by James King
“Still thinking, Clare,” he said. “Still using the old noggin.”
He looked at his car. By far the best he’d ever had. He didn’t know what the odometer said, but it had to be well over 120,000 miles. He tried to remember a trip or a vacation or anything that the car had played a part in. But those things—the vacations, the good times with the kids, the drives with Clare—had all happened in different cars, long before he’d bought this one. Still, there was something about this car. It had been there. Just there.
“So long, you hunk of crap,” Bill said, turning away.
On the street, he asked a kid in a brown uniform of some sort for directions to the Greyhound station.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
To keep from freaking out while she waited for her grandfather, April studied the route of the California Zephyr. The name alone was enough to get her pumped. Here, finally, was something tangible, something that had the name California on it, a sign that she was almost there, that it was really going to happen. She was more excited by the name of a train than she had been when she saw the Rocky Mountains for the first time.
After Utah, just three stops in Nevada—Elko, Winnemucca (she tried to imagine saying, Hi! I’m from Winnemucca), Reno—and they’d be in California. Then six in California: Truckee, Colfax, Roseville, Sacramento (she’d heard of that one), Davis, Martinez, and—final stop, end of the line—Emeryville.
“But I want to go to San Francisco,” April had said to the clerk when she purchased the tickets.
The man, who was younger than her grandfather but getting up there, looked at her over his half-glasses. “That’s where you’re going,” he said. “Eleven thirty-five. Track two.” He looked back down at the newspaper he was reading.
“Then why doesn’t it say San Francisco?”
“It’s just the name of the station.”
“Are you sure?”
April was surprised at her question—not because it was a stupid question, but because she had asked it at all. A few weeks ago, she would have accepted the man’s answer without question. Even if she didn’t really believe him, which she didn’t, she wouldn’t have—what’s the phrase her mother always used?—stood up to him. A few weeks with her grandfather had cured her of that.
The clerk looked up from his newspaper. He removed his glasses professorially. April wondered how his wife felt about all the hair sprouting up on the top of his nose.
“Young lady, I’ve been selling tickets to San Francisco for more years than you’ve been alive. Not one person has asked for a refund because I sent ’em somewhere else.”
“Just wanted to make sure, sir,” she said, offering her sweetest phony smile. Her grandfather would approve of the “sir.”
The man nodded curtly and returned to his newspaper.
“I’m so sorry I interrupted; you look incredibly busy,” April said. She turned and walked away. She felt his eyes on her back but made her way to the waiting area without turning around. She sat in one of the plastic chairs. The waiting area wasn’t nearly as skeevy as she thought it would be. She’d expected to smell urine and see a bunch of homeless people, bums, and perverts hanging out. But the station seemed almost new, with lots of open space and windows and clean, well-polished floors. And it wasn’t very crowded, either: a man in a suit reading a newspaper; a young couple snuggling against each other, trying to get some sleep; a tired-looking mother sitting near a pile of suitcases while her two young boys—they looked like twins—ran around the waiting area, laughing and screaming. The mother made no attempt to slow or quiet them; she looked too exhausted to do much of anything.
April renewed her vow to never have children.
She pulled out her road map. Just as she suspected. The ticket agent was full of it. Emeryville wasn’t in San Francisco. It was across the Bay. That kind of sucked. You’d think that if you were going to build a railroad across the country, you’d go all the way and end it in San Francisco. Whoever heard of Emeryville? And how would they get from there to San Francisco, now that they didn’t have a car?
She’d worry about that later. In the meantime, it was important to keep her mind occupied, because she was starting to wonder why in holy hell her grandfather was taking so long. It had been nearly an hour.
She created an acrostic, a memory trick her fifth-grade teacher had taught her, to help remember the stops in California: Trucks Carrying Roses Should Drive Mighty . . . she had trouble with an “E.” That damned Emeryville again. No problem now, though; she’d never forget Emeryville—although she would do everything in her power to do so once they got out of there.
Easily! Trucks Carrying Roses Should Drive Mighty Easily. Truckee, Colfax, Roseville, Sacramento, Davis, Martinez, Emeryville. She was still disappointed in Emeryville. A final destination should be a city, not a ville.
A half hour later, the kids had stopped running around the luggage, but they were now hanging on their mother, whining and crying.
Their agitation was contagious. April felt herself starting to panic. Where was the old man?
She studied the train route map again and considered memorizing the stops in the opposite direction. But there were too many of them: twenty-three between Salt Lake and the end of the line, Chicago. Why did it stop in Chicago? Shouldn’t it go all the way to New York? It would be cool to take a train all the way across the entire country. It would be even cooler if, by some weird coincidence, Keith Spinelli was on the same train. What would stop them from spending all day together? All night? She seemed to remember some movie about a man sharing a train compartment with a woman, although the woman didn’t know the man was a man because he was in drag. It was a stupid movie, but her mother couldn’t stop laughing.
Her mother’s laugh used to make her cringe. But now she smiled.
And now she stood. The worn-out mother looked up at her in surprise. April started to pace. It had been two hours. Something was wrong. Something was definitely wrong.
She replayed what had happened. Her grandfather had said he needed to sell the car—but why? It was running perfectly fine. She should know—she’d been driving it. He had never even hinted that there was something wrong until after he’d spoken with her mother. That was it! Her mother had said something, goddamn her. Maybe she had threatened to call the cops.
April wanted to kick herself for being so stupid. Grandpa was dumping the car so the cops couldn’t find them. But why was it taking so long? Was he really trying to sell it? Who would he sell it to? A picture of a huge, heavily muscled and tattooed biker formed in her mind.
“Are you all right?”
April had wandered near the mother. The kids were all asleep now. One of them was asleep at her feet; the other sprawled out across her lap like that statue of Christ and his mother.
“I’m fine,” April said. “Thanks.”
“Waiting for someone?” the mother asked. She seemed eager for exactly what April was not: conversation. “Boyfriend?”
April looked at her. “A boyfriend? No.”
The mother nodded. “Running away?”
Something about having kids, April thought, makes it impossible for women not to pry into everyone else’s business.
“I did when I was your age,” the mother said when April didn’t answer. “The first time, anyway. I was a little older when we decided to run off to LA and become famous movie stars.”
April looked at the mother closely, surprised to find herself talking to someone she might have seen in movies. How cool would that be? But the face wasn’t familiar, and April saw now that the woman wasn’t as old as she originally seemed; probably her midtwenties. Old but not that old.
“Is that where you’re going now?” April asked, realizing immediately how stupid her question was. They were in Salt Lake City, after all. Duh!
The mother smiled. “No. Going to Reno. That’s where I grew up.”
April nodded. “I guess the movie star thing didn’t work out?”
Now
the mother laughed.
“I didn’t mean anything,” April said quickly.
“It’s okay. And no, the movie star thing didn’t work out. Not nearly. Oh, we made it to Los Angeles. But Randy—that’s his name—met some guys who liked to hang out in Venice Beach and get high all the time. He stopped going to casting calls. Eventually stopped working at his busboy job. Got into crack. Only paid attention to me at certain times, if you know what I mean.”
The woman nodded at her sleeping children.
April felt herself redden. “So why are you here, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Randy met these two other guys on that beach. They were different. They were wearing nice blue suits. Promised Randy he’d be much happier as a Mormon. I guess Randy had hit rock bottom. He wanted to get clean. I wanted him to get clean. So we all came out here to start our new lives. That was a year ago.”
“Oh, so you’re going to Reno to visit your parents.”
The mother shook her head. “I’m going to live with them. Randy kicked drugs, but he developed a taste for prim-and-proper Mormon girls. A choir girl, can you believe it?”
April looked away. She didn’t want to see the woman—girl, really—cry. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“You’re sweet,” the mother said, successfully fighting off the tears. She fixed her eyes on April. “I’ll bet your mother misses you.”
April didn’t want to think about her mother. She had to think about her grandfather.
“Do you mind if I give you some advice?” the mother asked. “I know you’re all excited about wherever you’re going. I know you probably think you’ll get a job, that your boyfriend will take care of you, that everything’s going to be so much better there than at home. But take it from me—it won’t be easy, not at your age. I know you think I don’t know what I’m talking about. But if I were in your shoes, if I could do it all over again, I’d get on the next train or bus home.”
April tried to think of a response other than You’re right—you don’t know what you’re talking about. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
The mother held her in her gaze as April gathered up her bag and her grandfather’s. April considered asking her to watch their things for her while she retrieved her grandfather, but even though she knew the mother would probably agree and say she wouldn’t mind at all, it felt wrong.
“Do you know where the lockers are?” she asked at the same moment she saw them. She ran over, stuffed the bags into one of the larger ones, and started searching her pockets for five quarters. She only had two, along with a crumpled dollar bill. She hadn’t realized she was carrying so little cash.
The clerk, now working on a crossword puzzle, looked up smugly when she asked for change. “Machine,” he said, pointing his pencil to the left of the lockers.
It wouldn’t take April’s bill. She kept smoothing the bill out, trying to feed it in, but the machine kept pushing the money back at her. After half a dozen tries, she ran back to the ticket window.
“It’s not working,” April said. “It won’t give me change.”
“It sometimes does that,” the clerk said, not looking up. “Keep trying. It’ll take it.”
April turned and started toward the machine. But then she stopped, as if someone had stepped in front of her, blocking her way.
Her mother would not do this. No way would her mother allow someone to treat her this way.
April turned and walked back to the ticket window.
“I’m not asking you to give me money,” she said. “I’m asking you to give me four quarters for a dollar. I need it, and I need it quickly because someone who needs my help is waiting. So I’d appreciate it if you’d give me the change now. If you don’t, if you make me leave this station to get change somewhere else, I’m going to make sure that my father, who is a lawyer, gets you fired for working on a crossword puzzle instead of doing your job.”
April slapped the dollar bill on the counter.
The clerk leaned back in his chair and removed his glasses.
“Well, aren’t you something?”
April made sure to thank the man as he pushed four quarters across the counter. After she secured her luggage, she returned to the window.
“Excuse me, sir. Which way to the Greyhound station from here?”
Another look up over half-glasses. “You don’t know?”
“No, sir.” Would I be asking if I did?
The agent put his elbow on the counter and, with his crossword pencil, pointed at the station doors. “See those doors there? You go out, take a left. Keep walking. You’ll come to a little curve in the road. That’s West Third. Don’t go straight. Keep to your right. You’ll walk right into it.”
“How long will it take?”
The man looked at his watch. “Let’s see. If you leave right now, and you walk the whole way, I’d say you should get there in, oh . . . two minutes or so.” He smiled.
April searched the man’s eyes. “You promise this is for real,” she asked, her voice shaky. “I mean, I know you don’t like me, but the person I’m trying to find really, really needs my help. It’s my grandfather. He’s like you—well, older, probably. A little. But he gets a little confused and I think he may be at the bus station because when we got here he kept asking people for directions to the Greyhound so that’s why I need to go there and if you’re trying to trick me to get back at me or something—”
The man held up his hand to stop her.
“Scout’s honor,” he said. He pointed to the door. “Go get your grandpa.”
April ran.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
As she stood in the checkout line at Dominick’s Finer Foods, Marcy wondered how men these days survived. From the looks of things back at his “residence” hotel, Mike was living on TV dinners, cookies, and of course, Jack Daniels. For all their talk, all their cocky posturing, all their condescending certainty, it took very little for men to fall apart.
Take Hank. Big, tough, top-selling Hank. Had to be the protector. But threatened with a little separation, he puddled. Marcy stared at the head of the woman in front of her. Or had he? Marcy had been purposely driving thoughts of Hank away, trying to focus on April. But he kept elbowing his way into her thoughts: his big shoulders, his smile, his habit of listening so goddamned carefully to her.
Take Nick. He still couldn’t get it together. And it had been three frickin’ years since Marilyn died.
Take her father. Oh my god, take her father. Thanks to him, Marcy was pretty sure she had done more grocery shopping in her lifetime than any other woman her age. Because after her mother died, her father was too busy drinking to do what was needed to keep the family going. This included shopping for food. Her brothers were content to eat fast food and any crap that her father happened to pick up while on a booze run. She had to beg Mike to drive her to the grocery store. She had to beg her father for the money. At the age of twelve, she had to start doing all the things her mother used to.
She had enjoyed going to the grocery store with her mother, who’d shopped as if she were the queen of the A&P. The stock boys all smiled when they saw her. The cashiers loved to chat with her. Marcy could still remember, as a toddler, wrapping her arms around her mother’s leg in the checkout line and, when she was older, leaning against her as the cashier punched in prices. Oddly, Marcy felt closest to her mother then, even though the woman might have been chatting with the cashier or someone else from the neighborhood, not paying attention to her at all. This was her mother’s world outside the home. Perhaps that’s why Marcy always felt a strange tug when she saw women and their children in the store. It reminded her not of shopping with April—shopping with April was a goddamned nightmare—but of shopping with her mother.
Did April ever feel that comfortable, that secure, with me?
Marcy shifted her gaze to her groceries. Mike’s groceries. Groceries for Mike, who would never admit that he was on the skids. Got something
in the works, he’d probably say. Not to worry. He wouldn’t want to talk about the obvious—and he certainly wouldn’t want to talk about Colleen. Colleen, on the other hand, had had no problem talking about Mike. A few minutes after Marcy and Nick rang the doorbell of the “Warrington residence,” as Mike and Colleen’s kids had been taught to say when they answered the phone, Colleen was telling them, over coffee and in explicit detail, precisely why Mike could not be found at the residence. Marcy noticed that the kitchen—the entire house for that matter—was spotless. It would show well. Marcy imagined herself pointing out the bright and airy great room, the fireplace in the kitchen and living room, the granite counters.
Colleen herself was very much together, as always: just the right amount of makeup, shiny black hair pulled back tightly, clothes that looked designed especially for her. But the bags under her eyes and the worry lines that formed on her forehead as she spoke told a less perfect story. That was the difference, Marcy thought: Women wear their pain; men simply disperse it among the dirty socks and underwear and fast-food wrappers. And bottles.
Still, when Colleen told them where they could find Mike, Marcy couldn’t help but feel a certain level of anger with Colleen. She supposed that if the situation had involved someone other than her brother, her oldest brother, her sympathies would lie with Colleen. But when Colleen shook her head when Nick asked if she wanted to relay any sort of message to Mike, Marcy wanted to slap her. He may have been a philanderer, but at least he was here, she wanted to scream.
