Homesick Creek

by Diane Hammond

  You’d never know it now, but in high school Anita had been prettier than Bunny. Everyone used to say she looked just like the Breck girl. Her senior year she’d been the Miss Harrison County runner-up, beat out only by LeeAnn Sprague, whose folks had paid for tap dancing lessons since she was born. Anita had sung “If I’d Loved You” from Carousel, but her background tape had jammed, and she’d had to start over, which would throw anybody off. She still had her competition gown in a dry cleaner’s bag in her closet, champagne taffeta and chiffon, strapless because everyone agreed that her shoulders were one of her best features, with a huge bow in back that fanned across her shoulder blades like the wings of an angel. She’d worn satin pumps dyed to match, and she’d smiled and smiled even through the mistake with the music, her teeth coated with Vaseline so her lips wouldn’t stick. She had glided down the runway like a queen.

  But somewhere between that day and now she’d ballooned and hardened. A lot of people didn’t think you noticed when you lost your looks, but that was crap. Anita saw every single thing: the doughy skin; the weight; the stringy hair, the messy center part, the gray. She knew exactly what she looked like. She looked like someone who was circling the drain.

  She and Bunny had started heading in different directions right out of high school, Bunny mostly up and Anita mostly down. Anita tried not to notice how many things Hack bought Bunny, or Bunny bought herself, and not just the piano and the rabbits. Over the years he had bought her and Vinny lots of nice things: a top-of-the-line microwave, new cars, dental care. Several years ago he had given Bunny lizard-skin cowboy boots with flames up the sides. He’d even given her panties with little jewels that spelled SEXY, though that was probably a gift for himself as much as for her. Hack was like that sometimes, could turn even a present into the chance to come away with something for himself.

  Anita and Bunny had both been there that day when Hack first came up to borrow a blanket. He could have chosen either one of them, and he had chosen Bunny. If he had chosen her instead, what would Anita be like now? She pictured everything she’d become being swept off the table to float away on the wind like milkweed: the awful house, the beater car, the ugly clothes that were never new, the smoker’s cough, the squint, the lines in her face, all of them pointing down.

  She picked a piece of tobacco off her tongue and looked at the clock. It was four thirty-five, black and oily as creosote outside. Bob had risen like the dead from his hangover three hours ago and gone out. She knew he was at the Wayside. Whenever he went farther away, he took his toothbrush, his comb, and a fresh change of clothes. All of them were still in the house.

  The old wall phone went off in the corner of the kitchen like a bomb. She figured it was Roy calling to tell her to come get Bob, but it was her daughter, Doreen, instead, sounding hysterical.

  “Slow down, honey, I can’t understand you,” Anita said, squeezing her temples with her free hand. She’d been telling Doreen to slow down ever since Doreen could talk. The girl started crying, and in the background Anita could hear her three-year-old granddaughter, Crystal, sobbing too. Anita gave her a minute. “Honey, just take a deep breath. Breathe.”

  The girl drew a shuddery breath. “They just arrested Danny.”

  “Crap.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What for?”

  “Meth. Apparently his fucking buddy Bruce has been running a goddamn meth lab in his basement, and they say Danny was helping him. Crystal, shut the fuck up.”

  Anita could hear Crystal whimper. She made her voice low and soothing. “It’s okay, honey. She’s just scared. You want me to come over there and get her?”

  “Yeah . . . no. I don’t know. I mean, how are we going to make bail? We’re broke. Plus if he can’t work tomorrow, they’ll fire him, and then we’re fucked, we’re just totally fucked.” Danny was a stock boy at the Sentry Market over in Sawyer. It was his fourth job in a year and a half, fifty cents above minimum wage. “I can’t believe this. If he did do it—the meth thing, I mean—then how come we never have any goddamn money?”

  “I don’t know, honey. Have you called that attorney he had last time? He’ll tell you what to do.”

  “Yeah, right. He’ll tell me to go to hell is what he’ll tell me, because we can’t come up with a thousand bucks in cash like we had to last time before he’d even talk to us. We still owe nine hundred dollars from the trial, and Danny got convicted anyway,” Doreen said bitterly.

  “Well, then the court will give you somebody for free. They have to do that, honey. Danny’s got rights.”

  “Yeah, they’ll give us some broken-down old guy who doesn’t give a shit.” Doreen started to cry again, in an odd, flat way. From what Anita could hear in the background, Crystal was still crying too.

  “Listen to me, honey,” Anita said. “Are you listening? You need to call the police station and find out what’s going on. That bondsman you got last time, see if you can find him again. Do you remember his name? Wasn’t it Larry something? Those people must have listings in the yellow pages. I’ll be there as soon as I can to get Crystal. Has she eaten yet, because we’re real low on food right now, honey? I’ve been too busy to get to the store.”

  “Yeah, she’s eaten. I got her Burger King a couple of hours ago.”

  “All right, then put some clothes in a bag for her and a snack for later, and I’ll be there as fast as I can. If they tell you to come down to the jail, just leave me a note on the door.”

  “I can’t fucking believe this is happening,” Doreen said.

  “Well, it’s happening, honey. Just keep your chin up.”

  Anita hung up with a sigh. The girl had always been high-strung. Patrick had been an easy baby, fat and placid, but Doreen had screamed and fussed and demanded, and no matter how much Anita did for her, it wasn’t enough. When she was three and a half, Anita had cracked and hit her on the side of her head with a heavy glass ashtray. It took a while for the bruise to fade, but Anita just said Doreen had fallen down the stairs. Whenever Doreen was naughty after that, all Anita had had to do was look in the direction of that ashtray, which she made a point of keeping out on the coffee table, and Doreen would shut right up. Anita had never had to do anything like that with Patrick. He’d been her dream child, still was. She had a picture of him in his army full dress uniform on a table in the living room. It was still hard to believe he was over there in Germany. When he enlisted three years ago, she’d cried for hours. A couple of times he’d sent home money, forty, sixty dollars, but Anita had sent the money orders right back. She wasn’t going to take money from her baby boy. There might come a time when she had to, but she was damned if it was going to be while Bob could still get out there and work.

  Anita dialed the Wayside number from memory. When Roy answered, she asked him to put Bob on the phone. A minute later she could hear the receiver being fumbled on the bar, and then Bob said, “Honey?”

  “Listen, Danny’s in trouble again. I told Doreen I’d come over and pick up Crystal.”

  “Jesus,” Bob said sympathetically.

  “So you need to come home,” Anita said.

  “I wouldn’t be any help.”

  “Honey, I need the car.”

  “Shit! Course you do.” Bob put down the receiver, and Anita could hear him yell at Roy, “Wife needs the car. You seen it, by any chance? Big blue Caprice, lots of rust, needs a new front left tire real bad, but the others still have a few miles on ’em, muffler’s a real piece of shit—”

  “Bob,” Anita could hear Roy say, amused, “you drove here. Go look in the parking lot.”

  “Oh! Hey!” Bob raised the receiver and with jubilation told Anita, “Honey, it’s okay. It’s right here.”

  “I know it’s there. It needs to be here.”

  “No shit?”

  Anita set her jaw. “Look, honey, put Roy on the phone.”

  Another bunch of fumbling, and then Roy said, “Yeah.”

  “Who’s there who could drive the car h
ome and pick me up? I’ve got to get over to Sawyer. Danny’s in some kind of trouble again.”

  “Dooley’s here. You want me to ask him?”

  “Yes,” Anita said, relieved. Odd or not, Dooley Burden was somebody you could rely on. “Would you, Roy? I’ll wait.”

  The phone clunked down on the bar again, and when it was picked up this time, Dooley was on the line. “I got Bob’s keys right here,” he said. “You want me to come now?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got to get over to Sawyer and pick up Crystal. Danny’s in trouble again.”

  “No problem. What do you want me to tell Bob?”

  “Tell him whatever you want to. He won’t remember it anyway.”

  “Will do. I’m on my way.”

  But when Dooley arrived five minutes later, it was in his own little Subaru instead of the Caprice. He held the passenger side door open for her.

  “Uh-oh,” Anita said once she was inside. “Where’s the car?”

  “You didn’t have much gas,” Dooley said, heading back to the Wayside. “I didn’t figure you’d want to bother filling it up right now. You take this one and just drop it by on your way back through town.”

  Anita felt the backs of her eyes prickle with shame and gratitude. They wouldn’t have money for gas until Bob got paid again. She pretended to look out the window until she could trust herself. “That was nice of you, to think about that, Dooley. I’ll take good care of it,” she said.

  “I know you will. You tell that girl of yours to take care of herself. I’ve always had a soft spot for Doreen, ever since she was tiny and used to wear that majorette outfit everywhere.”

  In the Wayside parking lot he left the car idling while Anita came around to the driver’s side. “You be careful. Wind’s a son of a bitch,” he yelled as he made a dash for the Wayside front door.

  Anita hauled the seat belt across her lap, flipped the wipers on high, and turned the car toward Sawyer, cursing Danny for the millionth time. He’d been trouble from the minute Doreen had started going with him five years ago, but try telling that to the girl. When she got pregnant at sixteen, they got married for Crystal’s sake, but you could tell it was never going to work out between them. Then last year he’d gotten in trouble for stealing tools from a body shop over in Sawyer where he’d worked for a couple of months. He said he’d been given permission to take them home for a night or two to work on his old Mustang, but the owner testified in court that that was garbage. Danny had been sentenced to two years’ probation. If he really was involved in this latest thing, he could just hang, as far as Anita was concerned. She’d move Doreen and Crystal home with her and Bob if she had to. She’d figure something out. She always did.

  Anita drove over the cape, fighting every gust of wind. Dooley’s car was nice, though, even if it was small. It had been a long time since she’d driven such a new car. Bunny had a good car, of course, a nice midnight blue Thunderbird with a white landau roof. When they did things together, they never went in Anita’s car. In her next life Anita was going to have a new-model car every two years like clockwork and park it outside her new double-wide, just see if she didn’t.

  At Doreen’s apartment Anita pulled into the parking space next to Doreen’s car. The asshole manager would probably give Anita hell again for taking up someone else’s designated parking place, but that was just tough shit. She was tugging her purse out after her when Doreen opened the door. Her eyes were bloody-looking and puffy from crying, but her makeup was fresh, her mascara as thick and black as iron filings. Her hair was all poufed up too and pulled back into a ponytail. She’d always had thin hair like Anita. The back-combing wasn’t fooling anybody.

  “How come you’re driving Dooley’s car?”

  “Daddy’s got ours.” Anita pulled the apartment door closed behind her. The place was spotless at least. Doreen was a good housekeeper. Crystal came dashing over in footie pajamas and plowed into Anita’s legs. Anita swung her up and gave her a big kiss. The girl giggled and wrapped her legs around Anita’s hips, put her arms around her neck.

  “Hi, sweetie,” Anita said. “You glad to see Grammy?”

  “Uh-huh,” the girl said around a big wad of bubble gum.

  “She shouldn’t be chewing gum,” Anita said. Crystal already had four steel teeth because Doreen used to put her to bed with a bottle of juice every night.

  “Don’t start with me,” Doreen said.

  Anita sighed and gave Crystal a loud, smoochy kiss and let her down. “How about you go and get Mister Bear? Gram’s going to take you home for a visit.”

  Crystal skipped off, looking for her ratty teddy bear. Doreen shuffled a paper shopping bag full of Crystal’s clothes across the floor toward Anita.

  “Did you call the police station?”

  “Yeah,” Doreen said. “They told me I had to come down there in person. I’ve been getting ready.”

  Usually Doreen didn’t get dressed until late afternoon anymore. Sometimes she didn’t get dressed at all. Whenever Anita brought it up, Doreen just said what difference did it make when no one looked at her anymore anyway. Anita had to admit she had a point, but it wasn’t healthy all the same.

  “Do you want me to come down there with you?” Anita asked.

  “No. I called Teresa, and she said she’d go.” Teresa was Doreen’s best friend. She was three months pregnant with her second baby.

  “How’s she feeling?”

  “Like hell. You should see her, she’s already gained fifteen pounds,” Doreen said with satisfaction.

  Crystal came back dragging Mister Bear, a filthy teddy bear with a bow tie, checked vest, big feet, and one eye. For the last four months she had refused to go anywhere without him.

  Anita picked up the shopping bag with Crystal’s clothes. Crystal struggled into her pink plastic Barbie raincoat. Anita reached down to do up the zipper, but Crystal pushed her hands away.

  “I can do it,” she said, and with infinite care zipped up the zipper all by herself.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Anita said. “When did you learn to do that, hon?”

  Crystal slipped a sticky hand into Anita’s hand. Anita turned to Doreen and said, “Call me when you know something.” She gave her daughter a strong one-armed hug. “Love you, baby.”

  “Yeah, you too,” said Doreen.

  Anita buckled Crystal into the passenger seat, working around Mister Bear, and piloted Dooley’s little car back onto Highway 101, feeling the gift of a tailwind for the first time all day.

  “You okay, honey?” she asked, reaching over and patting Crystal’s leg.

  “Yes,” Crystal said gravely. Anita wondered how much she understood of what went on around her. More than any of them gave her credit for, probably. Doreen didn’t watch her mouth around Crystal enough, and neither did Danny; the child was growing up in the cracks and margins of the lives of other people who were needier than she was. It shouldn’t be like that. In Anita’s opinion, it took a certain amount of joy to raise a child right, just the same as it took vitamins and milk and warm clothes and kindness. Anita and Bob had had that once, when Doreen and Patrick were little and it looked like Bob was going to make something of himself in auto mechanics, maybe even have a shop of his own one day. Doreen and Danny had never generated joy in any amount, from what Anita could see.

  “What did you do today, honey?” Anita asked Crystal, preferring to fill the car with talk rather than with bitter thoughts.

  “We watched TV. ”

  “Sesame Street?”

  “The Home Shopping Channel.”

  Anita glanced over. Crystal continued to gaze out the window solemnly, looking tiny even in the Subaru’s small bucket seat. Anita probably should have gotten Crystal’s booster seat from Doreen, but she hadn’t thought of it. “Did Mommy buy anything?”

  “She wanted to, but her car was rejected.”

  “What?”

  “Mommy said her fucking credit car was rejected.”

  “Oh.”
<
br />   “She cried,” Crystal said.

  “Aw, honey.” Anita found her hand and squeezed it. “It was a sad day at home today, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you’ll just have to let Grammy read you some stories and maybe you can color a nice new picture for us to put on the refrigerator door.”

  “Will Daddy come home soon?”

  “I don’t know, sweetie. We’ll just have to wait and see. Mommy’s going to find out.”

  “Yes.” Crystal nodded. She knew about waiting. She’d spent a lot of her young life waiting in the Adult and Family Services office for shots, waiting for Danny or Doreen or someone to come get her at Head Start over in Sawyer; waiting for someone to notice that none of her clothes fit; waiting for someone to give her steel teeth. What kind of life was that?

  “Will Granddad be there?” Crystal asked.

  “I don’t know. He could be.”

  “Okay.”

  They drove the rest of the way home in silence as Anita tried to think of how to get her hands on enough money to buy cookies or ice cream. The child certainly deserved it, after the day she’d had. Anita couldn’t ask Bunny for help again, not so soon; Bunny had treated them to lunch at the Anchor just last week, and when Anita got home, she’d found twenty dollars stuffed into her purse. Bob didn’t get paid for another week, and old Marv Vernon made it very clear he didn’t give pay advances.

  She steered Dooley’s little car into the Wayside’s parking lot. Their Caprice was still there, but with luck Roy had cut Bob off or he’d run out of whatever money he’d scrounged and was already home. She helped Crystal out of the car and brought her inside.