Going to Bend (17 page)

“There were some things I had to see.”

“Like what?”

“Singapore. Thailand. They were the most beautiful places I’ve ever been.”

For a while it was quiet in the truck.

“If I’d known,” Schiff said softly, “I never would have come back.”

“Known what?”

He looked at her almost tenderly. He could have wept. He cleared his throat instead, switched on the ignition and put the car in gear. “That you wouldn’t sleep with me,” he said, and turned the truck around for home. Neither of them spoke again until they reached the outskirts of Sawyer.

“They really don’t have any money,” Petie said then, as though there had been no lapse in the conversation.

“Who doesn’t?”

“Nadine and Gordon. They really don’t. The only thing that’ll keep them from going under is if they get more local business.”

“So?”

“Well, Rose would be out of a job, for one thing. Plus I like them. They’re weird, especially Nadine, but they’re good people. I mean, they’re trying hard. It would be real good, Schiff, if they could keep the place.”

“I’ve never heard anyone say they were that great.”

“I’m saying it.”

“They canned you.”

“They should have done it a month ago.”

Schiff pulled the truck alongside Petie’s car. “So, what are you saying?”

Petie gathered up her purse and her junk and opened the door halfway. “I’m saying you know a lot of people. Just talk the place up. You could do that. Hell, take Carla and Randi there for dinner one night. Or maybe the dirt bike club could meet there this month. You know Rose is a good cook, so no one’s going to get poisoned or anything, and it would help. It really would.”

“Jesus.” Schiff held up his hands. “All right. I’ll see what I can do.”

Petie gave a curt little nod and hopped out. She was so small she disappeared from view completely once she’d slammed the door. Schiff was just about to pull away when the door was yanked open again.

“Hey,” Petie said. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

J
UST AS
she reached the outskirts of Hubbard the storm that had been building over the horizon for the past hour broke through like a bad head cold. Hailstones big as BBs stalked down the highway, dogged by rain. The boys would be just about to start walking home. Petie turned the nose of the car into the squall; the car hesitated, coughed and began favoring its bad wiper.

Petie had heard that turkeys were so stupid they drowned by opening their mouths during rainstorms. Most children, in her opinion, weren’t a whole lot better off. As she pulled up to the curb they poured
out of the elementary school in the usual states of joyful unreadiness—no jackets at all, or jackets without hoods. All winter the school smelled muggy and sour from so many soggy children.

The crowd thinned, but neither Ryan nor Loose appeared. When the last straggler had emerged, Petie switched off the engine and sprinted inside the school’s front door, where all the smells reached out and seized her, as they always did. This had been her school, too, hers and Rose’s, and it had looked and smelled pretty much the same then as it did now, except for newer desks and chalkboards: the same uneven, well-worn fir floors, the same construction-paper alphabet circling the ceiling, the same cheap Pilgrim and Indian and turkey cutouts taped on the walls. You could almost see their ghosts sitting in the second row of the first-grade classroom, sweet-faced Rose still years away from her pretty breasts, scrawny Petie full of ribs and knees and elbows sharp as hairpins, friends at first through an arbitrary seat assignment. It was the last year they were too young to pick out who was poor, whose mother was a slut, whose father was drinking, who was getting hit. But even through fourth grade they were happy years of hot school lunches and Dixie cups of stale ice cream you ate with flat wooden spoons and pennies-for-Unicef boxes Old Man raided and gave back to Petie half full, to turn in on the morning after Halloween. Turkey years. Then Petie’s mother had died.

No one was in the first-grade classroom, but Petie could hear voices down the hall, from the gym. She was drifting that way, woozy from sensory flashbacks, when suddenly a small boy burst past her, a first or second grader, in tears. An instant later a woman appeared in the doorway, put her hands on her hips and sighed. The child disappeared into the boys’ bathroom. Seeing Petie, the teacher pressed her lips together and shook her head. Petie didn’t recognize her.

“We have
got
to get more supervision in here, we’ve just got to,” she said, as though someone had been arguing with her. “Do you have children in Latchkey?”

“No, but sometimes they hang around until I come pick them up, when the weather’s bad.”

“Well, it’s a fiasco, plain and simple. Good Lord, look in there! We don’t have a program anymore, we have bedlam. Two-thirds of our students can’t go home after school, and they don’t have anywhere else to go so they’re staying right here. We’re not set up for this. Ten kids,
maybe
fifteen, yes. Forty, no way.” The woman suddenly stopped and then smiled ruefully at Petie. “Wow. Sorry. It’s not like it’s your fault.”

“It’s okay.”

“I should go after that child, but I’m the only one in here and I’m afraid to leave them alone.”

“I could watch them for a minute.”

“I wish, but I don’t think it would be legal. You could check on the boy, though. That would be great. His name is Harry Reilly. He’s one of our smallest boys, so he gets picked on.”

“Okay. Just tell my kids I’m here, if they start to leave. I’m Petie Coolbaugh—Loose and Ryan’s mom.”

“Oh. Yes, I know them. Well, thanks. Try and get Harry to come back to the gym with you. Tell him he can’t stay in the bathroom for the whole afternoon.”

Petie found the boy sitting beneath the row of small sinks, his knees pulled up under his chin. He was frail, like Ryan had been when he was six and he had the same shocky, hunted look.

“Hey,” said Petie, easing herself under the sinks near Harry. She smoothed out the wrinkles in her jeans, retied her shoes. “Want a Life Saver?” She fished around in her purse and brought out a linty roll she always kept on hand in case she needed to bribe the boys into submission. The child nodded, and Petie peeled down the paper. “Red or pineapple?”

“Red.”

Petie handed it to him. “I never liked the pineapple ones, either. Let’s throw it away. It’s got fuzz on it, anyway.” Petie gave the Life Saver a free throw into the metal trash container on the far wall. It rebounded off the tile wall and dropped in. “All
right
.”

The boy watched her doubtfully, sucking prodigiously on his Life Saver. He’d probably used a pacifier until he was four. He had the overbite
for it. Petie stowed the Life Savers back in her bag. The boy stared at his feet.

“So what happened in there? Did some kids gang up on you?”

Harry shook his head.

“Someone hit you?”

He shook his head again.

“Did you get called a bad name?”

No.

“Did they tell you not to tell?”

Yes.

“Was it a bunch of people? Just one? What grade, third? Second? First? First. Oh, no. Let me guess. Was it Loose Coolbaugh? It was. It was Loose, wasn’t it?”

Harry punched the end of his shoelace in and out of the eyelets in his sneakers. The corners of his mouth trembled.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Petie said. “He doesn’t mean to be such a shit.” She retrieved the Life Savers and offered the boy another one. He popped it in his mouth.

“What exactly did he do?” Petie asked. “If I knew, I could try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. It’s okay. I won’t tell on you, cross my heart.” Petie crossed her heart.

The boy’s answer came out in a whisper. “He touched my weenie.” He worked his shoelace in and out.

“Your—oh.”

“I don’t like it. I don’t want him to do it anymore.”

“Has he done that to you before?”

The boy nodded miserably.

Jesus.

Petie patted the boy’s matchstick arm. “Come on. I’ve got to take you back to the gym now, your teacher needs to know where you are. Okay? I’ll make sure that child never lays a hand on you again. I promise.”

She pushed herself out into the room, and reluctantly the boy emerged from under the sinks, too. She took Harry’s sticky hand and
walked him back to the gym. The teacher saw them, and looked at Petie inquiringly.

“He’s fine,” Petie said, handing him over. “He didn’t want to talk about it. Have you seen my kids?”

The teacher stood Harry in front of her and put her hands on his shoulders. “I think they’re over there. Well, Loose is. I don’t see—”

Petie put two fingers to her mouth and blew an ear-shattering whistle. The entire gym froze. Loose turned reluctantly from a little knot of boys across the room and shuffled Petie’s way, Ryan emerged from beneath a set of risers, and the room broke up again into a kaleidoscope of children.

“Time to go home.” Petie took Loose roughly by the arm and steered him out of the gym. Ryan trailed after.

In the car, Petie slapped the back of Loose’s head hard with her open hand. “Why did you pick on that poor little kid? Jesus fucking Christ, Loose, he’s about half your size and he was scared to death.”

“It wasn’t me, it was some other kids,” Loose lied hopefully.

“Bullshit.
Bullshit
.”

The three of them were silent the rest of the way home. Both boys got out of the car as quickly as possible and walked ahead, jackets zipped tight.

“Get out of my sight,” Petie hissed at Loose once they were inside. “I mean it. You stay away from me.” They stared at each other in the middle of the kitchen. Petie took in the crewcut head, round as shot, the honey-colored eyes underslung with bags, as though prematurely debauched.

She whispered, “God almighty, you look just like your grandfather.”

Loose ran from the room.

“The son of a bitch.”

She stood alone in the kitchen, an incipient migraine clamped onto her temples like the furious red-hot hand of God.

E
VER SINCE
she went back to work at the Sea View, Petie had been keeping her thoughts to herself. Rose didn’t press; it went that way with Petie sometimes. When Petie bleached out her hair she’d also stopped talking for five days. That had passed. This would pass. The thing with Petie was, you couldn’t expect to understand all the time. Sometimes you just had to settle back and catch a glimpse of whatever you could from the passenger side.

And then, Rose had been busy. For a week she had taken over at Souperior’s in the afternoons so Nadine could go check in with Gordon and then come back by five. When Gordon had finally begun to improve, Nadine invited Rose to stay on for a few more afternoons to learn the simple bookkeeping and purchasing systems, in case they ever needed her to take over. Rose’s life was gliding by in a lovely blur of good soup and purposeful days and warm uncomplicated nights with Christie. A good life.

Once, a long time ago in Doggett, Rose had lain beside Pogo and said,
How do you think this will end?
It had been a hot rich sweet night, full of growing things within and without, ten o’clock and just dark, the kind of night through which it was best to lie beside someone. Carissa had been two months from being born. Rose had been lying on her back, hands clasped contentedly around her belly, breathing in the fragrances and thinking about a miniseries installment she and Pogo were watching
on TV. She’d turned her head on the pillow and said,
How do you think it’s going to end?

And Pogo had said softly into the darkness,
I don’t know, darlin’. Probably one day I’ll just go
.

Less than a year later Pogo was gone, but from it Rose had learned that by anticipating neither misery nor joy, she might attain serenity. Christie would go back to Alaska again one day soon; Gordon would get sicker. But not right now. None of those things was going to happen right now, or even, probably, tomorrow.

On Petie’s last day with Souperior’s they decided to make one of their favorite soups, a creation that had had no name until Gordon dubbed it Crab Pot Chaos for
Local Flavor
. Crab season wouldn’t start for another two weeks, but Rose had sweet-talked Dooley Burden into setting a couple of crab rings off the docks yesterday in exchange for a couple of rounds at the Wayside. That night Jim Christie had brought home twelve pounds of prime Dungeness and the report that Dooley had been drunk by nine.

By eight-fifteen the next morning Rose’s house reeked of crab, and Carissa, Rose and Petie were all bellied up to Rose’s kitchen table, picking. In the center was a growing mound of crabmeat sweet as butter; everywhere else, shells. On a nearby counter a box of Band-Aids stood at the ready. Rose always cut herself to pieces on the shells once her hands turned cold and slippery. No matter; she liked picking anyway. Like crafts, it freed the mind. Better than crafts, good food came out at the end of it. Perfect work.

“Cute outfit,” Petie said to Carissa. She blew a puff of air at her bangs to get them out of her eyes; the rest of her hair was pulled back in a messy French braid, the first hairdo of any kind Rose had seen on her in years.

“Thanks.” Carissa smiled with delight. She was wearing a short flippy skirt with a big sweater, striped tights and huge thick-soled shoes. “Mom made the skirt yesterday, I think it’s so cool. Pay Less had this great fabric sale last week.”

“We made her a cute top to go with it,” Rose said. “We got some fabric for a pair of leggings, too. It’s this funny tropical print.”

“Mom says she’s going to put the monkey over my butt. There’s this one monkey in the print, peeking out from behind a big bunch of bananas.” Carissa giggled.

“It would just be our little joke,” Rose explained. “No one sees anyone’s butt anymore, anyway, with all the big sweaters and shirts you guys wear.”

“You’re lucky you’ve got the mother you do,” Petie told Carissa. “God obviously had a plan when he gave me boys. I can sew shirts like nobody’s business but I couldn’t give fashion advice to a cow.”