The Minor Apocalypse of Meena Krejci

by Susan Taylor Chehak

  By the time she finally stops for gas, it is late, past dinner time. Lightning glitters in the distance, sheet lightning, heat lightning brittle in the blackening sky. She's in a little nowhere town just off the Interstate, a place whose name she won't remember later, after she's moved on. Past a block of boxy white houses with broad front porches and miserly front lawns is the gas station at the corner of the town's center square. Meena pulls over here and fills up, pays at the pump, grateful not to have to go inside and be seen by the cashier, maybe remembered and recognized later after flyers with her picture on them have started to appear on phone poles and lamp posts and in the windows of grocery stores and gas stations like this. Missing!

  Just a little farther on is a small motel. Outside the car, where Meena stands and stretches, the air smells of summertime: river funk, wet cement, mown grass. The motel is nothing more than a simple long box with curtained windows and numbered doors. A big yellow neon sign hovers, moonlike, overhead.

  As nervous as Meena is, the girl at the counter inside doesn't seem to notice, or to care.

  "Hey!" she says, looking up brightly as Meena stands gasping at the drastic change in temperature from the humid heat outdoors to this air-conditioned chill. The girl's smile is wide and toothy, and it causes two deep dimples to puncture each milky cheek. "Welcome to the Wizen Inn!"

  On the wall behind her is an aerial photograph of the area that has been blown up into mural size—sensuous folds of farmland creased by creeks, slashed on the diagonal by the pale shoals of a dried-up river bed, blemished here and there by the shadowed leafy huddles of spread trees and pocked by the pale buildings of what must be this town. The girl's hair has been bleached a bright white, chopped short and then gelled to spikes above her clear high forehead.

  She has pushed a tattered leather bound register book across the counter toward Meena and is offering a pen. "Just go ahead and fill out your name and address, okay?" The dimples twinkle.

  Meena nods; she smiles back weakly; she takes the pen and bends to write. She hesitates only for a moment, then: Elizabeth Grandon. 2340 Otis Road S.E. Linwood Iowa 53402. Her heart bangs and she can feel the flush of blood that is heating up her face. Do they check on things like this? she wonders. No, how could they? But is the girl going to ask to see a driver's license? And if she does?

  Meena hands the pen back, smiles. Well if she does then Meena will just have to turn around and walk away. "Never mind," she'll say. Waving over her shoulder, slipping back outside again into the darkening heat. She'll get back into the car and move on, and try not to worry about the fact that just because of this the girl is going to remember her later when the police finally do come around asking questions.

  She'll say, "Yeah, sure, that woman was here all right. In her fifties maybe? Dark hair, graying, about five-foot-six, I guess. Ordinary looking, nothing you would notice. Maybe a little overweight, but not hideous or anything. And she acted a little weird, too, now that I think about it. Scared, like. Paranoid. Guilty?"

  But the girl doesn't ask for the license. She merely takes the book back, hardly glances at it. Digs in a drawer for a key, smiles again at Meena. "That'll be thirty-nine dollars," she says. "Plus a dollar seventy-two cents tax."

  Meena is digging in her purse. Besides the roll of bills that she took from her father's pocket, she has money of her own in her wallet. A twenty dollar bill and behind that another one and two fives. She pulls both them out and gives them to the girl.

  The phone is ringing, and the girl has turned away to answer it. "Wizen Inn!" she chimes, a silvery steel bell. As she hands over the change and the key her fingertips, surprisingly cool and dry, brush Meena's palm. She flashes that young dimpled smile again, waggles fingers, then turns away to huddle over the phone.

  Outside in the heat, Meena stands there for a moment and takes a deep breath, of relief. She pulls her suitcase from the trunk, locks the car, eyes the number on the room key, and with a studied casualness now makes her way down the flank of the building to her room—132. She doesn't want to attract any attention to herself, a woman traveling alone, but the place seems to be deserted and no one seems to see her anyway.

  The room smells of cigarette smoke and mildew, but at least it's air-conditioned and cool, and she shuts the door, turns the bolt, engages the chain. She sits on the edge of the bed, takes another deep breath, for fortification this time. She finds a cigarette in her purse and lights it. She is thinking she probably should eat something, but she's not really hungry and she sure doesn't want to go out again. The thought of walking into a restaurant, sitting at a table, reading a menu, ordering a meal, eating it, paying for it: the whole thing seems impossible. Instead she scoots back on the bed and falls against the pillows. She pulls the ashtray over close where she can reach it and uses the remote control to turn on the TV.

  She didn't know she was this tired, but she's not surprised. It's been a long day.

  When Meena awakens later, it's to the sound of a woman's laughter, outside her room. A man's voice, deep, answers back, and then there is silence. The television set flickers wildly before it settles into focus upon a commercial for fast food. A young woman is eating a huge fat hamburger, holding on with both hands but making a mess of it anyway, spilling ketchup on her white shirt. Watching this makes Meena realize how hungry she is. But she can't see how she can go out for food now. In the dark. In the middle of the night. She finds her purse, looks through it, but there isn't anything to eat there, only a roll of mints. So she sits on the bed chewing mints, slowly, one by one, and watching the TV.

  After the commercial the evening news comes on and Meena turns up the volume for it, leans forward, feeling slightly foolish even as she does, because what is she looking for? A glimpse of herself maybe? Her own flimsy fifteen minutes of fame? Could be that Josef Krejci's body has been found. And that his daughter's flight out of Linwood has been discovered. If so, then they will be on the lookout for the car, won't they? And might they not find it, parked under that bright yellow sign in the middle of the motel parking lot for everyone to see? Will it be considered stolen, in that case, and is this something that can be added to her crime?

  But there's nothing on the news about Meena, so maybe they haven't found him yet, after all. There is, however, an update on that missing man. Ralph Wendell's face fills the screen for a moment—it's bleary-looking and blurred in such a close-up—then that's followed by a shot of the house with the van and the banners, which read better. A short woman is standing in the doorway. She looks ineffectual in that sleeveless summer shift and the cheap strapped sandals on her feet. This will be the wife, of course. To Meena's eyes, she looks forlorn. Lost. Slump-shouldered and much older than expected. She doesn't look like a murderer, that's for sure. And then Meena is wondering: If this woman did kill her husband, then how in the world did she do it? Further: Where's the body? Buried in the garden? Bricked in behind a basement wall? But what about the car?

  What follows is a short interview with the detective who has been working on the case since the beginning. He is a bullet-shaped man with piercing blue eyes, a bald head, heavy jowls, thick lips. He has been following every lead, he says, as if that were a promise. But it's clear anyway that he has no idea where the missing man might be. The report ends with the photo of the man again and a sonorous voice-over announcement: "If you have any information as to the whereabouts of this man, please call..."

  Meena turns off the TV and allows the darkness to blanket her. This is familiar, and so she doesn't mind it much. She lies back down again, closes her eyes. Figures: Probably that old man wasn't murdered by his wife after all. Figures: Probably he ran away, just like her father said he did. Joe Krejci always was right about so many things, maybe this one too. And in this Meena is able to find a little bit of comfort for herself.

  When the morning comes, she doesn't like it that she's still dressed under the covers. This seems slovenly to her. She cracks the curtain to see that the light outside her r
oom is dim with dawn. She has decided what she'll do when they catch up with her, which she expects is likely to be soon. She will give herself up. In fact, she is looking forward to it. She will go without a struggle. Standing in the steam and shower spray, as hot as she can stand it, she is imagining the whole thing: her picture in the newspaper, one hand fanned across her face as a uniformed man escorts her to a police car, waiting. His hand is spread over the top of her head, protectively, as she ducks in. Maybe there will be something on "America's Most Wanted," she thinks, as she works the motel's bottled shampoo into her hair. If she's gone long enough, that is. A woman who murdered her dad. Lizzie Borden. Whack, whack. Even if that isn't how it was.

  She also has to wonder what everyone is going to have to say about her: that she is a spinster, a dried up old maid still living at home, taking care of her mean old domineering dad. And then one night, she snapped? Well, he did frustrate her sometimes, she can hardly find any argument with that. He did know how to make her mad.

  It would make a good story for "The Whole Truth." She can only guess that they'll all fall back on the same old phrases that everybody uses when something like this happens, nobody has any imagination anymore. They'll say that Meena Krejci sure seemed nice enough. Seemed fond of her father. They got along just fine as far as anyone could tell. And who would have ever guessed that such a thing as this could happen here?

  Unless they talk to Mimi Hanrahan, who might have something else to say about a man who gives his daughter his wife's wedding ring for her fiftieth birthday.

  "That's sick," Mimi said, when Meena showed up at the restaurant where they'd agreed to meet to celebrate the occasion.

  "It's not sick," Meena argued. "It's sweet. It's thoughtful. It's very kind of him."

  "You give him too much credit," Mimi said. "That ring is already yours. It was your mother's. It isn't his to give."

  Meena didn't agree. She knew better. And who was Mimi Hanrahan to criticize her father?

  Mimi Hanrahan, who might have something else to say about a woman who has never left home, a woman who has taken care of the old man for more years than anyone bothers to count anymore, a woman who has given up her own life—a lover, a husband, children of her own—so that she can concentrate all her energies on looking after him.

  He needs me, Meena said. I am all he has.

  Yes, well. And whose fault is that?

  Mimi Hanrahan, who didn't know, who couldn't know, who didn't understand and wouldn't try, either. Meena felt ridiculous trying to explain how it was for her with her father. Trying to describe how safe it felt to be with him—on a summer afternoon when he sat dozing in the shade while she pushed the mower around the back yard grass. She knew exactly who she was at moments such as that. She knew just what was expected of her. She would show him the perfect tomatoes she had grown; he would admire the dinner she cooked for him. He'd praise her sensible nature when she showed him the winter coat she'd found for half-price in the off-season sale at Fairchild's in the mall, and even if he suspected that she was lying and had bought it used from the White Elephant Thrift Shop where she worked five days a week, he would be considerate—and frugal—enough not to let on.

  To listen to Mimi Hanrahan judge and criticize their situation, to try to explain and defend herself against it, well that seemed like a betrayal of him, didn't it? Joe Krejci deserved better. He was old. And anyway, he was all that Meena had. And she had long ago made up her mind to be satisfied with that.

  Joe Krejci's car is compact and practical. And common—there are black Jettas all over the place, aren't there? So how can anybody seriously expect to be able to single out this one as the one that they've been looking for? When he had the grocery store, Josef Krejci drove a truck that was distinctly his: rust red, with his name spelled out in bold green letters on both doors. He used it for pickup and deliveries, but for a long time now there's been no need for that and five years ago Meena was able to talk him into buying this little car instead. Glad now that she did. And he liked it all right, too. A big man in a small car, he said it gave him a feeling of control, even as he got older and maybe not so confident anymore. He said it felt like he was driving a toy, which brought into Meena's mind this picture of the two of them in it, a couple of cartoon characters, him hunched over the wheel and her beside him with the window rolled down and an elbow hanging out, both of them too big, the car's grille a wide chrome grin, perched on fat crazy-looking rubber tires.

  But now that it's just hers, this car feels just right to Meena. It's almost as if she knew that someday it would, although who could have predicted that she'd be driving it here, out on the highway, heading toward the west? She keeps her speed down, partly out of a sense of caution, but more from her own pure enjoyment of these moments and the realization that there is no need for her to hurry because she doesn't even know yet where she's going, so what's the hurry to get there? Right now Meena is just going for the going of it, that's what she's decided. Just for the pure pleasure of the movement, tires rolling, and the thrill that shivers through her, singing out that now she is, finally, moving on.

  Add to that the sight and sound and smell of this August morning, which is glorious. Bright and warm, damp and newborn. The phone lines seem to shimmer overhead. Meena has rolled the windows down because she just loves this warm feeling of summertime and freedom blowing by and through and all around her, this early in the morning, when it's still not so hot out yet.

  She stops at a drive-through fast food restaurant and sits in the parking lot wolfing down two egg sandwiches and a plastic container of orange juice. The coffee is too hot to drink and so she puts it in the cup holder and then gets back on the Interstate again, still heading west as if maybe she knows what she's doing, with her back to the blinding glare of the rising sun.

  Trucks have begun to pull out of the rest stops as their drivers waken and get to work, and it's not too long before Meena realizes that she's been watching the traffic, on the lookout for Ralph Wendell's missing car. Or for his body, on the side of the road. Some khaki fabric, she imagines, a shapeless bundle, maybe a shoe. Hey, it's worth twenty-five thousand dollars, after all, to whoever is lucky enough to find him. Might be worth that, too, if you were to stumble on him now. Because, he's been missing for how long? A couple of weeks anyway. His body will be meat, a meal for some hungry thing.

  And with this thought comes a memory of another summer, on an evening when the light stayed late. A Saturday night it must have been because Mrs. Chadima had the day off and Josef had cooked a couple of steaks out on the charcoal grill himself, plus a lettuce and tomato salad and a pair of baked potatoes, buttered, on the side. On Meena's plate lay what looked to her like a huge slab of cold raw flesh and across the table her father was carving into his, chewing, smacking, moaning with pleasure until he saw her staring at him with disgust. Fathers ate their babies, Matka had said.

  "What's the matter?" he asked her, seeing that she had not touched her food.

  She couldn't speak.

  "Eat your steak, Meena. It's good." On the table near his elbow lay a folded section of newspaper that he'd brought with him to look at while he ate.

  She shook her head, managed to say, "No."

  His fork poised in midair. His eyebrows coming together in a frown, eyes darkening, face flushing with anger, two bright circles of red on either cheek.

  "You think everybody gets to eat a steak like this?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, they don't. Other people starve. You're one of the lucky ones. Eat." And the fork went up to his mouth, he bit, chewed again, waited for her to do the same.

  "I can't."

  "Why not?"

  She searched for a reason that he might understand. She poked at the meat with her fork and recoiled at the sight of the red juice that spilled out onto the white china of the plate. She set her fork down. Folded her hands in her lap. Lifted her chin to face him—bravely, it seemed to her—and cautiously explain: "It's too
bloody."

  He pushed away from the table with enough violence to slop the milk over the rim of Meena's glass. He reached across with his big hand as if he might strike her, and she cringed away from him. He stabbed his own fork into the bloody steak, carried it, dripping, outside, and slapped it back down onto the grill. Then he took his place at the table again, across from her, and resumed eating his meal. He turned to the newspaper, chewed, read, ignored his daughter.

  She sopped the milk up with her napkin.

  "I'm sorry," she said, and thought she meant it. He waved his fork at her, didn't answer, didn't even look up.

  Her hope was that he would forget, but no. After he had finished his own dinner he went out and got that steak and brought it back inside. It was blackened on the outside, on the inside it was as gray and dry as a thick piece of cardboard. Meanwhile Meena had eaten all of her potato, she didn't mind that, she liked it. Even the skin, which Mrs. Chadima said had all the vitamins in it. So, she wasn't hungry anymore. She was full and ready to be excused.

  She could hear the cries of her friends outside. They had been released from their own dinner tables and were getting up a game of Kick-the-Can out in the Grandon driveway. John Grandon and Leo Spivak, Libbie, the twins Kevin and Keith Mulvaney, Richie Sharpe and Fred Loomis, Lizzie Nathanson and Joanne O'Meara. Meena looked toward the door.

  "Eat your steak."

  He leaned over her, cut a piece off, handed her the fork.

  She took it into her mouth and chewed, doing her best, trying to be good, all hopefulness, but her throat closed and she gagged. Her eyes filled with tears.