Age of Consent (5 page)

She is brought out of these thoughts by a metallic snapping sound and turns to see her mother has found the mini whiskey bottles and is fixing herself a drink. All the years she's carried those little bottles around just in case of insomnia and her mother dispatches one as quickly as though it is water.

“Is he really
not
out there?” Bobbie says, hooking her thumb over her shoulder.

“He who? You mean Craig?” June shakes her head. On the bedside table is a decorated tissue holder and June plucks out a few pastel tissues, then blows her nose. The little whiskey bottle is empty now. June holds up a second. “These are puny,” she says.

“I'm driving you home,” Bobbie says.

“No need. I'm fine. I can drive.”

“No. No, you can't.”

June waves a tissue at Bobbie. “I've been driving myself around for the past thirty years without you. Now you show up, telling me what to do, show up looking…looking like…you show up looking like—”

“Like
what
?”

Her mother appears stricken. The evening has gone dead wrong and all her disappointment mixes with the alcohol and with the shock of being with her daughter now for the first time in so long. “Grown up!” June sobs. “I mean I knew you would be grown up but I missed out on everything
.
” Now she makes a sweeping gesture toward Bobbie, as though Bobbie were a large, loathsome creature taking up room where her little girl should be. “Do you realize what this sort of thing does to a person?
Do you?
”

Bobbie says, “I imagine it is painful.”

“Damned right it's painful!”

Bobbie pats the air with her open palm. “Don't yell, Mother. We're not the only people in this place.”

“What do you care who hears? You're willing to go to court and tell the world anything that comes into your head! You're telling a courthouse about family matters that we should be working out ourselves!”

No, Bobbie thinks. I am not talking about family matters. And no, I am not trying to work out anything at all.

ALL THE WAY
back to the house, June complains about the stress of the trial. She says it has made her ill, that she does not sleep well, that her eyes do not focus as they ought to, that her heart races and sometimes she thinks she is about to have a heart attack. It's been too much, she tells Bobbie. The trial with the girl who lost, thank God, and this new one. Her life has become a giant weight she can no longer carry. “One dead husband, a runaway child, now this!”

The Chevy Impala has a dented front bumper and headlights at skewed angles. Bobbie drives steadily toward the neighborhood that was once her own, through streets that were once familiar to her. She notices the new houses that have sprung up, developments in places where there were woods, quaint little shops where there had been feed stores and gas stations. Her mother falls quiet as they approach her street and is no longer crying by the time they reach the house. Now it is Bobbie who feels emotional. She cannot bring herself to take the car all the way up the drive, to sit in her old driveway next to her childhood home. It is too much even to see through the tall conifer trees the lights in the rooms that once felt part of her. The trees have grown higher, the bushes gone wild. Buttercups have nearly taken over the lawn Bobbie used to mow.

“You're going to have to walk from here,” she tells her mother.

“Come inside and talk to Craig,” June pleads.

“Not on your life.”

“Why don't you stay here with us? No need to go back to that old guesthouse tonight. Be
our
guest—” She stops herself. “Hell, this is your
home
.”

“That's his car up there, isn't it?” She follows the Chevy's headlights up the long dirt drive where they reflect against the plastic casing of brake lights on a low red sports car. She can see the vanity plate with Craig's initials. She can see the fat racing tires.

June sighs, then touches her forehead, feeling for a headache. “He says you hate him because he wanted some money back. Money you stole from him. I know you don't steal, so there must have been a misunderstanding. We just need to talk this out.”

“No misunderstanding. There was money.”

“You
stole
money?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to
say
that? In court? Oh Bobbie! You're going to
tell
them you're a thief?”

“I don't know what I'm going to tell them,” Bobbie says, though this isn't the case. She knows exactly what she will tell them.

“So it is true, what he said about the money?” June says.

“I suspect not, but it doesn't matter.”

“Craig says everything matters. Oh, I do wish you'd talk to him.”

But she won't talk to him. June tries everything to get her into the house. She tells her that Craig will be angry if she returns without her, that she cannot walk and needs assistance. She tells her there is no need to bring family business into a public arena, tries to shame her into cooperating. But Bobbie isn't having it. In the end, Bobbie gets out of the car and goes around to the passenger side. It is a clear, pretty night with stars that seem to hang low in the sky. She opens her mother's door, then pulls June gently by the arm until she is standing in the night's soft glow, surrounded by the sound of crickets and the frogs that chirp (Bobbie knows) from the marshy grass behind her mother's house.

“Are you just going to leave me here?” June says, as though she is being stranded on a desert island. “And take my car?”

“I'll bring it back later.”

“But darling—” Her mother doesn't move. Bobbie gets back behind the steering wheel as her mother stares in shock.

“Go to bed, Mother,” Bobbie says through the open window. “Nothing is changing my mind.”

“But why not? Why on earth?” June says.

She shoves the Chevy into reverse just as her mother comes toward her again with another plea. “Because,” she tells June, “the man nearly killed me.”

Then she reverses, driving away even as June stands, baffled by what is happening. Bobbie doesn't look at the house she has not seen since 1978, does not allow herself to think about Craig inside. She pauses a little at the very edge of the property, glancing at a specific tree that had once meant something to her. For months before she ran away from home, it hid a jam jar full of money.

1978

C
oming out of the motel and getting into Craig's car with the money plunged deep in her pocket felt like climbing into a bull's pen. Bobbie sensed that as with a bull she must keep watch but not look at him directly. The car smelled like old bong water and burger wrappers and pot resin. His clothes, the ones he had on and every stitch he owned, carried that same green-weed smell. They drove out of the motel parking lot and she thought what she needed now, other than the newly found money folded against her thigh, was a little luck.

He said, “What were you really doing in there anyway? Smoking cigarettes, I bet.”

She didn't answer and he gave her a look.

“I don't have any,” she said. “I told you.”

“They make you taste like an ashtray.”

“I was fixing my hair.”

“That was a hell of a long time for hair.”

She smiled and hoped that smiling would end the discussion. He reached over and put his hand on her knee. She looked down at the cotton pocket of her blue jeans and hoped he wouldn't feel around in that area. Keeping the money from him felt like a greater betrayal than hiding from him on the school bus had been. She wondered what he would do to her if he found out about the money, other than take it off her, that is.

“What's the matter?” he said. “Are you sick?”

Not sick, she thought, but not exactly right, either. The night was inky, with a moist heat that liquefied the air. Her hair was wet at the nape, her blouse damp under her arms. No matter how many times she ran her tongue over her lips, they were dry, while the rest of her was sweating, not just from the heat. If he found the money, she would need an explanation for why she hadn't mentioned it. But she couldn't think of anything. Her brain raced like the images on a slot machine, but when she summoned it to slow down and give some answers, nothing came up. Nothing she could win with.

“I'm fine,” she said. “It's that test tomorrow making me worry.”

Even now, while he was driving, he moved his wide hand on her thigh, reaching higher, almost to where the money was. She held her breath and waited, waited for him to wrap his fingers around the wad of bills and then ask what in the hell was
that
in her pocket. Her head began to wag back and forth, as though saying
no, no, no
to a conversation that ran inside her mind. She better tell him, tell him now before he discovered for himself. She opened her mouth to speak but suddenly did not know what to say.

She took a long breath. She willed her heart to slow, but it would not. Meanwhile, his hand moved down to her knee and then up again, climbing her leg one finger at a time as she stiffened under his touch. She waited, and hoped, and tried not to seem as though she was hiding something. She prepared an explanation, then gave up, deciding there was no explanation. He would tell her she was selfish. He would say she was a thief. She was about to confess the whole thing when he rolled his palm away, this time toward the inside seam of her jeans, just beneath her crotch. He could not feel the money there, or where he went next, so she said nothing.

They drove a rural route, passing a farm on their right, an abandoned gas station attached to a miniature golf course, now closed down. She wondered if there were anywhere left in the world that didn't look like this, haggard and worn, in need of repair. For years, the recession had caused her mother to worry she would lose her job. When the cupboard door broke, her mother had tacked it back up with the wrong hardware. When the dishwasher leaked, they began using the sink to wash dishes. Now, she had five hundred dollars, money out of the blue. If only she could get home without Craig finding out.

He kept touching her, then looked over.

“What's the matter?” he said.

“Nothing.”

She felt like a bug next to him, even more so in her thin shirt and wooden Dr. Scholl's sandals, blocky slabs without any heel, castoffs from her mother who said they made her toes ache. She tucked up, trying to hide the outline of the bills through the fraying cloth of her jeans, and rested her head on her knee, her face turned toward him. She hoped her expression portrayed fondness, not fear.

“You know they're still hassling me at work,” he said. “That asshole girl.” He was referring to a girl who had come into the station asking after Craig and telling everyone that she knew him. The girl was a high-school student with acne and frizzy hair. The program director had told her to stay away from the station, but she'd kept insisting that Craig was expecting her. “
I know Craig
.
We're friends
,” Craig said now, imitating the girl's light, high voice. “Friends, bullshit. But that big shit-eating pig of a program director makes a huge deal of it!”

He had one hand spanning the wide circle of the steering wheel, and with the other he found her knee. He articulated his story with little prods from his fingers. Big-
poke
-shit-
poke
-eating-
poke
-pig. He pointed the Buick down the smaller road that led to her neighborhood, rolling the steering wheel with his thumb, all the while playing his other hand up and down her leg.

“And I don't know this girl!” he said, all innocence. “Anyway, she's already sixteen!”

Sixteen was legal, Bobbie knew. Just as she knew she was illegal.

“And anyway, I wouldn't cheat on you,” he said, then suddenly drew his attention to the radio. A song ended and he lurched forward and flicked the dial, turning it up so the sound boomed through the car. “Hang on, here comes a break!”

He was obsessed with breaks, with all performance from disc jockeys. He listened only to the station he worked for, never changing it even if he hated the song. And when he liked a song, he'd crank up the volume so high she could feel the base thumping her chest. He'd make a fist and tap the air like he was playing the drums, his expression concentrated inward, his drumming hand fastened to the rhythm, eyes half closed in concentration. She'd watch him, feeling the music pressing into her, and she'd think,
This is embarrassing
.

But the songs didn't mean much to him. They were filler; what he cared about, cared greatly as though every deep-voiced radio jock on the East Coast was in a contest with him, were the times in between songs when the DJ came in with that all-important break. That is when he'd really turn up the volume. Right now, a guy he hated who had the spot before his, a guy whose hire he'd opposed, who he'd heard had drinking problems and sleep problems, was talking over the guitar intro of a current hit, and this fact pissed him off. He listened, his face darkening as the voice ran into the song, interfering with the lyrics. Shaking his head, Craig gave Bobbie a look like
Can you believe this shit?
before moving the volume back to a normal range and returning to his conversation.

“I told that pig, I already
have
a girlfriend. And he says, ‘How come I never met her?' And then, guess what? He starts asking how
old
you are.”

He'd half convinced himself she was of age now, so often had he lied.

“What did you say?”

“Eighteen.”

She felt her head buzz. Eighteen. That was ridiculous.

“Actually, I told him you'd be nineteen soon. But it's none of his business. What's he, your goddamned father?”

Her father was dead. Heart attack in his twenties. This made no sense to Bobbie, how someone could have a heart attack at such an age, but she'd seen the death certificate in a box in the closet alongside old wedding photos of her parents. Her mother, pregnant in a big white dress; her father, a young man in a dark suit, a gold ring on his finger.

They turned off the road and suddenly they were nearing her neighborhood, gliding beneath traffic lights suspended on wires, passing a parade of shops, what used to be a restaurant, then a dance club, now a nursing home. In a few more miles he would pull the Buick into a space at the top of her drive. She'd hear the crunch of his tires over the pebbles, see the reassuring light that shone by the front door. He'd stop some way from the house, pull up the parking brake, and turn toward her. Then he'd do something to remind her about the sex. He'd put her hand on his crotch so she could feel the outline of his dick, warm, already swelling, waiting for their next time. Then he would tell her he loved her. “I love you, babe,” he'd say, just like Sonny to Cher. If she didn't say it back, he'd look at her with big eyes and keep holding on to her until she did.

Once, she had almost believed that she did love him, because he'd paid her such a lot of attention, and told her how pretty she was, and how mature.
You're different from the other girls
, he'd said.
You're wise for your years.
Those were the early days, back when he was being nice. He would take her to restaurants, pull her chair out for her, tell her to leave room for dessert. He'd sneak her into the station and let her choose records. She'd wear his headphones, talk into the microphone, hear her voice in a recording he'd play back to her. He made her feel special, clever, somehow above the pettiness of junior high in which friendship and popularity hung on such small matters as whether your hair was “good” or you had the right jeans. Then one day, he told her he wanted to marry her.
Marry me?
she'd said, stunned, terrified. He'd nodded confidently, as though that had always been the plan. He'd worked it out that they were like Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed and forbidden because of her age, but for no other reason. No legitimate reason. Plenty of guys were older than their girlfriends, he'd told her. In other countries, men older than himself married girls her age.

Who do you belong to?
he would ask her, pinning her on the mattress. She'd tell him what he wanted to hear.
You
, she'd say. The thought scared her because she worried—she really did—that if it came to it, he'd get what he wanted and she would be his. His now and forever. And then all her life would have led up to marrying him. But how do you get out of such a thing? After you've had sex with a guy and told him that you loved him? And she had told him, too, more than once. It was too late to take it all back.

But it wasn't too late, she told herself now. It wasn't. They sailed down the dark street, too far out in the country for streetlamps. He sang along to the radio as they passed the elementary school. His favorite song, “Three Times a Lady,” by the Commodores. She hated the Commodores. Syrupy, worse than her mother's Tom Jones. That he could even like this song bothered her. Surely she didn't have to carry on meeting him, driving with him, having sex with him. There was an out—it happened all the time. She just had to try.

She said, “I don't like that song.”

He sang another line, as though she just needed to listen a little harder and she'd see how fan
fucking
tastic was this band and its number-one hit. “Number one,” he reminded her, holding up a finger. “You can't argue with that!” Then he said, “So I told that prick boss of mine, that I already got a woman and not to take seriously this stupid girl and her ridiculous accusations.”

Back to the program director, whatever he'd said about the girl Craig knew, or didn't know.

“I said to him, the idiot, I said, ‘Are you listening to crazies off the street? Fans, oh man. They are the true head cases and a good reason to get and stay stoned!' And then you want to know what happened next? You want to hear?”

She breathed in, and he took that as a yes. He said, “I held up some weed and we went into the parking lot and got high.”

He laughed out loud. Spit foamed a little at the corners of his lips. He was always complaining about dry mouth, a side effect from all the pot. It was the weed's fault but who could blame weed? He'd drink Dr Pepper or beer, or Nestlé Quik, or rum. Then he'd scream,
I'm drying up! My tongue is numb!
Like he'd never heard of water.

He said, “Reach behind my seat and see if you can find my pipe, wouldja?” His face glowed from a Mobil sign they passed, then from a restaurant's neon lights in the shape of a cactus, then from the red of the traffic light at the end of the long road.

She brought out the pipe, but it didn't feel familiar in her hands. It was a little stainless steel “L” with purple ceramic on the stem, lightweight, compact, but it wasn't his pipe. His was a red and blue one with a longer stem and a Confederate flag. This one, specked in rust, its stem clogged with oil, was so tiny you'd likely singe your lashes smoking it.

“You mean this?” she said, holding it out for him.

He nodded. “I left my good flag pipe in the head at the station and it was taken by that skinny boy-wonder piece of shit they brought in who
talks over the fucking lyrics
!” He yelled this last part straight into the radio. “I hate that little fuck. He always plays my favorite records so I can't repeat them, and now he's taken my goddamned Confederate flag pipe, the cock!”

He threw the matches at her. “Light up the bowl,” he said.

She didn't want to. If they smoked in the car, she'd reek of it. “We can pull over, can't we?” she said, then remembered the money and hoped he wouldn't stop.

“No, we
can't
pull over. Jesus, you should get high. That's what is actually
wrong
with you, if ever you were wondering. The government makes shit up. Think about it. If everyone switched to weed, who would pay their fucking tax for alcohol?” He laughed, then tossed over his Bic but she dug in her purse for matches because she wouldn't burn her fingers so easily with them. That was when he saw it, saw the money making a bulge in her pocket.

“What is that?” he said, his voice suddenly slow and deliberate. He had his fingers around the roll of bills and he wasn't letting go.