November 29, 2006

Chapter 25

(Filed under: The Novel)

"I think that'll be perfect," Jack said. Anwyn was holding up a blue baby outfit with a dinosaur playing basketball on the front.

"I like it, too," Anwyn said.

"You know I don't Catalina is in dire need of baby clothes," Jack said.

"No, probably not," Anwyn said. "But that's OK."

"I think I remember getting the announcement from them," Jack said. "It showed up a week or two later. At that point we were just culling the bills out of the mail and letting the rest pile up."

"Lost in the pile," Anwyn said. "Not where I'd like to end up."

"I’m just amazed she managed to get out an announcement so soon," Jack said. "Those things are a lot of work."

"They are if you like to procrastinate," Anwyn said.

"And what do you mean by that?" Jack said, playing like he was offended.

"We should have done this a while ago and we're just making up for it," Anwyn said, "Whether or not Mateo needs more clothes."

"You know you can't make up for everything," Jack said.

"I know," his daughter replied. "And I'm not going to." They wandered out of the baby aisle and headed towards the checkout. "I just think this one is important."

"It's a dinosaur playing basketball," Jack said. "I don't know about you, but I don't think it gets any more important than that."

"Nope, it doesn't," Anwyn said. She let her dad stand in line and pay for the gift while she wandered towards the entrance. She watched a couple little kids playing on one of the coin-operated rides in the entryway.

She remembered always wanting to ride those, but her mom always said no. But one time her and Isabelle walked past the ride with their father.

"C'mon, Dad, please?" Anwyn asked, tugging on her father's sleeve.

"Yeah, Dad, let the kid have a ride," Isabelle said, too old and too cool herself to be seen riding a fiberglass fire truck in the vestibule of a grocery store.

"Oh, I don't know," Jack said, using his mock worried voice. "Do you think it's safe?"

"Oh, c'mon, Dad," Anwyn pleaded. Jack reached into his pocket for change, but he came up short.

"Sorry kid," he said, this time dropping the voice and being serious. "But I don't have any change."

Anwyn's face fell. She let out a sigh and stuck out her lip. She was prepared to continue the pouting for the entire ride home.

"You know, you can't have everything," Jack said. He was prepping another of his speech's, ready to pick up Anwyn in his arms when Isabelle spoke up.

"Hold on," she said as she started digging into her purse. She pulled out two shiny quarters and handed them to Anwyn. "Here." She held them out to Anwyn and her little face lit up. She took the quarters and plunked them into the box next to the fire truck and then climbed aboard, managing to sit down just before the machine jolted into action and the siren started howling and the lights flashing. She beamed as the firetruck rocked back and forth and rumbled. Her mom never let her do this.

But Jack wasn't watching Anwyn enjoy the fire truck. He was watching Isabelle. She had a faint smile as she watched her little sister on the fire truck, but Jack knew she was hiding a much larger smile. He put his arm around his oldest daughter and together they watched Anwyn glow and giggle.

Now Anwyn was doing the watching.

"You ready to go?" her dad asked, coming up behind her.

"Yeah," Anwyn said, and they walked out the door towards the car.

"You know," her dad said, "I think you're a little old to ride the fire truck."

"You're never too old," Anwyn said.

"OK, true," Jack said. "But you are too old to not look ridiculous."

"Would you be embarrassed if I rode the fire truck?" Anwyn asked.

"Just a little," Jack said.

They drove back to home and arrived just in time. Oliver was picking up Anwyn for the usual Saturday trip to the nursing home.

"Un minuto," Anwyn called to Oliver as she slammed the door and ran into the house with her bag from the store. Jack got out of the car and gave Oliver a smile and a shrug. Oliver waited in the pickup truck and after a few minutes Anwyn came back out with a blue gift bag.

She climbed into the truck and handed it to Oliver.

"What's this?" he asked.

"It's for Mateo," Anwyn said.

"You didn't need—"

"Why does everybody say that?" Anwyn asked. "That's not the point. I don't need to do anything. But we do it anyway."

"Gracias," Oliver said, giving up on fighting her.

"De nada," Anwyn said. Oliver fired up the pickup and they pulled out of the driveway and headed through town, past the neighbor with his collection of unworkable cars lined up in the front yard, past the neighbor with the garden gnome guarding the front door, past the post office, the gas station and the old Richmond Café and on out of town.

"I heard you talked to Dominic," Oliver said.

"News travels fast," Anwyn said.

"Nobody has anything better to talk about," Oliver said with a shrug.

"Yeah, we talked on Monday," Anwyn said.

"Learn anything," Oliver asked.

"He's got two brothers and a sister," Anwyn said.

"I meant about Isabelle," Oliver said.

"No," Anwyn said. "I didn't ask. I don't need to know anymore."

"That's good," Oliver said. "Though I'm still wondering about truth or dare." They both laughed and started trading their theories and ideas about how Isabelle had managed to get Dominic's underwear.

When they pulled into the nursing home parking lot Oliver was still arguing for a make out session. Anwyn was standing by her trade theory and refused to budge.

"It'll be an unsolved mystery," Anwyn said as they got out of the pick up.

"You could just ask Dominic," Oliver said.

"Or you could ask him," Anwyn said.

"You don't ask another man about his underwear," Oliver said, holding the front door of the nursing home open for Anwyn.

"Then I guess you'll never know," she said with a smile.

The nurse gave both of them a forced smile and they went their separate ways, Oliver to talk to Guadalupe and Anwyn to Grandpa Frank's room.

She knocked on her grandfather's door as usual and pushed it open.

"There you are," said Grandpa Frank. "I was beginning to wonder about you."

"Oh, c'mon, Grandpa," Anwyn said. "You know I'll be here." She kissed his sandpaper cheek and sat down on the bed. She curled her legs on to the bed and leaned back on her hands. Grandpa Frank sat in his usual chair, wearing the same faded bathrobe.

"So how's my girl?" Grandpa Frank said. He had a big smile, accentuating the wrinkles on his face.

"I'm good, Grandpa," Anwyn said.

"And how are you really?" he asked, his face stern but understanding.

"I'm great, Grandpa," Anwyn said.

"Good to hear," he said, his smile back.

"I went to Lily's grave on Sunday," Anwyn said.

"You found it, huh?" Grandpa Frank said. "It's been quite a while since I've been out there myself. Though there's not really much to see."

"No," Anwyn said. "Not really. But it was good to go. I never had a chance to thank you for telling me what really happened to her. Thank you."

"No problem, kid," Grandpa Frank said. "There are some things you need to know and there are other things you don't really need to know. Most people don't really need to know about that. But some of us do."

"Thank you, Grandpa," Anwyn said. She hopped off the bed and gave her grandfather a hug. It wasn't the tear-filled, dramatic hug of last week when she had just been told about Lily's suicide and it was all washing over. Instead it was a warm and happy hug, full of joy and warmth that went deep. She soaked it up, holding her grandfather tight and breathing in the faint scent of Old Spice.

She suddenly remembered sitting on her grandfather's bed many years ago, back when he still lived in his old house and Anwyn and Isabelle were visiting for a summer. She was young and had skinned her knee when Isabelle pushed her and she fell on the concrete driveway.

The tears had started flowing and dotted the concrete as Anwyn slowly tried to stand up and brush the dirt from her bare legs. Her knee was scraped and bloody and the sight of the wound made her take the crying up a notch.

Grandpa Frank came outside to investigate and Isabelle denied it and Anwyn just blubbered. He sent Isabelle up to her room—which had actually been Jill's room when she was a girl—and took Anwyn by the hand and led her inside. He took her into his bedroom, the only bedroom on the main floor, just off the kitchen and the bathroom. The room had the scent of Old Spice and the six-year-old Anwyn found herself looking around her grandfather's room. She rarely came in here and couldn't help taking things in.

Her grandfather sat her down on the bed and kissed her on the forehead. He grabbed a box of band aids from the bathroom, pulled the little red string to open the package and then peeled back the paper backing and applied the band aid to Anwyn's skinned knee.

"There," he had said. "All better." But Anwyn didn't smile or say thank you. She just sat there looking sad. Another tear trickled down her cheek.

"What's wrong?" Grandpa Frank asked.

"Why did Isabelle do that?" Anwyn asked. She ran her finger over the fresh band aid over her knee. She could still feel a slight sting from the wound below.

"Sometimes people do mean things," Grandpa Frank said.

"How come?" Anwyn asked.

"I don't know," Grandpa Frank said. "They just do. I imagine if I asked your sister she wouldn't know why she did it either. Sometimes we can just be mean."

Anwyn didn't seem particularly cheered up by her grandfather's response.

"But what's important," Grandpa Frank said. "Is how we respond to things that happen to us. You could sit in here and cry all day, you could be mad at your sister and not talk to her again. You could hold it against her and not share your Barbies and be mean right back to her. You could do that and it'd be perfectly understandable."

Her grandfather paused for a moment and Anwyn thought about what he said, imagined being mean right back to Isabelle.

"Or," Grandpa Frank said, "Or you could choose not to let your life and your choices be defined by someone else's meanness."

"What do you mean?" Anwyn asked.

"Instead of being mean right back to Isabelle," Grandpa Frank said, "You could be nice to her."

"And then she'll be nice to me?" Anwyn asked, looking up at her grandfather.

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe not. It doesn't really matter what she does. What matters is what you do."

The words sunk in and Anwyn remembered sliding off the bed and going upstairs to find Isabelle. They played with their dolls and not a word was said about the pushing incident until they finished and were heading downstairs for lunch.

"I’m sorry I pushed you," Isabelle said.

"It's OK," the six-year-old Anwyn said. "I'll live."

THE END

Posted by kevin at 7:49 PM | TrackBack

Chapter 24

(Filed under: The Novel)

Anwyn walked into Howe High School on Monday morning with a new smile. She still had to face the many whispers and odd looks that were still circulating the school after her encounter with Dominic last week. But she didn't care.

"Hey," Anwyn said to Lynn when she walked into Mr. Craven's biology class.

"Hey yourself, cemetery girl," Lynn said.

"That's a fun new story to add to the rumor mill," Anwyn said.

"I thought so," Lynn replied. "You won't let me torture Dominic, so I've got to have some fun somehow."

"I think Dominic's probably had enough," Anwyn said. "We'll end up touching off some kind of Capulet vs. Montague feud if we're not careful."

"And then your grandchildren will fall in love with each other and slip into some murder-suicide pact," Lynn said.

"My family's got the suicide part covered," Anwyn said with a weak smile.

"Is that a little weird to joke about?" Lynn asked, suddenly a little uneasy.

"No, it's OK," Anwyn said. "I don't want anyone walking on eggshells around me."

"It's a little late for that," Lynn said.

"Well, I don't need my friends walking on eggshells," Anwyn said.

"Good, because I don't think I can just give up all suicide jokes."

Anwyn smiled and felt how strange it was to be laughing and smiling about all of this. A week ago she was stewing in it. She remembered months and months ago it just nagged at her, alternating between remorse for not feeling bad and just forgetting about the whole thing. It would come back to her mind and she'd feel bad for not feeling bad.

Ms. Jonas, the counselor in St. Paul, kept telling her it was OK to feel however she felt. They were only emotions and that was just how she reacted. What was more important was what she chose to do with those emotions.

That comment never made much sense to Anwyn. Until Grandpa Frank told her what really happened to Lily and she realized that Grandpa Frank has been putting that idea into practice his entire life. He probably had incredible emotions, crippling emotions, but he didn't choose to wallow in them. Not that someone like Grandpa Frank would be likely to wallow in his emotions. Nobody would expect him to sit around and cry, but it wouldn't be surprising if he developed a temper or a thick, sarcastic edge. He could have developed any number of unhealthy coping mechanisms to help him deal with the overwhelming feelings of pain, betrayal and loss surrounding Lily's suicide.

And nobody would have blamed him. It just would have been the explanation. Why is Grandpa Frank so surly? His wife committed suicide and left him all alone with two kids. The person asking the question would grow suddenly silent and nod in agreement as they thought over how they'd feel if their loved one killed themselves. Almost any type of anti-social behavior could at least be understood with those kind of circumstances.

"But do you really want people just understanding your situation and stepping back?" Ms. Jonas had asked in one of their sessions. "It would create incredible distance in your life. No one would be close to you. I imagine that's the kind of loneliness Isabelle must have felt for whatever reason, and if you respond to her death in that way you'll just be repeating her mistakes."

At the time Anwyn just nodded and pulled at a loose thread hanging off her shoe.

But now it clicked.

Grandpa Frank didn't become a surly and bitter old man. Instead he overflowed with life and joy and hope. He loved to laugh and loved to enjoy life. In the end if you knew Grandpa Frank at all you had to wonder why on earth anyone so close to him would have wanted to kill themselves. His outlook on life could overcome so much.

And that made Anwyn wonder even more what Grandpa Frank had been like before Lily died. Was her suicide the cause of his incredible jovialness? Anwyn couldn't imagine her Grandpa not being her Grandpa, but also seemed impossible that Lily could have done what she did being married to a man like Grandpa Frank.

But that begged the question of why Lily did it, and it was the same unanswerable question as why Isabelle did it. It wasn't a road worth going down.

Mr Craven walked up to the chalkboard and Anwyn came back from her thoughts and started writing her notes.
She had changed for gym class and was coming out of the locker room when Dominic Warren came out of the men's locker room at the exact same moment. They walked out in step with one another and instinctively turned to acknowledge each other's presence when their eyes met.

Dominic stopped walking. Anwyn did a double take and then stopped as well.

"Oh," she said. "Hi."

"Hi," Dominic said, quieter and less sure of himself. They started walking again.

"Look," Anwyn said, after they had crossed the free throw line. "I'm sorry about last week. I just reacted. My sister had been on my mind and it was driving me a little nuts. I just snapped and you had the unfortunate position of being there when I snapped."

"I'll live," Dominic said.

"And you know, you were right," Anwyn said.

"I was?" Dominic asked.

"Yeah, Isabelle could be a bitch sometimes." By now they had reached the huddle of their classmates gathered around Mr. Graves and awaiting the instructions for the day. More than a few students gave Anwyn and Dominic odd looks, wondering why they were talking to one another and still standing next to each other. Even Mr. Graves noticed and paused for a second when his eyes came to them. But he quickly glanced down at his clipboard and started barking instructions.

He clapped his hands and the crowd of students started sauntering off toward the door to make the warm up lap around the school. It seemed like every gym teacher had some sort of elaborate warm up routine where the class would have to run a specified route. Even back in St. Paul Anwyn remembered having to run around the backstop, out to the foul pole, across the field to a tree and then across the bus circle and back to the gym. In Howe High School it was a little less elaborate and just meant running around the school. Every now and then they'd have to do an extra leg around the football field, and that was the path they had to run today.

Just like when they ran the mile the class spread out, the faster runners taking off and leading the way then the class spreading out with a clump of the slower runners jogging together. Anwyn often found herself near the front and today she found herself taking the lead and breaking away from her classmates.

Just as she was enjoying the air and the smell of the grass she realized someone was coming up beside her. It was Dominic.

"Well hi again," Anwyn said between breaths.

"Hey," Dominic said. They jogged in silence for a minute or two, passing the windows of the cafeteria.

"I wanted to apologize, too," Dominic said. They slowed their pace a little so they could talk easier, but they were still far ahead of their other classmates. They both ran enough that even a slow warm up pace was much faster than the rest of the class. "I shouldn't have said that about your sister. I had no idea what happened to her."

"You didn't know," Anwyn said. "It's OK."

"I had pretty strong memories about her," Dominic said, visibly wincing. "I'm sure you heard the rumors."

"Oh yeah," Anwyn said. "I guess I’m not the first one to do that to you."

"I guess it runs in the family," Dominic said.

"I don't think so," Anwyn said. "I think we make of ourselves what we will. It just happens that Isabelle and I are more alike than we care to admit."

"I hope not too alike," Dominic said, "for your sake."

"I don't think you'll have to worry about that," Anwyn said.

"That's good." They jogged on in silence, pulling away from the high school and making a loop around the football field.

"Do you miss her?" Dominic asked.

"Yes," Anwyn said. "And no. We never got along that well."

"Siblings are like that," Dominic said.

"Do you have brothers or sisters?" Anwyn asked.

"Two brothers and a sister."

"And do you get along?"

"Yes and no," Dominic said. "Times three." They both smiled.

"I get along the best with my sister, but she's also the youngest," Dominic said. "We have less to fight about. I'm not likely to steal her Barbie and she's not likely to play my video games. We stay out of each other's way and that makes it a lot easier to get along."

"It also makes it harder to be close," Anwyn said, knowing what it was like when her mother stayed out of her way.

"I suppose," Dominic said. "I think it'd be tough to lose any of them."

"You find a way to deal," Anwyn said. They were running away from the football field and back towards the gym. The warm up was almost over.

"You're pretty fast," Dominc said as they reached the gym and slowed to a walk. "You should join the track team."

"That's what they tell me," Anwyn said. "I think Mr. Graves ordered a uniform for me already."

"So you'll do it?" Dominic asked.

"Yeah," Anwyn said. "I haven't told him yet, but I will. I prefer cross country, but I guess I'll take what I can get."

"So are we cool?" Dominic asked.

"Cool?" Anwyn said. "Yeah, we're cool." Dominic smiled at her and walked away, going to ask Mr. Graves a question. Anwyn watched him go. He had a certain handsome appeal. She could see what Isabelle had seen in him. But he was also cocky. Anwyn thought being kneed in the groin by multiple girls might do something to tone down the cockiness, but apparently not.

As he walked away Anwyn realized she still didn't get anything about Isabelle out of Dominic. But she also didn't care.

Then she smiled, realizing that the one thing she would still care to know about was how Isabelle got her hands on Dominic's underwear the night they played truth or dare. That remained a mystery and even though her and Dominic were now "cool," she didn't think she'd be asking him anytime soon. And he wasn't likely to volunteer the information.

Posted by kevin at 6:51 PM | TrackBack

November 28, 2006

Chapter 23

(Filed under: The Novel)

If Anwyn had brought Charlie with her on her run that Sunday morning he would have been whining by now. She was still standing on the bridge, lost in the water below. Her mind was replaying the day Isabelle had died, remembering her thoughts and emotions.

Anwyn sat on her bed with her dad and they heard noises outside, car doors opening and closing.

"That's probably them," Jack said, meaning the ambulance or the police or both. Anwyn nodded. Jack stood up, wiped his eyes and headed for the door.

"Are you going to stay here?" Jack asked, stopping in the doorway.

"Um, yeah," Anwyn said, "I guess." She didn't know what else to do. She watched her dad go and the thought occurred to her that she could have Isabelle's room. She had never really wanted it before—it wasn't any kind of dream. But the thought just occurred to her.

The front door opened and Jack stood back as two paramedics came in. They carried gear in bags slung over their shoulders and rushed as if it mattered. Anwyn came to her doorway and watched the paramedics come up the stairs and go in the door across the hall.

She just stood there, not wanting to follow, not wanting to leave her room since she told her dad she'd stay here. With the door to Isabelle's room open Anwyn could just see her limp form spread across the bed. She was still wearing her faded green high tops—the one with the hole in the sole.

She could see the paramedics working on the body, checking vital signs and doing standard procedure tests. But as soon as they touched the body they knew as Jack did that it was way too late. One of them picked up the empty pill bottle from the table, read the label and called in to dispatch. The walkie-talkie's cackle echoed throughout the house.

The day turned to a blur from there. The paramedics left. The coroner was on his way. The police were coming to take statements. Jill came home in complete hysterics—Anwyn didn't actually remember much of that.

Standing on the bridge Anwyn did remember that she didn't have breakfast that day. In the midst of everything she forgot and when she did remember she felt guilty for wanting something to eat and had started crying again. That's how it went in those first few days. There were phone calls, friends, home-cooked meals on strange platters that filled up the fridge. There were funeral arrangements, flowers, hugs.

It had all came in a flood. And it seemed like a million years ago and a million miles away. In reality it was a little more than seven months and 700 miles away. And through it all there were never any answers. The police asked their questions, family and friends respectfully didn't ask theirs—but they buzzed among themselves, and Jack, Jill and Anwyn had their own questions. But there were never any satisfying answers.

As the water flowed below Anwyn knew there never would be. Just days before she had stood on this very spot and thought about suicide. It could come up that simply and there was no explaining why Isabelle had done what she had done. But she did it, just as her grandmother Lily had done it before.

Her Grandpa Frank's words echoed in her ears. Searching for answers was a fruitless game. It happened. Anwyn could either struggle on, grasping for answers that weren't there and punishing herself for not missing her sister. Or, she could come out from under the long ugly shadow her sister's actions had cast and make her own life something more.

Isabelle couldn't find a reason for living. She couldn't find enough hope to carry on. But Anwyn would be different. Just as Grandpa Frank had gathered himself up and moved on, so would Anwyn.

She would no longer be a prisoner to questions with no answers. She hadn't been close to Isabelle, and she would no longer feel bad for that. It's just the way it was. Suicide didn't change anything. Figuring out what went through her sister's mind in those final moments wouldn't make her feel better. Isabelle would still be dead and life would still have to go on. She couldn't bring her sister back, she couldn't fix her messed up family, she couldn't repair her broken life. It's just the way it was. Healing would only come through living.

She broke her gaze with the water and turned north to Richmond, starting in a slow jog, building speed and increasing her stride to a full sprint. Her shoes landed in the pebbles and dirt with a soft crunch-crunch. Her lungs sucked in oxygen and she felt alive.

She hit the railroad tracks before stopping. Her heart blazed within her chest and she loved it. She shook out her arms and trotted home, letting her heart rate slowly return to normal.

Oliver.

It occurred to her suddenly. She needed to talk to Oliver.

She turned around where she was, home within sight, and started trotting to Oliver's house. She skipped the blacktop and when straight, cutting across a backyard and over a fence. She went across the railroad tracks where her and Isabelle had flattened pennies, across another yard and down the road to where Oliver and Catalaina and Mateo lived.

Mateo. She still hadn't gotten a gift for her little once-removed cousin. She made a mental note and knocked on the door.

"Hola chica," Oliver said, smiling when he saw her standing there. "Out for a little run this morning?"

"Of course," Anwyn said. "I've got an image to maintain. Look, we need to go to Lynn's house. Can you drive?"

"We?" Oliver asked. "What's this all about."

"I can explain on the way," Anwyn said. "Can you go? Or are you watching Mateo?"

"No, but I was on my way to church," Oliver said. "I pick up Guadalupe every Sunday and we go to the little church a few blocks down from the nursing home."

"Church, huh?" Anwyn asked. "Can you skip it? Just this once?"

"For you, I'd do it," Oliver said. "But Guadalupe relies on me to get her there. I can't just let her down. She looks forward to Sunday about as much as she looks forward to Saturday."

"She looks forward to Saturday?"

"Yeah. She loves getting visitors. It's the simple things."

"I guess," Anwyn said, her mind spinning. "You could just drop her off. We won't take that long. You can be back to pick her up before church is over."

"This is that important to you?" Oliver asked. "It needs to be now?"

"Yeah," Anwyn said, "I think it does."

"OK, let's go."

Oliver opened the door for Anwyn, feeling a little awkward wearing his good jeans and a button down shirt while Anwyn still wore her running shorts and a ragged long sleeve T-shirt. He walked around the pickup and climbed in the driver's side, shaking his head.

"So what are we doing?" he asked as they pulled onto the highway.

"I'll tell you when we get there," Anwyn said, smiling as she turned away and looked out the window, watching the corn fields go by.

When they arrived at the nursing home Oliver suggested she go in and say hello to Grandpa Frank while he loaded up Guadalupe and drove her the few blocks to church. The pickup was pretty tight and it wasn't worth cramming the three of them in the cab. Oliver said he'd come back and pick her up and they could finish her little errand.

Anwyn nodded and the two went inside. The nurses smiled at Oliver and waved him through as usual, and the two parted company.

"See you in a few," Oliver said. Anwyn nodded and wandered down to her Grandpa Frank's room. She rapped on the door softly and slowly pushed it open when she didn't hear anything.

Her grandfather was sound asleep in his chair. He wore the same faded blue bathrobe he always did and it looked like he hadn't yet shaved. He actually never shaved on Sundays. He always said that Sunday was a day of rest, and so he'd give shaving a rest just for that day. His face was leathery, full of pock marks and wrinkles. The stringy remains of his gray hair were messy. It looked like he'd woken up and moved straight to his chair and fallen back asleep.

Anwyn quietly tiptoed into the room and curled up in the chair opposite her sleeping grandfather. He looked so calm and peaceful that she didn't want to bother him. She knew what he'd say, that it wasn't a bother at all, but she let him sleep just the same.

She watched her Grandpa Frank sleep, thinking about Isabelle and Lily and how Grandpa Frank had carried on all by himself. The tragedy of losing his wife was never a secret, but the true details of that loss made it so much more painful and his story so much more tragic. But also so much more hopeful. She suddenly realized how much more amazing her grandfather was because of it. The fact that he could go through so much worse than what everybody thought and still come out as strong and amazing as he was just floored Anwyn.

She saw the same strength in her father, carrying on despite Isabelle, despite Jill's implosion. It was a solid strength, a sure strength. It wasn't rock solid or impenetrable. It had to flex and give and grow. It allowed for love and pain and weakness and failure, and perhaps that's what made it so strong.

A soft knock came at the door and Oliver poked his head in.

"Hey, you ready?" he whispered. Anwyn nodded and followed him out the door, turning to shut the door as quietly as possible.

"Sound asleep?" Oliver asked as they climbed back into his pickup truck.

"Yep," Anwyn replied.

"Guadalupe says he always sleeps in on Sunday morning," Oliver said. "She tries to get him to come to church with her, but always says he's busy having his own church."

"So, where to?" he asked.

"Lynn's house," Anwyn said. "The house next to the cemetery in Carver."

Oliver nodded and steered his pickup back onto the highway. Carver was halfway between Richmond and Truss, the three forming a triangle. They rode in silence as usual. They came to Carver and slowed to the town's speed limit, driving through town and heading for the cemetery on the far side. Oliver parked the truck outside the house and a dozen feet from the cemetery entrance.

"This would be kind of a creepy place to live," Oliver said, eyeing the looming gravestones that started in neat, orderly rows just beyond the fence around Lynn's yard. Anwyn didn't say anything. She just climbed out of the truck and slowly walked up the path to Lynn's front door.

"What, did you run all the way here?" Lynn asked when she opened the door. Her hair was still messy and she was still wearing her pajamas.

"No, Oliver drove me," Anwyn said, gesturing to the pickup on the street. "C'mon. We have something to do."

"And what would that be?" Lynn asked. "You do realize it's before noon on a Sunday morning."

"Yeah," Anwyn said. "I want to show you guys something."

Lynn sighed and went back inside to get her shoes. She put a jacket on over her tank top and followed Anwyn outside. Oliver was leaning against the pickup truck and nodded to Lynn.

"What are you all dressed up for?" Lynn asked.

"Church," Oliver said. "And you?" Lynn ignored him and followed Anwyn. Oliver fell in line behind them and Anwyn led them to the front of the cemetery.

"Seriously?" Lynn asked. "This place creeps me out all the time and you want to have a little picnic?"

"You live next to it," Anwyn said. "Haven't you gotten over the creeps?"

"Well yeah, but I don't need to go for a visit and stir things up again."

"And we're not having a picnic," Anwyn said.

"Then what are we doing?" Lynn asked.

"I think we're having church," Oliver said. Anwyn didn't say anything. She was leading them up and down the rows, reading each tombstone as they passed.

"At least you're dressed for it," Lynn said. "I'm not sure this is the proper attire."

"You're dressed perfectly," Anwyn said. "Here. This is it."

It was a small, flat gravestone that sat flat on the ground. The stone wasn't polished and perfected like the newer gravestones. It also wasn't towering and covered in gothic motifs like some of the ancient gravestones.

The words read, "Lily Nelson, 1924-1957. Beloved mother, wife and friend."

The three teens stood in a semi-circle around the gravestone. Anwyn stood in the middle. Nobody said anything. They just read the words, over and over. Finally, Anwyn spoke.

"Lily Nelson was my grandmother," she said. "She obviously died pretty young. I had always known that, though I never thought anything of it. But yesterday Grandpa Frank told me something I didn't know. Lily had committed suicide."

It suddenly became clear now. Lynn pulled her jacket tighter around herself, suddenly feeling cold. Oliver slowly nodded his head, realizing how very much like church this was. Anwyn smiled in spite of the sadness she felt for her grandmother. She noticed the broad Kansas sky in that moment, stretching for miles and miles and miles all around them.

"It really doesn't clear anything up for me," Anwyn said after a few minutes of silence. "Isabelle is still dead. If anything a history of suicide in the family should be a little disturbing, but it's not. It somehow makes it all a little easier."

"So no more kneeing Dominic in the balls?" Lynn asked. "Sorry—couldn't help myself."

"No," Anwyn said, ignoring Lynn's apology, "No more searching for answers that aren't there. I don't know what my sister said or did to Dominic, but it really doesn't matter."

"None of it really matters," Oliver said. "Does it?"

"Not really," Anwyn said. "I'm not living under Isabelle's shadow anymore."

"I feel like we should leave flowers or say a prayer or something," Lynn said. "I don't go to church myself, but it seems like something like that would be appropriate." She looked to Oliver, thinking he might know what to do, but he didn't say anything.

"No," Anwyn said. "We're here. That's enough." They stood in silence for a few more minutes.

"Grandpa Frank loved her," Anwyn finally said, again breaking the quiet. "And you could tell that without him telling you. I think that's what amazes me the most."

"Do you love Isabelle?" Lynn asked. It was a forward question and she almost regretted asking it. But she asked it anyway.

"Sometimes," Anwyn answered, searching her heart. "I just can't say I loved her just because of what she did. We didn't always get along. We didn't always bond. But she was my sister."

"Sometimes you love your family no matter how much they drive you nuts," Oliver said. Anwyn nodded.

"Then I must really love mine," Lynn said.

Anwyn smiled and wrapped her arms around Lynn and Oliver. "C'mon, let's go," she said. "Who wants to hang out in a cemetery all day?"

Posted by kevin at 9:58 PM | TrackBack

November 27, 2006

Chapter 22

(Filed under: The Novel)

Chapter 22

The sun came up over Richmond as Anwyn ran. It was a new day.

As she pumped her arms she felt life and her pulse and everything she loved about running. The sky stretched in every direction, just beginning to be lit up by the rising sun, and it seemed to be stretching with hope.

After Grandpa Frank revealed his forty year secret, Anwyn stayed with him and they didn't go out to see Guadalupe for their usual Spanish lesson. She just sat in her grandfather's lap, crying and holding him.

When she finally got up to go they both wiped the tears away and laughed at each other. They didn't say anything. They didn't have to.

Oliver found Anwyn and the two drove back to Richmond in silence, though Oliver noticed it was a different kind of silence. But again, Oliver didn't ask.

Anwyn ran south of the tracks and down to the river like she always did. It occurred to her that nothing had really changed. She still didn't know anything more about Isabelle and why she did what she did. She didn't have any answers. But something had changed.

As she turned left at the blacktop and headed south for the river she noticed again the dying and fading bits of Richmond. The empty Richmond Café with the name stenciled on the window, but the building dark and faded. A window or two was broken and the brick façade was beginning to crumble. Through the windows you could see that the roof leaked and had even caved in back in the corner.

Next to the old restaurant was another decrepit building, this one used to be a grocery store or a drug store. It had been closed for decades, empty and forgotten. The windows had been boarded up long ago, the door nailed shut. On the other side of the empty restaurant was the gas station, still humming with life. Its building was just as old as the others, but it had a fresh coat of paint—relatively fresh, it was still a decade or two old—and clean windows. A thousand tiny repairs had kept the building in better shape, plus the constant flow of people that doesn't allow weeds to grow up through the floorboards.

The town felt empty and deserted, but there were also hints of life. It was haunted with the past, with remnants both visible and invisible. There were the physical traces that you could measure and analyze, but there were also psychological traces that you could feel just by walking down the street.

Lily had once walked down this street. She had perhaps shopped in the old general store, maybe ate in the Café and surely picked up her mail at the post office. She might have taken Robert and Jill into the gas station to pick up a candy bar and a soda pop on a warm day.

Anwyn really didn't know. She didn't know anything about her grandmother Lily. She was tempted to have the same questions and anger over Lily's suicide as she did for Isabelle's. Perhaps if Lily hadn't done it her mom wouldn't have felt such pain and would have been stronger in the face of Isabelle's death. Maybe the presence of a grandmother in their lives would have given Isabelle some extra measure of hope and grace and she wouldn't have felt the need to do what she did.

And who knows. Perhaps Grandpa Frank is only the man he is because of what he endured, and if he hadn't gone through it he would have been a lesser man, and would have inspired lesser things in Jack, in Isabelle, in Anwyn and in Oliver.

She could quickly see that asking the questions and playing the 'what if' game didn't get her very far. She found strength in her grandfather's acceptance. What's done is done.

By now she had reached the bridge. She looked out over the flowing muddy water of the Arkansas River and she remembered the day her sister died.

It was like any other summer day. It was August 11 and both Anwyn and Isabelle could feel the summer slipping away, could feel the coming school year closing in.

"I want you girls to clean up the basement today," Jack called as he stood at the door, ready to head out for work. Jill had already left hours before, needing to get to the office early. Jack waited for a response.

"I'm waiting," Jack said, beginning to grow impatient. He finally heard two mumbles of agreement from the kitchen and decided that was good enough.

That was when Anwyn flicked on the radio to listen to some music while she ate her breakfast. Isabelle was sitting at the table reading a magazine—though really just flipping through it for something to do. The ready-made pop song came on the radio and Anwyn moved her head back and forth to the beat. Isabelle mocked the song, one of the conversations Anwyn had already recollected.

"So after breakfast should we start on the basement?" Anwyn asked. But she already knew the answer. Isabelle would want to put it off as long as possible. These kind of tasks that their father threw out just before he walked out the door weren't unusual. He didn't like his daughters sitting around and wasting away their summer, so if they didn't have something planned he usually gave them something. Earlier this week they had reorganized the kitchen pantry. Back in June he made them clean out the garage, a project that lasted an entire week. While each project involved a lot of work, Jack didn't have outrageous expectations. The first day he came home to find the garage barely touched. Anwyn had found a set of Nerf guns and her and Isabelle had spent hours shooting little foam balls back and forth at each other.

Jack just nodded in approval and ducked inside before he was pelted with foam balls. The next day the dove a little deeper into the garage and deeper still the next day. By the end of the week they had made clear progress, and that was all Jack cared about.

He just didn't want to see his daughters sitting around in front of the TV every single day for an entire summer.

"Maybe," said Isabelle. Her one word answers were especially annoying to Anwyn. It was as if Isabelle were trying to save her energy so she minimized her words.

"Well I'm going to get started on it now," Anwyn said. That was often how these tasks went. Anwyn would get started on her own and Isabelle would join in out of guilt or boredom, depending on the day.

After putting her dishes in the dishwasher, Anwyn flicked on the light and started down the basement stairs. The stairs themselves were old, worn wood, big and thick like you could only find 100 years ago when the house was built. The basement walls were rough concrete, not the smooth, well finished walls you find in newer houses.

There were a few shelves at the bottom of the stairs and then the washer and dryer in the corner, along with a drying rack and other miscellaneous laundry supplies. The water heater and boiler were in the middle of the basement and the far back corner, the opposite one from the stairs, had both floor to ceiling shelving on both walls, each shelf bowing from the weight of the random boxes and junk stacked upon it. There were even a few overflowing boxes stacked on the floor in front of the shelves.

The mission, much like every other job they undertook that summer, was to go through the boxes, pull out the junk and the garbage or anything that could be sold or given away, reorganize what had to be kept, and put it away neatly. Hopefully they would end up with space on the shelves and a hefty load to take to Goodwill.

Anwyn pulled the string and the bare lightbulb came on with a buzz, lighting up the drab corner of the basement. She pulled one box off the shelf and got to work. Inside the box was old cords and various electronic miscellanea. As she pulled out some of the cords she could hear her sister's footsteps on the old wooden steps.

"Hey," Isabelle said when she came up behind Anwyn.

"Hi," Anwyn said. "Check out this ancient stack of telephone cord. Do you really think we need this much phone cord?" Isabelle took the length of cord Anwyn had been holding up and looked closer at it, noticing the left over residue from various bits of tape used for who knows what.

"Trash it," Isabelle said. That had become their favorite phrase as they dug into these old clean up jobs. At times it was a game to see how much stuff they could possibly throw away. "I swear, Dad thinks he needs to keep everything and then makes us clean it all out."

"Yep," Anwyn said. But she knew it wasn't just their dad.

"Oh, check this out," Isabelle said, reaching into the box and pulling out an ancient rotary phone, all fancy with a thin handle and chrome parts. When it hung up the entire cradle went down to disconnect the phone and hang up. It was the kind of phone you saw in movies being used by women who wore fur coats and smoked cigarettes in those long sticks. She picked up the receiver and spun the rotary dial, watching it click as it went around.

"I am so keeping this," Isabelle said. That was another hazard of the clean out projects. Junk that should probably end up being trashed ended up being reclaimed.

"It doesn't have any speed dial," Anwyn pointed out. "More like slow dial. By the time you dial your friend's number they'll already be busy."

"But that's not the point," Isabelle persisted. "Just imagine how I'll look talking on this phone." She threw her hair back and picked up the phone, flashing her eyes and giving a fake, movie star smile.

"Because the people you talk to on the phone can almost see how you'll look," Anwyn said.

"But I'll know how I look," Isabelle said, refusing to be dampened by Anwyn's simple logic.

The phone went in a pile and they continued digging into the treasures lost in boxes in the corner of the basement. Sometimes they talked and laughed, telling stories related to random bit of junk, other times they just worked quietly, and sometimes they snapped at one another, simply getting testy from the dust and work and boredom, as siblings do.

When they quit for lunch the job was half finished. Isabelle grabbed an apple and a magazine and sat down in front of the TV, leaving Anwyn to pull something out of the freezer and put it in the oven. Isabelle would later pick a few chicken nuggets from Anwyn's plate. At this point in the summer she was used to it and just cooked a few extra.

"I'm heading back down," Anwyn said after she finished lunch.

"OK, I'll be there quick," Isabelle said. But she wasn’t. As Anwyn dug into another box, this one full of old college text books bearing bright yellow 'used' stickers across the spines, Isabelle sat upstairs and flipped through her magazine, willfully avoiding the work in the basement.

It wasn't anything new for Anwyn. She finished up the shelf she was on, dealt with the various piles, and called it a day herself. Their dad would be happy as long as they just made progress, and they'd made enough progress for the day.

"I’m going to the library," Anwyn said from the door. "You want to come?"

"No, that's OK," Isabelle said, not looking up. Anwyn shrugged and walked out the door. It was the last time she saw her sister alive. Alive perhaps, but not lively. It was a typical summer day.

When Anwyn came back from the library Isabelle was gone and her dad was home. Isabelle had gone out with friends and wouldn't be home until later, though it was so normal that Anwyn didn't even ask.

She had dinner with her parents, watched some TV, read a book about physicist Richard Feynman—the book belonged to her dad and she thought it sounded interesting. Something about a science nerd with a sense of humor appealed to her. She went to bed just before 11, shutting off the lights and making sure the porch light was on for Isabelle. Her parents had long since retired to bed.

When she woke up in the morning it was early and her dad was sitting on the edge of her bed.

"Hey beautiful," he whispered in as calm a voice as he could manage. She rubbed her eyes and moaned, thinking her dad was waking her up early for some ungodly chore.

"Wake up, Anwyn," he said a little louder. "I need to tell you something." Now his voice gave himself away. It wavered this time and as her eyes adjusted she could see the emotion in his face. He looked old.

"What is it?"

"It's Isabelle," Jack said, pausing while he searched for the words. Anwyn immediately assumed she hadn't come home last night. Anwyn remembered thinking that Isabelle had finally taken her drama to new heights. She wandered if it was another boy, another make-out session in a semi-public place.

But her father didn't continue with some tale of Isabelle's late night indiscretions. Instead he ran his hand through his hair and cleared his throat. He reached for Anwyn's hand and finally choked out the words.

"Isabelle's dead," he said, simply and to the point. Any of the usual euphemisms felt awkward to him and he stuck with the plain language he knew. "She—she killed herself last night." He squeezed Anwyn's hand as he finished and lost it, the tears streaming down his face again.

As Anwyn stood on the bridge south of Richmond remembering how she first found out about her sister's suicide, it still pained her to think of her initial reaction.

As she looked at her weeping father and realized this was no joke and no simple night of poor teenage choices, Anwyn realized she'd have to finish cleaning out the basement by herself.

Thankfully she kept the thought to herself and instead managed to question her dad.

"What? What do you mean?" she asked. "Suicide?"

"As I was getting ready this morning her door was open and I looked in on her," Jack said. "She was sprawled across the bed, still dressed. I thought she must have gotten home really late and crashed and I came in to check on her and make sure everything was OK. I was rehearsing my lecture when I saw her eyes. They were open. Glazed over. That's when it hit me. I checked her pulse, but she was already cold. The ambulance is on the way—I wanted to tell you before they showed up."

The simple reality of it set in.

"Is she—is she still there?" Anwyn asked.

"Yeah, she is," Jack said. "The police said to—"

"The police?" Anwyn interrupted.

"Yeah, the 911 operator said they'd need to investigate," Jack explained. "I told them there was an empty bottle of pills on the floor—I don't even know where they came from—but they said it's standard procedure or something."

By now Anwyn was sitting up, legs crossed in front of her, still holding her daddy's hand and picking at her lip with the other hand. Her dad had a vacant stare, old and pained. He was clinging to the simple facts in order to cope. Simple, straightforward procedures. It reminded him or programming language and it kept the emotions from overwhelming him.

"Mom's on her way, too," Jack said, remembering another detail. "She had just gotten to work—she might have to fight traffic to get home. She's really upset—she'll need you." It was a thought that proved fruitless. Jill was indeed upset—she started screaming into the phone when Jack told her. He somehow managed to calm her enough, and she said she was on her way before hanging up. But then she flung the phone against the wall and stormed out, leaving it lying in pieces on her office floor. When she did make it home she was distant and cold and even though Anwyn wrapped her arms around her mother she didn't feel close.

Anwyn and Jack sat there on the edge of her bed holding each other. Jack kept thinking through details, checking them off and sorting them by priority. Anwyn found herself thinking how disruptive it would be—an ambulance coming down the street (would they use their siren? she hoped not, it was still early and she didn't want it to wake the neighbors), strange people in Isabelle's bedroom, the body (it felt so very odd to suddenly call her sister a body), her distraught mother trying to fight traffic on the way home, breakfast—would it be rude to have breakfast while they hauled her dead sister's body out of the house? The random questions and thoughts kept coming, and tears dripped down her face.

Her dad reached up with his sleeve to dab them, and it made Anwyn cry all the more because they weren't tears of pain and loss, they were tears of guilt for thinking such terrible things in the face of her sister's death. She wasn't crying for Isabelle, she was crying for herself.

Posted by kevin at 10:17 PM | TrackBack

November 24, 2006

Chapter 21

(Filed under: The Novel)

The question still rattled around inside Anwyn's head on Saturday morning when she jogged down to the bridge south of town again, with Charlie again panting at her side.

She remembered Isabelle waking up early on Christmas morning, waking up Anwyn and together the two snuck down stairs to check out the haul. They pawed the presents, inspected the stockings and climbed back into bed with their parents none the wiser. Of course it was obvious to their parents that something had happened when they weren't up at the crack of dawn to tear into presents.

Anwyn felt guilty and apologized to her parents, vowing never again to snoop around the presents. But Isabelle didn't apologize. She kept on playing with her toys, pretending she didn't hear Anwyn's apologies. She discovered her presents when she wanted to, and that's all there was to it. They were her presents anyway. No apology needed.

"There's our little runner," Mabel said when Anwyn came into the post office with Charlie after her run. Mabel had surely heard the news about Dominic and the rumors about Anwyn's sister, but she didn't act like she knew anything out of the ordinary. Anwyn just smiled and retrieved the mail without saying much.

"Hola, chica," Oliver said when she climbed into the truck for their usual Saturday drive in to Craver to visit Grandpa Frank and Guadalupe.

"Hey Oliver," she said. She felt quiet, which was beginning to become the norm for that week. Oliver noticed, but he was also used to being quiet himself, so he didn't feel the need to force a conversation. He liked that about Anwyn.

The questions that had haunted Anwyn all week were plainly on her face when she walked into Grandpa Frank's room and curled up in the chair opposite him. He set his newspaper down when she walked in. He looked a little tired and distant.

"Well, good morning," Grandpa Frank said.

"Hi Grandpa."

"You look like you've got a lot on your mind today," he said, trying to bring his wandering mind back to the present.

"Yeah, it's been an interesting week."

"What was so interesting about it?"

"I kneed a boy in the groin," Anwyn said, the thought of it still making her smile, though she didn't want to be mean about it. Her Grandpa Frank laughed out loud at that and slapped his knee.

"That's a good one," he said. "Wow. I didn't expect that kind of interesting."

"What kind of interesting did you expect?" Anwyn asked, suddenly curious.

"Oh, I don't know." Grandpa Frank said. "Teenage girl interesting."

"Well what's that?"

"Boys, I guess," Grandpa Frank said. "Hell, I dunno."

"Well a boy was involved," Anwyn said, looking sheepish.

"What did he do?"

"He called Isabelle a bitch." And then Grandpa Frank grew quiet. The story was a lot more interesting now, though in a more somber way. Though he knew better than to expect teenage girl interesting from Anwyn, he almost wished that's what it had been.

"And you reacted?" Grandpa Frank said. "I can understand that."

"He had some, um, history with Isabelle," Anwyn explained. "She had met him during one of our summer trips before. I wanted to ask him what he knew about her."

Grandpa Frank laughed again, a deep, gutsy laugh.

"I don't think he's going to be very likely to want to tell you now."

"No," Anwyn said, smiling at herself. "I don't think so. My friend Lynn thinks we could torture him."

"Well, you're off to the right start if that's your goal," Grandpa Frank said. "What did you think this boy was going to tell you, anyway?"

"I don't know," Anwyn said. "Something. I just wanted something. Anything."

"You're not likely to get much," Grandpa Frank said, offering his wisdom. "Unless he talked to her the day of—and even then it likely wouldn't tell you anything. I mean you talked to her the day of, didn't you? And it's not helping you much."

Anwyn shook her head. She did talk to Isabelle the day of.

"Ug," Isabelle had said as a song came on the radio the morning of her last day alive. "This group sucks. Bunch of aging rock dinosaurs." The song was an characteristic pop number from a band with decades of rock 'n roll street cred.

"I like it," Anwyn protested, eating her cereal at the kitchen table, glancing at the newspaper and listening to the radio. It was a pop number, and that's what made it so likable. The group of aging rocksters had figured out the secret to making a likeable song.

"Bah," Isabelle said dismissing her sister's opinions with a wave of her hand. "It's just tripe." Of course some thought that just because you knew how to manufacture a likable song didn't make it OK to do so. They apparently wanted something else, something more.

Thoughts on a random pop song didn't exactly say much about Isabelle's mental state. It was one of many completely ordinary conversations Anwyn had with her sister the day she died. None of them told her anything about why she did it or what she was thinking or when she first started thinking that way.

"Assigning blame is a net loss game," Grandpa Frank said. "No matter whose door you're able to lay that blame at, it won't change anything. And I'd guess the blame lies squarely on the hands of the ones who did it."

"Can it really be that simple?" Anwyn asked, picking at her shoe.

"Why not?" Grandpa Frank said. "Nobody labeled it a homicide, did they? There's no foul play afoot is there? It's just a teenage girl doing what she thought she had to do."

"But she didn't have to," Anwyn insisted, letting her feet fall from the chair and standing up. "She could have found another way out. She could have dealt with it somehow. She could have gotten help."

Grandpa Frank swallowed. He looked to the floor and to his faded bathrobe and to his granddaughter pacing around his room in a nursing home in Carver, Kansas.

"Sit down, Anwyn." She stopped pacing and sat tentatively on the edge of her grandfather's bed. She was angry, worried, and puzzled at the same time—puzzled as to why her sister was causing her so much concern so many months later. It's like it wouldn't go away. Her grandfather looked to the floor and then up to the ceiling as if wrestling with something, and then he finally looked Anwyn in the eye.

"Did anyone ever tell you about your grandmother?" Grandpa Frank began. Anwyn nodded. Her lip quivered and she was afraid to speak. Her Grandpa continued slowly, "Her name was Lily. I loved that woman."

Anwyn looked up and could feel a faint smile forming at the corner of her mouth. Hope. In her entire life she had never heard her grandfather say something so genuine.

"She died when your mother was real young," Grandpa Frank continued. "She was maybe 9 or 10. A young little girl. Robert was 12. It wasn't easy."

He paused for a minute, remembering those early weeks and months, having to be a dad and a provider and a counselor and so much more for his two kids. Those were hard days.

"Did anyone ever tell you what happened to her?"

"No," Anwyn said, emboldened by her grandfather's voice. "I remember my dad saying something about her dying while Mom was young, but Mom never told us anything."

"No, she probably wouldn't," Grandpa Frank said. "That's her nature, as you've seen, to avoid the tough things." He paused again. Reflecting on those days. He hadn't spoken with anyone about this in years. He hadn't actually spoken of the full details with anyone.

"You see Anwyn," he said, "I know you're not going to find any reasons or blame or anything to help you through this because there probably isn't any reason that will make sense to you for what Isabelle did. It's just what she did."

"I know this," he said, "Because Lily's death was a suicide."

Anwyn looked up from the bed, into her grandfather's deep blue eyes. He wasn't crying, but he could have been—she thought she could see the start of tears forming in his eyes. The tears were flowing from Anwyn's eyes. She couldn't help it and she really couldn't explain why.

"Forty years ago I came inside and found Lily sprawled out on the bed," her grandfather said. "I thought she was taking a nap or tired or something. I tossed my keys on the table and sat down on the edge of the bed next to her. I thought she'd wake up and I went to put my hand on the small of her back and it was cold. Then I saw her face and her eyes were glazed over and I knew something was wrong. She was dead. I found an empty pill bottle on the nightstand and I could put two and two together."

Anwyn didn't say anything. She had put her hands to her mouth as soon as her grandfather started talking about how he found Lily. He didn't need to tell Anwyn that he'd never told that story before. If you asked around town you might found a few folks who knew the story, but none would volunteer it. Most would disavow it. Even Mabel, the woman who worked at the post office didn't know the barest details of the story.

Grandpa Frank sat back in his chair and ran his hand over his scratchy beard, just as he'd done when it dawned on him that his wife was dead.

"I asked myself the same questions you're asking. I searched for answers. I tried to figure out what I had done or what I had said that pushed her over the edge. I thought there most be some logical explanation. But in forty years I've found nothing but heartache. Looking for somewhere to lay blame is a fruitless game."

"All I know," Grandpa Frank said, "Is that I loved Lily. She decided to kill herself, and I wish she hadn't—obviously. But what's done is done. There's nothing I can do about it. I have to live my own life and not let her actions cast a shadow over mine. That's what I've tried to do anyway, whether or not I've been any good at it…"

"Oh, Grandpa," Anwyn cried out, throwing her arms around her grandfather's neck and letting the tears come. Her grandfather reached up with a weak arm and patted his granddaughter on the back, slowly. He remembered doing the same thing to his daughter some forty years ago, trying to comfort and reassure a mere child when her own mother had killed herself.

In such a situation there is so little you can do and Grandpa Frank felt lost to it all again as he held his granddaughter in his arms.

Anwyn, on the other hand, felt relief and hope and grace, all flooding in at once in unbreakable waves. Grandpa Frank hadn't told her anything that answered any of her questions, but somehow they seemed insignificant now.

Posted by kevin at 2:05 PM | TrackBack

Chapter 20

(Filed under: The Novel)

Gym class the next day was interesting. Dominic was sullen and grumpy, sticking to the edge of the crowd and not acting his usual cocky, self-assured self. Anwyn felt bad. It was pure reaction.

Some of the other students avoided her, too. The rumor was circulating that her sister had killed herself, and now the obvious questions about Anwyn herself were buzzing about the school.

"It'll blow over," Lynn said, by way of comfort. "It always does. Pretty soon we'll be back to nothing to talk about except the weather."

"Yeah," Anwyn said. "How 'bout that weather?"

"Sure is some weather," Lynn said.

But amidst all the fuss Anwyn still had her central questions. Why did Isabelle kill herself?

On Wednesday Anwyn, Lynn and Oliver sat around outside after school. Anwyn's detention would be starting soon, and Lynn and Oliver were helping her kill time.

"So Mr. Graves wants me to join the track team," Anwyn said.

"You didn’t scare him away?" Oliver asked.

"Apparently not."

"He's a gym teacher," Lynn said. "He saw how fast you ran the mile and your—shall we say assertiveness—with Dominic. He knows a team player when he sees one."

"I'm not so sure Mr. Douglas knows a team player," Anwyn said.

"He just wants everything under control," Oliver said. "He's a principal. That's what he does."

"How was your chat with Chet Dahlman?" Lynn asked.

"Oh, it was all right," Anwyn said. "The guy is just so old. I'm not sure he has any idea what he's talking about."

"He kind of creeps me out," said Lynn. "They have too many after school specials featuring teachers just like Dahlman."

As they sat near the front entrance to the school the door opened and Dominic Warren walked out. Their conversation instantly stopped. He looked their direction, saw Anwyn and stopped. Then he looked down and started forward again, refusing to change his path for her. He already faced enough from the other students, he didn't need to be walking the long way around just because of her. He scowled as he walked past, more to the ground than anything as he didn't look up at the three.

Oliver and Lynn just watched him walk by, Lynn ready with some sharp verbal barbs and Oliver ready to just take the larger senior out. Anwyn was staring at the ground, the same bit of ground Dominic kept his eyes on.

"Well that was awkward," Lynn said when Dominic had passed.

"You should see my gym class," Anwyn said. What frustrated her the most about the whole thing was that she still didn't know anything. Perhaps she knew that her sister was strong enough to fight back, doing her own kneeing of a boy's crotch, but it didn't tell her a lot.

It did tell her that Isabelle may not have been the complete princess, flirt she thought she was. Perhaps Isabelle had a bit more strength. But that didn't provide any answers. If anything it made it harder to understand why such a strong person would kill themselves.

She remembered one summer in Kansas when they had done the tourist thing with their Grandpa and Grandma Miller. They piled into the Buick, the grandparents, Isabelle and Anwyn, and drove off to some 1800s historical site. It was an old fort, full of period characters in costumes, canons, blacksmiths and lots of historical accuracy.

They took a guided tour—Anwyn found it interesting and Isabelle tried to look as bored as possible. Their grandparents were rather oblivious, talking among themselves and not really focusing on their grandchildren. They were much the opposite of Grandpa Frank in so many ways.

It was when they were having lunch that Anwyn and Isabelle finally got a chance to wander off on their own. Though it was more Isabelle than Anwyn who yearned to get away and be on her own. Isabelle asked if she could wander around first, and the prospect of sitting alone with her grandparents prompted Anwyn to finish up her sandwich and ask if she could be excused as well. Their Grandma Miller said certainly and asked that they be back before too long. Their Grandpa Miller didn't say anything. He was never wild about the trip in the first place and just wanted to sit back and enjoy his lunch, now content to sit back and digest without the chatter of two young girls.

During this particular recollection Isabelle was perhaps 13 and Anwyn 9. The age difference was acute, with Isabelle yearning to be older and wiser and more mature, and of course she was much less mature than she wished to be. Anwyn was still a child and found her sister's attempts to be mature laughable at best.

Isabelle wandered off towards a playground, Anwyn following close behind. Anwyn played on the swings and met another young girl named Sara. They played on the swings and talked a little, both visiting with family and eager to get away from all the educational stuff for a moment and just play.

Isabelle joined a small crowd of other kids her age crowded around a picnic table. There were maybe three boys and a girl when Isabelle walked up. Anwyn couldn't hear what they were saying, but she watched as Isabelle joined them, walking up and talking easily and then quickly becoming a part of the group. She never understood how her sister could do that so easily. It always baffled her.

Whatever the group of teens had been doing before, now it was most assuredly flirting. Anwyn would hear Isabelle's voice, carrying on the wind, followed by the easy laughter of boys.

Their Grandma Miller collected them again and they continued the tour of the old historical fort. As they wandered around looking at displays another group or two seemed to move along with them, and one of the boys from the playground among them.

Anwyn noticed the boy, and of course Isabelle did, too, though she acted like she didn't. When she could avoid it no longer she looked right at the boy and gave him a warm smile. He practically waved back at her and she turned her attention back to the display showing techniques for making sod houses, acting as if it were the most interesting thing she had seen.

For the rest of their time there Isabelle stayed just far enough away from the boy to keep from talking, close enough to her grandparents to make it seem like that's where she had to be. Anwyn remembered watching the whole scene with confusion. If Isabelle liked the boy why didn't she just talk to him?

But now looking back, Anwyn wondered if that was part of it. Was it all just a game to Isabelle? She had been toying with that boy. She had no intention of talking to him again. She knew she would never see him again and so she just flirted with him, seeing how long she could make it last.

That poor boy probably thought of Isabelle the rest of his trip and most of the way home and probably came up with a few lame ideas for trying to figure out who she was so he could possibly see her again.

But none of it gave Anwyn any answers. It was time for detention now and she gathered up her stuff and Lynn and Oliver said bye and watched her go.

In detention it was just Anwyn today. She took a desk near the back, embracing her rebel status, and sat down to wile away her time.

She remembered Friday nights when she was in still in middle school, only a few years ago, and Isabelle was in high school. She poignantly remembered the feeling of watching Isabelle go off with her friends and Anwyn stayed home, on Friday night, with her parents, and didn't do much of anything.

She'd sit in her room and listen to Isabelle get ready all afternoon. It would start with calls to various friends, seeing who was free and who wasn't and who was in the mood for what and what they might possibly do. Anwyn could have done the same thing, but having her mom take her and friend to the mall or having her Dad drive her to a friend's house just didn't seem as exciting. One of Isabelle's friends would be driving and they were going out on the town. There was an appealing amount of freedom to that, even though Isabelle and her friends would just end up bouncing around from one friend's house to another to some restaurant to a quick, giggling stop at the store.

It was depressingly similar to what teens did in central Kansas.

Anwyn remembered sitting in her room and watching out the window as Isabelle's friends pulled up and honked. The car was already half-full, giggling high school girls not really sure what they were ready for. Jack would stop Isabelle before she raced out the door and go over a few of the usual ground rules, though Anwyn never paid much attention to the restrictions. It was the freedom that intrigued her.

That evening Anwyn opted to go for a run, bringing Charlie along as it was pushing into twilight and beginning to get dark. She ran along the road, soaking up the feeling and the air and the wide, wide horizon. She loved running at dawn and dusk because the endless sky stretched that much farther. The sun's rays would bend in the atmosphere, evoking emotional colors and sights.

She never much noticed the sun rise or set in St. Paul. It came and went everyday, but it was more felt in how light or dark it was outside. The event itself was secondary, inevitably blocked by buildings or trees or the curvature of rolling hills. Going for a run meant following whatever maze of sidewalk she wanted to, perhaps winding through a park. In Kansas it was something else entirely. It had always been an escape for Anwyn, but in Kansas it was something more. It was counter-cultural. It was unexpected. It was weird. And she liked it.

She liked the crunch of gravel under her feet, she liked the stretching sky overhead, and she liked—in an odd sort of way, because it also made her feel a little subconscious—the eyes that would watch her go past. There was Mabel in the post office, the gas station attendant, the old woman who lived next to the old Café and liked to sit on her porch. Mabel had been right, Anwyn had become known as the runner of Richmond.

She made her usual trek past the railroad tracks, down to the bridge and back. She paused as usual at the bridge and looked down at the water, at the sandbar where her and Oliver had watched Isabelle and Dominic kissing. She guessed correctly that this is where Isabelle had kneed Dominic in the groin, stopping him from going farther than she was willing to go. It just seemed unlikely that Isabelle had kneed him in his own house in an attempt to steal his underwear. It seemed more likely that she used some other ploy to get his underwear. Otherwise her attempt wouldn't have taken so long and wouldn't have been pulled off so calmly. You don't sneak into a boy's house after midnight and knee him in the groin and come out calmly. More than a simple injury, that would be breaking and entering and assault.

As she stood atop the bridge and watched the water flow beneath her Anwyn felt a familiar urge. She felt it often lately and couldn't quite explain it. She had the urge to climb up on top of the concrete railing and leap, sailing as far out from the bridge above the water as she could and then soar down, down, down to the water.

It was a suicidal thought and she hated it. She wasn't suicidal herself. She didn't actually want to do it. It was just a speculative thought: What would happen if I leaped to my death?

And she had a good idea what would happen. She would crash in to the water at surprising speed. She probably wasn't high enough to be killed on impact, but if the water was shallow enough or she landed just right, it certainly could kill her. No matter how she landed, it was definite that a fall from this height would be painful. The shock of it would likely knock her out, and her limp body would float down the river, maybe able to suck in oxygen and maybe not. Likely not, with the current flipping her around and maybe under. She'd flow past the bridge and to the southeast, carried with the water. She might wake up on a sandbar, but more likely she'd be found dead by some hunter, either washed up on a sandy shore or maybe stuck in a tree that once overhung the water but fell in and partially blocked the stream, acting as a filter and collecting various bits of river trash, like suicidal girls.

Her father would freak out. Losing two daughters in one year to suicide. It was enough to add a third family member to the statistic—why not. Though Jill would be the one more likely to do that. Jack would solider on. He would become a recluse, even more introverted and quiet than he already was. He wouldn't be able to move again and would content himself with just closing the door to Anwyn's room and never opening it again. Oliver would come over and get rid of any of Anywn's things that weren't in her room; her toothbrush, her jacket, her backpack, her stack of magazines next to the couch, her collection of teen dramedies. Jack wouldn't be able to do it himself.

Oliver. Anwyn smiled to herself, wondering how Oliver would react to her suicide. He'd be pissed. He'd curse, probably in Spanish. He'd chalk them up as suicide sisters and wonder what happened to Anwyn—she had been moving on. She'd be trying.

He'd wonder why she didn't ask for help. And the question would haunt him.

Grandpa Frank would find himself alone. He'd be angry that his body was so weak and tired, that he couldn't take Anwyn to the river himself and keep her out of trouble. He'd be even more distant with Jack, the quiet moments between them stretching into forever. He'd probably give up on his Spanish and as a result avoid Guadalupe.

Charlie whined next to her and she realized that her little scenario would leave Charlie behind on the bridge. She didn't know what Charlie would do. If he had grown attached enough to her he might leap in after her and face the same fate. Or perhaps he'd survive and pull her to shore and she'd face even more awkwardness for having attempted suicide and survived.

That was almost harder—to have tried and failed. To have announced to the world that you can't handle it, that you don't want to handle it and that you want out, but to be unable to finish the job. You'd be refusing to face consequences, but then you'd go right on living and have to face them anyway. You hadn't wanted to ask for help, and now you'd be getting help at every turn. Every comment, every question would be analyzed and no one would quite feel the same around you. You would be a mystery—not a potential mystery like any stranger on the street—but a known mystery, perhaps not solved, but studied and labeled and watched.

More likely, Charlie wouldn't jump after Anwyn, but he'd bark and go nuts and watch her fall in and then run down to the bridge to where he could safely leap to shore and then follow her body down the river, perhaps rushing into save her—or perhaps finding her already dead. At the least her body would be found faster.

Dominic would feel worse than he already did. He'd feel some what justified—the girl was crazy. But he'd also feel remorse for saying 'bitch' in the first place. He'd wonder what would have happened if he'd held his tongue and heard Anwyn out. Maybe she wouldn't have done it.

Lynn would say something sarcastic, full of piss and rage that Anwyn had done it and not confided in her, but it would also be hilarious.

The waves of pain would radiate out from Anwyn, haunting everyone who knew her. The town of Richmond itself would be haunted, suddenly given its own story of teen tragedy. The runner of Richmond would be a story for the ages. It'd be the campfire story for generations. If you listen closely you can hear her running in the night.

Anwyn wasn't suicidal. It was just a passing thought. A curiosity. She watched the river flow beneath her and scratched Charlie behind the ears while he licked her other hand. The curiosity disappeared as logic returned Anwyn knew it was just a thought.

She hoped that wasn't the explanation for Isabelle. What would happen if I took these pills? What would happen if I just took the whole bottle and laid down for a nap?

It seemed ridiculous. But for whatever reason it happened, and the waves of haunting echoed out from Isabelle. Her parents grew apart and divorced, her mom heading east to pursue her career and her father returning home to Kansas to try and regroup and make it through life. Her good friends were left scratching their heads, crying together and listening to old favorite songs, banding together to be there for each other and making lame promises into the night that they wouldn't go the way Isabelle had gone. The truth was it could happen to any of them. They realized, just like Anwyn, that they didn't know Isabelle at all.

And they also realized that they didn't know each other, that they could keep a portion of themselves—their true selves, and hide it away from everyone, like they all thought Isabelle had done. That true nature only came out when she made that final, fateful act. Or so they thought.

Grandpa Frank broke down crying when he heard the news. He sat in his chair and bawled like a baby, having just hung up the phone and hearing the news from Jack. He cried, burying his face in his hands and just cried. Tears, poured down his face and when the nurse came in she couldn't figure out what was wrong. She was getting ready to sedate him when he finally was able to wave a hand and mumble that was OK, that he just need to cry, damn it. Can't a man cry?

And the repercussions of Isabelle's actions were currently haunting Anwyn most of all. She wasn't heart broken like her father or grandfather, but it went to the depths of her soul. Partially because she wasn't close to her sister, and partially just because of what it was. Death does not come and go easily. It barges into lives and leaves great swaths of destruction in its wake, especially when it comes at one's own choosing and comes so very early.

But all of the thoughts and recollections and questions and possibilities didn't answer anything for Anwyn. Her sister was still dead and she still didn't know why.

As she ran back to town with Charlie she turned left down suddenly and jogged down a different street, still south of the railroad tracks. She slowed to a walk and then came up to a hedge separating two yards.

She had been here before, almost four years ago late at night with Catalina and Oliver as they waited for Isabelle to fulfill her dare. Anwyn watched Dominic's house with interest, wondering where he was and what he was doing. She could see lights on inside, and rather than add to the rumors and to Dominic's shame, she turned around and jogged back the way she had come.

Then she turned unexpectedly again and came to a familiar house. Oliver's truck sat in the driveway. She knocked on the door and could hear a chair being scooted back on the kitchen floor.

"Hola, chica," Oliver said with a surprised smile, opening the door wider and stepping back so Anwyn could come in.

"Hey cousin," Catalina said from the table. Mateo waved his arms, not necessarily at Anwyn but just because he could. He was sitting in a high chair, getting a late dinner before he went down for the night.

"Hi little guy," she said, ruffling the small amount of hair that had sprouted on his head.

Anwyn sat down at the table and just smiled for a minute. There was warmth in this house, in this odd assemblage of family. Nobody said anything for a moment and Anwyn just sat there, with Charlie lying on the floor next to her, his dog brain plotting how he could move closer to the high chair and catch any falling crumbs.

Posted by kevin at 2:04 PM | TrackBack

November 22, 2006

Chapter 19

(Filed under: The Novel)

"So you're Dominic?" Anwyn asked, catching up to the taller senior after they both finished with the fastest miles in their class. Dominic looked back at her. It was the new girl in his class. He'd never met her before, never seen her since she showed up at Howe High School a few weeks before. But her face struck him as oddly familiar.

"Yeah," he nodded, still breathing hard. He also just realized the freshman had nearly ran as fast as he did. Anwyn shook her head, understanding the coincidence. Of course she'd end up in one of Dominic's classes. Why not?

"You were pretty fast," Dominic said when Anwyn didn't follow up with anything.

"Yeah, I run all the time," Anwyn said.

"I guess so," Dominic said. "What's your name?"

"Anwyn. You knew my sister?"

"I did?" Dominic asked.

"Yeah. Isabelle Miller."

"Name doesn't ring a bell," Dominic said.

"It'd been a while. Probably four years," Anwyn said. Dominic searched his mind trying to place the name and the familiarness of Anwyn's face.

"You're the girl from Minnesota, right?" Dominic asked. Anwyn nodded. It was starting to click. "Your sister came to visit four years ago, right? She hung out with Catalina?" Anwyn kept nodding. Dominic slowly smiled.

"Yeah, I remember now," Dominic said, turning to spit in the grass. The rest of the class was starting to finish now, Mr. Graves was calling out times and shouting for the pack to hurry up. "I remember, yeah. What a bitch."

And it happened so quickly. There wasn't any forethought or shock or planning—only a reaction. Anwyn took a step forward, put her arms around Dominic—he thought he was about to get kissed, which was his fatal flaw the first time around—and as she pulled the senior in high school who had at least a six inch height advantage towards her, she viciously raised her knee to his crotch.

Dominic's body thundered to the ground like a felled tree. His hands went to his groin, his mouth fell open, his eyes watered. The other students in gym class turned in shock, trying to see imagine what could have happened, how the senior jock had been floored by the freshman new girl. Mr. Graves stopped calling out times and just stared, his whistle falling out of his mouth.

Anwyn stepped forward towards Dominic, still writhing on the ground, and leaned into his field of vision.

"That bitch," she said, "killed herself. Show a little respect."

And with that Anwyn calmly walked off to the locker room. The rest of the class, including Mr. Graves, just watched her go. When the rest of the class finally showed up in the locker room Anwyn was cleaned up and ready to go. The other students avoided her and finally Missy stopped in front of her.

"Uh, geez, Anwyn, are you OK?"

"Yeah."

"OK," Missy said. "Um, Mr. Graves wants you to go to the office."

"I thought so."

"Do you want me to go with you or anything?"

"No thanks. I'll be fine." Anwyn walked off to the office, leaving Missy gawking.

The school office was quiet and empty. The secretary point to a chair and Anwyn sat down. Mr. Douglas marched into the room, avoided Anwyn, and marched back with Chet Dahlman. He motioned for Anwyn to come with them and the three sat down in a claustrophobic conference room, Chet Dahlman and Mr. Douglas across from Anwyn.

"So what happened?" Mr. Douglas asked.

"He called my sister a bitch," Anwyn said, deadpan.

"And that's it?" Mr. Douglas said. "He didn't touch you or threaten you or anything?"

"No," Anwyn said. "Why?" Mr. Douglas didn't respond. This was apparently new for him. Either Dominic Warren had a habit of getting in trouble and the fact that this time wasn't his fault was a complete and total shock, or Mr. Douglas expected some sort of trumped up story to match the retribution.

"The boy will be lucky to have kids someday," Mr. Douglas muttered. "From what he says that's the same thing your sister did to him."

Anwyn looked up, suddenly surprised and brought back to the immediacy of the situation.

"What?"

"He says your sister kneed him in the groin as well," Mr. Douglas explained. "He talked about it running in the family and said some other colorful things that we don't need to repeat. But he'll need to be a little more sensitive from now on—and I imagine he will be."

Anwyn's mind raced. She never imagined her sister doing anything like this. It was such a bad girl thing to do, which wasn't quite Isabelle. It thrilled Anwyn a little that she had done something Isabelle did, but also scared her that they could repeat the same mistakes.

She wondered when it had happened, if it was the end to the little make out session along the Arkansas River that she had always assumed ended in something much more stereotypical.

Or was that the end of the underwear raid? It hardly seemed likely that the way to get a boy's underwear was to knee him in the crotch. Removing said pair of underwear would be a little difficult in that position, but maybe Isabelle did that to get him out of the way and then just rifled through his dresser and snatched a clean pair.

Or maybe there was something else. Maybe there was more to the story.

"Ms. Miller," Mr. Douglas said, returning to his official disciplinarian voice. "You'll have detention for a week. If anything happens again you'll be suspended. And I'm not interested in your fancy excuses or reasons—" he turned a wary eye to Chet Dahlman, "—there's no reason to injure a boy like that. I also want you to meet with Mr. Dahlman here, at least for today."

Anwyn nodded. The punishment didn't matter to her. Mr. Douglas nodded, then exchanged glances with Chet Dahlman—who looked tired and annoyed—and left the room. Now it was just Chet Dahlman sitting across from Anwyn.

"Well," Chet started. "Despite what Mr. Douglas said, we are concerned about your reasons …" He continued, rambling on and on about how it was OK if Anwyn felt the need to act out, but she needed to find constructive ways to do so and kneeing a boy in the balls wasn't one of those ways, though it was good that Anwyn could take care of herself, and on and on it went. Anwyn nodded at the right spots and wondered what she was missing in Spanish. She finally spoke up and said enough kind-hearted, remorseful things that Chet Dahlman felt pity on her and decided it would be best if she returned to class.

He walked her to the door of the office and told her his door was always open and it was always better to come visit by choice. Anwyn nodded and stepped into the empty hall.

And then the bell rang. The hall filled with students and voices and laughter and movement. And eyes staring at Anwyn. As she walked down the corridor towards her English Literature class she felt like the students parted in front of her, not wanting to get too close. It was more her imagination than anything, but the students were buzzing about the freshman girl who had toppled a senior guy. One story had it that her blow had made him impotent. Another said that Dominic had tried to touch her and he got what he deserved. But every story contained the detail that Dominic had called Anwyn's sister 'bitch' and that the sister had committed suicide. It was also starting to make the rounds that the sister had reportedly done the same thing to Dominic, though no one quite understood how the puzzle pieces to that one fit together.

"You know, if you wanted to get the story out of Dominic, that probably wasn't the best method to use." It was Lynn. She saddled up next to Anwyn and walked with her down the hall to their English Literature class.

"Yeah, I know," said Anwyn.

"I mean, I'll back you if you want to use torture," Lynn said. "I've got spare car battery we can hook up to his nipples. It's the American way." Anwyn smiled.

"I don't really know what I was doing," Anwyn said. "It just happened so quickly."

"Of course you knew what you were doing," Lynn said. "Achieving justice for women everywhere. So is it true that your sister did the same to Dominic?"

"I don't know," Anwyn said. "That's what Mr. Douglas said."

"Well, you're probably not going to get the real story out of Dominic now," Lynn said. "Unless we keep going with that torture plan." They reached their English class and sat down. Anwyn noticed Mrs. Summers watching her from the door to her chair. Apparently word traveled fast, even among teachers.

"What did he do?" Oliver asked as soon as he came in. He looked furious, like he was ready to go after Dominic himself, even though Dominic was the one already hurting.

"He just said Isabelle was a bitch," Anwyn said, trying to keep her voice low, though she could tell the whole class was straining to hear. It even looked like Mrs. Summers was trying to hone in on their conversation from the corner. "And I snapped."

"He didn't do anything to you?"

"No," Anwyn said. "Why does everybody ask that?"

"It'd give me more reason to kick his ass."

"No, I think I've done enough," Anwyn said.

"Kicking his ass would fit with our torture plan," Lynn chimed in.

"He didn't do anything wrong," Anwyn said. "Isabelle could be a bitch. It just, I've never had anyone say anything like that about Isabelle to my face. I snapped."

"You say the word and I'll hook up that battery," Lynn said as Mrs. Summers dimmed the lights and flicked on the overhead projector to start class.

The eyes continued to follow Anwyn the rest of the day and she was glad for the quiet of detention. Gossiping about the sister of a suicide case was not tolerated in detention, as two kids quickly found out with a doubled punishment. It turns out the office had called her father and he'd be picking her up after detention.

As she waited outside the school Mr. Graves stuck his head out the front door.

"Ms. Miller," he called. She looked over. "That was a nice mile today. If you can keep that knee to yourself I want you on my track team." She nodded and the door closed behind Mr. Graves. At least not every teacher pretended like they didn't know.

Jack pulled up to Howe High School in his Saab and picked up his daughter from detention.

"Hey beautiful," he said.

"Hi Dad."

"So I know you had talked about getting into some after school activities, but is detention really what you had in mind?"

"Sorry, Dad."

"I bet that boy is sorry," Jack said. "What was his name? Dominic Warren?" Anwyn nodded. The silver Saab pulled onto the main highway and cruised back to Richmond. "I probably know his parents. Boy is that going to be embarrassing when we run into each other at the post office. And I don't think Mabel running interference will help."

"So why'd you do it?"

"He knew Isabelle," Anwyn said, starting from the beginning. She told her dad about the scene at the river—quickly filling in the rumored information that Isabelle also had a knack for kneeing Dominic in the groin when Jack's grip on the steering wheel tightened—and about the truth or dare-inspired underwear raid. "I thought he might know something about Isabelle that we didn't know."

"So you kneed him in the groin?" Jack asked. "Honey, that's generally a good way to make a boy incapable of spilling the beans."

"Dad," Anwyn intoned.

"Sorry," Jack said. "I'm not just not used to handling discipline cases like this."

"Do you want more practice?" Anwyn asked. Jack should his head and she continued. "He finished ahead of me in the mile in gym class and I realized who he was. It clicked and I went up to ask him about Isabelle. As soon as he remembered who she was he said she was a bitch. Then I just snapped."

"Well, I suppose fond memories of being kneed in the groin might make you call someone a bitch," Jack said.

"Do you think that's all it is?"

"I don't know," Jack said. "What do you think?"

"I don't know," Anwyn said. "And I suppose now I won't find out."

"Unless maybe you knee him again," Jack said, laughing until he turned to see Anwyn straight-faced. "Sorry—do I need to be serious again?" Anwyn nodded.

"Well, it's not every day that a father learns both his daughters could defend themselves. It's encouraging." Anwyn didn't say anything. She loved her dad, but sometimes she expected something more normal. This wasn't exactly the punishment lecture she was expecting.

"So you ran the mile today?" Jack asked. "How'd you do?"

Posted by kevin at 4:18 PM | TrackBack

November 21, 2006

Chapter 18

(Filed under: The Novel)

Monday morning was back to school.

"Spot any celebrities this weekend?" Lynn asked before biology class started.

"Does Mabel count?"

"Who?"

"Richmond's postal lady and gossip queen," Anwyn answered.

"Not unless she goes crazy and shoots the place up," Lynn said. "But she's probably the only employee, and if you don't kill anybody in your postal rampage I'm not sure that qualifies as criminal celebrity. No one ever got a made-for-TV movie just for shooting an empty building."

"But what about all those poor, innocent letters?" Anwyn asked.

"Oh, they'll be mourned, perhaps get a commemorative postage stamp, but I don't think that gives Mabel a TV movie," Lynn said. "Maybe an indie film starring Susan Sarandon."

"Why the questions about celebrities?" Anwyn asked.

"Sounded better than just asking how your weekend was," Lynn said with a shrug. "So, how was your weekend? See, it's just blah."

"Not much of a weekend anyway," Anwyn said. "More running and old folks visiting."

"Geez, you're really getting into this visiting thing," Lynn said. "Do you have a route? Do the Meals on Wheels folks know about you. They could save a lot of volunteers."

"Sorry, I don't drive yet," Anwyn said.

"Really, I thought—"

"Yeah, yeah," Anwyn interrupted. "I know everybody else in town my age already drives. I'm the poor city girl who always took the bus and never needed a license to drive as a farmhand."

"My bad," Lynn said, holding up her hands like she was innocent. "It is one of our redeeming qualities so I had to make sure you knew. But no matter, the Meals on Wheels folks can get you to do the visiting and Oliver to do the driving. I'm sure he wouldn't mind."

"No, probably not."

"Prom material," Lynn said. "Totally."

"So how about you," Anwyn said. "Did you spot any celebrities this weekend?"

"I saw Chet Dahlman hanging out at the Carver Cemetery on Saturday. He's the guidance counselor, right? That's kind of celebrity-like."

"Yeah," Anwyn said, remembering sitting in his office on her first day at Howe High School. "He's the guidance counselor. What was he doing in the cemetery?"

"I don't know, looking at gravestones?"

"What were you doing in the cemetery?" Anwyn asked.

"Putting flowers at grave of my sister—she killed herself. Tragic, really." Lynn held a straight face and Anwyn started giggling.

"That's not funny," Anwyn said, finally controlling her giggles.

"No, it's not. I should have told you earlier," Lynn said.

"I said I was sorry about that."

"I know, I just have to rub it in," Lynn said. "No, I live next to the cemetery."

"Creepy," Anwyn said.

"Sometimes," Lynn said. "Makes Halloween a lot more fun."

Anwyn just nodded, wondering about Chet Dahlman and graves and her sister.

"What does her tombstone say?" Ms. Jonas had asked during one of her counseling sessions with Anwyn back at St. Paul Western High School.

"I don’t know," Anwyn said, shaking her head and staring blankly at the wall behind Ms. Jonas. This was one of the early sessions, and it usually took Ms. Jonas at least 15 minutes to break through Anwyn's resistance and get her to talk.

"Sometimes tombstones don't sum up a person's life very well," Ms. Jonas said. "If you could have written the words, what would you write?"

Anwyn shrugged. But her mind started turning.

"C'mon," Ms. Jonas urged. "What would it say? 'Beloved daughter, sister and friend'? Or maybe 'Annoyed Older Sister'? Or how about 'Threw her potential down the toilet'?" Anwyn finally smiled and Ms. Jonas stopped pushing.

"I think the tombstone said something about potential," Anwyn finally said. "I don't really remember it. My dad picked it out. I think he thought it was kind of lame, but he didn't have much time and my mom was usually better at that type of stuff. And, well, she was kind of useless at the time. Still is."

Ms. Jonas waited a minute to see if Anwyn would elaborate on her mother, but she didn't.

"That's what I mean," Ms. Jonas said. "Often the words on tombstones are hastily chosen. So what would you say? Write a few things down, see what feels right." She handed Anwyn a yellow legal pad and a purple marker.

Anwyn sat back and thought and thought.

"It doesn't have to be profound or permanent or public," Ms. Jonas said. "Nobody has to see it. Write one or a dozen. Just think about your sister and how you'd want to remember her."

Anwyn put the marker to the paper and wrote, 'Isabelle Miller' across the top. She paused and then started scrawling several potential tombstone messages:

"Selfish daughter, sister and friend. Killed herself."

"She did what she wanted. Including dying."

"Killed herself, but ruined my family."

"Suicide. Nobody cared."

She finally pushed the legal pad back on to Ms. Jonas' desk.

"Can I read them?" Ms. Jonas asked before touching it. Anwyn nodded and Ms. Jonas picked up the legal pad and read over Anwyn's epitaphs. Then she set the pad down on the desk.

"How'd that feel?" Ms. Jonas asked.

"Good," Anwyn said.

"It's OK to be angry with your sister."

"I know," Awnyn said. "Sometimes it just doesn't feel like it, though. I'm supposed to be mopey and depressed and what people expect when your sister commits suicide."

"Is that what they expect?"

"Maybe," Anwyn said. "I don’t know. It just feels wrong being happy."

"It's not," Ms. Jonas said. "Isabelle killed herself. She didn't kill you."

Anwyn remembered writing those epitaphs in Ms. Jonas' office and later talking to her about feeling bad for writing them. She remembered thinking she should go back to Isabelle's grave and read the actual words, but she could never bring herself to do it.

Mr. Craven's introduction to cellular biology cut off Anwyn's bantering with Lynn and her recollections of St. Paul counseling sessions. But later in the day it would come back to her.

"Today we're running the mile," Mr. Graves shouted to the class after blowing his whistle. There were a few quiet groans in the back, but the gym teacher ignored them. Anwyn shifted her feet and stretched her neck to the left and then the right. They ran a decent warm up every day in gym class and then moved on to a game or whatever physical test Mr. Graves was required to put the students through. They'd apparently been building up to the mile for the past few months.

Mr. Graves led the class out to the football field encircled with a running track. The class of a dozen students followed behind, few talking. Anwyn was in the middle of the back, not talking to anyone. She usually didn't. She found she usually ran and played harder than most of the girls, which was something she experienced in St. Paul as well. It just meant she didn't connect with the girls while jogging slowly at the back of the pack. So she had yet to connect at all. Missy was in this class, the excitable pillar of school spirit that had shown Anwyn around on her first day. Everyday she's wave at Anwyn and make some attempt to talk to her, but she did the same with everybody. Anwyn didn't think of it as much of a connection.

Mr. Graves barked out instructions, how they'd have to run four laps around the track, how he's shout at times as they went, how they'd need to run each quarter mile in two minutes if they wanted to get a mile under eight minutes, a respectable mile for a bunch of untrained high school students.

The students started to line up and Mr. Graves called Anwyn over.

"I know you just moved here not too long ago," he started. "We've been training for this for a while, so if you want to sit out, it's OK. You can run it again before the end of the year."

"I can do it," Anwyn said.

"You sure?" Mr. Graves asked and she nodded, giving him a stern look. "OK, OK, I had to ask. Mr. Douglas told us all you were new and to take it easy on you. I didn't think a mile would be easy, so I thought I'd offer. But you're right, you always run hard in warm ups. Go get 'em,"

It was the kind of talk that could have ended with a pat on her butt, but that didn't happen in Kansas, no matter how white trash Lynn wanted to make it sound.

Anwyn lined up with the others and Mr. Graves blew his whistle and they all took off. It was still morning, the sun low in the sky and the dew still on the grass. Anwyn breathed in the air and felt the sky and the few puffs of clouds and could smell the freshly cut grass of the football field. The sky stretched in every direction around her, and she realized she loved that feeling. It made the world seem big, seem real, seem physical. It made her feel like she could run across the globe, to the very horizon.

She had broken away from the pack by the first corner and was now towards the front with a few boys in front of her and a couple stragglers behind her stretching back to a small clump of girls that constituted the pack.

Anwyn's thoughts jumped around as they always did when she ran. She thought of Isabelle. She thought of the boys she'd chased, Danny and what may or may not have happened with him at St. Paul Western High School on a Saturday; Nick, the terrifying boy from the library; Dominic Warren, the Kansas boy and victim of the underwear raid; Justin Crenshaw, a one-time crush and maybe nothing more. And maybe so much more. There were others. There were always others. Anwyn could remember other stories, other boys, other glimpses of Isabelle kissing a boy on the front porch before her dad flicked on the porch light and went back to his book with a sly grin.

But no matter how many instances Anwyn thought of, none of them gave her any more insight. None of them explained Isabelle's actions, none of them gave a reason or a pattern or a sense that something was wrong and dark and spiraling out of control.

Isabelle liked boys. What teenage girl didn't? She made a few dumb choices. What teenage girl didn't?

She thought of Oliver's words that simply asking for help could have saved a life. Would it have been that hard to ask? To cry out? Anwyn knew her father would have done anything. It really wouldn't have mattered what issue Isabelle had. Jack would have handled it with resolve and not erupted. Jill might have, but that wouldn't have mattered. Jack would have done what needed to be done.

And that was just it. Suicide didn't seem to want to do whatever needed to be done. It just wanted to escape. Isabelle permanently escaped something that could have easily been dealt with. So what made her think the easier route was so impossible?

The solutions didn't come to Anwyn. They never did come. She ran on, passing another boy and passing the halfway mark. Mr. Graves shouted out the times as they passed, well under the two minutes per quarter mile standard he had suggested, which was purely motivation and guilt for some of the crowd lagging back in the pack.

Anwyn thought about Isabelle's tombstone and the epitaphs she wrote in Ms. Jonas' office. Her dad had asked if she wanted to go back and visit Isabelle's grave before they moved. Anwyn just shook her head and her dad didn't say anything. He expected Anwyn not to want to go, and he went alone. He took a single flower, something he did every few months when he could stand to go. He always mentioned that he was going or gave some small hint to Jill—when she was around—and Anwyn in case either of them wanted to go. They never did.

Graveyards weren't exactly attractive to Anwyn. She wasn't sure how Lynn could handle living near one. And then she remembered her Grandpa Frank visiting a graveyard. It was probably the same one in Carver that Lynn lived next to. Anwyn and Isabelle waited in the car while Grandpa Frank got out—in the rain—and took a flower to a grave. He stood outside in the rain with nothing but a hat keeping the rain off. He came back to the car and they drove off, nobody saying anything.

As she finished the third lap and picked up the pace Anwyn guessed it had probably been Lily's grave. Her Grandpa Frank never said much about the trip, and he never said much about Lily. It was just a hunch, but it made sense.

And now another question nagged at Anwyn: How had Lily died? She tried to remember the story from what her dad had told her, but she just remembered that Lily had died when Jill was 10, and at the time Anwyn couldn't think about anything but the prospect of losing her own mother at 10 and what upheaval that would cause in her family. While Jill didn't die, Anwyn effectively lost her at 15, and it did cause upheaval.

Going into the final corner Anwyn finally shook the thoughts of Isabelle and Lily and death and graves and pushed harder, feeling her heart pounding and the blood coursing and seeing the sky stretch so far behind the finish line where Mr. Graves stood that she wanted to just run straight and not stop.

"6:04!" the gym coach cried in triumph when Anwyn crossed the line. She beat her last time by a good 20 seconds. She slowed to a walk and put her arms behind her head, sucking in the oxygen as fast as she could.

"Nice work, Miler," Mr. Graves said, turning away from his timer. Anwyn was far enough ahead of the next student that he didn't need to keep calling out times. "Another ten seconds and you would have beat Mr. Warren and been the best in the class."

The name clicked. Anwyn looked ahead and not ten feet in front of her, shaking his hands to relax them, was Dominic Warren.

Posted by kevin at 10:26 PM | TrackBack

Chapter 17

(Filed under: The Novel)

On Sunday morning Anwyn got up early again and ran. She ran past the closed post office and the gas station, the light bulbs in its sign still humming even though the sun had already risen. She ran past the train tracks and south to the river.

The air felt clear and warm. It would be hot today. Anwyn's mind raced along with her, following all kinds of rabbit trails. She thought about Catalina's paranoid rantings, about Oliver's vigor defense of Guadalupe, about her Grandpa Frank's warm interactions with the old Hispanic woman. She had never really seen her Grandpa Frank close with a woman before. She had seen him joke around with Mabel at the post office, long before she knew Mabel by name. She'd seen him give the girls working at the Café a hard time. But she'd never really seen her grandfather be affectionate with a woman, in a romantic sense.

She wasn't sure that was what was happening with him and Guadalupe, at least not yet. But the seeds were definitely there. It all made sense since Grandpa Frank's wife had died long before Anwyn was born, before even Anwyn's parents had gotten together. Anwyn had never seen her grandparents interact.

She remembered her name was Lily. Grandma Lily. It sounded so odd. It didn't have the familiar ring of Grandpa Frank. Anwyn's mom never talked about her own mom much. Jill didn't really talk about that kind of thing. Lily had died when Jill was 10. Anwyn remembered her dad telling her that much, but she couldn't remember any of the details.

She had reached the river by now and as usual stopped at the height of the bridge and looked down on the sandy beach and the muddy Arkansas River. She remembered lighting firecrackers with Isabelle and Oliver on the shore. It was another summer trip. Anwyn had probably been 8, Isabelle 11 or 12. They were there during the Fourth of July and Grandpa Frank had picked up a stash of firecrackers. They were illegal in Minnesota, which made them all the more thrilling in Kansas. It was the kind of thing they could only do with their Grandpa Frank. Their Grandpa Miller would have loved it—he probably would have threw the firecrackers close to the girls and watched them scream at each sudden pop. But their Grandma Miller would have squashed those plans. Anwyn wondered if Lily would have done the same.

Grandpa Frank had outfitted each of the girls with a bucket of firecrackers and a torch—the long brown stick that burned slowly so you could use it to light the firecrackers and not mess with matches or a lighter. They joined up with Oliver and walked down to the river to blow stuff up. It was all too violent for Catalina who opted to stay home in a huff. Anwyn had thought Isabelle would back out and stay back with their cousin, but in a rare display Isabelle broke ranks and went with the younger kids.

Oliver would bury his firecrackers in the sand, leaving only the fuse sticking out. He'd light the firecracker, holler "Fire in the hole!" and scamper off, diving behind a tree or a shrub and watching expectantly as the firecracker popped, sending up a little cloud of dust and sand.

Anwyn would just set her firecracker on the ground and then stand as far back as possible while she reached to light it, often flinching and starting to run away before it was lit. Her dad had filled her with horror stories about misusing firecrackers and she didn't want to become another fear-inducing anecdote. Knowing she was only 8, Grandpa Frank had wisely repeated a few of the stories for good measure.

Isabelle didn't care much for the stories. She liked to hold the firecracker in her hand, light it, and then throw it. The dangerous stunt horrified Anwyn, as well as Oliver, and they both urged her not to do it.

Once the fuse had burned too quickly it exploded just a few feet from Isabelle. Her ears rang and her body tensed up. She looked around to make sure Anwyn and Oliver hadn't seen.

"You didn't use all your firecrackers," Isabelle complained when they'd finished and sat back in the sand to watch the river go by. Anwyn shook her head. Her bucket was still half full. She'd even shared a few with Oliver, but she couldn't bring herself to keep blowing things up.

"They're her firecrackers," Oliver pointed out. "She can drown them all in the river if she wants."

Anwyn remembered liking that idea. She wanted to see a few dozen firecrackers floating down the river. But she didn't want to hear what Isabelle would say, the hard time she'd get for wasting half a bucket of firecrackers. In the end they walked back into town and Anwyn handed her half a bucket to Grandpa Frank.

"Didn't use them all?" he asked. "That's OK. You can celebrate your freedom by choosing not to blow 'em up."

Anwyn smiled at her grandfather's words as she remembered that Fourth of July from the top of the bridge. After another moment's recollection, she turned and trotted back to town.

As she passed over the railroad tracks, Anwyn suddenly turned and starting jogging along the railroad bed. She just wanted to veer away from the pavement and the usual route.

Isabelle was always about the most convenient route—to her. Maybe that's why she killed herself. Anwyn was thinking of the time she walked with Isabelle to St. Paul Western High School on a Saturday. It was a week or two into Isabelle's junior year, Anwyn's eighth grade year. Isabelle had some project to work on and had forgotten one of her books in her locker.

"Then you can walk back to school and get it," Jack said. "I'm too busy to drive you up there."

"But Dad," Isabelle whined.

"No. You left the book, it's your problem." Isabelle sauntered off to get her backpack and head back to school.

"What are you looking at?" Isabelle sneered when Anwyn peered into her room.

"Nothing," Anwyn said. "Is your school even going to be open on a Saturday?"

"Somebody will be there," Isabelle said, zipping her bag shut.

"Can I come?"

It took convincing, but Isabelle didn't have much of an argument for leaving Anwyn behind. Besides, she knew from experience that if she didn't relent and let Anwyn tag along that she might just try to follow along anyway, and that could be so much more annoying.

They walked side by side, not saying much. Isabelle walked just fast enough that Anwyn had to hurry to keep up. Whenever they passed people Isabelle would charge ahead, forcing Anwyn to fall back and let the people pass. They reached the school and found the front door open. There were enough sports teams practicing and extracurriculars going on.

Without a word, Isabelle led Anwyn straight to her locker and stuffed the forgotten book in her bag. When she turned to leave she went the opposite direction from where they had come.

"Didn't we come in that way?" Anwyn asked.

"Yep," Isabelle said, not bothering to explain. She led Anwyn past the library and the auditorium. They heard voices ahead and rounded the corner to see an open classroom door and a few students spilled out into the hallway with huge swatches of paper spread across the floor. It was one of the drama classes, working on props and sets for an upcoming production.

"Hey Amy," Isabelle said, waving at a student who just came out of the classroom. The friend waved back and Isabelle sauntered up, Anwyn following reluctantly. Isabelle and Amy started talking immediately, barely pausing for a brief acknowledgement of Anwyn.

They eventually sat down on the floor with the intent of painting a backdrop, but they got more chatting done than anything. They eventually employed Anwyn so they didn't have to worry about her bored fidgeting.

The talk turned to some of the usual crushes of late. Anwyn didn't think much of it, carefully painting the edge of the billboard she was working on. But Isabelle and Amy's tones suddenly hushed. They spoke in whispers and Amy seemed to point down the hall. More whispers. Shock and disagreement from Amy. Stifled laughter.

"I'm going," Isabelle said.

"Seriously?" Amy asked.

"Oh yeah," Isabelle answered, putting down her paintbrush. Anwyn had already painted more than her. "I'll be right back, Anwyn. You stay here with Amy." Amy gave her a fake smile and Isabelle stood up and sauntered off down the hall.

Anwyn didn't bother asking where her sister was going. Amy wouldn't tell her and Isabelle likely wouldn't tell her later. About 20 minutes later Isabelle came back. Her face was red and when Amy questioned her she just nodded and wouldn't say anything more.

She motioned for Anwyn and they left, leaving Amy to the stage sets. They walked off in the direction Isabelle had just returned from. They walked to the back of the school and then circled back to the front, a circuitous route Anwyn only realized when they reached the front door.

Standing by the door waiting for a ride was a boy with long hair pulled back in a ponytail. When he saw Isabelle and Anwyn coming he smiled and waved.

"Hey Isabelle, good to see you again," the boy said.

"Hey yourself, Danny," Isabelle said, giving the boy the flirtiest look Anwyn had ever seen her sister give. Danny's eyes followed the girls as they went out the door and down the sidewalk towards home. Anwyn didn't bother asking, but she guessed Danny was part of Isabelle's little excursion, and probably the whole reason for the trip back to school on a Saturday.

Anwyn turned away from the train tracks, jumped a fence and started across a field that would bring her just behind her house. It wasn't her usual route, but sometimes that had made things more interesting with Isabelle.

Posted by kevin at 8:28 PM | TrackBack

November 20, 2006

Chapter 16

(Filed under: The Novel)

"Hola, Guadalupe," Anwyn said, sitting down next to her Grandpa Frank and across from Oliver and his grandma, Guadalupe.

"Hola chica muy bonita," Guadalupe said, gesturing with her hands.

"Isn't anyone going to talk American?" Grandpa Frank asked with a laugh. "Or do I have to put my brain in gear?"

"Usted es tan obstinado," said Guadalupe. "Pero sabemos que es justo un acto."

"She said I look like a handsome actor, didn't she?" Grandpa Frank asked Oliver, but he didn't wait for an answer. "Yes, yes I know. Ruggedly handsome." He laughed again and Guadalupe just shook her head.

"Aceptable, aceptable, hablaré español," Grandpa Frank said, "Actuando obstinado." And then he turned to Anwyn, winked and said, "I'm so good at acting stubborn, too."

"Eso es major," Guadalupe said with a pleased look. She sat back in her chair and breathed in slowly, then began telling stories about her home country of El Salvador. Grandpa Frank, Anwyn and Oliver all listened intently, even though Oliver had heard the stories many times over and Grandpa Frank had coaxed them out of Guadalupe months ago. But they were fresh for Anwyn and she listened close.

Every few phrases Guadalupe would stop to make sure they still understood and Anwyn would nod for her to continue or ask a question to make sure she was still following. It was better than a Spanish textbook vocabulary lesson.

Oliver just sat back and took it all in, enjoying the familiar tones and rhythms of his grandmother's Spanish, watching the gleam in Grandpa Frank's eye as his brain worked to keep up with the new language, and feeling the warmth of family in the room.

"Adios," Anwyn said again as Oliver helped Guadalupe back to her room and Anwyn and Frank went back to his.

"She's a good woman," Grandpa Frank said as the shuffled down the hallway. "Ella es las buenas mujeres."

"Si," Anwyn said. "I think it's cool you're learning Spanish from her."

"I've got to do something to keep the brain sharp," Grandpa Frank said. "No going soft in my old age."

"Grandpa, you're not going to go soft," Anwyn said. They reached his room and she helped him sit down on the bed.

"Everything else is going soft," Grandpa Frank said, his breathing labored from the walk down the hall. "My mind is about the only thing I've still got going for me."

"Well, you are still ruggedly handsome," Anwyn said as she leaned forward and kissed her grandfather's rough cheek.

"You are too kind, chica," Grandpa Frank said. "Now you go off and enjoy your Saturday like a normal kid. No more hanging out with the old folks."

"I'll see you next Saturday, Grandpa," Anwyn said, pausing at the door.

"Damn kids," Grandpa Frank said. "Can't they see it's time for my nap." He winked at Anwyn again and smiled. She waved and then closed the door behind her. Grandpa Frank eased himself down into bed, and sat there tired and weary, but happy.

Oliver was waiting for Anwyn at the front desk. They walked out the front door together, cheerful but quiet.

Oliver's truck motored into Richmond, slowing for the turn and then crawling along as they came into town. Anwyn always wondered what would happen if someone came cruising through town at top speed. Would anyone notice? Would the gas station attendant fall back in chair and swear, maybe take off his hat like in the movies? Or would the offender be gone before anyone could look up?

"Do you want to stop off at my place and see if Catalina and Mateo are around?" Oliver asked.

"Sure," Anwyn said. "I suppose visiting the old folks on a Saturday doesn't quiet cover my Kansas visitin' allotment." Oliver shook his head.

"Are you ever going to stop ragging on this place?" Oliver asked.

"No," Anwyn replied without hesitation. "I don't think so. That would ruin the fun."

They parked in the dirt driveway and walked in the front door. Mateo was plopped in the middle of the living room floor, lying on his back and lazily kicking his feet in the air. Purple crocheted booties covered his feet, a gift from his great-grandma Guadalupe.

Catalina sat on the couch, keeping one eye on Mateo and another on her homework.

"Anwyn," she said, "It's so good to see you again."

"Hey cousin," Anwyn replied, giving Catalina a hug. Everything always seemed a little more formal with Catalina, a little more dramatic. Anwyn knelt down next to Mateo and said hello, poking his stomach and watching him smile. Then she sat down on the couch next to Catalina and Oliver kicked back on the floor, first trading faces with Mateo and making the chubby little baby laugh. He so easily became the center of attention. It took a few minutes before they could all break away from the baby's trance.

"So how was Grandma?" Catalina asked.

"Bueno," Oliver replied. "Old as dirt, but she still commands the galaxy." Anwyn giggled, thinking of the way Guadalupe had forced her grandfather into speaking Spanish. Catalina nodded, but didn't say anything.

"She said to say hello," Oliver continued. "She misses you and the bebé."

"Of course," Catalina said with a sigh. "You told her I miss her, too?"

"As per your request," Oliver said, a little more stiffly than usual. Catalina just nodded.

"Do you mind checking Mateo and putting him down for a nap?" she asked. Oliver just shook his head and gathered up Mateo in his arms. He started singing a soft song, probably made up as he went along. Anwyn strained to hear.

"Did you see Guadalupe?" Catalina asked.

"Yeah, we talked," Anwyn said. "Oliver and I managed to get her and Grandpa Frank out into the common room and we talked for a little bit."

"In Espanol, I suppose?" Catalina asked.

"Yeah," Anwyn admitted with a smile.

"That's Guadalupe," Catalina said, setting her homework down on the coffee table. "It's her way or the highway."

"Is there a little tension between you two?" Anwyn asked.

"Oh yes," Catalina said. "And you can probably tell that Oliver agrees with her."

Anwyn didn't say anything. She thought Oliver had seemed a little prickly, but she also didn't see what was so bad about Guadalupe. She was a strong, sure women.

"She just doesn't agree with how I want to live my life," Catalina said.

"And how do you want to live your life?" Anwyn asked.

"Well having Mateo about broke her heart," Catalina said. "I wasn't married and his dad, Cody, didn't stick around. I didn't want him to, but that doesn't seem to matter to Guadalupe."

"She's probably just worried about you," Anwyn said, trying to carefully balance the bruised ego of her cousin and the honor of an old woman.

"Oh, she hides it well," Catalina said, her eyes narrowing. "It's all concern about me and what I'll make of myself, but really she's just judging me. It's not like I'm the first. I should have had an abortion. That would have given her something to judge. Oh, that woman. I swear, family can be the worst."

Anwyn had stopped listening once Catalina got started. She remembered Catalina's 'poor me' rants from their childhood. Her step-father Carlos would ask her to shuck the corn and she'd drag Isabelle and Anwyn along with her, complaining all the while that Oliver didn't have to do it, and the sexist work roles, and if her real father—it went on and on. None of it was ever true. Anwyn couldn't be sure this time around. Old grandmothers could have deep judgmental streaks, but it could also be Catalina being herself. Frankly, Anwyn hoped Catalina had matured a bit by now, had made something more of herself.

Oliver closed the door to Mateo's room, not bothering to be as quiet as he could, and came back to the living room. Catalina finished her rant when she heard the door close.

"Anyway, how are you doing in school?" Catalina asked. Anwyn tried not to roll her eyes. She realized Catalina hadn't asked about Grandpa Frank—who was technically her blood relative. Guadalupe was Carlos' father and technically a step-grandmother.

Anwyn endured Catalina's small talk and then made an excuse to escape. Oliver offered to drive her home and for once Anwyn took him up on it.

"She hasn't changed, has she?" Oliver asked as they pulled away.

"Nope," Anwyn said, shaking her head and watching their house go by.

"I suppose she gave you the rant about my Guadalupe?" Oliver asked.

"Yeah," Anwyn said. "It's not true, is it? Guadalupe isn't like that?"

"No," Oliver said, shaking his head for emphasis. He stared straight ahead as he drove and didn't glance over to Anwyn. "Grandma was definitely concerned when Catalina got pregnant. Heck, everybody was. She might have been disappointed to see Catalina raising Mateo by herself, but that's only because she's seen so many in our family try to do that, and fail."

Anwyn just sat in silence, taking it in, trying to sort fact from opinion from hurt feeling.

"I love my hermana," Oliver said, "But sometimes she's full of herself."

Posted by kevin at 9:35 PM | TrackBack

November 14, 2006

Chapter 15

(Filed under: The Novel)

Anwyn remembered that the trip to the library became even more interesting after she spotted Isabelle and the boy from the bus making out. After Nick spotted Anwyn spying she ran off and Isabelle did the same, stalking away from Nick.

Anwyn showed up at the front entrance 20 minutes early, not wanting to run into Nick in some far-flung corner of the library. Isabelle showed up in exactly two hours, completely unaware that her sister had witnessed the entire scene with Nick.

"Ready to go?" Isabelle asked, full of pep and smiles. Anwyn just nodded. The two started out the door, walking side by side.

"Did you get all the info you needed?" Isabelle asked.

"Yep," Anwyn said. "How about you?" Of course she knew the answer.

"I got enough," Isabelle said. "I may need to do some more later, but this will get me started." Anwyn didn't say anything.

There was a drug store across from the bus stop and while they waited Isabelle offered to go inside and get them something to drink.

"You want anything?" Isabelle asked, as if she always bought her sister something.

"Sure," Anwyn said. Isabelle popped into the store and came out with two soda pops. She handed one to Anwyn and looked down the street to see if the bus was coming yet.

"Thanks," Anwyn said, a little baffled. It was as if Isabelle were trying assuage her guilt. Isabelle just nodded. The ride home was quiet, no incredible sister bonding, but the drink had been unexpected and odd. It always went that way back and forth with Isabelle. Sometimes she was nice and sometimes she was something else.

Sitting in her bedroom in Richmond, Kansas—which used to be her dad's bedroom when he was a child—Anwyn realized how often Isabelle had chance encounters with strange guys that turned into more than a simple conversation. But that's the way she was. She always pranced around getting the attention of guys and then flirted with them mercilessly. Isabelle never had a steady, consistent boyfriend. She just bounced around from fling to fling, date to date, guy to guy.

Oliver was probably right. One random guy from four years ago probably wouldn't know anything about Isabelle. There had probably been so many random guys—more than Anwyn had spied on and could ever know about. It was doubtful any of them knew Isabelle any better than Anwyn did.

She tried to find reassurance in this fact, but it didn't mean a lot. The question of why still nagged at her.

The rest of that week at school went by in a blur and Anwyn found herself eating cereal on Saturday morning after another early run. Her dad had just staggered out of bed and was now in the shower. Oliver would be by soon to pick up Anwyn so they could go visit Grandpa Frank and Guadalupe.

She set her milky bowl in the sink and went outside to wait on the porch. It was warmer today, much warmer than when she had gone running. It was one of those warm spring days when everyone back in St. Paul would break out their shorts and celebrate the departure of winter, even if it was only in the high 40s.

Oliver finally pulled up in his rusty pickup.

"Hola, chica," he said, leaning over and unlatching the door for her.

"Hey, Oliver," she said. The truck lumbered out of the driveway and towards the highway and the town of Truss.

It was a quiet ride, a few pleasantries and gentle ribbings exchanged, and then they drove in silence most of the way. The pickup pulled up in front of the nursing home and shuddered to a stop.

"You ever worry if this truck is going to just up and die on the side of the road?" Anwyn asked as they slammed the doors shut and walked inside.

"Every day," Oliver answered.

The nurse manning the station by the door said both Guadalupe and Grandpa Frank were still in their rooms and hadn't yet come out into the common area. She told Anwyn and Oliver they welcome to go visit. If they could manage to coax their grandparents out of their rooms that'd be even better.

"We're talking about Grandpa Frank, right?" Anwyn said.

"Oh, we know all about his stubborn tendencies," the nurse said. "But sometimes the codgy ones will listen to their granddaughters."

"I'll see what I can do," Anwyn said. Then her and Oliver went their separate ways.

Anwyn knocked on her grandfather's door and slowly pushed it open.

"C'mon in, c'mon in," Grandpa Frank called from his chair in the corner. He was wearing the same faded bathrobe and wrapped in the same blanket as last week. He set a different book aside as she walked in. "Ah, it's good to see you, girl,"

"Hi Grandpa Frank," Anwyn said, leaning over to give him a hug and kiss his sandpaper cheek. She sat down in a chair opposite him.

"So how have you been?" she asked.

"I'm fine, forget about me," Grandpa Frank said, adjusting his blanket and pulling the bathrobe a little tighter. "How have you been? Are they teaching you anything at that high school?"

"I do OK," Anwyn said. "I'm in mostly sophomore classes, so it's challenging enough."

"Good, good," Grandpa Frank said. "So they have a few years before you outgrow them and they don't know what to do with you but let you teach the classes."

"I doubt that will happen, Grandpa."

"You never know," he said, nodding his head as he thought about it. "If you're in sophomore classes as a freshman, what's going to happen when you're a senior? They'll have no choice but to graduate you early." Anwyn just smiled and looked at the floor.

"How's your dad doing?"

"He's good," Anwyn said. "Working hard as usual."

"Good, good," Grandpa Frank said. "Your father always was a hard worker. I never quite understand what he works hard at, but he seems to be good at it. He doesn't work too hard, does he?"

"No, he usually quits by 5," Anwyn said, "Just in time for dinner." Grandpa Frank smirked.

"Dinner?" he said. "You eat dinner awfully late." He smiled at her, enjoying his role as kidder.

"Supper," Anwyn corrected herself. "Just in time for supper. Sorry Grandpa, I've only been here a few weeks—my vocabulary hasn't had time to adjust."

"You'll catch up," he said. He always loved to chide Anwyn and Isabelle about the differences in language between Kansas and anywhere else. They'd ask about dinner in late afternoon and Grandpa Frank would give them the strangest look and ask if they weren't sitting at the table with him eating cold turkey sandwiches. They'd roll their eyes and sigh and plead and try to convince him that supper and dinner were interchangeable, but he refused to budge, insisting that the noon time meal was dinner. They didn't seem to have lunch in Kansas, though Anwyn argued they should add it and have four meals.

"Good—your father not working late that is—he's a hard worker but he also knows what's important. I'm afraid that was your mom's problem. She's also a hard worker—too hard, I'm afraid." Anwyn nodded. She always remembered her mom bring her work home and staying up late, papers and file folders consuming the kitchen table. If her or Isabelle tried to sit down and chat while they had a snack their mom would shoo them away, muttering about KoolAid stains on her papers.

"Mom called earlier this week." Grandpa Frank just waited for her to continue. "I haven't talked to her since before we moved. She sounded happy—talking a mile a minute about New York and her new clients at the firm and how it was going. Sounds like she's still working too hard."

"That sounds like your mother," Grandpa Frank said. "Always jabbering faster than you can listen and always working too hard. I'm worried about her. No matter how far you run away or how you try to busy yourself your problems will always find you."

Now it was Anwyn's turn to nod and wait for her grandfather to continue. It felt weird to hear her Grandpa talk about her mom like this. It was a perspective she didn't normally see, the rough patches in her mother's life.

"What your sister did was a time bomb for your family, that's for sure. Something like that is hard for everyone to recover from, no doubt. But at some point you have to deal with it. You can't just runaway. One of these days it will come back to haunt your mother, you'll see. It will probably be too late, but it will haunt her just the same."

"But what about you," Grandpa Frank said, turning now to Anwyn. "Have you been able to cope with Isabelle's suicide?"

"I guess," Anwyn shrugged. She wasn't used to talking about it so suddenly and so openly. It felt awkward, like the last time she visited and her Grandpa just blurted out his sympathies. But it also felt reassuring in a small way.

"It's OK," Grandpa Frank said, "It's rarely something you feel sure about. I reckon you'll have questions and doubts about it for much of your life."

"That's not very reassuring," Anwyn said, raising her eyebrows but still managing a smile.

"No, it's not," he said. "But it is honest." He rubbed his scruffy chin and looked up to the ceiling, suddenly lost in thought. Anwyn readjusted in the chair, pulling her feet up on to the edge of the seat and wrapping her arms around her knees. She looked back at her grandfather and he was still lost in thought, contemplating what could possibly be reassuring and honest.

Posted by kevin at 8:12 PM | TrackBack

November 13, 2006

Chapter 14

(Filed under: The Novel)

Anwyn climbed aboard the school bus after her final class and slumped into a seat halfway back. She sat next to the window and just stared out.

She remembered when Isabelle started high school. She was in a panic about everything—her classes, her friends, what to wear. Even something as simple as breakfast set her off into a panic.

On the first day of school she was flying around trying to find her new clothes and her new school bag. Anwyn and her father sat at the table having breakfast, like they did every day. Anwyn would have to start getting ready soon, but she didn't have to leave for another 45 minutes. She had plenty of time. Isabelle, on the other hand, had to leave in ten minutes. And she wasn't dressed yet.

"Isabelle," Jack called out. "Did you get some breakfast?" Anwyn grinned, but didn't look up from her cereal bowl. Isabelle never ate breakfast.

"Dad!" came the shriek from upstairs. Jack just chuckled.

"It does a body good," he called out again, this time breaking into laughter.

"You're bad," Anwyn said, trying not to laugh herself.

"Yeah, I suppose I am," Jack said. "Maybe I should help her out." He set his bowl and glass on the counter and walked towards the stairs. Then Isabelle came flying down the stairs.

"What are you looking for?" Jack asked.

"Nothing," Isabelle said. "I'm fine."

"Well, it sure looks that way," Jack said. "Let me help you out."

"No, Dad, I've got it under control," Isabelle said. "I'm in high school now." That had been her refrain for the summer. She was in high school now and she could handle it. She was in high school and she didn't need help. She was in high school now and she didn't lower herself to giggling with Anwyn or going to the library with her or any of the things they used to do. Though every now and then she'd slip and let out a girlish giggle or do something nice with Anwyn before realizing it and trying to be extra cold to make up for it.

Isabelle had changed her outfit one final time and now was trying to track down her backpack. She found it, crammed her notebooks and folders into it and took off out the front door. Anwyn just shook her head and kept eating her cereal. She had learned over the summer not to worry about it. Jack sighed and watched his firstborn march defiantly down the sidewalk towards the bus stop. She didn't need help anymore. She was above it.

When Anwyn came home from her first day of sixth grade, Isabelle was of course already home. She had claimed the TV and was stretched out on the couch watching reruns of The Cosby Show.

"Hey," Anwyn said. She sat down in the chair opposite Isabelle. Isabelle just grunted, hardly turning to look at her sister. They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching Cliff Huxtable talk about the quality of chocolate cake.

"So," Anwyn said, "How was high school?"

"It was fine," Isabelle said. Anwyn didn't say anything. These were the same lame answers she'd give her parents when they asked her later that evening. Anwyn stood up to leave her sister to the TV.

"How was middle school?" Isabelle asked. Anwyn stopped.

"What?" she asked.

"How was middle school?" Isabelle repeated. Anwyn sat down on the arm of the chair.

"It was kind of fun, actually," Anwyn said.

"I liked having different classes and different teachers all day long," Isabelle said, turning away from the Huxtable family.

"Yeah, that's pretty cool," Anwyn said.

"Who do you have for science?"

"Mr Johnson," Anwyn answered.

"Ooh, he's good," Isabelle said. "Just be sure to study hard for his tests." It was the old Isabelle, suddenly returning to be nice to her little sister.

"Any cute boys in your classes?" Isabelle asked. And there it was. Anwyn knew it wouldn't last long. There was the mature Isabelle, beginning to emerge.

Anwyn just shrugged. She had never been as eager to share the Justin Crenshaws of her life with her sister. And Isabelle knew that.

Isabelle turned back to the TV and Anwyn went to her room. Later that evening their parents would ask about school and Isabelle would shrug and say it was fine.

The bus stopped in the middle of Richmond and Anwyn filed off the bus with her other classmates and started walking home. She remembered Isabelle's momentary burst of kindness on her first day of high school. That's often how her experiences with her sister over the next, final few years would go. Excessive surliness and then suddenly, unexpectedly something kind and decent. It wasn't a precursor to suicide though, it was just being a teenager.

Anwyn scratched Charlie under the collar when she walked in, the dog turning and leaning into it. Anwyn gave him a final pat on the head and stuck her head into her dad's office.

"Hey dad," she said. Jack just turned and waved, pointing to his earpiece perched on the side of his head. Anwyn liked to call him a cyborg when he wore it. He was on a business call. He mouthed a "how was school" and raised his eyebrows like a question. Anwyn gave him the thumbs-up and he nodded.

"How's the call?" Anwyn asked softly. Jack rolled his eyes and then pretended to fall asleep.

"No, it's a database issue," Jack suddenly said, jolting back awake. He paused and gave Anwyn a look. He shrugged and continued, "Yeah, I'm sure. I've checked it twice." Anwyn grabbed a snack from the fridge and headed up to her room.

The floor of Anwyn's room was no longer completely consumed with boxes. There were only a few strays leftover, shoved off in a corner. They'd probably stay there for months. Anwyn had never moved before, at least not that she remembered, so she had no idea how it was done. She didn't realize that if she didn't unpack the boxes now she'd never do it.

She sat down on her bed and remembered another day when Isabelle's niceness had poked through, only to suddenly disappear again. They had taken the bus downtown to the big library. Their mom wasn't thrilled with the idea, but they both had big projects to work on and it seemed like the easiest way for both of them to get research done and not to have to worry about parking downtown.

"Mom, I’m 15," Isabelle kept saying. "I'm not a child." That made Anwyn 11 and not a child either, but Isabelle thought otherwise.

"Well then you can take your sister," Jill said.

"But mom," Isabelle intoned.

"But what?" Jill asked. "You both need to go to the library. You're old enough and responsible enough to take the bus as you've so persuasively argued. That means you're also old enough and responsible enough to take your sister and keep an eye on her."

"Fine." Isabelle huffed, exasperated. Anwyn didn't say anything. She didn't think she needed Isabelle keeping an eye on her, but she also didn't want to take the bus alone.

"Let's go," Isabelle muttered. They walked out the door together, but hardly together. Isabelle walked in front, with her quick, rushed strides. Anwyn struggled to keep up, wishing Isabelle wouldn't get so annoyed so quickly.

The bus pulled up to the stop and Anwyn followed Isabelle on. Isabelle paid for both of them, making a big deal of it and telling the driver she was also paying for her little sister. Anwyn resented the emphasis she put on 'little.' Isabelle led them to the back of the bus, and motioned for Anwyn to take the corner seat in the back. It was actually the seat Anwyn preferred, so she didn't complain about being bossed around. From that seat you could see the entire bus, you had a clear view out the window, and—best of all—you could put your feet up behind the seat in front that face the center of the bus.

Isabelle sat down next to her sister, but also next to an older, rough looking boy. Anwyn didn't realize it at the time, but Isabelle spotted the guy when she got on the bus and planned to sit next to him, forcing Anwyn to take the window seat so she could sit next to the boy.

Before she knew it, Anwyn realized her sister had struck up a conversation with the boy sitting next to her. She didn't even realize it had happened and afterwards wished she had. She was never good at starting conversations with total strangers and always wondered the best way to start—without doing something completely goofy like commenting on a T-shirt or making inane comments about the weather. Anwyn imagined her sister had better methods.

But there they were, Isabelle and this boy, talking. He had to be older, maybe a senior, maybe in college. Maybe just a drop out. They were talking about music now, bands Anwyn had never heard of and she wasn't entirely sure Isabelle had heard of them either.

It turned out that the boy was going to the library, too. At least that's what he said. Anwyn wasn't so sure. It didn't look like he needed to go to the library. He didn't have a bag or a notebook or anything. The bus stopped and the three of them stood up and went out the rear door of the bus. Isabelle and the boy—his name turned out to be Nick—walked in front, laughing and carrying, while Anwyn followed a few paces behind, clutching her notebook and looking at the pavement.

Her sister was flirting, with abandon, with a total stranger. Her parents would be pissed. But Anwyn wouldn't say anything. As much as she wanted to turn her sister in and watch her get busted, she also didn't want to tattle. She also knew that Isabelle tended to get herself in trouble. Anwyn had realized long ago that she didn't have to take the heat for getting Isabelle in trouble. She'd do it herself.

They walked in the big doors and Isabelle and the boy turned to the right and started heading towards the stacks. But then Isabelle said something, the boy stopped, and she turned and walked back to Anwyn.

"Meet me here, at the entrance, in two hours," she said, turning to walk away almost immediately.

"What?" Anwyn said. "Where are you going?"

"Nick and I are going to study and we don’t need you bothering us," Isabelle said. "You've been here before, you know what you're doing."

"What do you mean, you and Nick?" Anwyn asked, pushing the edge.

"What about it?" Isabelle asked. "Do you need me to take you by the hand and help you with your homework?"

"No," Anwyn said, defiance in her voice.

"Look, you're smart, you can do this yourself," Isabelle said, trying a different track. "Mom should have let you come by yourself. So what do you care what I do?"

"Fine," Anwyn said. "Two hours?"

"That's my sister," Isabelle said, pinching Anwyn's cheek and turning to rejoin Nick. Anwyn locked eyes with Nick who had been staring at her. He had his head tilted back slightly, like he was trying to look down on her even more than his height allowed. He gave Isabelle a smile—a sleazy smile, Anwyn thought—and the two walked together into the history section.

Isabelle looked back at the last second, looking back to reassure Anwyn. But Anwyn didn't see the usual confidence and strength in her sister's eyes. She saw the eyes of a scared little girl.

But Anwyn just shook her head and got to work. She went up the marble staircase to the third floor and started her research. She was doing a history project on St. Paul and asked the librarian to pull a few local interest books and documents. She holed up at a table with a pile of books and flipped pages and scribbled notes.

She worked for a solid hour, writing down names and dates and interesting tidbits. She took a detour reading about the origins of Mississippi Boulevard and East River Parkway, the roads that followed the Mississippi River on each side of the bluffs, but otherwise stuck to her work and finished earlier than she thought she would.

Anwyn packed up her notes and returned the books to the librarian with a polite 'thank you.'

Now she had an hour to kill. She was in one of the most amazing and interesting buildings in St. Paul. The library building was completed in 1917 and had ancient marble arches and rich woodwork. It was an architectural marvel.

But marveling at an old building isn't how Anwyn chose to spend her remaining hour. Instead she would marvel at her sister.

Anwyn wondered around the third floor, went down to the children's section and then back up to the second floor. She looked down every aisle of books, peeked in semi-private caddies and nooks where researchers were pouring over stacks and stacks of books. She checked the bathrooms and the café on the first floor.

Finally she went in one of the newer side rooms. Here the ancient building suddenly felt modern. It was as if an extra floor had been wedged into the building to accommodate more books and all the architecture flourishes were forgotten in an effort to cram more books into a tiny space.

Here the shelves were extremely narrow. There was hardly enough room to turn around. This room was also empty. Anwyn quietly tiptoed down the center aisle, pausing to peer down each row as she went.

And then she heard it. Muffled giggling, whispers, hushing and more giggling. It was coming from the corner. Anwyn came to the sixth row from the end and snuck down the row. Each shelf had slats where you could see through to the next row, and the row beyond that and across the room. Except where books were too tall and blocked the view. The result was that you could just barely find a sight line to peer all the way across the room. Peering six rows over was a little easier, but it was still a challenge.

Within six feet of the end of the row Anwyn got down on the floor and peered through the rows into the corner. She saw two pairs of legs—her sister and Nick. She sat up on her knees and tried to peer through a few shelves higher, but her view was blocked. She went up another shelf and could see Nick and Isabelle at waist level. They were standing close together. Then farther apart, then back together—depending on whether they were whispering or giggling or both.

Anwyn slowly moved up another shelf, carefully peeking to make sure she couldn't be seen. This time she could see higher. Isabelle's back was to her and Nick was facing her. His arms were around her.

Anwyn dared to go another shelf higher and this time she could see their faces, at least Nick's face—she saw the back of Isabelle's head. Nick's eyes were glued to Isabelle and he seemed oblivious to anything else. Isabelle didn't have the same concentration and she kept turning her head at every little sound. When she turned Anwyn could see her face, and she had the same scared, lost look in her eyes. She tried to hide it, to cover it up with her usual confidence and air of superiority, but she couldn't. Even Nick could see the fear in her eyes.

And that's when he kissed her. He moved in, his mouth opening in a sneer and he kissed Isabelle, not letting her turn to check the aisle for the umpteenth time.

Anwyn's eyes widened and she was about to turn away when Nick opened his eyes and stared straight at Anwyn, his lips still locked with Isabelle's. Anwyn couldn't move. She didn't know what to do, whether she should run or act like she hadn't seen anything. But it was too late for that now and she was too scared to run. Nick didn't seem to react either, he just kept staring.

And then Isabelle finally turned and pulled away from Nick, who broke his gaze at Anwyn. She took her chance and turned and ran, not caring how loud she was anymore. Isabelle didn't notice the footsteps but pushed Nick away. She glared at him and then turned and stalked off.

Nick watched her go, not saying anything.

Posted by kevin at 10:09 PM | TrackBack

November 12, 2006

Chapter 13

(Filed under: The Novel)

The underwear raid, as they came to call it, had happened four years before Isabelle's death. When they got back to the tent Isabelle wouldn't tell them how she'd done it.

She wouldn't play truth or dare anymore, which was how Anwyn expected to find out what had happened. But Isabelle just laid back and looked at the stars and quiet slowly pervaded the tent and they all went to sleep.

As Anwyn walked home from babysitting with Oliver she still remembered that night and still didn't know how Isabelle had walked away from Dominic Warren's house with a pair of his underwear.

And now that she thought about it, Dominic Warren was a senior at Howe High School.

She didn't know him. She only knew him from a few childhood memories from summers spent in Kansas. Actually a single summer spent in Kansas, since that was the last time Anwyn and Isabelle had come to Kansas for the summer. The next year Isabelle got a job and it just seemed like too much.

The next day at school she decided to ask Lynn in biology.

"Do you know Dominic Warren?"

"Whoa," Lynn said, picking her head up from her desk. "Somebody's got an agenda this morning."

"Do you know him?" Anwyn asked again.

"There are only 265 students in this school," Lynn said. "Of course I know of him. But I couldn't introduce your or anything. Why?"

Anwyn sat down, letting her bag fall to the floor next to her desk.

"I want to talk to him," she said.

"And that's your big plan for the day?" Lynn asked. "What happened to coming in and sitting down and we could grunt at each other, maybe compare notes on Mr. Craven's hippy tendencies."

"Sorry, I'm just complex," Anwyn said.

"Ooh, big city girl," Lynn said, waving her hands in mock alarm.

"Well, if you must know, I'd like to inquire about a pair of underwear," Anwyn said with a devilish grin.

"Whoa," Lynn said, doing her best Joey Lawrence impersonation. "I don't think I need to know anything more about that." Anwyn laughed. She remembered watching Blossom back in the day. Isabelle had a crush on Joey Lawrence, perhaps in the pre-Justin Crenshaw crush days.

"Or I need to know everything about it," Lynn said, giving Anwyn a raised eyebrow. Anwyn leaned towards Lynn.

"It's a long story," Anwyn warned.

"Aren't they all?" Lynn asked.

"Well, I'm not sure if I can get into it now," Anwyn said.

"You can't just leave me hanging," Lynn said. "C'mon, how many stories do I get involving seniors and underwear? OK, more than I'd like to admit, but you still can't leave me hanging."

"It may be nothing," Anwyn said.

"And it may not be," Lynn insisted.

"At lunch," Anwyn said and turned back to her desk. Mr. Craven was about to start class.

At lunch Anwyn and Lynn holed up at a table in the corner so they could talk alone. Their usual table of friends gave them an odd look, but they ignored it.

"OK, my sister and I used to spend summers in Kansas and one summer we played truth and dare late at night with Oliver and his sister."

"Familial bonding. Nice," Lynn said.

"Catalina dared Isabelle to steal Dominic's underwear—and she did it," Anwyn said.

"How?" Lynn asked.

"That's just it," Anwyn said. "I don't know."

"That is steamy," Lynn said. "Though why the sudden interest?"

"There's more," Anwyn continued. She told Lynn the story about seeing Isabelle and Dominic kissing by the river, how her and Oliver had been watching and took off before they saw what happened.

"You and Oliver, huh?" Lynn asked. "I thought you guys had a history. Espionage and intrigue, apparently."

"And there's more," Anwyn said, looking down at her sandwich, which she really wasn't planning to eat.

"More?" Lynn asked incredulously. "Seriously, girl, you have some juicy stories."

"Isabelle is dead," Anwyn said, just throwing it out there. "She killed herself last August. That's why my parents got divorced. That's why my dad and I moved back to Kansas."

Anwyn had been sticking with the divorce story, not wanting to be the suicide girl's sister. She dealt with that in St. Paul and some people walked on eggshells around her. It wasn't worth it.

Lynn didn't say anything. She put her own sandwich down, and she wouldn't pick it up again.

"You're serious?" Lynn finally asked. Anwyn nodded. Lynn swore. "That's not a steamy story anymore." Anwyn nodded again. "So what do you want from Dominic?"

"I don't know," Anwyn said. "I never knew my sister that well to begin with, but things like the whole Dominic episode and of course her suicide really throw me for a loop. I want to know why she did it."

"You think Dominic and his underwear have something to do with it?" Lynn asked. "That's quite a pair of underwear." Anwyn smiled and looked down at her uneaten sandwich.

"It sounds stupid, doesn't it?" she asked.

"You want me to be honest or supportive?" Lynn asked with a grin. "Honestly, yeah it does seem kind of crazy. I don't think you're going to discover anything. But if you want me to be supportive gal, yeah, sure, let's go track Dominic down."

Then Anwyn spotted Oliver walking into the lunch room and she flagged him down and waved him over.

"Oliver, what do you know about Dominic Warren?" Anwyn asked. Oliver sighed and sat down at the table.

"Hola to you, too," Oliver said. "What's this all about?" He had a pretty good idea.

"Remember the night we slept in the tent in your yard and played truth or dare? We went to Dominic's house and—"

"Yeah, I think I remember sneaking across town after midnight," Oliver said. "What about it?"

"I think Dominic might know a side of Isabelle we never knew," Anwyn explained. "I just want to know if that side of Isabelle explains anything."

Oliver exchanged glances with Lynn.

"That was four years before Isabelle killed herself," Oliver said. "Do you really think it means anything?"

Anwyn exhaled slowly. Her sandwich still sat in front of her, uneaten and not looking especially appetizing. She looked at Lynn and then at Oliver.

"I'm sounding kind of obsessive, aren't I?" she asked. She watched Lynn look at Oliver and then back to her. Lynn nodded slowly.

"Forget about it," Anwyn said. "This is crazy. That was four years ago. It wouldn't mean anything."

"We can ask Dominic, if you want," Lynn said. Oliver didn't say anything. He had knew who Dominic was. For years he lived three blocks from him. If he had wanted to know what happened at the river or that night while they played truth or dare he could have asked. But he also knew Dominic was just as likely to tell them as Isabelle had been. Some things are meant to be secret. And some secrets die with people.

"No," Anwyn said. "I'm sounding crazy. Let's just forget about it." She pushed her sandwich away and sat there quietly. Oliver didn't know what to say. Lynn did.

"You know what this, don't you?" Lynn asked. Anwyn shook her head. "It's the biggest, craziest, story I've heard since moving to Kansas. Nothing happens here. This is amazing."

"Technically," Oliver said, "The suicide happened in St. Paul."

"Shut up," Lynn said, shooting him a look. "The make-out session at the river—OK, that happens all the time—but the underwear swap, and now you're back where it all happened. You and Isabelle are intimately tied to Kansas. I claim the story as one of our own stories of weirdness."

"I feel so honored," Anwyn said.

"You should be," Lynn said. "I don't have cable—I've got to work with what I have."

"And it wasn't an underwear swap," Anwyn said. "Isabelle just stole Dominic's underwear."

"That's what you think," Lynn said. "Why would a boy just hand over a pair of underwear? Don't you think he came up with some sort of trade? I bet they swapped underwear."

"Who swaps underwear?" Oliver asked.

"Did you check when she came back?" Lynn asked. "Was she wearing underwear? Or was she going commando style?"

"I didn't check!" Oliver said, his eyes getting wider and starting to feel a little weird.

"Nobody checked," Anwyn said. "We tried to pull it out of her when we got back to the tent, but she shut us down. No one thought of pantsing her to find out."

"Well, you should have," Lynn said. "We wouldn't be having this conversation if you had the forethought to just pants her back then."

"Because that's one of the memories I want of my dead sister," Anwyn said, "The time we pantsed her."

"Well, you couldn't have been worried about that at the time," Lynn pointed out.

"That's just it," Anwyn said. "Nobody expected what she did. There weren't any warning signs. There was no discernable reason." Now the table became quiet. Their lunches sat there uneaten and the minutes slowly ticked by. Before they realized it the bell rang and lunch was over.

Posted by kevin at 3:54 PM | TrackBack

November 11, 2006

Chapter 12

(Filed under: The Novel)

Oliver and Anwyn closed the door letting Mateo drift off to sleep to the hum of the music.

"It is a terrible thing," Anwyn said. "Just asking for help. It's not even that hard."

"I guess it depends on your circumstances—what you're trying to escape from," Oliver said. They walked into the living room and sat down on the couch. "In some cultures suicide can be considered honorable."

"Yeah," said Anwyn, "And Catholics say if you commit suicide you go straight to hell. Not exactly much comfort for the survivors."

"Good thing you're not Catholic." Anwyn just back her head spinning and thinking.

"This is really bothering you, isn't it?" Oliver asked.

"I do think about it a lot," said Anwyn. "It's not like I’m slipping into depression of thinking about following in Isabelle's footsteps, I just wish I could understand it all."

"I blame it on our family," Oliver said. "We're a pretty messed up bunch."

"How so?" Anwyn asked.

"Well, we've got death," Oliver started. "That can always mess people up. There's Isabelle, of course, and Grandma Nelson died along time ago. There's the train wreck of Robert Nelson, Caterina's father. He took off before she was even born. History repeated itself with Caterina. Your parents are divorced. Mine are remarried, making for a blended family of half-siblings. Heck, I don't even live with my parents anymore, and I'm not even 16."

"And don't forget my racist, alcoholic Grandpa Miller," Anwyn added.

"Hey, that's your side of the family," Oliver said. "I've got no ties."

"You technically have no ties to my family anyway," Anwyn said. Oliver shrugged.

"I have a feeling most people are pretty messed up like this," Oliver said.

"Am I messed up?" Anwyn asked.

"You are preoccupied with suicide," Oliver said with a smirk. "That's pretty weird."

"You'd be preoccupied with it too if your sister killed herself," Anwyn fired back.

"No, I'd be pissed," Oliver said. "And too busy changing diapers to worry about the why."

"I should probably get going," Anwyn said, standing up and heading towards the door. "You can manage now that Mateo's asleep?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine," Oliver said. "You sure you want to go already? I could talk for another few hours about suicide."

Anwyn smiled. Oliver always did fine a way to make her smile.

"Yeah, I've got homework to do." This was only partially true. Oliver followed her to the door and held it open while she walked out. It was dark now, colder, but not enough to complain about. Anwyn turned and waved, and she headed home.

The night seemed darker and yet not darker than the city. It felt darker because there weren't light on everywhere. The lack of light pollution also meant the stars shone brightly, a blanket of them, stretched as far as they eye could see.

Anwyn remembered one night when her, Oliver, Catalina and Isabelle stayed out late to watch the stars. They were sleeping over at Aunt Alejandra and Carlos's house, and the kids had talked their way into sleeping outside in the backyard. Oliver set up the tent with the girls' help and the four laid out their sleeping bags, all lined up in a row inside the tent.

They had flashlights and a little lantern and stayed up late telling stories and jokes. They played truth or dare. Isabelle always said truth and Oliver always said dare.

They dared Oliver to do all sorts of goofy physical stunts, like jumping the neighbors' fence and staying in the yard for a full minute or running around the house in nothing but his underwear. Once Catalina and Isabelle ganged up and dared Oliver to kiss Anwyn. She argued that they were cousins and it'd be illegal, but Isabelle pointed out that they weren't really cousins.

Oliver didn't speak up, partially because it was late and dark and somehow that always fuels boys to do stupid things they wouldn't do during the calm and reason of the daylight, but also because as a 10-year-old boy kissing a girl was an intriguing notion.

"Then you kiss him," Anwyn had said. And she did.

She turned to Oliver. "I dare you to kiss me," Isabelle said. Catalina giggled. Anwyn's mouth hung open. Oliver tried to play it cool. Isabelle sat up and leaned forward slightly, her lips pouting and her eyes closed. She had the princess role down and she milked it.

Oliver sat up and suddenly he didn't look as cool. He looked a little nervous and wasn't sure if kissing a girl would be as intriguing as he thought, especially with two others watching.

He leaned forward to kiss Isabelle on the lips. Anwyn and Catalina both leaned in, though Catalina was about to explode in giggles and Anwyn still looked shocked. Isabelle was frozen in position, waiting for the dared kiss.

Oliver slowly moved in, and then quickly planted a kiss on Isabelle's cheek. He sat back down as quickly as he could. Catalina erupted. Anwyn's expression didn't change. Isabelle relaxed and opened her eyes. She thought for a moment and then smiled. "Not bad."

Catalina's alliance with Isabelle to get Oliver to kiss Anwyn had failed, so now Catalina turned on Isabelle.

"Isabelle," she said, relishing the surprise that registered on her face. Up until then they had always targeted the Oliver and Anwyn. "Truth or dare?"

"Truth," Isabelle said, as always.

"Have you ever done it with a boy?" Catalina asked. This time Anwyn cracked up. Oliver rolled his eyes. Isabelle mulled her options.

"Dare," she said after a moment's consideration. Anwyn stopped laughing. Oliver's mouth fell open. Even Catalina was surprised. Isabelle always went with truth, happy to lay out any detail. Anwyn and Oliver exchanged looks. It was only a few days before that they'd seen Isabelle kissing the boy with the hat down by the river. Later they would talk, debating whether or not anything had actually happened, whether or not Isabelle was just trying to create mystery and make everyone thing she was older and more mature than she was.

"Maybe she saw us," Oliver had said to Anwyn. "Maybe she knows we were watching and so she wants to play up what might have happened, when really nothing happened at all."

"But if she wanted us to think she was having sex," Anwyn said, "Why wouldn't she just say so? She didn't shy away from anything else when we played truth or dare." And it was true. Isabelle had told them she had a crush on Justin Crenshaw. She told them she had once cheated on a spelling test. She told them she kept a diary hidden in the vent—and she said that truth with eyes blazing at Anwyn, warning her to not even try sneaking a look at it.

Now Catalina had to come up with a dare, and after watching her brother do the stupidest, childish things it was time to do something serious. And she said it without hesitation: "I dare you to steal Dominic Warren's underwear."

Simply saying underwear after a certain hour was sure to cause hysterics, and it did. Oliver and Anwyn cracked up, rolling around on the floor of the tent. Even Isabelle smiled. After they finally settled down, Anwyn asked who Dominic Warren was.

"He was a boy who came down to the river today while you guys were swimming," Catalina explained.

"We didn't see any boy," Anwyn said, trying to play dumb.

"You guys were south of the bridge or something," Catalina said. "But he was there. Isabelle knows who he is." Now it was Isabelle's turn to be embarrassed. But this was the granddaddy of dares. This wasn't running around the house in your underwear or hanging upside down from the pole of the clothesline. This dare involved some serious work.

"How can I even do that?" Isabelle asked, not wanting to shy away from the dare, but unsure of how to even go about pulling it off.

"He lives three blocks over," Catalina said. "You sneak over to his house. You find a way to get his underwear." Oliver cracked up again.

"What am I supposed to do," Isabelle asked, "Ask his mom?"

"If that works," Catalina said, a wicked grin on her face. "Or you could knock on his window. His room is on the main floor."

"And what's she going to say?" Anwyn asked. "'Excuse me, can I borrow a pair?'" Her and Oliver cracked up again.

"I think she can figure it out from there," Catalina said. Isabelle nodded and started looking for her shoes.

"You'll have to come with me and point out his house," Isabelle said. "And his room. I'm not knocking on his parents' window."

"I'm coming, too," Anwyn said. She wasn't going to miss this.

"Me, too," Oliver said. "I'm not staying here while you guys run around town."

"We're not running around town," Catalina said. "We're going straight to the Warren's house and coming straight back. She unzipped the tent and turned back to shush everyone.

The four of them filed out of the tent and stole across the dewy yard. Catalina was first, then Isabelle, then Anwyn, then Oliver last. They were all wearing pajamas and tennis shoes. Oliver wore shorts and a long sleeve shirt that was too small. Anwyn and Isabelle both had patterned pajama pants, Isabelle's with hearts and Anwyn's with unicorns. Anwyn wore a T-shirt and Isabelle a tank top. Catalina wore sweatpants and one of her dad's T-shirts.

The four made it out of the yard, pausing in the street to listen. The town was quiet. It was well past midnight and dark, but the stars lit up the sky so they didn't even need flashlights. They'd left them in the tent. The group scampered down the street, turned left, and then went down three blocks.

They stopped by a hedge on dividing the Warren's yard from the neighbors.

"That's it," Catalina said, pointing to the house. Dominic's room is in the back, the far corner."

"You sure?" Isabelle asked.

"Yes," Catalina said. "I had to do a group project with him last year. We worked at his house. Their dining room is the corner closest to us, the back corner closest to us is the family room, his room is the far back corner, and his parents' and sisters' rooms are upstairs."

Isabelle looked convinced. She took a step forward and then turned back.

"Wait for me here," she said. "If you hear anything or lights go on or anything happens, run back to the house." Then she turned and hurried to the house, trying to keep low to the ground. She made it to the corner of the house and flattened herself against it. She looked back to the edge and the three faces that stuck out around it.

Isabelle nodded to them and then snuck around the house and out of view. Catalina, Anwyn and Oliver all relaxed now they couldn't see Isabelle. Catalina kept watch on the house, watching for signs of movement or light. Anwyn and Oliver sat down and waited, silently exchanging glances. Oliver picked up a stick and started fiddling with it. Anwyn looked up at the stars. Catalina laid down in the grass and continued to watch.

Five minutes passed. Then ten.

"Maybe we should go check on her," Oliver said.

"No way," Catalina said. "It's her dare."

"What if she got caught?" Anwyn asked.

"No lights have come on," Catalina said. "The whole place is quiet. She didn't get caught. We wait."

Another five minutes passed.

Then Isabelle reappeared at the back of the house. She stuck her head and looked both ways, spotted Catalina and waved. She snuck passed the family room window and then sprinted for the hedge. Her face was serious and it wasn't until she reached the hedge when she finally smiled.

"Well?" Catalina asked. Oliver and Anwyn looked on in amazement, unsure of what to expect.

Isabelle looked at each of them, her face blank. Then she pulled a pair of white Hanes underwear that had been tucked into the back of her pajamas. She tossed them at Catalina who squealed in the darkness.

Posted by kevin at 5:15 PM | TrackBack

November 10, 2006

Chapter 11

(Filed under: The Novel)

That night Anwyn walked over to Oliver and Catalina's, past the railroad tracks and toward the river. Catalina had a class on Monday nights and Oliver watched Mateo. He had asked Anwyn the other day if she wanted to come over and help.

Now, the English Lit suicide discussion still fresh in her mind, she wasn't as eager to watch Mateo and hang out with Oliver. She had seen his look of concern and puzzlement and she knew the subject would come up.

She pulled her jacket closer. With the sun dropping the temperature had started to fall with it. She wasn't afraid of the forthcoming conversation, she just didn't know where she stood. She was never sure if yet another conversation would mean anything, would clear anything up.

She knocked on the door and could hear Mateo crying and shrieking inside. She tried the door and it was unlocked. Nobody locked their doors in Richmond. She went inside and found Oliver desperately trying to soothe his nephew.

"Hola," Anwyn said.

"Hey," Oliver mumbled. "Thanks for coming. Here, you try." He pushed Mateo into her arms and stepped back. Anwyn struggled, trying to shift Mateo around and get a comfortable grip on him.

His eyes got wide and he stopped crying and looked at Anwyn.

"Hi there," she said. Mateo's lip quivered. "What have you tried?"

"I tried a bottle, I checked his diaper, I tried putting him down for a nap," Oliver said. "Nada."

"Maybe we just need attention," Anwyn said. She saw a pile of toys in the corner and plopped Mateo down on the floor within reach. She grabbed a wooden ring with small, bright colored rings that looped around it. She put it in front of Mateo and he laughed, a chuckling, fake sounding laugh.

Oliver dropped onto the couch. "Sure, he just wants to have fun. I was trying all the serious things like food and comfort and sleep." Mateo picked up the ring, which was heavy and unsteady in his hands. He shook it and the smaller rings rattled. He chuckled again.

Anwyn sat across from him, her legs folded beneath her. She watched Mateo and wondered what his future might be.

"Why do you think she did it?" Anwyn asked abruptly.

"What?" Oliver asked.

"Lynn had that theory today," Anwyn said, "That maybe Ophelia didn't mean to kill herself. Do you think that could have been the case with Isabelle?"

"Oh Anwyn," Oliver said. "I don't know." Mateo started chewing on the ring.

"She didn't have a boyfriend, I don't think anyone turned her down and sent her spiraling into depression. Nobody died. My parents got divorced because of her, so it wasn't that. She wasn't depressed, no more than any teen is. I just don't understand why."

Oliver didn't say anything. He kept his eyes on Mateo.

"So are you doing OK with it?" he finally asked.

"I don't know," Anwyn said. "It just doesn't seem to go away. I don't know if that's normal or not. I talked to a counselor back in St. Paul about it—Ms. Jonas. We talked quite a bit actually."

"What did she say?" Oliver asked.

"Not much. They're supposed to get me to talk." Mateo dropped his ring and Anwyn picked it up again and held it out to him. "She did seem pretty miffed with Isabelle—apparently she'd been helping Isabelle get ready for college, and well, that was a waste of time now wasn’t it?"

"Ouch," Oliver said.

"Yeah, I didn't expect that from a counselor," Anwyn said. "But I think she was trying to break through to me."

"Did it work?"

"Yeah, actually, I think it did," Anwyn said. "It convinced me to actually talk to her anyway."

"Did you ask her about the why question?" Oliver asked.

"Not really," Anwyn said. "Before I wasn't so concerned with why. I was just mad that she'd messed everything up. You know, I didn't really miss her. I still don't." Oliver finally looked at her.

"You don't miss her?" he asked. "Really?"

"Not really," Anwyn said. "I mean I wish she hadn't done it, but more because we wouldn't have moved to Kansas, because Mom and Dad wouldn't have gotten divorced, because I wouldn't have to go through all this hassle. Isn't that kind of stupid? Selfish?"

"I don't know," Oliver said. "Maybe. I’m no shrink. She did leave a lot of chaos in her wake, didn't she? I can see being upset about that. But you don't miss her?"

"C'mon Oliver," Anwyn said. "You know we never got along that well. As we got older we just ignored each other. I was hoping that would change with both of us going to the same school. I was hoping for some sisterly bonding or something. There was a day or two that summer when we did bond, when she stopped being high and mighty and would talk to me, would seek me out and joke with me. But most of the time she was too prissy and too royal to deem me worthy of her time."

Oliver slowly nodded, his eyes lost in a gaze. Mateo was still content on the floor, alternating between shaking his ring and sucking on it. Anwyn reached out and smoothed his shiny black hair.

"More than anything," Anwyn said, "I feel guilty that I don't miss her."

Oliver exhaled.

"Sorry," Anwyn said. "This is all a bit heavy."

"No," Oliver said, "It's OK."

"No, I'm sorry," Anwyn said. "You thought we were just going to pal around and watch this cut little squirt. Instead we sit around and talk about morbid topics like suicide in front of your little nephew." Oliver smiled.

"You know," Oliver said, "He's not really my nephew. He's maybe my half-nephew, if such a thing exists."

Anwyn smiled warmly, for the first time that day.

"You hear that kid," she said, "Your tio just disowned you. I guess I'll have to claim you." She reached forward and grabbed Mateo, pulling him into her lap. He giggled and she started tickling him, his face lighting up as he threw his arms out and his head back.

"So you've got no idea, about Isabelle?" Oliver asked. "Why she did it?"

Anwyn just shook her head, took Mateo's hands in hers. He leaned to the left and the right, half-dancing.

"I think that's part of it," she said. "I wish I had a reason. Something to blame. I just don't get why you kill yourself."

"You have to be pretty desperate, I guess," Oliver said. "You need to have no way out."

"But isn't there always some way out?" Anwyn said. "I mean, take measures into your own hands. If you're willing to bail out on life, why not at least try something else before you go that far?"

"I don't know," Oliver said."

"Take Ophelia," Anwyn said. She plopped Mateo back on the floor in front of her and gave him an oversized truck. He leaned forward and sucked on the cab. "Let's say it's Hamlet's rejection that had her all mopey and pushed her to kill herself. Why not get back at the bastard—sleep with his best friend or something. Or do something drastic to get his attention."

"Like what?"

"I don't know," Anwyn said, "Show up in his bedroom naked? Not many guys would turn that away."

Oliver stifled a laugh. "And suddenly this is Jerry Springer and not Shakespeare."

"Oh come on," Anwyn said. "Shakespeare is just high brow Jerry Springer. Hamlet's uncle kills his father and remarries his mom?"

"I guess," Oliver said.

"I just think if you're going to throw your life out the window, if you'd go that far to end your life—why not try something just as drastic to save your life?"

"That's a good question," Oliver said. He leaned forward and put his feet up on the coffee table. Mateo had given up on the truck and was sucking his finger now. "Maybe societal limitations keep you from acting out like that."

"Yet you'll still try suicide?" Anwyn asked.

"Well, suicide may be breaking out of society's limitations, but you're not around to hear about it," Oliver explained. "Maybe they don't try something drastic because they'd still be around to take heat for breaking society's rules."

"Maybe," Anwyn said.

"I mean, Ophelia doesn't seem like the type to go strutting into Hamlet's room naked. She's too prim and proper. Society had a specific place for her, and she stayed in that place. Suicide was breaking out of that place, but it was the ultimate breaking out. She didn't have to live with the consequences." Anwyn nodded, starting to get his point.

"A drastic action to save your life would have consequences," Oliver continued, "And I think consequences are exactly what a suicidal person is trying to avoid."

Anwyn nodded. Mateo switched to his thumb and his eyes were starting to flutter. Avoiding consequences. It seemed to be a worthy definition of suicide. After all, how many people throughout history had killed themselves to escape the consequences of their actions?

"I don't know," Anwyn finally said. "I guess I'd rather at least go out in a blaze of glory, accomplish something with my death if it had to come to that."

"And that's part of my you and Isabelle are so different."

"I wonder sometimes," Anwyn said. "If I knew why she did it, I might be able to feel different from her. But if there's no reason—"

"It seems like something anyone could do?" Oliver interjected.

"Yeah."

"Well, what would make you want to kill yourself?" Oliver asked.

"Oh geez, I don't know," said Anwyn. "Maybe we should put Mateo to bed before he has to listen to more of this." The two stood up and Oliver bent down to pick up his half-nephew.

"I guess something tragic that seems insurmountable might make suicide seem like a good idea," Anwyn said as they walked into Mateo's room. She flicked on the light and Oliver set Mateo on the changing table. "Like if you did something terrible—killed somebody or committed some crime."

"Doesn't sound like Isabelle, does it?" Oliver asked.

"No, not really."

"Here, hold on to him," Oliver said, stepping away from Mateo and towards the dresser to find pajamas. Mateo pulled at Anwyn's shirt as she stood in front of the changing table to keep him from rolling off.

"Or if something awful happened to you—you found out a boyfriend cheated on your or found out your were pregnant or something," Anwyn said, now just grasping for reasons.

"But you didn't think Isabelle had a boyfriend," Oliver said, finding the pajamas and coming back to change Mateo. "That you know of, anyway."

"No, no boyfriend that we knew of," Anwyn said. "And pregnancy doesn't seem right. I think she would have been elated if that happened, even if Mom and Dad would freak out."

Oliver pulled off Mateo's onsie as he kicked and stretched, then pulled his pajamas on, wiggling each arm in and then a leg, a foot and finally zipping him in.

"You know," Oliver said, "I think something happened and she didn't think she could face the consequences. I think she was in a place where she needed help, but for whatever reason she didn't or couldn't ask for it."

He picked up Mateo and carried him to the crib and laid him down. Oliver pulled a blanket over the child and turned on the mobile, which played a peaceful, happy tune.

"It was probably something that any of us would have had no problem asking for help with," Oliver said. "But for whatever reason it seemed like too much."

Anwyn nodded as she looked down at Mateo, the boy born mere hours after her sister died.

"That's a terrible thing," Oliver said as they both watched Mateo suck his thumb and fight to keep his eyes open. "When simply asking for help could have saved a life."

Posted by kevin at 7:51 PM | TrackBack

November 9, 2006

Chapter 10

(Filed under: The Novel)

On Monday grey clouds covered the sky. The extreme flatness of the land still accentuated the sky, giving the overcast day an ominous feeling.

Anwyn walked to the center of town where the bus would pick up the most of the Richmond kids. A few other students nodded to her, but mostly they all stood in silence, hoping it really wasn’t another Monday and another school day.

Anwyn had been looking forward to starting high school and being in the same building as her sister. She really didn't know why. They usually didn't get along that well. She just remembered having her sister in the same building from kindergarten through second grade and liking it for some reason.

But when Anwyn went to the first day of third grade she had to walk to the bus stop by herself. Her sister had left for sixth grade and middle school 45 minutes earlier. For the rest of her public school life Anwyn would have to walk to the bus stop alone.

Life at Howe High School was survivable. She had already been through one week of school and made it out alive. She told her dad she actually managed to learn a thing or two, so her academic career wouldn't be completely flushed down the toilet thanks to their move to Kansas. Her dad simply smirked at her and mumbled something about a Kansas education being good enough for him.

She actually had several mostly sophomore classes, thanks to her advanced schedule. Geometry, biology and English literature were all sophomore classes, though since the school was smaller the grade divide didn't seem to be as sharp as it was in St. Paul. Befriending sophomores and even juniors wasn't frowned upon like it would have been back home.

Anwyn trudged off the bus and to her first class, biology. She plopped down next to Lynn, a sophomore from Carver who had commented on Anwyn's bright red shoes on her first day of school.

Anwyn had grinned and said they were her ruby red slippers. Lynn just rolled her eyes and they both repeated, "There's no place like home." Lynn hadn't been born in Kansas either and enjoyed the cynical little joke together. When Missy—Anwyn's tour guide on the first day—didn't get the joke, Anwyn decided to keep wearing the grungy red Converse.

"Did you do anything worthy this weekend?" Lynn asked, her head still resting on her desk.

"Visited my grandpa," Anwyn responded, slouching in her desk.

"How very local of you," Lynn said.

"The postal woman recognized me as the 'Runner of Richmond'," Anwyn said. "So I've got that going for me."

"You run?" Lynn asked.

"Yeah, it helps me clear my head."

"That is worthy," Lynn said.

"Really?"

"Yeah," Lynn said. "How many people do you see jogging along the corn fields around here?"

"I guess so," Anwyn said with a shrug. "I didn't realize I was being so counter-cultural."

"Yep, you're a rebel," Lynn said. "If you go vegetarian I'll have to turn you in and we'll have ourselves a lynchin'."

"Where's the beef?" Anwyn asked.

"That a girl." Lynn was even less enthused about living in Kansas than Anwyn was. Anwyn could handle it. She missed the city but knew it was for the better. She also saw upsides, like reconnecting with her extended family. But Lynn would rather drown in the negatives, playing up the stereotypes and wallowing in it all.

The bell rang and class started, their biology scrawling the date and the topic of the day's lecture on the board. The teacher had shoulder length hair and a bald spot on top, prompting Anwyn to ask Lynn if it was legal to import hippies.

Later that day Anwyn met up again with Lynn on their way to English Lit. Oliver was in the class as well, though she didn't know it until the second day. She had spent that class period the first day chatting with Mr. Dalhman the guidance counselor. The second day Oliver walked in and saw her.

"Hola, chica," he said.

"Don't you mean, 'hola'," Anwyn said, giving the 'hola' her best English accent and butchering the Spanish. "This is English Lit after all."

Oliver smirked and took his seat. Anwyn played insulted and turned to Lynn.

"Lame joke?" she asked.

"Borderline," Lynn said. "I give you points for effort."

"So you know Anwyn?" Oliver asked, looking over at Lynn.

"Yeah, we go way back," she said, grabbing Anwyn's hand. "All the way to first period." The girls snickered. Oliver just looked bemused. He was used to sitting quietly in class and not talking much. It wasn't that he was shy and quiet, he just was just more reserved.

"Anwyn and I are cousins," Oliver said.

"Well, not exactly," Anwyn said.

"That's the short story anyway," Oliver replied. Lynn sat up with mock intrigue.

"Ooh, do tell more," Lynn said.

"Yeah, we're not cousins," Anwyn said. "We can't go to prom together if you say we're cousins." Oliver blushed.

"Why not?" Lynn asked. "I was going to ask my attractive looking cousin." Oliver just shook his head. This was a little much for the guy who normally just sat there quietly and waited for class to start.

"Oliver's mom used to be married to my uncle, but then he ran off—what ever happened to Robert?" Anwyn asked, received only a shrug from Oliver, and continued, "—When Catalina was born. She's Oliver's sister and my cousin. But then Oliver's mom got remarried to Carlos and they had Oliver. And since I'm not related to either of Oliver's parents by blood, we're not technically cousins."

"Whoa," Lynn said. "That's some soap opera."

"Hey, I had nothing to do with it," Oliver said, raising his palms.

"So this Catalina is your cousin and Oliver isn't, and they're brother and sister," Lynn said, trying to work it out. "Weird."

"Technically Catalina is my half-sister," Oliver explained. "So that could make us half-cousins."

"There's no such thing as half-cousins," Lynn said. She turned to Anwyn: "That boy is prom material." Oliver gave up and turned to pull out his books and notes.

Lynn and Anwyn continued like that most every day and Oliver realized his quiet English Lit class was gone. This particular Monday was no different. Anywn and Lynn came in from lunch, still debating the merits of various old school punk bands. Aside from targeting their jokes at the state of Kansas, Anwyn and Lynn both enjoyed punk music in all varieties, from the old school late 1970s to the modern resurgence that true diehards scoffed at. They both just liked good music, regardless of the current critical climate.

"OK class, let's get started," said Mrs. Summers, tapping a piece of chalk on the board. "We have a lot to cover today." That's what she said every day. She was older, in her mid-50s, wore conservative skirts and her hair pulled into a bun. You couldn't ask for a more stereotypical English teacher. She tried to make up for it by forcing the class to act out scenes from the books they read and when it came time to show movies she went with the modern versions instead of the 1960s versions. And even though the modern Romeo & Juliet had Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio, some of the guys in her classes pleaded for the 1968 Zeffirelli version, thanks to a momentary scene where Juliet can be seen topless.

"Last week we finished up Hamlet and we will continue discussing it this week," Mrs. Summers said. She asked the class some basic questions to get them back into the play and then had them read a few scenes.

"All right, now I want us to talk about Ophelia," Mrs. Summers said. Anwyn looked up from her book and readjusted. "Why do you think Ophelia killed herself?" A few hands went up and Mrs. Summers called on a girl in the corner.

"It's pretty basic, isn't it?" she said. "She was in love with Hamlet, Hamlet had no interest and ditched her, so she lost her will to live."

"Perhaps," Mrs Summers said. "Other thoughts?"

"Didn't Hamlet have a bit of a suicidal bent with his whole 'to be or not to be' thing?" asked a boy in the front. "I think Hamlet gave her the idea, intentionally or not."

"I think it was grief for her father, killed by the man she loved," said a guy with glasses sitting in front of Anwyn. "She had a double whammy of life's pain and that was it."

"It's kind of a lame reason to die," Anwyn said, speaking up without being called on.

"What was that, Ms. Miller?" the teacher asked.

"I just said it's a lame reason to die," she repeated. "So she had some pain? Was that the only solution?"

"We should point out that not everyone thinks it was suicide," said Mrs. Summers. "Academics debate the point and the text isn't entirely clear. Suicide is certainly implied, but it's not directly stated."

"So you think Ophelia drowned by accident and it wasn't suicide?" Anwyn asked.

"Well, it would give credence to your theory that being 'ditched' by your love interest who goes on to kill your father is a 'lame' reason to die," Mrs. Summers said. "Perhaps it was accidental."

"And she was hanging out at the river to—what?" Lynn asked, "—drown her sorrows." A few students chuckled.

"Do you have a theory, Ms. Harris?"

"It could have been both," Lynn said. "She could have started out wanting to end her life and so she wandered down to the river. She walked up and down trying to get up the courage, but she couldn't do it. Just when she was going to go back home and live life to the fullest she slipped on the shore and fell in and died anyway, even though she had changed her mind and wanted to live."

"Suicidal remorse?" Mrs. Summers said. "That's a plausible theory."

Anwyn shifted uncomfortably in her seat as the discussion continued, moving away from the why and onto what it meant for Hamlet and the chaos that ensued. She glanced over to Oliver and realized he'd been starring at her. Their eyes met for a moment and then he quickly looked to the floor.

Posted by kevin at 9:41 PM | TrackBack

November 8, 2006

Chapter 9

(Filed under: The Novel)

After finishing breakfast and getting presentable for a Saturday, which for Jack meant jeans and a T-shirt, he and Anwyn climbed into his Saab (which was definitely an obscure car in central Kansas) and headed for Truss, a larger town of a few thousand people to the east. A population of a few thousand got you a couple gas stations, a few restaurants that didn't close every few years, and a nursing home.

They rode in a comfortable silence, not needing to always talk. They passed the usual fields and oil pumps, occasional stands of abandoned farm implements. These always intrigued Anwyn. They were old and brown with rust, just plopped in a corner of a yard or field to rot when they were replaced. The farmers didn't get rid of them or haul them off or strip them down for parts. They just hauled them somewhere convenient and dumped them. They'd even go the trouble of keeping the weeds down around them. Apparently that's what you do when you have tons of empty space.

The nursing home was on the edge of town. Jack parked out front and they walked in together, nodding to the few residents who sat in rockers out front. One of them took a deep drag on a cigarette and exhaled slowly.

Jack got directions at a nurse's station and they walked down the hall and knocked on Grandpa Frank's door.

"C'mon in," he called and Jack and Anwyn opened the door and saw Grandpa Frank sitting in a easy chair in the corner, wrapped up in a blanket and reading a book.

"Hi Grandpa."

"Hi Frank," Jack said.

"Well," Grandpa Frank said, setting his book down. "Look at what we got here. C'mon in, have a seat." He motioned for them to sit in one of the vacant chairs or on the bed. Anwyn sat on the bed and Jack sat down in one of the chairs.

"I heard you two were coming to town," Grandpa Frank said. "Now I understand this is a permanent visit, right?"

"Yep, we moved in last week," Jack answered.

"Well, there goes the neighborhood," Grandpa Frank laughed and Anwyn grinned. It felt good to hear his familiar voice.

They talked for an hour, telling Grandpa Frank about how Jack was able to buy his dad's old house back from whoever had it, and now Anwyn, Jack—and of course Charlie—were making it home. They told him about Jack working at home and Anwyn attending Howe High School. She told him she was thinking running track this spring to stay in shape for cross-country in the fall. They asked how he was doing, and he deflected the questions as best he could, finally relenting and admitting his body was tired and weak. But his brain stayed sharp so he read as much as his eyes and his stiff body would allow.

"I'm sorry about Isabelle," Grandpa Frank said abruptly. "You never do understand those, just have to swallow it and move on."

Neither Jack nor Anwyn said anything.

"And I understand my Jill didn't take it very well," Grandpa Frank said.

"No, Frank, she didn't," Jack said. "I'm sorry. I tried—"

"Don't try to explain for her," Grandpa Frank said. "That's her problem. If she wants me to know she can explain it to me herself." He paused for a minute, then raised a finger. "And she better hope she doesn't feel the need to explain it me because I'll put her in hot seat, that's for sure."

Anwyn smiled at the thought of Grandpa Frank sticking it to her mother. Of course that would require Jill slowing down enough to actually call or—God forbid—make her way to central Kansas. It didn't seem likely. Jill was safe from one final scolding from her father.

"I thought I gave Jill a better example than that," Grandpa Frank said. "I'm the one who should be sorry, Jack, and I am." His wrinkled face was firm and somber.

"But enough of that," Grandpa Frank said. "I've got two nice folk right here who aren't sorry to be here—at least not yet." He asked more questions, catching up with Jack and grilling Anwyn about her classes and if her teachers were being hard enough on her.

After a while Anwyn excused herself to go to the bathroom. As she came back she passed the common room, an open area with a TV flashing in the corner—the closed captioning on and the volume muted, though no one was watching—and couches and squishy chairs spread about in little clusters. The room was mostly empty, but she heard a familiar laugh from the corner.

There in the corner sat Oliver and a shriveled, old Hispanic woman. Anwyn walked to say hello.

"Hola muchacho," Anwyn called. Oliver turned, surprised, and smiled back at Anwyn.

"Hola yourself," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Dad and I are visiting Grandpa Frank," Anwyn said. "And this chica bonita?" She gestured to the old woman crumpled in the chair next to Oliver.

"Abuela," Oliver said, a little louder so she could hear. "Este es Anwyn, prima de Catalina." The old woman smiled and rattled off a welcome in Spanish.

"She says she's pleased to meet you," Oliver said. "This is my grandmother, Guadalupe."

"Hola," Anwyn said. Guadalupe reached out her shaky hand and took Anwyn's hand, holding it tenderly in hers.

"Su abuelo me es muy agradable," Guadalupe said. "Pero su español es pobre."

Oliver started to translate, but Anwyn stopped him.

"Hold on," she said. "Let me try. You said something about my grandpa—'agradable,' that's 'nice' right, He's very nice to you?" Guadalupe nodded. "And his Spanish is poor?" Guadalupe nodded again.

"I didn't know you knew Spanish," Oliver said.

"You didn't think I could pick it up from you, did you?" Anwyn teased. "No, I really don't know Spanish. But taking Spanish I is starting to pay off." She turned back to Guadalupe, "Usted—uh, forget it. I'm just going to look dumb if I try to show off. Are you teaching Spanish to my grandpa?"

"¿Está usted español de enseñanza a mi abuelo?" Guadalupe said, then translated it back for Anwyn in slow, halting English, "Are you teaching Spanish to my grandpa? Sí, él es muy impaciente aprender." She paused again. "Yes, he's very eager to learn."

"That's good for him," Anwyn said. "Es bueno." Oliver's grandmother nodded and let go of Anwyn's hand. She turned to Oliver and returned to her thick Spanish.

"She says she's tired and ready for a nap," Oliver said. "Though it was nice talking with you."

Then Guadalupe reached out to Anwyn again and said, "Usted es una chica muy bonita usted mismo." Oliver looked to Anwyn to translate, but she shook her head. She got the gist of it.

"Gracias," she said. Guadalupe nodded and Oliver helped her to her feet and started back to her room with her.

"Will you wait for me?" Oliver asked.

"Sure," Anwyn said. She plopped down on the couch where Oliver had been sitting and waited. This half of the nursing home was for the more active residents. They could still move around on their own for the most part, though they often needed canes or walkers or a helping hand. They could get around well enough, but not well enough to be on their own. The other half of the nursing home was the more depressing side, all the patients who were slipping away. Their bodies were fading and often their mental state would quickly follow.

"I didn't know your grandma was here," Anwyn said to Oliver when he came back.

"And I didn't know you were learning Spanish," Oliver said. "She's been here for a few years. I try to visit when I can."

"That's impressive. I doubt many teens come in here on their own."

"Well, you're here," Oliver said.

"With my dad," Anwyn said. "Though I wouldn't mind coming to see Grandpa Frank on my own. I think Dad's always a little uneasy around him, especially now."

"Yeah?" Oliver asked. "They always seem to get along."

"They do," Anwyn said. "They get along great. I think it's more a matter of expectations or something. Dad would never say anything, but I think he feels bad that my mom isn't here."

"It's could also be that he gets along better with Grandpa Frank than he does with your other grandpa." Oliver said.

"You think?" Anwyn asked.

"Well, you're here visiting Grandpa Frank," Oliver said. "Have you been to see your other grandpa yet?"

"No, I suppose we haven't," Anwyn admitted. "We haven't even talked about it."

"Sometimes it's easier to just ignore it," Oliver said. Then Anwyn stood up and the two walked back to Grandpa Frank's room.

"So, does driving to the nursing home quality as to and from work?" Anwyn asked.

"Huh?"

"Your driver's license," Anwyn said, "I thought you could only get it early if it was for driving to and from work."

"This is work," Oliver said. "It's my duty to visit my grandmother."

"Tell that to the cops," Anwyn said.

"I will when they pull me over," Oliver said. "How many cop cars have you seen since you've been here?"

"None," Anwyn admitted.

"See?" Oliver said. "Besides, I am on my way to and from work. This is just a detour. And nobody's going to throw the only kid in the county who visits his poor grandmother in the old folk's home."

"You should see about getting your license," Oliver said.

"I hadn't really thought about it, but I guess I should," Anwyn said. "Back in St. Paul I just took the bus everywhere. I hadn't though about getting my driver's license there either."

In fact, she remembered that Isabelle didn't get her license until the summer she died. At that point it was a formality, a convenient ID and the fact that it enabled her to drive an automobile was secondary.

She also remembered her Grandpa Frank teaching Isabelle how to drive on a deserted country road. Isabelle had maybe been 12 and was so far off from getting her license that it seemed more like play than an actual lesson. Isabelle sat behind the wheel of Grandpa Frank's pickup, with Grandpa Frank in the passenger's seat and 8-year-old Anwyn riding in the back. That was something else she had only ever dared to do in Kansas.

Anwyn remembered holding on to the roll bar and watching over the cab of the pickup. She remembered Isabelle veering left and then right at first, and then slowly settling down and learning to keep the vehicle centered in its lane. She couldn't hear the instructions her grandpa gave, but she did notice the color slowly return to her sister's knuckles as the lesson went on.

"Hola, Oliver," Grandpa Frank said when Anwyn and Oliver reached his room. "¿Cómo es su abuela?"

"Hola," Oliver said, Muy bueno, gracias."

"Did I tell you I'm learning Spanish?" Grandpa Frank asked Anwyn and Oliver. "Guadalupe, Oliver's grandmother, has been kind enough to teach me a few things."

"So I heard," Anwyn said.

"This kid's been kind enough to stop in and say hola, as well," Grandpa Frank said, trying to throw a playful punch at Oliver, but his arm was too slow to react. It had the effect of an involuntary movement.

"It's good to see you again, Oliver," Jack said, reaching out to shake his hand.

"You, too, Uncle Jack," Oliver said.

"Throw that door open a little wider," Grandpa Frank said. "I want the whole wing to see the kind of parties I throw." Everyone laughed and Anwyn and Oliver sat down and again. But then the nurse came and it was time for Grandpa Frank's pills and his physical therapy.

"C'mon Eustis," Grandpa Frank said, chiding the nurse. "Can't you come back later, after the party."

"Sorry, Mr. Nelson," Eustis said. "I'm late enough as it is. I let you visit with your partygoers longer than I should have."

"That's all right, Frank," Jack said, standing up. "We should probably get going anyway." The others stood to leave, the men shaking hands with Grandpa Frank and Anwyn giving him hug. They filed out as Eustis watched, and then she turned to help Grandpa Frank get up.

They were halfway down the hallway when Anwyn mumbled for them to hold on and she ran back.

"Grandpa," she said as she half knocked and half pushed the door open. The blanket that had been wrapped around him was gone and Eustis was helping him out of his bathrobe. She hastily covered him up again when she heard Anwyn, but Anwyn caught the sight of her grandfather's withered body. His arms and legs—which were once strong and protective—were stick thin and covered in spots. His body was surely failing him, and Anwyn felt as though his mind were trying desperately to hang on, to make up for the physical failings.

"Grandpa," she continued, her face not even registering that she's seen the state of her grandfather's health, "Would it be OK if I came back for another party sometime?"

"Hell, you have to ask?" Grandpa Frank said with a menacing look on his face. Then he softened. "Anwyn," he said, "I'd love it. You'll make old Eustis here jealous."

"Oh stop," Eustis said, "Maybe you do need a shot today."

"OK, Grandpa," Anwyn said. "I just wanted to check. I'll see you later." She waved and her grandfather nodded, too tired to wave back.

Posted by kevin at 6:21 PM | TrackBack

November 7, 2006

Chapter 8

(Filed under: The Novel)

Anwyn jogged back into town early on a Saturday morning, but Richmond was beginning to awake. A TV flashed in a window, a truck rumbled in the distance and a man sitting on his porch waved.

She went to the post office, the bell on the door jingling as she opened it. Charlie panted at her side, obedient and happy.

"Good morning," the woman behind the counter said.

"Morning," Anwyn replied, a little winded. She went to her box, spun the dial, and retrieved the mail.

"So you must be Richmond's little runner, huh?" the woman asked.

"Huh?" Anwyn said, looking up from the pile of mail. "Oh, yeah. I guess."

"So you're Jack's girl, right?" she asked. Then Anwyn remembered that the post office wasn't just where you got your mail. She gave up on making a quick stop.

"Yeah, I'm Anwyn," she said. "This is Charlie."

"Nice to meet you, sugar. I’m Mabel. And that's a nice looking dog you've got there. We don't get many big and fluffly like him. Usually it's the scruffy looking farm dogs or the little tiny lap dogs for the old folks."

"Thanks," Anwyn said. "We like him."

"So how do you like Richmond?" Mabel asked, leaning against the counter.

"It's all right," Anwyn said.

"C'mon now, sugar," Mabel said. "You don't have to lie." Anwyn giggled.

"It's really flat," Anwyn said, trying again. Mabel nodded. "Actually, it is a nice change of pace." What she really meant was that it was nice to get away from St. Paul and all the immediate connections to Isabelle. Kansas still had connections, but there were distance memories. She wasn't living in the same house where her sister died, wasn't retracing her last steps, wasn't listening to her mom shout and then feeling the emptiness. It was a nice change of pace.

"Yeah, I suppose it is slower here," Mabel said. "Wouldn't know myself."

"Kansas born and raised?" Anwyn asked.

"Yep," Mabel answered. "The pace may be slower, and the land may be flatter, but I reckon people are the same wherever you go." Anwyn smiled and nodded, though the thought wasn't very encouraging.

"It's nice to meet you, Mabel," Anwyn said. "I suppose I'll see you around."

"Suppose you will. Bye now Anwyn."

At home the house was still quiet, her dad choosing to sleep in on Saturdays. Even though he worked at home and could technically sleep in every day, he still got up at 6:30 a.m. Monday through Friday, just like he always did, and slept in until at least 10:00 a.m. on Saturday.

Anwyn curled up at the kitchen table to work on homework until her dad crawled out of bed. Shortly after 10:00 her came tromping down the stairs, wearing pajama pants and a skuzzy T-shirt. His hair was messed up and he needed a shave.

"Good morning, Dad!" Anwyn said, louder than necessary. Jack just waved his hand, motioning for Anwyn to be quiet. He got breakfast in a zombie-like state and finally collapsed into a chair opposite Anwyn. After his first bite of cereal and a splash of orange juice he started to wake up.

"So how long have you been up?" he asked, his voice still scratchy.

"Since just after sunrise," Anwyn answered. "Charlie and I went for a jog."

"That's nice," Jack said. "You know the sun still comes up, whether you get up to see it or not."

"And you know you could keep right on sleeping if you like," Anwyn said. "You don't have to be so pleasant and perky on my account." Jack looked Anwyn in the eye and gave her his best fake smile.

"Ah, sleeping in isn't any fun unless you can draw it out," Jack said. "Your mother got up early on Saturday, too. I never understood that."

Silence. It usually happened whenever one of their growing number of touchy subjects came up.

"You haven't heard from her, have you?" Anwyn asked after a pause.

"No," Jack said. "I called her when we got here. Left a message." Another pause.

"You know you can call her anytime," Jack said.

"Yeah, I know."

"You probably should call her," Jack said.

"It's still too hard," Anwyn said.

"It won't get any easier," Jack said. "I'm not trying to push you, I'm just saying." He took another bite of cereal and it crunched loudly as he chewed.

"Yeah, I know," Anwyn said.

"Families are never easy," Jack said. He'd been in town for a week and still hadn't talked to his own father. It went unsaid, but they both knew it.

"So, what do you have planned for today," Jack asked.

"I wanted to go visit Grandpa Frank," Anwyn said.

"Ah, getting in the Kansas spirit, huh?" Jack said.

"Yeah, I met Mabel at the post office today. I'm on a roll." Anwyn said.

"You should have a score card," Jack said. "Wow, Mabel. That woman has worked there forever. I swear, that has to be the cushiest job in the state. How long do you think it takes to separate the mail for a town with a population of 100?"

"Well, when you have to chat with everyone of them that can be a full day's job," Anwyn said. The two smiled and continued to exchange witty comments across the table while Jack finished his breakfast. This easy rapport was part of the reason the move to Kansas was at all possible. If they had anything less it would have crashed and burned.

The news broke on the night of Christmas. Anwyn's mom had left a few days before, refusing to deal with a family holiday and a broken family. It was just Anwyn and her dad—and Charlie—the house empty and quiet. They opened presents early and enjoyed a breakfast of red and green frosted donuts. Then they spent the day watching cheesy family Christmas movies.

They ordered a pizza for supper and it came while the credits for another movie rolled. The TV finally went blank and they sat in silence eating pizza on the couch. Jack tossed a crust to Charlie when they'd finished.

"So I think we need to talk," Jack started.

"'Bout what?" Anwyn asked.

"Well, about us."

"What do you mean?" Anwyn asked. Jack paused, trying to find the words.

"Well, it's just going to be you and me," Jack said. "I don't think your mom is coming back."

"Yeah, I know."

"Well, the trouble is we've always been a two-income family," Jack said. There were details of the divorce to be worked out still, the possibility of alimony and child support, all financial stuff. But however it worked out it wouldn't be enough to keep the house.

"I just don't think we'll be able to stay here," Jack said. He let it sink in. "I think that may be for the better, all things considered." Anwyn nodded. "I'm also not sure what else we can afford around here. A smaller house would still be a hefty payment, and rent isn't exactly cheap around here."

"So what are you saying?" Anwyn asked.

"I think we need to make a big move," Jack said. "I was thinking we could move back to Kansas." He paused again, letting the idea compute before he continued with his list of reasons.

"OK," Anwyn said.

"OK?" Jack repeated. "That's it?"

"Sure," Anwyn said. "With Isabelle... and with mom... going somewhere else and starting over doesn't seem like a bad plan. I imagine rent is a lot cheaper, too."

"Rent? Ha!" Jack said. "We could both buy a house in Kansas. I was thinking I could ask my boss about long-range consulting and I could start my own business. Plus we know a few people, so we wouldn't have to completely start over. I know it's not the Twin Cities and it'll take some getting used to, but I think it could be good."

"I said it's OK, Dad," Anwyn said. "You don't need to convince me."

"Well I had all those reasons, I might as well use them," Jack said.

"This doesn't mean I have to become a farmer, does it?" Anwyn asked.

"It doesn't mean I have to become a farmer, does it?" Jack said with more emphasis. The two traded jabs at Jack's home state and grinned. After a few minutes Jack spoke again.

"You know this doesn't change anything?"

"Yeah, I know," Anwyn said.

"Isabelle is still dead. Your mom is still gone. We're not running away from anything. We're just starting fresh."

"Right," Anwyn said. Another pause.

"We're always going to remember Isabelle," Jack said, his voice quiet and steady. "I hate what she did. But I'll always love her." He reached over and hugged Anwyn, trying to keep the tears from coming. She wrapped her arms around her dad and the two sat there in the light of the Christmas tree.

"So does this mean we have to trade in the Saab for a pickup?" Anwyn asked. Her dad laughed and they started trading jokes again, picking fun at their soon to be home.

Later that Christmas night, alone in her room in St. Paul, Anwyn thought about her dad's words. He hated what she did but loved his daughter all the same. It was a painful contradiction, but it seemed to carry Anwyn's father through.

Anwyn wondered about herself, if she could so resolutely hate what Isabelle did and fiercely love her just the same. She decided she could not. While she hated what Isabelle did, it was more for the chaos it caused in its wake, what it did to their mom, to their dad. And she wasn't sure if she loved her sister so strongly. Instead she felt strangely indifferent. And that's what bothered her most of all. She kept wondering in her heart, asking the night if it was OK that she didn't miss her sister.

She couldn't tell her dad about these thoughts. It was one of the rare things that even their good rapport couldn't overcome. She knew her dad loved Isabelle so strongly that she hated to think how he'd react if he knew she felt so indifferent.

The funny thing is Jack would show the same stubborn, unexplainable love to Anwyn despite her indifference. She just didn't think it possible.

Posted by kevin at 9:43 PM | TrackBack

November 6, 2006

Chapter 7

(Filed under: The Novel)

The alarm clock went off early and Charlie whined. Anwyn sat up, strangely awake, and got out of bed. She pulled her running shorts and a tanktop out of the dresser and quickly got dressed in front of the mirror. She pulled her hair into a pony tail and grabbed light weight jacket.

She went downstairs and Charlie followed. Her dad wasn't up yet, preferring to sleep in a little on a Saturday. Sometimes Anwyn liked to sleep in, and sometimes she liked to get up early. When her and Isabelle stayed with their Grandpa Frank she liked to get up early and have breakfast with her grandfather, listening to his stories.

Anwyn got a drink of water and then grabbed Charlie's leash and headed out the front door. Outside the air was crisp and gave Anwyn's bare legs goose bumps. She bent down next to Charlie and clipped his leash to his collar, gave his chin a scratch. The pale sky began to lighten, the sun just beginning to rise.

Anwyn started off, jogging towards the center of town with Charlie trotting next to her. The morning air was quiet. A dog barked in the distance and Charlie instinctively looked up. Anwyn felt her blood pumping, her muscles slowly waking up. She jogged to the blacktop and turned south towards the river. The post office was dark and quiet. It wouldn't open for another hour. The lights of the gas station hummed and she could see the owner, George, inside, manning the register for any farmers who needed a sixth day of work. But otherwise Richmond was sleeping in this Saturday.

She reached the railroad tracks and picked up her pace, encouraging Charlie to run a little harder. His tongue flapped loose in his mouth, but he was eager to be outside. She passed the south end of town and left Richmond behind, and the horizon opened up completely. You could still see it in town, but once you left all the buildings behind it opened up completely. Stands of trees here and there on the horizon broke up the complete flatness, but they were so far away and low to the ground that it didn't matter. The sky felt enormous, stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see. It seemed easy to believe that the world was flat.

Once Anwyn came across a news article that researchers had decided to compare the topography of Kansas to a pancake and see if it really was flatter than a pancake. Indeed it was. No surprise to anyone who ever stood in central Kansas and felt the flatness in their very being.

She showed the article to her dad and Jack just groaned and got defensive about his home state.

"Well sure, if you look at the relative size of Kansas compared to the height of our hills, that would seem incredibly flat. Look at the small size of a pancake in relation to the little dips and holes in the surface—those would be relatively large since the surface area of the pancake is so small." Yes, Anwyn's father was definitely a computer geek.

"Notice that they don't compare the relative flatness of any other state to a pancake," Jack pointed out. "Unless you've got the Rocky Mountains running through your state I best most states are as flat as a pancake."

But flatness didn't have to be a bad thing. It did something to you. Being able to see for miles and miles in every direction somehow changed your perception. It felt different. Anwyn soaked it up as she ran.

She came to the bridge and kept on going, climbing the height of the bridge and finally slowing to a stop at the peek. Charlie panted beside her. She leaned her hands on the concrete guard rail and looked out over the Arkansas river. The sandy shore below felt inviting and she trotted on across the bridge with Charlie, following the two ruts that curved down to the river.

She squatted in the damp sand next to Charlie, still panting, and breathed heavy herself. The riverbed dipped down below the flat land in a ravine—what you'd expect from a river. The edges were lined with trees and it was the one place where the impending feeling of flatness was minimized. The water rushed and swirled, going over and around sand bars and shallows, downed trees and the occasional piece of junk dumped in the river long ago.

One of the last times they came to Kansas Anwyn remembered coming here. They walked down from Grandpa Miller's house, her and Isabelle and Catalina and Oliver. They were going swimming. At least that was the line Anwyn and Oliver had bought. Swimming in the dirty brown water of the Arkansas didn't appeal to Isabelle or Catalina who were more interested in laying on the sand, soaking up the sun and talking about boys. Both were just entering high school and it was a new obsession.

The older girls spread their towels out in the sand and stripped down to their bathing suits. They both wore two piece bikinis, the kind that would have been impractical for the swimming and playing they would have done only a few years before. But now they felt above such things and planned to be as inactive as possible. Isabelle's suit was white with pink polka-dots, and her skin had been tanned from a summer of doing exactly this. Catalina's suit was solid black.

Oliver and Anwyn stripped to their swimsuits as well, but left their towels and clothe in a wadded pile on the shore and ran for the water. It was a dry summer day in Kansas, a day where the heat just surrounded you, and neither one could imagine wanting to lie around in the sun. They splashed in and went under and came up soaked and laughing. They ran to a sandbar and found a place deep enough to jump in and went one after the other jumping and shrieking and jumping again.

They had been swimming for a while when Oliver noticed someone on the bridge. He was looking down and watching quietly, staring at the girls and paying little attention to Oliver and Anwyn. Oliver pointed the observer out to Anwyn and the two watched him. They swam to the far side of the river and then came closer and closer to the bridge, looking up at the stranger.

He wore a dirty cap and jeans and after a few minutes summoned up his courage to walk down to the river and confront the two sun bathing girls who had just happened to position themselves within perfect view of the bridge, as if on purpose.

Anwyn and Oliver were under the bridge now, in the shadows, quiet and watching. They exchanged glances and giggled, then turned back to spying on their siblings again.

The boy kicked his way through the weeds, coming down the embankment to the sandy shore where Isabelle and Catalina were stretched out on the sand. They heard him coming but didn't move, trying to lie as still as possible, thinking of themselves as older and sexier than they really were.

The boy stopped a dozen feet shy of their towels and his eyes went up and down both girls, confirming for himself what he saw from up on the bridge. Anwyn and Oliver were hushed, unable to hear what was going on. They watched as the boy said something and the two girls pretended to break from their trance. They turned to the boy and then sat up. The three began talking.

"What's he saying?" Anwyn asked.

"I can't hear," Oliver said.

The girls giggled and the noise echoed among the trees. The boy evidently said something funny. The boy eventually sat in the sand next to the girls and the talking continued. Anwyn grew bored and dragged Oliver farther down the river, away from the teenage trio.

It had maybe been an hour later. Oliver and Anwyn had been down river, climbing trees and diving off the branches that hung over the water. As they came to the bridge they remembered the boy and decided to be try and eavesdrop again. In the shadows under the bridge they could see the shore, but Catalina sat on her towel alone, fidgeting and looking nervous. She kept glancing up river.

Anwyn and Oliver exchanged glances and then swam up river, sticking to the far side of a sand bar so Catalina wouldn't see them. Fifty yards from the bridge they finally saw Isabelle and the boy with the dirty cap standing on the shore among the trees. They never told anybody what they saw. Oliver wanted to stand up, to stride forward and stop them, but Anwyn took his hand and shook her head no.

"Isabelle can take care of herself," she whispered and dragged him away.

As Anwyn looked down on the Arkansas River from the bridge remembering that day, she still hadn't told anyone what she had seen.

Isabelle and the boy were kissing. His shirt was off—yet he still had the hat on. There arms were intertwined and Oliver and Anwyn watched his hands struggle with the clasp to the top of Isabelle's bikini. This was the moment when Oliver wanted to surge forward. But Anwyn pulled him away, knowing this was her sister's moment to do what she would do. Oliver and Anwyn never knew what happened.

As the boy tried to go farther than Isabelle had agreed—and that's really what it was—the conversation on the beach was the most ridiculous of flirting. The boy wanted to be close to cute girls and the cute girls wanted to be close to a boy. Somehow he convinced Isabelle to go up the river away with him—Catalina wouldn't go for it, she knew she had to live in the same town as this kid. Isabelle just wanted the thrill and as they walked she told the boy he could only kiss her. He nodded, looking innocent.

When he tried to undo her top, Isabelle pushed back. He kept coming and she pushed back once more. He came towards her a third time, awkward and pathetic and Isabelle stopped kissing him and pushed him back.

"I told you," was all she said. With her arms still around the boy she jerked him close—directly into her raised knee. Hardly a whimper came from the boy as he dropped to the sand, his dirty hat falling into the river.

Oliver and Anwyn were drying off when Isabelle came back to the bridge alone. She rolled her eyes at Catalina and Oliver and Anwyn tried to pretend like they didn't know anything.

Years later standing on top of the bridge with Charlie, Anwyn still wondered what had happened with the boy. With hindsight she could assume the worst. But somehow she knew her sister to be better than that. She took one final look at the empty beach below and then turned back to Richmond, Charlie trotting at her side.

Posted by kevin at 9:19 PM | TrackBack

November 5, 2006

Chapter 6

(Filed under: The Novel)

Anwyn climbed into bed that night after wondering that fateful question to the mirror. Charlie sniffed at her door and then curled up on the rug between a few boxes. Usually he slept downstairs on the couch.

A week after Isabelle killed herself Anwyn found herself walking down the hall of what would be her new school. But the newness and excitement of her freshman year of high school had been so rudely and completely destroyed by her sister's action. Classes at St. Paul Western High School wouldn't start for another week. A counselor from the school had tried to set up an appointment with Anwyn three times before Anwyn finally made time. She only did it because her dad asked her to.

"You need to talk to somebody," he had said.

"Why? What's there to talk about?" Anwyn asked, her voice trembling. Her dad just sat there quietly. He was trying to collect his thoughts, to collect his feelings.

"You can't let this anger consume you," Jack finally said.

"I'm not angry," Anwyn said through gritted teeth. She almost laughed at herself for saying it. Everybody knew she was angry. But for not for the reasons you'd expect. She wasn't angry that her sister was dead. Anwyn fumed because her sister grabbed the spotlight one final and ultimate time, and it would cast a shadow on everything else for the rest of Anwyn's life. She was angry that her sister had messed everything up.

"Anwyn," her father said, "I don't want to lose you." And they both knew he meant more than suicidal tendencies. He was thinking of more than Isabelle. At that moment Jill sat on the front porch drinking from a bottle of vodka.

And so Anwyn walked down the hall of her new school towards the counselor's office. That first meeting was quiet and awkward and difficult. The counselor was young, maybe in her early 30s, and asked lots of questions and didn't say much.

"What did you like about your sister?" Ms. Jonas asked.

"Nothing," Anwyn said. "She was a bitch." The words stung before she even said them.

"Really?" Ms. Jonas asked. Nothing seemed to phase her. "Why was she a bitch?"

"She was," Anwyn said. It was the best response she could give. The questions dragged on and Anwyn gave short and terse answers, completely uncharacteristic for her. If Ms. Jonas had ever talked to Anwyn before she'd know that.

"Look Anwyn," Ms. Jonas said after another monosyllabic response. "Let me cut to the chase. Your sister just killed herself. It sucks. And you're angry. Anyone can see that. But you've got to talk about it. You can't just ball it up inside."

Anwyn just sat there, glaring at Ms. Jonas.

"Maybe you don't want to talk today," Ms. Jonas continued. "That's OK. But I want to show you something." She turned to a filing cabinet in the corner and pulled out a file. She set it down on the desk between them.

"This isn't exactly recommended," Ms. Jonas said, looking a little sheepish. "But I think it might help. You probably know that they assign counselors based on last name, which means I was your sister's counselor as well. This is her file."

Anwyn stared at it, mesmerized.

"Now I can't let you just look through it," Ms. Jonas said. "That's beyond not recommended. But I can tell you a few things. This file—this whole file—is just like most of the files I have. It's not filled with depressing letters and rant sessions. You won't find a suicide note or even any rationale for what Isabelle did in this file. There aren't any behavior issues—there's not even a detention slip. The whole file is filled with good grades, recommendations from teachers, test scores and notes about her college application process."

Ms. Jonas paused and let Anwyn absorb the words.

"Whenever I talked with your sister it was about her future. I spent hours and hours helping her process her life after high school. We talked about careers, we talked about majors, we debated the merits of different colleges."

She paused again. Anwyn's face was blank, but her mind kept spinning.

"I don't know why your sister did what she did," Ms. Jonas said. "It's a complete surprise to me. But I show you this file because I want you to know I'm mad. I'm angry with Isabelle for wasting my time. That's how I feel. I should probably feel sadness for losing one of my students, but I mostly feel anger." A tear fell from Ms. Jonas' eyes and she just let it go.

"I can come back any time?" Anwyn asked, the wrath gone from her voice.

"Anytime." Anwyn walked out that day, leaving Ms. Jonas behind with Isabelle's file. But she came back at least once a week for the rest of her time in St. Paul.

"Why do you think she did it?" Anwyn asked Ms. Jonas one day in the fall. Anwyn had skipped out on her American literature class to come to the office and see Ms. Jonas. She had a permanent pass out of any class and the teachers never asked questions. Something about reading The Catcher in the Rye and listening to her classmates' inane answers didn't seem worthwhile. They didn't know what they were talking about and any time she spoke up everyone parsed what she said for insights about suicide.

"I don't know, Anwyn," Ms. Jonas said. "I've shown you her file—I don't think this was a lifelong plan she had." Anwyn wondered. "Why do you think she did it?"

"I don’t know," Anwyn said. "She always thought she was right. She thought she had all the answers."

"Big sisters usually think that," Ms. Jonas said. "But they're not always right."

"No, they're not," Anwyn said with a smile. "One time she was craving s'mores and was convinced she could toast the marshmallows in the microwave." Ms. Jonas laughed. "She blamed me for it, but Mom didn't believe her."

"How's your mom doing?" Ms. Jonas asked. Anwyn grew quiet.

"She won't talk about it," Anwyn said. "She won't talk about anything. She works all day—even into the evenings—and then comes home and watches TV."

"What about your dad?"

"He's OK. He doesn't say much either," Anwyn said. "But we have breakfast together. Sometimes we don't say anything. But sometime we'll talk. The other day he asked me what I thought we should do with Isabelle's stuff."

"What'd you tell him?" Ms. Jonas asked.

"Well, most of it we don't want," Anwyn said. "Even if liked her style I couldn't bring myself to wear her clothes. Same with her books and CDs. I told Dad we should probably make a box for her knick-knacks and papers—everything else that someone else could use we should probably give away."

"That's a practical answer," Ms. Jonas said.

"That's what Dad said. But he agreed with me."

"What will you do with the box?" Ms. Jonas asked.

"I don't know. But it doesn't seem right to get rid of it." That box moved with Jack and Anwyn to Kansas and now it sat in the third bedroom upstairs, where it would sit until everything else was put away and they had to do something with it.

Anwyn fell asleep thinking about Ms. Jonas and those sessions back in St. Paul. She enjoyed those talks, if only for the sake of sharing what was going on in her head and heart, which sometimes contradicted. Sometimes she could talk to her father, but Jack often seemed distant and talking with his daughter about the whole situation seemed to take so much effort for him. He was willing to take that effort, but Anwyn didn't want to put him through it.

And her mom—Jill checked out. Isabelle had been so like her and the suicide hit Jill hard. It was as if it was a choice Jill could have made herself, and while none of them knew why Isabelle did it, Jill could at least understand why. It made her reevaluate everything. Jack tried to talk to her, tried to reconnect with his wife. But he got nowhere. Anwyn could hear them arguing when they thought she had gone to bed.

"I don't want to talk about it," Jill had said.

"What do you want?" Jack asked, frustration in his voice. Though there voices carried through the walls Anwyn could imagine him sitting on the bed looking exhausted.

"I don't know, Jack, but everything's changed." Jill said as she rushed around the room doing nothing in particular.

"No," Jack said. "I don't accept that."

"Well whether or not you accept it doesn't matter, that's the way it is," Jill came back. Anwyn could hear her slam something on the dresser.

"No," Jack said. "One thing has changed: Our daughter is dead." He was standing up now, facing his wife. His dress shirt was unbuttoned and untucked, his dress shoes already kicked into the corner. He didn't raise his voice often, but he was doing it now. On the other side of the wall Anwyn tried not breathe.

"How can you talk like that?" Jill cried out.

"Like what?" Jack asked incredulously. "She's dead. Isabelle is dead." Jill sobbed, loud and painful. Quieter, softer, Jack started again, "Our baby girl is gone. I don't understand why and it tears me apart. But we're still a family."

Jill just shook her head. Anwyn strained to hear.

"You just don't get it, do you, Jack," was all Jill said. She had already given in.

"There's another baby girl who isn't dead," Jack said. "She still needs us."

"No, Jack, everything has changed." It was her mantra and whether or not it was true, she would make it true.

A month later, just before Christmas, Jill moved out. Jack and Anwyn and Charlie watched her go, taking a single bag with her. She had called a taxi and wouldn't let Jack take her to the airport. The divorce proceedings were all but finalized.

She took a final look at her only daughter and said, "Someday you'll understand, Anwyn," as if she were a child. "Everything has changed."

And she left.

Posted by kevin at 8:33 PM | TrackBack

November 4, 2006

Chapter 5

(Filed under: The Novel)

The sun was setting now, creating a majestic purple and deep red in the clouds to the west. Anwyn squinted and took it in for a moment, not remembering the last time she saw a sunset like that. Kansas at least had that going for it—a horizon so far and wide and flat that every sunset was a once in a lifetime. It's amazing how the trees and buildings and obstructions of city life take away the sense of distance.

She broke away from the setting sun and turned back to her not-quite cousin Oliver, who still sat in his idling pickup.

"Nice truck," Anwyn said with a smirk.

"Gracias. And it's a pickup," Oliver said.

"Since when could you drive?" Anwyn asked.

"I've been driving since I was 14—it's farm country," Oliver answered.

"And you're a farmer?"

"Well, no," Oliver said. "If you're under 16 you can drive to and from work, which is what I’m doing. Though I do turn 16 in a couple months and it'll be legit."

Anwyn could smell the exhaust from Oliver's pickup and silence started to fill the moment.

"So, are you gonna ask a girl if she wants a ride?" Anwyn said. Oliver just smiled back, then gestured towards the passenger's side with his head. Anwyn climbed in and Oliver shifted to drive and the pickup rumbled forward towards Richmond.

"It's been a while," Anwyn said, rolling down the window using the old crank and resting her arm on the ledge like Oliver was doing.

"Si," Oliver said. "We heard you and your dad were coming." He left the second part unsaid, but gave a furtive glance towards Anwyn. She nodded. They both allowed a moment of silence. Anwyn let her hand rest on the tan fabric of the bench seat that ran between them. There wasn't an armrest, but there was a cupholder resting on the floor straddling the hump above the driveshaft. It was an automatic with the shifter coming off the steering column—a granny shifter—complete with a collection of rubber bands hanging off the lever.

"So this is your truck?" Anwyn asked.

"Si, it's my pickup," Oliver emphasized the last word. Anwyn smiled. "It's pretty old—actually used to belong to your grandpa—Mr. Miller."

"Really? He sold it to you?" Anwyn asked in disbelief, looking over at Oliver.

"Not quite. He sold it to Grandpa Frank. Grandpa Frank sold it to me." Anwyn laughed. It was exactly the kind of thing he would do.

"Did you have to scrape off any racist bumper stickers?" Anwyn asked. Oliver chuckled and shook his head. They had left the river behind and were coming up on Richmond and the cluster of houses on the south side of town. Anwyn realized how slow Oliver was driving, unsure if it was on purpose or if that's just the way he drove.

"So what do you do around here?" Anwyn asked.

"You know, stuff," Oliver said. "What did you do up there in Minnesota?"

"Not that much, I guess. It always feels like there's more to do, even if you don't do any of it. It's just weird, no shopping, no concerts, no culture."

"See, you're just misinformed," Oliver said. "We've got shopping, you just have to want brass fittings and tractor parts. And we've got concerts—maybe not the White Stripes or whatever it is you're into, but there are plenty of so-so local bands that play in crappy little clubs."

"And culture?" Anwyn asked. "I didn't see any concert halls or art galleries on my way into town."

"Then you must have been asleep, chica." Oliver gestured to a house they were passing, piles of rusted brown junk collecting in the front yard. "I call it found art. And there's plenty of culture to go around."

The pickup rolled past another house with a collection in the yard, this time pinwheels and yard gnomes. Oliver smiled at Anwyn and she just shook her head.

"You wanna stop by and see Catalina?" Oliver asked.

"Yeah, that'd be good. It has been a while."

"Besides, that's what we do around here," Oliver said.

"Visit," Anwyn finished. "I know."

The pickup turned off the blacktop and onto the gravel road. It rolled to a stop outside a small house on the south side of town, still south of the railroad tracks and closer to the river. The house was a teal green color and only a single story. Anwyn swung the door of the pickup truck shut and it resounded with a solid thud. It was definitely and old pickup.

"Hermana, I'm home," Oliver called as he opened the front door.

A sharp, whispered, "silencio!" came from the other room and a sheepish look came over Oliver's face.

"I forgot, it's just about bedtime," Oliver said, setting his keys on a hook next to the door and closing it after Anwyn came in.

"Bedtime?" Anwyn asked.

"You probably don't remember—you were a little distracted at the time," Oliver said as he led Anwyn through the living room and the hallway where the bedrooms were. The living room was small, a couch and a few chairs, a pile of unfolded laundry sat in the corner. There was no TV. It smelled very alive and fresh, but there was also a hint of mustiness—the old house smell. The hallway was narrow and lined with framed snapshots. Anwyn didn't recognize half of them, but did see Aunt Alejandra and Carlos, one of Grandpa Frank and one with Anwyn's immediate family.

She saw her cousin Catalina slowly closing a bedroom door—she looked older and wiser and tired, but her face lit up when she saw Anwyn. Catalina wrapped her arms around her cousin and whispered a greeting, half in Spanish and half in English.

"Why are we whispering?" Anwyn asked in a whisper herself. Catalina looked to Oliver and he just shrugged, so she took Anwyn's hand and pulled her back towards the closed bedroom door. Catalina opened the door a crack and peaked inside, then opened it wider and motioned for Anwyn to look.

She stepped forward and looked in the door and there lying in a crib was a baby, his thumb jammed in his mouth and his eyes closed and his dark hair looking just perfect. A mobile circled above his head, monkeys and bananas spinning around and soft music came from a music box on a nearby dresser.

"His name is Mateo," Catalina whispered to Anwyn and she smiled.

Mateo had just fallen asleep and was in that momentary state after the crying stops when babies look absolutely angelic. Anwyn absorbed the sight: the soft light from a nightlight in the corner, the spinning monkeys, the car and truck sheets and the little baby, zipped into a snuggly sleepsack. Anwyn stepped back and closed the door, remembering hearing something from Grandpa Frank or maybe Aunt Alejandra about Catalina being pregnant. It seemed distant and vague and she couldn't be sure.

"So when did—I don't remember hearing—" Anwyn seemed lost for words. The three had come out of the hallway and sat down in the living room, Catalina immediately reaching for a basket of laundry so she could fold onsies and burp rags while they talked.

"We don't keep in touch like we used to," Catalina said, shaking her head.

"I guess I knew, I had just forgotten." Anwyn said. "A baby. Wow."

"We sent an announcement," Oliver said, "Cute picture and everything. But we figure it might have gotten lost with everything going on."

"He was born in August. My little angelo." Catalina said. And then it dawned on Anwyn.

"What day?" she asked.

"August 12," Catalina said, slowly and with a sigh, understanding the tremendous weight of her words."

Anwyn nodded. The night of August 11 Isabelle committed suicide. Anwyn didn't find out until the next day, August 12.

"He's beautiful," Anwyn said. "I'm so sorry I forgot. We should have sent you a gift or something."

"No, we understand," Catalina said. "You had other things to worry about."

"That's no excuse," Anwyn said.

"It's OK," Catalina said as she stopped folding the sleeper in her hands and put it down. "We all grieved that day. I miss Isabelle." Anwyn didn't say anything in response. She just let the comment hang there.

"I'll still get you something—Dad and I, we'll get him something," Anwyn said, still sitting on the edge of the faded couch.

"Don't worry about it, cousin," Catalina said. "I'm just glad a small measure of joy could come on that sad day."

"He didn't look like a small measure of joy," Anwyn said. "How big was he when he was born?" The two cousins talked about Mateo and the typical questions surrounding a baby. Oliver sat in the corner and looked on, just enjoying the conversation.

"I should probably go," Anwyn said. "My dad's going to wonder where I am."

"You're welcome to come back anytime," Catalina said as she stood up. "We should have you and your dad over for supper sometime."

"That'd be good," Anwyn said.

"C'mon," Oliver said as he stood up and headed for the door. "I'll drive you home."

"It's not that far," Anwyn said.

"No, it's OK. It's dark out now." Oliver said, taking his keys from the hook and heading out the door. Anwyn looked back at Catalina, who shrugged.

"Always the gentlemen," Catalina said. "Adios."

They climbed in the pickup truck and started back to Anwyn's house.

"So is it just you and Catalina?" Anwyn asked.

"Yeah, it's kind of a weird story," Oliver said.

"They always are."

"Well," Oliver started, "Catalina had been on her own and I was still living with my parents over in Carver. Catalina and Cody—that's Mateo's dad—were going to buy this house when she got pregnant. Cody, the jackass that he is—"

"Oliver!" Anwyn said. She never remembered hearing him swear.

"Sorry—but he is," Oliver said. "He took off as soon as he heard the news. Catalina refused to move back home and my parents were worried about her. She went ahead and bought the house anyway so I offered to come live with her."

"How come?" Anwyn asked.

"It seemed like a way to keep the peace," Oliver said. "Catalina shouldn't have been alone, but she was too stubborn to come home or ask for help. Mom and dad were worried and if she was alone they would have stopped over all the time and it'd just get ugly. I figured I could help her out and I told my parents it'd be a good deterrent for Cody or any other guy she might have her eye on."

"Always being the brother," Anwyn said.

"I guess," Oliver said, pulling the pickup into Anwyn's driveway. "It's been good though. She shouldn't have to take care of Mateo all by herself and he needs a dad. Not that I'm a dad, but…"

"I get it," Anwyn said. "That's cool. Thanks for the ride." She climbed out of the pickup and swung the door shut.

"Tell your dad I said hola," Oliver called before pulling away. Anwyn nodded and went inside, a bark or two coming from Charlie.

"Dad, I’m home," she called.

"There you are," Jack said, standing in the kitchen doorway. "I thought the coyotes might have gotten you." He said 'coyotes' without the long 'e', the way the locals say it.

"Nope, I'm too fast for them. I ran into Oliver and he took me over to see Catalina and Mateo. They live on the south side of town."

"Mateo?" Jack asked. "Oh, that's right. She had a baby." The two walked into the kitchen and Jack sat down at the table.

"Yeah, he's a cute little kid," Anwyn said, still standing. "We need to get her a gift. I can't believe we forgot about that."

"Well, it's been a little—a little much lately," Jack said.

"That's no excuse," Anwyn said.

"We can get them something this weekend," Jack said. "We'll drive into Morgan."

Anwyn nodded and grabbed an apple from the fridge. She headed up stairs to get her clothes and take a shower. It always seemed a little backwards to have to shower downstairs. She saw the snapshot from Richmond Café in her bedroom and stopped. She couldn't believe her cousin had a baby and she had completely forgotten about it. It was even worse that everyone thought Isabelle was a worthy excuse.

Anwyn looked in the mirror above her dresser. She wondered if it was wrong that she didn't miss her sister.

Posted by kevin at 6:20 PM | TrackBack

November 3, 2006

Chapter 4

(Filed under: The Novel)

The sun hung low in the sky. Shadows had grown long and tall, reaching across yards and over houses. A neighbors' yard had cars in various states of disrepair lined up and being overcome with weeds. A dog barked in the distance and Anwyn could just make out Charlie's low, quiet response. He never really barked at other dogs, just a soft response, as if to say I hear you, I hear you, but I'm not doing anything about it.

Anwyn's legs felt weak and soft. It had been too long, far too long since she had a good run. With packing and loading and the 12 hour drive from St. Paul and unloading and unpacking she hadn't had time for her usual run in the last week. She pumped her legs slowly and surely, trying to get the feel for them again. The ground was forgiving, the loose dirt and pebbles of a Richmond street.

Anwyn turned left at the blacktop and ran south, toward the railroad tracks and the river. The post office had long-since closed, an a single light hung over the door. The lights had come on a the gas station, they'd be open for a few more hours, but not long. There was no sense staying open all night. The hardware store had closed as well—farmers started early and quit early—and the Richmond Café had been closed for many years. All the buildings and storefronts were quiet, Main Street was empty.

As Anwyn approached the railroad tracks she could see the remains of the old train depot. It was boarded up—had been decades ago—and the weeds grew tall all around it. A sign facing the tracks—so the train could see it as the rolled in and out of town—said "Richmond" in large, block letters. The looked ancient, the peeled, the wood worn and old.

Once upon a time the trains would stop in Richmond. It was a cattle stop where ranchers would drive their herds to be loaded up and taken off to the stockyards in Dodge City. Most evidence of any such activity was long gone, either purposefully pulled up and discarded somewhere less noticeable, or else abandoned and forgotten in plain site, like the depot.

As Anwyn approached the tracks she could see more evidence. A single set of tracks ran from Carver to Richmond to Howe to Morgan, but here where the tracks crossed the highway there were three sets of tracks. Only one allowed a train to safely cross the road. The others had been paved over so the grooves that kept the train's heavy wheels on the track were gone. Anwyn eyed the ribbons of metal that cut through the road, now useless and forgotten.

Many years ago her Grandpa Miller—her Dad's dad—had taken Anwyn and Isabelle down to the railroad tracks. They walked across a field, scrambled over a fence and through some weeds to the tracks. Isabelle had frowned at the fence and struggled to get over it. Anwyn had tackled it with vigor and energy, managing to snag her jeans on a nail in the process. Their Grandpa Miller helped them over the fence in his gruff and standoff-ish way. He stood at a distance, warning Anwyn about the stray nail, yet doing little about it until she was stuck.

Casey Miller had never had daughters of his own, which perhaps explained his ineptitude. Not many daughters, much less city girls, would have gone for a romp across a field, over a fence and to the railroad tracks. It was something Casey Miller had done with his boys. It was the only thing he knew.

After getting past the fence they trudged through the tall grass and weeds and finally came out to the mowed section within yards of the tracks. The grass and weeds had been cut down and then overcome with little white stones that made the solid bed for the tracks.

Their grandpa handed each girl a penny and they placed them on the tracks, one on each rail, directly across from each other. Isabelle placed her penny and then looked up and down the tracks, imagining the train coming. Anwyn placed her penny across from Isabelle's, imaging the train hitting both pennies at the same time and maybe jumping, probably not jumping the tracks and wrecking—that would have crushed Anwyn with guilt—but just bouncing, enough for the engineer to look back and laugh and wave at the Miller girls.

When they came back a few days later their pennies were lying in the bed of white stones, flattened like paper and stretched so Lincoln looked fat and faint. The train hadn't jumped the tracks and the engineer didn't even notice he was passing through Richmond.

A few days after retrieving the pennies Anwyn and Isabelle would discover their Grandpa Miller in the small workshop in the shed behind the garage, drunk and rambling incoherently about people he didn't like, using racial insults the girls had never heard before. When Anwyn repeated one of them in front of her mother, not even knowing what it meant, Jill's hand covered her mouth and her eyes had gone wide. Anwyn's lecture had been long and dull—she would have preferred the soap that her Grandpa Frank had used to teach Jill not to use such words.

Only a few years later Grandpa Miller would move to Morgan and leave Richmond behind, taking his seething racism and alcoholism with him. Jack grudgingly defended his father, saying he was just old, so very old. Old and stubborn.

The thoughts and memories came to Anwyn as she ran, now long past the train tracks and leaving behind the few houses and streets south of town. Since the main highway turned off from Main Street back in the middle of town and went east, a smaller highway came south of town and turned back to dirt as it left town and headed south towards the river. Anwyn followed this road, now hearing the gravel and sand crunch under her shoes.

It felt good to run again, to let her memories and thoughts spill over and over. Isabelle had a role in many of them, but now that she was dead that role always seemed mysterious and shifty. Anwyn kept wondering how long her sister knew she would kill herself. Did she know that day at the train tracks when they carefully placed their pennies? Did she know that day when they found their grandpa drunk and incoherent? Did she know only weeks before it actually happened, that day when for an hour or two sibling rivalry seemed to fade away and she let Anwyn come into her bedroom and the two talked and giggled and bonded like two sisters should?

Now she had reached the bridge, perhaps a half-mile south of town. The road abruptly switched to a pale white concrete, first scattered with sand and gravel and then bare save for the stark yellow line down the middle. The bridge rose, subtly at first, but then it became more noticeable and Anwyn could feel it in her legs, feel it in her lungs and she breathed in the cool evening air of a spring Kansas evening. The rise continued until the bridge finally left the land below and started out over the river, the climb completed and leveling off. Anwyn slowed her pace and looked out over the Arkansas River.

Anyone else would have pronounced it just like the state, but here in the heart of Kansas they pronounced it like their own state. It wasn't Ark-an-saw, it was Ar-Kansas. Anwyn remembered calling the state Ar-Kansas in social studies class in second grade and her teacher giving her the strangest look before correcting her.

But here it was again Ar-Kansas. That at least felt comfortable, felt right.

Anwyn stopped on the bridge and looked out over the river. It all looked brown, the bare trees, their buds not yet appearing, the muddy water, twisting around sandbars and heading southeast. Two ruts swerved away from the bridge just to the south and turned down to the river, a makeshift road. There was an open area along the river flats, scattered with broken bottles and strewn trash, a few charred remains of late night campfires.

She closed her eyes and remembered another fond family outing, this time a cookout along the river. It was a year or two after the Richmond Café snapshot and was a gathering of both families. Her Grandpa Frank and her Grandpa and Grandma Miller—the two rarely came together. And it wouldn't happen again. Jack's brother James and his wife Claudia were there, along with their son Morris. Aunt Alejandra and Carlos came with Catalina and Oliver in tow. They would play with Isabelle and Anwyn and Morris, running up and down the shore, sucking down their glass-bottled Pepsi's while the adults drank beer.

That, of course, was an unfortunate decision. The grandparents and Carlos and James hung back while the others went wading down the river a ways, the parents carrying the children when it got too deep and everyone shouting and carrying on.

Anwyn paused for a moment—would Isabelle have known that day that life would end at 17? Maybe that's why she had the boldness to wade herself, refusing to let Jack or Jill or even Aunt Alejandra carry her, soaking her clothes in the process and having to swim most of the way.

The recollection continued. While Anwyn and Oliver, the doomed Isabelle and Caterina, Jack, Jill and Aunt Alejandra, and Claudia and Morris were splashing and yelling and having fun in the Arkansas River, James and his dad Casey Miller were getting drunk. Carlos had quickly realized his mistake and wished he too were in the river splashing and carrying on. Grandpa Frank had stayed back on purpose, not because of his bad knees as he claimed, but because he knew Carlos would need him. And Betty Miller just stood by and watched, powerless to stop her husband when he started drinking.

Anwyn never knew what happened, but the drunken banter must have gone the way you'd expect, with caustic barbs being thrown out at Carlos, first subdued and indirect, but then more and more focused and sharp as their blood-alcohol numbers rose.

When the wet parents and kids came back to the fire Betty and Casey—Grandma and Grandpa Miller had left. James was buckled into the passenger seat of his car, his knuckles bleeding. Carlos had a sore jaw and was sitting in front of the fire seething and trying to collect himself before his kids were in his lap.

Grandpa Frank stood just behind Carlos with a hand on his shoulder, between him and James. He had tried to keep the peace when the shouting broke out and while he couldn't help where the drunken punches landed, he at least knew a drunk would cause more damage to himself and concentrated on keeping Carlos from doing what any sane and just man would have done.

"No, Carlos, it's not fair," Grandpa Frank said, his breathing heavy and labored. "But what will you do when Oliver realizes you gave that smartass the beating he so deserves?"

"Si," Carlos said. "You're right. I just… I just…"

"I know," Grandpa Frank had said. "But the better man doesn't fight. Beating the crap out of him will only make his resolve that much worse."

"Stupid gringo," Carlos had said, spitting and finally sitting down in front of the fire.

Grandpa Frank just nodded and looked back to make sure James was still belted into the passenger seat. He exhaled slowly, feeling the pain in his bad knees.

That was the last time the Miller and Nelson families came together. Anwyn's cousin Morris ended up robbing a gas station and was serving time. James still drank too much and Claudia had left him long ago.

Anwyn exhaled herself, wondering why families fell apart. As she thought a truck came rumbling up the road from the south. It slowed as it came to the bridge and then kept slowing as it approached Anwyn. It was a small and ancient pickup—Anwyn would have called it a truck, but in Kansas a truck was something bigger—with peeling paint and spots of rust.

It pulled up across from her on the bridge and stopped. There in the driver's seat, one arm resting out the window and the other arm draped lazily across the steering wheel sat Oliver.

"Hola, chica," he said.

"Hola yourself," Anwyn replied with a smile.

Posted by kevin at 5:03 PM | TrackBack

November 2, 2006

Chapter 3

(Filed under: The Novel)

Anwyn slumped into a seat in the middle of the bus and rested her head against the window. Her first day of Howe High School had finally ended. There was really nothing worse than having to repeat your first day of high school. This time around it was more the new girl stares than it was the whispers and murmurs about what had happened over the summer.

Howe Consolidated School District had only a few buses. Each covered one of the respective towns where students had to be shipped in, either Richmond, Carver or White Plains, and sometimes they had to double up, depending on the current state of repair the buses happened to be in. There were a few kids who lived out in the country and the buses divided those kids up.

Today the buses must have been running well for the Richmond bus was only going to Richmond and had maybe a dozen kids. Anywyn stared out the window, her head still resting against the glass. She watched the empty fields go whizzing by, seeing the rows of freshly disked dirt that lined up like a geometric pattern. They passed a black oil pump, turning and churning so slowly as it reached the bottom of the well. Then there was the requisite piece of ancient farm machinery, sitting on the edge of some country farm house's property. Who knows how long at it had been sitting there, rusted and useless, replaced by something better but not completely discarded.

These sights weren't anything new to Anwyn. They were quintessentially Kansas. She had seen them so many times when her family—her whole family—had come to Kansas to visit. But now these weren't quaint sights, they were the norm.

Visit. That seemed to be the number one recreational activity in Kansas.

The bus slowed as it entered Richmond, rounded the corner and came to a stop in front of the post office. The bus route only made two stops in Richmond, one in the middle of town that emptied half the bus, and another south of the railroad tracks. It didn't used to stop twice, but now there was a student out in the country south of town, so the kids who lived south of the tracks convinced the bus driver that he'd be driving past their house anyway, so why not stop there.

Anwyn stepped off the bus and looked around. A few students nodded to her, another said hello and they exchanged introductions. The students went their separate ways and Anwyn again looked up and down Main Street Richmond. The post office sat on the corner, the official center of town. Across the street was a gas station, and on another corner the Richmond Café which had closed and opened again too many times over the years, and now sat empty. There were a few other buildings along Main Street, a new aluminum shed that was someone's warehouse, the burned out remains of the old grocery store, the brick hardware store. It wasn't much.

The post office and the gas station—and once the café—served as the town's social center. Anwyn remembered long visits at all three places with various relatives.

Anwyn and her father lived a few blocks from the center of town, which is about as far away as you could get and still be in Richmond proper. They were lived down one of the dusty side roads and to the right. The only paved road in Richmond was the highway that turned into town and then away again—deliberate right angle turns—and doubled as the main street.

"I'm home," Anwyn called, letting the old storm door slam behind her. She closed the heavy back door with its ancient handle that didn't quite turn and gave it a final shove to make sure it would stay closed. Her father had bought the only available piece of real estate in Richmond, Kansas, which just happened to be the house he'd grown up in. It was apparently a hopping housing market in small town Kansas—there were so few houses available that when one went up for sale you had to go for it. Someone else had lived in the old house since Jack Miller's parents had, so it didn't seem quite as odd. Then again, the change in decorations seemed odd and off-putting, making everything not quite familiar.

Charlie sauntered up to Anwyn and licked her hand, then turned off to whatever he had been doing before she came home. Charlie had been Isabelle's dog, a curly, black dog that came up to just past your knee. Technically he was a Portuguese water dog, but nobody had heard of that breed.

"Hey, Dad," Anwyn said, poking her head into his office. He worked at home as a computer programmer. Or a technical consultant? Or a freelance coder? Anwyn never quite understood it, but Jack basically worked on computers. He had convinced his employer in St. Paul to let him become a long distance consultant, which allowed the move to Kansas. It also allowed him and Anwyn to still have a roof over their heads.

"Oh, hi," Jack said, breaking away from the screen. "I didn't hear you come in." That was typical. The whole place could be robbed, ransacked and burned to the ground and Jack wouldn't notice. "How was school?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Anwyn replied. Jack gave her that look. "Do you really want me to answer that truthfully?" This time she smiled. Her dad did, too, and shook his head no.

"I had a wonderful day at school, Daddy, dearest," she said, folding her hands and sashaying back and forth. "I just can't wait to go back tomorrow."

"I know, I know," Jack said. "It's no St. Paul Western. But it'll get better." Anwyn gave up on her dutiful daughter impersonation and leaned against the door frame. She knew he was right.

"I did get to talk to an old favorite teacher of yours—Mr. Dahlman," Anwyn said.

"Ah, old Chet Dahlman," Jack said, kicking back in his chair and spinning around in a circle. "He's still around. Wow, he must be so close to retirement. What's he doing now."

"Counseling."

"Oh," Jack said. The spinning stopped. "Oh, I see."

"Yeah, well he remembered you, but it was Mom that turned him into a nostalgic history buff," Anwyn said. Leaning in the doorway she noticed how small the doorframes in the old house were. She had noticed her dad stooping through the doorways before but hadn't realized why. She was short enough not to need to duck, but it seemed like ducking might be a safer alternative, just in case.

"Yeah. Dahlman's history class dealt with a lot of politics—I think we even did some mock elections. That'd be right up your mother's alley. Taking the power, pulling the strings, orchestrating everything…" He trailed off and looked up to the ceiling. While the doorframes were smaller than normal, the ceilings were taller.

"I thought we weren't going to badmouth Mom," Anwyn said, somewhat slowly. She didn't really want to bring it up, but she knew if her father started she would follow suit.

"I meant that sincerely," Jack said, looking Anwyn in the eyes. "Your mother needs to be in control—it's just the way she is. A political climate was her true element. She could work some real magic. It was mesmerizing to watch."

"Well maybe now's her chance," Anwyn said. Her father just nodded and after a moment of silence swiveled back to his desk and work. Anwyn grabbed a snack from the fridge—raspberry yogurt—and head up stairs.

The house was built in 1903. It had four bedrooms, a master bedroom downstairs that had become Jack's office and made a complete circle with the kitchen, living room and dining room, with the only bathroom sticking off from the kitchen. Upstairs were three more bedrooms. Jack and Anwyn each claimed one with a third turning into a TV room. Jack had aspirations of squeezing in a second bathroom upstairs, but computer programmers aren't plumbers.

Anywyn's bedroom was still a mess of boxes and piles. The bed was the only clear space. She flopped down on the bed and suddenly remembered sleeping in this room as a child. Images and memories flooded in—the musty, mothball smell of the sheets and blankets; the ancient fixture that hung from the center of the ceiling, all gnarled and twisted metal; sharing the room with a cousin and her sister.

The day before she had found a box of old photos and today she picked that box up again, flipped through a few at random, and then stopped at on particular picture. It was old and the color beginning to fade, a snapshot from maybe ten years ago.

Charlie came into the room, nosed Anwyn in the leg and she pat his head. He curled up on a rug between a few boxes and Anwyn sat on the bed for a closer look at the aged snapshot.

The picture captured a family gathering at the Richmond Café, apparently during one of its many ill-fated resurgences. Her Grandpa Frank sat in the center, smiling broadly from under his Co-op hat. On one side sat his daughter, a younger Jill with her arms around a younger Jack. On the other side sat Aunt Alejandra and Carlos.

Alejandra wasn't technically Anwyn's aunt, at least not anymore. Once upon a time she had married Jill's brother Robert. So for a time she would have been Anwyn's proper aunt. But Uncle Robert and Aunt Alejandra didn't last. Things went south—no one talks about what really happened—and Robert took off before Catalina was even born.

But rather than watch his once daughter-in-law drift and struggle as a single mother, Grandpa Frank took Alejandra under his wing. He made her family. Aunt Alejandra eventually married Carlos and he called Catalina his own. Later they had Oliver, who was just a year older than Anwyn, and not technically her cousin by any legal sense of relation.

Oliver and Catalina sat next to Carlos on the far right of the picture. Oliver was maybe six, and held a chicken finger aloft in triumph. Catalina had her arm crossed and was looking disapprovingly at her little brother.

And there on the far side of the snapshot, next to Jack, sat Isabelle and then Anwyn. The five-year-old Anwyn held a French fry up in the air, mimicking her not-quite-cousin Oliver. But Isabelle, perhaps seven or eight, looked directly at the camera—the only one of the children pictured to do so.

Isabelle looked pretty—as so many people often told her—and happy. It was a kind of joy Anwyn hadn't seen in her sister in a long time. It was a moment in a time, a snapshot of a happy and joyful family. But times change. Looking forward, one would never expect such a happy, confident child as Isabelle to take her own life the summer before her senior year of high school.

Posted by kevin at 8:33 PM | TrackBack

November 1, 2006

Chapter 2

(Filed under: The Novel)

Anwyn sat in a frumpy chair in the guidance counselor's office. The chair had wooden armrests and an fabric seat and back, the kind of fabric that made you itch. Not exactly ideal for a counselor's office.

A placard on the desk said, "Chet Dahlman, Guidance Counselor." It looked as old as the chair.

After a bonding moment with Missy at the conclusion of the grand tour, Anwyn returned to Mr. Douglas' office, and in his quietly characteristic way he pointed to Mr. Dahlman's door and said Anwyn would need to talk to the school's guidance counselor. It was actually the district's guidance counselor—the Howe Consolidated School District, which included children from the nearby towns Richmond, Carver and White Plain, could only afford a single counselor. They probably only needed a single counselor.

Anwyn sat in the frumpy chair with her legs pulled up and her feet on the edge of the seat. She wore her favorite jeans—anything to carry her through today—the faded ones with that tapered just right at her shoes, not too tight, but not like some hippy bell-bottoms. They had stitching on the front pockets, pinwheels and diamonds in assorted colors. She absent mindedly pulled at the sleeves of her long-sleeve shirt, which she wore under a polo shirt. Anwyn had a sort of funky, eclectic style. It wasn't quite punk rawk with chains, put it wasn't quite the preppy-ized punk that passed for popular these days. She didn't think either would be popular in Kansas. She was afraid to know what would be popular. Her friend, Shiloh, from back home in St. Paul had said country would be in—button-down shirts, cowboy hats and fringe. Anwyn knew enough to know such blatant stereotypes wouldn't be right. But she also knew it would be the cutting edge, slacker-cool that pervaded her former social spheres.

She let her sleeve go and moved to playing with her light brown hair, grabbing a strand and twisting and curling. Her hair still had some of the black from a recent home dye job. She wasn't sure how that kind of behavior would go over either.

Anwyn stopped playing with her hair, consciously this time, and looked again at the placard on the desk. "Guidance Counselor." Back home in St. Paul they didn't call them guidance counselors anymore. They were just counselors. Apparently somebody realized that today's teens needed more than guidance. They needed professional help.

Then the door the opened and Chet Dahlman came in. He was a lifer at Howe Consolidated School District, teaching elementary school at the beginning of his career and slowly moving up to the junior high and then high school. He switched to guidance counselor a dozen years ago when the teaching got harder and he didn't want to keep up. But guidance counselor required a different kind of knowledge, but most of all Chet Dahlman wanted to help kids out. They often didn't listen to him as a teacher, so he thought he could do more good as a guidance counselor. Of course students listen even less to counselors.

"Sorry about the wait, Ms. Miller," Chet Dahlman said, closing the door behind him and taking a seat behind his desk in an equally frumpy looking office chair. He set a thick file folder in the middle of his desk. He smiled at Anwyn and opened the folder.

"Miller—I thought so," he said. "I had your father when I taught junior high history. Back in the old Richmond High School building." She totally expected it, but every time somebody knew who she was—or at least knew her relatives—it seemed creepy. That didn't happen back home. She also couldn't help but smile at the bit of nostalgia. There was a small school in Richmond, which had once been a high school when the town had the students to support it. But as the population dwindled and the school districts consolidated the building switched to a junior high school, then was vacant for a while, and now served as a maintenance building.

Anwyn had heard the story from her Grandpa Frank—in most families it would be Grandpa Nelson, using his last name, but somehow the first name stuck—many times. Not only was Richmond home for her father, but it was also home for her mother. But after 25 years being away, Jill Nelson/Miller (who knew which name she was using now) had practically forgotten about Richmond, much less called it home. Anwyn's Grandpa Frank would talk about that old school building every time they drove by, how both Anwyn's parents—Jack and Jill as it were—attended school at the building at different times and it wasn't until Jack had graduated and Jill was a bright-eyed senior that they finally "became an item," as her grandpa would say.

"Well I hope Dad wasn't too much trouble for you," Anwyn said.

"No, not much," Dahlman said, looking up from the folder at Anwyn. It was as if he remembered there was a student and not just a file. "I don't think history was his subject though. Your mother on the other hand..." Anwyn's blue eyes fell to the floor. "...she was something in history. How about you—do we have a budding history buff?"

"I don't know if I'm a buff, but I like it well enough," Anwyn said. She resented being like her mother in that way, but it was just a fact. It didn't have to mean anything.

"Your grades say you like it pretty well." Just as Anwyn suspected. The fat file folder was her record, probably passed on from her school in St. Paul. She knew what was coming, again.

"Now I see we have some, uh, interesting history here," Dahlman said. "I would guess a new town and a new school would that make that all the more challenging."

"Yeah," Anwyn said, pulling at her sleeve again, "It's no picnic."

"And how are you coping with... with all of this?" Dahlman asked, gesturing to the file.

"As well as I can," Anwyn answered with a shrug. More than anything she wanted to stop talking with her mother's former history teacher, but she knew from experience that saying nothing would just make it last longer. "I'm not really thrilled to move here, but it's what my dad and I had to do."

"Does it upset you?"

"Yeah," Anwyn said, wondering what kind of training this guy actually had. "But I just have to deal with it."

"OK," Dahlman said, closing the folder. "I can see you've been through this all before so I won't put you through it again. But I want you to know—"

"That the door is always open?" Anwyn interrupted. "Yeah, I know."

"Yes, my door is always open," Dahlman continued. "But not everybody likes to talk to an aging guidance counselor. I know that." Anwyn leaned forward slightly. Maybe this aging counselor did know a thing or two. "Just talk to somebody. You're not in this alone. I suspect that may be part of the reason your dad brought you here—there are plenty of people in this town who know you, even if you don't know them. Many of their doors would be open as well, I suspect."

Dahlman gestured that the session was over and Anwyn stood up to leave. She still thought it creepy that people knew her—knew of her, and that was an important distinction. Nobody in this town really knew her. Dahlman understood that distinction, but he left it for her to sort out. Sometimes she wished people would just put it out there the way they meant it.

Before she reached the door Dahlman spoke up again.

"Ms. Miller," he said as he interlocked his fingers in a gesture of sincerity. "I am sorry about your sister."

Posted by kevin at 9:18 PM | TrackBack

Chapter 1

(Filed under: The Novel)

"Welcome to Howe High School," the girl said. Anwyn blinked, slowly taking it in. The twang of the girl's accent was subtle—not southern belle slap you upside the head—but it was just enough to get under your skin.

But what really bothered Anwyn was the sincerity. This girl oozed with it. The silence began to fill after the girl's welcome and before awkwardness could truly set in, Anwyn glanced around, managed a weak smile and said thanks.

The oozing continued.

"My name's Missy and Mr. Douglas wanted me to give you the grand tour of our school."

This time Anwyn just nodded. She didn't think a tour was exactly necessary. The school consisted of two corridors, a gym/cafeteria/auditorium, maybe a dozen classrooms and maybe a few hundred students total.

Missy started the tour at the main entrance, where she had ambushed Anwyn almost before the principal, Mr. Douglas, had a chance to welcome her. Mr. Douglas didn't say much, preferring to let Missy handle the details, but did ask Anwyn to stop by after the tour.

Anywn had nodded and turned to the dirty-blonde girl with the big smile.

Missy gushed every obscure fact about the school she could manage. The main entrance, which housed the offices, had been built in 1926 and at the time was the largest school in 100 miles. Their football team won the Kansas State Championship three times, in 1936, 1943 and 1968. In the fall the team had won their division and everyone was looking forward to next year.

"So where did you say you were from?" Missy asked.

"I didn't." Anwyn said. She wanted to leave it at that, just let it sit there and watch Missy grow uncomfortable, but the poor girl didn't deserve that. "I'm from the Cities—the Twin Cities," she said, correcting herself, trying to remember that she was hundreds of miles from home and no one would know what 'Cities' she was referring to.

"Ooh, I bet it's cold up there," Missy said. "Was your winter bad this year?"

"It's not bad. We had a few 10-inch snowfalls this year, so it was actually a pretty weak winter." It felt better to talk. Felt more comfortable, more like Anwyn. But still.

"10 inches?" Missy said. "Mercy." Anwyn didn't say anything. Talking about Minnesota wouldn’t help.

"Well, we can have pretty cold winters, too, but 10 inches of snow doesn't happen very often." Missy laughed, apparently at the thought of 10 inches of snow in Howe, Kansas. They were now turning down the second of two corridors, the math and science wing of Howe High School.

"So what brings you to Howe?" Missy asked. And there it was. Anwyn knew the question would come and she'd have to face up to it. She could tell the truth. She imagined the rawness of the truth tearing away Missy's smile and her bubbly, oozy demeanor. But that would be mean. And she had promised herself she wouldn't be mean. Moving to Kansas may not have been her idea, and it definitely wasn’t her fault, but she also couldn't blame the poor bystanders who called this town home. When she decided Missy had smiled at the silence long enough she opted to go with bits of the truth.

"My dad grew up here," Anwyn said. "Well, not Howe. But Richmond. He thought it'd be a good place to get a new start." She'd heard the speech too many times that winter.

"Richmond, huh? What's your daddy's name?"

"Jack Miller," Anwyn answered. She knew it was coming.

"Miller, huh? Sounds familiar. Is Casey Miller your grandpa?" Missy asked. And there it was. Everybody knew everybody. Her familiarity with Kansas used to be charming. But this was part of what she dreaded.

"Yeah, that's him," was all Anwyn could say. Her Grandpa Miller used to live in town but had moved off to Morgan a few years ago. Something about too many "spics," as her grandpa would say. But the funny part was that there were more Hispanics in Morgan. Her grandpa would end up living next to one and have to bury his racist leanings. She thought that her grandparents moving away would put a damper on her dad's plans to come back home, but no such luck. It wasn't the proximity to family, though there was still plenty of family around, it was this place itself.

"Getting a new start, huh?" Missy asked. "Well, I've been here all my life, I guess you could say it gave me as good a start as you can ask for."

"My parents got divorced." It was out before she knew it. Anywyn paused for a second, and then went with it, turning back to Missy. "My mom went off to be the career woman she always wanted to be and my dad—my dad couldn't afford the mortgage on his own. He thought starting over in his old home town would be a good idea."

She had thrown out more bits than she wanted, but they were still only bits.

For once Missy didn't say anything. She just nodded. Anwyn's eyes turned to the nearest classroom, the last one in the corridor. She could see a teacher standing at the blackboard, a few students in the first row.

"I'm sorry," Missy said. Her sincerity oozed again. Missy may have been the cheerleader type, the overzealous student, but she was actually sincere. "I guess that happens now and then."

Anwyn could think of a hundred snide comments, but she let them go.

"Anwyn, huh?" Missy asked, trying to move on. "That's such a pretty name."

The words hung there. Those were the kind of compliments people gave to Anwyn's sister, Isabelle.

Posted by kevin at 7:09 AM | TrackBack