Circle of Three (36 page)

Julian said softly, “It won’t be bad,” and I tried to believe him. “I’m working here, not over bone.” He pointed with his index finger at my wrist bone, but didn’t touch it. “Bone is the worst. I won’t be there.”

“Okay.” I inhaled and licked my lips. “Okay, then. Let’s go. Hit me.”

He started the machine. The whine went right into me, into the back of my mouth where my teeth were clenched. Out of the side of my eye I saw him dip needles into ink. “I’m going to start a line now,” he said in his lilting voice. I shut my eyes tight.

Yeeeee-ow
. It really really
hurt
. It really hurt!
Owww!
I wasn’t going to be able to stand it. “Don’t forget to breathe,”
Julian said, but he didn’t stop drilling. I showed him my teeth and turned my face away. Breathe. La la la la la, I sang in my head. Okay, it wasn’t as bad. But it was still bad. But I could do this. As soon as I knew I could do it, the pain got better. A little. La la la la la.

I wished Julian would talk. I could talk to him, but I didn’t want to distract him, make him go outside the line or something. I glanced down at my arm. Oh wow, he’d done the circle part on my hand, which was bleeding a little, not too much. I got a queasy feeling and had to look away.

“Easy,” he said, “not so good here,” and I could feel him coming closer to the bone for the crosspiece. I wasn’t prepared for this deep, biting pain. Tears got deeper and deeper in my eyes. I blinked fast to get rid of them, squeezing and relaxing my left fist for a diversion. I thought of all the movies where the guy gets shot and somebody has to dig the bullet out while he bites down on a piece of wood or something that always breaks,
crack
, right before the fadeout. If I had a stick in my mouth it would break right…about…
now
.

“Better now,” Julian said, and started down my arm.

It was better. This was doable. I decided to talk. “Are you the actual Rude Boy?” No, it was better not to talk. What a jerk I was whenever I opened my mouth. Julian shook his head without looking up.

I crossed my legs. I wasn’t cold anymore. Where he was drilling felt warm, and the warmth was seeping all through me, my whole body. “Have you always been a tattooer?” Okay, that was it. He shook his head again, exactly as before, and I closed my mouth. Two people, a man and a woman, started talking in the hall. Their voices trailed away quickly—they must’ve gone out in the lobby. I wished I could’ve seen them. The rap coming from somewhere changed to steel drums and horns, sort of third world music. Julian didn’t even have a radio in his room. He liked to work in silence.

It got bad again when he started on the other crosspiece,
which was close to the other bone in my wrist. I was expecting it this time, though, so it wasn’t as shocking.

“Okay. Just filling in now. Bad part’s over.”

Yes. This was what Raven must’ve been talking about, not pain so much as an electrical heat, a buzz. Plus it was a really pretty red Julian was using, it had pink in it, a definite color but also soft. Strong but feminine. I loved it.

By the time he finished I was in love with him, too. I fantasized that he was doing this to me naked. His hands were so clean and slender. I wanted to touch his braided beard, pull on it. Pull his mouth to mine and kiss him. I was feeling a little drunk. High on endorphins.

“Done.” He turned off the machine and stood up, went over to his table. “Do you like it?”

My arm floated up, weightless. “It’s lovely. Thank you so much.” Little pinpricks of blood seeped out of the veins on the surface of my hand. Nothing hurt. It was a beautiful tattoo. “You’re a true artist.”

He smiled, not with humility or gratitude, but as if that amused him. I felt a little insulted.

“How much do I owe?” I leaned over to get my purse.

“Seventy.”

I got out three twenties, a ten, and five ones. Tipping was encouraged. That left me a five-dollar bill and some change to get home on, but that should be plenty. I had a full tank of gas.

Before I could give him the money, he put my arm on the little platform again and started taping a gauze bandage over the tattoo. “Only leave this on for about two hours,” he instructed. “Then wash with cool water and soap. Rinse. Dry. For three days, spray very lightly with Neosporin, every five hours.”

“Okay.”

“No direct sunlight, not for two weeks.”

“Really? How come?”

“Because it will fade. In five minutes in sun it will start to fade.”

“No kidding.”

“It may itch. Don’t scratch it, slap it.”

“Slap it?”

“If it becomes infected, put Listerine.”

“Listerine?”

“Three times a day.”

“Okay.”

“That’s it.”

I stood up. I wasn’t dizzy or anything, in fact I felt fantastic. “Thanks a lot. I really like it.”

“Good.” He held the shower curtain for me, and after I passed through, he came out, too. I was surprised when he walked with me out into the bright front room. At the door, he looked down at his filthy, unlaced sneakers and said softly, “I wouldn’t ever have guessed that you were gay.”

I laughed.

He looked up, smiling. “Usually I know. But with you.” He smiled, shrugged. “I wouldn’t have guessed. Anyway, doesn’t matter. Take care.”

He waited for me to leave. I stood still, staring at him with my mouth open. When I didn’t move, he stepped back. “Okay,” he said, and went back to the hallway. He ducked into one of the other cubicles, not his. A humming tattoo machine stopped; I heard men’s low, casual voices. A laugh.

My skin felt prickly hot on the inside and icy cold on the outside. I got the door open. Warm, humid air smacked against me, tugged everything in me down. My systems started working again. The shock wore off.

If only I could die. Right now. God. Oh God, I really wanted to die.

Nobody hassled me in the three blocks to the car. The last place I wanted to go was home. But maybe I’d get lucky and have an accident on the way and be killed. I could drive off a bridge or a cliff, drive into a stone wall. The car would burst into flames and I’d be incinerated, and no one would ever know about my tattoo except Julian.

The car wouldn’t start.

Well, now everything was perfect. A perfect day from beginning to end. How could I commit suicide in Washington, D.C.? I could run out into the middle of Georgia Avenue and get hit by a car. But with my luck, I’d only be maimed. I could wait on a corner to get mugged and hope it was fatal, not just a wounding. I didn’t want to be raped, though. I’d always hoped if I was going to get raped it would be after I lost my virginity.

I remembered a White Tower two blocks down on the corner. Unbelievable, but I was hungry. I went in and sat at the counter in the only seat left, between a fat man and a thin man, both black. Practically everybody in here was black. I ordered a toasted cheese sandwich and a small Sprite, thinking I was never, in Clayborne, the only white person. They must be scared around us, always being in the minority. I was scared, but I wasn’t showing it, because for one thing it would be rude.

I saw myself in the murky mirror behind the counter. My skin was gray, my hair was dirty, I looked awful. I looked like a raccoon, dark hollows under my eyes. My hand hurt—good, maybe it was infected. I didn’t look eighteen. No way, I looked about fourteen. I hoped Rude Boy’s got busted and Julian went to jail.

I was such a tool. What a stupid idiot moron.
Retarded
people knew the difference between the ankh and the female symbol. But—Julian had rushed me by staring at me and not talking. He’d made me so nervous. “That one,” I’d said, and he’d opened his beautiful eyes in surprise. Oh, if only I could die.

The sandwich just made me hungrier. I asked for the check before I had to watch the fat man eat his dessert, a piece of cherry pie with vanilla ice cream. If I left a 15 percent tip, I’d have exactly two dollars and ninety cents left. Which still should be plenty. I put a quarter and a nickel next to my plate, thanked the waitress, and left.

A girl was hanging up the receiver of the beat-up pay
phone on the street just as I passed behind her. So it was like a sign.

Between the cars going by and the kids who should’ve been in bed by now playing jump rope in the middle of the side street, I had to stick my finger in my ear to hear the operator. “I want to make a collect call,” I said, and gave her the number. “From Ruth. To whoever answers.”

Mom answered.

“Hello?”

“Hi.”

“Ru-uth?” Her voice broke in the middle. Something happened to my throat, too; I couldn’t talk for a second. Then Mom said, “Where the hell are you!”

“I’m not telling. Anyway, what do you care?”

“Jess is looking for you, Jess and Grampa, they drove up there togeth—”

“Jess and
Grampa
?” Incredible.

“Tell me where you are!”

“Okay. I’m in D.C.”

“I know that.”

“How do you know?”

“Your friend finally told us.”

“Who, Krystal did?”

“Are you anywhere near a police station? I want you to—”

“No, I’m not near a police station. The car’s broken, so I’m sleeping on the street tonight. This is a really crummy neighborhood, Mom. Can you hear it? It’s raining again, though—maybe I’ll go home with somebody instead of sleeping on the sidewalk.”

“Ruth—”

“I could go with some derelict, they’re all over the place. A pedophile already tried to pick me up. He wanted me to get in his car, and I almost did. He wanted to take care of me.”

“Listen, listen to me.”

“I figured out afterward I should’ve gone with him. I could’ve been his little girl.” Mom gave this high wailing
sound. “Maybe I’ll share a needle with some of the guys on this street. Maybe have sex with one of them and get AIDS and die.” I kept talking even though I was crying. “Why not? I mean, it turns out I’m gay anyway.”

“Ruth, please, oh honey, for the love of God—”

“What would you care? If I was dead you could have your lover all to yourself, you and Jess could live happily ever after.”

“Ruth—!”

I hung up. I was shaking, I felt hollow inside, I felt like a straw, nothing in me but air. I didn’t even know I was that angry. I scared myself.

Stiff-legged, I marched back to the car. It almost started, but then I flooded it and it died.

I crawled over the seat and lay down in the back. I put my good arm over my eyes to block out the glare of the streetlight. The smell from the garbage Dumpster was stronger in the dark. I was sweating from the breathless heat, but I was afraid to roll down a window. My hand hurt. It was almost time to take off the bandage, but I didn’t want to look at my tattoo. I wanted my arm to get gangrene and fall off in the night.

I listened to music and the hiss of car tires and the shouts of children and the dangerous, interesting sound of men and women laughing. I thought about how many minutes our phone conversation probably took off Mom’s life, and if it was more or less than the number I’d put on with good deeds when I was little. I thought about calling her back and telling her I was okay. A little after midnight, I fell asleep.

T
HE POLICE LEFT
the house a little after ten on Monday morning. They were beginning to look embarrassed, I thought as I ran water over their half-finished coffee cups, but still not worried. What did it take to make them worry? Body parts? Hanging over the sink on my elbows, I let my eyes go out of focus. My brain felt like the rings of water swirling above the drain, aimless, driven by nothing but physics. You couldn’t live with the worst fear you’d ever imagined, the one you’d been pushing to the back of your mind since the day your child was born—you couldn’t live with that hour by hour and stay clear in the head. I could feel my mind blurring, not from fatigue but for protection.

What was I doing? Oh. This was happening more frequently, amnesiac episodes when I couldn’t remember what I had just said, or thought, why I was in a certain room, what a two-way conversation was about. Except for a sick, disorienting hour early this morning, I hadn’t slept in over two days. What was that, how many hours? I tried to count, but got lost in the numbers. What did it matter anyway.

My mother came up behind me—I jumped when she put her hands on my shoulders. “Hard as rocks,” she said, digging in with her thumbs, Mama’s idea of a massage. “Listen,
now, today’s the day. She’ll either come home by herself or they’ll find her. This is it, I’m positive.”

I nodded; it was easier than speaking. Along with everything else, for some reason I was losing my voice.

“And she’s fine. All that bull—that was just stupid, snotty talk, she did
not
sleep on any street last night. Her idea of paying you back.”

My throat hurt, or I’d have said, “You didn’t hear it, the noise in the background, she was
on
the street.” Nightmare sounds; they’d kept me in a state of dread all night.
My baby is in hell and I can’t find her
.

“She’s all right, Carrie. Come on, you can’t get like this.”

“I’m all right.”

“Tsk. Let me do that.”

“I’m finished. Is Jess still here?” He and Pop had been sitting beside each other on the sofa in the sunroom for the last hour, talking quietly, passing sections of the newspaper back and forth. I knew he was still here—I just wanted Mama to talk to me about him.

“He’s here.” She stopped the sharp-fingered massage abruptly. “I told him to go, but he wouldn’t.”

I turned around in dismay. “You told him to go?” She’d been civil to him last night, and almost nice to him this morning. She’d brought him coffee, called him Jess, asked him a polite, fairly astute question about the city council’s position on the school tax hike proposal—I thought she was making a real effort.

“To the
sailing
. I told him to go see the ark float.”

“Oh.”

“But he won’t.”

“No.”

“Rather be here.” She sniffed, either in approval or disapproval, I couldn’t tell. “It’s a shame you both had to go and miss it. After all that work you did.”

A stunning concession. I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. “It’ll be there awhile,” I said. That was a sore point with Mama,
the fact that the town was allowing Eldon to keep the ark tied up on the river until the twenty-sixth of June—forty days and forty nights.

“It’ll be there awhile,” she agreed gloomily. “Still. I know you wanted to be there when they put the animals on. I’m sorry, but your daughter has a lot to answer for.”

“I just want her to come home. I don’t care what she’s done anymore.”

“I know.” She put her arm around my shoulder. “You never worried me like this. It never occurred to me to say thanks.”

Oh, I didn’t want to cry again. “You’re welcome,” I said, and tried to laugh. “It’s never too late to take credit for being the perfect child.”

“Don’t push your luck,” she said, and hugged me.

The phone rang. She stepped out of the way—she’d learned not to try to answer it herself.

“Hello, Carrie?”

“Yes? Is that—Landy?”

“It’s me, I’m calling here from the Point. Things are starting to break up now.”

“Oh—how are you? Did everything go all right? Jess is here—I’m sorry we couldn’t go down there. I don’t know if you heard about Ruth, but—”

“Yeah, I did, Jess told me last night. So she’s not there yet?”

“No.”

“Well, I wondered about that. I didn’t want to call you for nothing, but then again, I figured if you knew she was back you’d be down here. It went real well, by the way. Daddy couldn’t stay long after the boarding, but he was just as pleased as could be with everything.”

“Oh—good. But what were you saying about Ruth—”

“Well, I saw her about halfway through it, about the time we were putting on the medium-size animals.”

“What? What?”

“I couldn’t stop what I was doing, and after that I lost sight of her—there was a crowd, even the TV people were down here, we were real pleased—”

“Ruth was
there
? Landy, are you sure?”

“It was her all right. It was still raining and she didn’t have no umbrella, so she was quite a—”

“Is she still there?”

“That I can’t say for sure. I haven’t seen her since then, and that was maybe an hour ago, but she could still be. I wished I could’ve got her, talked to her, but I didn’t know if she’d already gone home and come back and you knew it, or just what. Sorry if I messed up—”

“You didn’t. Thank you—I’m coming right down.”

“Ruth’s
there
?” Mama followed me out of the kitchen, into the living room, the sunroom, while I called all the way, “She’s back! We found her!”

The men jumped up from the couch. “She’s down at Point Park, or she was, Landy just saw her.”

Jess shook his head in amazement.

“Who’s Landy?” Pop said, beaming, patting Mama on the shoulder.

“Landy Pletcher, Eldon’s son,” Jess said. “What’s she doing down at the Point?”

“I have no idea. Pop, can I have your car? He said the launch went perfectly,” I told Jess, “he said TV people were there.”

My father dug his keys out of his trouser pocket and tossed them over. “Want me to come with you?”

“I’ll go, too,” Mama said, looking around for her purse.

“No, Mama, no. Pop—thanks. I’m going by myself.”

In the hall, I grabbed an umbrella from the coatrack. I was halfway through the door when I remembered. “Oh—Jess, can you take my parents home?” They’d all followed me into the hall.

“Glad to,” he said. We exchanged a secret look. We were enjoying the same mental picture, I knew: of Mama bouncing along between Jess and Pop in the pickup.

*   *   *

The Leap River was a glorified creek that began at Culpeper and flowed south through Greene County. The deepest part was at the Point and east for a few miles, past Leap River Farm, Jess’s farm; after that it turned back into a stream and finally trickled away into the Rapidan. Point Park, Clayborne’s main civic recreation area, started at the bridge and ran adjacent to the river for almost half a mile. It had hiking trails, picnic shelters, a children’s playground—soon to be refurbished with Eldon Pletcher’s money—pretty views, a jogging path, a band pavilion, ball fields. The centerpiece was two wide, side-by-side fishing piers made out of river rock and stretching halfway to the other side of the Leap. Jess, Landy, and the Arkists had constructed the ark between the two piers, which were slightly less than thirty feet apart—a perfect distance for a nineteen-foot-wide ark; if they’d built it at a shipyard they couldn’t have found a more convenient staging area.

From the parking lot, I couldn’t see it clearly; too far away, too many trees in the way. But what I could see made me laugh, a quick, nervous explosion at the sight of an ark, an
ark
, bobbing on the khaki-colored river. They’d painted it a light charcoal gray to resemble weathered wood, with gay white and black for the doors and portholes and trim. It was a handsome ark, most impressive, you’d never have guessed it was hollow inside, a mere floating stage. What startled the laugh out of me was a glimpse of my lovely giraffe, head jutting up over the flat top of the third deck, so raffish and silly—and as I drove past, his mate on the flip side looking coy, batting her long black pipe cleaner eyelashes. Oh, it worked. Glory be, it really worked. It could’ve been such a disaster.

The skies were clearing, but raindrops still fell heavily from the trees overhanging the paved lane leading from parking area to parking area. I turned on the wipers and huddled over the steering wheel, my face close to the steamy windshield. Cars and people still clogged the drive; if the
crowd had “broken up,” as Landy said, it must’ve been enormous an hour ago. Food and balloon vendors were closing down their concessions. I passed a white van with a satellite dish on top—a TV crew? I slowed to let a mother and her little boy cross in front of me. In red letters across the chest, the boy’s T-shirt said
I SAW NOAH’S ARK
, and the date. What entrepreneurial genius was selling those? Not the Arkists, I was sure. Thank God Mama wasn’t here.

I turned around at the dead end without seeing the Chevrolet. Could Ruth have gone home? We’d have passed each other, though, and I’d been watching carefully. Maybe she was on the other side of the river.

I steered slowly out of the park, across the bridge, and turned in at the gravel drive above the tow path. More people, more cars.

There, I saw it. No—that Chevy Cavalier had a huge dent in the fender. I stopped next to it, blocking a car behind me, and rolled down my bleary window. Ha! There was Stephen’s expired faculty parking sticker under the rearview mirror. Ruth was nowhere in sight.

A crumbling concrete lane led steeply up the hill behind the river to Ridge Road, where there was another, smaller parking area. Jess and I, a million years ago, used to go there and park. I found a place for the Honda near the overlook. Just as I was getting out, a fresh rain shower started. I opened my umbrella and started back down the slippery road toward the water. Watching my feet, I didn’t see Ruth until we almost walked into each other.

“Oh,” she said involuntarily. Her surprised face shut down and turned stony. My impulse to reach out for her sank just as fast—but the dark thing, the deep dread inside finally slithered away, out of sight. Gone.

She looked half-drowned. “Are you all right?” She gave a nonchalant nod. “Come on,” I said, and turned around. I tried to share the umbrella, but she made a point of slouching up the hill beside me in the downpour.
Drown, then
, I thought. Anger was working hard to overwhelm my relief;
the urge to slap my daughter’s sullen face had never been stronger. But neither had the urge to grab and hold and never let go.

Inside Pop’s car, I fumbled in the glove compartment until I found a clean handkerchief. “Here, dry your hair. At least dry your face.” She turned around to comply, surliness in every move, every line of her body. For a second I felt drunk on it, the old familiar sneering meanness, the intimacy, the dearness of it filling my throat like honey, like tears.
We will get through this
,
and it will be awful, but oh I love you, I love you
.

The rain slacked off again, reduced to trickling streams down the windows. Through the murk and the trees, the little bit of river visible from here was only a muddy, moving blur. “Are you cold?”

She shook her head, staring straight ahead. She looked exhausted, red-eyed and disheveled, the wrinkled knit of her shirt sticking to her childish breasts. She wouldn’t look at me. I couldn’t stop looking at her.

“Why did you come here? Why didn’t you go home?”

“I drove by, saw a million cars. Including the cops.”

She must’ve seen Jess’s truck, too. “Are you all right?” I asked again.

She shrugged one shoulder and stared out the window.

“Did you get a tattoo?”

Her nostrils flared. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

In spite of everything, I wasn’t prepared for more hostility. She leaned forward to wipe the condensation off her side of the window, then switched the wipers on for one swipe and turned them off. The message: anything outside this car is more interesting than anything inside.

“I’m sorry for what happened,” I said. “Sorry for the way it happened. I know you’re hurt. But if you’re waiting for me to apologize for being in love with Jess, that’s not going to happen.”

“Who cares, Mom, I don’t give a damn anyway.”I sighed when she folded her arms across her chest; fortifying
the stockade. There was nothing to do but start further back. “You know Jess and I went to school together. When we were in high school, we fell in love. Eleventh grade.”

“How come you never told me?” She made her voice sarcastic, as if the answer would be obvious to a child. “How come you kept it a secret?”

“I told your father,” I evaded. “It wasn’t a secret.”

“Oh, yeah, what did he say?”

“Nothing. He—didn’t think anything of it.”

“Poor bastard.”

I blanched, not at
bastard
but at the casual cynicism. I’d never wanted her to be this grown-up.

“Ruth. I know how you feel.”

“Bullshit, you don’t know anything.”

“Then tell me.”

“No.”

I took hold of the wheel and turned it back and forth until the steering lock clicked. “I’ll tell you how I feel, then. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’d rather hurt myself. If you wanted to punish me, you couldn’t have picked a better way. And I’m angry about that. Ruth, I am so mad at you.”

She scowled straight ahead.

“I
do
know how you feel. You think I dishonored your father. You think the two people you trusted most have been false to you, tricked you. You’re furious and you’re hurt.” Her cheeks turned bright red. She looked out the side window to hide her face. “How was I supposed to tell you?” I said thickly. “Do you think I did any of this on purpose? I didn’t want to fall in love with Jess again.”

She said through a stuffy nose, “Why didn’t you just marry him in the first place?”

“I should have.”

She turned on me with burning eyes. “Oh, that’s great, Mom, then I wouldn’t even exist. Then you and Jess could have everything.”