Rebecca's Road

by Marlene Lee

  Raymond put his hands on the arms of his chair and rotated his head and shoulders. “I’m tired,” he said again. Rebecca would have liked to offer him the bed while she sat up in the chair, but imagining a man in her bed was even more unthinkable than listening to him use her bathroom. “I started driving right after you called.”

  She should thank him again, but she hadn’t actually asked him to come. “Thank you,” she said.

  “You sounded terrified.”

  “I have moments of terror that are so real I can’t think of a single reason not to be terrified.”

  “It’s been a long time since anyone was personally worried about me,” he said slowly, “or called me long distance.”

  “Are you going to get a room?”

  “I called ahead,” he said, but seemed in no hurry to leave. He flexed his shoulders and rotated his head again.

  “Would you like a drink before you go?”

  “Yes,” he said. She had tap water in mind, but he picked up the ice bucket and left the room. Rebecca filled a glass and set it on the table. When he returned he drank down the water, filled the glass with ice and a Coke from the vending machine, made a glass for her, and put out two coasters. Rebecca couldn’t refuse. She liked Coca-Cola. She liked its peppery effect. She pulled the chair out from the other side of the round table and sat down. They each took a sip and looked up with eyes watery from fatigue and carbonation.

  “My wife was a nervous woman,” he said. “Anything and everything made her nervous. She was very sensitive to noise, temperature, color, taste, people’s accents, people’s manners, people’s style, people’s motives.” He looked around the room as if trying to find more items in what Rebecca thought was already a long-enough list. “She was sensitive to everything.”

  “Was she small-boned?” Rebecca asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Mother was small-boned. And nervous. She worried about everything, but she never had a panic attack.”

  “You don’t seem like a nervous woman.”

  “No, I’m large. Large-boned,” said Rebecca. “My panic attacks are about large things, like life and death and nothingness. Mother worried about little things.” They contemplated their moisture-beaded glasses.

  “I’m glad you called me.”

  “It was the panic.”

  “It’s odd,” said Raymond, playing with the coaster, “but the one thing that should have worried my wife most of all, didn’t.”

  Rebecca waited.

  “She wasn’t afraid to die.” He closed his eyes. It was hard to tell under the low-watt bulb in the motel lamp, but Rebecca thought the blood drained from his face.

  “Raymond, are you ill?”

  “Just tired,” he said. “My wife handled her worries well. Anxiety ran in her family. She was aware of it. Sometimes in a worried state she’d just go to bed. Make herself a cup of tea and go to bed, even if it was in the middle of the day.”

  “What specifically did she worry about?” asked Rebecca.

  “The kids. Finances. Lightning striking the house.” He took a swallow of Coke. “Our neighbor’s barn was struck by lightning. But for the most part her fears were unrealistic. I finally stopped trying to reassure her because it didn’t do any good.”

  “You miss her,” Rebecca said. Raymond reached out. She touched his hand across the table.

  “The body needs comfort,” he said.

  Rebecca pulled back. She used her body for getting around. She didn’t mind being an adult, at least she hadn’t while Mother was alive, but she didn’t want all the nonsense that went along with it.

  “I don’t want to talk about bodies,” she said.

  Raymond laughed. “We’re not going to talk about bodies,” he said, “or anything else.”

  She thought he was looking at the bed, and felt a pang of anxiety. But he remained where he was and didn’t look at the bed anymore. Finally he left. It was four-thirty, the hour of despair and of faith. Despair that night will never end and that Mother, asleep in her bedroom down the hall, will never wake up. Delicious, bittersweet faith that the loneliest hour is also a bridge to morning; that morning will come in spite of all evidence to the contrary; that Mother, or something mother-like, is waiting at the place where first light nibbles at the dark.

  Rebecca turned off her light and drew the drape just enough to allow a slit of false daylight in from the parking lot. She dressed, zipped up her suitcase, opened the door, and tip-toed out to her car. She stood for a moment in the parking lot, wishing she could glide away from the motel without getting in the car or turning on the engine. A cool breeze blew her hair that, to anyone watching, shone quite red under the sodium lights.

  She opened the driver’s door, slid her suitcase over to the passenger’s side, got in behind the wheel, closed the door without slamming it, turned on the ignition, rolled forward, and entered the highway that ran through town. She wished Raymond well. She was sorry to leave on the day his wife, a year ago, had died. But staying behind with him was not possible.

  The single stoplight on Main Street swayed in the wind above the intersection and was soon behind her. In two minutes she was out of town. She met no one on the ink-black road. No cars approached. The only headlights she saw were in the rear-view mirror. She began to think of Mother. She cried for a while, slowing considerably, and when the nice little cry was over she wiped her eyes and resumed speed.

  The headlights in her rear view mirror remained at the same distance. She sped up. The headlights also sped. She slowed. So did the headlights. She drove steadily for a mile, then gunned the engine. Frightened by the sudden noise, the power under the hood of the car, and most of all by the relentless headlights in her rear-view mirror, she made a ragged turn and found herself pointed down a dirt road, without lights or engine, hardly breathing, waiting for the throb of the car that had been following her. Its hum drew nearer. She could have screamed at the slow-moving thing. It down-shifted, slowed, found her scent, and paused. The trees, telephone poles, and mouth of the dirt road were illuminated by its frightful yellow lights swinging in behind her. Rebecca jumped out of the car and faced Raymond, who was walking toward her, back-lit, his engine still running behind him.

  “You bitch!” He had almost reached her bumper. If she could get to the far side of the car, she could sprint to the highway.

  “What kind of person are you?” he shouted.

  “You found me,” she said in a voice that surprised her. It sounded almost normal. “You didn’t go to your motel room.”

  As soon as she spoke she dashed to the far side of the car. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him streak toward her in a movement that was much too fast for a short, pudgy man with a heart condition. He caught up to her and grabbed her by the arm.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he shouted, and whirled her toward him. In a whirling motion of her own she tore loose, then reached the highway and began pounding down the pavement. He was right behind her. They were both panting. With one large foot Rebecca landed on the white line in the center of the highway and stopped abruptly. Raymond stopped, too.

  “You said you were going to your room!” Rebecca shouted. She could hear Mother’s crisp commands to stop her tantrum, but she paid no attention. “You lied to me! You didn’t go to your room the way you said you would!”

  Raymond lifted his arms, just visible in the pre-dawn light, and danced with fury on the broken white line. “I drove all night to get to you!”

  A truck approached. They saw the fierce, wide-set headlights and felt its vibration. When they stepped onto the shoulder, they were nearly blown off the highway.

  Raymond’s spurt of energy faded. “Let’s stop at the restaurant ahead,” he said tiredly. “If you don’t want to talk to me, just drive on by. I won’t bother you anymore.”

  She looked down the road. “You go first.”

  Separately the two of them drove down the highway. Rebecca kept a distance until Raymond’s r
ight turn signal began blinking. As she followed him onto the exit road she realized that Mother had not offered her usual advice in the last few minutes. It was possible, of course, that Mother had no advice to give. That, however, seemed unlikely.

  “Raymond,” she began, once they were seated in the truck stop, “you’ve been very nice to drive all this distance.” He didn’t respond as she had expected, nicely. In fact, there was an angry look in his eyes.

  “You were right,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “You don’t know anything about the world.”

  She bristled. “I’m finding out now.”

  “You haven’t found out anything yet, Ms. Quint. But stand by. I am going to instruct you.”

  “I left Missoula,” Rebecca said, “I didn’t come back to you, and now you’ve hunted me down, exactly as it says on your coffee cup.” It was… interesting, playing with fire.

  “With two significant differences.” He leaned forward and put his index finger in her face. He didn’t shake it. He just held it there. “First, you called me back. And second, I’m not going to kill you. I would like to kill you, but it would be bad for my heart.”

  Rebecca moved to one side. His finger followed.

  “You are obviously a spoiled, selfish woman who expects the world to be a pleasant place, when it was actually your mother who made it a pleasant place. You didn’t have the grit to find out the facts on your own.”

  Rebecca didn’t move, not away from his finger, not away from his fiery face and rapid mouth.

  “I can see her now, running interference for you, letting you sleep till ten, buying you clothes like that expensive satin bathrobe and these Birkenstocks which cost a fortune—”

  Rebecca pulled her feet back and tried to make them small. She felt herself blush from the chest up in that mottled way she hated, partly from shame, largely from dread of what more he was going to say, because, clearly, he was nowhere near being finished. There he was, leaning forward over the table, forgetting his eggs. He was someone on the trail of, if not a hunted thing, an idea, a thought, a philosophy that he was shining onto her life like a flashlight; better yet, a headlamp from one of those Montana trucks that hunters drive. She, of course, did not have to accept anything he said. In fact, she did not have to listen to him at all. While Raymond repositioned himself in order to keep his finger in front of her nose, Mother, who had not addressed her directly in weeks, suddenly spoke.

  “Lies, lies, lies,” she said. “Get away from this brute as fast as you can, Becky. Listen how he talks about your mother. He never even knew me.”

  “Mother says—”

  “—Birkenstocks, I say, that cost a fortune, when you should have been out working so you’d develop a sense of your own ability. Having a family so you’d understand how precious human beings are, how they develop from small bundles of impulses into remarkable people. Instead of committing yourself to a passionate cause or deep reflection, you were out shopping with Mother.”

  “The man is an idiot,” said Mother.

  “No, he’s not,” Rebecca said loudly. “He drove all night through two states to help me.”

  “Balderdash. He wants sex. Just like your father.”

  Raymond had fallen silent. He was staring at Rebecca with red, enlarged eyes. “Who are you talking to?”

  “Mother,” said Rebecca. “I’m defending you.”

  He stared at her.

  “I know she’s dead, but sometimes she still seems very real to me.”

  “Obviously.”

  “She doesn’t talk to me as much as she used to.”

  “That’s the best thing she’s ever done for you.” Raymond finished his eggs, slid out of the booth like a younger, slimmer man, and said, “I’m leaving, Ms. Quint. Let me go. If I don’t come back to you, hunt me down at my University bench.” He bent down and kissed her in the middle of her forehead. “I’ll sweep you off your feet. I’ll show you what Montana men are made of. You haven’t seen anything yet.” And he walked out of the restaurant.

  Rebecca wanted to follow him. But he was already driving off down the highway. Her car, the only one in the parking lot, shone pink in the sunrise. She slowly climbed in and turned south toward Colorado.

  “Rebecca,” Mother said softly, “remember to visit Cousin Millie in Denver, then get yourself back to Chico and the orchard where you belong. And by the way, don’t ever take up with a strange man again.”

  “Be quiet,” said Rebecca, touching the spot on her forehead where she’d been kissed. “I never liked Cousin Millie, and Raymond is not a strange man.”

  She lowered her window. The early morning air filled her lungs and satisfied every cell in her body because the wind was blowing from the west, from Montana, and because, in spite of everything, Raymond still wanted to see her again.

  7

  The Dome

  Rebecca stood on a high bluff overlooking the Missouri River and rang the doorbell to Mimi Davenport’s house. On the far bank lay the town of Jefferson City above which the lighted dome of the State Capitol building lifted gracefully—like a flower? a face? a breast?—toward the night sky.

  A slim woman in Levis, with plain gray hair and bright eyes, much shorter than Rebecca, opened the door, reached up, and tipped Rebecca’s face this way and that under the porch light.

  “Thirty-five years!” she cried.

  Rebecca tried to manage her height, large feet, swaying dyed-red hair, and confused, aroused heart in the midst of the embrace. “Is it really you, Mimi?”

  “Indeed it is.”

  “I didn’t think you’d recognize me. I’ve gotten old.”

  Mimi clasped both of Rebecca’s hands in hers. “I’d know you anywhere.”

  Rebecca shut her eyes. “I’ve gotten old,” she repeated.

  “Nonsense.” Mimi pulled her into the high-ceilinged entry hall where their childhood quivered between them. “Did you get through Kansas City without losing your way?” she asked gently.

  Rebecca looked down at the veined marble floor. “I lost my way.”

  Mimi picked up the suitcase and began climbing the curved staircase to the second floor. Rebecca followed.

  “And did you find the house without trouble?”

  “I had trouble finding your house.”

  “Yet here you are, all the way from California, by yourself.”

  “I really don’t know how I did it. It’s been two weeks on the road now.”

  Mimi took Rebecca’s hand. “Follow me,” she said, and led Rebecca along the second-story hallway, clicking lights to the left and right. Rooms sprang into life.

  “I don’t know any woman who owns a beautiful home like this by herself,” Rebecca breathed.

  “Any woman can own a beautiful home by herself,” Mimi replied briskly. “It’s the law.” She stopped at a bedroom carpeted in pale blue; a white bedspread brushed the deep pile. “Actually, my mother and I owned this house together. She lived here until she died, and so will I.” Mimi stooped and picked a bit of lint off the carpet. “This house is mine because I worked hard and because Mother and I followed a sound financial plan.”

  Rebecca walked to the window on the far side of the room and looked out. The Missouri River, stately and broad, glided by the foot of the bluff, undisturbed by the passage of time, deaths of parents, or sound financial plans.

  “Do you work for the State?” she asked, eyeing the Capitol across the river.

  “No. I have my own firm. Mimi Davenport, Certified Public Accountant.”

  The title, like Mimi, suggested an end to confusion. “How did you get a firm like that?”

  “First I became an accountant. . .” Rebecca listened while Mimi described the course of her career, smitten, as she had been in junior and senior high school, by her successful friend.

  “Now tell me about you.”

  “I’m still at home on the orchard,” Rebecca said. “Mother died in November.” She stopped, as if there w
ere nothing more to tell, which, in fact, was the case, and covered her face with her hands.

  “Oh, Becky! I’m so sorry!” Mimi guided Rebecca to the edge of the bed where she sat and rocked her back and forth. “It’s awful, losing a mother. I know, I know.” She cried, too, against Rebecca’s dyed hair and skinny neck before she stood, red-eyed but efficient, and lifted Rebecca’s suitcase onto the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. “We’ve lost a lot of things, but we haven’t lost each other.”

  “That’s because you write letters and send Christmas cards.”

  “You don’t,” said Mimi.

  “I don’t have anything to say.”

  “Nonsense. You’re just not a verbal person.”

  Is that what she wasn’t, Rebecca wondered: verbal?

  She returned to the window, touched the sill with one broad hand beginning to spot, and admired the Capitol dome, ethereal yet fleshy in the luminous wash of floodlights.

  Mimi clicked off the bedroom light. “Mother and I built here because of the Capitol building,” she said softly, coming over to the window to bask with Rebecca in the white light that seemed to slip over them from the dome.

  “Before my trip,” Rebecca said in a husky voice, “I never imagined the world was so beautiful.”

  Mimi brushed a loose strand of hair back from Rebecca’s face. “What have you seen?”

  Rebecca tried to be verbal. “There was a hitch-hiker who might have been dangerous but didn’t hurt me, and a Chinese tourist and his daughter who became my friends. In the middle of Nevada are signs that say, ‘Prison Area. Hitch-hiking prohibited.’ Far away in the desert are the prisons. Their small windows twinkle sadly.” She told of weather, sleet thrown at the windshield, and of gambling machines and roulette wheels, of a stony, black landscape where the devil, in agony with his bowels, brought out prominences and spirals and turds with a corkscrew, of hot springs in Idaho, of flat-chested young men and women in Sun Valley wearing dark glasses.

  But she did not speak of Montana; she did not mention Raymond.

  The telephone rang and Mimi hurried to answer it. When she returned she apologized. “A friend insists on coming over. He won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. He doesn’t understand the word ‘no.’”