If Darkness Takes Us Read online

  Mazie had started climbing into bed with me in the middle of every night shortly after Tasha died. I finally told Mazie to go to bed in my room in the first place. It comforted us both to sleep in the same bed.

  In an effort to give Mazie solace, I let her listen to her Frozen record on the phonograph until the batteries went dead, and I had no replacements.

  I saw those same three sinister-looking men from the funeral and from Darla’s explosion twice more. They drove slowly through the neighborhood in an old muscle car—a ruby red GTO from the early 70’s, with that unique cross-hatched grille. Neighbors stopped to watch them. The first time, I don’t think the men saw me, but the second time they looked right at me and squeaked their tires, then sped away, chased by a pack of mangy dogs and mangier kids.

  Suddenly, I realized that I’d seen these men on the night of the train wreck—unloading the ice chest at the Beldings’ house. At the time I’d thought the ice chest was full of beer, but maybe it contained methamphetamines, or it was used to carry the meth away.

  They must’ve come to Darla’s explosion because they’d been watching the Beldings’ house. Maybe they still had drugs stored there, or maybe they’d planned to break in and steal them. Surely the drugs burned up in the fire, or I hoped they had.

  But why did they come to the funeral? And what were they doing here now? Whatever their reason, it couldn’t be good.

  I explained all this to Jack, and he put the patrollers on high alert.

  I went to Tasha’s grave every day, no matter the weather. I rolled myself down there in my wheelchair, then walked up the embankment and sat on an old chair Jack had left there for me. Usually Mazie came along, and we talked about how much we missed Tasha. Sometimes I asked Mazie to be quiet. I told her I wanted to listen to God, but I really wanted to grieve in silence. Keno and Milo never came with us, but Keno often went on his own. I don’t know if Milo went or not.

  I wasn’t sure what was going on with Milo. The only time he seemed the least bit pleased was when he and Keno went to shoot guns at Jack’s range. Milo brooded a lot, stayed to himself most of the time, and never smiled anymore. The rest of us were gloomy, too, but we cried openly, we comforted one another, and sometimes we laughed at silly things Tasha had said or done in her short life. We were “processing” our grief, as they say.

  Yet Milo never cried, never talked about his departed cousin, and never laughed. His moods seemed darker by the day. I tried to get him to tell me his feelings, but he refused.

  One afternoon when Sonja had gone home early, Milo started mocking Mazie, holding her Barbie doll out of her reach and making her jump for it.

  “Give it to me, Milo!” Mazie demanded.

  “Don’t feel like it,” he said.

  “Please.” Mazie turned up her charms, flashing him a grin.

  “Make me!”

  “Tasha, make Milo give it to me!” Mazie hollered, then she gasped when she realized what she’d said, and she let out a squealing cry.

  Milo burst out laughing, wickedly laughing. “You yelled for Tasha, stupid, and she’s dead!”

  “Don’t say ‘dead’!” Mazie screamed, covering her ears and crying hysterically.

  “Milo! For God’s sake! What a nasty way to tease your sister.” I hopped up from my seat and reached toward Milo. “Give me the doll!”

  He sneered and wrenched the doll’s head off, then hurled the head and body across the room, where they slammed against the wall and fell behind the couch.

  “Milo, what’s wrong with you? Go to your room!”

  “No! I won’t!” He yanked open the back door to rush out, only to run straight into Keno.

  “Stop him, Keno.”

  “I hate you, Milo!” Mazie proclaimed.

  Keno grabbed Milo by the arm and tugged the boy into the house.

  “What’s going on, Milo?” Keno examined the squirming boy, gripping him tighter.

  “He’s being mean to Mazie and disobeying me. I told him to go to his room.”

  “He broke my doll!” Mazie wailed.

  Although Milo had more height than he’d ever had, Keno was still a head taller and still had a grip on Milo’s arm. Milo tried to jerk away, but Keno latched on with both hands and twisted the younger boy around into a headlock.

  “Better apologize to Mazie and go to your room,” Keno said.

  “Leave me alone, asshole!” Milo commenced kicking backward at Keno’s shins and feet.

  “Stop it, you little jerk!” Keno pushed his weight into Milo, spun him around, and wrestled him to the ground, until Keno knelt astride Milo’s thighs, pinning his arms to the ground.

  “Milo, what’s gotten into you?” I said.

  “Nothing!”

  “Something. What is wrong?”

  “Mazie yelled for Tasha.” Milo cackled. “Stupid Mazie yelled for stupid, dead Tasha.”

  “What?” Keno’s eyes hardened.

  “I got mixed up,” Mazie cried. “I didn’t mean to.”

  Keno ignored Mazie and glared at Milo, pinned beneath him on the floor. Milo stared back, his eyes bulging. Keno closed his eyes and took slow, deep breaths.

  “Fucking shit!” Keno roared, then he dropped to his side on the floor. “Fucking, fucking shit!” He curled into a ball, shaking with sobs.

  Milo raised up on his elbows, flabbergasted. He didn’t say a word. He scrambled to his feet and ran upstairs to his room.

  “I can’t get my doll from behind this thing.” Mazie tugged on the heavy couch, which didn’t budge an inch.

  With Keno curled on the floor crying, and me not knowing what to do for him, I used a broom to sweep Mazie’s broken doll from under the couch. She snapped its head back in place, good as new. I sat down and tried to calm my rat-a-tatting heart.

  “That boy will be the death of me.” I sighed heavily and leaned back in the chair to close my eyes.

  “He’ll grow out of it,” Mazie said. “That’s what Daddy says when Mommy gets mad at Milo for being bad.” She deepened her voice to imitate her father, “’Jeri, the boy will grow out of it.’”

  “Your daddy’s pretty smart.” I just hoped to hell her daddy was right.

  “Milo’s acting out his pain like the rest of us,” Keno muttered, sitting up on the tile and rubbing his eyes, breathing stuttering breaths. “I can’t stand this fucking shit.” He rose and headed back outside. When did he get so wise?

  Mazie climbed into my lap. She was getting too big for it but somehow squirmed around to fit.

  “Mazie, what happened to your princess skirt?”

  “I put it away,” she said. “It was Tasha’s. It makes me sad.”

  “Then it’s good you put it away. You can keep it to remember Tasha by.”

  “Yeah,” she sighed and snuggled closer.

  “Honey, don’t feel bad about calling for Tasha. It’s a normal thing to do. I almost call for her dozens of times every day.”

  “You do?”

  “Sometimes I forget for a second that she’s gone.”

  “Me, too,” Mazie said. “I wish she wasn’t gone.”

  “So do I, honey. . . . So do I.”

  I’m sure Milo’s thirteen-year-old hormones were raging and making him slightly insane, but that tirade of his shook me up. Usually I don’t really pray, but I prayed to God that Milo’s insanity would be temporary.

  Within an hour, Milo tiptoed down the stairs. I was still sitting with my eyes closed, not exactly sleeping, but trying to rest in the midst of our sorrow.

  “Nana?” he said, a contrite tone to his changing voice. I opened my eyes to see a sheepish boy with a hank of dirty hair dangling over his downcast face.

  “Yes?”

  “Can I come out now?”

  “I don’t know. What made you act so crazy and mean like that? Here we are, hurting and missing Tasha. And your sweet little sister, who you are very lucky to have—Keno doesn’t have his little sister, you know—Mazie calls for Tasha in a moment of confusi
on, and you go berserk.”

  I sat forward and took Milo’s limp hand, squeezing it hard. “Look at me.”

  He skittered his eyes in my direction and gulped.

  “Why did you do that? Do you miss Tasha and it makes you act crazy?”

  “I guess.” He wouldn’t focus on me.

  “Don’t you know whether or not you miss her?”

  “I do, but it’s just—” He smeared tears off his cheeks. “I don’t wanna miss her, so I try not to.”

  “Oh, Milo.” I pulled him to me for a hug. “You have to go ahead and let yourself feel it. You have to cry like the rest of us do. Because if you don’t let your grief out, you’ll bottle it up, and that’s what makes you act crazy.”

  I surveyed Milo’s puzzled face. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  “Do you understand me, kiddo?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Are you angry?”

  He nodded.

  “I understand. I’m so angry I could scream all day and night, for weeks on end.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hammering things is good. Go build something and hammer the hell out of it.”

  Milo grinned crookedly. “Okay.”

  I gave him a half-playful swat on his behind and sent him outside.

  Near dusk, while I made dinner on the grill, Milo sat in the grass in a cloud of gloom. Keno came home from gardening and sat down beside Milo.

  “Hey,” Keno said.

  “Hey,” Milo muttered without looking up. The two of them just sat there, picking at blades of dead grass. Soon, they lay on their backs and gazed at the sky. If they ever said more than “hey” to one another, I didn’t hear it.

  Mazie knew better than to chatter at Milo in her usual way. She brought her Barbie and sat beside the boys, playing with the doll while the boys ignored her. After a while, she went inside and came back with a book, which she handed to Milo.

  “Read Winnie the Pooh to me,” she said. To my surprise, Milo read to Mazie until dark, when I called them for supper.

  Every time I called my grandkids, I expected four kids to respond, but I only got three and a stab of pain.

  That night near bedtime, I hollered upstairs for the kids to come down. The three of them reached the bottom of the stairs and saw me, sitting on the couch and holding out the stethoscope.

  “Come here,” I said.

  “What are you doing?” Keno asked, indignation in his tone.

  “What do you mean? I need to check your lungs. You know that.”

  “What?” said Mazie.

  “That’s crazy,” Milo said, laughing.

  But Keno’s face grew stern. “Nana, you just checked us.”

  “What? No, I didn’t. Get over here.”

  “Yes, you did. You checked us half an hour ago.”

  “That’s right.” Mazie gaped at me worriedly.

  “You did, Nana. You really did,” Milo said.

  I glared at my grandkids while I flipped through memory files in my brain. The kids regarded me solemnly.

  “I don’t remember checking you,” I muttered.

  “Well, you did,” Keno said. The other two nodded, but still I couldn’t remember it.

  “You guys are just saying that to get out of it. You shouldn’t tease me that way.”

  “No, we’re not!” Mazie said. “You said I sounded right as rain. Remember?”

  “You asked me where I got this scratch.” Milo yanked up his T-shirt to show me a red welt on his rib cage that I’d never seen.

  “Where did you get it?” I mumbled, my brain throbbing.

  “On that rosebush by the Mint.” He scrunched his eyes. “I told you.”

  I dropped my face into my hands and sat there with an aching mind until Keno said, “Nana?”

  “Sorry. Go on to bed.”

  The kids slinked away, staring back at me. I plowed through my brain for hours and never did remember checking those kids.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  SINCE KENO NEEDED to keep occupied, he started teaching math and science in the evenings to the kids in our co-op group, and he took over the neighborhood gardening as a type of straw-boss, prioritizing the workload and that sort of thing.

  One day I was inspecting our home garden, making notes for Keno on what needed to be done. Jack opened my gate and strode up in front of me, inches away. I started to step back, but he reached out to caress my cheek. He leaned in and puckered up for a kiss.

  “Whoa!” I put my hand on his chest to stop his forward motion. “Don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “People are watching.” I glanced around quickly but didn’t find a soul to support my excuse.

  “So what? Everyone knows about us anyway. It’s not like it’s a secret.”

  “What, exactly, do they know about us, Jack? That we slept together a few months ago?”

  “Well, I hope it happens more often than that.”

  “Is that what you want? Sex?”

  “No.” He leaned backward. “I mean, yes, I want sex, but I want it with you and only you. I thought you knew me better than that.”

  “What am I supposed to know? I can’t read your mind.”

  “Well, that I love you.”

  “Love me?” I raised my voice. “That’s a huge statement. What makes you think you love me?”

  “I don’t think it. I know it. I’ve been in love before, Bea. I know what it feels like.” He crinkled his wrinkly old eyes while scanning my face. “Don’t you love me?”

  “Jack Jeffers, do not come here and ask me questions I can’t answer. Can’t you see that I’m busy? Don’t you have work to do?”

  To my chagrin, Jack laughed. “You didn’t say ‘no,’” he said.

  “Oh, go home!” I spun away from him, stomped past Sonja as she came out to the grill, and went in the house.

  Sonja waited a minute, then followed me inside. She’d become the emotional rock of our household during our time of grief. She seemed to know the right tone to take with each of us—when to be cheerful, when to be solemn, when to console us or leave us alone.

  “Are you alright, Bea?” she asked.

  “That old man is driving me crazy. Everybody wants something from me. They just demand more and more and more. Can’t they see I have nothing left to give? I feel so damned empty.”

  “Don’t you think love can fill you back up?” Sonja took my hand.

  “Love,” I muttered.

  “Do you not love Mr. Jeffers?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I might, if I had any love left in me.”

  “Maybe you should let him give love to you, and soon you will have love to give.” Sonja—such a deep well of wisdom and heart.

  I sat down on the edge of the couch. “I just feel like everyone—except you, Sonja—everyone else is always after me for something. Time, advice, attention, food. I can’t take it anymore.”

  “It’s very hard when people demand things from you that you don’t feel you can give.”

  “Especially men,” I said. “Why do they pressure us to make decisions?”

  “My husband did this to me, about something I should not have been pressured about.”

  “Oh?” I sat still, hoping she would finally feel comfortable enough to confide in me.

  “Cesar the elder wanted another child,” Sonja said. “I wanted one, too, but I wanted to wait because I wanted to work. But I obeyed my husband, and I tried for a while to make another baby. Yet, nothing happened. And Cesar kept pushing me for not getting pregnant fast enough. I was very hurt and angry.”

  “Excuse me, but that is just wrong.”

  She nodded sadly. “I did a bad thing.” She paused, reluctant to say more.

  “I bet it wasn’t so bad.”

  “It was deceitful.” Sonja winced, blurting out the story in a rapid stream. “I took birth-control pills without telling my husband. I did this for a year or more, but then he caught me, so I stopped. But I didn’t
get my period. Cesar was watching me closely, asking about my period every day. When it didn’t come, he was elated and bought pregnancy tests and vitamins.

  “I took a test but got a negative. I thought I took it too early, so I waited a week and got another negative. Then, I went to my doctor, and she gave me hormone shots to start my period. Cesar was furious with me. He wasn’t rational at all. He packed his bags and left me, said he was going to Mexico. I thought he would be back when he calmed down, but he’d already been gone five weeks when the EMP happened.”

  I sat quietly, taking it all in. If Cesar II was that controlling, Sonja was probably better off without him. “Don’t you think he should have forgiven you for that by now?”

  “Yes! Yes, I do.” Tears pooled in her eyes. “But because of the EMP, I cannot know his feelings. It makes me feel crazy.”

  “Aw, honey, come here,” I pulled her down beside me on the couch, enfolding her in my arms while she shuddered and sniffled. At last, I asked her, “Are you still going to try to go find him in Mexico? It’s warmer now.”

  Sonja sat forward, wiping her face with her palms. “I can’t leave you now. You need me.”

  “It’s true that we need you, but someone else could help us while you’re gone. I mean, I’d miss you terribly, and I’d be worried sick for you, but I want you to be happy.” Then I wondered something. “You and me are okay, aren’t we?”

  She sucked in a breath. “I think it was kind and motherly of you to keep me from going to Mexico. I was not in my right mind. You kept me safe, and got me healthier.”

  “But I shouldn’t have done it.”

  “It’s true, you shouldn’t have. But I’m glad that you did.”

  “Sonja, you’re too kind to me. You’re some kind of saint.”

  “I need the love you give me, Bea. I did not get it from my husband. And there is no one else to help you like I do.”

  “It’s true that no one else would be as much help or be such a great cook.” I smiled. “And we couldn’t possibly love anyone else as much as we love you. I’m closer to you than I’ve ever been with my daughters.”