Seventeen 6 страница

Agnes sprawled out luxuriously, her skin already poaching to a light rose colour. She reached out her foot and played with the hem of Lizzie’s yellow floral dress like a child. Lizzie lowered her newspaper and pushed Agnes’s foot away. “Stop fussing with me, ” she said. “You’ve got a cheek to show your face around me this morning. ” Lizzie undid the tea towel wrapped around her curlers. She opened a plastic bag at her side and started unravelling her hair.

Agnes took her mother’s pick comb and slouched in the sticky deckchair again. “My head is throbbing. ”

Lizzie drew out a curler and held the kirby grip between her lips. “Oh, poor you. I hope you don’t expect any sympathy. ”

“You should have stopped him. ”

Lizzie was watching Agnes out of the side of her eyes now. “M’lady, let me tell you, in forty years of marriage I have never once seen your father raise his hand in anger. ” She turned to the women with the potatoes. “You know, Maigret, he’s that soft I thought he’d come back dead a week into that bloody War. ”

“Aye, he’s a fine man, right enough. ” The potato women nodded in unison.

Lizzie turned back to her daughter. “I don’t want you dragging his good name down with your own. ”

Agnes ran the pick through a painted tangle. “Am I that low? ”

“Low? ” Lizzie scoffed. “Do you know I’ve just been sat here on my lonesome getting a wee bit of colour, and I’ve no been able to get any peace from anybody. A woman cannae even run her messages, but she’s got to cross this grass and ask me, how I’m holding up? ”

“People should mind their own. ”

“I’m just after having Janice McCluskie drag her Mongoloid son across those weeds to me. She goes, ‘I’ve heard your Agnes has no been keeping that well. How’s her wee problem? ’” Lizzie’s knuckles were white with indignation as she twisted a kirby grip. “I’m sat here with my dress unbuttoned down to my God’s glory and that pair of mouth-breathers gawping down at me. ”

“Ignore them, Mammy. ”

“Bastards! No keeping well? No fucking keeping well! ” Her hands clawed at the imagined offenders in front of her. Lizzie exhaled loudly, and her anger shifted to a look of tired defeat. “I don’t deserve their hand-wringing, Agnes. I’ve worked hard my whole life without a day’s rest, and for what? ”

Agnes knew the next line well enough. Agnes still shook her head.

“So you could have everything you ever wanted. ”

Lizzie seemed so far away then. Agnes had the urge to wrap her mother in her arms, beg for her forgiveness, even though she felt not a shred of remorse. “Can’t we be pals again? ”

“No. It’s not as simple as that any more. ” The corners of Lizzie’s mouth turned down in a mocking way. “Let’s just kiss and make up? No, I think not. ” She uncurled another clump of hair. “How many women will it take, Agnes? ”

Agnes bristled. “I need a cigarette. ”

“You need a lot of things. ” Then she added, “You should have stayed married to that Catholic. ”

Agnes rooted around in her mother’s curler bag. She took out the Embassy packet and put two cigarettes in her mouth. She took a long draw and held the smoke inside for a long while. “Jesus can’t pay my catalogue. ”

Lizzie gave a fake laugh. “No. But hell will mend you. ”

Agnes got up then and sat on the blanket by her mother’s side. The lit cigarette was a measly peace offering, but Lizzie took it and said, “Help me take out these curls. I must look half-mental. ” Agnes took her mother’s head in her hands and ran her fingers through the thinning hair. Lizzie softened slightly. “You know, your faither always used to come in on a Friday night, half past six. Every other working fella on the street would go missing. There wouldn’t be a man’s voice till Sunday afternoon, not in all of Germiston. I remember that you could hang out that window and watch them all stoat home on a Sunday teatime. All of them addled wi’ the drink. ”

The potato peelers were nodding in unison again. Lizzie said, “I’m no judging the men. That was just what they did in those days. If you wanted your housekeeping money you had to go dig your man out of the pub on a Friday teatime. But your faither would come singing Friday night, his wage packed in his hand and a fresh parcel under his arm. Silly fool would have been down that market on his way back from Meadowside and picked up a wee dress or a new coat for you. I never knew a man know the size of his weans, let alone go shopping for them. I used to tell him to stop it, he was spoiling you. But he would say, ‘What’s the harm? ’”

“Mammy, I can’t talk about this again. ”

“Honestly, I was that happy for you when you married that Brendan McGowan. He seemed like he could give you what your faither had given me. But look at you, you had to want better. ”

“Why shouldn’t I? ”

“Better? ” Lizzie used her clenched teeth to itch the tip of her tongue. “Look where better has gotten you. Selfish article. ”

Agnes brushed out the last of her mother’s curls. She had to restrain herself not to give them a sly tug. “Well, seeing as you think I’m selfish then, I need to ask you for a favour. ”

Lizzie sniffed. “It’s a bit early in our friendship to be calling in favours. ”

She rubbed the lobe of Lizzie’s ear gently, manipulatively. “I need you to tell him for me. Tell him that we’re moving. Will you do that? ”

“It’ll kill your faither. ”

“It won’t. ” She shook her head. “But if I stay here I know I am going to lose him. ”

Lizzie turned and studied her daughter closely. She stared coldly at the flicker of hope in Agnes’s eyes. “You will believe anything, won’t you. ” It wasn’t a question.

“We just need a fresh start. Shug says it might make everything better. It’s only a wee place, but it’s got its own garden and its own front door and everything. ”

Lizzie waved her cigarette airily. “Oh, la-di-dah! Your very own front door. Tell me: How many locks do you suppose this front door is going to need to keep that wandering bastard at home? ”

Agnes scratched the skin around her wedding band. “I’ve never had my own front door. ”

The women were silent a long while after that. Lizzie spoke first. “So, where is it then? This front door of your own. ”

“I’m not sure. It’s way out on the Eastern Road. It used to be rented by an Italian chippy or somebody Shug knows. He said it was very green. He said it was quiet. Good for my nerves. ”

“Will you have your own washing line? ”

“I would think so. ” Agnes rolled on to her knees. She knew how to beg for what she wanted. “Listen, we’re pals again, right? I need you to tell my daddy for me. ”

“Your timing is beautiful. After this morning’s nonsense? ” Lizzie pulled her chin into her chest and made a long, low clown mouth. “If you leave he’ll blame himself to his dying day. ”

“He won’t. ”

Lizzie began rebuttoning her summer dress. The buttons were lining up wrong, and it was testing her patience. “Mark my words. Shug Bain is only interested in Shug Bain. He’s going to take you out there to the middle of nowhere and finish you for good. ”

“He won’t. ”

Wullie and Shuggie came lumbering across the forecourt then. Lizzie saw them first. “Look at the state of that. A walking advert for soap powder. ”

By the time Agnes looked up, the last of the Eiffel Tower was being licked from between the boy’s chubby fingers. She couldn’t help but smile at her father, the giant with his shirt tails untucked, like a schoolboy shirking his uniform. They walked slowly, swinging between them the Daphne dolly that Shuggie treasured so much.

“If you cannae make Shug do right by you, at least make him do right by the boy. ” Lizzie narrowed her eyes at her grandson, at his blond dolly. “You’ll be needing that nipped in the bud. It’s no right. ”

Seven

Agnes followed Shug’s red leather cases as they migrated around the flat. They had shown up out of nowhere, earlier in the week, with no price tags and the faint look of having been gently used. Shug had neatly folded all of his clothes, setting socks within shoes and rolling underwear into tidy jam rolls, before packing everything thoughtfully inside. Often, during the week, he would open one of the red cases and study the contents closely, as though memorizing the inventory, then close and lock it securely again. Agnes could see the cases were half-empty, that there was still valuable space inside. Several times she left small piles of the children’s clothes near them and then watched with bubbling jealousy as the cases up and moved to the other side of the room, still with nothing belonging to her or the children placed inside.

On the day of the flit he had set the red cases by the bedroom door. Agnes worried the suitcase lock with her nail. She wondered why she hadn’t seen the new house herself. Shug had come home with the idea after one of his night shifts spent talking to a Masonic pal who owned a chippy in the city centre. A council flat in a two-up two-down that he said had its own front door. Shug signed for it there and then with all the casualness of buying a raffle ticket.

Agnes wrapped the last of her glass ornaments in newsprint and lined up her old green brocade cases next to Shug’s. She intermixed them, rearranged them, but no matter what she did there was a sense that they didn’t belong together any more. In the luggage tag that hung from her case was a handwriting she barely recognized now. It was the happy, confident loops of a much younger her, running away from her first husband for a promise of a life that was worth living. Her fingers traced the forgotten name: Agnes McGowan, Bellfield Street, Glasgow.

When Leek was still in nappies, Agnes had run away.

On the night she finally left she had packed the green cases full of new clothes, showy, impractical things she had bought on the last of Brendan McGowan’s tick and had kept hidden for the past long year. Before she ran away she had scrubbed their tenement flat one last time. She knew the news would bring in the neighbours. With beady eyes they would pour in to offer condolences to her man, hoping to gnash their gums at her uppity ways. She wouldn’t dare give them the pleasure of thinking her slatternly too.

On the plush hall carpet she had tamped a loose corner with her toe, pushing it back in place, and she was sad to hear the crunch of carpet tacks grip the wood once again. Earlier in the day she had tried to lift it. She had broken two good wedding spoons and bloodied her fingers before sitting back in frustrated tears. As the mascara ran down her face she had wondered if maybe she should stay on, just a little longer, just till she had gotten good use out of that new Axminster. She hadn’t tried to take everything, but that carpet was new, and she had enjoyed how the old wife across the close blanched every time she saw it. It was the kind of hall carpet that you left your front door open for, the beautiful thick kind that you wanted all the neighbours to see. She had nagged and nagged until she got it installed, wall-to-wall, Templeton’s Double Axminster, but the tingly feeling hadn’t lasted this time, not even half as long as she had expected it to.

Living with the Catholic, in the ground-floor flat, all she could see was a wall of grey soot-covered tenements across the street. The night she ran away, Agnes had watched the lights go out, one by one, good, hard-working folk getting an early night for an early start. Outside in the rain was the purring hum of the hackney engine. She could not help but feel some excitement, and inside her, underneath the doubt, was a rising thrill.

Over the back of the sofa lay two miniature effigies; studies in neat melton and soft velvet and uncomfortable shoes of patent leather with gaudy silver buckles. She woke her sleeping toddlers. Catherine looked like a drunken old man, her sleepy eyelids opening and closing in big distressed gulps. As Agnes kissed them awake, there was a low scratch on the tenement door. She crept out to the hallway. The door opened with a low whine, and a man’s round, tanned face twitched anxiously in the bright tenement light. Shug moved impatiently from one foot to the other, ready it seemed to run at any moment.

“You’re late! ” Agnes hissed.

The smell of sour stout on her breath made him swallow his half-smile. “I don’t fucking believe it. ”

“What do you expect? ” she hissed. “My nerves are shot waiting for you. ” Agnes pulled the door open and passed the heavy cases to Shug. They bulged at the zippers and tinkled happily, as if they were full of Christmas ornaments.

“Is that it? ”

Agnes stared at the deep, swirling carpet and sighed. “Aye. That’s it. ”

With the cases in hand the man shuffled into the street. Agnes had turned then and looked back into the flat. She went to the mirror in the hall and ran her fingers through her hair; the black curls bounced and folded back on themselves tightly. She ran a line of fresh red lipstick across her mouth. Not bad for twenty-six, she thought. Twenty-six years of sleep.

In the children’s bedroom she finished making the beds and put the dirty pyjamas into the pocket of her mink coat. Without negotiation she gave them each a single toy to bring and led them out into the hallway. Stopping in front of the big bedroom door, she turned to them. She looked at the lovely carpet and in a low voice urged, “Right, no matter what, no crying, all right? ” The shiny heads nodded. “When we go in there, do you think you can give me a big, big happy smile? ”

She found the bedroom switch through habit. It flicked on with a click, and the dark burst with bright, unflattering light. The room was small and tight, dominated by a rococo-style bed that was much too large. The boy happily called out, “Daddy! ” and the messy hump in the royal bed stirred. Brendan McGowan sat up in shock, blinking at the Victorian carollers stood at the foot of his bed. His mouth went slack.

Agnes pulled the collar up on her mink coat in a grand gesture. It was a coat he had bought for her on tick, an unneccesary extravagance that he had hoped would make her happy and hold her at peace from want, if just for a while. “Right. Thanks for everything, then. ” It was coming out wrong. “I’m away, ” she said, in a clumsy understatement, like a maid who had finished her chores and was leaving for the day.

The sleeping man could only blink as his waving family filed out of the room. He heard the front door close gently and the heavy hum of a diesel engine. Then they were gone.

As they roared away that night, the black hackney taxi sounded solid and heavy as a tank. Agnes sat on the long leather banquette flanked by her warm babies. The four drove in silence through the wet and shiny Glasgow streets. Shug’s eyes kept glancing in the mirror, flitting over the faces of the sleeping children and tightening slightly. “Where are we going, then? ” he asked after a while.

There was a long pause. “Why were you late? ” asked Agnes from behind the collar of her coat.

Shug didn’t answer.

“Did you have second thoughts? ”

He stopped looking in the mirror. “Of course I did. ”

Agnes brought her leather-gloved hands up to her face. “Jesus Christ. ”

“Well, didn’t you? ”

“Did it look as if I did? ” she replied, her voice higher than she would have liked.

The streets of the East End were empty. The last pubs were closed, and decent families were tucked in together from the cold. The hackney pulled along the Gallowgate and drove on through the market. Agnes had never seen it empty before; it was usually full of people buying their messages or new curtains, nice bits of meat or fish for a Friday. Now it was a graveyard of empty tables and fruit boxes. “Where are we going to go? ”

“I left mine at home, you know. ” He was glowering at her in the mirror. “We agreed. We said a fresh start. ”

Agnes felt the hot heads of her children burrowing into her side. “Yes, well, it’s not that easy. ”

“Aye, but you said. ”

“Yes, well. ” Agnes fixed her eyes out the window. She could feel him still staring in the mirror. She wished he would watch the road. “I couldn’t do it. ”

The man looked at the children in their Sunday finest, old-fashioned clothes worn for the first time, expensive clothes bought for a midnight escape. He thought about all their clothes neatly folded in the cases. “Aye, but you didnae even try, did ye? ”

She fixed her eyes on the back of his head. “We can’t all be as heartless as you, Shug. ”

He had tapped the brakes as his body spasmed in anger. All four of them lurched forward, and the children started to gripe. “An’ you fuckin’ ask me why I wis late? ” Bits of spit landed, gleaming, on the rear-view mirror. “Why I wis fuckin’ late wis because I had to say goodbye to fo-wer greetin’ fuckin’ weans. ” He drew the back of his hand across his wet lips. “Never mind a wife that threatened to gas the lot of them. Telt me if I left her that she would put the oven on and not light the ignition. ”

The taxi screamed off again. They drove in silence, watching empty night buses grumble by and dark windows on cold houses. When he spoke again he was quieter. “Have you ever tried to walk to the front door with your bastarding family stuck into you like fish hooks, eh? Do you know how long it takes to peel four screaming weans off your leg? To kick them back down the hall and shut the door on their wee fingers? ” His eyes were cold in the mirror. “No, you don’t know what it’s like. You just tell muggins here to come get ye. You sally out with suitcases like we were off to Millport for the day. ”

She was sobering up. She stared silently out the window, trying not to think of the trail of fatherless children and the childrenless father they were leaving in their wake. In her mind it looked like a trail of viscous, salty tears being dragged along behind the black hack. The excitement had left her by then.

When they had passed under the iron railway bridge at Trongate for the third time, the sun was starting to rise and the fresh fish vans were being unloaded at the market. Agnes stared at the women crowded at the bus stop, the early-shift charwomen getting ready to clean the big city-centre offices. “We could go to my mammy’s new flat, ” she had mumbled finally. “Just till we find a place of our own. ”

All these years later, Agnes didn’t want to think about that night because it made her feel like a fool. Now she had packed the Catholic’s suitcases again. These brocade cases that were now carrying her away were the same ones that had brought her here to her mother’s. She looked down on the green cases and ripped the old McGowan label in two.

After Agnes had left the Catholic, Brendan McGowan had tried to do the right thing by her. Even after she had stolen away in the night, he had hounded her to her mother’s and made promises of what he would change to have her back. Agnes had stood there, in the shadow of the tower block, with her arms folded, as her husband offered to rearrange himself so completely into whatever she wanted that he would not have been recognized by his own mother. When it was clear she wouldn’t take him back, he had asked the parish father to talk with Wullie and Lizzie and guilt her into returning. Agnes would not be told. She would not go back to a life she knew the edges of.

For the next three years Brendan McGowan had sent his money every Thursday and taken the children every second Saturday. The last thing Catherine remembered about her real father was sitting in Castellani’s café as Brendan wiped vanilla ice cream from Leek’s face. Agnes had dressed them both deliberately in the best clothes they owned, and an older lady, with pearls about her neck and ears, had complimented Brendan on their neatness and good manners. The woman leaned down to Catherine’s height and asked the pretty girl what her name was. Clear as a Cathedral bell, the little girl had replied, “Catherine Bain. ”

Brendan McGowan had excused himself from the table then. He had wound between the clusters of happy families towards the bathroom, and then he had turned and gone out into the street. Catherine didn’t know how long they had been sitting there alone, but Leek had eaten his ice cream and then hers and was dipping his finger into the melted dregs at the bottom of the shell-shaped glass.

The good Catholic had done all he could to hold his restless wife. She had run from him, and he had lowered his pride and asked for her back. She had divorced him, and he had lowered his pride again and had taken any time he could with his children as sacred. Then she had given them the Protestant’s name, and like lambs who had wandered from their field, they were sprayed with the indelible keel marks of another. Agnes had found his limit. Now, thirteen years on, Leek and Catherine could not have picked him out if they met him in a crowd.

Agnes had to restrain herself from picking at the brocade handle. She had packed her questions and doubts into the Catholic’s cases again and cheerlessly carried them to the taxi. To look at it now, the black hackney felt like a hearse. Wullie wouldn’t speak to her as he helped carry the children’s clothes down in the rusted lift. Lizzie stood over the big soup pot in the kitchen and wrung her chapped hands on her apron. As Agnes watched her mammy stir, she could see the gas wasn’t on.

Leek and Catherine had sat up in their beds at night talking about the ominous pull of this new life. Agnes could hear the low mumble of their worries through the wall. Lizzie had come to her earlier in the week and said the children had asked to stay on with her. She pleaded with Agnes to let Leek finish school and let Catherine be close to the factoring office. The day of the flit, Agnes had noticed how Leek had been gone the whole morning, slunk off with his pencils and secret books to some hidey-hole or other. Catherine had quieted her trembling lip and dutifully helped her mother pack. All morning Lizzie hugged Shuggie close and whispered prayers for safe return into his pale neck. Agnes watched Leek, when he thought no one was looking, plead to his granny again; she heard him say that he would be good, that he would behave. Agnes was glad when Lizzie rebuffed him gently. “No, Alexander, your home is with your mammy. ”

As the rain started to come down, the last things to be loaded were Shug’s two red leather suitcases. Only when they were stowed in place did Agnes admit to herself that it was time to go. Lizzie and Wullie stood in the rain looking as grey and stiff as the tower block behind them. Their goodbyes had been casual and distant. Lizzie wouldn’t have them make a scene in public. A crack in the facade might open a rift, and Agnes had no idea what would flood forth from that. So instead they kept busy, fussing about kettles and clean towels.

Agnes sat on the back bench of the taxi with Shuggie packed between her knees. Leek and Catherine sat tight on either side, wedged amongst the boxes, their thighs pressed close to hers. She had ironed all their outfits, taking time to starch Catherine’s work shirt, picking out Shuggie’s blazer from the catalogue. She had bleached her dentures, and her hair was freshly dyed, a shade darker than black, closer to the saddest navy.

That morning she had tilted her head forward and asked Catherine what she thought of her new mascara. The mascara looked too heavy for her eyelids, like she was on the edge of sudden sleep. Now, as the taxi pulled out into the main road, Agnes made a show of looking back and waving mournfully through the rear window with a long, heavy blink. She thought it was a cinematic touch, like she was the star of her own matinee.

The hackney chugged up the Springburn Road and was past the empty Saint Rollox railworks before she turned back around in her seat. She ran through the hollow reasoning why she was going along with Shug’s plan, but as she tried to fortify herself with this rosary, it seemed like the stupid fancies a love-daft lassie half her age might have. Agnes rubbed the pads of her fingertips as she counted off her foolishness: The chance to decorate and keep her very own home. A garden for the weans. Peace and quiet for the sake of their marriage. She dug deeper. There was a chance that things would be different, she hoped, once she got him farther away from his women.

The windows grew foggy, and Shuggie drew a sad face in the condensation. With a flick of his thumb, Leek altered it to look like a swollen cock and then slumped down in his seat. Agnes drew her ringed hand over the drawing and saw through the clear glass that they were passing the big blue gas containers behind Provanmill, the guards at the northeastern gate of Glasgow.

They drove for a very long time in silence. Eventually the taxi chugged to a stop at some lights, and Shug opened the glass partition to tell them they were nearly there. He closed the glass again, and Agnes wondered whether it was from habit or something truer. She remembered when he had been courting her, how he would keep the glass open and try to charm her with his easy patter. He would lean back and rap his Masonic ring on the divider, a faint line on his left hand where his wedding ring should be. The air would be thick with his tangy pine aftershave and hair pomade. On weekday afternoons the taxi would smell of the sweaty stink of them, the glass misty from their lovemaking. She thought of the happy hours parked under the Anderston overpass, happy hours before they really truly knew one another.

Agnes looked at the grassy front gardens of the low bungalows and tried to feel excited again, but it was like trying to make a fire with wet wood. There had been a line where the houses had imperceptibly passed from council to bought. Shug slid the separating window open with a swish. “Look at they gardens, huh! ” The houses were beautiful, with roses and carnations and smiling ornaments behind double-glazed windows. They pulled farther along, and the houses rose above them in a raised cul-de-sac, a manicured hump elevated above the noise of the road. Each private house had a garden, which had a drive, which had a car and sometimes even two. Agnes looked at Shug’s eyes in the mirror; he had been watching her. The look felt as close to love as she could remember. “If you like this, then just wait. Joe’s said it’s like a happy little village. A real family sort of place where everybody knows everybody else. Nicest place you could hope to live. ”

Leek and Catherine shared a snide sideways glance. Agnes wrapped a hand around one of each of their knees and squeezed a firm warning. Shug shouted over the sound of the diesel engine, straining over his shoulder to be heard. “It’s next to a big colliery and all the men work up at yon coal mine. The wages are good enough that the women don’t even need to go out of the house for work. Joe said all their children went to the same school. Good for our Shuggie, get him out of the sky, have some boys his own age to play with. ” His eyes were flashing happily in the mirror, he looked pleased with all his planning. Agnes watched him stroke at his moustache. “It turns out there’s no pubs out here. It’s bone dry, except for the Miners Club. ”

“What, not a single one? ” Agnes sat forward.

“None. You need to be a miner or miner’s wife to get into that club. ”

Agnes could feel the sweat rise on her back. “What are you meant to do for fun? ”

But Shug wasn’t listening. “This is it! ” he shouted, pointing in excitement to a turning on the road. The taxi tilted as Agnes and the children leaned over to see the turning that would take them to their new life. On the corner sat an empty petrol station. It had a wide forecourt but only one pump for petrol and one for diesel. Shug slowed the taxi and turned into the street beside it.

Agnes rooted around in her leather bag. There was a jangle of bingo pens and mint tins as she took out a lipstick and pulled a fresh line of blood red around her mouth. With her hand already to her mouth, she surreptitiously slipped a blue pill between her teeth, and with a single crunch she broke it in two and swallowed it dry. Only Catherine noticed. Catherine watched her pout her lips and wipe carefully at the side of her lip line. Then Agnes reached over and adjusted the buckle on her high black heels, and with her long painted nails, she smoothed her wool skirt and picked at the oose migrating downwards from the front of her pink angora jumper.

Catherine narrowed her eyes. “How come you aren’t dressed for flitting? ”

“Well, there is flitting and then there is moving house. ” Agnes spat on her comb and dragged it through Shuggie’s hair. He squirmed, but she held his shoulders and kept combing until the hair sat in neat rows and she could see the clean pink lines of his scalp.

“Pfft. How do I look? ” asked Leek, rumpling his hair over his face. His big toe was bursting the seam of his white trainers, a dirty sock starting to poke out.

Agnes sighed. “If anyone asks, you are with the movers. ”

They slid the windows all the way down, and the taxi filled with a rushing breeze that carried the scent of fresh-cut grass and wild bluebells. Underneath the bright green tones was the dark brown of untended fields, mounds of cow dirt, and the dark places at the bottom of wet trees. The beaded sleeves on Agnes’s pink angora jumper danced in the wind, and she twinkled like a rabbit dipped in rhinestones. Shuggie reached up and ran his fingers through the glass beads. His mother’s mouth was set in a wide white smile, her teeth not touching, like someone was taking her photo. She would have looked happy if her eyes hadn’t kept anxiously flitting back to Shug’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. Shuggie sat playing with her sleeves and watched as her back molars came together and slowly started to grind back and forth.

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