The Drowning Game (18 page)

He startled me by opening the driver's side door and getting in.

“Boy, Uncle Curt was pissed,” he said.

“Why?”

“Said he's been out of his mind with worry. Didn't know if we were alive or dead. He actually said we should turn around and come home and hide in his basement. I said this was the first time we've been anywhere near a phone. He told me call him when we get to Denver.”

I pulled the folded paper out of my pocket, the one with Mrs. Bart I. Davis's address on it, and read it over again. Was this actually kin of mine, and if so, what was she like? Dekker's grandma popped into my mind, her and her casserole and the way she put Dekker in his place, and I hoped that mine was like her.

Dekker unfolded the map. “Can you navigate?”

“Yes,” I said. “Dad taught me how to read maps almost as soon as I could read.”

Every time I used that word—­Dad—­it hit me in the chest. Charlie Moshen, Michael Rhones—­who had he really been? He was obviously much more disturbed than I could ever have imagined, taking me away from Mom and my real dad.

Dekker handed me the map. I looked at the address Curt had written for us and found where it was located on the map within a few minutes.

Dekker started up the car and drove us to I-­70.

An hour and a half later we pulled up in front of Mrs. Bart I. Davis's address, which looked like a run-­down hotel. The paint was faded and peeling, the lawn in front sparse. It was called the Village at Xanthia.

And now that we were here, I was suddenly immobilized by fear. What if Mrs. Bart I. Davis didn't want anything to do with me? What if she was a mean old lady?

What if she wasn't my grandma at all?

I
FOLLOWED
P
ETTY
up to the building and through the front door to a desk. My heart sank. I'd been expecting an apartment complex, but this was a nursing home. The place seemed cheery enough, but there were several old folks in bathrobes sitting in wheelchairs, staring at nothing. Underneath the floral air-­freshener scent, I smelled urine. The clock, to my surprise, said three
P.M.
No wonder I was so tired and hungry. I'd been driving nonstop since breakfast.

A fleshy woman in scrubs sat behind the reception desk, talking on the phone. She held up a finger to us.

We waited until she hung up and turned to us. “How can I help you?”

Petty opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I came to her rescue.

“We're here to see Mrs. Bart I. Davis.”

She consulted a notebook. “Jeannie Davis?”

“Yes,” I said with authority.

“And who are you?”

Petty and I glanced at each other. We couldn't give our real names, of course.

“We're her grandniece and nephew,” I said.

The nurse looked suspicious. Or maybe I only thought she did.

“Is Mrs. Davis expecting you?”

“No,” I said. “She definitely is not expecting us. We're in town from Nebraska. We promised our mom we'd visit.”

“You'll need to sign in and print your license plate number here.” She pushed a clipboard with a sign-­in sheet on it toward us.

“We took the bus,” I said.

But she'd already turned away to attend to other business.

I wrote on the sign-­in sheet:
Bill and Melinda Gates
.

“Where can we find Mrs.—­Aunt Jeannie?” I asked the back of the nurse's head.

“She's in room 3B.”

I led the way down the hall. Petty avoided eye contact with the old ­people. Most of them were like droopy statues, and the rest moved with painful slowness. Petty probably didn't have any experience with old ­people, where I'd had a lifetime of it. After I went to live with Oma, I accompanied her Meals on Wheels runs and her weekly visits to the Sunset Nursing Home in Niobe. Every Thursday, Oma baked cookies and other goodies for the old folks.

“Here it is,” I said, pointing to an open door. Many televisions up and down the hall competed with each other, most of them death-­metal loud, and one of them was in the room we were about to enter. “I'll go in first, okay?”

Petty nodded, her face ashen

Inside were two old ladies. One sat up in bed, the other in a chair. Only the lady in the chair turned when Petty and I entered.

“Hello,” I said.

“Good morning!” the lady in the chair said cheerfully. “Are you here for my bath?”

“No, we're here to visit. Are you Mrs. Jeannie Davis?”

“Oh, no, honey. I'm Zelda Krantz. I'm her new roommate.” She whispered, “Her last one passed away.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” I said.

I glanced at Petty, who couldn't take her eyes off the lady in the bed, her possible grandma, who hadn't taken her eyes off the TV.

“We're some relatives in from Nebraska,” I said. Then I said to Jeannie, “Hello, Mrs. Davis.”

Her head turned slowly, and her eyes traveled from my belt buckle to my face before her eyes narrowed in what might have been confusion or suspicion. She didn't answer.

“How are you today?”

She kept staring at me.

“She's having an off day, I think,” Mrs. Krantz whispered. “She has the Alzheimer's, you know.”

“No, I didn't know,” I said, deflated. This was a major setback. Would Mrs. Davis be able to provide any information? Would she even be able to talk to us?

Petty backed up against the wall.

“She was very lively this morning,” Mrs. Krantz said, looking at the TV. “Very talkative.”

“What did she talk about?” I asked Mrs. Krantz.

“About when her children were little, mostly,” she said. “She has her good days and her bad days. You should go ahead and talk to her anyway. Even if she doesn't answer, you can talk to her.”

I tried to catch Petty's eye, but she was frozen in place. I imagined she'd even stopped breathing. I got as close to her as I dared and whispered, “Talk to your grandma, Petty.”

“What do I say?”

“Just . . . say hello.” I thought I could see some resemblance to the lady in the photo album, but maybe I just hoped I could. I turned back to Petty. “Don't make her strain to see you,” I whispered. “Go over by the bed, look her in the eye and talk to her.”

Petty detached herself from the wall with some effort and walked to the bed. Mrs. Davis's eyes were still on me. Petty cleared her throat, and the old lady's watery eyes slowly tracked over to Petty's face.

“Hello,” Petty said.

Mrs. Davis's cloudy old eyes gazed into Petty's, and I could actually see her pupils dilate. She must recognize Petty! A low growly noise came out of Mrs. Davis's mouth. “Ma. Ma. Ma. Ma. Ma. Ma.”

“Is she saying ‘Mama'?” I said.

Mrs. Davis's veiny old hand came up off the blankets and wavered, but it looked like a shooing motion to me. She kept her eyes on Petty's face, her eyebrows drawn together. “Ma. Ma. Ma.” It was creepy, the way she drew the syllables out, how her voice was pitched so low. I knew this voice would haunt my dreams.

“She must be way back in her childhood now,” Mrs. Krantz said. “I feel for her, I do. I hope it's not contagious. Not a thing wrong with my mind, not a thing. Sharp as a razor!”

Petty shocked me by reaching out and taking Mrs. Davis's hand. Once contact was made, Mrs. Davis stopped making any noise at all. She continued staring at Petty until her eyelids got heavy. Then they closed and she snored softly. Petty set her hand back on the blanket.

“Does she ever have any visitors?” I asked Mrs. Krantz.

“I've only been her roommate for about a week now, and she hasn't had any in that time. I've had two, though.”

“That's great,” I said.

“Do you want to try again tomorrow?” Mrs. Krantz asked. “She might be a little clearer. Then again, she might not.”

“But you'll be here, won't you?” I said. “We can talk to you then, can't we?”

“Of course you can!” Mrs. Krantz's dried apple-­doll face lit up, and I could see that she'd once been very pretty.

“Is there a special treat we can bring when we come back tomorrow?”

“Can you bring me some chocolate-­covered cherries?”

“We can,” I said, “and we will.”

 

Chapter 20

“W
E DROVE BY
a motel for twenty-­nine dollars a night,” I said. “That's probably as good as it's going to get.”

What I didn't say was that it was called Motel 9, which I took as a good omen because it was so close to Disregard the 9. I didn't want her to think I was superstitious.

When I snapped out of my mini-­daydream, Petty was staring at me. “We're going to a motel?”

“We need a place to sleep,” I said. “What were you thinking we should do?”

“I didn't think about it,” Petty said. “I guess I thought we'd come to town, we'd find my grandma, she'd tell us who my real dad is and we'd go there. I didn't think about . . . nights.”

The way she'd said it, “going to a motel” sounded extra special sleazy. Suddenly my stomach felt like it was tumbling in a clothes dryer.

“If we stayed at a nice place,” I said, feeling my face glow red, “it would be over a hundred a night, easy.”

“That's not exactly what I was—­”

“It'll only be for a night or two.”

She went quiet and stared out the window, to my relief.

We pulled up to the motel, which was made of tan brick. M
OTEL
9, said the sign.
Best Rates in Town. WiFi. Cable. Phones. Fridge.
What looked like old blue terry-­cloth towels hung behind some of the windows while others were sealed up with slabs of particle board. The rooms surrounded the parking lot in a U, and all the doors were red. We got out of the Buick. There were cigarette butts all over the ground, so many of them it almost looked decorative.

“Maybe we should gather all these up for Ashley,” I said.

“That's a joke, right?” she said.

I couldn't help but smile as I nodded. “That's a joke.”

We stood gazing at the motel.

“Do you feel weird?” Petty said.

“Yeah,” I said. “But our cash stash is going to go a lot quicker than you think, so I think we need to stay in the same room.”

“No,” Petty said. “I mean I'm having a hard time getting enough air, and my heart rate's way up.” She held two fingers against her jugular.

Oops.
I tried to recover quickly. “That's the altitude.”

I led the way into the front office. A wall of what was probably bulletproof glass stood between us and a dried-­up old man shaped like a parenthesis. He wore pants belted just under his armpits and his voice squawked out of the mouth-­high metal speaker embedded in the glass.

“Room?” His teeth were the color of maple syrup.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “We're not sure how long we'll be here, so maybe we should—­”

“Twenty-­nine dollars a night, one forty-­nine a week.”

“Right. You have a room available for, I don't know, like three nights?” I glanced at Petty to see if this seemed reasonable. She had no reaction.

“Pay up front,” the old man said. “Cash only. No check. No card. Cash only.”

I could imagine he'd been saying this speech dozens of times a day for the last sixty years in exactly the same way. A metal drawer popped out and knocked Petty in the hip. Inside of it was a pen and card to fill out. I removed them and started writing. Petty reached into her pocket, pulled out five twenty-­dollar bills and put them in the drawer, which retracted.

“No pets.” The old man counted the cash as he talked and never looked up at us. “No smoking in the rooms. Outside only. Hundred dollar fine we catch you smoking in your room.”

It was funny he was saying all this, because the inside of the office smelled a lot like Ashley's apartment. But I figured Petty was glad I'd have to smoke in the parking lot.

“Here's your key,” he said, and the drawer popped out again. This time Petty got out of the way. She pulled out the change and the key.

“Thirty dollars if you lose the key,” the manager said into the metal speaker that made his voice sound like a robot's.

“Gotcha,” I said.

The old man put his mouth up against the metal circle and shouted, “And no drugs!”

Petty jumped at the sound.

Outside, I parked the car in front of the door to Room 5, our new home for the next ­couple of days. As I tried to unlock the door to the room, a woman peeked out the window next door. She had crispy yellow hair and sleepy eyes that rolled in my direction, but she looked through me. I snorted. No drugs my ass
.
I unlocked the door, opened it and went in first. Thousands and thousands of cigarettes had been smoked in that room. The brown carpet resembled felt and was worn to the floorboards in some places.

Petty glanced in the bathroom, under the double bed and the couch, then she stood staring at me.

There was only one bed. Every motel room I had ever stayed in had two double beds. I'd thought there would be two. My skin got hot and I couldn't look at her, because I had a flash of the two of us lying in it together.

“I'll be right back,” I said, and walked out the door.

I pulled a cigarette out of my pack and lit it up, gazing up at the sky, which was blue and thin and high. I walked back to the office and rang the bell. The old man came out of the back office and just stared at me.

“I'm in Room 5, and I wondered—­do you have a different room available with two double beds?”

“No.”

“Could you check?”

“Don't need to.”

“Well, then I'd like my money back so we can go someplace with two double beds.”

He pointed at a sign on the back wall before disappearing into the back room again.

NO REFUNDS.

Maybe we should've gone somewhere else, just eaten the hundred dollars, but I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, for fear Petty would pick up on what I'd been thinking.

This was going to be torture. Having Petty so close, staying in the same room. I hoped Mrs. Davis would be semi-­lucid tomorrow and tell us where Petty's real dad was. I would drive her to him, there would be a tearful reunion, then I would get on the road tomorrow to Kansas City with five days to spare. I was suddenly acutely aware of the attraction that had been building. Now that we'd be sleeping in the same room, that attraction hit critical mass. I'd need to practice not thinking about her.

No way I could sleep in the same bed with her and expect not to have a reflexive physical reaction. I'd have to sleep on the couch.

I finished my cigarette and went back in the room.

Petty hadn't moved from the spot she'd been standing in when I left.

“Wow,” I said. “This is a shithole, isn't it? This place makes the motels I stayed in as a kid seem like palaces. I'm going to use the bathroom.”

“Okay.” Petty sat on the couch, the middle of which sagged into a crater, and dust rose. She sneezed.

I went in the bathroom and tried to shut the door, but it wouldn't close. It was too big for the frame. Perfect.

“I'm going to turn on the TV,” Petty called. I was grateful to her for that. I heard the television switch on.

Rust ringed the tub, and the corners of the room were packed with pubic hair. There seemed to be a film of ancient filth on everything. So. Gross. I sighed.

D
EKKER CAME OUT
of the bathroom and reached for the tan-­colored phone. He punched some buttons. “Hey, hippie,” he said. “We're here . . . it was fine . . . it's called Motel 9, and it's a real shithole, but it's cheap. We're in room number five.” He listened for a minute. “Yeah, we saw her about an hour ago. She's got Alzheimer's . . . I know. We're going to try again tomorrow morning . . . I don't know . . . She's doing good . . . Okay. Hold on.” He held the phone out to me.

I felt a deep flush spreading over my neck and face. Curt wanted to talk to me? Why?

“Hello?” I said.

“How you doing, petty girl? How do you like Denver?”

“It's big. And loud. And dirty.”

“You feeling overwhelmed?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Whatever you find out there, be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid. And tell your granny hi for me. I'll talk to you soon. Give the phone back to Dekker, will you?”

I handed the phone over. He'd just wanted to say hello, which confused me and made me glad at the same time.

“Yeah, it's not exactly what she's used to,” Dekker said. “I'll call when I find out anything new. 'Bye.” He hung up. “We have to find a place to buy chocolate-­covered cherries for Mrs. Krantz and some groceries so we don't have to eat out. I mean, eat in restaurants.”

His face got red, but I didn't know why.

In the nightstand was a smudgy phone book he paged through until he found what he was looking for and wrote on a little pad of paper. He called the number and asked for directions from Motel 9, which he also wrote down.

Once we were back in the Buick, I read off the directions while Dekker drove the Denver streets. When he parked in front of the Walmart, I said, “I've never seen one in real life. Just on TV.”

I followed him through the automatic doors. This place was ten times the size of the Walgreens in Salina, and it made me feel dizzy and untethered. The aisles were packed with slow-­moving ­people who all seemed to be talking at once, and loudly. Not long after we got inside, we got separated by the throng and I started hyperventilating. I stopped walking and backed into the shopping carts, making a racket above the general noise. Dekker was taller than most ­people, so I could see the back of his head. But he turned and saw I wasn't there and pushed his way back through the crowd. He grabbed a shopping cart and put my hands on the push bar then got behind me, not touching me but staying close enough to make me feel safe.

We pulled out into the human traffic. I turned and looked up at him. “Thank you.”

We navigated through the aisles to the stuff we needed. We each had to buy some clothes—­luckily, Walmart's stuff was pretty cheap. I got a pack of underwear, pajamas, two pairs of jeans, and three T-­shirts for less than fifty dollars.

Dekker insisted on using his own money to buy his clothes. I insisted on buying the food.

I was so glad to get out of there.

Back at the motel, Dekker put the food away then flopped on the bed with the TV remote.

“I'm going to get ready for bed,” I said. I took my Walmart bag into the bathroom, then brushed my teeth, washed my face, and put on my pajamas, feeling shy about Dekker seeing me like this. But I couldn't sleep in the tub.

“My turn,” Dekker said, and took his stuff into the bathroom.

I found an old blanket on a plywood shelf above the little fridge. I spread it out on the couch and took one of the lifeless pillows from the bed. Then I crawled into my couch bed, lay on my side and faced the wall.

I heard the toilet flush, the bathroom door open and the light go off. “Petty, where are—­what are you doing?”

I turned over and looked at him. “What?”

“Why are you on the couch?”

“We can't sleep in the same bed.”

“Yes, we can,” Dekker said. “I'm not going to—­I'd never—­you don't have to worry about me.”

“I know you wouldn't do anything on purpose,” I said. “But as a guy, you have certain reflexes you can't control.” I was glad my back was to him, because my face flamed with embarrassment.

“What does that mean?”

“My dad told me boys can't help overpowering girls. It's something their bodies are programmed to do. It's not your fault. But I can't be in the same bed with you.”

“That is so sick,” Dekker said.

“I know, but you can't help it.”

“That's not what I mean. What your dad told you was a lie. It's not true. Anyone is capable of self-­control. Nobody is ‘programmed' to ‘overpower' anyone else.”

“Of course you're going to say that,” I said. “You can't help it.”

“I can help it! If you don't believe me, look it up on the Internet.”

I sat up and faced him.

“Your dad,” Dekker said, “Charlie Moshen, Michael Rhones, whatever the hell his name was—­was a total skeev. He made it his life's mission to fuck with your head. He lied to you about—­well, about everything, as far as I can tell. You need to understand that. I'll sleep on the couch.”

“No,” I said. “I'm already here, and you're too tall. Now go to bed.” I turned over again.

He sighed, exasperated, and got in bed.

Thursday

I
T WAS A
restless night. There were lots of sirens, howling dogs, ­people yelling in English and Spanish. Plus the smell of rot, ancient cigarette smoke, mildew, and B.O. was so ingrained in every fiber of the room, I couldn't escape it. I also couldn't stop hearing my grandmother's creepy low voice in my head saying,
Ma ma ma ma
.

My disappointment at not being able to ask Jeannie a ton of questions was heavier than I would have expected. I hoped today would be different. I had a whole list: What was my mom like as a kid? How did they get along? What was I like as a baby? What exactly happened between Michael Rhones, my mom, and my real dad?

I guess I'd expected to feel some sort of instant connection with her, but all I'd felt was fear and revulsion. This person meant nothing to me, and I wondered what life would have been like had Michael Rhones not taken me away. I wondered if I'd have spent time over at my grandma's house, baking cookies and coloring and sewing like I'd seen on TV.

I knew about Alzheimer's disease, but I'd never seen it in real life. It was scary and life-­shattering.

I woke up earlier than Dekker and tried to go back to sleep, but my back hurt and my legs were stiff from being bent all night. Plus my sinuses and throat were so dry they ached. I got up and went to the bathroom. When I came out, Dekker's eyes were open.