Only Flesh and Bones by Sarah Andrews Read Free Book Online Page A

Menken.
    Crazy old J. C. Menken, alone with his moping daughter in that huge house in Genesee. I thought back to the first time Menken had taken me there, two years before, when I was a newcomer to his now-defunct Blackfeet Oil Company. The two had been alone together even then. She had been a stringy girl of fourteen, wild in her rage and sorrow over her mother’s departure. Where was it Miriam had gone? I tried to remember if Cecelia had ever told me. Surely Menken never would have; he’d been bent on pretending she’d never gone. How quickly he had moved to erase the damning limerick Cecelia had scrawled that day on the refrigerator door, begging for her father’s attention:

    Oh, Mommy’s up in Aspen snorting coke
She left Friday wath a friendly looking dope

Dear old Dad’s in the Jacuzzi
With his brand new buddy Suzie
Trying to see if they can make the bourbon float

    It had seemed pretty good doggerel, for an adolescent. I hadn’t thought at the time about the implications, beyond the obvious assertion that J. C. had been dumped or cuckolded, but now that I knew him better, I wondered. Would the suburban wife of smooth, conventional old J. C. Menken have been the sort to snort cocaine? And would she have been so obvious about it that her daughter would have known, or, for that matter, would she have let the child know about it if she’d been running off with a dope fiend to a fast town like Aspen? This image of Miriam didn’t seem to fit with what I knew of Menken, but then, it was hard to feature any woman living with him for long without losing her grasp on reality.
    During Miriam’s absence, J. C. had encouraged me to visit Cecelia. I had always met her at the stables, the better to avoid the awkward social contact with my boss. We had gone for rides together on their quarter horses, I on Miriam’s gelding, Cecelia on her wonderful chestnut mare. Cecelia had proved an okay kid once she relaxed: bright, capable on horseback, and deeply motivated to improve her barrel-racing skills. We’d set up the oil drums in the arena and ridden the barrels again and again, I schooling the horses and demonstrating the tricks and postures that spun horse and rider around the turns, she doggedly practicing until she began to master them. But I had never met Miriam, even when she quietly returned. She hadn’t come to the office, hadn’t answered the telephone when I’d called to set up subsequent riding visits with Cecelia. In fact, if Menken’s secretary hadn’t passed the word to the troops, I’d never have known she was back.
    Then in the merry month of May, not quite a year ago, Blackfeet had gone belly-up, and we had all been out of work. I’d looked for other jobs for a while, but quickly ran
out of steam as hope dwindled. It was natural that I hadn’t thought to call Cecelia to go riding; I had been busy. And then I’d heard that she and Miriam had gone to Wyoming for the summer, and then my father died, and …
    I hadn’t been in touch with much of anyone after that. Autumn followed summer, with winter hard on its heels. And now it was spring again, time for new beginnings.
    The shower began to run cold. I turned the cold tap off, but the water only warmed for a minute or so, just long enough to rinse my hair. Bundling out of the water and into some thick towels Betty had left out for me, I settled on the foot of the bed and rubbed my scalp with vigor, trying to shake myself back into feeling warm. I dug out my blow-dryer and let it rip, then pulled on a flannel nightshirt, dove under the down comforter, and crimped my body into the time-honored pose of the fetus.
    Why had Miriam come back ? The question caught me by surprise, amusing me with its opposite supposition, an understanding that any woman in her right mind would eventually have left J. C. Menken. He was just that strange a man. But then, why had she married him in the first place?
    I peeked out from under the comforter. Stared at the