The Unraveling of Mercy Louis (35 page)

Charmaine goes to the other side of the bed, across from Illa. She takes Mama's hand, kneels down and kisses the knuckles, holds the hand to her cheek. “Wasn't your fault,” she says. “You were just doing what friends do. I know that now. I shouldn't have cut you off like I did, but I just grouped you in with everyone else in this town and didn't want nothing to do with any of y'all.”

From outside, the wail of an ambulance. In the hall, nurses appear out of nowhere, bustling here and there in preparation for what's coming in the double doors Mama was wheeled through only a few hours ago. How much can change in a handful of hours, after years of running in place.

“You're here, I'm alive,” Mama says. “That's a good enough place to start.”

A
T TRAVIS'S HOUSE,
his parents and sisters are already asleep. In the kitchen, he cuts two slices of bread pudding out of a pan balancing on the stove's burners, heats them in the microwave. I devour mine, then eat his.

Travis asks if I remember anything from today, the town hall meeting or what happened at Evelia's before everyone stormed the place.
Did they hurt you?
he wants to know. But the day unfolded like a dream faintly recollected, and I tell him so.

When Charmaine asked where I wanted to go, I said this address. I wanted to be in this house where I learned happiness. In the bathroom, Travis runs a hot bath for me, dumps in half a box of bubble bath so the suds go up to my chin. It smells of lavender, like Sylvie did that first day she embraced me. I close my eyes, feel my fingertips grow rubbery and start to prune. Travis sits cross-legged on the counter, reading a book. The silence between us is full and satisfying, and I remember the first night he talked to me at Park Terrace, how several minutes of silence visited us as we walked to the big oak, and how it felt like a benediction then, too.

He slides off the sink and walks to the tub. Fingertips kneading my scalp, he washes my hair, tilting my chin up and pouring water over the crown of my head. I think of Jean de l'Ours watching the king's daughter bathe, of David watching from his palace window as Bathsheba washed herself and the ill that came of it, Uriah's death that David arranged so he could marry Bathsheba. It's a sin to let Travis see my nakedness, I know, but somehow it feels baptismal.

When I stand from the tub, I wring out my hair slowly as he watches me. His gaze is serious, not lascivious, not admiring. In his room, he undresses and we burrow beneath the comforter. It's the first time we've had the legitimacy of a bed, which feels both glorious and sad, for it marks us as beyond the kids we were last summer, stealing time and fumbling in his truck.

I ask him to hold me. Tonight, between Charmaine and Travis, I've been held more than ever in my life. We don't make love, but under the sheets we entangle ourselves, arms and legs twining, unable to get close enough, nearly two hundred degrees of heat. Later, hovering above me, he holds my bad hand and good over my head against the pillow; I let my arms go soft, and he lowers himself so we're chest to chest. For a few blessed minutes, with the pressure of his weight on me, I'm not fighting the sneezy urge beneath my skin. He kisses my ear. Before we fall asleep, my body curled into his, I fight to keep my eyes open, trying to memorize his face because I'm not sure who I owe for this happiness, God or the devil. Perhaps I am a fool to stake my life on this boy, but I'd do it again. Without this touch, I'm only half alive, anyway.

The next morning, the sound of a dog barking wakes me. The bluish light coming in at the window tells me it's early. The smell of coffee drifts in from the kitchen. Friday, a workday. Travis's scratchy chin on my shoulder as he sleeps on his belly beside me. I touch my neck with both hands, my face, feel my breath against my palm. I'm alive, I've lived through the night. As I blink my way further into the day, I realize it's not a dog barking after all, but someone crying in short rhythmic bursts. Sylvie, maybe, or one of the girls. I slip out of bed and back into my clothes.

I open the door and steal toward the sound, find Sylvie hunched over the kitchen island, a half-empty mug of coffee abandoned, the cream filmy on top.

“What is it, Sylvie?” I say. “What's happened?”

She covers her mouth with a tissue, slides the newspaper toward me.
BABY DOE SUSPECT CLOUD BADLY BEATEN
,
POLICE SAY NO SUSPECTS
.

“It's brutal what they did to that girl . . .” She hiccups a sob, then folds me into a tight hug. “They beat her half to death . . .”

Before she can finish, I'm wriggling out of her arms, running back down the hall to Travis, her words trailing after me. I push into the room, the door slamming against the wall. Travis sits up, startled.

“Travis, what did I say yesterday about Lucille?
What did I say?
”

He rubs his eyes, blinks. “I don't remember exactly . . . something about Lucille Cloud dealing with the devil.” He stares at me. “Why?”

Clever, cruel you, letting me have him, letting me live but giving me the black mark of her torment in my soul.

“I have to go,” I say. “Take me to the Starlite.”

THROUGH THE STREETS
of downtown Charmaine drives fast, past the ruined storefronts, broken glass sprayed across the wide deserted sidewalks that were built for men and women to promenade down arm in arm, now split by crabgrass and anthills. Past the hulking high school, the Dome where I scored thousands of points, and where I finally fell. The buildings are quiet, they don't try to make me stay.

Soon we arrive at the city limit, where the Hotel Sabine stands sentry, forlorn against the bright autumn sky. I think of the party that August night, me sitting on the windowsill breaking up with Travis, knowing it was useless, that he had my heart no matter what I did, that I had paid a high price and would keep paying for that boy with his sweet words.

There is Park Terrace, and I remember summer nights, the wild freedom of the game.
Our bodies spun / On swivels of bone & faith, / Through a lyric slipknot / Of joy, & we knew we were / Beautiful & dangerous.
Behind the hotel's redbrick shell are the Praying Hands, blinding white in the sunlight, the refinery rising like a city of steel and smoke. As we pass by, I smell its choking stink, feel a shiver for the souls who departed this life from its labyrinth of pipes. I hold my breath and count
one two three four five six.
By the time I count
ten,
we have reached the interstate, and soon we are barreling west, which is the only direction for people like us, trying to erase the past.

May 2000

G
RADUATION DAY.
The students have been placed in the middle of the soggy football field, balancing precariously on plastic folding chairs so as to keep the metal legs from puncturing the grass and sending them ass over tassel into the mud. In front of the students, Principal Long stands atop a sheet-draped platform on the track, calling graduates up to receive their diplomas: “Kyle Henkie, Laynie Hibbard, Clint Hoakum . . .”

From here, Illa can see Mama sitting in the home stands with the other parents, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat they picked out together at the Houston Dillard's. Illa told her it reminded her of a hat a woman might wear in the French countryside, sitting next to a picnic basket. Not that she'd ever seen such a thing, but she could imagine it, she said, touching the hat's fat black ribbon. Mama said maybe they should find out.
Find out what?
Illa said.
What kind of hats women wear while sitting next to picnic baskets in the French countryside,
Mama responded.
Maybe we'll go before your internship starts.
And then Mama walked to the Lancôme counter and bought a bottle of perfume called Trésor that smelled of apricots and roses, as if holding a small glass bottle made in France were a down payment on the trip.

Illa could hardly believe it. Her mother was a woman who bought French perfume and talked about travel abroad, a woman who was ready to let Illa leave, first to New York City for the photography internship, then to Austin for college at the University of Texas.

After six months of physical therapy and regular meetings with a dietician, Illa's mother is also a woman who walks. Illa has used up dozens of roles of film documenting Mama's progress, like the proud parent of a newly walking toddler—an irony that is not lost on her. Some days, though, Mama stays in bed with the lights off, and Illa can hear her whimpering.

Illa waves to Mama, who waves back. They didn't go to Houston to shop; they went to meet with the people at the bank where Mama's settlement money was held. Illa pictured it sitting in the vault, stacks of hundred-dollar bills piled into towers. They found out that in four years the towers had grown a few stories, enough that Illa would be able to go to college on the interest alone. At Dillard's, they bought the hat, perfume, and some black slacks for Illa to wear on graduation day. Size four.
I've made it into positive integers,
she thought.

Illa and Annie aren't friends, but sometimes they get together to talk about Mercy. For an hour every couple weeks, they drive around trying to talk Mercy back into their lives.
Remember remember remember,
Annie says, and Illa nods even if she doesn't. Where Annie had years with Mercy, Illa had less than one week. For a few days in late autumn of 1999, she was the most important person in Mercy Louis's life. As quickly as it happened, it was over, Mercy separated from her not by her magnificence but by hundreds of miles of highway.

If Illa had been told last summer that it would play out like this, such a swift giving and taking away, she might have cried from frustration, but here, standing on the other side, she feels glad about the small role she was able to play in Mercy's life. Perhaps they didn't become friends, but their lives would be forever entwined. From that violence years ago, Mercy Louis was born. And wasn't her singular presence a gift to them all?

Mr. Long continues down the list of names. When he reads out “Lennox McBaine,” Illa can hear some hissing mixed in with the scattered applause, the hooting of his dad and siblings. His father had surprised everyone by recovering. As he receives his diploma, Lennox grins like a Cheshire cat. There was talk about not letting him walk with the class—some parents who worked at the refinery said it would be a slap in the face
—
but in the end, Mr. Long dismissed their complaints. The Sunday before the mayoral election, the
Houston Chronicle
published an article detailing the cover-up that Beau Putnam orchestrated at the refinery, quoting sections of the report Annie gave Illa. Lennox cowrote the piece with a
Chronicle
reporter. Two days later, Beau lost the election, and Annie took Illa out for milk shakes to celebrate. But even while toasting
Hizzdishonor Beau Putnam,
Annie's smile was tight. Illa imagines it isn't as satisfying to skewer an asshole when he's your father.

When Annie's name is called, she glides across the stage, flashing a pageant-worthy smile. Illa can tell Annie is pleased with herself for the speech she gave earlier in the ceremony, which she dedicated to Mercy. In the fall, she's off to Pomona on a full academic scholarship, which is lucky, since Beau disowned her and kicked her out of the big house on the hill after the story broke. Annie tried to talk her mother into leaving with her, but Mrs. Putnam decided to stay with Beau, which infuriated and then saddened Annie. Illa offered her a room in the house on Galvez, but she declined, choosing instead to move into the McBaine apartment in the GB, where she shares a bedroom with his sister. Sometimes, remembering the kiss she and Lennox had on that long-ago night, Illa feels the old simmering jealousy of Annie returning, but then she remembers how much has been returned to her in the past year, and how much Annie has lost, and her jealousy is replaced with a sense of generosity.

Up on stage, Annie's neck jerks
one-two one-two.
When she wears her long hair down, as she does that day, it's not as noticeable, but Illa sees it. Of all the girls who developed tics last fall, Annie and Marilee are the only girls still twitching. Or at least Marilee was, before she dropped out of school to go live with her aunt in Baton Rouge. Rumor was she got pregnant.

“Abby Williams, Corinne Wolcott,” Mr. Long says. Abby, Corinne, and the others, they all got better with time, their symptoms petering out along with the national news stories and the refinery stench. Keisha, on the other hand, was found to have a benign growth on her lung that aggravated the asthma. In December, she underwent surgery to have it removed. That same month, Marlene Upton's environmental tests revealed what everyone in town already knew—that the air and water quality in Port Sabine were terrible. For a while, she and Mr. Freeman tried to link the findings to the girls' symptoms, but again and again, doctors found that none of the victims had nerve or brain damage attributable to organic causes. Dr. Joel became so frustrated with Ms. Upton that at one point, he went on TV and said that while he understood the desire to find an environmental culprit, particularly in a place with Port Sabine's history, he wished that Ms. Upton would hurry up and leave town because all the distractions, the
media circus
and the
witch hunts,
were keeping the girls from getting down to the hard business of healing themselves after what, he hoped everyone could agree, had been a
very difficult year
.

“Travis Salter,” Mr. Long calls out. Travis unfolds himself from his plastic chair and ambles to the stage. Mercy's sudden departure has hit him the hardest. He never carries his guitar around anymore.

In late January, Mercy and Charmaine came back for an afternoon to bury Evelia, whom Pastor Parris discovered at the stilt house after she missed church several days in a row. Illa wonders if it was guilt that killed her or the shock of Mercy's departure. Or maybe she was just in poor health. The last few times Illa saw her, she seemed frail, her face drawn and skeletal. Now that Lucille's gone, kids have a new bogeyman:
Sleep under the angel over Evelia's grave, I dare you.

Every once in a while, Illa gets a letter from that familiar address, PO Box 1984, Austin, Texas, only this time they're from Mercy, not Charmaine. She's better now, no longer twitching. Best of all, she's playing basketball again.

Illa watches a plane divide the sky overhead, twin plumes of exhaust like the tail of a bird. The roaring of its engine reaches her on a delay. That's how she felt when she heard the news about Lucille. Like it was being shouted at her from across a canyon, echoing and reverberating.
Maybe,
she thought,
that's what happens with news we can't quite believe: that a thirty-ton metal bird can fly; that a girl's life is worth so little, she can be badly beaten and a town barely blinks.

Illa recalls what the Sonic carhop said that night, about being a girl in a town where that felt like a crime. Even the news stories dismissed Lucille, describing her as mentally ill and homeless. The thing Lucille did have in common with the LeBlanc Avenue baby was that people in town were eager to forget about both of them and move on. Lucille never pressed charges; no one knew where she went.

At last, Mr. Long calls her name. “Illa Stark.” He says it gentler than Coach Martin used to. After the disastrous start to the season, somehow Jodi Martin was able to rally her ragtag group of girls to a 21–9 season and third place in the district. In the spring, she resigned from Port Sabine High School, still the winningest coach in the history of Texas high school basketball. No one knows if she'll coach again. Rumor has it she's headed for Port Aransas, to a beach cottage she bought there.

Illa trips up the stairs to shake the principal's hand and collect the slip of paper that proves she survived high school. Never would she have imagined that she would make it to this stage and Mercy Louis would not. But she has arrived at the realization that not much separates her from someone as exceptional as Mercy, and what distinguishes them from each other isn't beauty or talent or control, as Illa so often imagined. The first two proved unreliable currency, and the last, an illusion. In the end, all that really mattered was whether or not you had a person who loved you well when you were young.