by Helena Maeve
I didn’t fault Barnes for having wanted to believe Kane would come through for him at the eleventh hour, but I wasn’t going to absolve him of blame for bringing me into this mess.
Ashley was quiet on the other end of the line. “Laure, are you okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Why?” Other than the pounding headache and my hazy vision, I felt fine.
“You sound like you’ve been crying.”
I sniveled. “Oh. Yeah. A little.” Laura Nyro’s Best Of wasn’t the best music to weep to, but it wasn’t her songs that had made me tear up. I was fine until And When I Die started playing halfway through the first side of the tape. Then I could barely hear the lyrics.
“I’m coming over.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re in Paris,” I pointed out, a mirthless guffaw bubbling in my throat. “That’s not exactly next door. Besides, I’m fine—”
“You’re not fine. I can hear it in your voice,” Ashley snapped, heaving a breath. “Please let me come over there. I haven’t been sleeping since you left.”
“Tell me about it…” I played with the frayed end of the comforter. “Jet lag isn’t worth it. And connecting in Chicago sucks—terrible advice, by the way.”
Ashley chuckled cheerlessly. “You really don’t want me over there?”
I spun the offer around and around in my head, weighing it like a turkey. “What about that conference thing?”
“That’s in New York.”
“So…halfway?” I asked, drawing my bottom lip between my teeth and grimacing at the waxy taste of my lipstick. “I don’t want you coming over just for my sake. Don’t ask me to explain why, I’m hungover and my head is a jumbled mess right now.”
“You’ve been drinking?” Ashley asked.
“Hey, focus on the problem at hand, mon ami.” The problem being me and my being in green, spacious Kansas while Ashley was all the way in the crooked tangle of Parisian streets, an ocean between us.
“Yes, fine,” he scoffed. “I’ll meet you in New York. And when we both get there, we’re going to have a very long chat about this independent streak of yours and how I’m all for it, in theory, but—”
“Not so much in practice?”
“Not when you put yourself in danger,” Ashley concluded stubbornly. He could be such a buzzkill when he was genuinely worried for my sake.
“It better involve paddles,” I drawled. I could have played along, but I was way too tired to take him seriously and my mouth tasted like an ashtray. I felt neither romantic nor penitent. “Buy your ticket first, then I’ll take care of mine. That way maybe we can meet at the airport.”
Ashley reluctantly agreed, although I could hear him resenting the compromise. If it was up to him, we’d be meeting in Kansas, on my doorstep. But I wasn’t going to let him spend twelve hours in transit because I’d gotten all self-indulgent and missed a couple of calls.
“Think I’ll ring downstairs for room service,” I said, yawning.
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“At your end—”
“No, in Kansas,” Ashley cut in. “Look outside.”
I didn’t have to. It was 03:15 according to the TV clock. I’d been asleep almost twelve hours. “Oh.” Now I understood why he was freaking out. “Well, that’s later than I thought…” By about ten hours. “I’m sorry,” I added, contrite.
“You should be. I’m just glad you’re okay. No more drinking until I get there, okay?”
“My liver thanks you for your concern.”
“Laure—”
“All right, all right,” I groaned. “I promise I’ll be good.”
“And keep your phone on,” Ashley added. “Freaks me out when you go dark like that.”
It annoyed me that he wanted to keep tabs on me, but in his shoes I probably would have done the same. “I liked you better when you were telling me how to touch myself,” I quipped.
That earned me an indulgent huff of laughter, which was probably more than I deserved. “Behave and we’ll see how we can mend that tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Oh, you sound awfully eager…” I was deflecting and I was sure he knew it, but we played along for a couple of minutes more before hanging up. Neither of us mentioned his spur of the moment confession. It wasn’t the moment to have a heart to heart.
I peeled off my clothes as well as I could without staggering to my feet. My hangovers were few and far between—one of the few perks of drinking since I was sixteen, I supposed—but when they hit, they were legendary. I gave myself a good ten minutes to finish the Coke, taking small sips so as not to upset my already riotous stomach.
Then I braved the short stroll to the bathroom.
Against all odds, I made it to the shower without my knees buckling or hitting my head on the tile. I winced at the first splash of icy water, but waiting for the spray to grow warm was tantamount to playing chicken with my resolve. I was exceptionally tempted to crawl back into bed and try for sleep I knew wouldn’t come.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” became my mantra as I shivered under the showerhead, my makeup and my tears washing away in ash-gray rivulets. The water warmed quicker than I’d expected and the thermostat in the room was as broken as I’d left it. It took less than a minute for my skin to dry once I left the bathroom, and my hair had begun curling rebelliously by the time I mustered the energy to attack it with a comb.
Incensed, I trooped back into the bathroom to dampen the unruly strands. I stopped dead in my tracks when I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror.
Kane was right. I did have my mother’s face. If I’d grown out my hair, worn glasses, I might have been her doppelganger, twenty years too late.
Memories tugged me back.
Warm arms around me, the room whirling dizzily as we spin. The smell of flowery perfume and the lit end of a cigarette. Black hair flutters across my vision. I see my small, plump hand, reaching up.
I see my mother’s sad smile.
The music I’d heard that night must have been Laura Nyro, playing on the shiny turntable I wasn’t allowed to touch. Mom was often sad back then. Had she been weeping that night? The echoes of the past made it difficult to be certain.
Ash scatters into the sink, the dusty flecks reflected on the gleaming enamel. I feel myself slipping as Mom bends to flick the butt into the bin. I tighten my grip around her shoulders. I’m scared of falling.
The record skips. Mom swears, annoyed, and stalks back into the living room. The world bobs around me with every step, but through the kitchen window, I see Daddy.
He’s in the yard behind the house, spade in hand.
He’s striking the dirt like it might strike back.
Angry yard work, I must have thought. I was five or six, still young enough for my mom to carry me in her arms but too old to be oblivious to what went on around me.
I whimper. Words are still difficult, but I know what Daddy’s like when he and Mom fight. I don’t want that tonight. Mom spins me around again, whispering for me to calm down even though she’s the one sniffling.
She staggers, wobbling under our combined weight, and fetches up against the counter. “Ça suffit, maintenant!” Now she’s angry, too.
I press my hand to the glass so I won’t hit my head. I’m not scared, though. Mom has her arms around me and Daddy is just outside, doing yard work. At night.
Through the glass, I watch him toss aside the shovel and grab a plastic bag with both hands. He strains, the tendons in his neck pulling taut, his whole face turning pink.
The bag wriggles like a worm trying to get away.
Dad reaches for the spade. I can tell he’s speaking because his lips move, but I can’t hear him.
The lights from the house spill in a dim halo over my wooden swing set—store-bought because the one Dad tried to build fell apart—and inflatable pool. Two rubber ducks bounced out the last time I played there, dislodged by my splashing. They drag my eye over the overgrown yard and all the way to the garbage
bag.
I must have missed it as a six year old, but as an adult I remembered with startling clarity the shape of the sack—long and lean, with two bony mounds in the lower half—never mind the tanned hand that peeked out from amid the tufts of yellowed grass.
I remembered Donna Barnes.
Chapter Ten
I dithered until morning. Sleep was impossible, anyway, and I didn’t dare go for a walk in the middle of the night, in a city I didn’t know. Pacing the length and breadth of my room wasn’t a much better use of my time, but it was the best I could do.
I changed from PJs to skinny jeans—the only pair I owned—and a long-sleeved shirt. I’d packed a single sweater for my trip. It came in handy as I shivered my way down to reception.
The lobby was still empty, the faint whirr of a vacuum cleaner echoing from the offices behind the front desk. Once I’d made eye contact with the receptionist, I couldn’t turn tail.
“Hi,” I greeted. “Do you have any idea how I can get to Topeka?”
My phone’s GPS reported that we were only about an hour away, but if making my way back from Leavenworth via cab had taught me anything, it was that distances in the Midwest were nothing like they were back home. I could cross Paris end to end in an hour if I put my mind to it and I was ingenious about my use of public transport. I doubted the same could be said about Kansas City.
The receptionist told me he did. He was a blond-faced youth, maybe my age, maybe a little younger, with a toothpaste ad smile and chocolate eyes. Something in his face reminded me instantly of Ashley, which was probably why I also instantly decided that I liked him.
“Fastest’d be by car,” he told me, grabbing a map from behind the desk and unfurling it over the counter. He made an X over the hotel. “This is us—”
“And what if I don’t have a car?” The seriousness of that omission had been drilled into me by the guards at USP Leavenworth.
“Oh, there’s a bus,” my new best friend reported. “It takes a little longer—two hours or so, I think. Drops you off at the Amtrak… But you’ll still need a car to get around town.”
Topeka, in other words, was much like Leavenworth and Lansing and even Kansas City—merciless to pedestrians.
“Okay,” I said, relenting. “Where do I get a car?”
Fifteen minutes later, I had a stick shift Toyota waiting for me at the car rental place down the street—and I checked that it was genuinely down the street—and directions to get me as far as Bentley Park, Topeka. As much as I’d warmed to the hotel clerk, part of me was still too paranoid to say precisely where I was headed.
I wolfed down a quick breakfast of eggs and toast, with a side dish of crispy bacon. I was alone in the restaurant, so I kept my expression of distaste for the watery coffee to a minimum.
Guilt found me only once I was alone with my thoughts in the chill of morning. I hadn’t even checked flight times to New York yet. True, I was waiting for word from Ashley, but that didn’t stop me feeling as though I was somehow betraying the plans we’d made. I did my best to push the thought aside and told myself that Ashley would understand.
A few trucks passed me by in swift succession, but otherwise the city still seemed to be asleep. It wasn’t as cold as yesterday, so I shrugged out of my trench coat as I nudged open the glass door of the Rent-A-Car I’d had recommended to me. The first thing that struck me was how like a TV police station it looked. The second was the clerk dozing behind the desk.
She jerked awake at the trilling of the bell above the door. I gave her sixteen—she certainly looked sullen enough.
“Hi. I’m—”
“You’re the lady from the hotel, right?” The sixteen year old stood. “Yeah, we don’t get many six a.m. calls. I need to see your passport and your driver’s license. And a credit card.”
I handed over the lot, trying not to feel awkward about being called ‘lady’. I was maybe ten years older than the clerk. That didn’t put me in the mothballs and lavender demographic. Then again, maybe my persistent panic confirmed it. I was getting old.
“All right,” the girl drawled once I’d signed on the dotted line to promise I wouldn’t abscond with the car or else hold them liable in case of a crash. “These are your keys. Car’s in the parking lot outside. It’s fifteen bucks for the day. Gas is on you and you can drop it off at any of our dealerships.”
“You got a map?” I was collecting paperwork, anyway, might as well know where I could drop off the car in case I decided to take the bus home after all.
The clerk set me up with everything I needed, but I still left the franchise feeling like I’d disrupted her nap. The parking lot outside was teeming. I counted five rows of ten cars each, a few of them Toyotas. My stomach sank when I buzzed the car lock.
The stick shift in question was a Land Cruiser, a big silver whale of a car that, once I opened the driver’s side door, smelled faintly of plastic and weed.
I felt intimidated just sliding behind the wheel, the gap between my knees and the steering wheel large enough to accommodate another set of legs. The largest car I’d driven was a Peugeot 308. This was a considerable leap. I gave passing consideration to going back in and demanding a smaller car, but a quick glance around the parking lot told me that options were limited. I could have a Toyota-brand mastodon or a Chevy. Or maybe a Ford. Either way, the only real choice was between a sedan and a truck.
I stuck with the truck.
The engine purred handsomely to life at the first twist of the key. I took a moment to acclimate to the dashboard. Everything seemed straightforward and the gas tank was three-quarters full. I deposited my maps on the passenger seat, wishing not for the first time that Ashley were with me. He’d do more than play co-pilot if he were here. He’d tell me to take it easy.
Nervous? Don’t be.
He would smile and give my hand a squeeze.
By chance, just as I checked my mirrors and made to pull out of the parking spot in my aircraft carrier-sized car, I noticed the cassette slot beneath the radio controls. If that wasn’t a sign, then I don’t know what would qualify. I rummaged quickly through my voluminous handbag. Laura Nyro’s best hits were fast becoming the soundtrack of this excursion.
I hit ‘Play’ as I eased into traffic, humming along to melodies I’d heard a long time ago.
* * * *
Ashley’s lookalike at the hotel had neglected to mention the traffic I’d encounter on Route 70. Part of me had been hoping that seven in the morning would be too early for trucks and commuters. The other had whispered its misgivings and now felt oddly vindicated. I silenced the I told you so’s bubbling at the back of my head as I inched forward another three feet, then braked.
The Land Cruiser gave me a little altitude compared with a more modest car and I had no trouble looking a couple of hundred feet ahead over the sprawl of cars bottlenecking the interstate. I leaned back in my seat, thumping my head against the leather. Not my best bit of planning, leaving so early. I should have waited for rush hour to pass.
My only—admittedly perverse—comfort came from seeing a bus caught in the same knot of cars and thinking I could have been on it, listening to other people cough and grumble as I whiled the minutes away. At least in the Land Cruiser, I had my namesake to keep me company and I could fiddle with my phone while I idled between minute forward lurches.
I’d never been more grateful for easy access to social media and funny cat pics, but a browser that could search the departures at MCI was precisely what I needed then. Fortunately flights to New York were common enough that I didn’t need to worry about finding a seat once I had the okay from Ashley. I checked my emails and call log to make sure I hadn’t missed his confirmation. I hadn’t. It was his turn to dally, I suppose, and I told myself not to hold it against him.
It was easy to do something to distract my attention. An email from Harry Pruitt hit the spot. Harry as in Lawrence—as in my half-brother.
A foghorn-loud blast of noise slammed into
me. I swore, my heart leaping into my throat, and glared into the rear-view mirror. The driver of the GMC Yukon behind me held up his hands, his lips moving—cussing me out, I suppose. Just for that, I took my sweet time inching forward to make up the gap that had grown between the Ford up ahead and me.
We weren’t going anywhere.
I turned my attention to the email and opened it with a curl of anticipation fluttering in my belly. I wrote to Harry maybe once or twice a year—for Christmas and his birthday. I’d been tempted to get in touch for the anniversary of Mom’s passing, but I was wary of being snubbed when my emotions were going haywire, so I’d refrained.
But there was no hostility in the message I read. Harry talked about being busy with school and work. He was teaching students trying to earn their GED in the evenings and he spent his days as an administrative clerk at a local insurance company. He was only twenty-two and bright as a light bulb. I felt a touch of pride kindle absurdly as I scanned his email. One of us was doing it right. One of us would’ve made Mom proud—and it wasn’t me.
He ended his email with the hope that maybe we could meet up someday. He was still in Topeka and he knew a place that served really good Japanese steak.
I didn’t believe in magical entities ordering my life according to some master plan, but coincidences like this one shook the foundations of my non-belief.
I wrote back to ask if he was free today.
My phone shrilled with a reply in a matter of seconds.
* * * *
For all their flaws, my grandparents had done their best to help me cope with the trauma of losing a parent. They’d set therapists loose on me. They’d enrolled me in an international school even though it wasn’t cheap in the hopes that it would help me deal with the culture shock. Despite being believers in the reputable, scientific side of high school curricula, they’d even encouraged me to go into the arts if I felt a need to express myself.
