A Ticket to Ride

by Paula McLain

  Raymond had been standing quietly by the door, but now he intervened. “Come on, now, Jamie, that’s enough. We know you’re lying.” His voice wasn’t hard, not yet, but I knew he meant business.

  “What? I’m not lying. I’m not,” I said, hearing my own voice creak and slide.

  “Really?” Raymond crossed the room and sat down, turning his chair to face me squarely. “So you don’t know Mr. Fletcher’s car turned up yesterday in an impound lot in Chicago?”

  I shook my head.

  “Or that your purse was inside?”

  The purse. I hadn’t even remembered I left it wedged under the seat when we parked to walk to the Tattered Rose. I was so drunk already, the Boone’s Farm coursing pinkly through me, that I could have left my shoes behind and not registered it.

  Pizzler cleared his throat, a long growl that seemed to come all the way from his lungs, and when he spoke, his voice wasn’t grandfatherly at all, but serious as a heart attack. “Whatever you’ve been playing at, Jamie, whoever you’ve been protecting, it’s got to stop now. Claudia’s parents are worried sick. No one’s seen or heard from her since Friday evening. We need to know where she is. When’s the last time you saw her?”

  I crossed my arms tight and set my chin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  “That’s enough!” Raymond barked. He grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard enough to make my teeth chatter.

  “You’re hurting me,” I said, trying to pull away. There were tears in my eyes. I looked at the officers, but they seemed to recede farther behind their side of the table. “Stop it.”

  “No, you stop,” he said. In his face there was none of the tenderness I’d seen when he carried me from the car and tucked me in. I half-wondered if it had ever really been there at all. “Where’s Claudia?”

  “I want to talk to Fawn,” I whined. Even as the words left my mouth, though, I knew Fawn wouldn’t help, wouldn’t make me feel better. If anything, Fawn made me feel worse about everything lately. It was like crying out for a knife when you were already bleeding, and yet I didn’t know what else to do, who I should be calling out for instead. I began to cry in earnest then, fat tears bouncing onto the tabletop, into my lap.

  “We’ll bring in Fawn in a minute, but first we need to hear the truth from you, Jamie.”

  “What?” my voice rose, trembling. “I’ve already told you everything.”

  Raymond sighed angrily. Pizzler and Merton pushed their chairs back and stood up. The woman cop, Spacey, followed them while looking at me in a sad way, as if I were a postcard orphan or on death row.

  “We’ve asked the Fletchers to come in,” Pizzler said. “They have some questions for you and Fawn both, as you might imagine. Maybe if you talk to them it’ll jog your memory.” He turned to Raymond and said, “Go ahead and get Fawn now.”

  For several minutes I was alone in the room with my own rising panic. My skull throbbed. What would I possibly say to the Fletchers? If I told them the truth, I would be alone in my admission. Fawn wouldn’t corroborate and I had every reason to believe she really would stop talking to me. She might anyway, once she found out I’d left the purse in Mr. Fletcher’s car—a stupid oversight that punctured our story entirely. The last time Fawn had stopped talking to me, I’d felt so sad and alone, I was sure I was going crazy. I didn’t think I could bear being in that place again. But what about Claudia? Fawn and I had just left her there in Chicago. Here we were, worried about getting in trouble, but Claudia actually was in trouble. She was gone, maybe hurt, maybe hurt very badly. By not telling the truth to the Fletchers, weren’t we in fact abandoning her again? She didn’t deserve any of this. She didn’t do anything wrong. Hadn’t ever been anything but nice to me, to everyone.

  The door opened again and in filed Raymond, Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher, and Fawn. The officers were nowhere in sight. Maybe they were in another room, watching from some hidden camera, or maybe they were going to let the Fletchers torture the information out of me on their own. Just looking at them was torture. Mr. Fletcher’s red face ballooned from the collar of his white business shirt. His wife sat at the very edge of one of the metal chairs, gripping a thin turquoise clutch purse in her lap and looking like she might snap in half. Fawn wouldn’t even join us at the table. She stood against one wall next to the filing cabinet as if she were merely a bored spectator, threading a rubber band into her hair in a ritualized way. When she had run out of elastic, she pulled the ponytail tight against her head, leaned back, and snapped her gum. If she was worried about anything, she didn’t show it.

  “We know about the car,” Mr. Fletcher said. “And we don’t care about that. We just want to know where our daughter is.”

  “Fawn?” I said plaintively.

  “Why are you asking me?” Fawn said. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”

  Mrs. Fletcher began to cry soundlessly. Her shoulders shuddered rhythmically and I felt suddenly very sorry for her.

  “We don’t want to do this,” Mr. Fletcher said, “but we can press charges, you know. You were obviously involved in taking the car. There’s evidence putting you there, it’d be an open and shut case and that’s grand theft auto.”

  Fawn, who had either been told about my purse being found or was straight-up bluffing, said, “Go ahead. You can’t get me on anything. I wasn’t there and you can’t prove I was.”

  “Don’t be so sure. The police have fingerprinted the car.”

  “Who are you, Columbo?” Fawn sneered. “Good luck to you, truly,” she said, either to the Fletchers or me, I couldn’t tell, and then flounced out of the room.

  And that’s when my spell started. It came on lightning-fast. I didn’t have my inhaler, didn’t have any way to fight it back. Sucking air hard, I heard Mrs. Fletcher ask her husband to run for help, and that was the last thing I heard before the room went black.

  By the time we were back in Raymond’s truck heading home, I felt utterly exhausted and alone. The paramedics had come and given me oxygen. When I came to, I was lying on a cot in a small room, still in the precinct office, with a mask covering most of my face. Raymond stood next to me, but he wasn’t really with me. His face was hard and when he helped me out to the truck later, there was no tenderness in his touch. He had given up on me. As he drove home, he watched the road with an expression that wasn’t pained or disappointed or disgusted. As far as I could tell, he felt nothing at all. Fawn looked out the window and played absentmindedly with her door lock: up, down, click, clack.

  “Do you mind?” Raymond said.

  “Yeah, I do,” Fawn replied.

  It was late afternoon when we pulled into the drive, shade falling in thick angles over the lawn, and still Fawn wriggled into her suit, grabbed her towel, and went out to sunbathe. I went to our room and sat on my bed, but the silence was too loud, too overwhelming. I’d rather face Fawn, I knew, than my own dark thoughts, and so I went outside. Fully dressed, I sat down next to Fawn cross-legged, waiting for her to settle her towel, the baby oil, the cassette player. Waiting to be acknowledged. But Fawn only lay down and closed her eyes against what was left of the sun, her face flat and untroubled.

  “Aren’t you worried at all?” I finally spat out. “We could go to jail or something, you know. And what about Claudia? What if she’s really hurt?”

  “Give me a break.”

  “No, seriously,” I persisted.

  “What’s serious is how mental you are,” Fawn said without opening her eyes. “It’s clear I can’t trust you. I asked you for one favor, just five days, and you want to run and tell the Fletchers everything. If you hadn’t fainted like a big fucking baby, you probably would have already.” She rolled over and began to fiddle with the radio, flipping the dial through static and loud commercials and DJs barking call-in numbers. America flared up, a lyric midway through “Horse with No Name,” and Fawn turned it up loud, louder. “Are you just going to sit there all day?” Fawn said, rolling back over and shutti
ng her eyes once again, “or can I get some privacy for once?”

  What I wanted to do was stand up and go into the house; to fall asleep, maybe, bury myself under a wad of sheets, mail myself into unconsciousness. But it occurred to me that I had one trump card, one way to convince Fawn that maybe I wasn’t crazy for wanting to try to help Claudia. Fawn didn’t know about Donald yet, not everything. His forcing himself on me was proof that he wasn’t normal, as Fawn insisted, but a scary customer. Maybe something similar had happened between Claudia and Miles, and if so, I was the only one who could shed light on it. I reached over and touched Fawn’s shoulder with my fingertips.

  “What?” Fawn twitched roughly, brushing me off.

  “There’s something you need to know. Donald raped me.” The word felt jagged, toxic in my mouth. I still wasn’t sure rape was the right word to describe what happened, but it was as close as I could get to the truth just then.

  “What?” Fawn said, propping herself onto her elbows. “Define rape.”

  “He forced me to have sex with him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. I was there, you know.”

  “You were high as a kite is what you were.”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t remember what happened.”

  “All I’m saying is, if you were too high to tell him no, whose fault is that?”

  It felt as if I’d been punched. All I could do was sit there, panting shallowly, until I became dimly aware of Skinny Man in his yard. His garage door had come up and he squatted at the mouth, oiling the blades of his push mower with what looked like a furry pink mitten. There he was, the same as always, worrying about his crabgrass, his earwigs, as if nothing had happened. The police had obviously released him once they found the car and my purse and ID, or even before. Whatever the search had turned up in his house, it hadn’t been enough to hold him. And what had the police found? I guessed we would never know. Whatever his secrets, they were safe now, his to keep.

  Fawn flopped over and adjusted her bikini top, causing Skinny Man to perk up. He was on his knees near the driveway by this point, rooting up skeletal dandelions already gone to seed. Even if the police hadn’t revealed who’d accused him, hadn’t he guessed? I just assumed he’d be outraged, that he’d show up at our door, pissed and demanding to talk to Raymond. But he was just as pathetic and sad-sack as ever. Every time he wrestled up a dandelion, he’d gaze longingly at Fawn before tossing it in a pile, and I felt embarrassed for him. Fawn wouldn’t give a shit if he fell over in the road pining for her, if he committed suicide with his weed whacker before her very eyes.

  “I can’t believe you don’t care what happened to me, that you don’t care about Claudia,” I said, suddenly realizing it was true.

  “Oh, grow up why don’t you?” Fawn said coldly. “Shit happens.”

  Shit happens.

  I hated her at that moment. Hated her with the same precise intensity I had loved her with before. They seemed two sides of the same coin, love and hate, hot and cold wires running from the same conduit. Fawn hadn’t changed. From the moment I had first met her, she hadn’t altered one iota.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I said, standing. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself.”

  “And you’re so different? You don’t really care about Claudia. You just feel guilty. You think if you cooperate and help them find her, you can feel good about yourself again, a good girl and the big hero to boot. You’re so full of shit and you don’t even know it.”

  “Bitch!” I half-screamed.

  “I may be a bitch, but at least I’m not a liar.”

  “Yes you are. You lied to Raymond, to the police, and the Fletchers just like I did.”

  “Everyone lies to other people, asshole. But you, you’re lying to yourself.”

  I rushed toward the house, tears clouding my vision. After a long, singeing shower, I dressed with a sigh and went into the kitchen where Raymond was cooking dinner with the seriousness of a funeral director.

  “Go call Fawn in to eat,” he said without looking up from the skillet.

  “Do I have to?” I said warily.

  “How ’bout you just do what I tell you for once? How about that?” He picked up an oven mitt off the counter and threw it down again.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, and went to get Fawn though truthfully I would rather have shoved toothpicks under my fingernails. “Raymond says dinner,” I said from the welcome mat, then ducked back into the house.

  “She coming?”

  “I think so.” I sat down in my usual place. On my plate there was a gray-brown pyramid of Tuna Helper and canned peas. In the center of the table a stack of buttered white bread rose from a flowered plate like an ordinary island. It made me want to cry. Things had been so easy at the beginning of the summer. I’d been happy, and whether I’d wasted that happiness or it had been stolen from me, it didn’t matter. Gone was gone.

  When Fawn walked in, she was still in her bathing suit, her towel wrapped around her waist like a sari. “Gourmet as always, I see,” she said.

  “Go and change please,” said Raymond as he dismantled a piece of bread.

  She sat down. “If you don’t like the way I look then don’t look at me.”

  “I’ve had about enough from you, miss,” Raymond said with a huff.

  “Same here,” Fawn said. The fork she held seemed to balance of its own accord over her plate. No one moved or spoke for several seconds. I stared so hard into my peas they began to blur and merge.

  Finally Raymond stood. He held his full plate in his hand, walked it over to the sink, and dumped it without ceremony. “When your mother asked if I’d take you for the summer,” he said, turning around, “she warned me about you. But I didn’t listen. I told her I could handle whatever you could dish out, and I can. I can handle you, but I don’t want to. Everything you touch turns to shit and I just don’t want that in my house anymore.”

  “Fine then, just give up on me. Everyone else has.” There was bitterness and self-pity in Fawn’s voice.

  “Don’t even try to put this back on me. You’ve brought this on yourself. You had your chances. How many chances, now, Fawn? I know your story. I know what you’re about.”

  “You don’t know a thing about me, old man, so don’t even.”

  “I do, Fawn. I do know.” Raymond left the kitchen then. He didn’t huff or storm out, just walked calmly through the front room, grabbing his keys on the way, and was out the door. Seconds later we heard his truck start and rumble away.

  “That’s just perfect,” Fawn said, shoving her plate with the flat of her hand so that it scudded forward on the tablecloth.

  She stomped down the hall then, and I didn’t follow her. I knew Fawn would likely be packing and didn’t want to watch that. It was really over, now. Things were messed up beyond recognition and there was nothing I could do about it even if I wanted to. Did I want to? If it were possible, would I want Fawn to stay after everything that had happened? I wasn’t sure. I was just so angry with Fawn, angry with myself, angry with Raymond for washing his hands of Fawn—even if she deserved it. Because what did that mean for me? Was he done with me too? Was I headed back to Bakersfield, return to sender? The thought made me nauseous. I fed my tuna to Mick, my peas to the sink, and went to lie on the couch. Three hours later, fully drugged by back-to-back detective stories, I went in to go to bed. I wasn’t surprised to find Fawn’s bed empty. She had snuck out, of course she had, and was off doing who knows what with who knows whom. I couldn’t make myself care at that point. I lay down in my cot, pulled my sheet over my head, and fell promptly to sleep.

  It was only the next morning that I became aware of how completely abandoned the room was. Fawn’s bed was still empty and more than that, her clothes were gone, the closet door yawning open on nothing but the few things I actually owned. The denim jumper I had worn to the airport the day Fawn arrived lay in a heap on the closet floor like the trash it was
. Fawn’s makeup and her hairbrush were gone from the bureau top. The window screen swung wide open in a final fuck-you gesture. Certainly the screen had not been that way the night before. Fawn must have come in late when I was fast asleep. Come in and gone again without even bothering to spit a good-bye in my direction, but where? Where did she go?

  I blinked once, twice. What day was it? Sunlight butted its way through the bamboo, struck the milk-glass lamp, and winced through to leave a light pattern on the other side that vaguely resembled a rooster. Fawn was gone. Raymond was at work. What would I do with myself? How could I possibly fill the day that lay coiled ahead of me when I couldn’t even seem to fill my body, which felt dry and papery, the husk of something gone dormant. I crossed the room and lay down on Fawn’s cot. She had been wrong about one thing. Maybe I didn’t care about Claudia as much as I should have, but it was because I cared about Fawn too much. And for what? How stupid could I be? I tugged Fawn’s pillow up to my face to smell her coconut shampoo, her hair spray, and willed myself to sleep again.

  DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC?

  Over the Golden Gate and past the headlands at Marin, where poppies waved and ducked like bits of ignited paper, and then through Sausalito, Holly talked and Raymond listened—but only because he didn’t seem to have a choice. She was a girl Suzette had become friendly with at work, and Raymond wasn’t sure why she’d been invited unless it was a setup. As out of character as that seemed for Suzette—she’d certainly never wanted competition for his attention before—he could think of a few reasons she might want another woman around. Holly could be her version of a peace offering, a way to smooth the rough road between them. Or Suzette could be trying to distract him so she could make another, more focused play for Leon. Or—and this was Raymond’s best guess—either consciously or not, she wanted Raymond to screw around in front of her so that her mistakes would be out of the spotlight for a moment, the playing field leveled. But regardless of Suzette’s motives for bringing her along, Raymond had no intention of sleeping with Holly. She was a pretty enough girl, with very pale clear skin and a coarse auburn braid she wore over her shoulder. Occasionally the tip of it slid into the neck of her shirt, puckering out the fabric to expose a bit of her white cotton bra. But as attractive as she was, she also never shut up. While Leon and Suzette rode ahead on Leon’s brand-new Kawasaki, Holly told Raymond everything about herself: childhood stories, dead pets’ names, particularly revealing aspects of her star chart. She was a double Pisces, and what that meant, as far as Raymond could tell, was that she wanted him to see her soul, up close and personal. She had all sorts of whack-ball theories about intimacy—a word she spoke with gravity and a lead-heavy stress on the first syllable—like “naked therapy,” something a friend at Berkeley had turned her on to.