by Margo Catts
“A truck stop. There’s a room with phones.”
“That’s good. Is there a place to sleep there?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you need to find a place to sleep. I don’t think you should drive for a while.”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.”
“No, you should ask somebody where to go. Just for a few hours.”
“I’ll be fine. You just—you watch out for Kevin, okay?”
“Of course, but—” I could hear the emptiness, the way my own voice sounded flat and dead against a connection that had been closed.
Eventually, when the phone started beeping in my hand, I stood and hung it up, then went back to bed. But against my eyelids, I saw headlights sweeping the darkness and deep inside my skull I heard the moan of trucks. I didn’t sleep anymore that night.
*
Sarah was up first, as usual. When she saw the empty rollaway bed, she hesitated at the end of the hallway, nightgown floating over her feet, Buffers dangling below her elbow. My first few nights, she would come into my corner of the living room and start patting my arm to wake me. From there she’d graduated to sitting beside me while patting, and lately she’d started lying down, nesting against my back or belly, the springs squeaking as she worked her feet into the folds of the blanket.
“Are you awake now?” she’d say after she was satisfied that she’d done enough pushing and jostling to make herself comfortable.
“Yes,” I’d say.
“When can we have breakfast?” was the follow-up. A full night was a long time for her to go without food.
But this morning she found me sitting at the table, flipping through an illustrated children’s book on mythology I’d found in a basket. It had been that, hairstyle magazines, or a book of Bible stories with Jesus and the children on the front and no creases in the binding. Why was it so hard to find a book in this house? I’d been breaking bites off a piece of toast, most of which still lay, cold and dry, on a plate at my elbow. She padded across the carpet and stood beside me. She watched me turn a few more pages before she said anything.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking at this book.”
“What is it?”
“A bunch of stories people made up a long time ago about the way the world works. You never saw it before?”
She shook her head.
I gestured toward the basket in the living room. “I found it over there.”
“Oh,” she said, unimpressed. She pointed at the picture. “What’s that?”
“That’s called a chariot. It’s a kind of a wagon for horses to pull.”
“What’s that?”
“The sun. It’s a story about how a god would hitch a flying chariot to the sun and pull it across the sky every day.”
She wrinkled her nose and pulled her head back. “That’s crazy.”
“I know. People had some crazy ideas back then. They used to think that gods did everything, but now we know science, and that people do most things themselves. Kind of like we’re little gods.”
“We’re God?” Her wide-eyed amazement gave me a glimpse of just how this conversation might sound in the retelling.
“Oh, gosh, no.” I had enough trouble without kicking up a religious scandal. “I just mean, uh, there’s just a lot of crazy ideas in that book. They’re really funny. We’re just people, you know? Making our own things happen.”
Mercifully, I’d lost her, and I hoped the boring end to the religious conversation would drain the whole thing out of her mind. She put her palm over the picture and pushed a clump of pages aside, then pointed at the picture on the new page.
“What’s that?”
“That’s a girl being born out of her father’s head.”
Sarah remade her last face and exaggerated it, then turned to show it to me so I could see what she thought of the idea before she said anything.
“Daddies don’t have babies. And they don’t come out of people’s heads.”
“That’s right. I told you it was crazy.”
“My mom was going to have a baby. But then she died.”
Stunned, I didn’t answer. She turned another clump of pages.
“What’s that?”
Apparently I didn’t answer quickly enough.
“What is it?”
“Ah, that’s a man looking at himself in the water. He got stuck there because he thought he was so beautiful he couldn’t look away.”
She laughed. “He just looked at himself all day?”
“That’s what the story says.”
“That’s funny.”
I looked at her and the inevitable bird’s nest that sleep made of her hair. From time to time I checked on her at night to see whether I could figure out how it happened, but I only ever found her motionless, splayed across the mattress, sheets snarled around her knees, head buried in her pillow.
“I don’t know,” I said. “You look pretty great right now, yourself. I bet if you went in the bathroom and checked the mirror you’d get stuck there, too.”
She darted away and thundered down the hall. I heard a thud I knew to be her feet kicking the cabinet as she jumped onto the bathroom counter, then another thud as she jumped down. In few seconds later she was back at my side, giving me less time to gather myself than I wanted.
“Huh-uh.”
“Wow. You’re amazing. Most people would’ve had a hard time.”
“My hair looks messy.”
“Well, maybe. Do you want toast or cereal this morning?”
“I want frosty flakes.”
“Okay.”
I pushed myself back from the table and she sat down at her place, pulling the book in front of herself and starting over as I went into the kitchen.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to another picture.
“Hold it up so I can see.” She raised it as high as she could, looking up toward the ceiling, arms straight overhead. “That’s Athena. She’s Zeus’s daughter, the one that came out of his head. She was supposed to be very wise.”
She turned the page. “And that.”
“That’s Poseidon. He’s the god of the sea.”
She lowered the book and studied the picture of Poseidon rearing out of the water with his trident, arms outstretched over a roiling sea full of bizarre creatures. “He looks mad.”
“Uh-huh. Now if you want breakfast, you’re going to have to stop showing me pictures for a minute.”
She turned pages slowly while I poured cereal into a bowl and got milk. Kevin shuffled into the room and pulled out the chair across from her. He sat heavily, looking down at the place mat.
“What were you doing in the bathroom?” he said. “You woke me up.”
“Looking in the mirror.”
“Why?”
“To see if I’d get stuck.” Sarah turned another page. “I didn’t.”
“You should’ve.”
“I know. Lena thinks so, too.”
I glanced at him sharply, but since Sarah had missed the insult I didn’t want to make more out of it.
“Good morning,” I said. No response. “Do you want cereal or toast?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Crunch,” he said after a moment.
“Excuse me?” Kevin might not be chatty but he was always polite.
“Cap’n Crunch, please.”
“That sounds better.” I filled the bowl and poured milk around the edges. We had less than I’d thought, and left to his own devices he had a tendency to overdose himself, then pour the remainder down the drain.
I placed the bowls and spoons in front of the children and took my seat at the end of the table. Kevin picked up his spoon without response, while Sarah was too absorbed in the book to even notice the food.
“What do we say?” I prompted.
“Thank you,” they replied automatically.
“Who’s that?” Sarah asked, pointing at another picture as she picked up her sp
oon.
“Oh. That’s Pandora. That’s a box full of all the troubles in the world and she wasn’t supposed to open it, but she was curious and let all the trouble out.”
Sarah stopped her spoon above the bowl and glared at me. “All the bad things in the world were in that box?”
“It’s just a story.”
She shoved the book aside. “I hate her.”
I’d probably had less than four hours of sleep. I’d spent the next four replaying the conversation with Paul, imagining myself saying something that would have stopped him. Now I’d just learned that her dead mother might also have been pregnant. I was powerless to think of a helpful way to respond. I pulled my plate closer and broke off another piece of toast.
“I do, too,” I said.
I glanced over at Kevin, whose eyes stayed on his cereal. He pushed the floating squares down into the milk with the back of his spoon, an endless game of Whac-A-Mole that resulted in very little cereal consumed.
“Let me see your eye,” I said.
He turned to face me for just a moment, then went back to tapping the surface of his cereal. The skin was puffy, the eye reduced, with a purple streak extending from the bridge of his nose along the curve of the socket.
“Bad night?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“You and me both,” I muttered, standing with my plate. I hadn’t meant to say it, but my resistance was down. The children didn’t react, though. Sarah sucked milk from her spoon with her chin stretched over her bowl, feet waving back and forth above the floor, while Kevin continued tapping. I let my remaining toast slide into the trash on my way to the sink.
“Quit kicking,” Kevin snapped. I glanced up to see him glaring at Sarah.
“You quit kicking.”
“I’m not doing the kicking.”
“I’m not doing the kicking.”
“Quit it.”
“Quit it.”
“Quit copying me!”
“Quit copying me!”
“Shut up! I hate you!”
“Kevin!” I was too late. He lashed out with one foot, missing her, then swung again, catching her heel. Sarah shrieked, far out of proportion for the glancing barefoot blow, then started to wail.
“You apologize to your sister!”
“I’m sorry you’re stupid.”
“Kevin!” His behavior was so far out of character that I had no framework for how to handle it.
He slammed his spoon down on the table, knocking the edge of the bowl so that it sloshed milk across his hand and the place mat, then shoved his chair back and ran out of the room. A door slammed.
“Hush, Sarah. You’re not hurt.”
“Am too!”
“Enough. He’s gone.”
It was going to be a very long day, indeed.
*
By mid-morning I felt myself fraying. Though he eventually emerged from his room with a muttered apology, Kevin continued morose and brittle, and tension shimmered from him like fluorescent light. My own anxiety multiplied the effect, and Sarah, caught between us, alternated between whining and withdrawal.
I skipped chores. We needed groceries, and a trip out would’ve done us all good, but I was desperate for Paul to call and report he was all right and afraid to do anything that might result in a missed call, including one that might tell me he wasn’t all right. Sarah wanted to have her friend Jenny come over, but tying up the phone would’ve been just as bad, so I endured her pleading and nagging while I struggled to come up with reasons why it wouldn’t work. Finally Kevin announced that he wanted to watch TV, and I gave them both over to The Price Is Right.
I braced myself against the sink and stared out at the service shed and the mountainside and fought to keep the bile out of my throat. This was the first time I’d felt nauseated since I’d gotten pregnant but I didn’t think the baby was to blame.
A flutter of movement caught my eye in the sliver I could see of Poppy’s front yard. I darted across the living room and grabbed the front doorknob.
“I’m just gonna say hi to Miss Poppy,” I said. The children, immobilized, didn’t respond. I left the front door open so I could still hear the phone.
“Hey there!” I called, too loud, waving everything above the elbow.
Poppy, doubled over a spray of blue flowers so that she presented nothing but a dome of calico to the road, straightened and put a hand over her eyes.
“Well, hey there yourself,” she called back.
“How are the puppies?”
“Fine, just fine. They change every day. You all wanna come see?”
Stupid question. I’d been too absorbed by my own fear to anticipate that obvious response. “I—I can’t right now. I …” The only thing I knew was that I couldn’t let her go. She was an adult. A lifeline. In a way I’d never felt before, I needed to not be alone. I dropped my hand, still up in a half wave, to my side. “Can you come over and help me with something for a minute?”
“Well, sure, honey.” She hoisted herself out of the flower bed, pushing a wind chime away from her face, laid a handful of dead flowers on the step, then ambled across the road. “What do you need?” she asked as she came into the front yard.
I glanced inside at the children, still safely staring at the TV, and pulled the door ajar.
“Do you mind sitting down here for a sec?”
“Not at all.” She turned sideways and braced herself against the concrete with one hand before lowering herself onto the stoop with a grunt. I sat beside her, hands tucked under my thighs.
She eyed me, squinting though we sat in the shade, her face ruddy and creased. Her hair was in a braid that looked as if she’d probably slept in it, gray and fuzzy and caught on her shoulder, and an enormous turquoise squash blossom pendant lay on her breastbone like a fist. She smelled of cold cream and grass. “You okay?” she said.
“I think I need some help.”
“Yes, that’s why I came.”
I clearly lacked experience at asking for help. I wasn’t sure where to start.
“Do you know Paul pretty well?” I asked.
“Not really. I knew Carrie better.”
Just like Paul had said—everyone loved Carrie.
“He called me last night,” I said. Poppy waited. “I mean, early this morning. Really early, like three o’clock. He was drunk.”
“Ahh.” Poppy’s face eased, comprehending. “That happens, you know. Folks say some crazy things. What was it?”
“No, that’s not it—he’s on the road. I tried to tell him to get a room and stay wherever he was, but he didn’t really answer me. He just kept saying he’d be fine and that I needed to watch out for Kevin.” Through the sliver of open door behind me came faint dinging from the television, then a shimmer of applause.
Poppy looked at me, waiting. “That’s it?” she said.
“Yes!”
Another pause, then, “What do you want me to do, honey?”
“I—I don’t know! But I’m afraid to leave the house or tie up the phone. I don’t want to miss a call.”
“What kind of call? You mean, that he’ll call again and be mad if you don’t answer? Was he acting mean or something?”
“No! I hope he calls again. That would mean everything was all right!” I rolled my lips together. What I wanted to say next might become more real if I said it aloud. I put my elbows on my knees and rested my forehead on my fists.
“It sounded like good-bye,” I whispered.
Poppy put a hand on my back and leaned over to peer at my face.
“Honey, what are you afraid of?”
I put my knuckles to my cheekbones and looked toward the wind chimes sparkling in Poppy’s front yard. Took a deep breath. “I’m afraid he got drunk and started thinking about how he can’t take it anymore and the kids would be better off without him and that I didn’t say anything about how much they need him and he decided to drive his truck off a bridge and the highway patrol is going to call and
those kids are going to be orphans. With me.” I glanced over my shoulder at the door. I sounded insane. And awful. Only the sound of a slide whistle, a fortune lost, came from the TV in return.
“God damn.” Poppy straightened and rocked back a little, then looked back at me. “And all he said was ‘I’ll be fine’?”
“But you didn’t hear it! He was weird when I got here last night, and then there was this call …” I trailed off, looking for support, then did my best imitation of what I recalled of Paul’s tone. Heavy. Labored. “I’ll be fine. Take care of Kevin.” I waited. “Don’t you get it?”
“No, I don’t. Do you always expect terrible things to happen?”
“But that’s how people talk when they’re about to leave! Making arrangements and leaving messages and everything.”
Poppy tilted her head slightly. “Where the hell do you get an idea like that?”
I considered, then looked away. “It’s a long story.”
“And maybe you don’t want to tell it now while you’re worried about something else.”
“Probably not.”
“Another time.”
Slowly, I nodded.
She threw her heavy arm around my shoulders. “You know, having those kids wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.” A squeeze and a smile. “I mean, I’ve got Mama.” She added a slap on my back as punctuation. “Hah!”
I must have looked horrified. I already knew what awaited me. Forget the kids—I could see my father in another ten years, shuffling around my house, disapproving of the TV shows I watched or the way I kept the shades open to let in the sun, petulant if I was gone for too long. A strangling necklace of need. Now if you added the baby and these children … All my efforts to break away and flee were only making things worse.
“Wrong time for a joke, huh?” she said.
“Kinda.”
She folded her hands back in her lap. She spoke very softly. “So how can I help you?”
I had no idea. She couldn’t answer my questions about what Paul meant or what might have happened in the desert overnight. She didn’t know him well enough to explain him to me. She couldn’t tell the future and say that yes, it would be fine to take the children shopping for an hour or two right now, but that I should be home at, say, one fifteen.
