“Sorry, have you seen a girl in a dress walking around?”
“No. Now, git!”
Jay lifted a palm and put the car in reverse.
What could he do? He drove around the lake, far beyond where Liz could have walked. Versions of the same vision flashed before him: Liz crouched down like a frightened animal in this dry ditch or behind that ruined shed. How could she be so stupid? Where had she gone? He made one more drive around the boat ramp and the park, then headed toward Liz’s neighborhood, thinking he’d find her walking along the road and convince her to get back in. But he reached the subdivisions without having passed a soul.
A black mood that had settled over him at the prom (it had been almost cozy, the way it muffled his perceptions) began to lift. He no longer felt drunk. Slowly he began to see that he could be in trouble—real trouble.
He drove past Liz’s dark house, parked in the cul-de-sac, and crept across the Padgetts’ lawn to peer into the garage. Liz’s car and that of her parents were there. This meant her parents were at home asleep and Winston was still at the prom.
Jay cruised the streets for a while, looking for Liz. Where was everyone? Even for the late hour, the neighborhood seemed eerily deserted, the big houses dark and cheerless behind their blazing porch lights.
JANET VAN BEKE was startled out of sleep by the sound of the doorbell. “Carl?” she instinctively said, groping for him across the bed.
“Mmm?”
“The doorbell.”
“What time is it?”
She took her glasses from the bedside table and held them, still folded, to her eye to make out the glowing red numbers. “Nearly midnight.”
The doorbell sounded again.
“Who on earth?” said Carl, heaving himself up and pawing the floor with his feet for his slippers.
Janet pulled on her bathrobe and followed her husband down the stairs. They both heard Jay before they saw him: “Janet? Carl?”
“Oh. It’s Jay,” Janet breathed.
Jay peered in from the foyer. “Sorry,” he said. “I used my key.”
“What’s going on, Jay?” said Carl. He spread his knees and lowered himself onto a chair at the foot of the stairs. It was a decorative chair, rarely used, and he couldn’t have meant to stay there long.
Jay directed his answer to Janet: “I made a mistake. Can you call the Padgetts for me?”
“What happened, Jay?” said Janet. “Is Winston all right?”
“It’s not Winston, it’s Liz.”
“What happened?”
Jay hesitated. Carl gazed away into the den, apparently content to stand guard while Janet dealt with the boy. Jay had always been more her project than his.
“She ran off.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. Just— Could you just please call the Padgetts and see if she made it home?”
“I am not going to wake up Carolyn Padgett in the middle of the night unless I know exactly what is going on.”
“Liz ran off, out by the lake.”
“Did you have a fight?”
“No. I just— She didn’t understand.”
“Jay, have you been drinking?”
“No. Yes.”
Janet didn’t abide drinking, not in her own children and certainly not from Jay. She allowed a long silence to follow his admission. Then she said, “Is there anything else I should know before I call?”
“No.”
Janet went to the kitchen to make the call. In her absence, Jay and Carl said nothing.
“Liz is at home,” Janet said, returning. “She’s all right, but she’s not very happy.”
Jay nodded without lifting his eyes. “Can I stay here tonight?”
“No, Jay.”
“Why not?”
“You know why. This is not your home. Lina should have made that call just now, not me.”
“She doesn’t know them.”
“She should.”
Jay made a sarcastic noise.
“And what’s more, I’m not letting you drive, in the state you’re in. I’m going to call Lina and have her pick you up.”
“No!” shouted Jay.
This was enough to rouse Carl. “Listen, Jay,” he said, “you’re the one who screwed up tonight. I think from here on in, we’ll make the rules.”
“Just let me stay here, please!” This was the voice that had preceded a temper tantrum when Jay was a boy; it had that waver, that seed of hysteria. It was so different from his usual cool key that Jay himself seemed unable to recognize its childish ring. “I’ll go home in the morning!”
“We’ve had this talk before, Jay, and we’re not going to have it again. Not in the middle of the night. I’m calling Lina.”
No sooner had Janet’s back turned, though, than Jay dashed out the front door. Carl and Janet gave each other a look. They walked across the carpet and stood in the open door to see the taillights of Jay’s Maverick disappear around the bend.
Then they closed the door—too soon to see a Buick that had been parked under the low-hanging branches of an oak across the street turn on its headlights and follow.
LINA STAYED UP watching TV after Enrique had gone to bed, and eventually fell asleep on the couch, with the dim intent of seeing Jay when he came in. The phone rang, and Lina leaped up to answer it before it awoke Enrique.
“Hello?”
“Lina?”
Lina was so overcome that she had to sit down at the table and gather herself before speaking. It had been an entire season since she had heard Chuck’s voice, as he had obeyed her after their night together and left her alone. She had cleaned his house in the meantime, although it hardly needed it, and seen his little traces: his clothes in the hamper and his coffee cup in the sink. With Abby and Sandra away, he must have been eating every meal out.
“Lina, are you there?”
“Yes, Chuck.”
Lina heard Chuck take a few deep breaths. Then he cleared his throat and said, “I was thinking I could come by, just for a minute, and you could come out . . .”
So, it had happened. Sandra was dead.
“Yes,” said Lina. “When will you be here?”
“Ten minutes.”
Lina sat at the table, overwhelmed by thoughts, waiting for the sound of the car. Enrique staggered from his room to the bathroom. He emerged a minute later with concern in his sleepy squint. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, just can’t sleep. I’m all right, though.”
Enrique nodded and returned to his room.
Lina put on her coat and went outside. She saw Chuck’s Cadillac pulling into a spot up the road. With her heart racing, she walked to the car, opened the door, and eased into the velvety, scarlet interior she had until now only seen from the outside. The front seat was broad and soft as any sofa, and the lights of the massive console of the dash glowed orange like the hot coil of an electric range top. Finally, she looked up at Chuck, who seemed pale and fragile.
A woman’s voice issued from the dashboard: “Passenger door is ajar.”
“Wow,” Lina said as she opened and closed her door. “Your car talks.”
Chuck smiled wanly.
Lina reached for his hand and squeezed it.
“I have to go to Salt Lake tomorrow,” he said. “My flight’s at seven. I should be packing. I was packing, but then I ran out of strength.”
“I’m so sorry, Chuck,” said Lina.
“Thanks,” said Chuck, the word a swing at something he couldn’t see. “I don’t know. It’s sad, isn’t it? It’s hard for me to tell. Am I sad? I just feel still. Everything’s become so simple all of a sudden, and still. She’s gone. Sandra no longer lives in this world. What do we do? We bury her.” By his facial expression, Lina could see that he was surprised at what lay around the corners in this labyrinth. “I wanted to see you. Not for you to give me hope. I don’t want to corner you. But if you wanted to— If you wanted to tell me there was some light at the end o
f all this . . .”
“Chuck,” Lina said, her eyes brimming with tears, “I love you.”
His shoulders, which she hadn’t noticed were bunched, dropped, and he gave a great sigh of relief. “You love me,” he said with feeling. He fell to her, and she held him.
She did love him. Without realizing it, she had been doing the work of loving him for months. She had protected him from his own feelings by only partially revealing hers. This was what she had been doing back on their night together, when she pretended to be asleep. She hadn’t told him she loved him because she did love him—enough to save him from his own love that would have grown out of control if it was fed.
At least this was the gift Lina now credited herself with having given him.
Chuck turned his head and kissed her with lips wet from her own tears. She clutched him. His tongue darted into her mouth, searching out her own tongue to lift it. His hand moved frantically to grip her thigh. His kisses came harder, they moved from her mouth to her neck. Then they ceased and Chuck went limp. “God, I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She hushed him, and a few minutes later he seemed to doze off in her arms.
Lina felt happy and complete, with Chuck returned to her at last. She looked down the line of trailers toward her own. Stars quaked in a puddle in the gravel road. This place wasn’t so bad. A figure caught her eye staggering from the trailer park’s bad neighborhood, holding his arm—a drunk, most likely. As he neared the lane on which they were parked, he was obscured behind the row of trailers. Lina hoped his noise didn’t wake Enrique.
She closed her eyes for a minute and breathed in time with Chuck. Then the sound of footsteps running on gravel startled her, and she sat up.
Lina would later wonder how Enrique knew just where to find her. “Mom!” he yelled, approaching the car.
Chuck started, and Lina got out. “What is it?”
Hugging himself in his pajamas, Enrique stepped from one bare foot to the other on the wet gravel. “It’s Jay,” he cried. “He’s all beaten up.”
Chapter 22
The suitcase, whose shiny shell bore no scuffmarks, lay open like a great Bible on her bed, and Connie nervously took articles of clothing from drawers and put them in. Then she took other articles out of the suitcase and put them back in the drawers. How many skirts would she need? She could wear them twice before washing them, three times perhaps, as she wouldn’t be working in them. Standing here between her bed and her bureau, she was essentially blocking Gene’s exit. His accordion door was open and he sat on his bed swinging his legs and watching her.
“Do you need out, Gene?”
“No?”
“Are you sure you’ll be okay until dinnertime?”
“Yes?”
Every answer Gene gave sounded like a question. To Connie it was a question, the same one, repeated: Are you really leaving me alone here?
“Do you want to go over to Enrique’s now?”
“No?”
Connie glanced out the window and saw that Lina’s car was still gone. It was Sunday morning. She knew Catholics went to services at odd times during the week. Did they also go on Sunday morning?
Lina was not at church, but at the hospital. She had spent the night there, while Jay’s arm was set, his face stitched, and his nose bandaged. When the light of dawn started to show over the steaming fields out the waiting-room window, Lina noticed Chuck across the lobby, waving, trying to get her attention. She had thought she wouldn’t see him until his return. She gently rose and left Enrique asleep in his chair.
“They found his car,” Chuck said.
“Where?”
“Off Cherry Lane, by the canal.”
“How do you know?”
Chuck shrugged. “I called a friend in the department. We can go get it now—you and I—and avoid the fee for having it towed.”
Lina looked down. “Aren’t you supposed to be going to the airport?”
“I have just enough time.”
So Lina awoke Enrique to tell him where she was going, and she rode with Chuck to the spot on the outskirts of town, behind a lot full of irrigation supplies (long stacks of silver pipes studded with sprinklers, chain-link bins full of plastic elbow joints and rolls of black rubber tubing), where those boys or men—whoever they were—had chased Jay down. The Maverick was unlocked, and the keys were in the ignition. Lina quickly scanned the weeds for droplets of blood, ashamed for some reason that Chuck might guess what she was doing. There were none. Maybe Jay’s attackers had taken him someplace else. Lina drove the Maverick back to the trailer park, then rode with Chuck back to the hospital. They kissed a dignified, loving, but exhausted kiss—a married kiss—and said good-bye.
“They say he’s doing okay,” Enrique said when Lina awakened him. “They’ll come get us when he’s ready for visitors.”
“Move over,” she said as she nestled in beside him to wait.
Now the suitcase was shut and locked, and Connie stood at the door holding it. “Gene, you’re sure you’ll be okay?”
“Yes?”
“Try to be home from Enrique’s by nine tonight, all right? That’s when I’m going to call. Now, give me a kiss.”
Gene came over, and she kissed the top of his head and gave him an awkward hug.
“Look at me, Gene.” She took his chin, and Gene squinted and squirmed as if the sun could get to him even here, indoors. “Come on. You won’t see your mom for a week.”
He softened a little. His eyes opened and his fingers reached up and took her earlobe.
Connie released a little laugh. “I love you. Be good,” she said.
As she pulled out of her parking space, she noticed Gene watching her leave. It jarred her a bit; she couldn’t remember him ever doing that before, looking out after her, his face like that of an anxious little pug dog in the kitchen window. She gave him a little wave and was gone.
By the time she got to the edge of Eula, she no longer felt rattled but, rather, electrified. As she pulled onto the highway, she gasped at her own audacity and laughed. She was going away!
“SHOULD I MAKE some eggs for Frank?” Wanda asked, standing over the sizzling pan. Another wave of nausea and hunger—the two were one for her these days—hit her.
“Nope. Won’t eat ’em,” said Coop. “I already got him his cereal.”
Wanda peered into the living room and saw the man cradling a mixing bowl in the crook of his arm and dipping into it a serving spoon, as if to stir batter. Wanda cast her eyes back to the bacon (better not to look!) and, with tongs, broke off a crisp end of a rippled strip, dabbed it on a paper towel, and ate it.
“I’ll call Maria in a bit,” Coop said, “see if she can meet us at the station. She’s probably up, but I like to let her sleep as long as she needs on a Sunday.”
“Uh-huh,” Wanda said. She was having second thoughts about going to the police. If only she could call Melissa! But Wanda remembered too well that awful day when Melissa had hung up on her. She couldn’t spring this on her just when everything was going right. Coop had scared away Alan, their stepfather, all those years ago. Couldn’t he do the same now?
Coop must have sensed her trepidation, because he said, “Best to involve the authorities as early as possible, way I see it. You’re in the right. He’s in your apartment.”
“It’s Hank’s name on the lease,” Wanda replied glumly.
“Your stuff at least. And you can always stay here for a while.”
“Thanks, Coop.”
They ate their breakfast; then, as they were cleaning up, Frank called from the living room, “Coop? Wander?”
“Whatya need, Uncle?” called Coop.
“Come in here. Somethin’ I wanna discuss with ya.”
Coop raised his eyebrows at Wanda. He took a beer from the fridge, cracked it open, and followed Wanda into the living room.
“Thank you,” said Frank, trading the bowl for the beer can. “Sit down, both o
f ya.”
Coop and Wanda obeyed.
Frank sipped the beer and shifted among his cushions. His eyes didn’t leave the television. “They have pills people take nowadays, help ’em not kill themselves. I saw it on TV. They say that, when you got a lot of relations killed themselves, you’re apt do it, too. I thought I should tell ya, while I gotcha both here, case you might want to start takin’ them pills.” Frank ended by nodding in agreement with himself.
Wanda glanced at Coop. If he had looked at her in the right way, she would have burst out laughing. But Coop seemed determined to take Uncle Frank seriously. He said, “Thanks for that, Frank. I’ll consider it.” And he moved to rise, but Frank stopped him.
“Hold on, now. I ain’t finished. I’m sayin’ you might want to start takin’ them pills, because yer brother Louis killed himself. And . . . and so did yer daddy.”
Now Coop shot Wanda a look, but she no longer felt like laughing. Wanda waited for Coop to say something, and when he failed, she said in a generous tone, “Uncle Frank, our daddy didn’t kill himself. He died— You—”
“I told you all that I killed him, ’cause that’s what he wanted me to tell ya. But I didn’t. He shot himself in the night.”
“You didn’t shoot him?” Coop demanded. He reached out and hit a button on the remote control, turning off the television.
Frank’s face dropped in shame, as if he were suddenly naked. “Turn it back on, please.”
With an exasperated shake to his head, Coop obeyed. “When did he tell you to lie to us? Before he did it?”
“We had a talk by the fire that night. He didn’t want you kids knowin’ what he was about to do.”
Coop’s face was red, the tips of his ears nearly purple. “So he looked at you and said, ‘Frank, I’m gonna kill myself, don’t tell the kids.’ ”
“Not in so many words. With Cooper men, kinder gotta read between the lines. You oughta know that.”
Wanda cried, “Why didn’t you stop him?” It was a belief she held deeply that her father could have fended off all her life’s troubles, had he lived.
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