Still Life with Plums (9 page)

Jeff should be relieved that Betty won’t be making the two-day trip by herself. The baby is cutting back molars, and it’s scary for a woman alone on the road. Hasn’t he told her that five times a day for the past decade?
It’s a jungle out there. Be careful
. Besides, Betty no longer has the baseball bat or, Jeff thinks, the courage to use it. He has
protected her for so long that whatever muscle she flexed by moving so far from home has atrophied. He does so much for her, so much he’s sure she doesn’t appreciate, that she’ll miss once he’s out of her life. It’s how he proves his love. Who’ll do all that now? Who’ll peer in closets and under beds like he did when they came home to a dark house when he was sure he left a light on? Who’ll check and recheck and recheck to make sure the deadbolts are locked before going to bed? Who will stand before the refrigerator the first of each month to inspect expiration dates on mayonnaise and ketchup and pickle relish? Who will feel Stephanie’s chest in the middle of the night to make sure it’s still rising and falling, or call MedLine seven times in a row when she develops a rash? Not Bo. He can’t imagine anyone named Bo being that responsible, even if he is a
mining engineer
.

“Jeff,” Betty says. “Just take me home. Please.”

“Come on. Who knows when you’ll be back here. Don’t you want to see it one last time before you leave?”

“Not really.”

“It’ll be fun. Look!” he says, pointing. “There’s the sign for Friendswood. We’re almost there.” He hears Betty’s teeth grating so he shuts up and drives, absently counting the dashed white lines which sends him back to his first summer job working for the highway department. Hours and hours of setting out orange cones and barrels in tidy rows to redirect traffic when the roads were repainted, picking them back up when the crew was through. He remembers one afternoon when the heat was so intense it bounced off the concrete in waves. He tied his T-shirt around his forehead and hoisted the barrels onto the back of a flatbed, admiring the crisp dashed white lines, bold double yellows. Then he saw the dead cat, nearly flattened in the middle of the road, double yellow lines painted right over its carcass. He wondered why the crew hadn’t scraped it out of the way. It would decompose soon enough leaving a gap in the line.
A gap
in the line. A
thousand times since that day, in his mind, he’d peeled up the paint, shoveled out the dead animal, and smoothed the lines back to perfection.

In twenty minutes they reach their turnoff and that sad billboard with the blonde girl’s picture, Ashley Wilcox, and the caption: Have you seen me? The first time Jeff saw it, he decided that if his own daughter were kidnapped he would plaster her picture on billboards, too. And flyers, milk cartons. He’d take out television ads, and radio. He would stand in traffic to look in cars. Hire a bloodhound. After Stephanie was born, he constructed a six-foot privacy fence in the backyard, dug the post holes himself, strung the line to make sure it was straight, nailed the boards tightly in place.
Parks aren’t safe
, he’d told Betty.
Predators are just waiting to snatch little kids from public parks
. He prefers to stay home and look after his daughter though it’s cost him three jobs already. How many mornings had he called in with a lie?
Migraine
, he’d say. Or
bad back
. Though Betty is disgusted with these tactics he is
sure
she understands his apprehension about daycare, about free-floating germs, about under-trained strangers who don’t know about Stephanie’s allergies to red Kool-Aid and Fig Newtons. He has considered home schooling. He could do it, he thinks. He’s taught her so much already: her colors; her letters; the names of tools; that
= poison; don’t touch your face until you’ve thoroughly washed your hands; never
ever
use someone else’s bathroom—though this last rule retarded her potty training somewhat.

But tonight, Jeff drives toward the pier, toward the last bit of light hugging the water. The fishermen are in place and he wonders if they could be the same ones as ten years ago. It’s possible. Jeff parks and shuts off the engine. Pulls the keys from the ignition. He opens his door and hears the engine tic-tic-tic. He puts one leg outside.

“I’m not getting out,” Betty says.

“We’re here.”

“I don’t care. The sooner we get this over with the better.”

Jeff looks at his wife, his ex-wife, and can tell by the pucker of her mouth she’s not budging. It’s the same pucker she wore the day they stopped to pick wild grapes when she was pregnant. Jeff saw her pop one of the grapes in her mouth. He lectured her so thoroughly about bird shit and stray-dog piss and slug slime that not only did she spit out the grape, but she dumped the baseball capful they’d already picked onto the side of the road.

He pulls his foot back inside the car and closes the door. “It’s still pretty,” he says, trying to recreate the magic, the awe of that first visit. Trying to remind Betty about everything right in their lives. Then maybe she’ll call this whole thing off. This whole stupid thing.

“Galveston’s busy,” he says.

Betty looks across the water at neon restaurant signs and palm trees strung with white twinkling lights.

“You want a jaw breaker?”

Betty laughs and Jeff is relieved that he’s finally hit upon a pleasant bit of their history. They used go to Galveston on Saturdays and walk The Strand, the historic town center, stop in that candy store that sold jaw breakers the size of nectarines. Betty would work on one side of it the entire ride home until her tongue bled. Ooing and ahhing at the striated layers of color her labor revealed.
Like the earth’s core
, she once said. Then she’d wrap it up and put it in the vegetable bin in the refrigerator, along with the other half-sucked remnants of past trips—the only perishable Jeff didn’t have the heart to throw out. Tomorrow, if he can’t change her mind, she’ll pull open that drawer and spill dozens and dozens of lop-sided jaw breakers into the trash. They will clunk together at the bottom like golf balls.

Betty rests the swan on the floor and digs through her purse. “Here,” she says, pulling out a Ziploc bag. “I might as well give this to you now.”

“What is it?” Jeff says, not lifting his hand, not wanting to take whatever guilt offering or booby prize is inside.

“Just, here,” she says, opening it up, pulling out Stephanie’s hospital picture. Jeff clicks on the dome light and takes it, looks at his daughter’s purple face, the dumb pink bow taped to her head, little fists balled up. He wonders if this is the only photo he will get, though there are six albums worth of Polaroids he snapped weekly and arranged and labeled with Sharpie permanent ink.

“And this,” Betty says, handing him the trilobite they found at Enchanted Rock. Jeff takes the bag and pulls out the silver bolo tie Betty bought him at the rodeo in the Astrodome. There’s a coin tucked into a cardboard and cellophane holder. The letters JAG and the year 1818 are stamped on one side, a tiny lone star on the other.

“You’re giving me this?”

“They’re your initials,” she says, referring to the reason they paid four dollars for it at a roadside flea market. Only later did they take it to a coin dealer and find out that it was early Texas money: a New Spain Jola, a half real, coined by Jose Antonio de la Garza. Worth three-thousand bucks.

“I figured you could sell it,” she says.

Don’t do me any favors
, he wants to say. “I’m not going to sell it.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Jeff. I know you could use the money.”

Jeff zips the coin, the photo, the trilobite, the bolo tie back into the baggy and tucks it inside his jacket pocket. “Maybe I’ll give it to Stephanie.”

Betty let’s out a little sigh. “Whatever,” she says. “But wait till she’s older so she doesn’t choke on it.”

Jeff feels like he’s the one choking.
When she’s older
, he thinks, fingers thumping on the seat beside him as he imagines his daughter’s first whole sentences edged not with his lilting Texas drawl, but with that tinny backward twang he once found so endearing. Still does,
really. He’s going to miss playing Santa, and the piano lessons they always talked about. Who will make sure she’s immunized, pull her baby teeth, teach her the names of birds? Who will show her how to look right-left-right-left-right-left before crossing the street? To yell FIRE! when strangers approach. To not accept unwrapped Halloween candy.

“Do you have to take her so far?” he says, fingers drumming wildly.

Betty presses her hand over his to stop the noise. “We’ve been through this.”

Jeff pulls his hand out from under hers. They have been through this, time after time: Betty’s financial stability, her family network, her maternal rights. Her ridiculous mislabeling of his orderliness, of his parental concern.
Obsession
, she called it.
Neurosis
.

“Please just take me home,” Betty says.

Jeff nods, turns off the dome light, and starts the car. Before pulling out he looks over at Texas City. A blue flame billows from a venting column, yellow tip licking the sky.

Back on I-45 Jeff stays in the left lane doing below the speed limit.

“I think I’ve got a job lined up back home,” Betty says.

“What?”

“Just a receptionist at the Greenbrier, but it’s a start. Talk about coming full circle.”

Jeff squints in the rearview, trying desperately to catch a glimpse of the refineries. “Who’s going to look after Stephanie?”

“Mom and Dad.”

He feels a real migraine coming. “They barely look after themselves.”

“They take care of David’s kids just fine.”

Jeff bites his tongue, picturing Stephanie skipping around Betty’s parents’ house. Tripping on their slippery area rugs. Bumping her head on their brick fireplace. Sticking her curious fingers into non-childproofed
electrical sockets while her seventy-five-year-old grandparents chase after David’s two wild boys. He doesn’t even want to imagine what the boys will do to torment, to torture her.

“Can’t she just stay here with me?” Jeff whispers.

“You’re living in someone’s spare bedroom, Jeff. You don’t have a job.”

“I’ll get one. I’ll keep one, for her.”

“And who’ll watch her while
you’re
at work?”

Pressure builds behind Jeff’s left eye. “Betty,” he whispers, “she’s the only thing I ever really did right.”

Betty looks at him, at his lower jaw sagging. “I’m sorry,” she says. “But it’s not going to happen.”

An eighteen-wheeler roars through Jeff’s brain and he floors the gas pedal to outrun it, speedometer edging past 50-60-70-80.

“Jeff,” Betty says, voice low and flat. “Slow down.”

He doesn’t listen, practically stands on the gas as the startled engine trembles and whines.

Betty grips the dashboard as they pass car after car on the right, left, weaving dangerously close to their bumpers. A Toyota honks and flashes its lights.

“Stop it!” Betty yells.

Jeff doesn’t stop and the needle is out of numbers but he wants to go faster, get the hell home where Stephanie sleeps in her sturdy bed with fire-retardant mattresses and sheets and pajamas, smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors surrounding her like a force field.

Suddenly Jeff slams on the brakes. The car fishtails and swerves, tires screeching as he veers off the road.

When the car settles Betty glares over. “You trying to kill us?” she says, face ashen, looking as if she believes, at this moment, he is capable of such a thing.

“I saw a dog,” he says, jamming the car in park. He gets out without closing the door.

“Come back here!” Betty calls over the incessant ding-ding-ding, the car’s complaint that the keys are still in the ignition.

Vehicles he so recklessly passed just minutes before pass him now. Some drivers honk, shake their fists. One guy gives him the finger. Jeff doesn’t care. He starts walking, following his skid marks, gravel crunching under his boots. He hears a hum overhead and looks up at power lines strung from electrical towers spaced out like dominoes across the scrubby field to his left, leading back to Texas City. “Here, pooch!” he calls, looking for the mutt he’s sure he saw trotting in the middle of the road.

“Jeff!” Betty calls, but he keeps walking, squinting, scouring the road for the animal and there it is. A tangle of dingy fur sauntering between the north and southbound lanes, eyes glinting from the cars’ headlights whipping by on both sides.

Jeff squats across from it on the berm, and when the road is clear he holds out a hand. “Come here, pup,” he calls, voice warm and inviting. The dog stops, lowers her head, but her tail sways as Jeff makes kissy sounds. The dog looks at Jeff, then back up the highway, considering.

“I’ve got food!” Jeff yells, standing, slowly walking backward to the car. The dog walks, too, still in the center of the road. “You hungry?” Jeff calls over. “Wait’ll you see what I got.” When Jeff nears the car Betty rattles the keys at him. “I need to get home!”

“Give me your leftovers.”

“What?”

“Your leftovers. I can lure her over.”

“No! I don’t want a stinky dog in here.”