Little Wrecks

by Meredith Miller

  How does he know? She says she guesses she is. Maybe. Sometimes.

  “That’s because you’re better than this,” he says. “You’re supposed to be different.”

  “You’re kind of the second person to tell me that tonight.”

  “None of those other people are really paying attention, though. I can see you. Keep talking to me.”

  “How come I can, though? Why are you so easy to talk to?” He doesn’t answer that. He doesn’t seem to answer anything, but he knows everything before she says it.

  “You want to stop things from just happening to you. That’s not crazy. It makes sense. You should be in charge for a change. You want people to pay attention. I’ll listen. I can help.” He puts his finger to his lips. “Don’t tell anyone else.”

  He gets out of the car then. When he stands up, his black coat falls down around his knees and the things in his pockets clink into place. He walks away without a word, leaving Ruth there in the backseat, feeling his absence. It’s another five minutes before Doris stops singing and turns around.

  “How you doing all by yourself back there, Lana Turner?” Doris says.

  “Doin’ good, Mae West.”

  Doris’s sharp laugh goes out the window, filling up the salty dusk.

  And Ruth won’t. Tell anyone. She feels light and strange ever since the night of the bonfire. Changed. Like she’s the kind of insect that goes to sleep and wakes up in a different shape, with shocking new abilities. It’s as if Virgil Mackie appeared on the crest of a wave. She can feel it, sucking the air from around her as it rises, moving towards them all. It keeps rushing at her when she isn’t looking. For the first time since she can remember, she just knows Magda and Isabel wouldn’t understand.

  eight

  ONLY FOUR O’CLOCK on Saturday and Isabel has to stop when she comes through the door to let her eyes adjust to the darkness in her front hallway. A maple tree throws shade over most of the front lawn. Dark wood furniture and Chinese silk wall hangings make it even gloomier. Then there’s the hideous wallpaper. Ruth says Isabel’s mom is talking through the furniture, and they should all listen. She doesn’t have to live here, obviously.

  “Isabel, where is your mother?”

  “Hello to you too, Dad.”

  “Hello, honey. Have you seen your mother?”

  Her dad is so chipper; it really doesn’t go with the house. Right now, he looks a little unhinged.

  “I don’t know; I’m not her keeper. Can I call Elizabeth?”

  “I haven’t seen her since I got up. She’s usually right here all day on Saturday.” Her father casts his eyes around the living room and then passes through the door to the garage. He looks lost.

  “Dad!” Isabel follows him. “Can I call Elizabeth?”

  “What do you want to call your sister for?” He says it with his back to her, staring at the garage door.

  “Uh, to talk to her. What are you doing in here? You think you’re gonna find Mom under the car or something?”

  “It’s expensive calling all the way upstate, Isabel. You need a good reason.”

  “Okay, you really want to know? I think something is wrong with Ruth and everything seems weird lately. I can’t tell whether things are finally beginning to happen or we’re just all falling apart and starting to go a little crazy.”

  “Ruth Carter?”

  “Yes, Dad, Ruth Carter. One of my best friends for the past two years. Pay attention.”

  “Honey, Ruth Carter has had a tough upbringing. You know, you should be careful with her. Why don’t you talk to your mother?”

  “She’s not here, remember? And even when she is, she isn’t. You know that.”

  “Don’t talk about your mother like that! Of course she’s here for you. She’s a good woman and she loves you. Imagine if Caroline Carter was your mother. Then you’d have something to complain about.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Ms. Carter. You are such a snob.”

  This is why Ruth is wrong about the house. It’s all just sick, the sideboards, the wall hangings, the tacky wallpaper. They have it right there in the hallway just to announce their up-to-the-minute taste to anyone who looks in the front door. It’s like these big black-and-white flowers say, “We’re hip, we’re cool, we’re so seventies.”

  The thing her parents hate more than anything is reality. That’s why her father looks so uncomfortable right now, because she told him how she actually feels. No one yells at you for it; they just space out and leave you hanging. You can try to tell them what life is actually like. Mostly they’ll just look away at that wallpaper and pretend they didn’t hear you. At least Magda’s dad gets mad. It sucks, but it’s something.

  “I just thought maybe I could talk to Liz. I feel a little worried about stuff. She might listen to me.”

  “Are you sure you haven’t seen your mother today?”

  When it’s time to go out to meet Magda at Dunkin’ Donuts, Isabel puts on her big, old army pants and ties them with a long piece of nylon webbing her dad brought home from his job at Davis Marine. Then she puts on a pink satin bed jacket Ruth got her at Attic Antiques. Then her Navy sweater, since she never feels safe in the dark without it. She gathers the ends of the sleeves up in her clenched fists and heads down the stairs. There is no light on in the living room and the empty couch startles her. It’s Saturday: her mother should be there in the corner of the couch, reading Rex Stout with a glass of Dubonnet and exactly eight slices of orange cheddar on saltines filling a plate next to her on the side table.

  Good she isn’t there, though, because it means Isabel can get enough money for doughnuts and coffee out of the big brandy snifter full of change that sits on the sideboard. Her dad throws the coins from his pockets in there every night. To get to them, Isabel has to lift up a scrap of paper that says, “Stop stealing my change. Yes, this means you.”

  Something about the dark room makes Isabel shudder. She opens the front door in slow motion, like she’s sneaking out, even though she isn’t. Just before she closes it, she hears a scratching behind the couch. A mouse maybe, or branches on the window.

  After Isabel’s dark living room, the light in Dunkin’ Donuts is like violence itself. From the night road it’s a box of glass and chrome shining like a sick beacon, drawing the dispossessed in from the night. Them and the cops who feed off them. Everyone looks green and deflated in there, and later it’s always hard to remember the details of what you’ve seen under the humming tubes of those fluorescents.

  It’s Vicky working the counter. Her hair is bleached like Jean Harlow, but with inch-deep roots as dark as FBI shoes. The pink uniform makes her look even paler than she is. She has two scabs on her chin, and you can see the scar on her upper arm from the time she ran away to the city and got cut up by a john in the subway. Vicky still has that deep, dead junkie look in her eyes. That’s what makes every guy that sees her want to touch her, no matter how many other guys have been there before them. Something about that crazy emptiness turns guys on.

  Whenever Vicky comes back to Highbone, she’s sad and dry and clean. After a while, she has a relapse and leaves town, then reappears a few months later with another piece missing. The manager at Dunkin’ Donuts always gives her the job back. He takes it out of her in trade. Everyone knows that, too.

  Isabel likes to imagine the places Vicky has been to and the things she’s seen, what it’s like on the highways and in the train stations. She wonders who are the poets Vicky sits next to on all-night bus rides to Florida and Chicago. What kind of things have been written about the sad, beautiful junkie without a name?

  “Hi, Vicky. You seen Magdalene?”

  “No, honey.” Vicky leans in close over the counter. “Just me and Officer Krupke tonight.” She throws a glance towards the smoking end of the counter, where a motorcycle cop sits with his mirrored shades next to his coffee cup. Not Highbone Police—county cops hang out in here. The highway is the village border.

  Isabel la
ughs. “Guess I’ll sit down here and wait.” No way she’s sitting at the smoking end next to that guy. “Will you make me a soul coffee, Vicky?”

  “Yes, Isabel, you weirdo.”

  “No one will make them for me when you’re away.”

  Half coffee, half tea. She read somewhere that Thelonious Monk drank it. It’s good once you get used to it. Isabel looks out at the road.

  “Charlie working tonight?”

  “Yes,” Vicky says. “And I’m pretty sure you knew that, missy. Think I’ve never been you?”

  He’ll be here at midnight for his baking shift. He’ll work until four in the morning, and if they come back around two when he’s done making the doughnuts, he’ll fry them special shapes out of the extra dough. They’ll ask for airplanes and Saturn and tulips, anything they can think of to stump him.

  The cop at the other end of the counter raises one finger at Vicky. “More coffee, sweetheart.”

  “I know,” Vicky answers, “just the thought of milk.”

  He thinks that makes him tough, like he’s fucking Easy Rider or something. Like extra milk makes you a pansy. Isabel makes a wide circle around the back of his stool on her way to the bathroom, looking at him like he might get her dirty. Vicky smiles over the cop’s shoulder with just her eyes.

  There is a swing door into a little vestibule with three more doors, to the kitchen, the men’s room and the ladies’. The air back there is saturated with powdered sugar, acid and invisible. After you hang out in the back with Charlie, all your clothes smell like that.

  When Isabel comes out of the bathroom there’s a vet from the hospital in the way, just standing outside the men’s room. He has greasy bangs hanging down over his eyes, and the nervous energy that’s trapped inside him is making one of his feet tap the floor fast as a roadside drill. She turns sideways to get around him, thinking about where Magda is and whether when she gets there, she’ll help her find Charlie at the firemen’s fair.

  The guy is so quick he’s under her Navy sweater before she even realizes he’s moving. One hand grips her left arm like a claw and the other one is groping like a priest’s, kind and soft and searching for her breasts. He’s holding her just below the elbow and it shocks her how strong his hand is. A minute ago, he was practically invisible, now she can’t even move to put any space between them. His jacket is three inches from her face. The words PROTECTIVE AGAINST VESICANT GAS are stamped over the breast pocket. He smells like Night Train and coffee and cigarettes and disinfectant.

  Isabel goes still, gathering all her strength up to use in one sharp burst, then twists as hard as she can around to the right and into the swing door. She says, “Take your fucking hands off me, pig,” but quietly, so the cop won’t hear. Every girl knows the last thing you need after some creep tries to feel you up is a cop. The force of breaking free makes her stumble a little, but she tries to come through the door like normal. Luckily, the cop has his back to her.

  Her soul coffee is waiting on the counter near the front door.

  “Thanks, Vicky. You are, hands down, my favorite waitress.”

  Isabel’s voice surprises her by shaking. Everything looks a little too big and too bright and she gets distracted by the traffic for a minute before she sits. Once her breathing slows down, her body starts speaking into the silence. There will be finger-shaped bruises on her arm. One side of her shivers like spiders are crawling up under her sweater, memory working its way out of her muscles. She picks up the mug, but her soul coffee sloshes out and she puts it down again. Vicky looks at her, then sideways at the door behind the cop, where the guy from the VA hospital is just coming through.

  He sits down and tries to catch Isabel’s eye, smiling a sly smile like they share a cool secret. Vicky sighs and puts a Bavarian cream down in front of Isabel without saying anything. Their eyes meet and they both know everything. Vicky’s are blue and watery. Not dead, clean. Everything just washes out of them, nothing sticks.

  “Magda’s late, man. Where the hell is she?”

  Magdalene is late. She shuts the kitchen door and walks around to stand for a few minutes in the dark under Henry’s window. Isabel will be waiting at Dunkin’ Donuts, wondering why Magda hasn’t appeared exactly when she wanted her to. It won’t occur to her that maybe Magda had to spend the afternoon and half the evening keeping Henry occupied in his room, counting whiskies until her father shut the door to his study and quieted down. They made a library out of Lincoln Logs and told a story about a librarian who kept a dragon and could knit rivers. That was Henry’s idea, knitting water into a long river like a scarf. There is a lady who knits at Highbone Library. That must be what gave him the idea. He definitely has the equipment for dreaming.

  She cocks her head, listening for her name, but Henry is swimming in his own empty darkness. He won’t surface until morning. The carriage house hulks in front of her at the end of the driveway, with her mother’s stuff piled inside. For the past two years, Magda’s father has thrown in whatever he’s found as he’s found it. He’s still doing it. There’s always a box at the bottom of the stairs in the front hall. He tosses in whatever he finds that annoys him and, when the box is full, carries it out and puts it here. Every box is a random collection of clothing, cookbooks, jewelry, exercise equipment, shoes, photographs, and makeup.

  The carriage house is made of painted green planks, and there is a door near the roof that once went to a hayloft, but it’s all one high-ceilinged room now. It’s so full of boxes and trunks that her dad parks his Volvo in the gravel driveway. She can feel the dead piles of clothes and shoes and pictures, saying nothing at all in the dark.

  “Fuck you,” she says to them, and heads out towards 25A.

  From the road, Magda can see Isabel sitting near the door of Dunkin’ Donuts with her sneakers tucked around the back of the stool and her elbows in their tattered sweater sleeves resting on the counter. Magda comes into the light and through the door, setting off the electric bell in the kitchen.

  “So, Isabel, about those papers you burned the other night?” She hoists herself onto a stool.

  “Drop it, Magda. For real. Private. Life.”

  “While we’re on the subject of private lives, you need to stop talking about how cool Mrs. Hancock is in front of Ruth.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, Isabel, Mr. Hancock is probably Ruth’s dad.”

  “Probably?”

  “No one ever talks about it, but everyone kind of knows. It’s weird. It’s been like that ever since I can remember.”

  “Shit. I had no idea.”

  “You never do, O’Sullivan.”

  “Fine, I do now. What about Matt? What about my plan?”

  “Oh, yeah, good idea, Isabel.” Magda looks sideways at the cop at the end of the counter. “Let’s talk about that now.” She smiles at Vicky. “Hi, Vicky. When did you get back?”

  “About a week ago. I was in Florida. I went with this guy who manages racehorses.”

  “Bitch!” Isabel says. “Was it warm?”

  “Yeah, warmer than here. We were on the west coast, though, by the Gulf. It’s nice there, but no tourists. Kind of boring, and the horse thing is really sad. They have these little spindly legs that won’t heal if they break. It’s like they’re not supposed to be made the way they are but someone glued the wrong parts together. They have tragedy eyes.”

  “I wish I could go to all the places you go,” Isabel says.

  Vicky just laughs.

  “Well, Isabel, sorry to disappoint you, but there’s just the firemen’s fair. No epic drama there. Nice you’re back, Vicky. See you later.”

  There’s a low, sickly sky over 25A, but it clears out into stars as they get closer to the water. Cars are moving past on Seaview Road, all heading in the same direction they are.

  “We should talk about the plan before we see Charlie.”

  “There is no plan, Isabel. Here’s the weird thing: impressing Charlie is not a big priority for me and Ruth.
Go figure.”

  “Fine, but I’m not giving up. We need to expand our repertoire. Develop our talents. I want Vicky’s life,” Isabel says. “Florida all winter, man.”

  “Vicky is a junkie prostitute, Isabel. What is she gonna do when she’s thirty-five? That is, if some guy doesn’t kill her first just ’cause that’s how he gets his rocks off. It’s not exactly a long-term, low-risk game plan.”

  “This is America, hon. Short-term, high-risk built this country. Guys will pay to look at you naked. How nuts is that? They’re always gonna be grabbing us and shoving their hard-ons up against us. There’s no stopping ’em; we might as well work somewhere with a bouncer and charge them for it.”

  “Yeah, that’s really working for Vicky. ’Cause she isn’t covered in scars or anything. Her life is not your amusing fantasy. Show some respect.”

  It never lets up. Even at night when Henry is asleep, there are Isabel and Ruth flinging themselves at destruction. She still has to be the one standing in the way. Magda flicks a cigarette butt under a passing car, wishing it would shoot up the tailpipe and explode, just to give them something else to think about. But Isabel won’t let go.

  “All I’m saying is, it seems like to me we’re just as likely to get cut up here as Vicky is in the city. Highbone isn’t exactly a psycho-pervert-free zone. How do we make the best of it, is all I’m asking.”

  “There is no best of it, Isabel. It’s a big nasty machine, like a book by Dashiell Hammett. We’re gonna get dirty.”

  “Yeah, Magda, but I’m thinking maybe we can get dirty without being the ones who get hurt.”

  Looking down on the firemen’s fair makes Isabel dizzy. She and Magda lean out over the edge so they can be even dizzier. Like every year, the rides and the shooting booths and the towers of goldfish bowls and teddy bears are down there on the scrubland between the sea and a half-built executive development. You can still see it was an old gravel quarry. Isabel looks at the high sides of the pit, covered with shale, and at the expensive houses, with their acres of sod, spread out below them. There’s a bare concrete slipway that was supposed to be the marina, but no boats.