Editor’s Note: To celebrate our fifth anniversary issue, we’re sharing a piece originally published in the Southern California Review–the predecessor journal to Air/Light. A full archive of SCR is available for free online, and more information about the journal and archive can be found here.

Our Managing Editor Jackie DesForges chose this short story by Mariah Robbins. She says: “This is possibly the most stressed I have ever felt while reading a short story. The tension-building is masterful, and the relationship between the two sisters feels timeless, realistic, and intimate.” 

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I saw the man first. I saw him from my bedroom window. I could hear Eliza in her room, singing along with the radio as she took the pin curlers out of her hair. She hadn’t seen him– her fault for bothering with curlers before Labor Day. The man was coming down the long dirt road that led from Highway 35 to our farmhouse. He was still a ways off, but I could see he was wearing a suit with the jacket slung over his shoulder. His movements were neat and quick, even in the heat, like he was a wind-up toy on course to crash into our house. A long, orange tail of dust marked where he’d been.

I thought, “Lord, let it be Clark Gable.” Then I thought about telling Eliza, but I decided to change into my blue dress instead. The only problem was, it was still pinned up on the clothesline we’d strung in the hall between our rooms. Since the line acted as a second closet for both of us–we never took anything down unless we were going to wear it–Eliza would want to know why I was putting on a dress. Not just any dress, either, but my favorite dress, the only dress I had that wasn’t one of her hand-me-downs.

I checked out the window again. The man in the suit was a good quarter-mile off, maybe five minutes away, still moving purposefully toward our porch. It was an odd thing, every bit of it, the stranger, his church clothes, and me knowing it first.

I crept into the hall and pulled the dress off the line. It twanged a little, and I glanced at Eliza’s room to see if she’d noticed. Her door was open, and I could see her sitting at her dressing table–or what she called her dressing table, plywood draped with fabric-looking at herself in the mirror. It wasn’t unusual to catch Eliza admiring herself in the mirror, but this time she wasn’t posing or pouting or practicing smiles; she was just staring at herself, and in profile her face seemed to droop a little, as though she were an older woman giving herself an honest look. I’d seen actresses do this same thing in the movies. Eliza was always imitating something.

Back in my room, I’d just pulled the dress over my head and smoothed my hair down when I heard the knock. Eliza yelled, “Is that someone at the door?” She didn’t sound surprised to have a caller. I wondered if she was expecting somebody.

I tried to come down the stairs slow and elegant, but my concentration broke when I realized I wasn’t wearing shoes. At the door, the man was silhouetted against the sun glare and the mustardy dust and the screen, so I couldn’t immediately see his face.

“Hello, this is the Rogers residence,” I announced to his outline. I was using my telephone manners, but I figured they were just as good in person.

As I squinted up at him, my eyes adjusted against the light, and his features came into focus: he had ears that stuck out a little, coppery hair, and a nose with freckles on the bridge. I thought he was maybe twenty-five years old. He didn’t look like Clark Gable, but I liked him anyway. He had loosened his necktie, I saw, and the paleness of his neck caught my notice. His nice pants and shoes were covered in dust.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Rogers,” he said. His accent was sharp and sort of honking, definitely northern. ‘I’m Paul Owens. Is your father or mother at home?”

At that moment Eliza hollered, “Ruby! Who is it?”

When I turned I could see her feet at the top of the stairs, bare like mine, her toenails painted tomato red.

I turned back to Paul Owens. “No, sir,” I said. “Just me. “

Eliza made a sound like a cat with something stuck in its throat.

“And my sister Eliza,” I said.

Paul Owens smiled. “I don’t want to impose. Maybe you could direct me to the nearest town? I need to use a telephone.”

I had opened my mouth to tell him Decatur was three miles to the south, but Eliza appeared suddenly at my shoulder. She said, “Don’t even think of it! Decatur is miles away. Won’t you come in?”

I stared at her. She was beaming at the stranger. She was wearing a shade of lipstick called Oriental Blossom and she’d finished curling her hair. My blue dress felt itchy and stiff. I was standing closest to the door, but I didn’t open it.

“Thank you,” Paul Owens said. “I was driving to Dallas, but my car broke down just up there on the road. Engine overheated.” He turned and shaded his eyes like an explorer searching for the ocean. “You can’t see it from here. It’s a pitiful sight.” He turned back and smiled at Eliza.

I took a look around his shoulder anyway. I didn’t know what I thought I’d see; it hadn’t rained since June. I pictured the dust parting in the air like a stage curtain. “What color is it?” I asked.

He turned his smile on me and I felt like I’d hiccupped. “It’s a black Chrysler. A convertible. You like cars?”

Eliza gave a fake sort of half-laugh. “She doesn’t know anything about them.”

She didn’t say that she didn’t either, since we didn’t have one.

There was an old truck out on the farm, but Eliza and I weren’t allowed to drive it. I was pretty sure Eliza wouldn’t have wanted to anyway, but I was dying to; I was thirteen now, and most boys I knew started driving when they were eleven or twelve. But Daddy wouldn’t let me practice on the truck, because he’d gotten it on some kind of loan from the railroad. He’d started working a few nights a week signaling at the freight depot–usually just on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but for the past couple months on weekends too. Mornings after he’d worked he was still up at dawn.

This summer Eliza had taken to coming in late and sleeping past nine, but now I could make a passable breakfast myself, and I didn’t mind getting up. When I came downstairs in the mornings, the kitchen and the windows were the same shade of dark gray. By the time the coffee was ready, the outlines of the farm buildings were starting to solidify against the horizon. I’d let Daddy stare out the window till the coffee woke him. When he finished eating and headed out the door he’d put his hand on the top of my head or kiss the side of my hair. I’d been starting to wonder how I could keep my sister from taking over breakfast duties again when the school year started.

Eliza stepped in front of me impatiently and pushed the door open for Paul Owens. “Please, come in,” she said, and he did. “Have a seat in the parlor. Would you like something to drink? You must be parched.”

“Sure, if it’s no trouble,” he said. “This heat is something else.” He sat on our sofa, and it sagged beneath him.

“Ruby, would you fetch Mr. Owens a glass of iced tea?” Eliza said.

Any other time I would’ve told her to fetch it herself, but my stomach was too fluttery for me to speak. In the kitchen I opened three cupboards before I found the glasses.

When I got back, Eliza was sitting on the armchair across from Paul Owens, but she was scooted so far forward that her knees were only a few inches from his . She’d switched on the big brown radio, low, in the corner.

“I’m applying to Southern Methodist University,” she was saying. ”I’m hoping for a scholarship for my public speaking skills. I won the statewide extemporaneous speaking competition last year, and I’ll probably win it again this year. And of course I’m also the captain of the debate team. But I imagine it’ll take me a little while to make captain on the college team.” She paused and looked down at her knees like she ‘d just remembered modesty was one of the feminine virtues. “Maybe a year at most,” she said.

Eliza Rogers’s favorite subject is Eliza Rogers. That had come home on a report card once and Daddy still said it sometimes, teasing. Eliza didn’t mind. For the longest while I thought it was a compliment I just didn’t understand. My last report card had been almost straight Exceptionals, but the only comment was Ruby is one of our most diligent students.

Paul Owens was smiling at my sister like he was another goner–like Leonard Reading at the drug store, who gave her free sodas, or Mr. Hathorn who brought the mail and always looked disappointed when it was me who came down to meet him at the door. Or Bruce Lodge. He was the worst. He’d dropped out of high school a few years back, and now he hung around Decatur making a nuisance of himself. Once, a year or so ago, he ‘d followed Eliza home from town, trailing her by about fifty feet, making noises or something–I wasn’t sure exactly–and when she got home she was crying. Daddy went out and yelled at him, and he hadn’t done it again, but even so, I knew Eliza hated ever passing him in town.

I tried to think of competitions I had won, but there weren’t any.

“Daddy farms cotton, black-eyed peas, and watermelon,” I said, handing over the iced tea.

Eliza rolled her eyes, but Paul Owens smiled. “I love watermelon,” he said. “We don’t get them very often in New York.”

“But just think, those watermelons could come from this very farm,” I said, then shut my mouth so nothing else stupid could come out of it.

“Wouldn’t that be something?” he said.

I knew I was turning red. I sat down on the opposite side of the couch.

“What brings you all the way to Texas, Mr. Owens?” Eliza asked.

“Can’t you guess?” he said, gesturing to his suit with a flourish. He was still grinning at Eliza . She smile-frowned and shook her head. “I’m the best man in a wedding in Dallas,” he said. He pretended to brush some of the dust from his arms, still sort of hamming for us a bit. “If you can believe that,” he added, like it was the punch line.

Eliza obliged, laughing a little: “But that’s such a long trip for you! Is it a family wedding?”

“Actually, the groom’s my old college roommate,” he said.

“Oh, where did you go to college?” Eliza exclaimed, like she’d already been and they could compare. She leaned forward as though he were about to tell her a secret.

“We were at Princeton.” The way he said it, firing off the name fast but hitting the P and the t with a sort of relish, I knew there was a way I was supposed to react; I didn’t know what it was, though, and I wondered if Eliza did. “But we graduated quite a while back,” he continued, not noticing, I guess, that Eliza’s face had dropped. I wondered if she thought he’d say Southern Methodist. It was all she talked about lately, even though Daddy just rumbled, not saying anything, whenever she brought it up.

“Princeton,” Eliza repeated. “That’s in Pennsylvania?”

“New Jersey,” Paul Owens said. “Close enough.”

I felt a little bit sorry for her, so I decided to change the subject. “Are you a Methodist, Mr. Owens?”

“Ruby!” Eliza said.

He didn’t look Methodist, was the thing. Everyone we knew was either a Methodist or a Baptist, but I couldn’t imagine Paul Owens’ exaggerated Yankee act in either congregation.

He didn’t seem insulted. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m Episcopalian, actually.”

Episcopalian! It was a beautiful, swooping word, and I didn’t think I’d ever heard it uttered out loud before. I could barely keep myself from repeating it after him. For a few minutes it seemed like even Eliza couldn’t think of anything to say. The silence was broken by a cautious knock on the screen door. Eliza started up a little but sat back down quickly. She looped her fingers together and settled her hands deliberately on her lap. “Will you get that, Ruby?” she said.

I went to the door. It was Jane Grizzard. She was my best friend, even though she was only eleven, two years younger than me and three grades lower. She lived on the next closest farm. Sometimes at night we signaled each other from our bedrooms with candles, or practiced birdcalls back and forth, so I guessed she’d seen Paul Owens walk from the highway to our door.

“Hi,” I said, stepping out onto the porch and letting the screen door bang behind me.

“Hi, Ruby,” she said. “I thought I should let you know. I saw Ribbon break through her gate again. She’s probably fixing to eat those persimmons in y’all’s backyard.”

I made a face at the rotten timing. She was my horse, so I’d have to go get her. Also, Daddy had told me to gather up the persimmons a week ago. Last year Ribbon had gorged herself on them and the vet had to come, which cost fifteen dollars: I knew that because Daddy had brought it up every breakfast and supper for a week and a half. “Thanks,” I said to Jane. “Let me get a basket.”

“I’ll help,” she said. Normally she ‘d never have done such a thing, so I knew she wanted to see the stranger. I felt protective of him for some reason, but also of Eliza, flirting with him there on the couch. Jane never seemed to intend to spread gossip herself, but she was a two-way channel right to her mother, and Eliza always said one of Mrs. Grizzard’s favorite subjects was us: the poor motherless Rogers girls. How our daddy could stand being a widower so long, for one; and two, the disaster that was brewing for us on the horizon, as we became women without a woman to teach us how. Mrs. Grizzard couldn’t wait for her dire predictions to come true, Eliza said. But Eliza didn’t seem to care whether they did or not.

I still cared, though, about what Mrs. Grizzard said about Eliza, and I knew Jane would paint the scene on the couch as racy as she could. So, without any other way to stall her, I chose to fake a coughing fit. Then I said, loudly, “Okay, Jane. Come on in.”

I was relieved to see Eliza crouching by the radio and Paul Owens on the couch. Eliza turned and said, “There was some kind of news bulletin on the radio, but we couldn’t catch it.” I knew she wanted to say, what with you coughing like that. “Hello, Jane, ” she said instead.

“Good afternoon, Eliza,” Jane said, in the worshipful manner she used with Eliza. Only the week before, she ‘d told me she wished we could switch older siblings: Eliza for her brother Todd. Todd was seventeen, a year older than Eliza , and he mostly kept to himself, building model battlefields in his bedroom. I told Jane we could switch anytime.

I meant it, too.

“Mr. Owens, I’d like you to meet Jane Grizzard,” Eliza said. “Jane, this is Mr. Paul Owens, from New York.”

She sounded perfect. Once, someone from church had complimented her manners–like it was a wonder we weren’t feral–and Eliza had said it was easy: in any situation, she just thought of how Mother would’ve acted. Daddy overheard and gave a laugh like a bark, and Eliza pouted, the way she did when she got caught embellishing. I wondered then where she had learned her manners. Movies, probably. Magazines. Still, I thought it was unfair I wasn ‘t old enough to remember what Mother’s manners, or lack of manners, had been like. I’d been six when she died, so just got flashes of her, sometimes, making faces, singing off tune, swanning around, and in some of the memories she blended suspiciously with memories of my sister doing the same things.

“Mr. Owens’s automobile broke down on the highway,” Eliza was telling Jane, “so he ‘s using our telephone.” It was the first time she’d mentioned that.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Grizzard,” Paul Owens said.

It was exactly what he’d said to me at the front door, and in the same teasing tone. I grabbed Jane ‘s hand.

“We’re going to bring Ribbon back in,” I said. “She ‘s going to eat the persimmons and get the bloat.”

Eliza made a face, but at least she didn’t say, Daddy told you to pick those up a week ago. I pulled Jane into the kitchen and out the back door. The persimmon tree stood right up against the house. The fruit had fallen in sticky red-orange clumps on the tin roof and on the dusty grass, and the ground swarmed with bees-but there was no horse in sight.

I turned to Jane. “Where’s Ribbon?”

Jane sighed. “She ‘s still fenced in.”

I understood right away. In fact, I was pretty impressed with her. Still, I glared. “You just wanted to see that man for yourself.”

“I don’t think we should’ve left Eliza alone with him,” she whispered. “He’s from up north.”

“Oh, Jane, grow up,” I snapped, but as soon as I said it, I knew it wasn’t her I was mad at.

“Everybody says Eliza flirts with grown men,” Jane said. “You should be worried about her.”

“They say no such thing!” I said. Then I reconsidered. “Or if they do they’re just jealous.”

“Jealous how?” Jane said. She bent down and picked up one of the persimmons. She stood there with it oozing in her hand, waiting for me to answer her question or hold out the basket.

“Because she ‘s so smart and pretty,” I said. “And popular.”

Jane shrugged. “I don’t reckon she’s got more than two friends.”

She reached for the basket, and I gave it to her. I didn’t know what to say to that. I couldn’t say that Eliza acting like she was popular counted the same as being popular, even though it seemed to me it did, or it should’ve. Jane kept picking up persimmons and dropping them in the basket. Finally she said, glancing at me sideways, “Todd told me he saw her in the backseat of Micah Belier’s car.”

“Micah Beller–Micah Beller– ” My mouth was a step ahead of my brain, but finally I got myself unkinked: “Micah Beller doesn’t even have a car .”

“His daddy’s car.”

“How’d Todd see that?”

That pulled her up. “Maybe he didn’t see it,” she said, after considering. “Maybe he heard about it.”

Then I saw it, too– I didn’t want to, but I did: a head of dark hair pressed up against the glass, the bright flurry of her painted nails as she pulled her shirt off. The new brassiere she’d bought secretly and wouldn’t hang on the hall clothesline; I’d found it going through her dresser. I saw Micah’s thick red fingers twisted up in the straps.

The hair, the nails, the brassiere, but not the face.

“Todd’s lying,” I said. “Daddy would skin her alive, and Eliza knows it.”

It was the best I could come up with, and it wasn ‘t even true, but it sounded like something Jane could repeat to her mother, or to Todd, and it would make our family seem substantial and serious. Whatever I said had to match what Jane might consider an appropriate punishment, anyway, and her father scared me to death: he was older than most fathers, and meaner, and Daddy said he ‘d been in the War. Once, a few years ago, he’d found me and Jane in the barn, poking at a dying rattlesnake, trying to make it strike. He dragged us back by the collars, chopped the snake’s head off with an axe, then flung its body, still writhing, at Jane.

“Teach you to play with snakes,” he’d spat at us.

But Jane didn’t seem to register the severity of the punishment I’d invented. Instead, I’d reminded her of something: she stopped and covered her mouth. “I know something about your daddy,” she said. “He’s been taking Martha Traynor around on weekends. I heard Mother talking about it.”

“He is not,” I said. “Miss Traynor from the library?”

“See now?” Jane said. “You’re the one has to tell Eliza what a spectacle she is .”

“Spectacle!” I repeated. I didn’t know whether I was agreeing or just surprised she used the word.

“I bet she ‘s flirting with that man right now.”

“She has good manners,” I said.

“I bet you ten cents.” Jane took off around the side of the house before I could answer. Instead of following her I stood for a while and watched the bees nuzzle into the rotting persimmons. One of Miss Traynor’s library rules was that you had to be fifteen years old to check out books from the regular grown-up section. “They won’t do you any good till you understand them,” she’d said when I asked why. Later Eliza had me write down the books I wanted; then she went and checked them out and brought them home for me.

When I came around the side of the house Jane was crouched under the living room window. She pointed inside. You owe me ten cents, she mouthed, her face all strained and righteous.

I wanted to ignore her, but instead I got down on my knees and peered through the window. Eliza had moved onto the couch with Paul Owens, and she had his hand, face-up, in both of her own. She was giving him one of her stupid palm readings. She ‘d read a book on it last year and practiced for a while on boys at school until she got bored with it.

Now she and Paul Owens leaned together over his hand, so close their heads almost touched .

Jane shifted next to me. I swatted at her to be quiet so I could hear.

“See how this one’s branched off a little to either side?” Eliza was saying. “That’s a big decision you’ll have to make.” She traced her finger across his palm and let it rest there. She looked up at him. “It’s coming up soon, I think. “

“Dead,” I told him.

“Ruby!” Eliza yelped. She turned to Paul. “She’s teasing.” She glared at me. “The only problem is she‘s too young to know she’s not funny.”

“Eliza turns seventeen in December,” I said to Paul. “She ‘s awfully mature for sixteen, though.”

Eliza stood up fast. “Paul, can I get you some more iced tea?”

“Better not,” I said. “You don’t want to miss the bus. There’s one from Decatur to Dallas that runs twice a day.”

“The next one isn’t till five o’clock,” Eliza said. “He’s got plenty of time. Let me get you another drink.”

I followed her into the kitchen. She had to be furious with me, but she didn’t show it. I tried to act the same. “Eliza,” I said.

She turned to face me, the glass of iced tea in her hand. She stared at a point in the air just next to my head. “Did you want to say something?”

“I bet you didn’t know Daddy’s been dating Miss Traynor.”

She kept her face blank as putty. “Of course I knew,” she said. “You didn’t?”

“He said he was working weekends.”

“He is sometimes.” She spoke slowly like she was explaining a math problem to me. “They’re running the freight trains overtime. They’re carrying Army boys now, too.”

“Why? To where?”

She sighed. “I don’t know. Corpus Christi. Daddy probably didn’t think you were old enough to bother telling.“

I thought about him sitting at the table in the morning, staring out the window. “You don’t care about Miss Traynor?”

“Should I?” Eliza said.

I wanted to shake her until she told the truth. She moved to the door.

“Daddy won’t be happy we have a man in the house,” I said.

She stopped. “Paul’s a perfect gentleman.”

“That doesn’t matter any.”

“Don’t be small about it,” she said. “Just because he likes me. You can ‘t stand it. You think everyone has to like you more.”

“Me more?” I said.

“I know how everyone feels about me,” she said. “I know you know it too. You think I care? Which one of us is leaving?”

At that moment Paul Owens’s voice came from the front room. “Hey, that bulletin we missed,” he called. “About the war? They’re saying France and England just declared war on Germany.”

Eliza set the glass down with a thunk I thought would shatter it. She finally looked angry, as though the war across the ocean had been started to spite her. I chose that moment to say, “You’re not leaving. Don’t be so stupid.”

She turned on me. “How would you know anything about it?” She grabbed the knob of the door to the backyard and flung it open so hard the preserves rattled; then I could hear the bees again, through the open door. “You love this,” she said.

She was wrong about me: I didn’t love it as much as she wanted me to. Without her, it wasn’t much at all. I couldn’t tell if she actually thought I’d be happy to spend the rest of my life here, or whether she simply needed me to stay so she could leave. We both knew she wouldn’t come back, but I also knew she was wrong about another thing: I could go anywhere she could.

Instead I said, “You’re a spectacle.” Then the worst thing I could think of: “We’ re laughing at you. You don’t even know it.”

She turned and stared at me. I couldn’t tell what she was about to say.

“Hey, did you two hear that?” Paul Owens said, coming into the kitchen. His face was flushed. His freckles stood out. I met his eyes straight on. I was ready for him.

“Did you girls hear me?” he repeated. “This is big.”

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