The doctor finished sewing up the older girl’s face and they wheeled her out and brought her into the emergency room. She was still asleep and her face was bruised and yellow where it wasn’t bandaged. Mary Wells stood looking down at her.
That will all heal, the doctor said. It was a clean cut. She’s fortunate it didn’t involve the eye.
Will it scar? Mary Wells said.
He looked at her. He seemed surprised. Well yes, he said. It usually does.
How much?
We can’t tell that yet. Sometimes it turns out better than we think. She’ll probably want to have a series of treatments with a cosmetic surgeon. That would take some time.
So she’ll have to go through life until then, looking like this?
Yes. The doctor looked down at the girl. I can’t predict how long that will take. She’ll have to heal completely before they can do anything more.
Oh God, what a fool I am, Mary Wells said. What a stupid little fool. She began to cry again and she took up her daughter’s hand and held it to her wet cheek.
THEY KEPT ALL THREE OF THEM IN THE HOSPITAL overnight for observation. In the evening one of the police who had been out on the highway came to the hospital and left a traffic ticket, for reckless driving and the endangerment of life, and he informed Mary Wells that her car had been towed away.
The next morning a nurse drove them home. Mary Wells’s arm was in a sling, and she and the girls each walked up to the house with great care. Inside the house it was quiet. It felt as if they had been gone for days. Will you come out to the kitchen, please? Mary Wells said. Please, both of you. I want you to help me say what we’re going to do now. I don’t know what that will be. But we have to do something.
They sat down at the table. The younger girl sat watching her mother, listening, but the older girl, Dena, sat with her head turned away. She kept touching the bandage on her face with the tips of her fingers, feeling along the edges of the tape, and she refused to look at her mother and would not say anything at all. She had formed an idea already of what was coming for herself.
37
WHEN RAYMOND AND THE BOY CAME UP TO THE HOUSE after working outside all that Saturday afternoon, Victoria said it would be a good idea if they both took a shower and cleaned up before they sat down to supper. Do we smell that bad? Raymond said.
It wouldn’t hurt you to clean up a little.
You go ahead, the boy said. I’ll shower after you.
If that’s what it takes to get any supper around here, Raymond said. All right then.
He went back to the bathroom and showered and scraped off the bristles on his face and came out with his hair wetted down, wearing a freshly laundered pair of work jeans and a worn-out flannel shirt. Victoria said supper was ready and they should sit down and eat.
You’re going to let him eat without cleaning up first? Raymond said. How come?
He’s not as dirty as you were. And you’ve taken so long in the bathroom this food’ll burn up if we don’t eat it now.
Well by God, Raymond said. That don’t seem fair. It sounds like you got favorites, Victoria.
Maybe I do, she said.
Huh, he said.
They sat down together at the table in the kitchen as they had for each of the meals that week, and before they had eaten much of their supper a pickup drove up in the yard and stopped in front of the house. Raymond went out onto the little screened porch to see who it was. Maggie Jones and Tom Guthrie were coming up through the wire gate.
You timed it about right, Raymond said. We just sat down to eat. Come on in.
We’ve already eaten, Maggie said.
Well. Is something wrong?
We came out to see you. There’s something we want to talk to you about.
Come in. I’ll be done eating pretty quick. Can it wait that long?
Yes, of course, Maggie said.
They came inside and Victoria brought chairs from the dining room. Raymond started to introduce Maggie and Guthrie to Del Gutierrez, but Maggie said they had met the night before at the movie theater.
Then I guess we’re all acquainted here, Raymond said. He turned to Victoria. They say they don’t want to eat. Maybe they’ll drink some of your coffee.
Victoria poured them each a cup and Raymond sat down and began to eat again. Victoria and Maggie talked about school and about Katie’s day care in Fort Collins. Then Raymond was finished and he wiped his mouth on a napkin. What did you want to talk to me about? Can you talk about it here, or is it something we better go into the other room for?
We can talk about it here, Maggie said. We just came out to take you into town to the Legion. To the firemen’s ball.
Raymond stared at her. Say that again, he said.
We want to take you out dancing.
He looked at Tom Guthrie. What in hell’s she talking about? he said. Has she been drinking?
Not yet, Guthrie said. But we’ll probably have a few drinks pretty soon. We just thought we’d better get you out for a night.
You did.
Yes. We did.
You want to take me to the firemen’s ball at the Legion.
We figured we’d come out and pry you loose. You wouldn’t go otherwise.
Raymond looked at him and turned and now he looked at Victoria.
Yes, why don’t you? she said. I want you to have some fun.
I thought you kids would want to go into town again yourselves. This is your last night. You have to go back to school tomorrow.
We need to get packed and you can’t do anything to help with that. Why don’t you go? I want you to.
He looked across at the boy and Katie as if they might be of some help. Then he looked at nobody. It just appears to me like this is a goddamn conspiracy, he said. That’s what it appears like.
It is, Maggie said. Now go put on your town clothes so we can get going. The dance has already started.
I might do that, he said. But I’m going to tell you something first. I’ve never been so pushed around in all my life. I don’t know if I care for it, either.
I’ll buy you a drink, Maggie said. Will that help?
It’ll take more than just one drink to wash this down.
You can have as many as you like.
All right, he said. I seem to be outvoted. But it’s not right, to treat a man like this in his own house. In his own kitchen, when he’s just trying to settle his supper.
He stood up from the table and went upstairs to his bedroom and put on his good dark slacks and the blue wool shirt Victoria had given him and got into his brown boots, then he came back downstairs. He told Victoria and Del and Katie good night, then followed Maggie Jones and Guthrie outside. They waited for him to get into Guthrie’s old red pickup, but Raymond said he would drive his own vehicle so he could come home when he wanted to. At least you can’t stop me from doing that, he said.
But we’ll follow you into town, Maggie said. So you don’t get lost on the way.
Well, Maggie, Raymond said. I’m beginning to think you got kind of a mean streak in you. I never noticed it before.
I’m not mean, she said. But I’ve been around you men for too long to harbor any illusions.
You hear that, Tom?
I hear it, Guthrie said. The best thing to do is just go along with her when she gets like this.
I guess so, Raymond said. But I’ll tell you what. She’s going to make me think of a barn-sour horse yet, if she keeps on this way.
THEY DROVE OUT THE LANE AND ALONG THE GRAVEL county road onto the blacktop, the headlights of the two pickups shining into the night one after the other along the barrow ditches. Then they entered town and turned west on US 34. There was a wreck across from the grocery store and the highway patrol routed them around it. They went on through town and parked in the crowded graveled lot outside the white-stuccoed American Legion and went downstairs and paid the cover charge to a woman sitting on a stool at the entrance to the barroom and dance hall. A country band was playing at the back. The music was loud, and the long smoky room was already filled with people standing two and three deep at the bar and sitting in the booths along the walls, and there were more people clustered at the foldout tables in the big side room where the sliding doors had been pushed back. Men in western suits and women in bright dresses were dancing in the thin scatter of sawdust on the floor in front of the band.