“Who are the McCanns?” Perley asked, pointing to the old markings above the door. “What does AWA mean?”
“These are the questions that plague us,” I said. We squeezed inside.
Lily tended the woodstove while Karen set up a first-aid station on the low counter: herbs, salve, iodine, clean rags, thermos of hot water. Perley insisted on making the bed. When he unrolled my sleeping bag, a string of photo-booth photos fell out. He picked it up and studied it. “What’s this?” he asked, handing it to me, and so I looked into my boyfriend’s face for the first time in nearly a decade.
We pressed our faces to the camera. He wore safety goggles. I wore a man’s fedora. We stuck our tongues out. Frowned and smiled. Kissed on the mouth. I remembered when we’d crammed into that photo booth. It was soon after we’d bought the land. To warm up, to get a little electric light, to avail ourselves of the hot running water, we’d had a night out at the second-run movie theater and arcade. It hadn’t ended well, because my boyfriend had spent most of the evening talking to the ticket-taker, a neighbor of ours, forgetting, as usual, that we were supposed to be on a date. I wish I could say that he was flirting with her. At least then people would know where to aim their pity. But it wasn’t that. He simply loved nothing better than to chat at length with strangers. He loved any chance to make a good impression. I rode the bumper cars and fed quarter after quarter to the mechanical claw that’s supposed to pick up toys. I didn’t get a toy. I didn’t want a toy. I wanted my boyfriend and he didn’t want me, at least not very badly. Well, the joke was on him. It turned out I didn’t want anyone. Anyone but this family.
“That’s him,” I told Perley. “That’s the man that you told me I look like. It’s just that you’ve never seen him before.”
“Was he your boyfriend?” Perley asked, scrunching up his face so that his bandage puckered.
“I’m not sure I even know what that word means,” I said.
“Like how Mama K and Mama L are,” he said.
“I never had someone like how Mama K and Mama L have each other,” I said. “Never like that.”
* * *
Karen tucked Lily and Perley into their sleeping bags, kissing them both soundly. Then she and I went back down to the house, ready to stalk snakes. But for once, there were no snakes to be found.
“Cowards,” I said.
“They know that they’ve broken our hearts,” Karen said.
“What’s the thing about Madcoil again?” I asked.
“Madcoil is a snake monster that killed a bunch of elves,” Karen said. “I didn’t think our snakes were like that.”
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“To Madcoil?” Karen said. “In the end, the elves killed him. After he’d already done a lot of damage.”
Without Lily or Perley there, we didn’t bother to build a fire. Karen said, “Might as well turn off the light to save power. Unless you mind?” So we sat side by side on the sofa, huddled into our coats, staring into the dark, invisible piles of our old possessions inches from our faces.
I stood up and banged my shin on my bicycle.
“What are you doing?” asked Karen, but I didn’t answer. I felt forward with my hands, maneuvering around the window frames and garbage bags, down through the kitchen to the bookshelf, reached up high, felt around. I knew when I had my hands on the right book because it was sticky with grease and dust, soft with cobwebs. With the Best Practices Binder under my arm, I fumbled back to the sofa. I sat down again next to Karen, and I slid the thing over until I felt it fall into her lap.
“What is this?” she asked. “Oh shit, don’t tell me.”
“You should make an entry sometime,” I said.
“Helen, please,” she said, pushing the binder back to me. But we were both unwilling to let go of the day’s good feeling. I wouldn’t take the binder back.
“Best Practices,” I said. “How to Treat Non-Venomous Snakebites.” We sat cocooned. She didn’t try to give me the binder again. I almost thought she’d gone to sleep. Finally she said, “I could consider that. An entry like that could come in useful.”
“There’s a right way to do nearly everything,” I said. “You were perfect today.”