Betty Lou and I went through our usual routine: She handed me three hot environmentally incorrect Styrofoam containers loaded with thousands of heart-stopping calories and I handed over forty-five dollars, which included a generous tip. “How’s your Ma?” she asked. “Tell her I miss her. I tucked in the last piece of chocolate pie for Maddie, so don’t you put your fork in it.”
“Thanks, Betty Lou. Mama’s about the same. I’ll tell her you said hi.” Also part of the routine. I loved that it was still not pointless to Betty Lou.
Five minutes later, I was back on the road through town, driving past January Lane (although there was no December or February), the feed store, and the veterinary, hungrily snatching French fries out of the top container. After a few miles, I turned onto a road that quickly changed from smooth black asphalt to vicious, spitting gravel to clouds of boiling dust. I bumped along until I could see the big family ranch house up on the hill, in a protective clump of live oaks, but before that I turned off on an even more rugged dirt lane, winding through the playing fields of our childhood.
I pulled up to Sadie’s doublewide trailer, which she’d affectionately decorated with multicolored swirls of spray paint. She’d set her temporary home on a breathtaking spot of land. It faced the sunsets and overlooked a cement pond now shimmering brilliant orange, like someone had filled it with Sunkist soda.
For the first time, I realized how vulnerable Sadie and Maddie were, alone at night, smack in the middle of open land. Targets.
I got out of the pickup, then stopped. A new piece of sculpture rose three feet above me, a twisting tower of colorful recycled metal-Coke and beer cans, scraps of rusted tin, bottle caps, all of it attached to an ancient fence post running up the middle. An old doll that I remembered from Sadie’s childhood collection leered down from the top, wired in place. Molly, I think she’d named her. Molly’s blond hair and yellow overalls had seen better days. Her blank blue eyes remained as creepy as ever.
Apart from the doll, the sculpture was oddly appealing, an idiosyncratic complement to the trailer itself, covered with Sadie’s bold pop art drawings. Window boxes spilled over with marigolds, white petunias, and Mexican heather, thriving despite a spate of hundred-degree days.
“Do you like it?” Sadie asked, emerging from behind the sculpture with wire cutters in her hands. An impromptu weapon, I thought, if she ever needed one.
“I’m calling it ‘Last Night,’ inspired by that blind date Irene set me up on. What is she thinking, really? He was at least fifty. He had five threads of hair. He tried to slip his hand down the back of my jeans while we were still in the driveway. Lucky there’s not much between me and my jeans.” She pointed the wire cutters at my legs. “Nice look, by the way. What happened?”
“Inside,” I evaded.
While she gathered up her tools from the ground, I took special note of our physical differences. Sadie wasn’t especially tall, but she was all legs like Daddy. We used to lay out in bikinis on rickety lawn chairs, greased up with Crisco or baby oil, eagerly comparing the progress on our arms every half-hour. I always lost. Sadie roasted a beautiful gold; the best I could do was a bubble-gum pink. Her dark hair grew straight like Mama’s and mine but was usually cut ruthlessly short by her own hand. My sister was blessed-or cursed-with sweet, open features that reckless men always took as an invitation.
Today she wore her favorite summer attire. Paint-spattered cutoffs. A hot pink tank top that showed off two inches of flat stomach. Cheap plastic thongs on her feet that had seen better days. Minimal makeup. Big smile. Sadie made her living firing up tiny blowtorches and bending platinum and gold into breathtakingly delicate jewelry that looked like it was made by the hands of fairies. Her pieces sold for insane prices in galleries in New York and San Francisco. She refused to build a house yet, although she could well afford it with her take from the gas wells. Too permanent, she said, although her muses lived out here in the gum trees and live oaks. Inside, other muses entertained her through her Bose sound system, iPod, satellite dish, and plasma TV.
“Tooooooooooooooooommie!”
My niece, Maddie, jolted out the door behind her, barefoot, brown pigtails flying, wearing a faded Save the Gulf tee that hit her at the knees.
“What are we going to do tonight?” she wanted to know. “Did you rent something really good?”
“Yes.” I handed over To Kill a Mockingbird, rented out of a Redbox inside the hospital waiting room, and the chicken fried steak.
“You’re the best aunt ever,” my nine-year-old niece declared, throwing her arms around my waist, then bouncing away as if her feet had springs, a prime-time commercial for joy. A knot rose in my throat. As soon as Maddie disappeared into the trailer with her loot, Sadie turned from stacking tools under the awning.
“What’s wrong with your face, Tommie? You look like you’re about to cry.” Her eyes involuntarily fluttered, and I knew what was coming. “Why did you shoot a gun today?”
This was one of the problems with Sadie. She’d inherited The Gift from Granny. The fluttering eyes, a couple of blinks that most people wouldn’t notice-signals of some kind of premonition or “feeling.”
She sniffed. “I can smell it.”
“Really?” I asked, not believing her. Sadie liked to acknowledge other people’s psychic abilities, but not her own, even though hers were, well, real.
She opened the door of the trailer.
“Let’s get settled first,” she said.
It was like stepping into a walk-in refrigerator-a breathtaking blast of cold air. I threw the deadbolt behind us, Sadie looking at me quizzically.
“It’s still light outside,” she said.
I only nodded.
The trailer gleamed, spotless, as usual. Maddie was already plopped on the floor in front of the TV, lifting the lid of the Styrofoam container. Sadie and I nestled into opposite sides of the red-leather booth in the corner of the kitchen and dug in.
A granola friend, born somewhere north, once asked in disgust, “Why would any sane person want a greasy breaded crust around a slab of red meat?” If you had to ask, I told her, you’d never know.
I bit into a perfectly fried piece of heaven and, keeping my voice low, gave Sadie an abbreviated five-minute version of Rosalina’s letter, my internet research into her brutal, mob-connected husband, the surprise visit at Daddy’s office from the man named Jack, the violent encounter in the garage. Once again, I left out the fact that Jack’s attackers knew who I was. There was only so much worry I thought I should dump on her.
“Don’t tell Mama you took out that gun,” Sadie warned when I’d finished, which was ridiculous because Mama didn’t even know who I was.
“And clean it tomorrow.” For someone who lived out in the ether, Sadie was remarkably practical. Cleaning guns had always been a religion in our family, with Grandaddy as the head preacher. “Do you have the letter?”
“Yes.” I gestured to my purse while peering into the depths of her Sub-Zero refrigerator. “There’s only one more Corona.”
“Go for it.” She reached across the booth to my purse on the seat, pulling out the pink envelope, bent and creased from all its encounters with my obsessed fingers.
I settled back into my seat with the beer, watching her eyes as they moved over words I’d memorized, reading along with her silently even though I couldn’t see the page, my stomach churning around the grease.
Have you ever wondered about who you are?
My mind finished the letter a few seconds ahead of her. I watched as she flipped over the front of the envelope, examined the return address and the postmark, then held it up to the light, illuminating a small square. She pulled out a tiny picture stuck inside the lining of the envelope. How had I missed that?