“Well, that’s silly. Everyone needs a friend. I’ll be your friend if you like.” Now she felt embarrassed for him. He was so out there with his feelings, just open for attack.
“I don’t even know what the fuck to say to that,” she said.
Dirk kind of sighed and splayed his hands out like he’d done what he could.
“I’ll leave you to it, Charlie,” he said. “Looks like you got work to do.” He turned and disappeared behind a bend in the road. She felt stupid, like she’d said too much and too little at the same time.
Just then she heard her mother behind her.
“Who was that?”
Charlie got flustered. Her thoughts tumbled around, and her embarrassment was beginning to show on her face. But she didn’t want to let it show. She took hold of the shovel as if to anchor herself and mumbled over her shoulder.
“Just some asshole.”
Kit and Charlie came home from Doc’s hungry and tired. Kit opened a can of franks and beans, dumped it in a pot, and struck a match to light the hiss of gas below it. She unscrewed a jar of pickles to eat while supper warmed up. The two leaned against the kitchen sink, passing the jar back and forth, content to snack in silence. The troubles of the day had retreated with the heat, and what remained was the subdued peace of a hard day’s work and nothing left to say.
Kit fished out the last pickle and thought back to Caleb. He really did seem to always be around her. She admitted he was a man who looked good to her. The cream of his skin and his even build suggested a life clean from too much drink and drugs and other things that wore on a body. He was meant for something better, she guessed, than being loyal shepherd to this town of thankless and errant sheep. She remembered seeing him one winter bringing a drunk to the Truxtop for a hot cup of coffee and pie. Caleb sat with the old man and let him talk nonsense while he sobered up. At the time, she had thought him foolish, knowing the drunk might never remember the gesture. It wouldn’t stop him from drinking; if anything, he might take advantage of the kindness. She was reluctant to admit Caleb’s willingness to sit with a stranger might be admirable; it was harder still to admit that she might want him to sit across from her, nodding and listening and caring about what she had to say.
Just then, Kit heard the sound of a big-ass engine growling up toward her house, and Charlie hollered from the living room, “Incoming!”
She went to the window and saw the Prentisses’ black Suburban parked askew. The passenger door swung open and Sugar Faye slipped out. She smoothed her skirt and staked one stilettoed foot in front of the other across the drive and up the steps. Leigh climbed out the backseat and followed her mother, an ice cream Drumstick in hand. Kit went to the door.
“Yew-hew!” Sugar called out over her furious knocking. Kit readied herself for a talking-to and opened the door. Sugar looked like she had left the house fully made up but had gotten stuck in a windstorm, the big golden pouf of her hair mussed on one side, a little mascara under her eyes. She wore a spring-green dress, belted at the waist, a thin black line between the masses of her bust and hips. Her lace slip peeked out below her hem. Leigh, whose cheek was padded with gauze, hovered behind her, picking peanuts off the chocolate cap of her Drumstick and tossing them aside.
Sugar Faye shifted slightly, protectively, in front of her daughter.
“Listen, Kit, I got a bone to pick with you,” Sugar Faye said in a tone that was both indignant and vulnerable. “We just left the emergency room.” She paused for Kit, who had nothing, at that moment, to say. “To patch up her cheek? After Charlie . . . maimed it?”
Kit nodded. She wished Sugar would just come out and say what she had to say.
“Right,” Kit said. “How’s she doing?”
“Well, how would you feel?” Sugar snapped.
“Iff ackffley not vat bad,” Leigh piped up. “I got ife keem.” She held up the melting cone like a torch.
“I just had to pick up a little treat for the patient. Idn’t dat right, baby?” Sugar said, squeezing Leigh’s hand so hard the girl let out a cottony “Ffftop!” and tugged her hand back.
Sugar continued, “She was so brave when they were stitching her up, and I was crying like I was the one in pain—but it does hurt when our babies are suffering, it hurts more for us than them, duddn’t it? Like a dull knife to your gut? Duddn’t it, though?” And as she talked about it her eyes flashed with angry tears that spoke all the bitter words her lips could not utter.
Kit raked back thick handfuls of her short hair, wiped the sweat off her neck with the collar of her shirt. She knew she should apologize for what Charlie had done. At least she was imaginative enough to put herself in Sugar’s shoes and knew that if it had been Charlie with the hole-punched face there would have been hell to pay. Kit was in the unexpected position of feeling sorry for Sugar Faye. She took for granted that she could always turn to violence. If all she could do was blink away her tears and make subtle hints and rub the shine off her pearl earring like Sugar was doing now, she would have given up long ago.
Sugar Faye pulled a little jade tube from the purse hanging from her elbow, took the cap off, and applied her pink lipstick. Kit watched the ritual with interest, how she traced her thinner top lip in an M shape twice, going a little outside the natural line of her lip, then she dragged the lipstick from one corner of her full bottom lip to center and again on the other side and fish-smacked her lips. The most striking thing was how she managed to continue talking during the whole procedure.
“Of course I’ll always love my baby no matter how she looks,” Sugar said with a hand over her heart, “but lord, look at this!” She peeled back the bandage on Leigh’s face to reveal what was, in Kit’s opinion, a minor puncture wound with some light swelling.
Sugar took a tissue from her glossy black purse and mashed it between her lips, bizarrely removing half of the shimmery pink she had just applied. “I’ve been trying to understand what God wanted for us here, because you know I do trust he has a plan for us, and I know I have suffered from vanity, but is it so bad to miss the face she had?” At this, Sugar pried open her compact to vet her work.
“’On’t you ffink I’m fftill pwetty?” Leigh said.
“Hush it, now, Mama’s talking,” Sugar said with a bit more bass than before. She retied Leigh’s oversize bow, a fresh green that matched Sugar’s dress, at the top of Leigh’s head. “How’s Charlie then?” Sugar dragged her teeth over her pretty painted lower lip. Boy, did she look pissed. She was gonna keep Kit here until she got what she wanted and the more she wanted it, the less Kit was willing to let it go. “She must be feeling awful guilty, huh?”
“She’s . . . a little shook up, I guess,” Kit said.