The Driest Season Read online

Cielle shut the mailbox lid and lowered the red flag and walked behind Helen. “She’s our mother. The Olsens have nothing to do with us.”

  “What did it say?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t read it.” She touched her dress pockets, but she’d left the note under her pillow at home.

  Small green flickers of fireflies appeared over the lawn and at the edge of the woods. Cielle thought of them as night spirits, angels glowing in the dark. The gravel driveway crunched under their shoes and Helen walked straight up the front steps and knocked on the screen door. There was a large wooden table with a porcelain vase on it in the hall, and Oriental rugs in ruby-reds and burnt-oranges covered shiny dark wood floors. Bookcases lined the walls in the living room to the right.

  Helen bit her thumb. “If you’re keeping something from me, Lucille Patricia Jacobson, then I’d like you to think long and hard about how to tell me what it is you might know.”

  “I know an awful lot you don’t know, Helen Camilla Jacobson, and I’m not sure you want to know what I know.”

  “Intriguing,” Helen said. “I want to know.”

  Voices came from another room, but no one came to the door. Cielle thought Helen might want to know, but would regret the knowing once she was told.

  Helen knocked again and in a loud singsongy voice said, “Hello?”

  “Don’t make a scene,” Cielle said.

  The chatter paused and the clacking of heels came around the corner. Mrs. Olsen wore a baby-blue linen dress and baby-blue high heels. Her hair was swept up into a neat twist, not a hair out of place. Her mouth was painted in velvety red lipstick and looked like a rose petal. She carried a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

  “The Jacobson girls!” she said, as if they were invited guests. “Open that screen door, my hands are full.”

  Helen pulled open the door and stepped into the foyer. Mrs. Olsen leaned in and pecked each of them on the cheek and stepped back. “Look at you two, what lovely summer dresses.” She teetered backward and righted herself with a wider stance.

  “Sorry to interrupt your party,” Cielle said.

  “Nonsense.” Mrs. Olsen stepped toward the vase and tapped her cigarette ash inside of it. She smiled at Cielle and Helen; her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were glassy.

  “Is Darren home?” Helen asked.

  “Darren?” Mrs. Olsen creased her forehead. She seemed not to recognize her own son’s name. “He’s somewhere. I don’t know where. Maybe you want something to drink, girls? You’re old enough to drink.” Mrs. Olsen walked back toward the kitchen and the voices.

  “Why not?” Helen said, and took Cielle’s hand.

  “Why not is right,” Mrs. Olsen said. “We have mixed nuts and pickled vegetables, cheese and crackers, so help yourselves. You’re both so skinny. Eat something. Eat some protein.”

  Another couple her parents’ age whom she didn’t recognize, and a man Cielle assumed to be Mr. Olsen, sat in the living room and watched Cielle and Helen.

  “These are the Jacobson girls, dear,” Mrs. Olsen said. She put ice in two tumblers and poured whiskey over the top. Mrs. Olsen handed the drinks to Helen and then Cielle. Cielle had never drunk whiskey before, and the smell burned her nose. No one said anything, but Cielle saw recognition in their faces at the mention of their last name. They all seemed to inhale deeply with regret. Cielle knew that if they knew her father, then they knew how old she and Helen were, but no one made a fuss about the drinks. Mr. Olsen had a handful of nuts, and placed them in his mouth all at once.

  “I’m Andrew Olsen and this is John and Judy Schmitt,” he said. Cielle had heard the name Schmitt. They had children who were older, already in college and married.

  Mr. Schmitt raised his glass and said, “To your health, girls.” They all raised a glass and leaned over to clink Helen and Cielle’s glasses before drinking. Cielle sipped the whiskey, and it was hot and burned from her mouth down to her gut.

  Mrs. Olsen sat on Mr. Olsen’s lap, wobbled on his thigh, and almost fell over. He took her arm and put it around his neck. “You should hear Cielle play the violin,” she said, “she’s a real talent.” Mrs. Olsen smiled and looked right at Cielle, but Cielle didn’t think she could see straight. Water leaked from her left eye again.

  “How about that?” Mrs. Schmitt said. “I never could read music.” She put her hand on her husband’s arm, and when he looked at her she raised her eyebrows. Cielle knew that look. Her mother used to give it to her father when it was time to leave.

  “Cielle, Cielle.” Mrs. Olsen stood and hurried around the corner. “Hold on, Cielle, hold on,” she said. She heard a door open and objects being shoved and pushed around in a closet.

  “Mr. Olsen.” Helen leaned forward in her chair. “Where is Darren?”

  “Darren?”

  “He was supposed to meet Cielle at our house earlier to go to the fair.”

  Mrs. Schmitt put her hand on her chest. “Darren is such a nice boy. How is he doing?”

  No one said anything. Cielle put her drink on the coffee table.

  “You don’t like whiskey?” Mr. Olsen asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Cielle said. Mr. Olsen picked up her glass and poured it into his own.

  “I don’t much care for whiskey either.” He took a sharp shot of the drink and then he stood. “Darling, for the love of God, what are you doing out there?”

  Mrs. Olsen scurried around the corner holding a violin case. “I found it. I thought Cielle could play for us.” She held the violin out toward Cielle.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mr. Olsen said. “The girls are on their way to the fair.”

  “Cielle is very good,” Helen said.

  Mr. Olsen moved toward Mrs. Olsen. “Don’t put Cielle on the spot. Give me the violin.” He took the case from her. “The girls are supposed to meet Darren.”

  Mrs. Schmitt winked at Cielle. “Darren is such a handsome boy.”

  Mrs. Olsen lit a cigarette. “My older son played the violin like an angel.”

  Helen ran her hand over her dress and sat back. “I didn’t know you had another son,” she said.

  Mrs. Olsen looked at Mr. Olsen. She took a long drag on her cigarette and exhaled smoke. “It’s funny, the things you don’t know about your own neighbors, isn’t it?”

  “Or your own parents,” Cielle said.

  Mrs. Olsen nodded her head up and down, agreeing with Cielle. “I know, honey.” Mrs. Olsen wiped the wet from under her eye. “We all have secrets. Children don’t get to know certain things about their parents.”

  “We’re not children,” Cielle said. “I’m not a child.”

  “You’re somebody’s child.” Mrs. Olsen leaned down and took off her heels. “You’ll always be somebody’s child.” She set her shoes next to the chair and wiggled her toes.

  “My daughters will always be my babies,” Mrs. Schmitt said. “It’s true.”

  “You miss your children when they leave,” Mrs. Olsen said.

  Cielle looked at Mrs. Olsen. “I’m sorry about your son. Darren said he passed away.”

  Mrs. Schmitt gasped. “He did?”

  “He did not,” Mrs. Olsen said softly.

  Mr. Olsen took a few steps back into the room. “Girls, I’ll be sure to tell Darren you came by.” He extended his arm toward the front door.

  Helen drank the last of her whiskey and stood.

  “Christian did not die,” Mrs. Olsen said. “That’s not true.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cielle said, and stood to follow Helen.

  “Why would Darren say that?” Mrs. Olsen asked.

  “To make me feel better,” Cielle said.

  Helen squeezed her hand. “Come on, Cielle.”

  “How does saying someone’s dead who’s not make anyone feel better?” Mrs. Olsen’s lip tugged up at the edge of her mouth. “Did that make you feel better?”

  Helen pulled Cielle toward the door. Mrs. Olsen followed them with her dr
ink in hand.

  “Wait,” she said. Mrs. Olsen stood between them and the door. “Tell me if that news made you feel better. I’d like to know. My heart is pounding so hard, I don’t know what I think. My head is in another universe. Did his telling you his brother died make you feel better?” Her whiskey sloshed around in the glass and an ice cube popped out and slid across the wood floor right in front of Cielle.

  “Yes,” Cielle said, and she dragged the toe of her shoe through the wet on the floor and then looked up. “It did. It made me feel less alone.”

  Mrs. Olsen had one hand on her hip and her lips were parted, but no sound came out of her mouth.

  “Good night,” Mr. Olsen said. He opened the screen door and they walked back to their truck in the dark.

  Helen stopped at the mailbox, lifted her dress, and put the letter to Christian Olsen back inside and raised the red flag.

  At the fair, bright lights spun against the night sky. Smells of barbecued meat, fried dough, and beer wafted through the air, and tinny horn music wailed around every corner. Cielle passed a mirror and her body looked stretched lengthwise, like a piece of taffy pulled long and thin. The Ferris wheel turned and turned, with its chairs rocking back and forth.

  Helen moved toward the baseball stand. “Let’s throw things,” she said. “That will make me feel better.” She paid a man three cents for three baseballs, aimed at the bottles on the platform, and missed all three.

  “Your turn,” Helen said, and paid three more cents and handed Cielle three baseballs. Cielle focused on the bottle, wound her arm back, and threw hard. She knocked a bottle off the stand.

  “Down she goes!” the man yelled.

  She felt powerful. A force snaked through her arm and she knocked over two more bottles.

  “Pick your prize! Pick your prize!” the man bellowed.

  Cielle didn’t want to carry around a bulky stuffed animal, so she pointed to a silver key chain dangling from a hook that had a metal pendant on it that read Wisconsin in curving red letters. The man handed it to her. She twirled the key ring around her finger and she and Helen walked among the stalls and the noise and the food smells.

  “You want some cotton candy?” Cielle walked toward the food area, but then saw Darren, and made a sharp left behind the cotton candy stand.

  “Oh, no,” Helen said, and grabbed her elbow and turned her around. “You’re not going to hide.”

  “He’s with Janice Beams!” Cielle felt like the air was pushed out of her lungs.

  “You go up to him right now and ask why he didn’t show at our house.”

  “Let’s go home.”

  “If you don’t, I will.”

  Helen pushed Cielle out from the side of the stand, and Darren and Janice were right there.

  “What a surprise,” Helen said. “We just came from your house, Darren.”

  “My house?” he asked.

  Janice wore a kelly-green dress and kelly-green ribbon tied in a bow around the top of her ponytail. She was a year ahead of Cielle and was the kind of girl who wore a pearl necklace, sat so straight she had to have had a board tied to her back, and clicked her fingernails on the tabletop while people spoke.

  “You were supposed to pick up Cielle at five p.m.”

  Janice tilted her head to the side and looked at Darren with a tight, fake smile.

  “I’m sorry,” Darren said, but Cielle wasn’t sure to whom he was apologizing.

  “We drank whiskey at your parents’ house,” Cielle said.

  “You shouldn’t have gone to my house,” he said.

  “Well, we did,” Helen said.

  “You two are strange,” Janice said, shaking her head and strumming her fingers on her arm.

  “You don’t know us from Adam,” Helen said.

  “I know your father’s dead. I know you date Bodie Mitchell. I know you’re strange,” Janice said.

  “You’re not invited into this conversation,” Cielle said.

  The cotton candy lady handed the swirled pink nest of spun sugar to Janice, who plucked off a piece and stuck it in her mouth.

  “I also heard you might lose your farm,” Janice said.

  Cielle shook her head and stepped close to Janice. Janice leaned back, so Cielle leaned in closer and grabbed her upper arm and squeezed. “Janice,” she said. “Janice, shut up.”

  Janice took another step back and shook her arm. “Fine,” she said. “Don’t touch me.”

  Cielle let go and turned back to Darren. “Why did you lie about your brother?” she asked.

  He uncrossed his arms.

  “Your mother was drunk. She took out Christian’s violin and asked me to play,” Cielle said.

  “His mother’s always drunk,” Janice said.

  “Shut up, Janice,” Darren said.

  Janice’s nose twitched and she stopped eating. The cotton candy lady leaned out of her stall to listen.

  “My brother may as well be dead.”

  “But he’s not,” Cielle said.

  “He’s not the same.”

  “But he’s not dead.”

  “He’s in a veterans’ home in Washington, no leg, doesn’t know his name, he chain-smokes, and a nurse name Lena gives him baths,” Darren said. “He’s as close to goddamn dead as you get.”

  “Darren.” Janice swatted his shoulder. “Don’t cuss.”

  “Goddamn goddamn goddamn.” Darren grabbed the cotton candy from her hand and flung it through the air. It landed on the roof of the stand and looked like a pink bird roosting.

  Janice had hate in her eyes, stomped her foot, and turned and walked away. “I’ll be in the car,” she yelled. “You’re all rude and crazy. Don’t make me wait.” Cielle watched Janice’s ponytail and green bow disappear into the crowds and noise.

  “I’m sorry,” Darren said. “Janice lives next door and came over demanding I bring her tonight.”

  The cotton candy lady held out a new stick of spun sugar toward them. Helen took the cotton candy and they stepped away from the stand.

  “I don’t like liars,” Cielle said to Darren.

  “Sometimes people can be dead to you without having died.”

  “I wouldn’t know that.”

  “Then you’re lucky.”

  “Some luck.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I’m not getting anything right. I’m sorry,” Darren said. He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m really sorry. I’m going to go.” He turned and walked into the crowds and noise.

  “That was awful,” Cielle said.

  Helen held out the cotton candy, so Cielle ripped off a piece and ate it.

  “Let’s at least go on the Ferris wheel while we’re here,” Cielle said. She and Helen moved in the direction of the circle of light turning around and around ahead of them.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ON MONDAY AFTERNOON her mother left $400 in an envelope on the kitchen table and a note: In Richland Center. Please get this to Mr. Skaar. Cielle tucked the envelope into her skirt pocket and rode her bicycle to the funeral home. She pedaled up hills and her thighs burned. The bicycle chain and frame rattled. She passed the Lund farm, and Erik, who was in her class, and was baling hay on the tractor. He waved and she waved back. She passed the Daly farm, where Hazel, who was not much older than Helen and already a war widow, tended her garden, her red hair poking out from under a straw hat, her baby lying on a blanket nearby. She passed the Westrum barn—it was white and stone and five times the size of their barn—the biggest barn in Richland County. She kept pedaling uphill, toward the Richardson Funeral Home and Mr. Skaar.

  She didn’t know what the truth meant anymore, what part of it mattered, or what part was right or wrong. People made up their own truths and ways to live with lies, and maybe it had always been like that. One thing she knew was that people needed to have answers to make sense of their lives. She felt the need to know her father after his death—it was an impulsive need, a blaze in her heart. The heart seemed a dangerous thing, especia
lly when full of secrets or unanswered questions.

  The more she discovered, the more she found she did not know. Just weeks ago Mr. Bead had told them about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in physics: when you try to measure a particle, it becomes a blur, elusive. The observer becomes part of what is being observed, which makes the outcome about interpretation. Mr. Bead had asked, “Does this mean that the ultimate truth is unknowable, immeasurable?”

  She leaned her bicycle against the steps of the funeral home. Maybe, she thought, the only certain thing in this life is uncertainty.

  It was dark and cool inside the funeral home. The floor creaked under the worn red carpet. At the end of the hallway the door had a plaque on it that read OFFICE. Cielle patted her pocket for the envelope and walked ahead. She wondered how many dead people were in the home at that moment—how many waiting for viewings and goodbyes, waiting to be buried and returned to the earth.

  Cielle knocked on the door and Mr. Skaar opened it.

  “Miss Jacobson,” he said, “you made it.” He stepped aside and waved her in.

  The office was simply furnished. He had an oak desk in the middle of the room and a lamp with a green glass shade. A Bible was on one corner of the desk and a picture frame was on the other.

  “How old are you?” Mr. Skaar asked.

  “Almost sixteen.”

  He turned the picture frame on his desk toward Cielle and pointed to the girl in the photo with white-blond hair and deep blue eyes. “My daughter, Ingrid, is twelve.”

  “She’s pretty,” Cielle said.

  “Do you know her?”

  “No.”

  He sat in the chair behind his desk and turned the photo back toward himself. “I see death every day but I hate the thought of dying.”

  Cielle nodded toward the Bible. “But you believe?”

  “I try,” he said. “But death makes you question everything, doesn’t it?”

  Cielle took the envelope out of her pocket and held it up. “I have this.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You caught me in a thinking mood today.” Mr. Skaar didn’t reach for it or say anything, so she put the envelope on his desk. He looked at it and then dragged it toward himself with his forefinger.