Back Roads (10 page)

She watched me like she wanted more. I searched my brain for something else I could offer her.

“Like in the Garden of Eden,” I went on. “I always felt like, even after Eve became enlightened and realized she was naked, she would have been fine with it. Adam was the one who got embarrassed and couldn’t deal with it.”

She smiled deeply and gave me a familiar sparkling appraisal with her dark eyes. I pictured her giving the same look to her husband and him totally missing it and giving her a dry peck on the cheek on his way out the door for his night with the boys.

“A lot of people think that’s one of the things Bonnard was trying to show in his painting,” she said. “That Eve reveled in her natural state while Adam became awkwardly aware of his nakedness. He’s standing alone because his consciousness has separated him from her.”

She paused.

“I’d be curious to know who you think was to blame for their fall from grace: Adam or Eve?” she asked, kind of joking.

“Both,” I said with a nod of my head. “They were both selfish.”

“Selfish?”

“I always felt like that’s why God wanted rid of them. Not because they broke a rule. Because they turned on each other. I bet they could have smoothed things over if they had just gone to Him and admitted they were both stupid instead of trying to blame it on each other. If He thought they loved each other, God probably would have given them a second chance instead of damning the entire human race for all eternity.”

She was smiling at me again. I glanced down at the cucumber sticking out of my pocket.

“So what does your husband do on his night out?”

I asked it kind of snotty. There was a part of me that didn’t care about offending her. What would it matter? She was as much a fantasy as a lingerie model; the only difference was I could smell her and I knew where she lived.

The question was absolutely none of my business and I half expected her to tell me but she answered me.

“I don’t know,” she said, fanning her fingers in the air. “He has a couple friends from work he goes out with. They went through a racquetball phase a couple years ago. Then a basketball phase. I didn’t mind those so much because at least he was getting exercise. Now I think they just sit in the country club for hours on end complaining about how their wives and kids make so many demands on them and how they can’t golf at night.”

She stopped, bit her lower lip, and spit it out like it tasted bad.

“That didn’t sound too bitchy, did it?”

“No,” I said.

She put her index finger lightly on her lips. She seemed to like the taste of it better because she slipped the tip in her mouth and started lightly chewing on the nail.

“What would you rather be doing on your night out?” I asked her. “Besides grocery shopping?”

“Besides grocery shopping,” she said, giving me a sly smile
around the finger before hooking it into an empty belt loop in her shorts. “That’s a tough one. Well, I suppose on a warm, clear night like tonight, I’d take a book and a blanket and a couple beers and go to this clearing behind my house on the other side of the railroad tracks. It’s this huge open field surrounded by trees about a mile up the hill. You feel like you’re in a completely secluded world up there. I bet tonight it’s as bright as day with that big full moon.”

“You’d take beer?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Not a bottle of wine?”

“I like beer.”

“I kind of had you pegged for a wine drinker.”

She laughed. “Somehow I don’t think that’s a compliment.”

“Why can’t you do that?” I wondered. “Go read in the woods?”

“I suppose I could if I lobbied hard enough. It’s just not worth it.” Her face fell and her mood with it.

“Well,” she sighed, “I should let you put your cucumber away. By the way,” she started as she positioned her cart to leave, “what happened to your couch?”

I thought about it for a moment. “It caught on fire.”

“My God. You’re lucky the whole house didn’t burn down. Was someone smoking on it?”

“Yeah. One of Amber’s friends.”

“Thank God you were home.”

“Yeah, thank God.”

“Well, I’ll see you around.”

She started to go.

“I’m sorry about Amber,” I called after her. “I’ll have a talk with her.”

“No.” She stopped dead in her tracks and shook her head at me. “Please don’t. It’s okay. Really.”

I waited for the pink shorts to make a turn down the cereal aisle and went and put back the cucumber.

I didn’t want Callie Mercer or anyone else cutting Amber slack because our family had experienced a tragedy. People were always making excuses for stupidity and a lack of basic decency. They were always looking for someone else to blame.

Mom’s lawyer blamed Dad for his own murder. He practically came out and said he deserved it for beating us kids. He painted Mom as the ultimate martyr who sacrificed her freedom to save her children, but anyone looking at Mom sitting stunned and dry-eyed staring at her wedding ring knew even she didn’t buy it.

The lawyer purposely left out some very important facts like Dad married Mom when she got pregnant instead of running out on her, and he worked hard every day of their married life to provide for us.

He didn’t talk about the PHYSICAL STIMULI that shaped Dad’s world. How he didn’t like his job, but he went to it every day. How he didn’t like to shave, but Mom couldn’t stand stubble. How he didn’t like Bill Clinton, but he had to vote for him anyway. He wasn’t a monster. He was a flesh-and-blood man who couldn’t stand it if you spilled something.

I tried explaining these things my day on the witness stand, but the judge kept telling me to stick to the questions. Even the prosecutor, whose job it was to convict Mom, wasn’t interested in making Dad look good so Mom would look worse. He didn’t care at all about the individuals involved. He latched onto the big philosophical questions, “Is it ever right to take the law into our own hands?” and “What happens to the fabric of society when we do?” I thought he was crazy trying that argument with a jury box full of people who all had gun cases in their living rooms instead of bookcases but I had forgotten the reason they did was because they loved killing, just not their own kind. The prosecutor hadn’t forgotten. He twisted his line of reasoning into a big knot of paranoia.

Where do you draw the line? If it’s okay to shoot him for
beating the kids, is it okay to shoot him for staying out too late drinking? Today it’s a wife shooting her husband for beating the kids, tomorrow it’s a stranger shooting you in your car because he doesn’t like your bumper sticker. By the time he was done, everyone in the courtroom believed freeing my mother would be signing their own death warrants.

My good jeans and a clean blue T-shirt were waiting for me in the storeroom. I changed my clothes behind a stack of Heinz ketchup boxes, put on my cap, and transferred my box of condoms.

Callie was already checking out when I strolled up front. I hung back and watched. She was chatting up a storm with Bud. He knew everybody, but he seemed to know her on a personal level.

I waited until she left. I hadn’t been planning on talking to anybody on my way out, but I had to walk past all of them to get to the doors anyway. I slowed down as I neared Bud. He blew a bubble at me.

“Ready for your big date?”

“I guess so.”

“Where you going?”

“Movie.”

“That’s a good idea, Harley,” Church commented.

I stepped up closer to Bud. I didn’t want the cashiers hearing me mention Callie and launching into the history of her reproductive organs.

“How do you know her?” I asked him.

“Who?” he said. “Callie Mercer? I used to work with her.”

“She buys too much peanut butter,” Church volunteered. “I told her so. I’m not kidding.”

“Where?” I asked Bud.

“At the
Gazette
. She used to work there summers when she came home from school.”

“You used to write for the newspaper?”

“Don’t look so amazed,” he told me, popping his gum. “Writing for it’s only slightly more impressive than being able to read it.”

“Peanut butter’s full of fat,” Church said. “People don’t believe you when you tell them, but it’s true. Just like olives. Full of fat. People never believe me when I tell them.”

“Why’d you quit?”

“Well, one day I was going through my clips and realized the most important story I had ever written was ‘Man Dressed in Groundhog Suit Assaulted.’ ”

“Was that the Roebuck boy who got jumped up in Punxsy during Groundhog Days?” one of the cashiers asked.

My attempt at being discreet hadn’t worked.

“Up on Gobbler’s Knob, wasn’t it?” another cashier chipped in. “He was the groundhog who worked the crowd in town. The other one worked the mall, but he didn’t have the big top hat.”

“Yep, that’s the one,” Bud said. “They caught the guys who beat him up. I still remember the quote they gave me: ‘We got that damned groundhog.’ ”

“So you quit because you got disgusted?” I said.

“I quit because they made me. Mandatory retirement. But I like to think I would’ve quit anyway.”

“Why’d Callie quit?” I asked. “Because she had kids?”

“Well, let’s see. She worked there summers during college.” He paused and brought an age-spotted hand to his chin and rubbed it thoughtfully. “And then she worked there for a couple years after she came back here to live permanently. Yeah, I guess she did stop after she got married and started having kids.”

“Why would she want to come back here and live?” I wondered. “Doesn’t seem like she’d want to.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She seems different. That’s all.”

“I don’t know,” Bud said. “You might be confusing different with dissatisfied.”

Church stepped up between us. “She buys too much peanut butter.” He gaped. “She doesn’t even buy it for her kids. She buys it for herself. I’m not kidding. She told me she likes it.” He shook his head. “It’s full of fat. I told her so.”

“If she grew up here,” I went on, ignoring Church, “she had to know what this place was all about. She had to know she’d be dissatisfied with it. Why would she stay?”

“I’m pretty sure it was simply a case of love.”

“For her husband?” I asked, feeling a pang of disgust at the question.

“For her grandpa,” Bud answered me. “She came back to take care of him after he had his first heart attack. He lived for another year, then had the big one that killed him. She inherited his land and stayed on it.”

“She must have really loved him.”

Bud nodded. “Callie’s a little intense. When I worked with her I always felt like she was being pulled in a hundred different directions. Her grandpa was sort of her compass from what I could tell. Once he passed on—” he paused and tapped his temple with a finger, “her needle started spinning, if you know what I mean. I think she stayed on his land hoping to find some peace.”

“Did he give her the land before she got married?”

Bud stopped and gave me a searching look. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk so much. Getting all keyed up about your date, huh?”

“Did he?” I asked again.

“I think so.”

“Why’d she get married then?”

“Well, I can’t say for sure but I don’t think land ownership factored into it one way or the other.”

“I’m just saying if she had all that land and a job, she wouldn’t have to get married.”

“There you go again. Who said she had to get married? I
imagine she loved the guy. You got something against Brad Mercer?”

“I don’t even know him.”

I lost interest in the conversation once her husband came back into it. I was going to be late for my date anyway.

I said good night to everybody and started for the door. I was standing on the mat when I heard Church yell at the top of his lungs, “Harley, my mom says you won’t need any rubbers tonight.”

The doors slid open and I got out of there as fast as I could, their laughter ringing in my ears.

I was supposed to meet Ashlee at the fountain in the middle of the mall. I hadn’t given much thought to why she wanted to meet me instead of making me pick her up but as soon as I turned the corner past the fabric store and heard girls laughing, I knew. I would have left, but one of them spotted me and whispered to Ashlee. She looked over and waved and went back to her girlfriends. They whispered and laughed some more, then eyed me up and down with leering, smirking smiles.

Ashlee had snagged herself an older guy, a real man who paid taxes and bought his own underwear. She didn’t like me. She didn’t want to know me any more than I wanted to know her. She just wanted to show me off to her friends.

I deserved it considering the reason I was there. I couldn’t think of a more even exchange: my dignity for her pussy.

She slid off the bricks surrounding the fountain and walked over to me. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. There were certain things you couldn’t tell from a yearbook picture.

“Hi, Harley,” she said.

“Hi,” I said back. “I hope I’m not late.”

“I don’t care,” she said.

She stepped up in front of me and stood perfectly still like an offering.

“I mean, I don’t want us to be late for the movie,” I explained.

“I don’t care,” she said again. “I’ve seen it.”

“You want to see something else?”

She waved her hand in the air, then slipped it into one of mine.

“I’ve seen them all,” she said, and started leading me to the fountain to introduce me to her friends.

There were four of them, but they were interchangeable. Same fluffy hair. Same doe-eyed makeup and berry brown lipstick. Same clingy halter tops and fringed cutoffs and stack-heeled sandals.

I looked at them sprawled on the brick around the fountain, the bare legs and bellies and throats begging to be handled. It should have been a crime. Premeditated arousal. I should have been able to call Security and have them dragged off. All except Ashlee, who I wanted to keep for myself.

It turned out she didn’t talk much. She flashed me a lot of adoring looks and kept reaching down to adjust her sandal buckle after we took our seats in the theater. Each time she did, her halter top pulled away from her shorts and I glimpsed the start of a shadow at the base of her spine. I wanted to kiss that spot more than I wanted to kiss her lips.