The Right Side

by Spencer Quinn

  Her mother came closer. The skin on her face was so smooth, unwrinkled, unmarred; not even any—what were those grooves at the side of the eye? Crow’s-feet: that was it. She’d managed to get rid of the crow’s-feet? Here was aging gracefully, a state of being you heard about but didn’t often see. At the same time, something was wrong. LeAnne could see it in her mother’s eyes and their changing expressions: shock, horror, pain. It was around then that LeAnne realized she wasn’t wearing the sunglasses or the patch.

  “Oh, darling,” her mother said, and took a quicker step or two but then caught a heel on rough ground and stumbled, almost falling, almost losing her grip on a plastic bag she was carrying. She recovered and kept coming, her arms slowly unfolding, like some sort of embrace was in the plans. What the hell was the point of that, especially with her mother’s gaze locked on the right side of LeAnne’s face, all fucked up and out there for inspection? But no counterplan occurred to her, so she just stood there. Then her mother was right in front of her, throwing her arms around her, the plastic bag bumping against LeAnne’s back, and embracing her, holding her tight. “Oh, my darling girl.”

  LeAnne let herself be embraced but kept her own arms by her sides. Her mother’s tears dampened LeAnne’s shoulders. “You’re so thin, LeAnne. Much, much too thin.”

  “You’re wrong,” LeAnne said.

  “Oh, no, you are,” her mother said. “So, so thin, just like your friend said.”

  “What friend?”

  “That nice officer—Stallings, I think his name was. He said you were just a wraith. At least when I saw you in Germany you weren’t so very thin.”

  LeAnne remembered conv. with mom, fumbled through her mind for the details. “You came to Landstuhl?”

  Her mother nodded. “Don’t worry. They prepared me for . . . for memory issues.”

  Memory issues. No doubt about that. Wasn’t there something she’d been trying and trying to recall? Yes, number two, that was it. But what was number two? LeAnne caught a whiff of hot steel, came no closer than that.

  “Do you smell anything?” she said.

  “Maybe these,” her mother said, taking a box from her plastic bag and holding it out. “You asked for them in Germany.”

  LeAnne made no move to open the box. She pictured an explosion getting triggered the instant she raised the lid, crazy maybe, but so what? Crazy things happened in real life, and plenty of them.

  Her mother ended up raising the lid. No explosion. Inside were neat rows of the baking specialty from long ago: those gingerbread men with the mint-green eyes. At that point LeAnne started crying, not sobbing or bursting into tears, just slow and steady like it would never stop. They stepped into each other’s arms, the gingerbread men falling free and breaking to pieces on the hard desert floor, and clung together for what seemed like a very long time.

  They sat in the tent, LeAnne on the sleeping bag, her mom on the camp stool. LeAnne put on the patch but kept the sunglasses in her lap. Indoors with the sunglasses was just too dark and narrow, and besides what was she hiding now? Her mom had seen what there was to see.

  “Mr. Stallings believes you should go back to Walter Reed,” her mom said.

  “So he can watch my every move?”

  “Why would he want to do that? And as it happens, I’d already booked a flight for next Tuesday.”

  “Booked what flight?”

  “To come see you.”

  “Sorry to mess up your plans.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” LeAnne said. “I’m never going back there.”

  “But I got the impression your treatment’s not finished. Mr. Stallings said—”

  “Don’t want to hear about him.”

  “Whatever you say. In fact, this will be much better.”

  “Anything’s better than the hospital.”

  “I’m talking about what’s happening next.”

  “Which is?”

  “You’re coming to live with me, of course. With me and Alex—we’ve already discussed it, it’s all set. All the kids—the other kids are out and on their own now, don’t know if you’re aware of that—so you’ve got your pick of bedrooms.”

  Her pick of bedrooms: the one she wanted was Marci’s.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Nothing,” LeAnne said.

  Her mom glanced around the tent. “Um, at the risk of mentioning Mr. Stallings one more—”

  “Captain, for Christ sake.”

  “—sorry, Captain Stallings one more time, he said that you’d been supplied with . . . ocular prosthetics is the term he used, I believe.”

  “So?”

  “Can I see them?”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “Because that’s what moms do.”

  “Like trying on prom dresses?”

  Her mom rose, came over, kissed the top of LeAnne’s head. “Yes, like that.”

  There was a long silence, nothing happening except LeAnne’s mom bent over her. Her smell was glorious and unattainable, like the flowers at a celebrity wedding. Despite that, LeAnne said, “The plastic case in the backpack.”

  Mom moved to the backpack, fished inside, drew out the plastic case. LeAnne twisted around for a better view of Mom opening it up.

  “Oh, my,” Mom said. “I didn’t realize there was a choice.” She held the case closer to the light coming through the open tent flap and gazed at the contents. The meaning of that old saying about not knowing whether to laugh or cry became clear forever when LeAnne saw the expression on Mom’s face: the look of a certain type of woman who knows all the ropes when it comes to high-end shopping. “I think the middle one, don’t you?” She brought the case over to LeAnne so they could study the contents together.

  The contents: three fake blue eyes, each nestled in a velvety little compartment. Mom pointed to the middle compartment, her fingernail immaculate, the color a muted ivory. “Sky blue is a much too general description. Your eyes, for example, are the blue of the winter skies we get here, and just after dawn if you want to nitpick.”

  “Eye,” LeAnne said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t have eyes, plural. That’s the whole point.”

  “I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m just so nervous, that’s all.”

  “You are?”

  “Why, of course,” Mom said. She didn’t look up. A tear fell and landed in the box, but on the velvet, not the objects. “Oh, dear.”

  “Hand me the instructions,” LeAnne said. “But I don’t see the point.”

  “Don’t you still want to look your best?”

  “Oh, Mom, Jesus fucking Christ!”

  Mom looked up. “And if not that, then how about so people don’t feel sorry for you, at least as a starting point? Give yourself a fighting chance—that kind of approach.”

  The smarts you get from your mom.

  “Well?” said her mom.

  “Did you think Dad was stupid?” LeAnne said.

  “What a question!”

  “Is that why you broke up? Fundamentally, I mean.”

  “He most certainly was not stupid,” Mom said.

  “Compared to Alex,” LeAnne said.

  Mom flinched, just a bit. “What’s the point of getting into this? People are smart in different ways, as I’m sure you know.”

  “How was Dad smart?”

  Mom laughed. “Like that, right there. What you just did.”

  “Okay, I give up.”

  Mom laughed again. This time LeAnne came close to joining in. Then they went outside into the good light, laid the plastic case on the hood of the Range Rover, and went over the instructions together. “Clear enough?” Mom said after a bit.

  “Yeah.” LeAnne reached for the middle eye.

  “Whoa,” said Mom. She felt in the pocket of her slacks, took out a thin pack of wipes. They both cleaned their hands, took the eye from its velvet-lined co
mpartment; and together fitted the eye into its place in LeAnne’s socket. Mom stepped back.

  “How does it feel?”

  “I don’t know. A little funny.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Mom said. She tilted her head. “One thing I can tell you—it looks great. You’d hardly even notice.”

  Mom reached into the car, got a mirror from her purse, and handed it to LeAnne. LeAnne took a look at her new self.

  “Well?”

  LeAnne tried to examine this new self objectively. The lid twister woke up from what was a pretty long slumber for him. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “It’s a step, LeAnne.” If there was any impatience in Mom’s tone when she said that, it was very slight. “Now let’s pack up and get going.”

  “Where?”

  “Where? My place. Mine and Alex’s. And yours, too, as long as you need.”

  Want would have been better, LeAnne thought. Who was going to be the judge of need, to blow the whistle when time was up? But she didn’t get into any of that. Instead, she said, “You’re sure he’s all right with this?”

  “Alex?”

  “Yes, Alex.”

  “No worries there,” Mom said. “He considers it his patriotic duty.”

  The wind rose suddenly, almost blew the plastic case off the hood of the Range Rover before Mom clamped a hand on it.

  “Tell you what,” LeAnne said, her voice remarkably steady, at least to her ears. “This will take me some time, breaking down everything, the shower, et cetera. I’ll be along in a bit.”

  “But we’ve moved. You wouldn’t even know where to go.”

  “Tell me.”

  Mom wrote out directions. It was pretty simple. “And here’s my number in case you need it.”

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  “We’ll have to do something about that. See you for dinner?”

  Then with a kiss on the cheek and a cautious three-point turn, her mom was gone. She left the mirror behind, and also her impossible smell, which lingered in the air for some moments before the wind took it away.

  “I’m not hungry,” LeAnne said. She closed her eye—her good eye—testing out the new one for any miraculous attributes. The world went blank. Strictly for show, her ocular prosthetic, differing from Marci’s prosthetic leg, which was actually useful. This new eye was just another kind of patch. LeAnne patted her pockets in search of the real one. No patch. Her mom had taken it.

  The wind picked up. LeAnne stood on her land, examined her . . . what would you call it? A campsite? That was it. She liked her little campsite. How long could she keep living here? With her mother around, the answer was: not very. But living at her mother’s place, every single day bumping up against Alex’s patriotic duty? No way. So what was the answer? She could get in the car, put the pedal to the floor, and find peace. No other solution occurred to her. LeAnne took another look at herself in the mirror. The fake eye did not look so bad. But the scars did look bad, and even worse was what the mirror couldn’t show, meaning behind the surface. LeAnne got down on her knees. The wind was now blowing strong enough to raise dust off the desert floor; the sky around her turned garish.

  LeAnne had never prayed. What was the point? Asking for help from a being that might or might not exist? And if the being did exist, how about stepping in before the desperate pleas were necessary, Mr. or Ms. Being? She wasn’t smart enough to answer these questions, or even find a place to begin. Down on the ground, she noticed pieces of broken gingerbread men. She picked up the remnants—arms, legs, and a head or two with those mint-green eyes—and ate them, realizing she was hungry after all. The taste was much drier than she remembered.

  LeAnne was picking a mint-green eye out of a gingerbread face when she heard a loud flap, like a clapping sound, and the wind lifted the tent and its pegs right out of the ground and sent it bounding and rolling like tumbleweed. That snapped her out of a bad inner place and got her moving. She was at her best when moving, something obvious she should have realized long ago.

  LeAnne chased after the tent, corralled it, jammed it into the Honda. Then she raced around, gathering up all the scattered things—backpack, sleeping bag, clothing, pill bottles, Bronze Star, loose sheets of paper—scuttling back and forth at 2241 Lost Hills Road. All of the stuff she threw into the car, and climbed in herself, huffing and puffing, heart racing, sweat dripping down her chin. What was going on? Some moments passed before LeAnne realized that for the first time in her life she was out of shape.

  She sorted through the papers. They seemed to have fallen from the manila envelope Captain Stallings had brought; things she’d left behind at Walter Reed. One by one she smoothed the pages and replaced them in the envelope. The very last sheet was a printout entitled: Getting to Know Your Xion-3 Prosthetic Leg. On the front were instructions and diagrams. The back of the printout was blank, except for some handwriting, round, neat, childlike:

  1. Strengthen hip flexors.

  2. Life fucking goes on.

  3. Get LeAnne to visit when I’m back “home.”

  LeAnne went over those listed items again and again, searching for meanings behind meanings, and finding lots—starting with the prosthetic leg, even more useful than she’d thought. Did prayer work? Maybe it was the down-on-your-knees part that did the trick, and all the blather was irrelevant. But whatever she’d been praying for, the answer was Marci.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The boonies. A nothing little town called Bellville. Rains all the time.

  Rolling hills, orchards, some sheep, some cattle, and it was at least drizzling when LeAnne passed a sign: Bellville 10 miles, Canada 22. Had Marci said anything about nearness to Canada? LeAnne had no desire to be in any sort of foreign country, not even one that she’d heard resembled her own.

  She stopped for gas at a crossroads in a one-light town, checking herself in the rearview mirror before filling up. The fake eye looked worst on dim days like this, unable to reflect any sparkle, and, of course, also unable to produce it from within. But nothing sparkling was going on inside her in the first place. There was nothing fake about the face in that respect, a kind of face you actually saw too much of in life, the face of someone who was beat.

  “But,” said LeAnne, getting out of the car, “I’ve never had cheekbones like this.”

  An older woman at the opposite pump heard her and glanced across. This older woman was plain and unadorned, in no way like LeAnne’s mom, but it was then that she realized she hadn’t told her mom she wasn’t coming to dinner after all, would not be moving in. And when was that? Yesterday? The day before?

  “Fuck.”

  “No need for language like that, young lady,” said the woman at the opposite pump, her gaze shifting to the right side of LeAnne’s face.

  “You the queen of the boonies?” she said.

  “Excuse me?” said the old lady.

  LeAnne decided to be the mature one and let it go. She went into the gas station, passing a man on the way out, a man with a case of beer under one arm and a roll of duct tape dangling from his hand, only interesting on account of his build—similar to her Daddy in his younger years, except way, way bigger. Other than that, no resemblance: Daddy’s face had been of the craggy type; this man’s face was round, almost babyish, with a wave of jet-black hair slanting over his forehead. He didn’t look at her and she only looked at him because he went by on her left.

  At the counter, LeAnne bought a prepaid cell phone, plus a bottle of vodka on second thought. Outside she drove away from the pumps, parked on the back side of the station, found the directions her mom had written; directions and phone number.

  “Hello?”

  “Mom?”

  “I thought you didn’t have a phone.”

  “Now I do. I guess I messed . . .” LeAnne ran out of words. She gazed at the steering wheel compass she’d picked up somewhere or other, the needle pointing right back at her. “What day is it?”

  “I’m sorry?
”

  “Today. What’s the day?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “Okay, thanks. Good to know. Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “I just couldn’t do it.”

  “Because I said Alex considered it his patriotic duty? That’s why, isn’t it?”

  “So?”

  “So? Some remarks are meant to be taken in a lighthearted way. There’s such a thing as being too thin-skinned.”

  “Meaning I’m the bad guy.”

  “Damn it, LeAnne. I didn’t say that.”

  “It said itself.”

  “What does that mean? You’ve got to find a way to move on.”

  “Too thin-skinned? The hell with you.”

  “I’ll ignore that. And moving on means treating people with respect.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “I’ll ignore that, too. But you could have at least let me know you weren’t coming. Didn’t you stop and think for at least a moment that I’d be worried? Whereabouts in Oregon are you?”

  “Oregon?”

  “Weren’t you there yesterday?”

  “What are you talking about? Does it say Oregon on your screen?”

  “Um, yes. Well, no. It doesn’t say anything.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. It’s a bad connection.”

  “I was in Oregon yesterday.” Or had it been the day before, or the one before that? But certainly not today. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “Nothing is going on. And I’d be very grateful if you wouldn’t speak to me like that.”

  “You and the queen of the boonies.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  LeAnne said nothing. She heard her mom taking a deep breath.

  “Please come back. If living here is out of the question, we can make some other arrangement.”

  “I’ll make my own arrangements.”

  There was a long silence. Then her mom said, “Suit yourself.”

  LeAnne left the gas station, headed for Bellville, the compass now pointing directly away from her. That was where she wanted any kind of pointing: away from her. On an empty stretch of road, she lowered the window and tossed her prepaid cell phone into a ditch.