Ernie's Ark by Monica Wood Read Free Book Online Page B

sleep on your beds.”
    “Thank you,” Marie said.
    “It wasn’t my idea to break in here.”
    “I’m sure it wasn’t.”
    “He’s kind of hiding out, and I’m kind of with him.”
    “I see,” Marie said, scanning the room for weapons: fireplace poker, dictionary, curtain rod. She couldn’t imagine using any of these things on the girl, whose body appeared held together with thread.
    “He knocked over a gas station. Two, actually, in Portland.”
    “That sounds serious.”
    She smiled a little. “He’s a serious guy.”
    “You could do better, don’t you think?” Marie asked. “Pretty girl like you.”
    The girl’s big eyes narrowed. “How old are
you
?”
    “Forty.”
    “You look younger.”
    “Well, I’m not,” Marie said. “My name is Marie, by the way.”
    “I’m Tracey.”
    “Tell me, Tracey,” Marie said. “Am I your prisoner?”
    “Only until he gets back. We’ll clear out after that.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “Canada. Which is where he should’ve gone about six years ago.”
    “A vet?”
    Tracey nodded. “War sucks.”
    “Well, now, that’s extremely profound.”
    “Don’t push your luck, Marie,” Tracey said. “It’s been a really long week.”
    They spent the next hours sitting on the porch, Marie thinking furiously in a chair, Tracey on the steps, the knife glinting in her fist. At one point Tracey stepped down into the gravel, dropped her jeans, and squatted over the spent irises, keeping Marie in her sight the whole time. Marie, who had grown up in adifferent era entirely, found this fiercely embarrassing. A wind came up on the lake; a pair of late loons called across the water. The only comfort Marie could manage was that the boyfriend, whom she did not wish to meet, not at all, clearly had run out for good. Tracey seemed to know this, too, chewing on her lower lip, facing the dooryard as if the hot desire of her stare could make him materialize.
    “What’s his name?” Marie asked.
    “None of your business. We met in a chemistry class.” She smirked at Marie’s surprise. “Pre-med.”
    “Are you going back to school?”
    Tracey threw back her head and cackled, showing two straight rows of excellent teeth. “Yeah, right. He’s out there right now paying our preregistration.”
    Marie composed herself, took some silent breaths. “It’s just that I find it hard to believe—”
    “People like you always do,” Tracey said. She slid Marie a look. “You’re never willing to believe the worst of someone.”
    Marie closed her eyes, wanting Ernie. She imagined him leaving work about now, coming through the mill gates with his lunch bucket and cap, shoulders bowed at the prospect of the empty house. She longed to be waiting there, to sit on the porch with him over a pitcher of lemonade, comparing days, which hadn’t changed much over the years, really, but always held some ordinary pleasures. Today they would have wondered about James, thought about calling him, decided against it.
    “You married?” Tracey asked, as if reading her mind.
    “Twenty years. We met in seventh grade.”
    “Then what are you doing up here alone?”
    “I don’t know,” Marie said. But suddenly she did, she knew exactly, looking at this girl who had parents somewhere waiting.
    “I know what you’re thinking,” the girl said.
    “You couldn’t possibly.”
    “You’re wondering how a nice girl like me ended up like this.” When Marie didn’t answer, she added, “Why do you keep doing that?”
    “What?”
    “That.” The girl pointed to Marie’s hand, which was making absent semicircles over her stomach. “You pregnant?”
    “No,” Marie said, withdrawing her hand. But she had been, shockingly, for most of the summer; during James’s final weeks at home, she had been pregnant. Back then her hand had gone automatically to the womb, that strange, unpredictable vessel, as she and Ernie nuzzled in bed, dazzled by their change in fortune. For nights on end they