Gone.
“Night,” Aunt Patsy says. “Thanks for helping with the dishes,” she says. “Thanks for coming,” she says. And though Uncle Clint still fills the doorway, the trailer door wedged open, the door on the day is closing, and Zoe is splitting inside with need. It races to her fingertips like electricity and back up again to pinch off her throat. She trembles. It squeezes her spine. Invisible. The door is closing. You ain’t hardly family at all.
“Night,” she says as Mama stumbles back through the door. “Night,” she says again as the warm breeze lifts the hair at her neck. And only a sliver of the day is left open when she comes eye to eye with Mama slurring her way down the steps, eye to eye with Grandma grabbing Mama’s arm, and the need pulls at her chest, pulls at her shoulder, pulls at the purse resting against her hip, and Zoe shakes it open, before she knows it, she is shaking her purse open so keys rattle. She pulls out her lighter and then a cigarette. The flame ignites with a single strike, and she holds it to the shaking end of the cigarette. She pulls hard. Slowly. She breathes in deeply and exhales. Her smoky breaths stop the good-byes. She lowers her hand to her side, fingers of smoke weaving around her. She tries to hold it easily, but her hand shakes, like all the need and trembling is pouring out through one little cigarette. But it doesn’t matter. Every eye is on her. Before the door closes. Every eye looks.
“Zoe?” Uncle Clint says.
Aunt Patsy stares, her mouth open and silent.
Grandma’s lips pull tight.
“Sugar,” Mama says. Clarity. Crumpled eyes.
“This?” She waves the cigarette, and forces a smile. “I’ve been smoking for years. I can’t believe you never guessed. But I’ve decided I’m tired of secrets. No more secrets.”
Uncle Clint steps out of the doorway. “But, Zoe—”
She turns. “Night,” she says. A corner of control. The evening is over because she has made it so. “Night,” she calls over her shoulder.
And the jumble of voices at her back melt with the evening wind and ribbon away to nothing.
She is empty.
Or is it full?
Lightness.
She is full up lightness.
Twenty-Four
“Lorelei,” she whispers.
It rolls back to her again and again, like a leaf on a gentle tide. It comes back, wet, sweet, easy, to be whispered again. She wonders at such a little word that begs to be said aloud. Three little syllables that make a song. Complete.
She whispers it again, sends it up like a compass, a beacon, as she navigates aisles with a shopping cart that clack, clack, clacks to one side with a jittering wheel.
She stops in the jelly aisle. Rupert’s Deluxe Concord is endless black-purple and promises satisfaction or your money back. The twelve-ounce jar mimics cut-glass and costs $3.89. It would look pretty on her hutch. But not $2.40 prettier than the Food Star brand that is a little less purple and a whole lot bigger. She slips the fat Food Star jelly jar into the cart next to a ninety-nine-cent loaf of lighter-than-air bread. Peanut butter is next, and she ignores all the claims and offers on the jars—only the price matters. Food Star wins again.
She passes the milk case and pauses. She looks at the little quart cartons. She imagines a glass of cold milk with a peanut butter sandwich. But she has no glasses. And one more item—even a carton of milk—would be too risky. The damn tampons are taking up half her grocery budget, but those she can’t do without. She felt the cramping coming on at work, and only two battered tampons lurk somewhere in the bottom of her purse. Four fifty-nine for one stupid box. Even for the Food Star brand. She passes on the milk and picks up a ninety-nine-cent, two-roll package of toilet paper—on special. God bless Food Star.
She checks out. The $9.96 total is four cents under budget. The rest of her Sunday tips will go toward her transportation fee. The sleazebag was generous again. She is almost beginning to like him, in a gagging kind of way. She drops the four pennies change loosely into her purse. They clink against her hairbrush like a metal ball in a pinball machine, a clink clink, clink that harmonizes with the word still playing behind her eyes. Lorelei. She gathers the bag of groceries to her arms.
“Pardon?” the cashier says.
“What?” Zoe asks.
“Sorry, I thought you said something,”
Zoe pauses, crawls out of her thoughts…and smiles. “Yes, I probably did.”
And she leaves, the brown paper bag tucked snugly against her chest.
Twenty-Five
Her fingers glide over the wide arm of the Adirondack chair. The purple enamel is uneven. She feels faint indentations where previous layers had peeled, were sanded, and then were painted again. Season by season. A bit of yellow peeks out here, a bit of orange there, but it is mostly purple now, smooth, cool purple. She leans back, closes her eyes, swims in the sounds of Opal’s garden. For the first time she feels the teetering edge of autumn. A smell. A chill. The long glint of sun that seems more copper than gold. A difference that is hard to name when it is only just coming on. But it is there. And then, she thinks, it is not. It is once again the last days of summer, her back damp against the slats of wood. Summer, autumn. Autumn, summer.
It’s a dance, she thinks. This letting go.