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 November 2, 2006 8:33 PM
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