Call Me Home (31 page)

The early morning light was gray. He lit a cigarette and stood there. He might just stay the winter, he thought. There would be work if he wanted it. This was no different than any other town, really. Just one more place that people gather on this earth. But then – he thought of Randy's offer. “If you want me to find them, I will. Come with me.”

He looked out at the lake, at the rows of new buildings. In six months or a year, he thought, all of the sorrow of Don's life would still be stretched out before him, but around this lake, framed in these windows, would be a hundred different futures, all beginning. He understood, too, that he had been spared. In everything that had happened, he had been able to go on. He started walking around the edge of the lake. He didn't know how early he was, how much time he had, but it didn't seem to matter. He didn't want to look at the concrete block. He didn't want to think of Don anymore.

When he came to the dam, he crossed it, following the water to where it washed up against the old baseball diamond, the dusty lots where teenagers would have parked once, sliding damp hands into each other's shirts. It felt good to walk. He thought about the pits that needed burning, and his station by the skill saw where Dave Riley yelled down measurements for him. He kept walking. What if he did go with Randy? Was that crazy? He could hear a truck in the distance. He could hear all of them going to work. Since the accident he was careful, avoiding the eyes of the men who must know, or suspect. If he let himself think about it he was full of a cold fear. Don's hand reaching toward him was the reaper's scythe, the owl calling his name.

He stopped when he was as far from the work site as you could get. He stopped where he had a good view of the lake and sat down in the grass, the damp of the ground soaking through his jeans. The little herb was in his pocket, and he took it out. Whatever life was in it was so deep inside. He didn't want it. It was a consolation prize, a reminder of how he'd fucked everyone over. He could think about it all of his life, he thought, and he wouldn't understand why he had done it. He used one hand to make a cold little flat of grass, breaking and smoothing it. He opened the cellophane packet and spilled the Winter Worm into that nest, letting the grass fall back around it, hiding it. He could stay, he thought, or he could go. He could go with Randy. That was something his mother had given him – the ability to go where he wanted.

“So let's go,” he said aloud. Why not? he thought. He couldn't think of a single reason why he shouldn't, and a hundred why he should. “Let's go,” he said, and this time the words sounded electric and sweet, carrying across the water in the still of the morning.

The sun was breaking through the fog, the faintest warmth on his arms. He felt like laughing. He stood and stretched his legs. Even as he thought about leaving, it was as though it had already happened, and there was no way that it couldn't. He was shaking Mike Leary's hand. He was closing the door of the semi cab. The dashboard was glowing; Randy was drumming a beat on the wheel. Somewhere, Lydia and his mother were waiting for him, and he believed Randy when he said he could find them.

“Let's go,” he said again. He pushed through the woods, catching branches on his bare arms, and thorns, but he was imagining the radio, the painted lines of the road slipping past, the signs for towns they'd find or forget, and he walked faster. Happiness was rising in him, he was running up out of the woods, and it felt like the future was just beyond the trees, shining. It was offering itself to him, he thought, and all he had to do was step forward. All he had to do was take it.

Amy

Watermelon Thump, Luling, Texas, 2010

SHE POINTED OUT LANDMARKS TO LYDIA AS SHE DROVE
: the boarded up library where she used to take out books; the roadside stand that was miraculously still in business, selling pickled okra and chow-chow; the secret path down to the river. She parked the car in Luling in front of Andy's Lounge; the sky over them was dark, trapping the heat as though they were under a galvanized bucket. She was excited. It shouldn't have meant anything; it was just a fair, once a year when the streets were loud with Tejano music and shouting, singing, popcorn that stuck to the soles of your shoes, card tables with stacks of foil-wrapped burgers, fabric roses glued to safety pins, and whirligig carnival lights striping the streets. The Watermelon Thump. She'd been on a blind date here, long ago, and danced with different boys from Fannin High and Luling, and once she'd kissed Scott, even though he was with Jennifer. They had big bottles of wine weighing down their backpacks and nothing meant anything, it was all just sweet and damp; wet mouths, cheeks pressed to hers, her own hands between her hot legs.

She took Lydia's hand and they started toward the main drag, where the parade would be. Even with the thick dark clouds it was still summer and she was full of what she'd forgotten flooding back to her, even though she hadn't thought of these things in years: lantana, prickly pears, and the smell of cedar in the woods. A Luna moth beating its wings in her cupped hands. Pink crape myrtle, white, purple. The Dairy Queen and Stonewall peaches and
Mexia peaches and beggar's lice. Iced tea with Sweet'N Low in the pink packets, the pile of them beside a glass and spoon. Always she and Jennifer had said they were going to go to Mexico and drink mescal. They were going to float down the San Marcos every day with a keg strung between their inner tubes. They were going to get brave enough to go gigging frogs with their dates, but they both were going to scream before the boys could prong them. Why would the boys care when they were wearing dresses that would make every man in Fannin pause with a tender ache in his chest?

SHE LED LYDIA
through corridors of people and lawn chairs. Half of the faces looked familiar – people she'd known, or their children. To stand on a crowded street – the simple indulgence of that – made her grateful. What terrified her in Washington, what had put her in danger, protected her here; everyone knew a scrap of her story. Gary's name hung around the town like a fog. Even if she'd been away for eighteen years, she belonged to Fannin, and he didn't. She doubted he even belonged to Geronimo, where the ranch had been. If she thought about it too long the fear would start to rise up – the suspicion that he was never who he said he was, that she might have married someone who was even more of a stranger than she could imagine, even after everything he'd already done. She didn't want to know. She thought instead of how, if he so much as turned down First Street, the news would pass from mouth to mouth and someone would help them.

She was sure that it wasn't all wonderful, that people must be talking about her. Women in the aisles of HEB lowering trays of gizzards into their carts after service at the Baptist Church. They'd say she was a saint for what she'd endured, they couldn't believe it, what a shame, but still – to leave a husband, that was wrong, wasn't it, and hadn't Amy gone to Seattle in the first place, practically dragged him out there, and Seattle, what kind of place was that, all kinds of liberal Yankee gays, fruits, and nuts, she must have done
something
to bring it on herself.

She and Lydia had just passed City Market Barbecue, one of
the big businesses in town – they were making money hand over fist this weekend – when she saw Scott. It was him, looking the same, just heavier, and jowly. His stomach pressed against his thin T-shirt. He saw her stop and looked at her. She could tell he was searching for who she was, and then lit on it. He smiled hugely. It was the same Scott, she thought. He could grow old forever and he'd still be a little boy.

“
Amy
?”

She smiled. “Here I am,” she said.

“Well, shit,” he said, and then bounded toward her, wrapping her in his arms, his sweat and barbecue smell. “Holy hell, you look exactly the same. You look real good, girl.”

Amy held up her hand, joined with Lydia's. “And this is Lena,” she said. “My daughter.”

Scott looked from Amy to Lydia, and she wished for a minute she could see what he was seeing, what whispers of Gary could be found in her daughter's face, how much she herself had aged. “That's great, Amy,” Scott said. He looked so happy to see her, as though he'd been waiting a long time.

“Actually,” she said. “It's Ann, now. Ann Harris.”

“Ann,” he said, like he was thinking hard about the sound of it. “I guess you needed to do that, right?”

She felt heat rising up her face and neck. “Yes,” she said. “I did.”

“I heard he was trouble,” Scott said. “I been feeling real guilty about that, Amy. Introducing you and all.”

“Scott,” she said. “You didn't know.” It felt good to absolve other people of guilt for the things that she hadn't yet been able to absolve herself.

“Still,” he shook his head. “Still.”

“Just watch out for us,” Amy said.

He nodded. He reached out a hand toward Lydia, lightly nipped at her shoulder with his fingers. “You're real pretty, Lena,” he said. Lydia smiled.

“I saw Jennifer,” Amy said. “I met Janie, she's so pretty, Scott.”

“Aw,” he said. “Janie's a doll. And Jennifer –” A sadness fell over his face. “You tell her, if you see her. Tell her I'm a broken son of a bitch without her.”

Lydia was looking at Scott. Amy imagined her puzzling out these mysteries – who belonged to whom, who knew Gary and how, and why.

“I thought, man, I just thought, love me or leave me the hell alone,” Scott said. “But I'm one broken son of a bitch without her.” He slipped one hand up under his T-shirt and scratched his stomach.

“She'll come around,” Amy said, and she believed it. Jennifer and Scott pressed close together in the front seat of Scott's beater truck on the banks of the San Marcos, against a row of gray lockers. It seemed like the two of them together held something important in balance, a tiny pivot point in the larger machinery of the world.

She hugged Scott again. “Don't be a stranger,” he said. She shook her head, even though he had already passed by; she put one hand on Lydia's shoulder and they walked on through the sidewalk crowds. “Scott,” she said to Lydia, shaking her head. “He's exactly the same.”

“He's nice,” Lydia said, “but he smelled like barbecue.” They laughed. Amy was waiting for questions, wouldn't have minded them, but now her daughter was quiet, searching the crowd, her eyes skipping from the slumping carnival booths to the main stage and the trucks backed up on the grass. She seemed younger, Amy thought, or maybe Lydia had spent too long seeming way too old. Amy felt the same herself – too young, too old. She'd missed the '90s, nearly completely. She'd stayed home, raised her babies, ran from Gary, learned the ways to avoid him. Watched nothing but the nightly news. And now, on the Luling streets it was as though she'd aged unbelievably, and as though she was still eighteen, wearing a tight dress, weaving in and out of the crowd.

She and Lydia stood in line for the rides. On the Tilt-a-Whirl Lydia laughed, screaming, and clutched at Amy's shoulder. She looked like a child, Amy thought. She was glad that Lydia wasn't
embarrassed by her, to be on the ride with her, and grateful to be able to appreciate something so trivial.

“There must have been good times, too,” her mother had prompted her, a few nights before, looking so sad, and Amy said, “Yes, yes of course,” not just to placate her mother but because there were. There were normal days, and terrible things, and then there were good ones, too. But the happy times, in hindsight, pained her. Not because she missed them but because they were
too
bright, full of sharp laughter and big-toothed smiles that seemed about to careen into something else. Like an alcoholic's happy times, she thought, reckless and lurching madly on a knife's edge.

Still, there were good moments that were quieter, between her and Jackson and Lydia, just the three of them. And this, she thought, pulling Lydia close against her, the two of them held still in the heart of the rolling ride, this was good. So what if people talked about her, she thought. Who gave a damn. She had her daughter, and somewhere her other baby was out in the world. It could have been the heat, or the disorienting, bucket-colored sky, the spin of the ride, but she felt like she could feel them both, as though she had one of them at the end of each arm.

She remembered a time when the three of them were down on the Sound digging for clams. It wasn't allowed that season, but they weren't keeping them, just shaping holes into the sand, sinking their arms to their elbows, reaching toward the dark sources of air bubbles. The tide was far out, and after a while they walked out to the water's edge. There was man there in a yellow rubber raincoat and tall black waders. He'd dug himself into the wet sand and he was pulling on a geoduck.

She'd heard jokes about geoducks before, about the long, flesh-colored proboscis. Still, she'd never expected them to look
that
obscene. Jackson was watching and she could tell he wanted to laugh, and Lydia was mesmerized because it was so unworldly – this man in a tug-of-war with a sea creature.

She met Jackson's eyes. “Hold your tongue,” she said, and
Lydia said, “What is that?” and Jackson didn't laugh aloud but Amy was laughing with him, the joke danced between them, even as she crouched beside Lydia, wondering at the geoduck with her daughter. It was the same feeling she had now, even though Jackson was far from her. With Lydia warm against her spinning through the dark, she felt like she was suspended between the two worlds of her different children, a steady foot in each of those places, holding them both.