Heat and Light (27 page)

You get seasick,
she protested when Amy handed back the Dramamine.

I'm going to the desert,
Amy said.

“Rubin, what am I going to do with you?”

“One extra bag makes that much difference?” The force of his exasperation dismayed her. It seemed beneath them to haggle over luggage.

“Do I really have to explain this? If everyone brought three, we'd have to hire an extra van.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose; she was giving him a headache. “Sorry, Charlie. You're going to
have to leave some things behind. We keep a storage locker at the airport.”

Amy stared at him uncomprehendingly.

“Sort through them, if you need to. Pack and repack. Just be quick about it.”

“Here?” Amy eyed the grimy floor. A wad of blue chewing gum stuck to the tile like a plasticated snail. “It's disgusting.”

“Honey, it's the cleanest surface you'll see in weeks.”

He stood watching as Amy knelt and emptied a duffel onto the floor: folded shorts and T-shirts, a box of Tampax, her shampoo, moisturizer, and hairspray.

“Good Lord, is that a hair dryer?”

Her face filled with blood.

An hour later they were driving west into blinding sunlight, a slow caravan. Each van carried ten students; a fourth was packed with their rucksacks. The final truck, the chuck wagon, was driven by the cook herself. Amy stared out the window, memorizing road signs:
WILKERSON PASS 9,502 FEET.
She hoarded this information like words of a new language. There was an interest in the altitude of things.

TRUCKERS: DON'T BE FOOLED! 4 MI OF STEEP DESCENT AND SHARP CURVES AHEAD.

TRUCKERS: YOU'RE NOT DOWN YET! 1 MI OF STEEP DESCENT AND SHARP CURVES TO GO.

They drove and drove. The road dipped and fell. “Holler if you need a pit stop,” said Trexler, “but only if you need it. We want to make camp before dark.”

The blinding sun was nearly overhead. “It's, like, one in the afternoon,” said Amy.

“Correct,” Trexler said.

LOST BRAKES? DO NOT EXIT. STAY ON HIGHWAY.

Dipping and falling, dipping and falling. Amy thought, regretfully, of the Dramamine. By the time they climbed out of the van
and lined up outside a gas station restroom, she'd lost all interest in Lorne Trexler. She longed for a dim apartment, muted street noise, her own familiar bed.

They made camp east of Durango, near the Ute reservation. Shouldering their packs, they climbed a steep ridge. Trexler came up behind her. “You okay, Rubin? You look a little green.”

“I have a headache.” It seemed an absurd way to describe the pulsating pain lodged beneath her eyeballs, her skull encircled by a tourniquet.

He handed her a plastic water bottle. “Keep drinking. You're coming from sea level, remember. Altitude sickness is no joke.”

She took the bottle and drained it in one go.

“Wow, nice technique. You must be formidable at those sorority chug-offs.”

She flinched.

“Sorry. I'm an asshole. You really do look a little green. Here.” He touched his thumb to her forehead and, to her astonishment, rubbed in a circular motion between her eyebrows. You couldn't call it sexy or romantic or even affectionate, and yet the touch nearly undid her.

She closed her eyes.

Later she would forget the beginning; the beginning wouldn't matter. She'd remember, instead, the Wingate Formation mesas, the anticline eroded in the middle. The abandoned gold mines—the Mayflower, the Old Hundred—with their ghostly names. Mapping horst and graben near Split Mountain—a hammer in her pack, a hand lens, a Brunton compass, everything she could possibly need.

The rainstorm in the Salt Lake Valley.

The Ute woman in Moab who lent her a pair of scissors.

The Green River, breathtakingly cold, where she jumped in shirtless. As though she'd seen a rare creature back from extinction, or become one herself.

The roadside motel where she studied her body in the shower: her blistered feet on fire, her arms burned brown by the sun. Filthy water circling the drain, the color of weak tea. She unwrapped a motel soap and washed until it disappeared.

The Laundromat run by a Ute woman, who sat clipping items from a newspaper. Amy chose the heavy-duty cycle and ran her jeans through twice.

The steakhouse on the highway, which catered to large groups. Vans and tour buses idled in the lot. She pulled up a chair and ate as though she were starving, Rocky Mountain oysters with Tabasco chasers, and Lorne Trexler touched what was left of her hair.

In Moab she stopped wishing, stopped waiting. She cut off her hair and ate ravenously. She might have done it weeks before if only she'd known.

The beginning didn't matter. The ending she'd remember forever, the roadside motel in Moab. As she might have done at any point, she simply knocked at his door.

T
he Penn State campus has mushroomed, doubled or tripled in size. “We could ask for directions,” Rena says as Mack drives, embarrassingly, in circles.

“It's been a long time. Nothing looks the same.”

“That's okay. He's getting the lay of the land. Right, sweetie?”

In the backseat Calvin mumbles, “Whatever, Mom.” The smart-aleck tone, the roll of the eyes: Mack, as a kid, had been smacked for less. She studies him in the rearview mirror.
Don't push your luck,
she tells him silently.
I'm watching you.

They find the admissions building and park in a visitor space, ten minutes late for the campus tour. Another family is already waiting, a cute redhead and her well-dressed parents. Their tour guide is a chubby talkative girl dressed head to toe in Penn State–licensed apparel: hat, scarf, jacket, sweatpants. Even her tiny gold earrings are lion-shaped. She glances uncertainly from Mack to Rena. “Mrs. Weems?”

“Well, no. But close enough,” says Rena. “I'm Calvin's mom.”

They set out across a parking lot, the tour guide up front, followed by the redhead and the two mothers. Calvin and the father linger several paces behind. Mack walks alone, halfway between the men and the women, where she can hear both conversations at once without having to talk to anybody.

Rena is studying a campus map. Her eyes are bright, her color
high. “Sweetie, that's the art building,” she calls over her shoulder. “Calvin is considering an art major. He's very talented.”

“Jesus Christ, Mom,” Calvin mutters under his breath.

The kid is begging to have his clock cleaned.

“Awesome! Is this your first visit to Happy Valley?” the tour guide asks no one in particular.

“First time for me,” says Rena. “Mack went to school here.”

Did she? All the new buildings confuse her, the anonymous boxes of glass and brick. Every single one looks vaguely familiar, even those still under construction. Her memory, clearly, is not to be trusted.

“Oh, no kidding,” says the tour guide. “What class?”

“I didn't graduate,” says Mack, her breath steaming in the cold.

Behind her, the redhead's father is talking to Calvin. “Farma's been good to me. Vacation place in Hilton Head. We put three kids through school, all thanks to Farma.”

Mack wonders: Who the hell is Farma?

They cross a grassy quadrangle, snow-flecked. Mack feels, finally, a gut punch of recognition: they are kitty-corner from B Quad. “That was my dorm,” she tells Rena, pointing. “Over there, behind the gym.”

“The new gym is on the other side of campus,” says the tour guide. “Your partner means the old gym.”
Partner.
She pronounces the word with a big smile, proud of her open-mindedness.

Mack blushes scarlet. When she and Rena refer to each other this way, they're talking about farm business. When other people use the word—Rena's sister in Akron, who blames Calvin's attitude on their
lifestyle—
it never means anything good.

They climb the hill to the library. “How's it going back there?” Rena calls over her shoulder. “It must be weird for you. Lots of memories.”

“Yeah,” says Mack, thinking, I beat the tar out of a guy behind that building
.
She has never told Rena this, Rena who despises vio
lence. Who covers her eyes during action movies when an actor pretends to be shot.

The redhead explains that Penn State is her safety school.

“Right now Presslo is our bread and butter,” her father tells Calvin. “For hypertension. A year from now it's going to be Lumox. You heard it here first.”

“That's very interesting,” Calvin says. For a moment Mack sees him through a stranger's eyes: a bright, articulate teenager, confident and self-assured, willing to make conversation with adults. It's a version of Calvin she never gets to see.

They round the bend to the cafeteria. One winter morning after breakfast, Lindy had slipped there on a patch of ice, twisting her ankle. As a joke Mack carried her home to B Quad. Lindy clung to her shoulders like a well-designed backpack, filled with soft things.

Calvin is willing to make conversation with adults, as long as they aren't Mack and Rena.

“Pharmaceutical sales is an interest of mine,” he says, just loud enough for Mack to hear.

She could've knocked him sideways. It's hard to remember what he used to be: her hunting buddy, her fishing buddy. A long, long time ago.

“I wish my son could meet you,” says the father. “He graduated last spring and still no job. I could get him in at Centex, but he's set on sports management. He's twenty-three. Believe it or not, Joe Montana hasn't called.”

Calvin laughs politely.

At age fourteen he turned on her. Would it have been better if she were a man? Rena thinks it would've been worse. She blames the hormone storm of puberty, but the truth is darker and more complicated. The hunting and fishing ended when Calvin's father died. In some way that made no sense, he seemed to blame Mack for Freddy's death.
I didn't kill him,
Mack wanted to say.

Though of course she would've, given the chance.

Pharmaceutical sales. Mack would never have known if she hadn't run into her neighbor at the barbershop. Hank Becker was an old friend of her pop's.
Susan, I could swear I seen a fox in your back forty. Maybe go have a look. You don't want it getting in your coop.

Mack took a look.

She made short work of Calvin's plants, swinging a sickle like a sturdy Cossack. The clippings looked like perfectly good forage, but was it safe for a cow to eat marijuana? Mack took no chances. She gathered the plants into trash bags and drove them to the dump.

On her way home, she stopped by the Beckers'. Hank was sitting on the front porch.
I saw that fox. I took care of it,
she called from the truck.
Thanks for letting me know.

She didn't tell Calvin what she'd done. She let him figure it out on his own. He took a walk after supper and returned looking stricken.
You cut down my fucking plants.

Mack said nothing. Just this once, she let the expletive slide.

You owe me for lost revenue,
he said.
Six thousand dollars.

Are you kidding? You're lucky I don't call the cops.

You wouldn't do that,
said Calvin, but Mack could see in his eyes that he wasn't sure.
Are you going to tell Mom?

That depends on you.

She believed, at first, that she was managing the situation. The threat would be enough to make him straighten up. He'd be grateful for his second chance and eventually, inevitably, they'd be buddies again. Later she saw how easily he'd played her, having sensed her weakness: her pathetic hope that he'd love her again, a secret Mack had kept even from herself.
You'll never tell Mom,
he said when some weeks had passed.
She'd never forgive you for lying to her.

The tour ended, they head back in the direction of the Admissions Office. The pharmaceutical salesman falls into step beside Rena. “That's some kid you've got.”

Rena looks ready to kiss him. “I'm very proud of him. Whoa!”

The salesman reaches out a hand to steady her, just in time, as
she slides on a patch of ice. Rena seems not to notice his hand lingering at her back.

He was flirting with you,
Mack will tell her later. She's seen it before, Rena's effect on men: the bearded young veterinary assistant, the horny fertilizer salesmen who stop by unannounced and dawdle on their porch for half the morning. Even Pop had come alive when Rena fussed over him.
She's a nice girl, Susan. She'll keep you company when I'm gone.
He was frail by the time Rena moved in, hadn't climbed the stairs in a year and maybe never knew that they were sharing a bedroom. Though even if he'd known, he'd have thought nothing of it. They were both girls.

It's nearly dusk as they turn onto the highway, the early dark of deep November. Rena turns in her seat. “Well, what did you think?”

In the backseat Calvin shrugs. “It doesn't matter. I'm not going.”

Rena looks stunned.

“Even if I wanted to—which I don't—I can't apply this year. I didn't take the SAT.”

“What do you mean, didn't take it?” says Rena. “For God's sake, why not?”

There is a silence.

“Well, it's only November,” says Rena. “The application isn't due until January. You have plenty of time.”

“Actually, I don't.” Calvin smiles unpleasantly. “They only give the test on certain days. The next date isn't until spring.”

Rena turns to Mack. “Is that true?” As though Mack's semester and a half of college have made her some kind of expert.

“I think so.” Mack avoids Rena's eyes. Her disappointment is too painful to watch.

Mack studies Calvin in the rearview mirror, understanding that her mission has changed. For years she protected Rena from Freddy Weems. Her job, now, is to protect Rena from Freddy's son.