Patty’s head was heavy, she willed herself not to move. She would just keep her head right here, on the desk, until someone told her what to do. She was good at this, she sometimes sat for hours without leaving a chair, her head bobbing like a nursing-home inmate, thinking about her childhood, when her parents had their list of chores for her, and told her when to go to bed and when to get up and what to do during the day, and no one ever asked her to decide things. But as she was staring at the rumpled sheets on Ben’s bed, with the airplane pattern, and remembering him asking for new sheets—plain sheets—about a year ago, she notice a wadded plastic bag jutting out from underneath the bed frame.
She got down on her hands and knees, pulled out an old plastic shopping bag. It had a weight to it, swung out like a pendulum. She peered in and saw only clothing, and then she realized she was looking at girly patterns: flowers and hearts, mushrooms and rainbows. She dumped them out in a pile on the floor, afraid even as she was doing it that that those Polaroids she feared would tumble out with them. But it was just clothes: underwear, undershirts, bloomers. They were all different sizes, from Krissi’s age to toddler. They were used. As in, they had been worn by little girls. Just like the detective had said. Patty put them back in the bag.
Her son. Her son. He would go to prison. The farm would be gone, Ben would be in jail, and the girls … She realized, as she too often did, that she didn’t know how to function properly. Ben needed a good lawyer, and she didn’t know how to do that.
She walked into the living room, thinking about a trial and how she couldn’t bear it. She scattered the girls back to their bedroom in a fierce voice, them staring back at her with open mouths, hurt and scared, and she thought about how she made things even worse for Ben, a single mother who was incompetent, overwhelmed, how much worse it made him look, and she put some kindling and newspapers in the fireplace, and just a few logs on top, and she set fire to the clothes. A pair of underpants with daisies on them was just catching at the waistband when the phone rang.
IT WAS LEN the Lender. She started to make her excuses, explain that there was too much going on to talk about the foreclosure. There was a problem with her son—
“That’s why I phoned,” he interrupted. “I heard about Ben. I hadn’t been going to phone. Before. But. I think I can help. I don’t know if you’ll want it. But I have an option.”
“An option for Ben?”
“A way to help Ben. With legal costs. What you’re facing, you’re going to need a bundle.”
“I thought we were out of options,” Patty said.
“Not entirely.”
LEN WOULDN’T COME out to the farm, he wouldn’t meet her in town. He got all clandestine on her, insisting she drive out to the Rural Route 5 picnic station and park. They haggled and bickered, Len finally breathing a big huff into the phone that made her lips twist. “If you want some help, come out there, now. Don’t bring no one else. Don’t tell no one. I’m doing this because I think I can trust you, Patty, and I like you. I really want to help you.” A pause came on, so deep Patty looked at the phone receiver, and whispered Len? into the phone, already thinking he was gone, that she was about to hang up.
“Patty, I really don’t know how to help you but this. I think, well, you’ll see. I’m praying for you.”
She turned back to the fireplace, sifted through the flames, saw only half the clothes were burned. No logs left, so she hurried into the garage, grabbed her dad’s old axe with its heavy head and razor-sharp blade—back when they made tools right—and chopped up a bundle of wood, carried it all back in.
She was feeding it to the fire when she felt Michelle’s swaying presence at her side. “Mom!”
“What, Michelle.”
She looked up and Michelle was in her nightgown pointing at the fire. “You were about to throw the axe in with the wood.” Michelle smiled. “Scatterbrain.” There was the axe laid across Patty’s arms like kindling. Michelle took it from her, holding the blade away from her, as she’d been taught, and set it beside the door.
She watched Michelle walk hesitantly back to her room, as if she were picking through grass, and Patty followed in her daughter’s footsteps. The girls were all piled on the floor, murmuring to their dolls. There was that joke people told, that they loved their children most when they were sleeping, hah-hah, and Patty felt a small stab. She really did like them best when they were sleeping, not asking any questions, not needing food or amusement, and she liked them second best when they were like this: tired, calm, disinterested in their mother. She put Michelle in charge and left them there, too worn out to do anything but take direction from Len the Lender.