The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac (16 page)

It was so ignorant and sweet that Gladys laughed.

Amelia picked at a cuticle. It bled.

“You've had us in knots, Amelia,” Gladys chuckled, handing the girl a Kleenex for her finger. “Absolute knots. But”—and she sang this last part—“all's well that ends well.”

Amelia did not laugh. She regarded Gladys for one serious moment and then rose unsteadily to her feet. Gladys followed closely on her heels, humming.

Gladys helped her daughter undress and shooed her into the bathroom.

“I'll call your father. Just get clean now, dear. Everything feels better after a shower.” And Gladys smiled to herself and traipsed to the den to make her phone calls.

She called the police department first. None of the detectives working the case were available, so she left a happy message with the receptionist. “My daughter's come home! All's well that ends well! Case closed, I suppose.”

The receptionist asked her, please, to hold for the detective.

“No, thank you, it's all over now.”

The woman replied with some incredulity that the detective would likely wish to speak with her.

“It's just fine. Don't you worry. She's right as rain. A silly teenager, you know? Rebelling! These things happen.”

Then, hanging up before the woman could respond, Gladys dialed Eli's house. Vanessa answered. Vanessa always answered. Gladys could never bring herself to speak to Vanessa, so thick was her hatred.

“Roebuck residence,” Vanessa said again. “Hello? Hello? Anyone there?” Vanessa's tone changed, lowering just enough to indicate her discomfort. “Gladys. Hello, Gladys. Hold on a moment. Eli's right here.”

She passed the phone along.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hello, dear,” Gladys said.

“Gladys.”

“I've been meaning to call you, what with all of the week's excitement.”

“Well, yes,” Eli said. “Thank you. How are you holding up? I meant to call you this evening myself. I'm thinking of hiring my own private eye to do some real investigating.”

“It's so kind of you to suggest, dear,” Gladys said. “I'm doing very well. It's been emotionally exhausting, but I've chosen to look on the bright side of things.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I know how hard this must be for you. I just—we just, Vanessa and I, that is—I'm not sure what to make of it. All I can do is hope for her safe return, but now I'm worried—”

“But, oh!” Gladys interrupted. Bathing in the warmth of his kindness, Gladys had forgotten the reason for her call. It came rushing back to her, and she wanted to share the good news with him, to rejoice with him, together, as a mother and a father should. “But she's here, my darling! Things are splendid. She's here! A little rattled, I'd say, and stinking to high heaven, but right as rain. All's well, as they say!”

There was a sharp intake of breath and a shuffling sound. No doubt Eli had leapt to his feet, beginning to pace back and forth as widely as the phone cord would allow.

“Amelia's there? She's safe? Thank God! Thank God! She's all right? What happened? Have you phoned the doctor?”

Gladys heard Eli shushing Vanessa, who had begun to ask excited questions herself.

“Yes, Nessa,” he was saying. “Yes, she's all right. She's with Gladys.” He returned the phone more squarely to his mouth and repeated, “Has she seen a doctor?”

Gladys had not done such a disgusting thing as wheel her to a doctor, but she did not deny it, either.

“She's in the shower now. As I said, she's right as rain.” Then, waiting a moment, “She'd like it if you came and saw her.”

“She should see a doctor if she hasn't already,” Eli pressed. “The police mentioned rape. That boy is no boy, Gladys. He's a man. Nearly thirty. He preys on kids. I know they told you all of this. There may have been abuse.”

Had they told her about this? Gladys didn't think so, not exactly. She thought of the submerged car. Had Amelia been in it when it sank? She could hardly remember what her daughter had narrated to her. And the cops had not liked Amelia's young man. No, they'd called him a bad word. She remembered that horrible fat cop with the disgusting mouth. But they hadn't told her his age. They'd said
older,
yes. They'd said—

“I'll meet you at the hospital,” Eli finished.

“What she needs,” Gladys argued, “is a good, hearty meal. A good home-cooked soup. And rest, Eli. She needs a long nap and a—”

“Can you please stop, Gladys?” Eli fumed. “Can you please live in the real world for just this once? She's been missing, for crissakes. That criminal stole my car. He kidnapped her. God knows what they've been doing!”

“The
real world,
Eli?” The scars on her head burned. She felt she wore a wig of fire, and she spat the fire through the phone at Eli. “Is this the world with your monsters—ha, your
hominids
or
humanoids
or whatever you call them—is this the
real
world you mean? Isn't the real world the one you abandoned when you abandoned me, when you abandoned Amelia? Clearly this is your doing, your—”

“Don't make this about me, Gladys. This is about Amelia's health and well-being. She needs to see a doctor. Immediately and no later.”

“I agree. She needs to see a doctor. Dr. Roebuck, her father. If only he would be so kind as to leave his harlot wife and illegitimate baby for a few hours. We understand, however, if you are not so disposed, being as we are older and more tiresome than the false family you now choose to love.”

He slammed the phone down with such force that Gladys winced from the pain in her ear.

Oh,
she thought.
Oh, oh. That isn't how I wanted that to go. It isn't. I wanted him to come over and be with us. I wanted us to be a family again, if only for a few hours.

But he had been so very cruel, so very accusatory, as if to say that she didn't know Amelia well, that she didn't much care about her daughter's—how did he put it—
health and well-being
. Well, of course she cared! What sort of cruel father would accuse her of such a thing? Why did he think she had fought so hard against the divorce? She had known his leaving would damage Amelia permanently. He had argued the opposite: Their marriage was setting a bad example for her. But Amelia had been a happy, wholesome child before the divorce (hadn't she?). Now she was changed.

And now here came Amelia, clean if still haggard, her auburn hair darkly wet, wearing a torn black T-shirt and shorts that were quite a bit too short on her long legs—more like underwear than shorts, in fact—and her eyes were tearstained and her voice scratchy when she muttered hello, but she looked more like herself, calmer and even pretty now. She perched right beside her mother on the couch, as though afraid to be alone. Gladys wrapped an arm around her.

“I made fried chicken last night,” she said. “Do you want it warm or cold?” She knew her daughter would want it cold, but she asked just to confirm that Amelia was, after all, quite right in the head.

“Cold,” Amelia confirmed, and Gladys, satisfied, patted her daughter's knee and went to prepare the food.

Amelia followed. She hung against the doorframe like a long, crooked crack. Gladys was a bit shocked at how tired the girl looked. So wrung out. A little food, she knew, would do wonders.

“You called Dad?”

“What?” Gladys sang back innocently, rattling things around in the refrigerator.

“Dad. I thought I heard you talking when I was in the shower.”

“Oh, yes, dear. He was beside himself. We had a wonderful conversation. He's filled with excitement.”

“Excitement,” Amelia said. “Yes, how very exciting.”

Well,
Gladys thought.
She must be feeling well enough if she's speaking to me in
that
tone.

“I thought he might be freaked out,” Amelia added, more hesitantly.

“Your father? Oh, he's the picture of calm, always. You know that.”

Gladys set a plate down on the kitchen table and patted a chair.

“Here, dearest. Put some yum yums in your tum tums.” She had said that when Amelia was a young girl. It always made her smile. Even now Amelia curled her lip.

The teenager came to the table and plucked the chicken off the plate, chewing it indelicately. She started for the living room without even a napkin.

“I'd rather you eat here, dearest,” Gladys told her. “I'd rather you not get grease on the nice couches.”

Amelia gave her mother an annoyed look but turned obediently and collapsed into a kitchen chair. The whole table shook from the impact. Gladys feared the plates would break. She was not worried about the plates, per se, but certainly about the mess it would make, the danger it would wreak on her nerves.

“Gently, dear! My goodness, it constantly amazes me how such a scarecrow of a girl can pound around the house like a rampaging elephant. There's no excuse for it anymore.”

Amelia ignored her. She chugged her milk and set it down and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She sucked the meat off the chicken so that there was nothing left but slender gray bones. After she had belched and asked for more, which normally Gladys would not have allowed, Gladys willingly served her again. No doubt the girl had been starved enough. If anything, she needed more fat on her. She was as slender and gray as those chicken bones, Gladys saw.
Yes,
she resolved,
for a while—a short while only—we'll work to fatten her up.

When Amelia's feasting slowed, Gladys sank into a chair and patted Amelia's wrist.

“So tell me, dearest,” she said gamely, as though she were not the girl's mother but a close friend. “What happened, exactly?”

Amelia slumped back in her chair. “Like I said. I was with my boyfriend. We drove around. It was pretty cool for a bit. But then it got”—her eyes flitted around the room for a moment, searching for a word—“weird.”

Gladys made a pitying sound in her throat. Weird was not good. Weird was … bad? Uncomfortable? No, it was simply what it was: weird.

“I have to ask you something,” Gladys said, so softly that Amelia leaned forward, hugging her sharp elbows to her body. “I have to ask you something about the word
rape.
”

“What?” Amelia said.

Gladys felt a surge of anger that she had to repeat such a terrible thing.

“Rape,”
she said, louder this time. “Has there been any raping? The police mentioned—”

“God!” Amelia said, equally horrified. “Stop!”

Gladys sat back in relief, ready to let the whole thing go, but the girl buckled forward in her chair and gagged violently. Gladys rose in alarm, believing Amelia was about to vomit.

“Oh, my dear, oh,” she said. “Oh, oh. Mommy didn't mean to upset you. I'm sorry, dearest. They told me to ask, they made me—”

But when Amelia managed to work herself upright again, Gladys saw that the girl was heaving not from nausea but rather from a crippling bout of laughter, a laughter so encompassing that Amelia could hardly catch a breath. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and her mouth worked silently, filled with spit and teeth. She tried to speak but kept falling apart into fresh bursts of hilarity.

“I don't see what's so funny, Amelia,” Gladys said crossly, but now she, too, felt like laughing. It occurred to her that she had not seen Amelia laugh for several months. Or was it years? She laughed when she was with friends sometimes, but even then it sounded forced, like the short honking retort of a goose. It was not pure like this, overwhelming and cleansing.

Amelia wiped at her eyes. She hooted one last time and let out a deep, almost happy sigh. “Oh, Mom, it's not funny at all. That's what's so funny about it.”

“But—” Gladys began to press awkwardly.

“No. No rape. No raping. I promise.”

Gladys brought a heavily jeweled hand to her heart. “What a relief. You should have told me how old your young gentleman was. Thirty, they said! I thought he was young, no more than eighteen. Now, I don't mind your lying to me about it, dearest. Girls will lie. I did things like that, too, when I was your age. I dated older men. It was normal when I was a girl. Intelligent girls crave maturity. I understand completely. What amazes me is how nobly he comported himself. A fine young gentleman, like I told the police, his dad a pilot and all. The sort of young man who impresses one the instant—”

“Thirty,” Amelia said.

It was a repetition, a statement, but Gladys answered it as a question. “Well, yes, dearest. Isn't that right? Your young gentleman?”

“Please don't call him that.”

“Oh!”

Gladys leapt to her feet. Through the deep bay window, she watched a car pull into their driveway. A familiar car. Not the fancy Jaguar that had been dumped into Lake Roosevelt, but Vanessa's car, which was an old sedan, an eyesore.
The car of a poetess,
Gladys thought with disdain,
the car of a low-class woman.
Happily, she saw only one head floating in the car's interior: Eli's head. Vanessa, Gladys rejoiced, had stayed home.

What bliss Gladys felt then! What hope! He had come home to them, after all. What a wonderful evening this was turning out to be. The return of her daughter. The return of her husband.

“Your father's here, dearest. Straighten up. Straighten up your shoulders. And here…” She leaned forward and pinched the flesh over the girl's cheekbones. Amelia winced and pulled away roughly. “That looks better. Adds a little color to your face.”

She couldn't have Amelia looking like a victim. Not now.

Eli had never believed she was a good mother. He had told her, not infrequently, that she was selfish and material and cloying and demanding. But once, when Amelia was younger, after she'd had a bad fall and had come reeling from the carport to present her mother with the vicious wound on her elbow, which Gladys had quickly washed in the kitchen sink and bandaged and cooed over soothingly, Eli had commented that she was excellent in a crisis. Years and years had gone by since then, but Gladys believed that once something was said it could not be unsaid and that somewhere in Eli's heart he felt that way for her still. That she was excellent in a crisis. That she, above all, could weather the bad times.