Problem Child (ARC)

by Victoria Helen Stone

to give me a break from relationship talk for a while.

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  Victoria Helen Stone

  “Definitely. You’re smart as hell and you’re an attorney.

  At the very least, you can light a fire under someone’s

  ass and see what’s really going on. And, at best, maybe

  you’ll find this girl.”

  “Perhaps. But there’s a better-than-even chance she’s

  just staying with some inappropriately aged boyfriend.”

  “Still not good.”

  I shrug and pick up the book I’m almost done with.

  My cat bounces up from the floor and lands silently on the

  coffee table before stepping onto the couch. She considers

  me a moment, then climbs between my calves to settle

  onto Luke’s lap. I roll my eyes at her betrayal, but I’d pick Luke for warmth too. She’s rewarded for her superior

  choice when he absentmindedly strokes between her ears,

  and I watch her eyes narrow in satisfaction. Those are my

  moments of affection she’s stealing, but I’ll let her have

  him for a little while.

  “And…,” he ventures quietly. I hear what I don’t want

  to hear in his voice and I tense. “Maybe this could be a

  good time for you to think about us.”

  “‘Us’?” I snap.

  “Whether you want this to evolve or not.”

  “What does ‘or not’ mean? You’re presenting this as

  some kind of choice, but it reads more like an ultimatum.”

  Luke rolls his shoulders before slumping into the

  couch. “It’s really not. But if I buy a house, we might

  not see each other as often. Right now you’re only ten

  minutes away from my place and my job. I don’t want

  to spring this change on you. I’m trying to involve you

  in this decision.”

  “This hardly seems like the time.” I pull my legs back,

  hoping to stop this now. “My niece is missing.”

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  He’s a good guy. A genuinely good guy, so I know

  mentioning my niece will make him feel guilty. I see his

  mouth twist with it. But he still doesn’t stop talking. “I

  know, but this might be just the break we need to think

  it through.”

  “Now it’s a break. I see. You need to come right out

  and say it. You’re breaking up with me.”

  “No, I’m not. Not at all. I love you. I want a future

  with you. I’m just not sure you’re determined to have a future with me.” He snags my hand and looks me straight in the face. “Are you?”

  No, I’m definitely not determined, because it’s not

  possible. I’m not normal. I’m not a wife and mother and

  soft place to fall. There are new studies that claim socio-

  paths can feel something like love, but it’s our own kind of attachment, shallow and selfish. Or even more shallow

  and selfish than most people’s claims of love are.

  I loved Meg. I know I did. But that wasn’t the same

  as romantic love. It wasn’t commitment and fidelity and

  promises. It was friendship. This is something tighter.

  Something strangling.

  Every once in a while, like right here in this mo-

  ment, I want to be what other people are and I hate who

  I am. I hate what my parents made me with their ter-

  rible combination of emotional abuse and their genetic

  predisposition.

  I wanted to kill them many times when I was Kayla’s

  age. I wanted to burn down that trailer with them in it,

  blame it on a cigarette or a space heater or nothing at all.

  But luckily my own self-interest won out against raging

  teen hormones. I wanted to punish my family, but I did

  not want to go to prison and struggle for money and

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  social standing for the rest of my life. I wanted more and

  better. So I let them be.

  And most days I truly like what I am. It makes me

  strong. I saw how the world destroyed my best friend,

  using her own feelings to grind her into nothing. She

  killed herself to escape from that. To finally make it stop.

  She died and left me alone, and now Luke is all I have,

  and that can’t last forever. It can’t. I don’t have enough

  emotion inside me to cloud out the stark reality of our

  chances.

  “This obviously isn’t going to work out,” I mutter.

  “Why would you say that? Jane, come on. We get

  along great. We get along so damn well, I want to spend

  more time with you. Why does that scare you?”

  “It doesn’t scare me!” I shove his hand away and stand

  up. “I’m not good at relationships, and I’ve told you that.

  I’ve been very clear about it. You said that was what you

  liked about me, and now you’re asking me to”—I wave

  a frantic hand in the air—“do this?”

  “Yes. I’m asking you to do this. Move in with me,

  Jane. It’ll just get better.”

  “Who says it will get better? That’s ridiculous. We both

  agreed that we have issues, thanks to our shitty families,

  but everything has been working really well, and now

  you’ve screwed it up. I can’t do this. I can’t be that.”

  “Be what?” Now he’s standing too, his voice rising

  along with his body.

  “Some kind of…” I growl in frustration and pace to

  the fridge to pour more wine. “I don’t know. Some kind

  of constant fucking companion. A stupid, nurturing idiot.”

  “Jane, listen to yourself. There’s nothing stupid about

  loving someone.”

  I laugh. I can’t help it. “Really? Tell that to Meg.”

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  Problem Child

  I loved her. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but I

  loved her, and she left. Loving her brought me pain, and

  I don’t accept pain. I put it behind me and I won’t ever

  accept it again. I have to get out of this.

  “Jane—” he starts, but I shake my head.

  “You should go. I need to make travel arrangements.”

  “I get it, okay? I know what your family was like.

  And I know it hurt you so much when Meg died. But

  can’t we just try?”

  “Try what? Settling down? Fuck up a little family

  together, just like both our parents did? What’s the point, Luke?”

  He knows better than this. His own mother focused

  so much manic, destructive energy on him in childhood

  that he didn’t speak to her for most of his adult years and has always sworn he doesn’t want a traditional life. That

  was why he liked me.

  “The point is that I love you,” Luke says, “and I’ve

  never wanted to live with anyone before either. Never.

  But I want to live with you, so you take that however

  you want. Just…” He throws up his hands in exaspera-

  tion. “Go on your trip. Think about it. Really think

  about it. And decide what you want to do when you

  get back.”

  He dons his jacket in quick tugs, telegraphing his

  anger, wanting me to feel it and respond. But I can’t feel it, just like I can’t feel much of anything. He grabs his

  wallet and keys and jerks the door open, wanting some

  words from me that I don’t know; but just
as he’s stepping

  out and closing the door behind him, he stops.

  I stand there staring. I have techniques for making

  people like me, but I have no tools for smoothing things

  like this over, because I usually don’t care. This time I

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  do care, but all I can feel is outrage that he’s doing this to me. Making me hurt when he’s supposed to love me.

  The tight expectation in his face sags to disappoint-

  ment. “Call me, okay? Let me know what’s going on

  with your niece?”

  “Sure,” I say, “whatever.”

  Luke waits for another heartbeat before closing the

  door. He’s finally done talking, at least. I take the bottle of wine to the couch and sulk, waiting for my cat to pay

  attention to me. I’ll look into plane tickets tomorrow.

  I’m too exhausted to bother tonight.

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  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Oklahoma City airport has changed. It’s beautiful

  now, buffed to a shine by energy industry money into

  a very modern facility. I rent a car and tell Siri to find

  me a good barbecue restaurant on my way out of town.

  Home is still two hours away.

  Home. It doesn’t mean to me what it means to other

  people. I scowl at the very idea of nostalgia. Even if

  someone had a great childhood, it was still childhood,

  full of powerlessness and dependency. Why would anyone

  want that back?

  I don’t understand that any more than I understand

  why I would want tiny people depending on me. The

  idea of children feels cloying and gross. Just being loved

  by Luke is sometimes too much. It feels like he needs me,

  and I want to hurt him for that. And lately, very occa-

  sionally, it feels like I need him, and that’s a violent crack of lightning inside me. Another good reason to end this.

  I’m free now. Glad that I left. The sticky, niggling

  hints of fear and commitment are washed away with the

  distance.

  Sighing, I turn my mind toward planning my lunch.

  I’ll definitely have brisket and maybe a few ribs with

  extra-spicy sauce. Cornbread with honey butter. Pudding

  for dessert. Sweet tea.

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  “Mmm. Sweet tea.” I smile as my phone tells me to

  exit the freeway and turn onto Freedom Street.

  Freedom Street. Jesus Christ. There’s a fucking Indian

  reservation five miles from this spot. And I’m the screwed-

  up psycho in this world?

  The barbecue place is tiny and run-down, and there’s

  a Route 66 sign in the corner of the window even though

  Route 66 is half an hour south of here. But Siri was look-

  ing out for me. The food is almost as good as I want it to

  be, and the young Hispanic guy named Felix who serves

  me is very pleasant to look at and quite flirtatious. All in all, a good afternoon.

  I didn’t have any trouble getting time off work, be-

  cause I didn’t give them an opportunity to imagine they

  should be upset. I emailed my bosses over the weekend

  and presented the issue as an emergency, assuring them I

  knew I could count on their support. They wouldn’t have

  dared to contradict me, especially when I quaveringly

  mentioned that Kayla is my firstborn niece. I was only

  sixteen years old when she was born. The first grandchild

  in the family!

  That’s all true, though I barely remember anything

  but the scorn I felt for my stupid brother, who was turn-

  ing twenty and on his way to his first state prison stint

  when the baby arrived.

  Regardless, now I’m on paid short-term leave. I suppose

  I shouldn’t have abandoned Robert to his own devices at

  this delicate juncture. If I’m gone more than a week, he

  might be the golden boy again by the time I get back.

  But Jesus, he was boring, and, hard work or not, he’ll

  never live down his drunken fuckup. I can pick up my

  campaign when I get back and continue slowly destroying

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  his reputation. And if I find my wayward niece? I’ll make

  sure they all know I’m a goddamn hero.

  I grin at the idea and set off toward home sweet home.

  The land is flat and ugly, drying out with the dying

  sun of fall, and the suburbs go on forever now, broken

  up by tiny old towns that have been shriveling since they

  got bypassed by the interstate. There is no freeway to my

  old stomping grounds. Not enough people want to go

  there. It’s all two-lane highways and stop signs at every

  main street. But the highways are built wide enough for

  trucks. Lots of trucks.

  It’s been so long since I’ve driven here that I’m startled

  by the red of the dirt. I’d forgotten it. I’d never even

  noticed it growing up, to be honest. But now I see the

  huge wounds in the earth leaching iron into puddles like

  spreading blood. Construction on a new house has opened

  a huge, pretty gash filled with reddened rainwater. It’s a

  startling change. The soil of Minnesota is black as pitch.

  When I was young these scrubby lands were dotted

  with pumpjacks bobbing up and down. They pulled

  crude oil from the ground and provided nice points of

  interests in the landscape, like lolling cattle. I don’t see any bobbing pumpjacks now. No big oil derricks either.

  They’ve all been replaced with boring pipes that bring

  the natural gas out of the rock. The few pumps I do spy

  are stubby and misshapen, working to press wastewater

  and earthquakes into the ground.

  Ah, well. Maybe I’m nostalgic after all. I want things

  to be what I expect them to be, and this all looks stupid

  to me.

  An hour into the drive, I crest a rare rolling hill and

  see something brand-new, and this time it’s something

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  so delightful, it makes me gasp with delight. Windmills!

  Huge white windmills!

  They seem a mile high as their blades turn slowly in

  the wind. I squeal in wonder at the beautiful scene laid

  out before me. A dozen of these giants are scattered over

  ranchland, and as I keep driving, more peek over the ho-

  rizon to reveal themselves. They look like colossal robots

  marching toward an invasion, determined to defeat all

  the things I hate about this place.

  So perfectly beautiful. I can’t believe Oklahoma found

  yet another energy to farm. It’s quite an accomplishment

  since that Silkwood incident put the kibosh on the nuclear

  industry here decades ago.

  I’m impressed. I’m also a little giddy. This is exciting.

  I was bored before this trip, and that’s a dangerous

  state for a girl like me. Something cool and unexpected

  suddenly becomes catnip, and I want to roll around in

  it. When I was younger, that meant a dangerous affair or

  a high-risk scheme, but now I’m feeling a strange rush

  of endorphins over these inanimate objects. Maturity,

  I guess.

  A mile down the road I see that one of the
towers is

  relatively close to the highway, and I slow to roll down

  my window. I’m surprised at the silence of this great beast.

  I’d expected a whomp-whomp sound, but the blades turn too slowly for that. They are masters of disguise, actually seeming larger from a distance than they are up close.

  Something about the proportion makes this illusion pos-

  sible. I clap my hands in wonder.

  What pure delight to find that the stolid metal sol-

  diers follow me through my whole drive. I feel like their

  general, in charge and taking stock.

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  Problem Child

  Though I lose sight of them occasionally as they stick

  to a faint rise in the land, looking for the highest points, they soon return toward me in a wave like they can’t resist my draw. When I near another that looks close to the

  road, I pull into a narrow dirt lane that ends abruptly at

  a metal gate just thirty feet into the scrub pasture.

  After turning off the SUV, I put my shoes to the red

  dust. I can see a door at the base of the giant metal tower, and it’s only about a hundred feet past the gate. I want to be up close in the worst way. And there’s a chance there

  won’t be a lock, or a bigger chance that someone could

  have forgotten to lock it.

  It’s a long shot, but I still ignore the “Private Property”

  sign and climb over the metal gate to pick my way through

  rows of crop stubble. I can’t tell what it was from the few inches that stick from the ground, but a small herd of cattle graze on the leftovers a quarter mile away. People think cows are so docile, but these beef cattle are half-wild and mean as hell. Take it from my misspent youth: you do not want

  them riled up and freaked out. At least all the calves have been weaned and separated and de-balled, so the group seems comparatively laid-back with no babies to protect. They’re

  far enough away that I’m not worried, but bovine trampling

  in rural Oklahoma is not the way I plan to go down.

  When I get to the huge base of the tower, I hop up

  eight metal stairs and try to twist the door handle. It’s

  definitely locked. “Damn it,” I growl, tugging and twist-

  ing and cursing. The mechanism doesn’t budge, and I can

  clearly see the keyhole in the lock. Why oh why didn’t I

  summon the patience to learn lock picking when I was

  younger? I watched videos and everything, but the practice

  wasn’t enough fun to stick with.

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  Away from the traffic noise, I can hear the blades

  now, whooshing above me. I put my hand to the tower