The Perk (3 page)

"Give 'em to me … and that towel. I'll toss them
out on the way back to Austin, into that river we drove over."

"Why?"

" 'Cause they can get your fingerprints off that smooth
leather and they might be able to trace fibers back to that towel and this
limo."

"Really?"

Rudy was again shaking his head. "Man, don't you ever
watch TV?"

Rudy stepped outside and checked the road for
cars; then he leaned back in and grabbed Heidi's legs, and together they lifted
her out of the limo. The rain hit her face, and her mascara started running
down her cheeks like she was crying black tears. They bent down and gently
placed her on the wet ground. They stood straight and stared at each other as
if waiting for the other to say a prayer over her like they always do in those
western movies; but neither said anything, so Rudy shrugged and gave Heidi a
little nudge with his boot. She rolled down into a shallow ditch under a road
sign that read: FREDERICKSBURG, TEXAS, POP. 8,911.

She died on her thirty-seventh
birthday.

But not without a fight. Mastectomy.
Chemotherapy. Radiation. More chemotherapy. But the cancer would not be
denied. It took her breasts, her lymph nodes, her hair, and her life. An
unrelenting, unthinking, uncaring, unfeeling disease—the doctors called it
"invasive ductal carcinoma"—had killed his wife and their mother.
Beck wiped his eyes.

"Daddy, you okay?"

He glanced back at Meggie in the rearview
mirror. Only five, she knew her mother had gone to be with Jesus, but she
thought it would be like a vacation, and when it was over her mother would come
home. She didn't know it would be forever.

"Yes, baby."

"I gotta pee."

"Bad?"

"Way."

Beck steered the big SUV off the interstate at
the next exit and pulled into a gas station. It wasn't one of the modern ones at
a brightly lit convenience store with pay-at-the-pumps outside and inside young
employees in colorful striped shirts serving gourmet coffee with sparkling restrooms
that smelled of Pine-Sol; it was an ancient stand-alone station with manual
pumps and an old man with greasy hands slouched behind a dirty desk and holding
out a key chained to a hubcap that allowed access to a single restroom around
the side of the concrete bunker-like structure, a restroom that likely hadn't
been cleaned in years, if ever.

Welcome to Texas.

The hubcap banged against the steel door as Beck
tried to insert the key into the rusty lock. He finally succeeded, worked the
lock until it released, and gave the door a firm kick to pry it open. He felt
around for a switch and turned on the light, one dim exposed bulb hanging from
acoustical tiles long discolored from a leaky roof. Beck stepped inside and
checked the dingy space for rats, roaches, spiders, scorpions, snakes, and
other creatures of the dark; he found none, stepped out, and looked down at
Meggie. Her knees were tight, her legs were bent, and she was bouncing
slightly; a pained expression had captured her face.

"I gotta go."

"It's okay. Go ahead."

"
By myself?
"

"You need help?"

"
Duh
. Mommy showed me how to pee in a filthy restroom, but I can't do it by myself."

"Oh."

Beck followed her inside and shut the door, but
not before checking on her ten-year-old brother locked in the black Navigator
twenty feet away. Luke's ears were still covered with headphones and his eyes
still glued to the Gameboy. Beck turned back to Meggie; she was pinching her
nose.

"It stinks."

Stale urine, mold, and the July heat had
combined to create an overwhelming odor; he pulled the door halfway open and
let in fresh air and the sound of eighteen-wheelers whining past on the interstate.
Meggie held her arms out.

"Help me up."

"Onto the seat?"

"Unh-huh."

"You don't sit?"

"No way. I squat. Mommy showed me."

Beck lifted her up so she could stand on the
seat. She was heavier than she looked.

"Don't let go," she said.

Embarrassed, Beck averted his eyes as she pushed
her shorts and underwear down to her ankles, then squatted, holding onto his
arms for stability. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly,
as if she were doing a relaxation exercise.

She peed.

He gazed at her innocent face and saw Annie. It
was an amazing thing, how a man and a woman could create two children, each a
clone of one parent. Luke was Beck's clone, tall for his age and rangy, brown
curly hair and dark penetrating eyes, athletic and intense; Meggie was Annie's,
the same creamy complexion, the same black hair, the same blue eyes, an unusual
combination that had always struck him. And she possessed the same gentle
spirit.

"TP, please," she said.

Beck held her with his right hand and with his
left hand he pulled a length of yellowed toilet paper from the roll in the
holder attached to the wall. Meggie wadded it up and reached down. Then she
pulled her underwear and shorts back up in one motion as she stood. She
grinned as he lifted her down.

"That's how Mommy and I do it."

Meggie spoke of her mother in the present tense,
as if she were still alive.

"Does she … did she squat, too?"

"Unh-huh, but she doesn't stand on the
seat."

Beck tried to picture his wife squatting over a
public toilet, but that wasn't the Annie he knew.

"She never told me."

"It's our secret," Meggie said.

Beck pulled the door fully open and held it
there for Meggie.

"Did you and Mom have other secrets?"

Meggie walked under his arm and out the door and
said, "Lots."

They had married twelve years before, when he was thirty and
five years out of Notre Dame Law School and Annie Parker was twenty-five and a
new lawyer. They had met at a law school mixer after a football game. As a
former Notre Dame quarterback and then a lawyer at a big Chicago firm that
hired a dozen Notre Dame law grads each year, Beck Hardin had returned for
every home game and received invitations to every law school function. He had
walked into the crowded room, and his eyes were instantly drawn to her across a
hundred other human beings and lawyers.

He never looked at another woman.

Annie hired on with another Chicago firm, and
they became a two-lawyer family. He tried cases; she wrote wills and trusts.
Then Luke came along, and Annie opted out of the law for full-time motherhood.
Her choice. Five years later, Meggie was born. They moved to a sprawling home
with a big yard in a safe suburb with good schools. Beck took the train into
the city each morning and back out each evening. He always worked late, and he
often worked weekends. He billed three thousand hours a year, every year. He
made partner, and he made great money.

Annie made their lives great. She was a soccer
mom, a tee ball mom, and a room mom. She drove the kids to school, to baseball
practice, and to piano lessons. She gave birthday parties, helped with
homework, and went on class outings. She shopped, she cooked, and she ran the
household. She was there when he left each morning and there when he returned
each night. They had great kids, a great home, a great marriage, and a great
life. The Hardins were the perfect family. Everyone said so.

A routine mammogram changed everything.

Now Annie was gone, born and buried in Chicago, and her family was moving to Texas. In the six months since Annie had died, Beck
had tried to be a father, mother, and lawyer; he had failed at all three. He couldn't
get the kids to school each morning and fed and to bed each night and still
bill his three thousand hours. He had always prided himself on being in
complete control of his world, but he had soon realized it was only an illusion
enabled by Annie. Without her, he was lost and helpless.

The neighbors had tried to help; they brought
dinner over several times a week, picked up the kids when he couldn't, and
recommended a full-time nanny. But he didn't want his children raised by
neighbors or nannies. He was determined to raise them himself because that's what
Annie would have wanted. So he arrived late for morning conferences and court
hearings, and he left afternoon conferences and hearings early. Over seventeen
years of practicing law, Beck Hardin had accumulated a certain amount of goodwill
among his partners and the judges, so they tried to be understanding. But
there was a limit to understanding, and he was soon pushing the outer limits.

He found himself in a no man's land: neither
father nor lawyer.

Nor mother. Home life had gotten even worse.
Meggie took to carrying a black-haired doll with her everywhere and conversing
with it as if it were her mother; but at least she was happy in her denial.
When she started wetting the bed, he took her to a therapist; when the
therapist told him to take the doll away, he found another therapist.

But the therapists couldn't help Meggie, and
they couldn't help Luke. He was neither happy nor in denial. He understood
his mother was never coming back, and it made him sad and then it made him
mad. And it changed him. The happy-go-lucky kid who loved school and sports
was replaced by a stranger given to dark moods. His teacher said he'd just sit
and stare and sometimes he would cry. And sometimes he would hit things and
other kids. He got into fights, and his grades plummeted. He withdrew deeper
and deeper into himself; he quit sports, refused to play with friends, and
retreated to his room. Each night Beck would stand outside Luke's door and
hear him crying. Beck saw his life replaying itself through Luke; he couldn't
let that happen to his son. Beck knew he had to do something soon or he would
lose his children, too. But what? He prayed for Annie to show him the way.

He woke one morning with the answer clear in his
mind: Texas.

Beck Hardin would go home and take his children
with him. As soon as school let out, he quit the firm, sold the house and his
Lexus and most of their possessions, packed the Navigator, and headed south to
a place he hadn't seen in twenty-four years. He had left at eighteen, a
football scholarship in hand and a chip on his shoulder, vowing never to return
to Texas, a vow he had faithfully kept. Until now.

To save his children, he would go home.

"Are we there yet?"

He glanced back at Meggie, propped up high in
her booster seat like a queen on her throne.

"Soon, baby."

She put the doll to her ear, nodded, and said,
"Mommy says we've been in Texas a long time."

"Tell her … It's a big state,
honey."

They had crossed into Texas early that morning driving
south on Interstate 35, which extends from the Red River to the Rio Grande. Twenty-four years before, Beck had been angry and wanted out of Texas; when he had crossed that state line heading in the opposite direction, he had felt
like a lifer getting out of prison. Now, his life had brought him full circle.

Beck Hardin was back in Texas.

So he sped up. The posted speed limit in Texas was seventy, but Texans had always regarded the posted limit as the minimum speed.
That hadn't changed. They had just been passed by a young woman driving eighty
miles an hour and steering with her knees while texting on a cell phone. So he
had had the cruise control set on seventy-five for five hours now—not counting
two potty stops—and they had just entered the city limits of Austin, the state capital
in the geographic center of Texas.

It's a very big state.

"We've got just over an hour to go. You
guys want to eat lunch here or wait until we get there?"

Meggie looked to Luke for a decision, as she
often did, but Luke did not look up from the Gameboy. So Meggie whispered
something to the doll, nodded, and said, "Mommy says wait."

Beck stayed on the interstate that bisected Austin, barely recognizable after twenty-four years, like a high school buddy who had packed
on the weight: the sleepy college town had become a bloated city. When he had
last driven through Austin, the pink granite dome of the capitol had loomed large
over the skyline; now he only caught quick glimpses of it between towering skyscrapers.
Back then, environmentalists had waged war with developers for the soul and
skyline of Austin; now, seeing the granite-and-glass skyscrapers, it was
obvious who had won.

But a few familiar landmarks had survived. The
three-hundred-foot-tall white sandstone clock tower on the University of Texas campus still stood watch over the city; no doubt the tower lights still
shone burnt orange on game nights when the Longhorns won. And no doubt the
observation deck still remained closed, as it had since 1966 when an ex-Marine
with a brain tumor and a marksman's skill stood up there with a high-powered
rifle and killed sixteen people on the campus and streets below.

The UT football stadium still stood adjacent to
the interstate but had been enlarged to accommodate corporate skyboxes; the
stadium had been renamed after Darrell Royal, the legendary Longhorn coach, and
the playing field after Joe Jamail, the billionaire plaintiffs' lawyer from Houston, surely the quid pro quo for a sizable donation to the football program.

Football had been Beck's ticket out of Texas, and he had punched it. But he couldn't drive past the UT stadium without a twinge
of regret: he had been destined from birth to play in that stadium. His last
visit to Austin had been a recruiting trip to UT as the top high school quarterback
in the state, a country boy courted by rich and powerful businessmen and politicians
who had come to him like the wise men to Baby Jesus; but Beck Hardin had held more
than the mere promise of eternal salvation. He held the promise of another
national championship for their alma mater. But he had chosen Notre Dame
instead, no lesser a betrayal than if Davy Crockett had fought for the Mexicans
at the Alamo.