Nobody but Us

by Kristin Halbrook

  Will obediently presses the speaker button and we can all hear Misty struggle for breath.

  “Stop crying, girl. You can’t talk to the boy if you’re blubbering.”

  Misty responds with what I think is a demand to take her off speaker, but it’s hard to be sure because the words are broken and muffled.

  Will looks at me, uncertainty filling his face.

  “Ask her how she’s been. What she’s been doing,” I whisper.

  “Is that your girlfriend?” comes the voice on the phone, and there’s a moment of the three of us just looking at each other until we all dissolve into giggles. “I’m Misty. I don’t know if Will ever told you about me.”

  “He told me about you. You were one of his good things.”

  “He always was a sweet boy.”

  “What’ve you been doing?” Will offers.

  “Just living. Working. I got married twelve years ago and moved to California. I have two girls now. I’ve never—I never told them about you. Because I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. But I want to, all the time. I get to tell them now. What are you doing in Nevada? How’s your grandma?”

  “She died a long time ago.”

  There’s a moment of silent anticipation as we wait for Misty to find the right thing to say.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally murmurs.

  “If you’re saying that for me, you don’t gotta bother. We’re both in a better place.” There’s a moment of silence when we look at our laps or the clock or the wall. Misty’s breath rattles in the phone.

  “Will. I tried to keep you. I called three different lawyers, and each one told me the same thing: I had nothing over your grandma. It didn’t matter that I’d raised you or that we were as good as family or that I loved you—no one cared because your grandma was blood. But when she came and took you, that was one of the worst days of my life. I’ve waited a long time to hear from you again. Where have you been? Where did you go when your grandma died?”

  “My uncle’s,” Will says. “Then my aunt took me to North Dakota with her, but when she got married, I went to the state. Stayed with a few different families until they put me in the group home in Fargo. I kind of got in some trouble in school.”

  Will stops talking and studies a small spot on his jeans before going on again.

  “Got kicked out of one for fighting and then another one for … fighting again. Then they moved me to a new home … but that didn’t really work out, neither. The home leader told the state I’d be better off out somewhere I could work, ’cause I needed to stay outta trouble. So I got shipped out to the boonies and spent a summer and part of the school year working on a ranch.” Will shrugs, as though Misty can see him. “Wasn’t too bad. But some genius figured out I wasn’t even enrolled in school there and they made me enroll. But that was, like, a couple months ago, and I took off right when I turned eighteen.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “They tried to get me to graduate, then hang around and do this program. Community college with housing and stuff like that. But I just wanted to get the hell outta there.”

  “And you came to Nevada looking for your mom?”

  “No,” he says. He hesitates, slowly tracing the pattern of the couch with his finger. “But … you know where she is?”

  There’s a sharp sound on the other end.

  “I don’t think she knows where she is, baby boy. But let me tell you this—and it took me a little while to figure it out—your mom knew exactly what she was doing when she left you with me. You probably think she dumped you … that she didn’t want you.” Misty takes a deep breath. “Listen careful when I say this: your mom loved you enough to put you somewhere safe. That girl was always up and down—just like your grandma. She could have been sorted out with medication, but there was no one telling her to get to the doctor. You’d see her one time and she was high as a kite. The next time she’d have hit rock bottom.”

  Will runs his hand through his hair. “Was she clean?”

  Misty sighs, and we can hear her settling down into a chair or couch. “Not drugs, Will. It wasn’t that. It was her brain. It didn’t work right. She was always up when she was pregnant. Always smiling. I’d never seen her so happy for so long. Her mama—your grandma—was out of the picture and she had the house to herself and all those good hormones. … I thought things were going to be okay for her, even by herself. Then she had you and she sank.”

  Will clenches a fist and makes a sound in the back of his throat. “So I fucked her up.”

  Three “Nos!” come at Will, but it’s my eye he catches to search for affirmation that he didn’t destroy his mom. I touch his wrist and he blinks.

  “It wasn’t you,” Misty says. “It happens to lots of women after they have a baby. And for her it was worse because she already had problems. She lay in bed for weeks. Couldn’t get out of the house. Wouldn’t answer the phone. I let myself in every day to check on you two. I know she thought about what she was going to do. She loved you. She wrote me a letter, telling me all kinds of things. I still have it. You come see me, I’ll give it to you. Mom?” Julie lifts her head from where it had been resting in her hand. “Write down my address and number. Will, you better come see me as soon as you can, hear?”

  “I will.”

  “That’s good. You come. Don’t forget. I want to see what you look like now. I want to see this big trouble-maker who gets into fights. And bring Zoe. You’re coming, too, right, Zoe?”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Did you write down my info yet, Mom?”

  “Shush, girl,” Julie replies. “I’m getting it. You got no respect for my arthritic hands.”

  “You’re getting old. You need to come live with me.”

  “I got enough of you when you were younger. I think maybe I’ll try to keep Will here instead. He and his girl can take care of me.”

  I feel the rush of warmth to my cheeks, and Will puts his arm around me.

  “We’re going down to Vegas. We actually gotta go pretty soon.”

  Julie scrutinizes us and points her pen at me. “She even old enough for that? Hell, she’s probably not supposed to be away from home. You didn’t kidnap her, did you?”

  “Of course not,” I exclaim as Will’s arm tightens around me.

  “All right, all right. Here.” She passes the paper to Will. “It’s done, Misty. You can lay off now.”

  “Good. You come see me, Will and Zoe. Remember, you promised.”

  “We will,” Will says, but there’s an airy tone to his voice, like he isn’t thinking about what he’s saying but about something that’s already been said.

  WILL

  WE SAY GOOD-BYE EVEN THOUGH JULIE WANTS US to stay for dinner. Zoe’s better about the “no thanks” part than I am. I keep getting lost in their conversation. Julie trying to get us to hang out longer and Zoe’s nice, but firm, no and Julie tries again. Finally, I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of the car with my fingers on the keys and the keys in the ignition, and all I can think is, How did I get here?

  “Are you all right?” Zoe asks after she buckles her seat belt.

  “Me? I’m cool.” I turn the keys and listen to the car growl to life. The sound brings me back to life, too. “Yeah, I’m good.”

  “That was a lot to take in back there. Are you sure you’re okay? I can drive if you just want to … think for a while.”

  I can’t figure if I’m bothered by the stuff Julie said about my mom. Do I owe her anything? Do I owe understanding or sympathy or one fucking thought at all? She dumped me. I figured I’d done the same to her, but now I wonder if I’d hang in this town for hours just to hear more about the woman I tried pretending never existed.

  I flex my scarred forearm, the dapples of pale skin on darker skin stretching over the muscles. And I gotta wonder what her arms look like.

  I shrug, then laugh so Zoe don’t worry. “I’m fine. No, I mean it was cool to hear Misty and see Julie. They had pretty
good things to say, right?” I feel stupid for asking—for needing Zoe to agree with me—but it’s the only way to know I ain’t kidding myself.

  “Really good. Misty obviously loved—loves—you. And Julie was so funny. I want to be like her when I’m old.”

  “’Cept not all the cussing, right?”

  “Right. Not that.”

  I drive back to the highway and head east. Zoe pulls out the map and reads the freeway numbers aloud. I memorize them. Something else to think about is good. Something else to roll around in my head so I don’t gotta think about other stuff, like my mom, or Misty bawling over the phone, or Julie, who could tell who I was just by looking close at my face.

  “Are you hungry or anything?”

  “Julie made us eat almost an entire package of cookies. I’ll be full for a while.”

  “Nice lady,” I say. I watch the rearview mirror for a minute, leaving behind the woman who couldn’t take care of me, along with the ones who wanted to but weren’t allowed. Sometimes things are so messed up. Like, there’s an official way to do things, even if it ain’t the best way to do them, and no one can see outside that. No one could see how much better I’d have been with Misty and her new family. Instead, I got … this.

  And Zoe. I got Zoe, so it’s okay.

  “You think … you think I’m messed up? Like Misty said my mom was?”

  She don’t say nothing for a while, just stares out her window at the dark. It makes me think, yeah, something’s wrong with me. It gets me worried. It gets me pissed—that she won’t say nothing, that here’s one more thing to screw with me.

  She turns her head and watches me drive. I don’t look at her, but I can see her out of the corner of my eye.

  “How can you tell? How can you tell whether your problems are from being like your folks, or whether they come from years of being treated like—”

  I swallow and grip the steering wheel. She sees it, I guess, ’cause her voice changes. It goes soft.

  “Nobody treated you right. Even when times were better, they weren’t what you deserved. I don’t know. Maybe there’s something from your mom, but maybe you’re who you are because that’s who you had to be to deal. What if you’re reading too much into it?” She puts her hand on mine and it’s warm and meant to calm me, but my stomach’s eating itself from the inside out. “Maybe you’re not this bad, stupid person you think you are. Actually, no, it’s not a ‘maybe.’ You’re not that person.”

  I wanna believe her, but my head’s spinning now and I ain’t sure what I’m supposed to be thinking. I’ve never figured anything was wrong with me—like, brain problems. I can’t get a handle on it and I don’t like that.

  “So, is there some test or something I’m supposed to take? To find out if I’m messed up?” I shake my head. “Actually, can we just forget about it? I don’t buy that just ’cause my mom was screwed up, I am, too.”

  “Yeah, we can drop it. And no, you don’t have to be—you’re not—messed up.”

  “Not with you keeping me in line.”

  ZOE

  WE STOP FOR GAS AT THE EDGE OF ELKO.

  “One more tank of gas for one more stretch of highway,” Will says.

  I get out and he does, too. He pats the car absently and looks across the hood at me. He smiles and my insides melt with relief.

  “It’s okay,” he says, and comes around the car to lift me off the ground in a bear hug. “Know what’s coming for us? Our lives. Awesome lives for us.”

  The store is whitewashed clapboard with faded and chipped paintings of totem poles and eagles. Will’s Camaro fits well in front of it, like it’s a scene from a vintage film. Inside, there’s a convenience store, a gift shop, and slot machines. Will heads for one and drops a quarter in while I walk over to the counter.

  “Do you have a restroom?”

  The guy behind the counter glances over me with disinterested eyes and passes me a key attached to an oar. It’s more conspicuous than a neon sign. I hug the oar to my chest, all three feet of the thing, then grimace and hold it away in disgust.

  “Where—?”

  He flicks his thumb toward the front door.

  The bathroom’s outside and around the corner. Will grins at me and laughs when he sees what I have to carry to the ladies’. I ignore him and anyone else who might be looking this way and breathe a sigh of relief when I turn the corner. There’s not a soul on this side of the building.

  My relief fades when I see the tiny vivid fleck on my underwear and try to recall whether or not I packed tampons. I honestly can’t remember putting them into my bag, and humiliation settles over me like a cloak. Not again. I can’t ask Will for tampons. I’ve never asked him for anything that personal.

  I fold a length of toilet paper and line my underwear. It’s a temporary solution. There’s a scratched mirror above the sink, and I curse my feminine features as I wash my hands. How long can I rub and make suds before my hands melt away down into the drain and mix with some far-off ocean?

  I take an extra piece of paper towel to wrap around the handle of the oar.

  Will is in the store now, trying on a knit ski cap in shades of green and brown. There are pompoms hanging from the earpieces and he waggles them at me when he sees me hand the oar off to the cashier.

  I smile at him, but I can’t bring myself to laugh. One of these aisles has to have what I need.

  I glance at Will. He’s moved farther away, to a section of the store dedicated to Native crafts. I see him poke at the feathers on a dream catcher.

  Maybe it’s the next aisle.

  The cashier rings up a woman with a kid at her knee screaming at her to buy him a candy bar.

  Here. With the aspirin and bandages and diapers. Nice. That’s the company I like to be associated with. There are only two boxes to choose from, both the same brand. Regular or Super. I figure if I get the Super, I can stretch them longer. I pick up the box to check the price sticker.

  I drop the box. Twelve dollars is breakfast and lunch. A few more gallons of gas. Almost half of what we paid for a motel room.

  Even if I could bring myself to ask Will to buy me the tampons, I couldn’t let him spend that much. We need every dime for important things. Food. Gas to get us all the way to Vegas, all the way to freedom.

  Will’s in the refrigerated section, pulling out a plastic-wrapped sandwich and inspecting it.

  I suck in a breath and drop to the cracked linoleum floor next to the box of tampons, ripping the top open with trembling fingers. The noise is like cascading fireworks on a windless night. I shove them everywhere, in my bra, down the back of my pants, in my socks. I don’t look up. If I can’t see anyone, they can’t see me.

  I’ve emptied half the box when the hands grasp my arms and jerk me to my feet.

  “Stealing from me?”

  He shakes my body and I freeze. Joints seize, muscles tighten, blood halts its course to my brain, fingers, ankles. He shakes me again, as though the movement will loosen my tongue and I will answer him.

  He’s little, dark eyes and sharp smell drifting under my nose. It’s him. He’s here, he’s found me. I do what I always do. There’s this room, four walls painted pale sunshine but no windows. That’s where I hide. I’m stiff as a canoe, a vessel gliding effortlessly over still water in a sunshine room.

  His face is talking to me again, but there is no Zoe here to hear his words.

  With another shake, my hand betrays me, slamming against a shelf. Medicine bottles rattle to the floor and my canoe springs a leak. I whimper.

  He lifts my shirt to take back what I’ve stolen from him. More of the same. More of the same. I can never get away.

  Then, Will.

  He’s there, creeping up behind the cashier. I close my eyes because there is no greater embarrassment than Will seeing what this man is doing to me. I want to die.

  When I open them again, it’s to see Will raise his hand. His fist is wrapped around an object, dark and sloshing. He brings it
down with a swiftness that startles me. The sound is dense and thudding and the man and I both fall to the floor.

  Will hesitates. Swears under his breath. Drops the wine bottle to the floor, where, finally, it breaks. Rivulets of purple-red seep into floor cracks, soak into the man’s shirt. He’s so still. I hold my breath, waiting for him to move, a sickening feeling growing in my stomach. The bittersweet smell of wine is overwhelming.

  “Will. Is he—?”

  “No. Look, his fingers are twitching. Get up. Come on, Zoe. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  His hand’s around my arm, too, but lower on my forearm and gentler than the cashier’s. He helps me to my feet and grabs an unopened box of tampons and we run.

  WILL

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME YOU NEEDED THEM?” I toss the box in her lap. That’s what I’m here for, to take care of her. It kills me that she couldn’t ask me.

  “I just … couldn’t.”

  She’s embarrassed to admit that to me. I hate myself for getting harsh with her. Who’s she ever had to ask for stuff? No one.

  “Baby, you can ask me for anything.” I put my hand on her thigh and she covers it with hers. She’s shaking and I’m seething. I’m trying damn hard to keep it under control. I owe her that. “I’ve been around girls. At the home. They ain’t shy about nothing. I get it.” I try to finish with a laugh, something to reassure her, but it’s a strangled sound.

  Shit. I figured the bottle would break. It always does in the movies. It breaks and there’s this sound of shattering glass and the impact is lessened. I ain’t never heard the sound that bottle in the store made. That lumpy, thick sound. I shudder.

  “They cost too much.”

  “They didn’t cost too much. You needed them.”

  “We don’t have enough money!”

  “We got enough.”

  “Will—”

  A fire flares to life in my head and I see spots. I tear the paper bag from under the seat. Throw it at her.

  “Here! We got money.”

  She don’t move. “Where did this come from?”