“Are you crazy, woman, coming out in this storm?” Mother said. Aunt Arlen’s head was wrapped tight in an old flannel shirt, and she wore a raccoon coat that held the ripe smell of the dead animals. She went straight to the stove to rub her bare hands together over the heat.
Mom offered cornbread and Arlen shook her head. Skinny as she was, I’d never known Arlen to refuse food. She still hadn’t said hello. Finally she took the rag off her head and turned to face us. “I’m not going back,” she said, “not even if hell does freeze over. I mean it this time. I’ve had it. Right up to here.” She slashed the air in front of her throat. “He can just see how he likes it, cooking and cleaning up after those boys. They’re half his — or more — I can hardly see my part in them now that they’re grown. Maybe Justin and Marshall will think to look for their own place if they don’t have a live-in maid. Lester can iron his own shirts and mend the crotch of his own damn jeans instead of throwing them in my lap and asking me what the hell I do all day that I can’t get around to the ‘few, simple things a man has a right to expect from his wife.’ Now that the Fat Lady’s shaking for God and speaking in tongues, there’s one more ‘simple thing’ Lester Munter wants from the old wife. All of a sudden this bag of bones don’t look too bad. Well, he can hold his breath till he turns blue and falls on his face. He’s not laying a finger on this woman. ‘Come on, baby, let’s get warm,’ he says, right in front of the boys — and them sneering, knowing their father’s gone to Lyla Leona for years, and they’ve seen her too, wallowed in her flesh. Pigs, every one of them. I had to get myself out of there before I stabbed my fork right up his nose.” She paused long enough to take her first breath.
“Can I stay here, Evelyn? Just until this blizzard’s over? I’ll look for a place as soon as the weather breaks. Something for me and Lucy — oh, my poor baby; I can’t leave her with her brothers for long. They’ll turn her into a little slave. Maybe I can get us a room at the boardinghouse, right up there with Minnie Hathaway and Lyla Leona; maybe I can be saved too.”
“Don’t even think about living in a dump like that,” Mom said. “You can stay here long as you want.”
I don’t believe Arlen ever had any intention of looking for another place. She settled into the den off the living room and slept on the lumpy sofa that was three inches shorter than she was.
For two days she watched her own house like a thief. “Look at Lester,” she said on the third morning, “fat and happy and late for work.” She snorted. “Looks like Justin gave up on that foolish beard. My boy never thought he had enough chin. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t go out with girls. Maybe that’s why Lester did him the favor of taking him to see the Fat Lady when he was sixteen. What a father. Isn’t there some law against a man and his son sleeping with the same woman? Well, there should be. Rubs mighty close to incest if you ask me.” Arlen didn’t mind that I was the only one listening to her.
“Poor Lucy,” she said. “Look at her. No hat, no gloves, you’d think one of those boys would see to it she doesn’t freeze on her way to school.”
Later that morning Arlen sneaked into her empty house and packed enough clothes to stay with us all winter. The whole thing made my father nervous. He asked Mom how long Arlen was staying. “Just a week or so, honey, until this tiff blows over,” she said. She never called him “honey,” so he must have known we were in deep.
On Sunday, Arlen went to church; she wanted to hear if folks were speculating on her reasons for leaving Lester. She wanted to know if the reverend judged her with mercy or cruelty. Daddy stayed home for the first time in months. He said he wanted to have a word with Mother, but he looked too red to talk. As soon as Arlen was out of the house, he pounded his fist on the kitchen table and said, “She’s not staying here another day.”
“She’s staying as long as she wants,” Mother said.
“It’s not right, a woman leaving her husband and kids. I won’t be any part of it.”
“She’s your sister, Dean.”
“She’s Lester Munter’s wife, that’s what she is, and she belongs in his house, not mine.”
“Blood and water.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“That your sister should mean more to you than Lester Munter.”
“What do you think we’re running here, a home for wayward women?”
“She’s hardly a wayward woman.”
“No? Well I think that’s a mighty polite name for a woman who deserts her husband. When I think of her harping away about Elliot Foot, I don’t know whether to laugh or be sick.”
“It’s not the same.”
“No, of course not. Elliot Foot is a man.”
“Elliot Foot ran off to be with another woman. Arlen left to be by herself. Your sister walked across the alley and Elliot took a Winnebago to Arizona.”
“I could make her go.”
“I’d go with her,” Mother said.
“Are you threatening me?”
“I’m stating a fact.”
They glared at each other. They were both bluffing, but neither one was willing to force the hand. Finally Daddy said, “I wish she’d just find her own place and keep us out of it.”
“You know she hasn’t got a dime of her own.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“Hers,” said Mom. “She should have lifted ten bucks from Lester’s wallet every week and stashed it away for herself.”
Dad sighed. He didn’t have a chance with this kind of reasoning. “If Les ever comes over here and wants to drag her home, I won’t stand in his way.”
Arlen stayed, one week and then another. The third week began. She didn’t have much to talk about now that Lester and the boys weren’t around to keep her riled, but that didn’t stop her. There was a noisiness to her presence, a clamor of confusion. By the time I came home from school, Mother was worn down by Arlen’s jabbering. She soon agreed with my father: it was time to send Arlen back to those children who needed her.
Our house seemed smaller in winter. The tiny windows of my attic room leaked light, but by four o’clock the whole house was dark. In the dim hours, my wallpaper turned chaotic. Nina had chosen it, this tangle of green vines and burgundy roses. I dreaded going home but couldn’t stand the cold outside. Often, Arlen followed me from room to room, relating every detail of her day. She stayed on my heels as I climbed the stairs. One afternoon she said, “I couldn’t decide whether to wear my blue dress or my green one this morning. So I chose the brown slacks instead.” This amused her. She muttered a few words under her breath and giggled. I tried to slip into the bathroom and close the door, but she was too quick for me. “I had toast for breakfast — with strawberry jam. Your mother had apple butter.” I sat down on the toilet. “No, wait,” she said.
“I can’t,” I answered, but she didn’t mean me.
“I think she had marmalade.” The confusion concerning Mother’s toast perplexed her. She charged out of the bathroom and down the stairs. “Evelyn,” I heard her call. “Evelyn, did you have marmalade or apple butter?”
Later, when I thought about what happened to Arlen in our house, I realized anger was the only thing that had kept her strong. She had to fill her head with nonsense; the steady buzz stopped her from thinking about her husband and sons making love to Lyla Leona, kept her safe from the blinding memory of the day they pulled Jesse from the lake.
I learned something that winter: when things go bad, they can always get worse; misfortune has its own momentum. A week before Christmas, a second storm hit. This blizzard took its toll. In the fields beyond the edge of town, snow blew over the frozen bodies of cows and sheep, the ones that didn’t make it to the barn before dark.