by Sharon Dunn
“Skateboard park, arcade, Joe’s house, mall, Kevin’s house. Some of his other friends, I’m not clear on their names.”
Tammy shook her head again then glanced at her watch, eight o’clock already. “I had stuff I wanted to get done. I was going to tell that Ginger lady that I think something bad did happen to her friend. I wanted to tell her in person.”
Her mom’s fingers fluttered to her mouth and her forehead wrinkled. “You could be back on patrol…or worse.”
“Keep your voice down. Cops work out here.” Tammy glanced from one treadmill to another and then to the StairMaster. She didn’t recognize anyone from the department. All the same, she leaned closer to her mother and whispered, “Didn’t you and Dad teach me to do the right thing, no matter what it cost?”
Mom nodded. “That we did.”
“Something is going on, and I intend to get to the bottom of it.” Tammy sauntered into the locker room with her mother trailing behind her. She grabbed her gym bag off a bench. No time for a shower. She’d just have to call Ginger and see if she could come by later. She wasn’t going to put this off another day. She slipped sweats over her workout suit. “I’ll take his friends’ houses and the skateboard park.”
“I’ll take the arcade and the mall and then head home to see if Trevor returned.” Her mom folded Tammy’s workout towel and handed it to her.
Only her mom would take the time to fold a dirty towel. Tammy unzipped her gym bag and set it on top of her street clothes. “When you get close to a phone, call me with a progress report.” Mom was probably the only person over twelve in America who didn’t own a cell phone.
The women left the locker room and headed toward the club exit. Tammy stood at the glass door. At this hour, the sky had only the faint hint of gray. Evening light waned. Already the tension had crept into the muscles between her shoulders. “One of us may have to go out to Kevin’s house. If we just call him on the phone, he’ll lie about Trevor being there. I don’t know about his other friends.”
On the sidewalk outside, a woman pushed a baby carriage past them. Tammy’s shoulders slumped. She closed her eyes and tried to picture Trevor as a baby. He’d been so beautiful. And she had been so hopeful, imagining a bright future for her boy, a college education, a good-paying job, a pretty girl to marry, and a love for the Savior to guide him. With the exception of the recovery of her faith, she had managed very little of that for herself. What silly notion had made her think it was possible for Trevor?
The woman stopped pushing the carriage, bent over, and gathered a bald baby into her arms. As though she’d been punched in the gut, Tammy felt herself crumpling from emotional overload.
Her mom touched her shoulders. “Tamela, dear, you have to stop trying to do this alone.” The older woman rubbed her back like she’d done when Tammy was little and couldn’t sleep. “He’s a boy. An old lady and an overworked mother can’t turn him into a man.”
Tammy took a deep breath. “You know, Mom, my brain just feels so hammered. I can only focus on the next thing I have to do, which is find my son, make sure he’s breathing and not on the way to the police station again.”
The clock in Ginger’s kitchen said that it was nine-thirty. “What time did that police lady say she was coming by?”
She sat at the table pushing her mashed potatoes around her plate while Earl ate his late dinner. She’d noticed the lasagna in the container was gone, but Earl had not argued with her when she suggested she warm him up something. It had been ages since they’d eaten together. Here she was knocking the word soul mates around her head, and they couldn’t even manage to have a meal together.
“She said she’d come by a little after eight.” Earl made a crater in his mashed potatoes and poured gravy into it.
They sat at either end of the table. Phoebe perched on the chair between them, the chair that had been their son Patrick’s. Ginger had put a pillow on it so Phoebe could see better. The cat’s huge head was just visible above the table.
Ginger unfolded her napkin by flipping it outward. “I’m not going to wait all night for her.” She really wasn’t interested in hearing more bad news from the police department. She placed her napkin on her lap. That poor Tammy woman seemed to be their official bringer of bad news.
“Aren’t you just going to bed?” He tore open his roll and slathered butter on it.
“The girls and I are going midnight shopping. I told you that.” Or at least she had put it in a note for him somewhere. “I have some other errands I want to run before that, and I told Kindra I would pick her up.”
“It might be a good idea to talk to the police.” His knife scraped the plate as he cut up the roast beef. “I got this strange feeling this afternoon that someone had been in the family room. The door was open, and some stuff was knocked around.”
Ginger glanced at the garage sale stuff she had brought in from the car. The room felt suddenly colder. “Someone was looking for something in our place?”
“It’s not like the room was torn to pieces, but my stack of books was knocked over, and your bills were spread out all over the desk.”
Ginger’s neck muscles pinched. “I always put the bills in a pile.”
Earl took a bite of his roll. “I know. From now on, I’m locking the house when I go out to the garage.”
She willed herself not to think about someone being in their house. Earl knew her habits. She knew his. But they didn’t know each other, not really. Not like Arleta had known David. She scooped up a forkful of mashed potatoes. It tasted like sawdust. From his chewing to the tinkling of silverware, every sound Earl made was almost deafening.
She took another bite of sawdust, chewing slowly. “Earl, do you remember any time that we did stuff together?”
“Sure, we went to the kids’ games and recitals and baptisms.” He stabbed the green beans with his fork.
Exactly, everything centered around the kids. “No, I mean really do something together, like go on an archaeological dig.”
Earl set his fork down. The creases in his forehead multiplied and became more distinct. “Go on an archaeological dig?”
What was she trying to say? “That’s just an example. What I’m trying to say is—” What she was trying to say was that if she had to live in a house where the only noise was the smacking chewing sounds he made, she would go insane.
On the drive home, Ginger had gone through the catalog of everything they had done together, every conversation she could remember. They must have talked about something besides the kids. Was the depth of their communication limited to how they would weatherize the house before winter hit? She hadn’t known that his dream was to invent something that changed the world. All this efficient, functional talking couldn’t be what soul mates said to each other.
Earl’s blank expression caused all the coherent thoughts to leave her head. All she could think about was the bulb of gravy on his upper lip. She pushed his napkin toward him, hoping he would get the hint. Earl bent his head back and narrowed his eyes at the napkin, like it was a neon lizard crawling across the table, but he didn’t pick it up.
Ginger traced the flower pattern in her tablecloth. Why wasn’t he following her? He was the one who suggested that their marriage lacked something in the first place. He was the one reading all those books.
“Do you remember the night Mary Margret disappeared?” Gathering courage, Ginger pushed her chair back and stood up. It was now or never. She put her hands on her hips and straightened her back. “What did you mean when you said I wasn’t supportive of you, that you needed a cheerleader?” There, she couldn’t be any more direct than that.
Earl wiggled in his chair and took two more bites of roast beef. He spoke slowly as though he were pulling each word up from the underside of his toenails. “I just meant that sometimes you say things that hurt my feelings.”
Phoebe yowled.
“Hush, Phoebes, Mama’s having a talk.” She had cooked and cleaned for this man for o
ver thirty years. She kept his sock drawer organized. Not an easy job. Why didn’t he say thank you? Her feelings were hurt, too. “Earl, I don’t want to live in a house this quiet. What’s happening to us? Don’t we have anything to talk about?”
“It doesn’t have to be this quiet.” Finally, he picked up the napkin and wiped the gravy off his lips. “This is the next chapter of our lives. We should live a little, do something adventurous.”
“Something adventurous?” It was her turn to have a blank look on her face. The way Earl changed his tune every ten minutes was likely to give her emotional whiplash. First, it was that she wasn’t supportive, and now he wanted to have an adventure. Why couldn’t he just make up his mind?
“I just think now is the time for us to chase our dreams. I’m going to invent something big. I am.” Earl rose to his feet and grabbed Ginger’s arm just above the elbow. “We could buy a Harley and tour the United States.”
Ginger gasped. Becoming a motorcycle mama had never been on her to-do list.
His shoulders slumped a little. “That’s just an example. All I am saying is we should do things we haven’t done before. Can’t you think of something you’ve never done before that you have always wanted to do? That you couldn’t do because we were busy raising the kids?”
Ginger shook her head. She had always believed she’d missed something by marrying so young. Now that she thought about it, she didn’t know what she would have done different. Did she have dreams beyond alphabetized spice racks and balanced budgets?
Earl grabbed his milk off the table and took a gulp. “I know. Go out tonight and pay full price for a dress.” He slammed the empty glass on the table. “That would be daring for you.”
Her vision clouded. She blinked fast five times. “Full price?” The words sounded foreign on her tongue. Her chest felt tight. She slumped back down in her chair. Full price? Was she having a heart attack? Her voice was a squeaky whisper. “I have never paid full price for anything in my life.”
Earl seemed energized by the idea. His eyes kept getting bigger and rounder. “That’s why it would be daring…for you. We don’t need to get motorcycles. That’s for later. We’ll take baby steps.”
Now he paced back and forth in the kitchen like he was center stage at the Met. “When we had four kids and money was tight, I appreciated that you found a way to make sure everyone had warm coats and winter boots.”
Ginger calmed a bit. He had noticed. “I buy out of season. That’s my secret.” She raised her chin.
“The thing is, Ginger, money isn’t tight anymore. God has blessed us. You could go out right now and pay full price for a new dress and buy matching shoes. It won’t break us.”
Full price. Full price. Why couldn’t he have asked her to do something easier, like climb Mount Everest or something? She tossed her napkin on the table and jumped to her feet. “You don’t want me to buy what’s on sale?”
Earl nodded, pressing his lips together. “Don’t even look at the price tag.”
Her rib cage squeezed tight. All the air left her lungs. White dots floated into her field of vision. She really needed to sit down and catch her breath. “Not even look at the price tag?” she wheezed. If he kept talking this way, he’d be phoning 911 before the night was over. Such crazy talk.
He threw his hands up. “Live dangerously. I’m not talking about doing anything wrong or sinful. I just think we need to have adventures. That’s what this time of our lives is about.”
Ginger studied Earl for a long moment. Who was this man in front of her? Where had Mr. Predictable, nine to five, fall-asleep-in-front-of-the-TV gone? Not that the man standing in front of her was unappealing. She liked his energy, his enthusiasm. She just wasn’t sure if she could keep up with him. “Maybe we should just buy a Harley instead.”
“Go tonight and buy yourself the dress you want, not the one that’s on sale. Sometimes I think you just buy something because it’s on sale, not because you really want it. Like that time you said you were going to get a winter coat for yourself, and you came home with that prom dress.”
“It was an evening gown, and it was 75 percent off.”
“But you needed a coat.”
She almost pointed out that she couldn’t find a coat on sale. Ginger closed her eyes. Okay, so Earl was right. She had some kind of weird condition. “I just don’t see how this will help.” How would this turn them into soul mates? How would this make the house less silent? Earl was going off the deep end, and she wasn’t sure she could go there with him…especially on a Harley.
Earl gathered Ginger’s hands into his. “You know when a man buys a woman a diamond necklace and they go out together and she wears it? That makes the man feel good. ’Cause the money he earned paid for the necklace.”
“Now you want me to get a diamond necklace?” Ginger pulled free of Earl’s grasp and rested her head in her hands.
“What I’m saying is, when you keep buying stuff at those cut-rate prices, it’s like you’re saying I don’t make enough money for you to get what you really want, to splurge once in a while. Like all my years of working for the phone company don’t mean anything. Like my work wasn’t good enough.”
“That’s not what I’m saying at all, Earl. I’m saying that I got stuff on sale.” Splurge smurge. A memory that had been vaulted away escaped. “My mother used to splurge.” She shuddered. “She used to buy me the prettiest dresses, never even looking at the price tags.”
“Didn’t it feel good to wear those dresses?”
“Yes, until I found out she used the grocery money for clothes and we had to eat bread and jam for a week.” She hadn’t thought about that awful, empty feeling of curling up in bed with her stomach growling in years. She waved her hands in front of her. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you, hon. I knew your mother was flaky, but you never told me you went hungry because of her.”
She’d never told anyone that. Her own childhood had made her vow that her children would never have growling stomachs because of her spending habits.
“I just want you to treat yourself.” Earl’s thumb brushed over her cheek.
The warmth of his touch communicated safety, but she still didn’t see what he was driving at. “I am not going to run up huge credit card debt.”
“Just buy something you really want, and not just because the price is right. That will be the beginning of our adventure, the beginning of our new life.”
“Earl, things will be 50 to 75 percent off tonight. It doesn’t make sense to pay full price.” She’d been as direct as she could with him. He’d given her a confusing answer and stirred up memories she would rather forget. Really, it was the memory of taffeta, buckle shoes, and an empty stomach that upset her.
Earl couldn’t understand what she was asking for. He couldn’t hear her. And despite his best effort, she couldn’t understand him. How had they managed to hold a marriage together for so long when they didn’t even speak the same language?
“I can’t wait for that police lady any longer. I’m going midnight shopping with my friends.” And taking advantage of the discounts.
She grabbed her purse and dashed out the door. When she pulled out of the driveway, she could see Earl in the rearview mirror headed toward his shop. Phoebe loped behind him.
She pulled out onto the road. Sadness made her stomach tight.
Tammy stopped her car by the skateboard park and pulled her cell out of her purse. She rolled down her window to allow the cool evening breeze to relax her. Boy, did she need to unwind. She’d been to four places on her mental checklist and still no sign of Trevor.
Mom had returned home to wait for him there after checking several places. The sound of young men encouraging and harassing each other, of wheels rolling over concrete, floated through the window. The rest of the park was empty.
Her Betty Boop watch said it was after ten. She dialed Ginger’s phone number. It rang three times, and then
the message machine clicked on. Tammy hung up. She needed to get out there before her shift started at midnight. The clock was ticking. Evidence was disappearing. She couldn’t wait another day.
Tammy closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the seat. She’d spent the evening fighting off fear that something had happened to Trevor. She had been the first on the scene to a full repertoire of horrible things that teenagers did to themselves and others.
No matter how hard she tried, those ugly pictures pushed their way into her consciousness. Fear had made it nearly impossible to breathe, as if her entire body was wrapped tight in duct tape. God, it would be nice if You’d give me just one small sign that everything is going to be okay. Just a small sign. That was all she needed.
She opened her door and walked past the swings and merry-go-round toward the skateboard park. Two streetlights stood at either end of the skate park. About half a dozen boys, some of them standing, others riding the ramps or sailing into and out of the curved bowl, populated the concrete park. None of them were Trevor. She recognized two of the boys, though the last time she’d seen them they were in handcuffs.
She shivered. Just one little sign, God. Please.
One of the young men, a shirtless skinny guy with a bandanna on his head, seemed to be the informal coach. He shouted, “That’s it, Bobby. Looking good, Dave. Did your mama teach you that move, Jason?”
The other boys responded with expletives, groans, and a generous sprinkling of the word dude. As they skated under the light, she could see their faces. Their skin took on a warm, translucent quality. So young, so full of promise.
The coach jumped on his own board, bent his knees, and sailed expertly into the pit and back up the other side to stand beside Tammy. He was a little older than the others, maybe college age. A dragon tattoo decorated his arms and angled over his back.
