Hot Springs (13 page)

“I left. Personal reasons, OK? Look, I’ll pay you rent, if you want.”

“The market rent for that house is considerable. I doubt you could afford it. And besides, I’m selling the house.”

“I know you’re selling the house. But you’ve been selling the house for two years now. Couldn’t you just let me use it for a little while, at least until you really sell it? When that happens, I promise, I’ll get out.”

“I told you my answer.”

“Well, where should I stay?”

There was a long pause. “You can stay on my sofa for a while. A couple of nights.”

“You think I’m going to burn the house down?” When he didn’t answer, she just said, “How’s everything else?”

“Everything is a mess. Don’t you read the papers?”

“I meant with you.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“You could if you wanted to. I wouldn’t mind.”

“Is it raining there?”

She looked over her shoulder through the exit door to the parking lot, where the asphalt was soft with the heat, the sunlight a relentless assault. “Not really,” she said. “Kind of the opposite. Everything is on fire.”

“It is here.”

She waited for something, anything, but she knew it wouldn’t come. He’d always been more interested in his art than in the people around him. “I’m bringing someone,” she said.

“That’s good,” he told her. “You can share the driving. But two is too many for the sofa. You should probably stay with friends.”

“OK,” she said. “I’ll just call up some of my friends.”

She’d bought Emily the comb, then showed her how to play it using a piece of paper between her lips and the plastic teeth, and now the girl wouldn’t shut up. Bernice had the radio on, but they’d entered an all-country zone, and she hated everything that came through the buzzing aftermarket speakers some former owner had set badly into the doors. The engine made a droning noise, too, the dashboard rattled like a loose window in a storm, and, in general, it was as if she were surrounded by bees. Turning the radio dial hard to the left—was it coincidence that the more radical stuff on FM radio was all on the
left
?—she found something that came in clearly and sounded interesting. It seemed to be Native American chanting, and it sounded exactly the way white people did when they made fun of Native American chanting, a kind of hey-ya, ho-ya, hey-ya,
ho-ya refrain. She pictured Hollywood Indians parading around a campfire, rhythmically slapping their mouths. In the back, Emily was humming through her comb what seemed to be a kazoo version of “Angels We Have Heard on High.”

“Hey,” Bernice said, “listen to this music. It’s Navajo or something.”

Emily stopped making noise.

“Do you know about Indians?” asked Bernice.

“Not really,” she said. “Maybe.”

“Well, before white people came to this country and discovered it, there were already people here, and those people were the Indians. They’d been here pretty much forever, and this was their country. Only we sort of took it from them.” She was starting to wish she hadn’t begun, since the truth was, she didn’t have much in the way of facts about Indians to offer, nor was there a way to make this a story a child would want to hear.

“Why did we do that?” asked Emily.

“Actually,
we
didn’t do anything. It was the Europeans. It was . . .” she stopped herself from saying Christians, even though she had a feeling the word was probably accurate. What else? There it was, that sense of entitlement, of knowing so absolutely and certainly that you were right and everyone else was wrong, to the point that you didn’t even care if you wiped out entire villages, entire cultures. “Indians are very spiritual,” she said. “Listen to this song they’re singing.”

On the radio, the voices continued to chant. After a few moments, Bernice realized that they were not chanting in Navajo at all, at least not all the time. Some of the words were clearly in English. It sounded as if they were saying, “Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse,” and then something about how they lived down in Disneyland.

“Disneyland!” said Emily, excitedly.

“I guess you know about that, huh?” She looked up into the rearview mirror. “You feeling all right? You’re not going to get carsick on me, are you?”

There was no response. She’d been good about giving the child her ear drops every four hours, and she didn’t seem as sick anymore, but Bernice assumed that the next bad thing was just around the corner. She’d never been able to keep even a house plant alive.

“Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse,” chanted the radio Indians.

“OK, that’s enough of that.” Bernice turned it off and they were left with only the high-speed rattlings of the ancient car. She tried not to think about how stressed the rusty metal probably was, how it wasn’t unreasonable to imagine the whole thing coming apart like a low-tech version of the space shuttle, wheels heading off in all directions, she and Emily skidding along the asphalt on whatever remained of the undercarriage like tobogganers.

“Is it much farther?” Emily asked.

“Oh, yeah. A lot. I just hope we can make it in this piece of junk. Remember my car? That was a great car.”

Emily blew a few notes on the comb.

“You know, I lived with those people, too—your other parents. I didn’t spend as much time with them as you did, but we had the same room. Did you know that? I’ll bet they never even told you. It looked different when I was in it, though.”

“I know,” she said. Then, after a moment, she asked, “How did it look?”

Bernice tried to remember. “Well, for one thing, it wasn’t all pink on the walls the way they did it up for you. That happened about a week before you came. They had painters all ready to go, and then presto, change-o! We took down all of the postcards I had up of artists I like. Stanley Spencer. You’ll like him—he was religious, too, but
in a weird way. And Philip Guston. His work is funny. Let’s see. I had my CD player, and my VCR. I watched a lot of movies with you, even if you don’t remember them. Ate a lot of popcorn, too. Do you like popcorn?”

“I love popcorn,” said Emily.

“Who likes popcorn?” Bernice said enthusiastically. When there was no response, she answered the question herself. “We like popcorn! Now, once again, who likes popcorn?”

“We like popcorn!” shouted Emily.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” said Bernice. “You probably like Preston Sturges, too, even though you don’t know it yet. I went through a whole thing with his movies.
Palm Beach Story
,
Christmas in July
. They’re in black and white. In the old days, everything was in black and white. Anyway, you asked about the room. There was a desk, and a desk chair, and I had an easel, but I had to promise not to use any oil paints because I was pregnant and we didn’t want you coming out with two heads, so I tried doing watercolors. Which I incidentally suck at. Sorry, I shouldn’t say ‘suck,’ I guess. I did some charcoal drawings. I wonder where those are?” When she thought back on those long months, mostly what she remembered was the intense isolation, the anger that threatened to blow her apart. A couple of times, just to scare them, she’d gone out to the bars, but pregnancy had erased any desire in her for drinking, and without that, the scene had seemed dumb. That last week, she’d slept in a nursery, her bags packed and ready both for the hospital and for her return to Florida—a former coworker of hers had a sister in Miami with whom she would crash temporarily—and the rest of her life. The last thing she’d seen before closing her eyes each night was the brand-new crib, empty and waiting.

“Yeah, I really hate watercolor,” she said. “Do you like to make art?”

“Of course,” said Emily. “I like to draw. And I like crayons.”

“Maybe later we can try drawing together some, huh?”

“OK,” she said.

“What else can you do? You can read, I guess. You know your alphabet.”

Emily demonstrated that she did, and Bernice sang along with her.

“Well, we’ll have to find you a nice school to go to.”

“I’m going to New Jerusalem.”

“How about numbers? Can you add or anything? What’s two and two?”

“Four.”

A truck that had been tailgating her for some time suddenly pulled out and passed, its slipstream making Bernice almost lose control of the car, just for a moment. She gasped and tightened both hands around the wheel. “I hate this,” she said. She felt despair growing in her, despite her determination to be cheery and forward looking.

“And four and four is eight. And eight and eight is sixteen.”

“That’s great. That is amazing, actually. What else can you do?”

“‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ John 3:16.”

“‘Believeth’? What do you think that means?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“And who was John?”

She was silent.

“Do you even know what death is?”

“Of course.”

“Explain, then, smarty-pants. Tell me someone who’s dead, for instance.”

She was quiet, thinking.

“Dead people go away,” said Bernice. “They just go away, and they never come back, period. And at first you’re sad, and then you might be angry for a while, and then you just do your best not to think about them anymore.” She watched the truck that had passed them get smaller as it accelerated toward the horizon, the legend “England” across its back doors brightly lit by the afternoon sun.

“I want french fries,” said Emily.

“You do?” She felt suddenly hopeful. It was such a normal, such an un-Emily thing to say. “OK, then. Let’s find some.” They were in the middle of no place, but how far could it be to the next french fry? This was America, after all.

“With mustard,” she said.

“That’s weird,” said Bernice. “I’m not criticizing you, but I want you to know, that’s weird. Most people go for ketchup, though back where I’m from, you’ll find people ordering them with gravy. I don’t know why—it just makes the fries all soggy. But mustard? That’s a new one on me.” She was silent for a bit, thinking of various french fries she’d known and loved. The Sip ’n’ Bite had good ones, particularly at three in the morning after you’d been out drinking hard. There had been a place in Atlanta, right near the campus, and she’d often had a whole basket for dinner, nothing else.

“I’ll pray for them.”

“For what?”

“French fries.”

Bernice nodded. “OK, I will, too.” In the rearview mirror, she could see Emily grin at this news.

“Hey, Emily,” she said. “I just want to ask you something. Are you, like, OK with all of this? I mean, I know I never checked it out with you officially. Because here’s the thing—if you hate it, there’s always a way out, you know? It would be difficult at this point, and I’m not
sure exactly what I’d do, but I could do something. Do you understand what I’m saying? You don’t hate it, do you? I’m mean, you’re not, are you? Just tell me you’re not and I’ll shut up.”

“Not what?” said Emily.

“Not angry at me,” said Bernice.

O
n Sunday, Landis went to the movies and took a hike on Section 16. Monday, he closed out his checking account, which still had a little over four thousand dollars left in it. He stopped by ProSound, but Kevin’s truck wasn’t there and the building was locked up tight. Landis felt disconnected, as if he were spinning in space, living outside of time. He’d eaten almost nothing but Mexican food, and his stomach was starting to hurt. It crossed his mind a couple of times to call Robin and ask her if she wanted to meet and talk some more. He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t a criminal, and he wasn’t dumb either, even if he had gotten into something a little over his head. It was just that he was changing himself, or trying to, at any rate. He’d abandoned one woman, years ago, when things got rough, and he didn’t know if his karma could stand up to doing the same thing again. But it seemed a lot to explain, and he doubted
she was the person to tell it to, anyhow. At Kaw-Lija’s, a Mexican restaurant with a huge Indian’s head atop it in the north part of town, he saw Devon having dinner with a pretty girl with makeup and big hair. Devon grinned at him as if he’d just won the lotto. Later, he drank beer at the Copper Dollar across the street, a tiny tavern with an oval bar that he’d always kind of liked, until the same songs had cycled around on the jukebox one too many times.

Tuesday morning, he left his nearly empty trailer, got himself eggs at the Purple Castle Diner, then drove to a 7-Eleven, went inside and got set up with a lot of quarters. He came back out to the pay phone and called.

“They’re gone,” said Gillian. “You missed them. She left.”

“She did what?” Landis said, holding his free hand to his other ear to block out the street noise. His head hurt and his eyes felt as if they’d been dipped in candle wax and hung out to dry.