XVI
Mary

(Winter 1950)

“Kyle’s heading home, Eddie,” I had told her. “It will be soon now. You just have to hold on.” But she never even tried. I walked down our road and saw a scrub of white in the distance, tripping, falling, going off—Enidina, she seemed like a wild animal, her hair white and loose around her shoulders and her housedress faded and worn through the back. She caught her foot on a stone and crouched to rub away the pain, dropping to her knees, but quickly enough she was off. When I called out to her, she turned and looked back, and in that look I saw a light in her eyes and that old terrible strength—her size, her very stubbornness that made her everything at once. Her mouth hung open as if she might speak, her cheeks shivering. “You,” the look said, and she shook herself with a sudden rage and was off. “Eddie,” I called out again, but she was going so hard and fast now I had no hope of chasing her down. She could walk for miles if she went on like that, the sun rising in a haze and her figure dark against the brightness, such a sight I could imagine her forty years younger, that fiery hair on her head a signal for all the world—she was going. She was finished with this place. That neighbor of mine, she was done.

Where I sit now in her bed, I wait for any of them to return. The house is plain, ugly even, but I no longer care—the mattress feels so old it cradles me as if I have been here all along. I have the place to myself now, and I pull Eddie’s blanket over my chest to keep from getting cold. I have a bite to eat in the kitchen and the old outhouse out back should the water stop. I have Kyle’s picture on the bureau and my Bible at my side. But it is that notebook of hers I open, that wiry thing she kept to herself. Scribbles it seems and impossible to read, full of lies no doubt—not an address anywhere, though I can make out my name on nearly every line. Enidina has some nerve to leave me here like this, without so much as a word, without a thank you for all my visits—but I have faith I will not be alone for long. Already I can imagine Kyle walking down that road, Jack’s hat on his head. I can hear him on the porch out front, scraping his shoes on the mat. He will come in with that boyish look on his face and reach out his hands, promise he is home for good. Now that I am alone, he would never run off again. God himself would not abandon me, not like the rest—as if I deserved it—as if I had never done a good thing for anyone in my life.