The Dead Fish Museum Page 11

  She had met him in Florida, in her second year of detention. Her special problem was heroin, his was methamphetamine. They lived in a compound of low pink cinder-block buildings situated maddeningly close to a thoroughfare with a strip of shops, out beyond a chain-link fence and a greenbelt. At night, neon lights lit up the swaying palm fronds and banana plants, fringing the tangled jungle with exotic highlights of pink and blue. They’d climbed the fence together, running through the greenbelt, disappearing into the fantastic jungle. A year passed in a blur of stupid jobs—for Lance, stints driving a cab, delivering flowers, and, for Kirsten, tearing movie tickets in half as a stream of happy dreamers clicked through the turnstiles, then sweeping debris from the floors in the dead-still hours when the decent world slept. Lance, dressed in a white uniform, worked a second job deep-frying doughnuts in blackened vats of oil.

  But this, Lance had said, this would allow them to turn their backs on that year, on everything they’d done for survival. A regular at the doughnut shop had set them up with their kit—the picture ID, the magazine subscriptions, the pamphlets. Although the deal worked like a pyramid scheme, it wasn’t entirely a scam; a thin layer of legality existed, and ten percent of the money collected actually went to the babies. Another ten percent was skimmed by collectors in the field and the remainder was mailed to a PO box in Key Biscayne. Of that, the recruiters took a percentage, and the recruiters of the recruiters took an even bigger cut. That’s the way it was supposed to work, but when Lance and Kirsten left Florida the tenuous sense of obligation weakened and finally vanished, and Lance was no longer sending any money to the PO box. They were renegade now; they kept everything.

  Lance got out of the car. He tried to break the dragging tailpipe free, but it wouldn’t budge. He wiped his hands. Down the road the yellow lights of a farmhouse glowed like portals. A dog barked and the wind soughing through the corn called hoarsely.

  “The worst they can do is say no,” Lance said.

  “They won’t,” Kirsten said.

  Lance grabbed his ledger and a sheaf of pamphlets and his ID. They left the car and walked down the road in the milky light of a gibbous moon that lit the feathery edges of a high, isolated cloud. The house was white, and seemed illuminated, as did the ghostly white fence and the silver silo. When they opened the gate, the dog barked wildly and charged them, quickly using up its length of chain; its neck snapped and the barking stopped, and when the dog regained its feet it followed them in a semicircle, as if tracing a path drawn by a compass.

  Before they could knock, an old woman answered, holding a bowl of candy. Her hair was thin and white, more the memory or suggestion of hair than the thing itself. Her eyes were blue and the lines of her creased face held the image of the land around her, worn and furrowed. Her housedress drifted vaguely around her body like a fog.

  “Evening, ma’am,” Lance said.

  When he was done delivering his introduction on the evils of drugs, he turned to Kirsten for her part, but she said nothing, letting the silence become a burden. The whole of the night—the last crickets chirring in the cold, the brown moths beating against the yellow light, the moon shadows and the quiet that came, faintly humming, from the land itself—pressed in close, weighing on the woman.

  Finally Kirsten said, “If you could give us a place to stay for the night, we’d be grateful.”

  Lance said, “Now, honey, we can’t impose.”

  “I’m tired and I’m cold,” Kirsten said.

  Again the silence accumulated around them like a world filling with water.

  “My husband’s gone up to bed,” the woman said at last. “I hate to wake Effie.”

  “No need,” Kirsten said. “If we could just sleep tonight in your girl’s room, we’ll be gone in the morning.”

  “My girl?”

  “That’s a lovely picture she drew,” Kirsten said, “and it’s wonderful that you hang it in the living room. You must have loved her very much.”

  A quelling hand went to the woman’s lips. She backed away from the door—not so much a welcome as a surrender, a ceding of the space—and Kirsten and Lance entered. Years of sunlight had slowly paled the wallpaper in the living room and drained the red from the plastic roses on the sill. A familiar path was padded into the carpet and a pair of suede slippers waited at their place by the sofa. The air in the house was warm and still and faintly stale like a held breath.

  ____

  In the morning, Kirsten woke feeling queasy and sat up on the cramped child’s mattress. She pulled aside the curtain. The old couple were in the backyard. The wife was hanging a load of wash on a line, socks, a bra, underwear, linens that unfurled like flags in the wind. The husband hoed weeds from a thinning garden of gaunt cornstalks, black-stemmed tomato plants, and a few last, lopsided pumpkins that sat sad-faced on the ground, saved from rot by a bedding of straw. A cane swung from a belt loop in his dungarees.

  “Any dreams?” Lance said. He reached for Kirsten, squeezing her thigh.

  “Who needs dreams?” Kirsten said, letting the curtain fall back.

  “Bitter, bitter,” Lance said. “Don’t be bitter.”

  He picked his slacks off the floor and shook out the pockets, unfolding the crumpled bills and arranging the coins in separate stacks on his stomach.

  “Let’s see where we’re at,” he said. Lance grabbed his notebook from the floor and thumbed the foxed, dirty pages in which he kept a meticulous tally of their finances.

  “You don’t need a pencil and paper,” Kirsten said.

  “Discipline is important,” he said. “When we strike it rich, we don’t want to be all stupid and clueless. Can you see them old folks out there?”

  “They’re out there.”

  “It must be something to live in a place like this,” Lance said. He put down the notebook and peered out the window. “Just go out and get yourself some corn when you’re hungry.” He pressed his hand flat against the glass. In the field to the east, the corn had been gathered, the ground laid bare. “It looks weird out there.”

  Kirsten had noticed it also. “It looks too late,” she said.

  “That’s the whole problem with the seventies.”

  “It’s 1989, Lance.”

  “Well, then, high time we do some something about it.” He pulled the curtain closed. “I’m sick and tired of washing my crotch in sinks.”

  “I’ll go out and talk to them,” Kirsten said.

  “Where’d you go last night?” Lance asked. “After the gas station.”

  She didn’t want to say, and said, “Nowhere.”

  “Get a look at yourself in that mirror there,” he said.

  Kirsten sat in a child’s chair, looking at herself in the mirror of a vanity that had doubled as a desk at one time—beside the perfume bottles and a hairbrush and a box of costume jewelry were cups of crayons and pens and pencils and a yellowed writing tablet. Kirsten leaned her head to the side and began to brush her hair, combing the leaves and dirt out of it.

  “Lance,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t take anything from these people.”

  “You can’t hide anything from me,” he said, with an assured, tolerant smile.

  Kirsten set down the brush and walked out into the yard, where the old woman was stretched on her toes, struggling to hang a last billowing sheet.

  “Lend me a hand here,” she said. “The wind’s blowing so—”

  Kirsten held an end and helped fasten the sheet. Dust clung to the wet cotton.

  “I probably shouldn’t even bother hanging out the wash, this time of year,” the old woman said. She pronounced it “warsh.”

  The swallowing mouth of a combine opened a path along the fence. The old woman shuddered and turned away.

  “You have a beautiful place,” Kirsten said. “All this land yours?”

  “We got two sections. Daddy’s too old to work it now, so we lease everything to a commercial outfit in Kalona.”

&n
bsp; “You must eat a lot of corn.”

  “Oh, hon, that’s not sweet corn. That corn’s for hogs. It’s feed.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “That blue Rabbit up the road yours?” The old man walked with an injured stoop, punting himself forward with the cane. He introduced himself—Effie Bowen, Effie and his wife, Gen. He was short of breath and gritted his teeth as if biting the difficult air. A rime of salt stained the brim of his red cap.

  “That’s us, I’m sorry to say.”

  He tipped the hat back, bringing his eyes out of the shade.

  “Momma thinks I can tow you with the tractor,” he said.” I say she’s right. I went and looked at it this morning.”

  “I’m not sure we can afford any major repairs,” Kirsten said.

  “You work for a children’s charity,” the old woman said.

  “That’s right.”

  “We’ll get you going,” the man said.

  “Up to the Mennonites, right, Momma?”

  The old woman nodded. “I put towels out. You kids help yourselves to a hot shower, and meanwhile Daddy and me’ll tow your car up to the plain people and then we’ll just see.”

  “We’d like to go into town,” Kirsten said “If that’s okay.”

  “Sure,” the old woman said. She looked at her husband. “Yeah?”

  “Of course, yes. Yes.”

  ____

  Main Street was wide and empty, the storefronts colorless in the flat light. A traffic signal swaying over the only intersection ticked like a clock in the quiet. Feeling faint, her stomach cramping, Kirsten sat on the curb. A hand-lettered sign on a sheet of unpainted plywood leaned against a low stucco building, advertising Fresh Eggs, Milk, Broccoli, Cherries, Bread, Potatoes, Watermelon, Strawberries, Root Beer, Antiques.

  “No corn,” Lance observed, pitching a rock at the sign. “So, you gonna tell me?”

  She shook her head. “I just went for a walk, Lance. Nowhere,” she said, pressing a print of her hand in the dust. She was wary of Lance, knowing that if she let him he would tap her every mood. He believed that a rich and deserved life ran parallel to theirs, a life that she alone could see, and he would probe her dreams for directions and tease her premonitions for meanings, as if her nightmares and moods gave her access to a world of utter certainty, when in fact Kirsten knew the truth—that every dream was a reservoir of doubt. A life spent revolving through institutions had taught her that. Foster care, detox, detention—even the woman she called Mother was an institution, a fumbling scheme. Kristen’s improvised family of shifting faces sat together in common rooms furnished with donated sofas and burned lampshades and ashtrays of cut green glass, in lounges that were more home to her than home ever was, the inmates more family than she’d ever known.

  It was in those lounges, on mornings that never began, through nights that wouldn’t end, that Kirsten had elaborated her sense of the other world. She had stripped her diet of the staples of institutional life—the starches, the endless urns of coffee and the sugar cubes and creamers, the cigarettes. She’d cropped her hair short and stopped wearing jewelry, and one afternoon, while the janitor mopped the hallway, she’d slipped the watch from her wrist and dumped it into his bucket of dingy water. She’d cleaned her room and kept it spare, and she was considered a model inmate, neat and quiet and nearly invisible. By experimenting, she discovered that the only deeply quiet time on the ward was in the dark hour before dawn, and so she’d begun to wake at 4 a. m., first with an alarm clock, then automatically, easing from sleep into a stillness that was as spacious and as close to freedom as anything inside detention could be. Then she would pull a candle from her dresser drawer, melt it to her bedpost, sit in her chair, and stare at the mirror bolted to her wall. For weeks, she waited for something to appear in the clear depth, looking into the glass as if into a great distance. An instinct told her she was trying too hard, but one morning her arms lost life and went leaden, her hands curled, and the mirror turned cloudy, her face fading as if it had sunk below the surface of the glass, and her true mother’s fingers reached toward hers. The next morning, she learned that guiding the images made them go away, and she spent another disconsolate hour staring at herself. Eventually she was able to sit without panic as her image sank and vanished, and often she emerged from her trances with her own hand stretched to meet the hand in the mirror.

  Early in her detention, a social worker had advised Kirsten that the only thing better than heroin was a future, and that had been Lance’s gift, a restlessness that seemed focused on tomorrow, a desire that made the days seem available. But he was impatient, and his sense of her gift was profane and depleting, with every half thought and reverie expected to strike pay dirt.

  “Okay, fine,” Lance said. “Let’s hit the trailer court.”

  “I’m tired of those smelly trailers.”

  “We’ve talked about this I don’t know how many times.”

  “I want the nice houses. Those people have the money.”

  “They have the money,” he said, “because they don’t fall for bullshit like ours.”

  They started up the steps of the biggest and nicest house on the street. With its wide and deep veranda, it seemed to have been built with a different prospect in mind, a more expansive view. Kirsten knocked and wiped her feet on the welcome mat and shuffled through her pamphlets and forms. Dressed in overalls, stuffed with straw, a scarecrow slumped on a porch swing, its head a forlorn sack knotted at the neck with a red kerchief. Kirsten knocked again, and then once more, but no one answered.

  “See?” Lance said.

  “See nothing,” Kirsten said. She marched across the lawn to the neighbor’s door. Lance sat on the curb, picking apart a leaf. No one answered her knock. She shuffled through her materials, stalling.

  “Time to hit the trailer trash,” Lance said.

  Kirsten ran to the next house. A ghost hung from the awning, and the family name, Strand, was engraved on a wooden plaque above the door. She drew a deep breath and knocked. For some time now, she’d done things Lance’s way. She’d solicited only the homes where she found signs of a shoddy slide—a car on blocks, a windowpane repaired with tape, some loss of contour in the slouching house itself—fissures in somebody else’s hope that she and Lance could crawl through.

  But what had happened? They’d become sad little children, petty thieves and liars, swiping things that no one would miss—five dollars here, ten dollars there—and laying siege to it with large plans, intricate calculations. Lance had his theories, but lately it had occurred to Kirsten that he was conducting his life with folklore. He had a knack for discovering the reverse of everything—the good were bad, the rich were poor, the great were low and mean—and it was no surprise that they were now living lives that were upside down.

  A little girl pulled the door open a crack, peering shyly up at Kirsten.

  “Is your momma home?”

  “Momma!”

  The woman who came to the door, wiping her hands on a dish towel, was a fuller version of the little girl, with the same blond hair and blue eyes. Kirsten offered her one of the brochures.

  The little girl clung to her mother’s leg. She wore one yellow sock and one green, orange dance tights, a purple skirt, a red turtleneck.

  Kirsten said, “Did you get dressed all by yourself this morning?”

  The little girl nodded and buried her face in the folds of her mother’s skirt.

  The mother smiled. “Cuts down on the fighting, right, April? We have a deal. She dresses herself, then she has to eat all her breakfast.” She handed Kirsten the pamphlet. “I just made some coffee,” she said.

  Kirsten sat in a faded green chair by the window and leaned forward to watch Lance aimlessly tossing rocks and sticks in the street.

  The woman brought two cups of coffee and a plate with Pop-Tarts, toasted and cut in thirds, fanned around the edges.

  “You’d be surprised how many around here get into drugs,” she said. />
  “I’m not sure it would surprise me, ma’am,” Kirsten said. “Everywhere I go I hear stories from people who have been touched by this thing.” She sipped her coffee. “This tragedy.”

  “I worry about this little one,” the woman said.

  Kirsten bit a corner of a Pop-Tart, feeling the hot cinnamon glaze on the roof of her mouth. On the mantel above the fireplace was a collection of ceramic owls. They stared steadily into the room with eyes so wide open and unblinking they looked blind.

  “My owls,” the woman said. “I don’t know how it is you start collecting. It just happens innocently, you think one is cute, then all of a sudden”—she waved her hand in the air—“you’ve got dumb owls all over the place.”

  “Keep them busy,” Kirsten said.

  “What’s that?”

  “April, here—and all kids—if they have something to do they won’t have time for drugs.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “People think of addicts as these lazy, do-nothing sort of people, but really it’s a full-time job. Most of them work at it harder than these farmers I seen in these cornfields. It takes their entire life.”

  The woman cupped her hands over her knees, then clasped them together. Either her wedding band was on the sill above the kitchen sink, left there after some chore, or she was divorced. Kirsten felt a rush of new words rise in her throat.

  “You know what it’s like to be pregnant, so I don’t have to tell you what it means to have that life in you—and then just imagine feeding your baby poison all day. A baby like that one on the pamphlet, if they’re born at all, they just cry all the time. You can’t get them quiet.”

  It was a chaotic purse, and the woman had to burrow down through wadded Kleenex, key rings, and doll clothes before she pulled out a checkbook.

  “I never knew my own mother,” Kirsten said.

  The woman’s pen was poised above the check, but she set it down to look at Kirsten. It was a look Kirsten had lived with all her life and felt ashamed of, seeing something so small and frail and helpless at the heart of other people’s sympathy. They meant well and it meant nothing.