The Queen of Sleepy Eye (3 page)

I woke up to a twangy country song playing on a radio beneath the car.
Hmm?
I wiped the drool off my cheek and rose slowly to sit on the seat, afraid any sudden movement would send my stomach cartwheeling again. Through the windshield, tin signs touting Sinclair motor oil and genuine GMC parts hung near the ceiling. A small grocery store filled the side mirror. My heart thumped a warning. This wasn't right. Before my eyes registered where I was, the smell of oil and rubber placed me on a car hoist in the service bay of a gas station. The ding of an air hose confirmed my predicament.

“Mom?” I said cautiously, not knowing if movement would tip the car off its perch.

A man with a voice like an idling lawn mower said, “That was real smart of you to downshift into low. Not many women know it's possible to lose a gear and still be able to drive. I'm impressed.”

“Is this going to be expensive to fix, Tommy?” she asked, her voice a syrupy mix of helplessness and pleading. Without seeing
her, I knew she had pushed her bottom lip out just so and widened her eyes to catch the glint of afternoon light.

Before Tommy could propose marriage, I called out. “Mom, I'm awake.”

“Just a minute,
querida,
sweetheart, Tommy and I have to talk business.”

“I can let her down, ma'am,” he said, and a motor hummed as the hoist lowered the Pontiac to the ground. Tommy matched his voice, broad-chested and frayed. He pocketed the screwdriver he used to clean his fingernails and buried his hands in his armpits.

“Parts are gonna be hard to come by,” he said. “I'll start calling around, probably have to get a new tranny from the Front Range. You know, Denver? I'm alone here today, and tomorrow we're closed. I'll have more time to do the calling when Artie gets back from visiting his mother in Glenwood on Wednesday.”

I pushed the car door open. “That's four days from now.”

“Oh, I wouldn't expect parts to get here before the end of the month.”

“The end of the month? Where are we?”

“This here's Cordial, Colorado,” Tommy said.

I didn't remember a Cordial, Colorado, on the map. “How did we get here?”

Mom hooked me around the waist and squeezed. “Isn't this a lovely town with a lovely name?”

I turned to Tommy. “How much is a new transmission going to cost us, mister?”

“Well now, that's hard to say. There's the time and the phone calls to find the parts. This car ain't exactly fresh off the assembly line. Then, depending on where I find a good transmission, the shipping is another expense.”

“Could you make a guess?”

Mom and I groaned at his estimate.

“Don't worry now,” Tommy said, obviously distressed by female emotion. “That's the very highest the bill could be. I've never had a transmission cost that much. I wanted to prepare you if worse came to worse, and the final cost was up there somewhere.”

Mom ran her hand over the fender. “This car has special sentimental value only I can truly appreciate.” Oh boy, here came the queen story. I looked around the garage for the restroom sign. Mom said, “I rode on the hood of this car as the queen of Sleepy Eye. I was only sixteen.”

“Do you have a restroom?” I asked.

Without looking at me, Tommy pointed to a key with a hubcap fob hanging on the garage wall. He motioned with his head and said, “Around the side. Can't miss it.”

“One of the judges told me later that he thought I was eighteen,” Mom went on.

“You don't look much over that now.”

“You're so sweet.”

I stepped out of the garage and stopped, overwhelmed by the imposing presence of a mountain. Wounds on its side, like a lion's swipe, gouged through its shrubby hide to expose rocky flesh. I longed for the comfort of a reclining prairie. I looked right. More mountains scraped the horizon. To the left, plateaus like broad stairs led to the base of a rocky peak with crevices still packed with snow. I dared not look behind me. My heart pounded against my ribs.

Trucks rattled by. A mother pushed a stroller toward the double doors of the grocery store, and a train's whistle blew long and insistent. I sank to the curb to behold the mountain and the bluebird sky. I felt small. Weak. Humbled. Defeated. I'd allowed Mom to
weasel her way into my college life. California was huge, I had reasoned. We could both live there without seeing one another for months, maybe years. Now I was stuck in some hapless hamlet with my tormentor. As I wallowed in the bilge of self-pity, questioning my cognitive abilities seemed appropriate. What if my teachers hadn't taught me what the kids in California already knew? Perhaps my new peers had pushed themselves to take trigonometry and physics while I'd settled for geometry and chemistry. Maybe I was too stupid for college. Maybe I would have to beg for my job back at Tom's Bait and Bite Shoppe.

I'd rather die.

When I returned from the restroom, Tommy was loading the last of the boxes from our car into his truck. Mom supervised with one hand on her narrow waist and her chin tucked to watch Tommy over her sunglasses. She was smiling. When she saw me, she clapped her hands together. “Isn't this great? Tommy closed down the station to drive us to the motel.”

“Shouldn't he be looking for a transmission?”

“María … Amelia … Casimiro … Monteiro.
You ungrateful—”

“You promised we'd go straight to California.”

“What? Do you think I broke the transmission on purpose?” She cradled my face in her hands. I hardened my glare. She pulled me into an embrace. “
Fofa,
honey, this is a minor detour. We'll be back on the road in no time. You worry too much. I promise you won't be late for the first day of classes.”

No more Dramamine for me. I needed to stay alert. And no more hiding on the floor of the car. Thousands of people traveled mountain roads daily. The vast majority of them arrived at their destinations without plummeting over the side.

“Tommy,” Mom said, “I hope the Pontiac can stay inside. The sun will damage the finish. This is the original paint, you know.”

“Of course, Francie. That's no problem. I have the other service bay.”

Mom's body softened beside me. “Thank you, Tommy.”

I climbed into Tommy's truck, pressed against the door beside Mom, holding the velvet box with the tiara inside. Driving down the full length of Cordial's business district, two whole blocks, I recited over and over to myself:
He makes my feet like hinds' feet. He makes
my feet like hinds' feet.

* * *

WHILE MOM REGISTERED for our stay at the Lazy J Motel, I studied the map of Colorado on the wall. With my finger I traced the route we had taken from the Nebraska-Colorado border to Denver and up through mountain towns like Idaho Springs, Dillon, and Eagle, about where I fell into a drugged stupor and slept. From there, Mom should have driven on to Glenwood Springs, Rifle, and then Orchard City, just a few miles from Utah. No town named Cordial appeared along the route. I asked the motel clerk, Bonnie, a round-faced woman with honeyed eyes. “I was sleeping when we got to Cordial. How far are we from Orchard City?”

“Well, little missy, if you can avoid driving behind a hay wagon or some flatlander camper, the drive won't take you more than a couple hours.”

“Two hours?”

Mom kept her head down, giving all of her attention to the registration card.

“So anyone coming to Cordial would have to get off the highway and travel … ?”

“South on Highway 50 until they got to Clearwater,” Bonnie said. “Then they'd have to turn east on—”

“East? That's interesting,” I said. “East is the exact opposite direction of California.”

Either Bonnie didn't notice the sarcasm in my voice, or she thought I'd failed geography in a big way. “That's right, missy, you and your mom came east on Highway 92 to Highway 133, and then you followed the signs and—
ta-dah!
—you landed yourselves in Cordial.”

I softened my tone in light of Bonnie's sincerity. “I don't suppose too many people just happen upon Cordial.”

Mom crossed the
t
and dotted the
i
of her last name with sharp jabs. “That's enough, Amy.” I slumped in the only chair of the tiny reception area. Mom asked Bonnie what being single was like in Cordial.

“Well, I'll tell ya. Cordial is known for its fruit. Before very long, they'll be picking cherries as big as golf balls from the orchards. They grow in huge clusters. All you have to do is reach up and grab what you want. Since the Raven Mesa Coal Mine reopened, men in town have been just as plentiful. They're lonely and their pockets are bulging with dough. You can take your pick.”

More than anything, I wanted to sit with Mom to watch Bobby and Cissy dance the mambo on
The Lawrence Welk Show.
I was that desperate to stop Bonnie's unwitting threat to my journey westward. “Shouldn't we get to our room, Mom?”

If anyone heard me, they didn't let on.

Bonnie leaned in. “Why, we've had more weddings than funerals this spring, and that's saying something.” Bonnie and Mom agreed to try their luck at the Lost Mine Saloon that night. There was no sense reminding Mom of her pinkie pledge. She wore the very look I'd seen on Robbie Coleman's face outside Baumgartner's Bakery.

Mom stepped into the motel room in front of me, and I drew a breath. She threw up her hands. “Don't start with me, Amy. I'm tired. I've driven all day. You have no idea how scary it was driving those last thirty miles in low gear. Big trucks passing us on double-yellow lines. Rough-looking guys in pickups honking their horns and shaking their fists at me. I'm going out for one drink with a nice lady. That's all.”

“Just tell me why you left the highway.”

“No reason,” she said, turning on the bathroom light. She pulled back the plastic curtain to inspect the bathtub and broke the label proclaiming the toilet sanitized. I followed her to the kitchenette. “Cordial sounded like a lovely place to—”

“We're in the middle of nowhere.”

“What's done is done,” she said, opening and closing all of the drawers and dragging her finger across the dresser and smiling. “Let's make the best of it, shall we? Bonnie gets off in an hour. The two of us are going out.”

“How much is this room costing us?”

“You're such a worry wart,
querida.
Relax. Bonnie gave us the weekday rate. Make a nest for yourself on the bed and read one of your old books. Watch some television. Isn't
The Rockford Files
on tonight?” Mom opened her suitcase. Her robe, the one I'd made in advanced sewing, lay in a flattened wad on the top of her clothes. She shook out the wrinkles and disappeared into the bathroom. The lock clicked into place.

Surrounded by a forest of pine paneling, my pulse quickened. How long had my mother planned on coming to Cordial? Staring at the varnished bathroom door, I yelled, “We are not staying here one minute longer than absolutely necessary! And don't forget your promise. No men! I mean it, Mom. I'm going to California with or without
you. I'll hitchhike if I have to.” While studying a knot in the door's grain, a brilliant plan came to me. “Mom, are you listening?”

“Amy, I'm getting in the shower now,” she said through the door.

“Wait! Open the door. I have a plan.”

The door opened. Only the widow's peak of her black hair showed under her terry cloth turban. She pushed past me. “I forgot my razor.”

I stood between her and the bathroom door.

“Okay, Amy, what's your plan?”

“We should sell the car and—”

My mother had only struck me twice that I could remember. Once for bringing a swear word home from school and once for mimicking the Pope during an Easter blessing on television. Now she slapped me for defaming a car with a failed transmission. “You have no idea what you're talking about,” she said.

And I didn't. My mother's devotion to the Pontiac defied reason. More than once I'd envied the attention she lavished on the leather seats. She polished them religiously. Her passion for the car was but one more snag in Mom's fabric that kept her enigmatic even to me. Yes, she loved flamboyant clothing and window-shopping for things she couldn't afford, but if someone complimented what she wore—a scarf, a pair of sunglasses, one of hundreds of hoop earrings she owned—she would say, “Here, take it. It's yours.” I once watched her wiggle out of a skirt in a restaurant bathroom. A woman had dropped soup in her lap and was only too happy to accept Mom's skirt in exchange for her sodden skirt.

What's with that stupid car, anyway?

Truthfully, I didn't ask that question out loud for many years, long after the sting of her slap had faded in my memory. That day,
I covered my face with my hands and turned my back on her. Nothing would hurt her more. To increase the drama, I threw myself across the bed, which smelled of cigarettes and hair spray.

Blecch!

“Ah,
gatihno,
I'm so sorry,” she cooed, lying beside me. “Oh, baby, I can be so stupid. I'm so, so sorry. Are you okay?” I didn't want my face in the bedspread one more second. I sat up. Mom embraced me with Herculean strength. We cried on each other's shoulders. I'd acted like a brat. I could be so ugly, so condescending. She was doing her best, I supposed, and I hadn't appreciated her efforts.

She only acted crazy when she was scared. I should have remembered. Moving to California meant she would live alone for the first time in her life. She was traveling thousands of miles with no definite plans but many, many questions. Where would she live? Where would she work? Could she earn enough to pay her rent and buy all the lovely treasures California had to offer? Her real worry was that I would sift through her fingers like sand and blow away with the first off-shore breeze.