Stay (26 page)

Luz’s room looked different without the books on the bedside table. Maybe the suitcase was still downstairs. My heart felt too big for my rib cage, and my lungs too small. I had to sit on the bed for a minute before I could lean forward and reach for the transmitter. When I stood, my face felt cold. The door seemed a million miles away.

I dragged myself to the bathroom, telling myself I did not have concussion, that if I could just drink some water, splash some on my face, I’d be all right, but when I got there my good leg started to fold under me, and I half fell, half sat on the toilet. I shivered, swallowed. I just needed a few minutes, and some water.

A child thundered up the stairs. The bathroom door slammed all the way open. Luz. She stared.

“I have to use the bathroom,” she said.

I didn’t move.

“What are you doing?”

“I was going to get some water,” I said. She looked at the sink, then at me. “My leg hurts.”

She absorbed that. “Would you like me to bring you some?”

“Yes. Please.”

She tipped the toothbrushes out of a glass, rinsed it, and filled it to the brim. She carried it from the sink with great deliberation. When I reached for it, she said, “Use both hands. If you spill it, it’ll make the floor slippery.”

I sipped. “Thank you.” My breathing steadied.

“What did you do to your leg? Did you fall down?”

“I hurt my knee.”

“Aba helps me if I hurt myself, she helps Mr. Carpenter, too. But most people don’t have an Aba. Most people have a mom.”

“Mine is a long, long way away.”

She nodded, unsurprised. “What about your brother?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Button’s not really my brother. Mr. Carpenter isn’t really my daddy, either. My daddy’s dead.”

A child skipping along the pavement, holding my hand on one side, Karp’s on the other. “Mine too.”

She looked worried. “Then who’s going to kiss you better?”

The bathroom walls wavered. A little hand took the glass from mine.

“Don’t cry,” she said. “I can do it. See?” She kissed my cheek, light as a cricket. “There. All better. Only I hope it works. I don’t think you’re supposed to be older than me.”

Her tenderness was unbearable. She was nine years old. She knew how to kiss me better: a simple thing, but one I could never have taught her. And I had come here to save her.

“Aud? I have to go to the bathroom now.”

“Yes,” I said, “of course,” and hauled myself to my feet.

She closed the door behind me.

On the way down the stairs, climbing into the truck, putting the engine in gear, I kept feeling that cricket kiss on my cheek.

Back in the park, I managed to get out of the truck and into the trailer. The dizziness was passing; probably more long-delayed shock than concussion. I stripped, and probed at my ribs cautiously. There was no way to be sure without an X ray but I didn’t think anything was broken. I strapped myself up as well as I could, took more ibuprofen and some Vicodin—not much left—and forced down an apple, half a can of tuna, and two glasses of water. I propped myself on the couch with a bag of ice on either side of my knee. It hurt too much to lie down.

I dozed for a while.

When I woke, I felt shaky, but I could think. I forced myself to my feet, found a flashlight. My phone was in the truck. Might as well take a look at the hitch while I was out there.

The lever that undamped the tongue had snapped off. Not dangerous, just a nuisance: I’d have to drag the trailer behind me for the rest of my stay in Arkansas because getting the hitch off would destroy it.

Back inside, I called Bette’s emergency number. It was an hour later in Atlanta, and she usually retired before nine, but she answered on the third ring and didn’t ask questions, just let me outline what I needed. I spelled out the exact terms: money, school attendance, home access to information, penalty for breaking the agreement. “Please e-mail me a draft as soon as you can.”

“Shouldn’t take long. Basically we’re talking about customizing a general child custody agreement. Do you want any visitation rights—her coming to you, you going to her? Vacations, weekends?”

I touched my cheek.

“Aud? Hello?”

When I had gone back to Norway as a child, speaking English with more fluency than Norwegian, my great-aunt Hjørdis gave me books and helped me with the words I didn’t understand. When my mother was busy and my father out of town, she had wrapped me in a warm coat, taken me by the mittened hand, and walked with me through the city, pointing out the different buildings, telling me their history, funny stories about people who had lived there that weren’t written on the plaques or in books. She had helped me belong.

“Are you still there? Hello? Goddamn these cellular—”

“Sorry, Bette. Yes. Visitation rights. I don’t know yet. Can you keep the door open?”

“I could write a general clause about unsupervised access, to be mutually determined at some unspecified later date, permission not to be unreasonably withheld, etc. etc. Would that suit?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll get right on it.” She hung up.

Bette loved the unusual, the unexpected. She loved her work. I could see her pulling on her robe, walking barefoot down the carpeted hallway to her home office, sitting down, rubbing her hands. I’d have the draft within the hour.

There were other things to do, but I felt restless and unsettled, as though my skin didn’t fit. I managed half a bottle of beer and no food at all. Towards midnight I left the trailer and stood in the dark under the trees.

The afternoon sky above the Carpenters’ house was an ominous yellow gray and the air smelled metallic. If the temperature fell a few more degrees it would snow. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. I transferred the briefcase to my left hand and knocked. Adeline answered the door in a daffodil yellow apron, wiping flour from her hands. Julia and I had eaten homemade food once. It was at Aunt Hjørdis’s house in Oslo. “A fine morning,” she said. Her faded blue eyes looked ten years younger. “Jud will be just a while.” She glanced at the briefcase.

“How long a while?”

“Oh, not long. An hour? He’s just… well, you know how he is. He’s just running through things in his mind, getting it all to hand, so to speak.” She looked past me. “I see you’ve brought that trailer again.”

“The hitch is broken.”

“Yes, well. Still, it’s a piece of good fortune. Button has been talking about nothing else since yesterday. Jud took them up to Conway for swimming first thing but the boy just won’t be distracted. He’d dearly love to see inside. I’ll send them out to you, shall I?” She smiled brightly, back to the Kind Christian Lady mode of getting her own way.

Aud rhymes with cowed.

“Luz!” Adeline called as she headed back into the house, “Button! Miz Thomas is here, and she says you can play in her trailer!”

I had barely dropped the briefcase on one of the recliners before Button was picking up the grapefruit knife I’d left in the drainer that morning. I took it away from him and asked Luz to sit for a moment while I made sure there was nothing else sharp lying within reach. She seemed fascinated by the luxury of the leather recliners; as I put away a bottle opener, I saw her furtively stroking the leather of her shoes and then the chairs, as if wondering how both could be the skin of an animal. She eyed the briefcase. My knee was less swollen today, but the pain was worse, as was the pain in my ribs. Stretching up to the higher cupboards hurt.

Eventually everything harmful was out of reach. Button found a paper clip and became absorbed in its shape, so I left him to it. I moved the briefcase from the chair opposite Luz and sat. My heart was beating faster than it should have been, and my mouth was dry. Perhaps it was a blood sugar problem.

“Is your knee better?” she said.

“Yes, thank you. The, ah, the kiss worked. For my knee.”

She nodded solemnly. “Aba always puts a Band-Aid on mine.”

“Good,” I said. Gentian violet. That’s what Hjørdis had used on my cuts and scrapes.

I looked at Luz, she looked at me. She had seen me bludgeon two adults half to death with a gun. I had no idea how to begin, or even what I wanted to begin.

“How are you?” I said.

She shrugged. Her eyes were clear, no sign of a sleepless night, but it would come: the nightmares, the sweating, the fear that nothing around you is safe. Payment always came due.

“If you have bad dreams, you can talk to me. If you want.”

She shrugged again. I looked around the trailer. Maybe my mother hadn’t known what to do with a little girl, either.

“Would you like to see my computer?”

She didn’t say no, so I got out the laptop. The case was soft black leather. While I booted up and acted busy with screen and keyboard, she pulled the case onto her lap and stroked it with the back of her hand.

I swiveled the whole thing around on my knee so she could see the SimCity screen. “This is a game where you can build your own city.”

She gave me an uncertain look.

“Here,” I said. “Let’s put it back in the case, keep it safe while we play.” She handed over the case unwillingly, but once the laptop was snugged in place with the screen still up, I put it back on her lap, and now she paid attention. I couldn’t kneel, so I squatted next to her to type. Her hair smelled faintly of chlorine. “See, I can make factories, and parks, and farms.”

“Can you make churches?”

“Yes,” I lied, and put in a hotel.

“It doesn’t look like a church.”

“No,” I agreed. “It’s not a very good program.”

“Program,” she repeated under her breath.

“We could see if we can draw a better church.” She looked around, as if expecting crayons and paper to appear from thin air. “No, look, here.” I pulled up Photoshop. “This, here, works like a paintbrush, and this a bit like a spray can.” I sketched an outline of a cathedral. It looked like a derelict shed. She smiled politely. I erased it. “Or we could borrow someone else’s picture. From the web.” For once the connection worked first time. I went to the Library of Congress image database. And then I knew exactly what I wanted.

I worked quickly. It didn’t take long. “There,” I said, and sat back. It was the Mexico City cathedral. She was riveted. “If you like, we can copy that over, use the image, the picture, for cathedrals in the game.”

She nodded mutely. I kept a small window open in the top left of the screen for her to look at while I got back to SimCity.

“Now, see, we paste this into here, and look, there it is.” A tiny cathedral in the middle of downtown SimCity.

“Not there. Here,” she pointed to a park. Quick look to see what Button was up to. He had abandoned the paper clip and was examining the hinge on a cabinet door. “It should go there, on this side. And there should be government
edificios
on the other side.”

Just like Mexico City, where the Catholic cathedral, built on the ruins of an Aztec temple, faced government buildings across a huge plaza. Maybe one day I’d tell her about Montezuma’s palace.

“You do it,” I said. I showed her how to work the touch pad. Her fingers weren’t used to machine ways, but after a while she got the hang of it. She moved the cathedral.

Button was trying to dismantle the stove, but I had disconnected the propane before leaving North Carolina, so I didn’t worry.

“How do I make buildings?”

“You have to pay for them.” I showed her how, and she set to work with a curiously bland face, no frowns of concentration or lip caught in her teeth.

Button started in on the fridge. I distracted him with the remote for the TV, and while he sat, fascinated with the changing pictures, Luz played god, or at least mayor.

“What are taxes?” she asked after a while.

I thought for a minute. “The government’s tithe.”

“Oh.” Ten minutes’ silence while she put in too many parks, stroked the leather carrying case absently, hummed tonelessly under her breath, checked once or twice to make sure Button was still amused by his own toy, and finally turned to me for help. “There’s no money left.”

“You’ll have to demolish some of those parks.”

“Yes. But there’s no point having them if everyone’s leaving.”

Fidget. Check on Button again. Sideways look. I just waited. “So what should I do?”

“Hard choice. Demolish the parks or have an empty city.” I knew which I’d choose.

“No.”

“They’re your only choices.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Well then, you’ll have to cheat.”

Consternation. Cheating was probably not much encouraged by the Plaume City Church of Christ congregation. Aud as devil’s advocate.

“You don’t like that idea?”

She shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Cheating’s bad.”

“Who says?”

“God.”

“Where does it say that in the Bible?”

Thoughtful look.

“Is there a commandment against it?”

She ran through the commandments in her head. “Thou shalt not bear false witness?”

“You don’t actually have to lie. You just sort of step around what everyone expects. It depends, of course, on what you want from the game.”

“People
and
parks.”

“Yes, but do the ends justify the means?” Incomprehension. How old did children have to be before you could talk to them as real human beings? I tried again. “Sometimes people play this game to test how clever they are: to see how many people and parks they can make without cheating. And sometimes people use it to just play, to have fun, not as any kind of test: just to build things, to see how they look.” All about perspective.

“People
and
parks,” she said again.

“Then watch.” I tapped in
call cousin vinnie
. “Now, you see that window—that man offering free money if you’ll just sign his petition?” She nodded. “If you go ahead and take that money, it’s yours, no strings attached.”

“For nothing?” Not so much a question as an expression of skepticism.

“Yes and no. Now watch, see what happens if you don’t take the money and type in this extra code.”

I entered
syxtwu
.

“Oh!” she said as the beautiful SimCity castle appeared.

“That boosts land prices, which—”

The trailer filled with the blatting of a sell-sell-sell commercial for cheap furniture: Button had discovered the volume control. I had to get up to turn it down manually. I swapped to a channel with strangely colored cartoon characters running about doing impossible things, and recorded three minutes of it. Then I showed him how to play back: freeze frame, slow motion forwards, backwards, jump back to real time. He loved that, making the characters go backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. He giggled: a strange, grown-up sound.

Luz was looking fixedly at the screen again. “What’s that?” She pointed to a farm on the outside of her city.

“Ah. Crop circles.”

Before I had to try explain to a nine-year-old Christian fundamentalist some computer geek’s in joke about alien visitors and crop circles, Adeline knocked on the trailer wall and called, “Miz Thomas? If you’d send the children out, then step into the house when convenient, I’d be grateful.”