluxe-checks in the ot rant I use the G-word now-God I feel Hi me when I'm scared-the invisible hands I mocked years before But this saie-raise the dead, could it?

It's kind of like, Toby says toroo in Bob Dylan because you've only heard the CDs and never saw hiain: What is your source of information? What is your source of information?) Based on my experience, I say, I am the center of the universe

Lord help us, Toby says, pulling the corner of his ic stuff is what runs me off, I say Sometimes I think of Jesus as some carnival trickster Maybe the whole Resurrection was a sca, Send me a dollar and put your hand on the TV screen and I'll heal you Send me a dollar and put your hand on the TV screen and I'll heal you

Toby tellsthe Roo) not so lucrative The folloeren't rich guys but riffraff-tax collectors and whores