Once it was good and dark we settled onto the flatbed—Lee gave me his sleeping bag, folding the spare blanket into a pallet for himself—and for a little while we talked about things that had nothing to do with a lost father, or the hazards of hitchhiking, or things that weren’t meant to be eaten. He held up a finger to trace constellations he made up as he went along—a giraffe, a blimp, a chocolate-chip cookie—which reminded me of Jamie Gash, and it was my fault our conversation petered out into awkward silence. Again I was the first to fall asleep, not that I slept well, and again Lee wasn’t beside me when I woke up. My brain jangled inside my head from lying on the plywood all night.
Lee was sitting on the picnic table, boiling water for coffee on the camp stove. He handed me a steaming tin cup and we drank quickly, in silence, before we got back in the truck and hit the road. I looked up at the brightening sky and thought of my dad. Francis Yearly was out there someplace—somewhere behind us, but not for long. In that moment I knew for sure he’d only left because he believed I’d be safer that way. “Did you ever go looking for your father?” I asked.
“Nope. No way to find him even if I wanted to.”
“Don’t you ever think about it though? Like if there was some way to find him—would you do it?”
“Nah. If we ever met he’d only end up dead.”
I laughed, and so did he, but his laughter fell away into a pensive silence. “Do you think your mom was afraid of you?”
My stomach turned over. I stared at him.
“Sorry,” Lee said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked that.”
The next time we stopped for gas I locked myself in the mini-mart restroom. The floor was filthy and I couldn’t bring myself to sit down, so I squatted on my heels, wedged my face between my knees, and cried.
The truth is like the waiting jaws of a monster, a more menacing monster than I’ll ever be. It yawns beneath your feet, and you can’t escape it, and as soon as you drop, it chews you to pieces. Of course it had sort of half occurred to me that my mother had been afraid of me, but it felt way more likely to be true now that someone else had put the words around it. She’d never loved me, had she? She’d felt responsible for me, like everything I’d ever done was her fault for having brought me into the world. Every kindness she’d ever shown me had come out of guilt, not love. All that time she was only waiting until I was old enough to get by on my own.
I jumped at a knock on the door. “Maren? Are you all right?”
“Yeah.” I grabbed a wad of toilet paper. “I’ll be out in a minute.” I blew my nose a few times and looked at it. No matter what happened, no matter how things fell apart, I always felt better looking at my own snot.
When I opened the door Lee was standing right outside. “You have to go?” I asked.
“Nah.” He was still looking at me, arms folded, brow furrowed. For a second I thought he was going to give me a hug, but then he turned around and strode back to the truck. When I opened the passenger door I found a can of Coke and something wrapped in aluminum foil waiting for me on the seat. “Figured you’d be hungry,” he said as he bit into his sandwich. Roast beef.
“Thanks,” I said. I couldn’t even taste it. Mama had kept me fed, but all along she’d been wishing she could lock me in a cage. It wasn’t dinner she made me each night—it was a sacrifice.
“Look, I’m sorry if I upset you,” Lee said. “But I’m not gonna tiptoe around your feelings.”
I shrugged and looked out the window.
We got to Tingley late that night. Lee pulled to the curb in a neighborhood of narrow two-story houses that seemed to be clinging to the memory of middle-class respectability. The windows and doors in one or two of the houses were boarded up, and it was so quiet I could hear the hum of the fluorescent bulbs in the street lamps. We got out of the truck and I followed him down the sidewalk, passing a few houses before Lee turned up a driveway. It was a sad-looking house, with weeds growing tall in the flower beds along the front walk.
“Whose house is this?” I whispered.
“Nobody’s anymore.” He glanced up at me as he bent to retrieve a key from under a weather-beaten welcome mat. “Oh, relax. It used to be my great-aunt’s. She died two months ago, and nobody wants to buy it.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” I felt stupid for saying it, but I couldn’t say nothing.
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged as he turned the key in the lock. “We can stay here tonight. Then I have to find my sister in the morning, and after that we’ll head back to Minnesota.”
Lee’s aunt hadn’t kept her house as well as Mrs. Harmon had. The air was stale. It smelled of sickness and disuse. I reached for the light switch, and Lee put up a hand to stop me. “Nobody can know we’re here. Just try not to bump into anything.”
“But I can’t see!”
“You’ll get used to it.”
We were in a tiny kitchen. From the streetlights I could make out a glass lamp hung over a round table to our right, an L-shaped counter along the wall to the left, and a refrigerator. Suddenly I thought of food. Lee must have had the same idea, because he opened a cabinet over the stove and peered inside. “Oh, good. There’s still some soup and beans in here.”
He laid the tins on the counter, opened another drawer, and took out a can opener. We had microwaved soup, and afterward I took out my journal and the flashlight. “You’re always writing in that book.”
I shrugged.
“Can I look at the pictures?”
I handed it to him. “Don’t read the writing, okay?”
“Sure.”
All the Scotch tape around the pictures made a crinkling sound as he turned the pages. He stared at the etching I’d found in a library book called Weird and Wonderful Legends of Scotland. The caption read: The constabulary discover the lair of Sawney Beane and his cannibal clan. There were piles of bones in the corners, limbs hanging from the ceiling, dozens of faces leering out of the darkness, and a bubbling cauldron attended to by an old hag who could only be Sawney’s wife, her fangs bared in the firelight. At the mouth of the cave was a row of men in uniform, gaping in horror at the evidence of decades’ worth of carnage. Sawney himself was lifting an ax against the intruders.
Before today I couldn’t have pictured myself in that cave. Now it looked almost cozy.
“Sick,” Lee said finally, then turned the page to the photocopy of Saturn Devouring His Son. He laid his finger on the space where the baby’s head should have been. “I saw this painting in a book once. Made me wonder if he was one of us.”
“Who, Goya?”
“Is that his name?” He closed the notebook and slid it across the table. “It’s like a book of monsters,” he said.
I ran my fingers over the marbled black-and-white cover. “It makes me feel less alone.”
He got up and rinsed out the dishes. “I’m gonna sleep on the couch in the living room. You can take the bedroom up those stairs and to the right. It has the best bed. Just don’t turn on any lights or open the windows. The neighbors notice everything.”
It felt a little like being back in Mrs. Harmon’s house, except not as comfortable because I hadn’t been invited. On my way up I pointed the flashlight at the framed family pictures on every wall and dresser, but I didn’t see any pictures of Lee.
The mattress was old, and the bedsprings dug into my ribs. For a long time I lay awake, the air in the room weighing on my chest like a gremlin, and when I finally fell under I dreamed I was racing down long, dark corridors that zigged and zagged. There were words on the walls in big, dripping letters. I knew my dad had painted the words, but I didn’t know how to read them. You can’t smell anything in dreams, but I could tell they were luring me with the scent of dinner.
6
I came down in the morning and found a note on the table: Driving lesson, be back soon. I was afraid to leave the house in case anybody saw me, but I felt almost as uneasy staying inside. What if a real estate agent showed up?
Nothing I could do about it, really. So I took out Mrs. Harmon’s yarn and needles and tried to cast on again. Knitting, or trying to, made me feel normal. I turned on the TV and watched The Price Is Right. When I heard the door slam I switched it off and tiptoed into the kitchen.
Still wearing his cowboy hat, Lee was moving all the canned goods from the cabinets into a plastic dairy crate on the counter. He pointed to a McDonald’s bag on the table. “Got you something for breakfast.”
I thanked him, and as I wolfed down my Egg McMuffin I watched a girl ride a bike up the street and turn into the driveway. She hopped off and nudged down the kickstand with the tip of her sandal. “Who’s that?”
Lee glanced out the window and sighed. “My sister. I’ll just go and talk to her.” He paused. “It’d be better if you stayed inside.”
“Why?”
“No offense, all right?”
“But…”
He went out, letting the screen door slam behind him, and his sister leapt into his arms. She was really pretty, tanned and green-eyed like him, but she would’ve been even prettier without so much makeup on. I crept to the door to see her better. So much for hiding from the neighbors.
“What are you doing here?” I heard him say. “You’ve already missed enough school for one day.”
Kayla grinned. “Your fault, for not coming on the weekend.”
“You’re right. I should’ve planned it better. Now go back to school.”
“We’re basically done for the year anyway.” Jagged shapes on her fingernails caught the light, electric blue. It had been a few weeks since she’d painted her nails. “I had such a good time this morning, Lee. It was so easy to pretend you’d never left.”
“I had a good time too.”
“Don’t you miss me when you’re gone?”
“You know you’re the only person in the world I ever miss.”
Kayla gave him a doubtful look.
“Don’t go there,” he said. “There’s no point.”
“And what about Mom?”
“What about her?”
“She’s really worried about you.”
Lee thrust his hands in his pockets and kicked at a stone in the driveway. “Who’re you kidding?”
“All right. I’m worried.”
“I’m sorry, Kay. I wish I didn’t have to.”
“You don’t have to!”
“Yeah, I do. You know I do.”
“I don’t know why, Lee. You never tell me anything. I might not see you again for months!”
“I promise it won’t be that long this time.”
“Who am I going to celebrate with when I pass the test?”
He grinned. “If you pass the test.”
“If I don’t pass, it’ll be your fault for not giving me enough lessons.” Kayla glanced over his shoulder and saw me standing behind the screen door. “Who’s that?”
Lee turned around and shot me a cold look. I knew I shouldn’t eavesdrop, but I’d rather have him be annoyed with me than let him shrug off my questions later on. I smiled at Kayla and gave her a little wave. She smiled back, but only with her lips. She doesn’t like me, I thought. She doesn’t like me because I’m with her brother and she’s not.
“Is she your girlfriend? Can I meet her?”
“She’s just a friend. Maybe you can meet her some other time.”
He hugged her again and held on. “We can’t stay. I just needed to see you. To make sure you’re all right.”
“I’d be a whole lot better if you’d come home.”
He backed away from her, holding up his hand for goodbye. “I’m sorry, Kay. I really am.”
She folded her arms and furrowed her brow. “I hate this, Lee. I hate that you do this.”
“I’ll see you soon, all right? I’ll come by the house and we’ll celebrate your new license with a movie or something.”
“And I really hate that hat,” she called after him.
“I know,” he said. “I heard you the first three times.”
I stepped aside to let him back in. Kayla stood in the driveway, head bowed, working her knuckles against her eyes. I drew back from the door screen.
Lee was cramming a few last things into his rucksack. “You got your stuff together?”
* * *
He guessed it would take us three days to drive to Minnesota, taking a more northerly route than we had taken to get to Tingley: through the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia into Ohio, then Indiana, up past Chicago, and across Wisconsin. The longer we drove, the more I felt the hum of excitement creeping out of the pit of my stomach and wending its way down my limbs and around my heart. Every mile on the odometer brought me closer to my dad.
Toward the end of the day’s driving I figured I’d waited long enough to broach the subject of Kayla. “So how’d she do?” I asked.
“Hmm?”
“The driving lesson. How’d it go?”
“Oh,” he said. “All right. I think she’ll pass.”
“Did you teach her with the truck?”
“Yup. I figured if she could handle this thing she’d have no trouble with my mom’s sedan.”
“Is she going to get her own car once she passes?”
Lee paused before answering, and I started to feel like I was asking too many questions again. “I don’t think so,” he said finally. “She’s got a job at an ice cream parlor, but I still can’t see how she’ll be able to afford it. I wish I could get her a car of her own.”
A thought formed in my head and presented itself before I could push it away. You could get her a car of her own, and you wouldn’t have to pay a dime for it.
“I just want her to be able to leave if she has to, you know? All you need is a car that runs, and you have that freedom. Hell, you don’t even need a license.” He sighed. “I really hate that she’s trapped in that house with my mom.”
I rolled the window all the way down and stuck my head out. You deserve to be broke and alone, thinking things like that. “Did you ever think about taking her with you?” I asked.
“No. She deserves better than this.” As he spoke he leaned forward in the driver’s seat, clenching the wheel with both hands. “I want her to go to college. I want her to have a normal life. A good life.”
“I’m sure she will.”
He flicked me a skeptical look.
“Do you think, maybe … if we have time, and there’s a good place for it … maybe you could teach me how to drive too?”
Lee rolled his eyes, but at least he was smiling. “Good grief,” he said. “Next you’ll be asking me to be your date to the prom.”
Again I turned to the window, so he wouldn’t see how red my face was. “Then you won’t teach me?”
“Yeah, I’ll teach you. When it gets dark, we’ll find a big parking lot someplace, after all the stores have closed.”
“As long as it’s not a Walmart,” I said, and he grinned.
* * *
My first driving lesson took place in a Home Depot parking lot somewhere in Ohio, and it was not a success. I had a hard time remembering to press the clutch when I needed to shift gears, and I cringed every time I heard the crunching sound of metal on unhappy metal.
Lee was a good teacher though. “It’s fine,” he said. “Just go slow. Stay in first gear. For now just get used to being behind the wheel.”
After an hour we switched places and picked up a pizza with extra cheese and pepperoni. Dinner warmed my lap all the way out of shopping center territory. The plan was to keep camping all the way to Sandhorn, at any state park more or less along our route, which Lee would trace for me in his dog-eared road atlas.
The pizza was cold by the time we found a place to stop in the woods, but we devoured it anyway, dangling our legs off the back of the flatbed. I was using my rucksack for a backrest, and he asked, “Why is your pack so big?”
“It’s everything I have. Of course it’s going to take up a whole bag.”
He shrugged. �
��You can always travel lighter.”
“But you need things. A flashlight. Maps. A change of clothes. Something to sleep in, stuff to cook with.”
“You got any of that stuff in your pack?” He looked at me and waited a moment. “C’mon. Show me what you’ve got in there.”
I loosened the cinch and opened the bag. Lee leaned over to peer inside. Books, mostly, along with a few pieces of clothing. “Those aren’t your books,” he said.
“Some of them are.”
“Which ones?”
I divided the books into two piles on the flatbed—mine and theirs. Mine: The Annotated Alice; The Lord of the Rings three-in-one my mother had given me for my birthday; The Chronicles of Narnia, also in one volume; and the Ringling Brothers circus book, which Lee picked up and flipped through.
Then he picked up the first book from the second pile: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. “Tell me about him.”
I sighed. “It was Kevin’s. He brought me up to his room after school to study together for a history test. His parents weren’t home yet. Nobody ever knew I’d been there.” I paused. “It happened like that a lot. A boy would make an excuse to invite me over after school, and…”
“Yeah. I know.” Next he picked up Around the World in Eighty Days.
“Marcus. He followed me home after the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Barron Falls two years ago.”
Choose Your Own Adventure: Escape from Utopia. “Luke. Summer camp when I was eight. He was the first one. After Penny, I mean.”
“Penny was your babysitter?”
“Yeah.” I took the book from him and ran my fingers over the cover illustration of the boy and girl racing out of the jungle, the chasm yawning just behind their feet. “Luke was going to be a forest ranger.”
“You can’t think about that kind of stuff.”
I put the book back on the pile. “Easy for you to say.” As soon as I said that, a peculiar feeling came over me, as if I didn’t care anymore what Luke had wanted for his life.
No, no. Lee was the one who didn’t care. He didn’t have to.
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