The Great Alone Page 31

  Really, she had trouble caring about anything except Matthew. Her emotions were impossible to access. “I don’t want to go.”

  “I know,” Mama said, stroking her hair. “But we have to leave.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “Home. But don’t worry. Your dad’s in jail.”

  Home.

  Four days ago, when she’d been in that crevice with Matthew, hoping against hope that they’d be rescued before he died in her arms, she’d told herself they’d be okay. Matthew would be fine, they’d go to college together, and Mama would come to Anchorage with them, get an apartment, maybe serve drinks at Chilkoot Charlie’s and collect big tips. Two days ago, when she’d watched them pull the tube from Matthew’s mouth and seen him breathe on his own, she’d had a split second of hope, and then it had crashed on the rocks of may never wake up.

  Now she saw the truth.

  There would be no college for her and Matthew, no do-over as a pair of ordinary kids in love.

  There was no way to lie to herself anymore, to dream of happy endings. All she could do was be there for Matthew and keep on loving him.

  I think you stand by the people you love. That was what he’d said, and it was what she would do.

  “Can I see Matthew before I go?”

  “No. He’s got an infection in his leg. They won’t even let Tom get near him. But we’ll come back as soon as we can.”

  “Okay.”

  Leni felt nothing as she dressed to go home.

  Nothing.

  She shuffled through the hallway beside her mother, the casted arm held in close to her body, nodding at the nurses who told her goodbye.

  Did she smile in acknowledgment? She didn’t think so. Even that small a thing was beyond her. This grief was unlike any emotion she’d experienced before, suffocating, weighty. It pulled the color from everything.

  They found Mr. Walker in the main waiting area, pacing, drinking black coffee from a Styrofoam cup. Alyeska was seated in a chair beside him, reading a magazine. At their entrance, both tried to smile.

  “I’m sorry,” Leni said to them.

  Mr. Walker came closer. He touched her chin, forced her to look up. “No more of that,” he said. “We Alaskans are tough, right? Our boy will pull through. He’ll survive. You’ll see.”

  But wasn’t it Alaska that had nearly killed him? How could a place be as alive as Alaska, as beautiful and cruel?

  No. It wasn’t Alaska’s fault. It was hers. Leni was Matthew’s second mistake.

  Alyeska moved in beside her father. “Don’t you give up on him, Leni. He’s a tough kid. He made it through Mom’s death. He’ll get through this, too.”

  “How will I know how he’s doing?” Leni asked.

  “I’ll give updates on the radio. Peninsula Pipeline. Seven P.M. broadcast. Listen for them,” Mr. Walker said. “We’ll bring him home as soon as we can. He’ll recover better around us.”

  Leni nodded numbly.

  Mama led her out to the truck and they climbed in.

  On the long drive home, Mama chatted nervously. She pointed out the extreme low tide in Turnagain Arm and the cars parked at the Bird House Tavern in the middle of the day and the crowd of people fishing at the Russian River (combat fishing, they called it, people stood so close together). Usually Leni loved this drive. She’d search the high ridges for specks of white that were Dall sheep and she’d scour the inlet for the sleek, eerie-looking white beluga whales that sometimes appeared.

  Now she just sat silently, her one good hand lying in her lap.

  In Kaneq, they drove off the ferry, rumbled over the textured metal ramp, and rolled past the old Russian church.

  Leni took care not to look at the saloon as they drove past. Even so, she saw the CLOSED sign on its door and the flowers laid in front. Nothing else had changed. They drove to the end of the road and through the open gate onto their property. There, Mama parked in front of the cabin and got out. She came around to Leni’s side, opened the door.

  Leni slid sideways, grateful for her mother’s firm grip as they walked through the tall grass. The goats bleated, packed in together, and stood in a clot at the chicken-wire gate.

  Inside the cabin, buttery August sunlight streamed through the dirty windows, thickened by motes of dust.

  The cabin was spotless. No broken glass, no lanterns fallen on the floor, no overturned chairs. No sign of what had happened here.

  And it smelled good, of roasting meat. Almost exactly when Leni noticed the scent, Dad came out of the bedroom.

  Mama gasped.

  Leni felt nothing, certainly not surprise.

  He stood there facing them, his long hair pulled back into a squiggly ponytail. His face was bruised, a little misshapen. One eye was black. He was wearing the same clothes Leni had last seen him in and there were dried flecks of blood on his neck.

  “Y-you’re out,” Mama said.

  “You didn’t press charges,” he answered.

  Mama’s face turned red. She didn’t look at Leni.

  He moved toward Mama. “Because you love me and you know I didn’t mean any of it. You know how sorry I am. It won’t happen again,” he promised as he reached for her.

  Leni didn’t know if it was fear or love or habit or a poisonous combination of all three, but Mama reached out, too. Her pale fingers threaded through his dirty ones, curled in to take hold.

  He pulled her into his arms, held on to her so tightly he must have thought they’d be swept away, one without the other. When they finally pulled apart, he turned to Leni. “I heard he’s going to die. I’m sorry.”

  Sorry.

  Leni felt something then, a seismic shift in her thinking; like spring breakup, a changing of the landscape, a breaking away that was violent, immediate. She wasn’t afraid of this man anymore. Or if she was, the fear was submerged too deeply to register. All she felt was hatred.

  “Leni?” he said, frowning. “I’m sorry. Say something.”

  She saw what her silence did to him, how it shredded his confidence, and she decided right then: she would never speak to her father again. Let Mama slink back, let her twine herself back into this toxic knot that was their family. Leni would stay only as long as she had to. As soon as Matthew was better she would leave. If this was the life Mama chose for herself, so be it. Leni was going to leave.

  As soon as Matthew was better.

  “Leni?” Mama said, her voice uncertain. She, too, was confused and frightened by this change in Leni. She sensed an upheaval in emotion that could move the continents of their past.

  Leni walked past them both, climbed awkwardly up the loft ladder, and crawled into bed.

  * * *

  Dear Matthew,

  I never really knew the weight of sorrow before, how it stretches you out like an old, wet sweater. Every minute that passes with no word from you, without hope of word from you, feels like a day, every day feels like a month. I want to believe that you will just sit up one day and say you’re starving, that you’ll swing your legs out of bed and get dressed and come for me, maybe carry me off to your family’s hunting cabin, where we will burrow under the furs and love each other again. That’s the big dream. Strangely, it doesn’t hurt as much as the little dream, which is just that you open your eyes.

  I know what happened to us was my fault. Meeting me ruined your life. No one can argue with that. Me, with my screwed-up family, with my dad, who wanted to kill you for loving me and who beat my mother for simply knowing about it.

  My hatred of him is a poison burning me from the inside out. Every time I look at him something in me hardens. It scares me how much I hate him. I haven’t spoken to him since I got back.

  He doesn’t like that, I can tell.

  Honestly, I don’t know what to do with all these emotions. I’m furious, I’m desperate, I’m sad in a way I never knew existed.

  There’s no outlet for my feelings, no valve to shut them down. I listen to the radio every night at seven P.M. Last night, your dad broadcast how you’re doing. I know you’re out of the coma and not paralyzed and I try to make that good enough, but it’s not. I know you can’t walk or talk and that your brain is probably irreparably damaged. That’s what the nurses said.

  None of it changes how I feel. I love you.

  I’m here. Waiting. I want you to know that. I’ll wait forever.

  Leni

  * * *

  LENI SAT IN THE BOW of the fishing skiff, leaned over, fluttering bare fingers through cool water, watching it cascade and pool. The cast on her other arm looked starkly white against her dirty jeans. Her broken ribs made her conscious of every breath.

  She could hear her parents talking softly together; her mama was closing the cooler, full now of silvery fish. Dad started up the engine.

  The boat motor started; the bow planed up as they sped for home.

  At their beach, the boat crunched up onto the pebbles and sand, made a sound like sausage sizzling in a cast-iron pan. Leni jumped into the ankle-deep water, grabbed the frayed line with her one good hand, and pulled the skiff aground. She tied it to a huge, limbless driftwood log that lay angled on the beach and went back for the dripping metal net.

  “That was quite a silver Mom landed,” Dad said to Leni. “I guess she’s the day’s big winner.”

  Leni ignored him. Slinging the gear bag over her shoulder, she headed up the steps, making her way slowly to dry land.

  Once there, she put her gear away and headed to the animal pens to check that their water was okay. She fed the goats and the chickens, stayed to turn the compost in the bin, and then started hauling water from the river. It took longer with only one strong arm. She stayed outside as long as she could, but finally she had to go inside.

  Mama was in the kitchen making dinner: pan-fried, fresh-caught salmon, drizzled with homemade herb butter; green beans fried in preserved moose fat; a salad of freshly picked lettuce and tomatoes.

  Leni set the table, sat down.

  Dad took a seat across from her. She didn’t look up, but she heard the clatter of chair legs on the wood, the squeak of the seat as he sat down. She smelled the familiar combination of perspiration and fish and cigarette smoke. “I was thinking we would head over to Bear Cove tomorrow, pick blueberries. I know how much you love them.”

  Leni didn’t look at him.

  Mama came up beside Leni, holding a pewter tray of the crispy-skinned fish, with bright green beans tucked in alongside. She paused, then set it down in the middle of the table next to an old soup can full of flowers.

  “Your favorite,” she said to Leni.

  “Uh-huh,” Leni said.

  “G-damn it, Leni,” her father said. “I can’t abide this moping. You ran off. The kid fell. What’s done is done.”

  Leni ignored him.

  “Say something.”

  “Leni,” Mama said. “Please.”

  Dad shoved back from the table and stormed out of the cabin, slamming the door shut behind him.

  Mama sank into her chair. Leni could see how tired her mother was, how her hands trembled. “You have to stop this, Leni. It’s upsetting him.”

  “So?”

  “Leni … you’ll be gone soon. He’ll let you go to college now. He feels terrible about what happened. We can get him to agree. You can leave. Just like you wanted. All you have to do is—”

  “No,” she said more forcefully than she meant to, and she saw the effect her shouting had on Mama, how she instinctively shrank back.

  Leni wanted to care that she was frightening her mother, but she couldn’t hold on to that caring. Mama had chosen to dig for treasure through the dirt of Dad’s toxic, porous love, but not Leni. Not anymore.

  She knew what her silence was doing to him, how it angered him. Each hour she didn’t speak to him, he became more agitated and irritable. More dangerous. She didn’t care.

  “He loves you,” Mama said.

  “Ha.”

  “You’re lighting a fuse, Leni. You know that.”

  Leni couldn’t tell Mama how angry she was, the sharp, tiny teeth that gnawed at her all the time, shredding a little more of her away every time she looked at her father. She pushed back from the table and went to the loft to write to Matthew, trying not to think about her mother sitting down there all alone.

  * * *

  Dear Matthew,

  I am trying not to lose hope, but you know how hard it has always been for me. Hope, I mean. It’s been four days since I last saw you. It feels like forever.

  It’s funny, now that hope has become so slippery and unreliable, I realize that all those years, when I was a kid thinking I didn’t believe in hope, I was actually living on it. Mama fed me a steady diet of he’s trying and I lapped it up like a terrier. Every day I believed her. When he smiled at me or gave me a sweater or asked me how my day was, I thought, See? He cares. Even after I saw him hit her for the first time, I still let her define the world for me.

  Now it is all gone.

  Maybe he’s sick. Maybe Vietnam broke him. And maybe those are all excuses set at the feet of a man who is just rotting from the inside.

  I don’t know anymore and as much as I try, I can’t care.

  I have no hope left for him. The only hope I can hold on to is for you. For us.

  I’m still here.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Dear Admissions Director:

  University of Alaska, Anchorage.

  I am very sorry to say that I will not be able to attend classes at the University this quarter.

  I am hopeful—although doubtful—that winter quarter will see a change in my circumstances.

  I will be forever grateful for my acceptance and hope that another lucky student can take my spot.

  Sincerely,

  Lenora Allbright

  In September, cold winds roared across the peninsula. Darkness began its slow, relentless march across the land. By October, the moment that was autumn in Alaska had passed. Every night, at seven P.M., Leni sat close to the radio, the volume cranked high, static popping, listening for Mr. Walker’s voice, waiting for news on Matthew. But week after week, there was no improvement.

  In November, the precipitation turned to snow, light at first, goose down fluttering from white skies. The muddy ground froze, turned hard as granite, slippery, but soon a layer of white lay over everything, a new beginning of sorts, a camouflage of beauty over whatever lay hidden beneath.

  And still Matthew wasn’t Matthew.

  On an ice-cold evening that followed the first vicious storm of the season, Leni finished her chores in a sooty darkness and returned to the cabin. Once inside, she ignored her parents and stood in front of the woodstove, her hands outstretched to its warmth. Gingerly she flexed the fingers of her left hand. The arm still felt weak, foreign somehow, but it was a relief to have the cast off.

  She turned, saw her own reflection in the window. Pale, thin face with a knifepoint chin. She’d lost weight since the accident, and rarely bothered to bathe. Grief had upset everything—her appetite, her stomach, her sleep. She looked bad. Drained and exhausted. Bags under her eyes.

  She went to the radio at exactly 6:55 and turned it on.

  Through the speaker, she heard Mr. Walker’s voice, steady as a trawler in calm seas. “To Leni Allbright in Kaneq: We’re moving Matthew to a long-term facility in Homer. You can visit on Tuesday afternoon. It’s called Peninsula Rehabilitation Center.”

  “I’m going to see him,” Leni said.

  Dad was sharpening his ulu. He stopped. “The hell you are.”

  Leni didn’t glance at him or flinch. “Mama. Tell him if he wants to stop me, he’ll have to shoot me.”

  Leni heard her mother draw in a sharp breath.

  Seconds passed. Leni felt her father’s anger and his uncertainty. She could feel the war waging within him. He wanted to explode, to exert his will, to hit something, but she meant it and he knew it.

  He hit the coffeepot, sent it flying, muttered something they couldn’t quite hear. Then he cursed, threw up his hands, and backed away, all in a single jerking movement. “Go,” Dad said. “Go see the boy, but get your chores done first. And you.” He turned to Mama, pointed a finger at her, thumped it on her chest. “She goes alone. You hear me?”

  “I hear you,” Mama said.

  * * *

  TUESDAY FINALLY CAME.

  “Ernt,” Mama said after lunch. “Leni needs a ride to town.”

  “Tell her to take the old snow machine, not the new one. And be back by dinner.” He gave Leni a look. “I mean it. Don’t make me come looking for you.” Yanking his iron animal traps from their hooks on the wall, he went outside, banging the door behind him.

  Mama moved forward, glancing uncertainly behind her. She pressed two folded-up pieces of paper in Leni’s hand. “Letters. For Thelma and Marge.”

  Leni took the letters, nodded.

  “Don’t be stupid, Leni. Be back before dinner. That gate could close again anytime. They’re only open because he feels bad for what he did and he’s trying to be good.”

  “Like I care.”

  “I care. And you should care for me.”

  Leni felt the sting of her selfishness. “Yeah.”

  Outside, Leni angled into the wind and trudged through the snow.

  When she finished feeding the animals, she pulled the starter on the snow machine and climbed aboard.

  In town, she pulled up in front of the harbor dock entrance and parked. A water taxi was waiting for Leni. Mama had called for it on the ham radio. The sea was too rough to take the skiff out.

  Leni slung her backpack over her shoulder and headed down the slick, icy dock ramp.

  The water-taxi captain waved at her. Leni knew he wasn’t going to charge her for the ride. He was in love with Mama’s cranberry relish. Every year she made two dozen jars of it just for him. That was how the locals did it: trading.

  Leni handed him a jar and climbed aboard. As she sat on the bench in the back, staring up at the town perched on stilts above the sea, she told herself not to have any hopes for today. She knew Matthew’s condition, had heard the words so often they’d worn a groove in her consciousness. Brain damage.

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