Chapter Four

Whitney left. Marge jumped at the sound of the screen door slamming shut even though she was waiting for it. Marge felt like a beached whale if whales could sweat. She got out of bed with a heavy pant and put the Benadryl bottle and spoon away in the tiny medicine cabinet in their shared bathroom. She used to feel guilty about it. Now she panicked when the bottle ran low. 

Garrett was up. He was waiting for her in bed, his face a full moon of wonder.

I love you, she thought. 

“I love you,” she said.

She went to his bed and held him. He allowed this for a few seconds then removed himself from her. He grunted a rhythm that she decided meant he wanted to go outside.

“Let’s go to the park.” 

The “park” was a small clearing behind the row of trailers next to Marge’s. It was surrounded by the tall trees that surrounded all of Sunset Village and featured a rusted slide and swing set as its main attractions. But Garrett was never interested in those. He liked to sit in the wood chips and work piles of them through his fingers like some sort of strange accountant. Marge would sit on the equally rusty bench that sprouted out of the ground, a lone metal flower in a sea of trees.

Pregnant. Marge chuckled to herself because crying was an island she had forgotten how to swim to. She sometimes felt like she had used up all of her tears and even considered asking Dr. Butler if this was possible. But she always stopped herself from doing so. It would be just another oddity that separated her from the rest of the world.

It was so hot, but the trees helped. Marge looked around, saw no one peeping out their trailer windows, so she took the bottom of her t-shirt and mopped her face with it. She always felt like an imposter in the clothes she wore because they were always somebody else’s. She was thankful for the church—St. Andrew’s—that regularly gave away clothing nobody wanted anymore except for the people who didn’t have a say in the matter. But she never felt like herself, wearing men’s sweatpants or tank tops a size too small. 

Beggars can’t be choosers, her mother said in her head. She wondered if her mother was looking down at her from heaven. Or if she could even see her at all. Marge was sure her seven brothers and sisters would have their own theories on this, but it had been so long, she knew she wouldn’t be welcomed to the conversation. There was no concept of the prodigal son in her family. You were either one of them or not.

Her parents had been different though. Good people. They lived on a farm in Helena and grew cotton, which Marge hated because it meant she was forced to pick it. Her friend, Eugenie, lived on a soybean farm. Lucky brat, Marge thinks even now. As Garrett snuffs and snorts at his pile of wood chips, Marge recollects the way her parents made her feel. Loved, secure. They taught her about Jesus, and for a few minutes, Marge believed them. There was hope in Jesus. There was something different. She even got baptized, and read her Bible, and ignored the way some of the batty old ladies at their small church seemed to care more about the baked casseroles they brought for potluck than the people in the pews. She could dig through it and toss out the bad, keep the good. But then something changed.

Lenny.

Lenny had never been a praying man. He never forbade her to, but there’s something about being married and in such close proximity to somebody else that changes who you are. Marge started to feel herself morphing into a different person completely. She obsessively cleaned the house the one time her parents drove up to visit them after they had gotten married. She pointed out things like Lenny’s new Lincoln (which they had bought on credit and had started to feel like a heavy noose around their necks) and the brand-new TV set that sat proudly next to the fireplace (also bought on credit). Her only regret was not being pregnant yet—a further dividing line between her and the rest of the Helena crew who had to suffer through cotton bolls pricking their fingers and long, boring Sunday services. Marge, on the other hand, knew the conveniences of frozen meals and fast-food joints and the lucrative air of the big city. She wasn’t like the rest of them, and she was finally living a life that proved it.

She realized now how gracious her parents had been and how big of a fool she was. She had only wanted to impress them, but those dopey looks on their faces—the ones that quietly said “oh dear”—had been salt in her wounds. And she had so many looking back now, every one of them self-inflicted.

Marge sighed and rubbed away the sweat of her temple. She figured she smelled something awful and was thankful no one was around to confirm it. Before her parents left that evening to take the two-hour trek back to Helena, her mother had cornered her in the back bedroom where Marge had been telling them their future child would sleep. 

“Margaret. I miss you,” she said, placing her hand tentatively on Marge’s arm. It was a move that suggested her daughter was a balloon just out of grasp, and if she didn’t act now, she was fated to watch her float away.

“Miss you, too, Mom,” Marge said. She did her best to mask the panic in her face, picking up the neutral yellow baby blanket that hung over the crib. Lenny had surprised her with a Sears catalog—told her to buy anything that caught her eye. Marge wanted to ask the question, “What if we can’t have a baby?” but she felt like voicing it was an evil omen, a bad luck charm, so she stuffed it back inside and flipped through the pages. It had been two months and so far, no child to show for it. But these things took time, like Lenny said.

She never went back home, even when her mother had invited her on Sundays, or for one of her siblings’ birthdays, or when her father had gotten sick. And then eventually, her mother had died, too, and all her siblings turned against her, an invite no longer extended. As her son tallied and demarcated piles of chips, Marge tried to find where she hid her anger, her sadness that life with Lenny had meant death to the life she used to know. But it was hidden so deeply within her, she didn't even know where to start.

Lenny had always promised everything. Even when the months passed, and she still wasn’t pregnant, she never once considered that maybe he hadn’t hung the moon. He’d come home in his shirt sleeves and black pants, smelling of hot pavement and carpet powder, a wry smile on his face.

“Soon, to the moon!” he’d say but only after two cans of Schlitz. And maybe that’s where the image of him hanging it had come from. Sometimes, when a person believed too hard in something, it took less energy just to believe them.

The metal seat made her sore, so Marge moved from side-to-side to relieve the pain. She looked for the love she had for Lenny inside of her, and it wasn’t as elusive. She first met him when he had traveled to Helena on a whim, thinking he could impress the farm wives into buying his wares, but instead of selling a vacuum, he stole a daughter, a sister, a farmhand.

It broke her heart to think maybe she hadn’t been in love with Lenny as much as she’d been in love with what Lenny offered her: a steady income (more than her parents could ever make), children of her own, a new house, her own things she didn’t have to share with her sisters. And every now and then, Lenny had gotten it right. But as for kids, they wouldn’t have one of those until seventeen years later. And as for everything else, she had made their beds under a pile of debt and worried that Lenny would suffer a heart attack from taking on additional jobs just to make up for the disappointment that came with his first. And he had, eventually. Whitney had just turned seven, and there were still birthday streamers in the kitchen where Lenny had fallen onto the floor, never to get back up. He had been half-dressed, his work pants on but his white button down still on the back of his chair.

Marge hadn’t found him. Whitney had. Whitney, who had planted her face against her father’s, her small body coiled next to him on the black and white tiles. How disturbing, Marge thought as Garrett threw a pile of chips in what she suspected was anger, this thought covering both decades and the weight of how Marge always seemed to feel.

She supposed when Lenny died her faith had too—not that the concept of hope was buried with him but that the act of believing in it was too daunting, too tiresome to think about. She had been all alone in the world with a child she needed to protect. What could be worse?

When she raised her chin to wipe the sweat from under her neck, Garret was staring at her.