Evangeline made no great effort to sort out what happened after that. When she thought about it later, which she tried not to, the memory rose as random sounds and images: hysterical cries, threats of eviction, sharp kicks to her ass and thighs, neighbors banging, police at the door.
She remembered curling fetal, lying on the Dorito-infested carpet for what seemed like hours. Finally someone threw a towel over her and she managed to get to her feet, stumble to the bedroom, and slam the door.
As for Matt, he was kicked out into the night, a turn of events that set Evangeline sobbing for hours. Yet, as the only other option was her own eviction into the dark streets of low-rent Seattle, she was starting to get over Matt by the time she fell asleep.
The next morning, Viv had thrown everything they owned into garbage bags and loaded the old Subaru station wagon. They drove up I-5 in silence and pulled onto the Edmonds ferry under heavy clouds, a sea of whitecaps lashing the boat. Viv set the parking brake, muttering, “He shouldn’t have done that. That son of a bitch.”
Evangeline hated seeing her mother so defeated. “Mom, I—”
Her mother whipped toward her. “As for you, whatever you’ve got to say, tell it to Jesus. I’ve got nothing for you.” She then commenced praying with such speed and fury that Evangeline thought she might be speaking in tongues.
An hour drive from the other side, they arrived in Port Furlong, some kind of old-timey seaport, a place she concluded was the most desolate town that could be reached on a tank of gas. Her mother’s frantic cheer as she pointed out the sweeping Sound views, grand buildings, and historic homes only sank Evangeline further into despair.
After a few days in a grungy motel, her mother rented a rusting single-wide on the outskirts of town. Evangeline begged her mom to let her go to school. She’d been in high school in Seattle after all. But Viv refused, deciding to homeschool Evangeline in order to protect her from “the rampant sexual promiscuity that has infected the culture,” a quote drawn, no doubt, from one of Viv’s many church pamphlets. She also refused Evangeline TV for fear that “lascivious portrayals of teens” would mislead a young soul, as if her daughter were a fragile innocent and not the girl she’d discovered fucking her forty-year-old boyfriend. Evangeline considered pointing out this discrepancy but didn’t think it’d further her cause.
Homeschooling was fraught from the beginning, with Viv devising her own course of study based on her understanding of the Bible and elementary-school math. Only two weeks in, Viv landed a job in the deli of a local grocery, ending even minimal efforts at educating her daughter. Evangeline spent a wet, gray spring in the mobile home with a dripping kitchen faucet and mold stains appearing like religious apparitions on ceilings and walls. Shadows from the tall firs kept the place in dreary twilight even on the sunniest of days. At times, Evangeline didn’t bother to dress, just lay on the couch in her pajamas watching afternoon soaps, thankful the corrupting influence of television had become a moot point once there was money to pay for it.
* * *
—
ON THIS EARLY OCTOBER NIGHT, the dark firs whispering around her, she longed for those lonely wet days with working lights and running water, with food in the cupboard, days when she luxuriated in the daily petty grievances a teenage girl could harbor against her mother.
She stared a moment longer at the dark spot on the hill and turned around. As she trudged back to the trailer, she let herself imagine a new home. It might be Isaac Balch’s house. It might be somewhere else. If she had learned anything, it was that she could survive losing people. Life, she had discovered, could be managed without parents or friends. Without love of any type.
Sometimes, though, the coldness of her heart gave her chills.
5
Peter attempted to drive me to his house following the service, but I objected and he didn’t argue. He understood that his particular riches—a wife and three sweet little daughters—were more than I could bear. He dropped me, as requested, at my property’s entrance.
As I walked past weed-choked plantings and piles of rotting leaves, I felt as if entire seasons had come and gone in the past few hours. The house now appeared abandoned, stunned into a stillness so complete I doubted resurrection was possible. Even Rufus, a dog that barked with the slightest provocation, lay silent somewhere inside.
* * *
—
KATHERINE HAD BROUGHT ME HERE. To this coast, this small town, this house that loomed empty before me. She couldn’t have been twenty-five when I first saw her sitting at the back of a large stone barn in the hills of Pennsylvania. We were staying at Fox Hill, a Quaker retreat and learning community with spartan rooms, half dozen to a bath, and serious work requirements. I was nearing thirty, teaching science at a nearby high school, and spending the summer attending daily meeting, taking silent walks, and scrubbing mountains upon mountains of cookware.
I’d been there three weeks when Katherine appeared at morning meeting. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, though with her flawless olive skin and thick dark hair, she was. It wasn’t even that she wore makeup and black slacks with high-heeled pumps, all so out of place in that room full of plain faces and jeans and work boots that I suspected this was her first Quaker meeting. No, what focused my attention was how her eyes kept scanning the room, alive and curious, as if longing to drink it all in, this new place and people and style of worship. Then a remembering—of where she was and what was likely expected—and a downward tilt of her head, an effort to find stillness, to give this whole silence thing a shot.
She must have seen me staring, because afterward she trotted up as I was heading back to my room. She asked if I might have a free moment to talk about my faith, mentioning she was Catholic, there for only a week. We met that afternoon and walked for hours through the neighboring woods and small town. Katherine spoke of many things: her love of nursing; a large, combative family; a romantic breakup; the remarkable beauty of birch trees in falling light. She hoped for children and dogs someday. “Lots of them,” she said.
When we arrived back on campus, we stopped at the spot where we’d started. “Sorry,” she said, suddenly shy. “I’m kind of a talker.”
“I like that,” I said. And I did, the way her words found my empty spaces and began to fill them. “Sorry that I’m not much of one.”
“You’re not,” she said. “But it makes each of your words count more. You know what I mean?”
I nodded.
“Besides,” she said, letting her eyes rest on mine until she’d woken every cell in my body, “I can see you in there. That’s what matters.” She reached out and touched my wrist, the hair on my arm rising in a shiver.
We married a year later. One July morning, she turned to me in bed, the sun dancing over her cheeks and lips and dark-lashed eyes. “Come with me to the Northwest,” she said. Her tone was urgent, as if her ticket had already been purchased. “There’s this place I vacationed as a kid. Port Furlong. You’d love it. It has boats and music and old hippies jigging by a fountain. Islands we could get lost in.”
I kissed her lightly. “We’ll have to go sometime.”