Red Road

by Wiltz, Jenni

  “I don’t. I want to learn how to drive and wear makeup.”

  “You don’t need any.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “I want you to be smart.”

  “You’re already the smart one.”

  “So be smarter.”

  “Like that’s possible.”

  “You can do it, Matt. You’re better than me at everything.”

  Her sister met her eyes in the mirror. “Em, you have to be nicer to Mom. She thinks you don’t care. She thinks you’re making everything harder.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  Mattie turned on the faucet and rinsed the excess face wash from her hands. “Just try, okay?”

  “Something’s not right, Matt. You have to feel it.”

  “Mom says everything’ll be fine. I believe her.”

  Emma watched her sister splash her face with water. With her eyes still closed, Mattie reached for the towel hanging from the wall mount. “Me too,” Emma lied.

  A few minutes later, she put on her Daffy Duck pajamas and crawled into bed. Water rushed through pipes in the floor and she knew that someone, somewhere in the house, had flushed a toilet. We’re like ghosts, she thought. Communicating presence through plumbing and bad carpentry.

  Everything that was wrong could be traced back to that one terrible night, when a thread in the fabric of space and time had been snagged. It crumpled the air between them, creating rifts and canyons with their own storms and weather systems. What if those storms never went away? What if she and her mom grew apart, content to live on opposite sides of the tempest?

  There was only one person who would tell her the truth. The piece of paper with his number was still in her desk drawer. She wondered if her dad’s smart phone, the only one they had, was in its usual spot downstairs, on the built-in desk next to the laundry room. Emma flung back the covers, grabbed Dan’s number from her desk, and crept out of her room.

  The hall was dark. No light shone from beneath Mattie’s door or her parents’. A solitary patch of moonlight fell through the skylight, illuminating the banister rail. She curved her palm over the rail and stepped down each stair. Two from the bottom, she stopped, the pulse pounding in her throat.

  Her mom was downstairs.

  Her mom was talking to someone.

  “Hello, this is Sharon West,” she said. “I submitted my application a week ago, and wanted to check on the status. I’m available for interviews any time this week.” She paused. “I don’t know if Christy mentioned anything, but this job is very important to me. I have two daughters and my husband isn’t able to work right now and . . . we’re . . . ” There was another long pause. “I can work nights, weekends, overtime, graveyard shift, double shifts, anything. Please don’t hesitate to call me at this number, 831-555-4589. I look forward to hearing from you.”

  Emma heard a soft plastic click. Two seconds later, she heard a gasp and the rough slide of a tissue being pulled from its box. Her mom took one deep breath then picked up the phone and dialed again.

  “H—hello, this is Sharon West. I submitted my application a week ago.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Friday, April 11

  When Emma came downstairs that morning, her dad was already at the table. Haloed with grey morning light, he stared at his folded hands. If he’d been kneeling, she could have mistaken him for a medieval monk, clad in a bathrobe instead of a habit.

  “Dad, what are you doing? Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

  He turned his head to look at her, left eye still plum-purple and swollen. “I don’t think I can sleep anymore.”

  She filled a bowl with store-brand bran flakes. She liked the way they got soggy all at once, releasing a faint metallic taste that made her think of holding a nickel in her mouth. “Do you need anything? I can make you some tea or get you some water.”

  He shook his head. “What will you do at school today?”

  “Turn in my Lonesome Dove paper.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Lonesome Dove.”

  “What’s it really about?”

  “People who die because they can’t adapt.”

  A faint smile lifted the corners of his lips and the silver beard surrounding them. “You’re so smart, Em. I don’t want you to do anything to ruin that.”

  “What would I do to ruin it?”

  He unfolded his hands and bulbous blue veins rose on their backs, like worms taped to their surface. “When you were born, you didn’t even have a name. Your nametag said ‘Baby Girl West.’ You were eight weeks early and had to stay in an incubator. The nurses put their hands in gloves and tried to rub you warm, but nothing worked. And then I realized it was because you didn’t have a name.” His eyes flickered sideways, moving from her head to her hands. “When my mother died, we found a box of baby girl’s clothes in the back of her closet. It had five outfits in it, each with a tiny nametag sewn in—her grandmother’s name. Your name. Instead, my mom had five boys.”

  “I never knew,” she said softly.

  “So that’s the name I chose for you. The name of a baby someone wanted for years and never got.”

  “Dad, I—”

  “I gave the nurses your new name. I watched them write your nametag from the hallway and I put my hands on the glass, even though they told me not to. I told you this name would make you strong.” His lips curved in the echo of a smile. “I told you to fight to get well so I could come and meet you. And you listened.”

  Emma felt a sob bloom like a choking flower in her throat. She’d seen pictures of her dad in those days, with long hair, gold-rimmed glasses, baggy jeans, and big flannel shirts. She tried to imagine him having hopes and dreams that didn’t involve her and Mattie, but she couldn’t. He’d given them all up the day she arrived.

  “You listened,” he said again. “You twisted your body in the incubator, like you were trying to read your new nametag. You looked at it, you looked at me, and then you screamed. You were telling me you understood. And you’ve always understood, ever since.”

  “Except now.”

  “You’re stubborn, Em. It was a good thing when you were in that incubator, but now . . . ”

  Emma tried to force her anger to displace everything else, but she couldn’t. All she saw was a wrinkled red raisin of a girl, screaming because they kept her in a plastic box. He had loved her even then. At the heart of everything was love, always love.

  “Dad, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

  His dark eyes smiled so his lips didn’t have to. “I wanted to be a dad.” He got up and shuffled toward the stairs, one hand pressed to the base of his arched spine.

  Emma felt that curve the way a fish feels a hook in its mouth. “Dad,” she whispered. “I need help.”

  But he didn’t hear her. He coughed and bent double, his throat dry from too much talking. Bruised and scabbed, his right hand gripped the banister until his knuckles glowed.

  • • •

  There were still twenty minutes to go in English class. In newer classrooms, like the portables, the clock’s second hand twirled like a mechanized ballerina. In older classrooms, like this one, it thunked like an old man’s cane. Emma liked the old ones better. Without even looking, you knew how much closer you were to getting out.

  Today, Mrs. Evans wore a blue polka-dot dress with pantyhose and open-toed shoes. There was a ring on her left hand, a big black stone bound to the band with multiple strands of gold wire. It didn’t look like a wedding ring, unless she got married in Middle Earth.

  While Mrs. Evans read the daily bulletin, Emma reached for her binder. There was something she had to do today, before anything like last night happened again. She opened the zipper pouch and shoved the pens and pencils aside.

  It wasn’t there.

 
She didn’t remember throwing the detective’s card away, but it was the only explanation for why she couldn’t find it. Emma zipped the pouch shut and tried to remember whether he also gave a card to the school secretary.

  “Okay, class,” Mrs. Evans said. “Now that you’ve read Of Mice and Men, I want you think back to freshman year, where you read another book that ended with a controversial killing. Do you remember?”

  Emma knew where this was going—Mrs. Evans wanted them to remember The Ox-Bow Incident and say that in Ox-Bow, the characters killed for their own good while in Mice, a character killed for the good of another. English teachers were the worst at asking questions that didn’t telegraph the answer.

  She reached into her backpack and pulled out the maroon notebook. She turned past the pages where she described her mom’s Miss Havisham décor. On the next page, she’d written “Alejandro Espinosa,” followed by the address she heard the policeman repeat to her father that night. Beneath the name and address, she’d already sketched a rough map of East Malo Verde, from Greenwood Boulevard to Vera Cruz Road, marking stoplights with Xs. Now, beneath the map, she wrote the other name Elvira had given her: Hector Espinosa.

  Which of them had smashed his fist into her father’s nose? Whose bloody handprints were on his shirt? It had to be Hector. The name was compact and powerful, like a boxer. A punch from someone named Hector would hurt.

  “Anybody?” Mrs. Evans asked. “Does anybody remember a book about a hanging?”

  Emma bit her lip to keep from answering. It was habit now, the same way Rachel inspected her hair for split ends. She scraped the ridges of her two front teeth across the pale, slick skin where she’d punctured her lip. I remember, she thought. And if real life were anything like that book, the Espinosas would have been hung a week ago.

  • • •

  When class let out, she told Rachel and Via she had to go to the bathroom. For once, being on their shit list worked in her favor. They shrugged and she dashed off before either one could decide they’d go with her.

  She ducked through the crowded main hallway, where football players twice her size held court surrounded by cheerleaders who looked half her size. For the first time, she absorbed the comparison without placing herself between them on the spectrum of female thinness. She had bigger problems now.

  In the main office, the secretary asked how she could help. “I was here the other day,” she said. “You called me in to talk to a detective.”

  “Oh, Miss West! Yes, I remember you.”

  “Do you have the business card the detective left? He gave me one, but I can’t find it.”

  “I think it’s around here somewhere.” The secretary lifted her desk blotter to reveal an assortment of cards and gum wrappers. Emma’s eyes scanned the logos, looking for the familiar star with a green field painted in its center.

  “There.” She pointed at a card with the badge printed on its left-hand side.

  “Good eye.” The secretary pulled out the card. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

  “Can I borrow it?”

  “Of course.” The woman handed it to her. “I have his name on the guest register.”

  Emma slipped the card into her jeans pocket. “Thanks,” she said, slipping back through the door and vanishing into the anonymity of the main hallway. There were still four minutes until the first bell. If she ran out of time, she’d be late for chemistry . . . and Dan. It couldn’t be helped, she thought, remembering her dad’s whisper: They found us. If the Espinosas really were coming back, someone had to do something.

  She followed the main hall to the end of the building and exited the courtyard. Tucked into a corner was a small bay of payphones, left over from the days when no one had a cell phone. One day, when Mr. Parker decided to lecture on government waste instead of King Phillip’s War, he’d talked about blocking the school’s plan to remove the phones because it would have cost $3,000 to contract out the work.

  Emma said a silent thank-you to Mr. Parker’s budgetary conscience and counted the change left over from an impulsive candy purchase. After three seconds in her palm, the coins gave off the heady metallic scent she loved best in the world. Two quarters bought her a dial tone.

  His phone rang once, then twice, then three times. He picked up on the fourth ring. “This is Kobi.”

  “Detective Kobilinski? This is Emma West. You talked to me at school the other day about my father’s case.”

  “I remember you, Miss West. What can I do for you? Did you remember something you want to tell me?”

  “I’m calling to ask for an update. Have you found out anything new since last time?”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” She imagined him swinging his feet down off the desk. “Are you riding my ass?”

  She stared at the silver and black phone box. Someone had written “14 Vida” in gold glitter pen on the top of it. Beneath it, someone else had written “chap RIP” in bloated bubble letters. Emma had seen that insult—chapete—in an online forum a few days ago, where forum posters bragged about their stockpiles of weapons in garages all over town. “If I were doing that, I’d have called you two days ago.”

  “Kid, what makes you think I’d tell you anything I knew?”

  “My parents pay taxes.”

  “That doesn’t mean I work for you.”

  “Have you figured out which Espinosa attacked my father? There are two of them, in case you didn’t know.”

  “I did know, but I’m surprised you do.” Kobilinski sighed. This time, she pictured him holding the phone against his right ear while he slipped his left arm out of his suit jacket. “Listen, even if I knew one of them was guilty, I couldn’t tell you. Not until we make an arrest.”

  “Are you going to make an arrest?”

  “No.”

  “Could you?”

  “I know what you’re trying to do, kid, but the law works this way for a reason. The evidence decides who is guilty.”

  “I thought it was the jury.”

  “Look, I can’t tell you anything about an open investigation. End of story.”

  “What if someone gets shot tomorrow? You’ll forget all about my dad. Our lives will still be ruined, and they’ll get away with it.”

  “You’re right. And I wish it could be different. But there are procedures I have to follow. If no one talks, there’s no evidence and no one gets arrested.”

  “Then make them talk. Someone did this. Someone had to have seen it.”

  “What are they teaching you in school, kid? Gestapo 101?”

  Heat blossomed in her cheeks. It traveled down her neck and deep into her chest, where it burrowed into the chambers of her pulpy heart. In a world where people went to jail for shooting burglars and rapists in their own homes, she shouldn’t have expected anything different. “You’re telling me we don’t matter.”

  “I’m telling you your family doesn’t matter any more or less than the Espinosa family. They have rights, too. I can’t give you what you want, kid. I’m sorry.”

  She thought about asking to speak to his commanding officer, because that was what people did on cop shows, but she had no confidence that anyone else in the station would be more willing to help. She fired her last round of ammunition. “My dad said they’re coming back. They have our address from the truck registration.” She paused, and then decided her dad’s version of events had a better chance of making waves. “We saw two of them last night, cruising past our house.”

  “Did anyone call and report it? Did you get a license plate on them?”

  “No,” Emma said slowly.

  “Then I can’t help you, kid.”

  “I read an online forum. There were Norteños and Sureños, bragging about how many guns they’d stockpiled. That’s evidence, right?”

  “Look, I got a stack on my desk a hundred cases high. At lea
st eighty of them are armed robberies and forty-seven are weapons trafficking. Every hefe in East Malo Verde has a gun, a gun I can’t trace because it’s been stolen so many times even the gang members have lost count. The best I can do is go talk to the neighbors again and see if they heard or saw anything. If you see anything else that tells you you’re in danger, get a license plate or a photo and give it to us. We’ll do the rest.”

  “I thought that’s what I was doing.”

  “Do your parents know you’re talking to me?”

  “Who do you think I’m doing this for?”

  “Miss West,” the detective said.

  “What?”

  “Study hard.” Then he hung up.

  Her stomach roiled with nerves, bile, and bitterness. Kobilinski wouldn’t help because he didn’t want to help. Flannery O’Connor was wrong. Good men weren’t hard to find; they were just easy to ignore.

  The second bell rang. She looked up at the cafeteria building, with its ugly rock exterior and a huge wooden hanging depicting their mascot, the Minuteman. Dressed in a loose shirt rolled up to the elbows and tight breeches, he held a rifle in his right hand. Everyone in this stupid town had a gun except for her.

  • • •

  As she stared at the mildewed grout on the locker room floor, she counted how many things she’d never done because she was afraid: try out for a sport, join a new club, eat lunch by herself on purpose. Most people at school pretended they weren’t afraid of anything, like Tim and the boy he almost fought. Were they better at hiding it, or was there something abnormal about the fear she carried with her all day, every day?

  She thought of the snowy TV screen she visualized to calm herself down when she was afraid. When most people looked at a snowy screen, they interpreted it as a signal to change the channel. She was the only one who interpreted it as a place to stay, a source of comfort.

  She smoothed the cuffs of her PE shirt as she made her way to the entrance of the locker room. Elvira’s cotton-candy gloss sparkled when she smiled. “Hey, partner. Is something wrong? You don’t look so happy.”