again and again. She made it all the way to New York City, stayed with a high school friend, another queer who’d made it out. She came home, but by that time her mother had left for Virginia with some devout stranger, so there was never time for reconciliation. They believed that she’d had a child out of wedlock, which is the phrase they used on their Christmas cards, but they believed it was their duty to love him anyway. They’d never mentioned me.
Helen stirred and sprinkled, I shoveled snake off the floor, tried to build up the fire, and soon Lily came back in with eyes as wide as the dinner plates Helen was covering in groundhog stew. Holding the phone away from her as if it were vermin, Lily carried it to the bucket we kept beneath the sink to catch the overflow from leaky pipes. She dropped the phone in, listened thoughtfully to the splash, cocked her head as it hit bottom. To the ceiling, she said, “Lost that child out of pernicious irresponsibility. He’s probably better off in foster care. Let this be a lesson. God has a plan.”
I plunged my arm in up to the elbow, scooped the phone out, buried it in a jar of rice. Lily watched me.
“What’s the point?” she asked. “There’s no one we really need to talk to. What would we talk to them about?”
“You need to eat,” Helen said, pressing a plate into her hands.
So Lily ate up all the groundhog stew on her plate, then turned her attention to the cold Big Mac and finished that off, too, nettle leaf and all.
Then she threw it all up.
“You need to lie down,” I said, stooping to clean up her vomit. “I’ll clear off the couch. Just give me a minute and I’ll find you a pillow.”
But she was already out the door.
* * *
Helen waited a respectful nine seconds before saying, “It’s a setback. But we’re not defeated.”
“We might as well move,” I said. “Fifteen thousand dollars.”
“You’re not moving,” Helen said. “We can get the money. Maybe I could take out a mortgage on this land.”
“Hey, Bank,” I said. “We’d like to take out a loan on a submarginal piece of land. Too steep to farm. The house ain’t worth shit. Oh, and there’s a pipeline down one side of it. Great idea, Helen. Let me know how that goes.”
“We’re going to figure this out,” Helen said.
“How’d you get thirty thousand dollars?” I asked.
“What?” she asked.
“You said that’s what this land cost,” I said. “How’d you get that kind of money?”
Helen looked embarrassed. “My uncle died and left me some, not all of it. Like I told you, my boyfriend paid off the rest working up north.”
“In one of those camps,” I said.
“He did what he had to do,” she said. “It was a job.” She saw my face. “You better not be thinking about that,” she said.
“It’s not right that you and Rudy are paying for this lawyer,” I said. “Perley’s my kid, I should pay.”
“We’re not paying,” she said. “It’s a trade.”
“I’m not providing anything,” I said. “And everyone knows this is all my fault, beginning with the way we built this house. It’s different for you, because you didn’t know any better. But I did. I knew how to build. I saw every mistake we were making, but I just stood back like a fucking ghost. Telling Lily we should bide our time, that we would fix it later. I’m what people mean when they say good-for-nothing.”
“Your self-loathing isn’t helping,” she said.
“I’m not helping,” I said. “Rudy won’t even let me help take down that tree.”
“You should go back to nursing,” Helen said. “You never should have quit that in the first place. All this time, Lily working for minimum wage, and you with a nursing degree. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Please, Helen,” I said. “Please tell me how I should make money. You’re the one with a B.A. Why aren’t you sitting behind a computer somewhere, raking it in? You’ve got all the lingo. Why don’t you help revitalize Appalachia or whatever the fuck? Or fucking graduate school. You could probably get a stipend just for studying Rudy.”
“A stipend? Are you serious?” said Helen. “You have no idea what that world is like. You should see my aunt. You know she has a Ph.D. in philosophy? She’s selling clothes online. After years of adjuncting at a community college. Bill collectors will probably show up at her