A Stranger in This World (10 page)

“Do you want me to?”

“I’m standing here in my nightgown,” she said. “This is stupid.”

She took my hand in hers and led me up the little stairs into her trailer. We took our coats off and then our boots and she led me down the narrow hall, to her bed all the way at the
back. I wanted to cry and it wasn’t just the whiskey: I was full of thanks, so happy to be forgiven. Margaret folded herself back under the covers, watching with her dark eyes as I fumbled with my clothes.

“Don’t do this again,” she whispered. “I can’t do it, not with the kids.”

“I won’t,” I promised, and I meant it. That night, I felt like Dorothy was the last mistake of the person I used to be. I was full of plans, the future inside me, bursting to get out.

“You will,” she whispered. “Come here.”

There were two more days after that, a Monday and a Tuesday, regular days. Margaret gave me a ride to the Vo-Tech in her little Datsun truck and then I took the bus back to her trailer while she picked the kids up from school and ran the usual errands. I stayed away from the Sacajawea—I didn’t want to see Dorothy and I didn’t know what the chances were, whether she was already gone or what else she might want from me. I was worn out with her.

The weather turned cold and the wind blew hard out of the north, making Margaret’s trailer tremble on its base. We’d spend the winter nights around her kitchen table, drinking coffee and fixing Mr. Coffees and FryBabys and Mixmasters. She’d do the motors and switches herself, but she’d let me take things apart and put them back together, while the kids cleaned the cases, using Liquid Secretary to cover spots and stains. She’d shut the TV off when the kids went to bed, then we’d pack all the spare motors back into the milk crates, the
tools into her fancy copier-repair tool briefcase, pack it all away and work on our homework for an hour or so in the quiet, not talking. Watch a little TV, maybe have a beer.

Now those winter nights stand for something, I don’t know—like part of a whole life, like a little patch cut from a big bolt of cloth. There was a whole everyday life of chores and reasonable plans and comfort, but those were the only days of it we ever got to live. I feel like I can remember every minute, but there’s nothing to remember: breakfast, dinner, television, work, Shane and Alicia singing “John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith” until we were both ready to murder them.

The third day was a Wednesday. Margaret had an early class but I didn’t have to be there till noon. I let her go early and hung around the trailer for a while by myself, drinking coffee and reading the Nickel Ads: firewood, computers, four-wheel drives. I tried to figure out what the Thunderbird was worth but there was nothing in the paper, and besides, I didn’t even have the title. After a minute I had to stop thinking about it because I felt the craziness again.

Around ten-thirty I walked over to the Sacajawea to check the mail and get some clothes, taking the long way around to stay out of the way of the old neighborhood. The Thunderbird was still parked out front when I got there, which was not quite a surprise. I changed my clothes and showered and shaved and started to feel pretty good. My schoolbooks were still there in the room but I wasn’t too far behind. I decided it would be easier to study in the library of the Vo-Tech instead of my room, and then I decided to take the Thunderbird to school instead of the bus. Maybe Margaret wouldn’t see me, or maybe I would explain it to her. Maybe I just didn’t think about it, which is how it feels now, trying to figure out why.

The Thunderbird started right up and ran strong. I’d forgotten what it was like to drive, with the big, powerful V-8 and the power steering and power brakes and automatic—a big smooth ride, a mile of turquoise hood out in front of me and the big chrome dashboard with the Indian symbols. I punched the buttons on the radio till I found a rock song, “All Right Now,” and turned it up and tapped my fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music. I felt fast, dangerous, untouchable. Even at the Vo-Tech, the high kept up. I kept looking back at the Thunderbird on my way into the building, the best-looking car in the parking lot, nothing but trouble but it was mine, for now anyway.

The two bikers came into the library about half an hour later. I knew they were looking for me, even before I saw one of the front-office staff pointing me out. They both had beards and little black braids. One of them was only big, while the other one was huge, three hundred pounds or more.

The one who was only big said, “Look, we need to get the keys from you.”

“What keys?” I said.

“Let’s not bullshit this,” the biker said. “I mean seriously. Dorothy owes us the money, give us the keys, we’ll call it quits, OK?”

And the keys were in my pocket and I could have just given them up, taken them out, handed them over, and that would have been it—no car, no money, no wife and no future life that was any different. And all of this had already happened, and part of it was that I couldn’t admit it to myself. I just felt empty and stupid. It was like looking down from a high place: I felt like I could see it all, my whole life at once. And for some reason at that moment I thought of Shane and
Alicia and how I had come from being a child to being here, and the waste of that child’s life, and I couldn’t do it. With the car I had something, some kind of hope, even if it was a lie. Otherwise there was just nothing.

“That’s not your car,” I said.

“The fuck it’s not,” the biker said.

“I have a receipt,” I said, sounding puny even to myself. I thought, Here it comes. Part of me wanted it, whatever was going to happen next.

But it was nothing. The biker clapped his hands down on the library table with a loud sound that made the other students stare, and he leaned down to look into my eyes and said, “I wish you’d quit trying to be an asshole about this.”

He had a low, raspy voice but he wasn’t trying to make it mean. It sounded almost like he cared. I could smell the complicated stink coming off the biker, leather and hair grease and cigarette smoke. I knew a couple of bikers around town and they were good guys to have as friends, good to drink with, but sometimes they told stories about this other life, the part that I wasn’t allowed into, girls and trains and pool cues. And the other thing was just a dream, there was nothing real about the Thunderbird. But there was nothing real about any of the rest of it, nothing for me.

“Sorry,” I said, and left the keys in my pocket.

“It’s going to get worse,” the biker said, and stood up, and both of them walked out.

I was shaking inside and the other students were staring at me. I collected my books and went to the window, where I could just see the bumper of the Thunderbird. I expected them just to steal it and I almost wished they would, just get it over with.

Ten minutes passed and the car was still there and I was still there, holding my books in my arms like a high school girl. It was a cold gray day, with a wind blowing papers across the parking lot. The snow was melted off everywhere but the shadows of the trees and I was thinking that it was time to quit—time to move on and give it another try somewhere else. Except for trips to here and there, I’d lived in this town for my whole life and I couldn’t help thinking I’d made a mess of it. I tried to hate Dorothy for the mess she made but it was my fault as much as hers. I just wish that I had thought of this ten minutes earlier, so I could have given the two bikers the keys to the Thunderbird and gotten the whole thing over with.

What happened was I left my schoolbooks on one of the tables in the library and went off to find Margaret. It was noontime, so I expected to find her in the cafeteria and she was, head-down over her books, drinking cafeteria coffee along with the brown-bag lunch she brought from home. This was the way I first saw her, and really I can’t remember if what I’m telling you is the memory of that particular day or just the way she was. Anyway, she was surprised to see me when I tapped her on the shoulder.

“What are you doing here, Parker?” she asked. “I thought you had a class.”

“I did,” I said. “I wanted to explain something.”

“Like what?” She took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes and looked at me, suspicious. But she must have seen the trouble in me because she changed. “Sit down,” she said.

But I couldn’t tell her about Dorothy, there in the cafeteria—it was too bright, too normal, too much in the light of day. What I really needed was three in the morning, a couple of drinks, but I had the feeling that I didn’t have time for that.

“Come with me for a second,” I asked her, and after a minute she said yes. She gathered her books and followed me out into the cold noontime and over to the Thunderbird.

“Whose car is this?” she asked when she saw me open the door with the key. “Who does this belong to?”

“It’s mine for now,” I told her, and opened the lock on the other door. She hesitated for a minute before she got in, and I remember that I was angry with her—like she didn’t trust me, like I was fooling her all along. “Come on,” I said, and started the engine.

She got in, fumbled around for a seat belt before she realized the car was too old to have them. She looked at all the beautiful chrome, the white leatherette. “Where did this come from?” she asked.

“It’s a long story,” I said. I backed the car out of the space and headed for the exit, and Margaret was looking at me from across the seat, a long ways away, like she’d never seen me before.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I just want to get away from here for a minute,” I said, easing the car out into the traffic on 34th Street, heading west, toward the mountains. I waited a few more blocks, until she was settled back into her seat instead of pressed against the door like she was trying to get away from me, and then I told her: “I’m in all kinds of trouble.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“I think I might have to go away for a while,” I said. I was going to tell her about Dorothy, and about the mess I made, but even at that last minute I didn’t want to. It was like saying the words would make them real, and as long as I didn’t say
them the trouble would go away by itself, like a little balloon flying off.

“There’s somebody waving at you,” Margaret said.

I looked over two lanes and there were the bikers in a blue Chevy pickup and the one that had done the talking was in the passenger side with the window down, waving his hand for me to stop. I slowed down at first, and the traffic carried them past me and I started looking for a place to turn.

“What’s going on, Parker?” Margaret asked, but I was trying to think and I didn’t answer. I looked over and the blue pickup was drifting back toward me through the other cars. I thought that I could get into the parking lot of a gas station but the pickup cut me off, and then I gave the Thunderbird some gas and we shot around them and we were off to the races, Margaret cursing in the seat beside me, cursing at me, God damn you, Parker, stop this fucking car. And after that I can’t really sort it out, except that we went back and forth through the traffic and I thought I could make a quick turn and then get away and then Margaret gave this new sound and I looked over and the biker was pointing a sawed-off shotgun at my head. I gunned the engine to get out of the way and went through the red light at Highland and then there was this sound, I don’t know, metal and screaming and tires where the Cadillac tried to stop before he plowed into the passenger side. She lived, though the glass made a mess of her face. Her hipbone broke into pieces and still hasn’t mended, that’s what I hear. I don’t know. I don’t see her, except in my sleep. I see the last thing, Margaret hanging like a red doll out the hole in the windshield and then the steering wheel breaking apart in my hands and then, most of the time, I wake up.

ON THE VERGE OF DIVORCE
,
THEY HEADED FOR FLORIDA
:
AN ISLAND
in the Gulf, a place they remembered as a refuge, dolphins, pelicans, vodka–and–Cheez Whiz picnics. They’d never been there in high season before, though. The roads were overrun
with ice-cream-colored Cadillacs and Lincolns, Hoosiers in golf clothes, Buckeyes and Badgers and Show-Me’s.

The last room on the island was next to the dock at the marina. The returning fishermen would park themselves outside the window every noon and boom at each other, driving Lockhart and Margaret from their beds, groping for aspirin and sunglasses. They began to feel hunted. Driving from restaurant to restaurant, searching for a late breakfast, they were crowded out by throngs of grinning well-off people who had been up since seven, who hadn’t known a hangover since college. Not that drinking was solving anything, exactly.

And something was killing the fish: the dredge, was Lockhart’s theory, anchored a hundred yards offshore and pumping streams of sand to replace the beach, which a winter storm had washed away. Every wave of the low Gulf tide brought ashore more dead fish, which had begun to smell. Half the island was uninhabitable.

Irritated and confused, they drove around in a rented pink Jeep. The only thing Lockhart was learning was how much he would miss her. They had nothing but each other’s company; it was almost enough. The third day they found a little empty notch of beach, protected by a line of island pines, where the water was clear and the black-backed dolphins swam close to shore, breaking the water with their fins. Margaret read Jackie Collins, reading the worst sentences aloud. Lockhart went snorkeling and saw a beach under the water that looked exactly like the beach above the water. They swam, they drank sweet white wine, they didn’t talk. A perfect afternoon. Lockhart was sorry to see it end. Waist-deep in the tepid water of the Gulf, alone, they watched the sun set through clouds: castles of fire, golden hillsides.

“What if we stayed together?” he asked her.

“Don’t confuse me,” she said. “I just want to be here, in this moment, right now, OK?”

Lockhart had nothing to say; technically, this was all his fault.

They stayed in the water until the moon came up, water and air the same temperature, pelicans flying through the evening, dark shapes against the dark sky. Lockhart tried to kiss her; she splashed ashore, pulled a dress on over her wet suit. The moon lit the path back through the woods. The Jeep sat at the edge of the road, the first step on a trip he didn’t want to take, back to their lives, back into history. Lockhart wanted to stand naked, just the two of them, without words if they could manage it. Instead they drove, a car among other cars, searching for a late dinner among the cheerful throngs.