I Mean You No Harm

by Beth Castrodale

  Then again, Layla didn’t really need wine to calm her nerves. She was far less anxious than she’d been the day before, or even this morning—maybe just because of the long day of driving and the growing number of miles between her and those disturbing packages—and that box of money from Vic. Bette seemed more at ease, too, and she’d stopped checking the rear-view mirror obsessively.

  “What about melons?” Layla asked.

  Bette pressed her lips together, thinking. “On a really hot day, I won’t pass up a slice of watermelon. But every other type of melon? It tastes kinda funky to me like—” She paused, as if searching for the right words.

  “Like mildewed sherbet?”

  Bette smacked the wheel. “Exactly!”

  This whole back-and-forth had started several miles back, when an ad for a zoo came over the radio. Immediately, Bette changed the channel, saying, “Don’t wanna hear about caged animals.” After Layla said she also hated zoos, they began an exchange of dislikes that became a kind of game: the sort of thing they’d never have done during their ill-fated first encounter, years ago.

  So far, their thumbs-down votes had aligned not just on zoos, cilantro, and melons but also on Sex and the City, Van Halen sans David Lee Roth, and raisin bread (plus anything else with cooked raisins). So far, they’d parted company only on candy with nuts. Bette hated all of it, while Layla made an exception for peanut brittle, something her mother had been said to love.

  Layla guessed that their similarities in taste were at least partly genetic, like the slight crooks in their noses, almost certainly from Vic. Layla had little doubt that he’d bestowed other, darker traits upon them as well. Though she’d never shoplifted, as Bette was said to have done, she’d come close as a teenager, once pocketing a pack of gum and a lipstick at a drugstore, and feeling amped up, electrified, as she made her way to the exit.

  She’d wondered, Is this is what being on coke is like?

  Then, something—she couldn’t remember what —killed the feeling. She replaced the gum and lipstick, rushed out of the store.

  Layla looked back to Bette, who seemed to have become infected by these dark thoughts. She was staring ahead at the road, her mouth a stern line.

  After a moment, Bette said, “While we’re in confession mode, I need to tell you something. Something that’s been bothering me for years.”

  About Vic? About her mom? Layla felt a twist in her gut.

  Bette signaled left to pass a slow-poke car, then got back into the travel lane. “How I acted on that trip with Dad? That was fucked up. And I’m really sorry about it.”

  On her drive to Vic’s wake, Layla had wondered whether Bette was going to bring up this subject, which she’d decided not to raise herself. “You were only a teenager.”

  “Well, you were what, ten? Eleven?”

  “Twelve.”

  The whole thing had started with Layla’s sixth-grade English teacher, who’d suggested that students connect with overseas pen pals to “expand their horizons” and “learn about other cultures.” Layla had thought immediately of Vic, who seemed to exist in another world.

  Knowing that her grandparents opened every letter and card from him, Layla had a friend’s older sister set up a P.O. box for her. Then she sent Vic the first letter, with the box number, and three of the pen-pal questions suggested by the teacher:

  What is your favorite animal?

  What are three unusual facts about you?

  What three books would you take to a desert island?

  She didn’t have the courage to ask about him and her mom.

  For almost a month, her P.O. box remained empty. Then, an envelope from him arrived, with a letter answering her questions:

  What is your favorite animal? The greyhound (quick, quiet, elegant)

  What are three unusual facts about you? 1. I don’t like being on or near oceans or other large bodies of water. 2. I’ve committed the Bill of Rights to memory. 3. I used to be a pretty good singer.

  What three books would you take to a desert island? The Great Gatsby, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, The Art of War.

  He also wrote:

  I’d like you to meet your sister Bette. Can you spare two days for a camping trip (one overnight): Saturday June 14th and Sunday the 15th? If so, me and Bette will meet you at the FastMart near your place at 5 on the 14th and get you home before dark on the 15th. If not, let’s figure out another time.

  Write back with a yes or no as soon as you can. Would be great to see you if we can make it happen.

  Love,

  Your Father

  He’d enclosed five twenty-dollar bills.

  She felt the thrill of this new connection with her father: their secret communication and the start of a secret plan they might get away with, together, if they played their cards right. Then there was the money: more than she’d ever held before, and so crisp it seemed fake.

  Yet, fear tinged the thrill. Her father was a stranger. She’d seen him in person only once, in second grade. They’d met up at a pancake restaurant that her grandparents had driven her to, somewhere between Pittsburgh and Reedstown, and the whole visit took place under Alice and Roy’s supervision, their glares seeming to rob Vic of words. Of the few things he’d said to Layla, the only one she remembered was, “You’re a smart kid. I’m proud.” Another memento of the visit: the bug-eyed doll he gave her, still hidden away in some drawer.

  Still, she said yes to getting on the road with this stranger, and another one: Bette, who was even more of a mystery. Layla had seen only a few pictures of her, heard only a few stories about her—negative ones—from her grandparents.

  By the day she’d agreed to meet Vic and Bette at the FastMart, Layla was well into second thoughts about the trip. She hoped that Vic and Bette wouldn’t show, that she could just walk back to her house and tell her grandparents that her plans to hang out with her friend Rachel, then sleep over at her place, had fallen through. When the big hand on the FastMart clock passed the 12, she felt a wave of relief. When it hit the 2, she started heading for home.

  Then a long black car with tinted windows pulled into the parking lot, stopped by the spot where she’d come to a halt. The driver’s side window hummed down, revealing a slightly grayer, slightly thicker version of the man she’d met at the pancake restaurant. He wore a black suit jacket over a red polo, which didn’t seem great for camping. Where was the tent and the other gear? Had he crammed it all into the trunk?

  And where was Bette? The passenger’s seat was empty.

  “Sorry for the wait,” he said, trying for a smile. “There was a nasty accident on 79.”

  He looked to the rear-view mirror and scowled. “Hey. Whaddya say to your sister?”

  Someone spoke from the darkness behind him. “Hey.”

  A croak or a whisper?

  “She has a name,” Vic said to the mirror.

  “Hey, Layla.”

  “Hey, Bette.”

  “Go help your sister with her bag,” Vic said to the mirror.

  As he popped the trunk’s latch, the rear door flew open, scaring Layla back a step. Out climbed a girl a head taller than herself, with a round, doll-like face and thick brown hair in a ponytail. She wore torn, faded jeans and a T-shirt with a pink heart on the chest. At the center of the heart, the word “Hole.”

  Bette squinted at Layla, as if she’d just gotten up from a nap, not by her choice. Then she thrust out her hand.

  It took Layla a few seconds to understand what Bette meant. She handed over her backpack and sleeping bag, which Bette tossed into the trunk like bags of trash. They landed on blue tarps covering some lumps Layla couldn’t identify—the camping stuff? Then Bette slammed the lid.

  “Hey!” Vic cried.

  As Bette returned to the back seat, Layla climbed into the passenger’s side, shut the door
. The car’s interior felt extra-dark, extra-silent, as if the plush, black upholstery had special powers to suck up sound and light. As they got onto the highway, she couldn’t tell if the skies were darkening or if that was some effect of the tinted windows.

  At first, Vic tried some small talk, asked her about school and Girl Scouts, and talked up the “amenities” of their destination, Paradise Campground: showers, toilets, and a “vending center.” Would that even count as camping? Layla wondered.

  Soon, he drifted into silence, now and then checking his watch. Why?

  Now and then, Bette mumbled under her breath, letting loose an occasional private Fuck. This triggered more Heys and mirror scowls from Vic.

  Clearly, Bette didn’t want to be here, and the situation Vic had created was starting to anger Layla. He was the one who wanted her and Bette to “get to know each other,” but now he was just sitting there like a lump, his mind seemingly somewhere else. She wondered whether this had anything to do with the occasional chirp from the pocket of his suit jacket—the ring of a phone. Why didn’t he just answer it?

  Around Dayton, the light dimmed even more, turned greenish. The sky flashed, thunder rumbled. Soon after they crossed into Indiana, the sky opened up, hammering the windshield with so much rain it was impossible to see anything but a gray wash of water and red smears of taillights.

  Vic gripped the wheel, no longer looking distracted. Bette was sitting up, tense, freed from her bubble of attitude. The fear Layla sensed in them heightened her own. She imagined the car spinning out and crashing, killing them all. She imagined her grandparents having to deal with losing yet another kid, because of something stupid she’d agreed to, something they’d surely see as a betrayal.

  Vic took the next exit and steered the car through a flooded intersection and then into the parking lot of a depressing-looking motel. A red-and-green neon sign advertised The Travelers Inn.

  “What are you doing?” Bette asked, irritation in her voice.

  Layla was wondering the same thing.

  “Gettin’ a reality check,” he said.

  He parked in front of the motel’s office and pulled a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket. Consulting it, he punched a number into his cell phone and waited for someone to answer.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I have a reservation for one of the camping lots this evening? … The name is Wright. Bill Wright.”

  Bill Wright? What?

  “Okay,” he said, after a beat. “I figured there might be a problem. Thanks.”

  Returning the phone to his pocket, he said, “Sorry, girls, our lot at the campground’s washed out. Looks like we’ll be crashing here tonight.”

  “Here?” Bette said, waving a hand toward the motel. “In this shithole?”

  “Enough with your mouth!” Vic pounded the dash and glared at Bette in the rear-view mirror. After a moment, he dropped his gaze to the windshield, which was still getting hammered by rain.

  Layla remembered what he’d written about hating large bodies of water. Was he feeling surrounded by too much water now?

  “Listen,” Vic said, in a calmer voice. “It’s almost dark. It’ll be a four-hour drive back home. Probably more in this rain, which, frankly, I’ve had enough of. So, let’s find a way to make the best of a crappy situation. Maybe it could even be fun, huh?”

  This time, Bette didn’t make a sound, but Layla imagined her eye roll and silently agreed with it. She wished she’d never said yes to this trip, and she guessed that the hours ahead—from now until her return to the FastMart the following day—were going to be the longest of her life.

  As they checked in at the office, as they rushed their stuff from the rain-pelted car to the walkway in front of the rooms, Vic’s phone never stopped chirping. How many people were calling him? Or was it just one super-needy, or super-angry, person?

  When they got to their adjoining rooms, Vic pulled a wad of money from his wallet. He handed it to Bette, then looked between her and Layla. “Have a pizza party or something, all right? Get whatever you want.”

  Then he vanished into his room, leaving Layla and Bette alone. Given Bette’s moodiness in the car, Layla didn’t have a good feeling about the hours of one-on-one time that lay ahead. The anxiety settled in her stomach.

  Bette unlocked the door in front of her and pushed it open. What they found was mostly normal: two beds, a central nightstand and phone, a dresser and mirror, a wall-mounted television. But the bedspreads and rug were a brownish orange that might have come from being dirty. And the room smelled like it did at Layla’s school when someone threw up, and the janitor used pine cleaner to mop it up and try to cover the stink.

  “Smells like ass in here,” Bette said.

  “Yeah,” Layla said, laughing. She wished that, like Bette, she could swear without thinking. Though Vic didn’t seem to make a big deal about cursing, Layla’s grandparents wouldn’t tolerate it.

  Bette threw her backpack on the nearer bed, claiming it. Then she unzipped a side pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Maybe she didn’t see the “This Is a Nonsmoking Room” placard on the dresser. More likely, she was ignoring it.

  Bette paused before lighting a cigarette—maybe noticing the same sound Layla did: Vic’s yelling from the adjoining room. The walls were just thick enough that Layla couldn’t make out what he was saying.

  Bette seemed to shrug off this interruption. She finished lighting her cigarette and took a deep pull from it, closing her eyes with what looked like pleasure, relief. Then she strode to the nightstand.

  “Dumps like this don’t have room service, but let’s see what we can do.” She opened the drawer in the nightstand and tossed its contents on what was to be Layla’s bed: a Bible, a packet of condoms that the maid must have overlooked, and brochures of some type. One of them turned out to be a guide to local restaurants, including a pizza joint. When they decided on a large cheese pizza, Bette called and ordered one.

  “Now,” she said. “Tip number one for shithole hotels: you can bet the bedspreads and blankets are loaded with pubes, and God knows what else. No guarantee for the sheets, either, but we’ll just have to deal.”

  “How?” Layla asked.

  “My personal strategy? Strip the bedspread and blanket, and wash your hands immediately. If you’re super-skeeved out by the condition of the sheets, you might put a towel on your pillow. But who’s to say you can trust the towels?”

  Layla tried not to think of all the people who’d left some part of themselves behind in this room, or used the condoms.

  “How come you know so much about motels?”

  “Been on the road with Dad for the last few months.”

  Layla wondered whether Bette had dropped out of school. It was only June. She also wondered whether all this was okay with Bette’s mom. All she knew about her mom was that she was divorced from Vic.

  “What does he do on the road?”

  “Business stuff.” Bette smashed her cigarette against the side of her shoe, extinguishing it, and set the butt on her side of the nightstand.

  “Like what?”

  Bette pulled her backpack from her own bed, started stripping off the bedspread and blanket. “The fuck do I know? I’m just along to see different places. We’ve been to Indianapolis, Detroit, Chicago, and a lot of podunk towns, too.”

  Layla started stripping her bed, trying to work up the courage to ask her next question. “Is he still doing the stuff I heard about? The burglary stuff?”

  Bette paused and gave her a look that was kind of a smile, kind of a scowl. “You really believe that shit?”

  Layla believed what her grandparents said about Vic. And the few times she’d been able to get on the Web, she’d found stories about him being investigated for different crimes. Sometimes, the stories called him a “ringleader” or a “boss.”

  “I d
on’t know. If he doesn’t have anything to hide, why did he tell that camping place he was Bill Wright?” Bill of Rights?

  Again, the smile-smirk. “What the hell difference did it make to them? I don’t know if I want a bunch of strangers knowing who I am. Not if they don’t have to.”

  Bette had a point. But if everyone used fake names, wouldn’t things get kind of confusing?

  Bette dumped her bedspread and blanket in the far corner of the room, on the floor. “Filth to filth,” she said, by way of explanation.

  Layla dumped her bedspread and blanket on top of them, pausing at the sound of Vic’s voice, now loud enough that she could make out a few words: … that’s the sad fuckin’ reality we have to deal with ….

  As if to distract Layla, Bette held up her hands, wiggled her fingers. “Sanitation time.”

  Layla followed her into the bathroom, where Bette unwrapped a mini-bar of soap, turned on the tap, and handed the soap to Layla. As Layla washed her hands, Bette studied the floor.

  “Pube,” she said, pointing to the left of the sink.

  Layla looked where Bette was pointing and saw nothing but dull yellow linoleum.

  “Near the wall, right under that outlet.”

  Scanning that location, Layla spotted a single black hair, too curled to be an eyelash. Ewwww! She scrubbed her hands even harder, in self-defense. Or maybe this was what praying was like.

  “And fuck!” Bette said. “Those are mouse turds, just to the right of it.”

  Looking to the right, Layla saw the tiny brown pellets: one, two, three, four of them. At least.

  Not wanting to sound ungrateful, she stopped herself from asking why they weren’t staying at some better, cleaner place. Vic certainly had the money for that. Either he was too freaked out by the rain to go any farther, or he couldn’t wait another minute to make—or take—that phone call. Or calls.

  “This brings us to tip number two: keep your feet covered at all times, at least with socks.”

  “What if I want to take a shower?” Layla rinsed her hands, trying to ignore the scalding heat of the water.