The Used World. Haven Kimmel
new garage, the empty chicken house—all were lit up and vivid in the yellow glow of the security light.
“You’re probably sitting there thinking about Mom,” Millie said, taking one container out of the microwave and putting another in.
“No, I’m not,” Claudia said, but she was.
“I bet you’re thinking how Mom would have been snapping beans or grinding corn or whatever for dinner.”
“You don’t snap beans in December.”
“You know what I mean.”
There, then, was Ludie, standing in the warm kitchen, listening to gospel music on the AM radio, and outside there was a snow falling like this one, and Millie was probably upstairs in her bedroom, on her way to becoming the person she was now but not yet there, and Claudia was in the kitchen, with her mother.
“It’s no crime to enjoy the time-saving devices of the modern world, Claude.”
“I never said.”
“I happen to like microwaved food, and I happen to like not having to do dishes.”
Millie happened also to like not eating, although she never said as much. She was tall (but not too tall) and thin, what Hazel called Warning Label Thin, or Sack of Hangers Thin. Hazel sometimes referred to Millie simply as Death’s-head, and it was true that in certain lights you could see Millie’s skull as surely as if she were being used in an anatomy class. At thirty-eight she was pinched and severe; the lack of body fat, combined with years of tanning, had left her with a web of fine lines on her face and neck. She wore her hair so short it stood up straight at the crown, and she did something to it she called ‘frosting’—which she would do to her head, but not a cake—so that the roots were black and the ends were a creamy orange.
Millie’s two children, Brandon and Tracy, came and went from the kitchen, speaking to neither their mother nor their aunt. Brandon, a junior in high school, took a soda from the refrigerator, then went back into the living room, where he slumped down on the couch to watch TV. A few minutes later he came back and got a bag of chips.
“We’re going to eat in about fifteen minutes, Bran,” his mother said.
Tracy, a year younger than her brother, ran into the kitchen, a cordless phone against her ear, and copied a phone number off the chalkboard, where she’d written TRACY + TIM 4EVER! Claudia had never heard of Tim, and doubted she’d ever make his acquaintance.
“We’re going to eat in fifteen minutes, Tracy,” her mother said.
“You are, maybe,” Tracy said, and slid across the linoleum in her socks, out of the room.
How could it be that everything had changed so much so quickly? There was no such world as had Ludie in it. She was the last mother to put up vegetables every year; the last fat mother who didn’t dye her hair or wear pants to church; the last to sing the old hymns and maintain a flourishing garden. Claudia couldn’t think of one other soul in the world who had a pawpaw tree in the yard, one that bore fruit, and that was because of Ludie. But Millie was the New Mother, no doubt about it, driving her SUV and buying everything in her life (her clothes, her furniture, her food, her pictures in frames) at the Wal-Mart. Sitting in Millie’s country kitchen with her seven thousand unnecessary pieces of plastic, Claudia sometimes expected to hear a voice call out for a manager in aisle nine. Ludie had worked all day, from the time she got up until she went to bed. She cooked and cleaned and visited the sick. In the summer she gardened and hung the washing on the line; in the autumn she raked leaves and baked; in the winter she shoveled snow and made candy. All spring she drummed her fingers on the windowsills, waiting for the time to put in annuals. She was never too sick or too tired for church or to take care of her own elderly parents. But it was Millie, who did none of those things and had no other job besides, who treasured time-saving devices like nacho cheese you could heat up right in the jar.
She put the jar of cheese down on the table, and a bag of corn chips. Beside the chips were refried beans, taken from a can and microwaved, and a jar of salsa. Millie had emptied a bag of shredded lettuce into a plastic bowl; another bowl held ground beef. The back door opened as Millie was putting paper napkins on the table and Larry came in, stamping his feet and blowing on his bare fingers.
“We caught three horses, but there’s two more still out there somewhere.” He pulled off his wool cap, shook the snow off his jacket. His muddy-blond hair was pushed up on his forehead.
“Sit down and eat something before you take the kids to the school,” Millie said, without looking at him.
“Temperature’s dropping. There’ll be a livestock alert by morning, I’ll bet, and tomorrow it’ll be too cold to snow.” Larry reminded Claudia of an actor in a western film. No particular actor—just a character with a squint, and an air of indifference to his clothes, his bunk, his companions.
“Sit down and eat something, Larry, before you take the kids to the school.”
“Take the kids to school? What for?”
“There’s a varsity game tonight.”
“So? If Brandon can’t drive them, they don’t need to go.”
Millie continued moving around the kitchen, opening the dishwasher, putting a dish in. She had a way of moving, Claudia had often noticed, that closed a door on a conversation. “Brandon isn’t driving with the roads the way they are, especially if two of Woodman’s horses are out.”
Larry looked at Claudia, sighed, pulled his cap back on.
“Sit down and eat something, I said. We’re having Mexican Hat Dance.”
“Well, I can’t, can I. I have to start the station wagon. I’ll eat something at the game.” The door closed behind Larry, and he left in his place a pocket of air so cold it surprised Claudia, even though she’d been sitting and studying the weather all evening.
Tracy came in now wearing makeup, and boots that wouldn’t keep the damp out. “Tell Dad it’s time to go,” she said to her mother.
“He’s starting the car, Trace.”
Brandon came in with his letter jacket on—a single varsity letter in golf, which Claudia would never see as a sport—and jingling the change in his pocket as if he were a man much pressed for time.
“That jacket’s not warm enough for this weather,” Millie said.
And right there it happened—a kind of disorientation that left her dizzy—it was December. High school basketball season in Indiana. The snow was falling, and Claudia was sitting at a kitchen table as teenagers got ready to head back to the school they couldn’t wait to leave earlier in the day. She was warm and safe, but there was a kind of voltage in the air, an excitement generated by having something, anything to do on a Saturday night, and it seemed to Claudia that nothing had changed. If she could just get home she’d find Ludie in the living room knitting in front of the television, and Bertram in his study. This was just what it felt like all her growing-up years: December, January, February, March.
“Kids, sit down and eat something before you go,” Millie said again, but Tracy was already putting on lip gloss and reaching for the door.
“We’ll eat at the game.” And then they were gone.
Millie watched the door for a moment, reached into the freezer where she had hidden a pack of cigarettes. She lit one and sat down across the table from her sister.
“You’re smoking again?” Claudia asked. She had grown accustomed to the idea that she might spend the rest of her short life inhaling other people’s fumes.
“Just this one,” Millie said, inhaling hard and blowing a thick cloud out over the table. “And don’t give me any crap about it.”
“I won’t.”
“I know Daddy would be horrified.”