Carter Clay (28 page)

“Where my ham-bur-er?”

“Sh,” says M.B. in a tiny, tiny voice. The terrible weight that lifted when Carter Clay first began to visit Katherine has settled on her chest and shoulders once more—and if anything, perhaps because of the respite, it feels heavier. “Not now, Kitty. Carter wants quiet now.”

None of them speaks again until they are in the little front hall of #335. There, Carter Clay bows his head and says, “I'd like to pray.”

“Lord,” he begins—M.B. tries to give Jersey's shoulder a pinch when Jersey fails to bow her head, but the girl manages to roll out of reach—“please, forgive us our sins, and let Your graciousness shine on us all this day. Us humble servants. Help us see the way as we seek to do Your will and pray for Your continuing love and forgiveness. In the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

“Carter,” M.B. says, “are you okay?”

He nods. “I better go, though.”

“Don't go!” Katherine throws her arms around his chest and tries to pull him into the living room.

“Kitty!” M.B. says. “Stop that! If you stop—if you calm down, I'll call Fair Oaks and see if you can't stay an extra night. Then maybe Carter'll come back and see us later, right, Carter?”

“Well, I'd
like
to,” he says.

Which is enough for Katherine, who releases him, and smiles, and says to M.B., “I'm calm, see? Calm as a cu-cumer. See?”

After Carter Clay left the McDonalds, Finis Pruitt extricated himself from the booth where Clay had held him captive. He made a show of dusting off his pants with his preposterous hat, and the swinging of his arm and the actual dust he managed to raise had the not unintended effect of clearing a little space for himself.

On the sidewalk outside the restaurant, he stretched in the sunshine. Smiled. He felt—weak, but in a pleasant way. As if he had just stepped from a sweat lodge or survived some astonishing train wreck. Really, the theater of the last ten minutes—could it have been even that long?—that degree of theater had been too much even for Finis. He could have sworn the rush of adrenaline he experienced in there had zapped this past year's rotgut residues right out of his brain. His thoughts were clearer now than they had been at any time since before the beating in Howell. The world sparked with purpose. Ever since Howell, he had been dull, hadn't he?

No more. On the molded plastic seating of McDonalds, he had undergone another metamorphosis. Before, he had been Persona Non Grata, the Guy Who Lost His Role. Now he found he had wings, a larger, grander part: the Dark Avenger.

Thank you, Carter Clay. Thank you, thank you.

Who would have thunk you had it in you to be so fucking scary?

Bright-eyed Finis threw open the restaurant door for the alarmed lady who headed inside. She tucked her child in close to her hip. “Good day to you, miss!” Finis crowed as the pair hurried past.

Finis was not the man to comprehend what drove Clay to associate with that threesome, but he could bet that neither grandma, daughter, nor grandchild knew the truth about the accident, and, clearly, Clay wanted to keep it that way.

To be so deliciously vulnerable—well,
that
feature of Clay's situation did not surprise Finis.

Something with an M? Finis felt certain that he would know the older lady's last name if he heard it. All of their names would have appeared in at least one of the newspaper articles about the accident. He might have the clipping still. Or he could look it up at the library. Get his gun. How difficult could it be to find an address if you had a name?

He opened the sack that held Clay's milk shakes in their lidded, now sweaty containers. Took out one plus a straw. Stuck the straw through the lid. Chocolate.

Of course, he reflected, as he sauntered off down the sidewalk. Clay's audience (crippled kid, old lady, head case) was not the most challenging audience in the world. But Mr. Nice Guy had to be a challenging role for a fellow to play for a family he had pretty well destroyed. Not to Finis's taste, true, but still an accomplishment of sorts; a treasure Finis certainly did not intend to allow Clay to keep.

In his lavender room above the hair salon, curled up on the too-short bed, Carter Clay listens for the faintest stirrings of sound in the alley below. He supposes it is only a matter of time before R.E. shows up at his door. Or M.B.'s door (“Mrs. Milhause? I think there's something you ought to know”).

Carter pictures the scene at the restaurant. As it happened. As it might have happened otherwise. Just now, a version breaks through in which he has not only killed R.E., but slipped past a police blockade after ditching the van for a stolen car.

Katherine and Jersey are with him in that car.

Or: they are
not.
Alone in the stolen car, he drives fast. Pedal to the metal. Hands tight on the wheel. Alone in the car, there is no need for conversation, explanation. The dark night fills his chest like a hit of good dope—

The sound that makes Carter jump back into his life in the lavender room is the opening of the hair salon's alley door. Click of a light switch in the hall below.

“Just me, Carter!” Jeri, the salon owner. “Forgot my purse!”

“Okay,” Carter calls back. He sounds calm enough, though he had readied himself to do murder, throw himself out a window, or maybe just—combust.

That night, when Carter Clay does not return to #335, Katherine Milhause panics. She spends the night prowling the condo, flinging Jersey and M.B. from sleep with various explosions: cupboard door slams, incoherent tantrums, frightening bursts of high-volume TV, crash of dishes dropped in sink, machine-gun discharge of popcorn into metal salad bowl.

Again and again—after M.B. has identified the source of the latest noise, after her heartbeat has begun to settle a bit—M.B. calls, “Come on, Kitty! Get in bed!”

Still the noise continues. M.B. stares at her bedroom's drawn curtains—Vanilla Creme, pinch-pleated, selected with so much care. The curtains seem to bloat with the coming dawn, and M.B. shivers and thinks: life is trying to steal life from me.

Then falls asleep once more, and is in Wyoming, in her childhood bedroom, the briny patches of wallpaper rough under her hand as she tries to make her way to a window. There is no air in the house! She breaks open the window and sticks her head outside in order to breathe—

Panting, she wakes up and knows she made a mistake. That is clear. She dropped a stitch. Her life has unraveled. But what was the mistake?

It was not having Kitty or marrying Lorne. Not leaving school after grade nine. That could not be helped. Not that stupid Ferris
wheel ride on which it seems she has pinned so much. Not Kitty's accident. Those were
happenings
, and what M.B. feels is
absence
, as if her life could be summed up by that hideous and mushrooming light now pushing out from between the pale curtains' darker folds.

More noise from the other room. Kitty running M.B.'s hair dryer?

What Kitty does not yet know, and M.B. does: Last night, when Carter Clay did not return, M.B. slipped into her bedroom and sat down on her bed and called Fair Oaks to ask for Carter Clay's telephone number. And learned that not only did Carter Clay not have a telephone, he had quit his job that afternoon.

A great palm pushing down upon her chest—that was the effect of such news upon M.B. Long after the Fair Oaks receptionist had hung up, M.B. stayed flat on her back on her king-size mattress.
Dear Lord
, she prayed,
make Carter come! Please, Lord! Help us!

That man at the McDonalds—what did he have to do with Carter?

Her little bedside clock—a thing of gilt and pretty turquoise glow-in-the-dark hands, a gift from Lorne—reads six-twenty. She could call Pastor Bitner. Pastor Bitner could comfort her. He could restore her faith. If only she could first admit to him that she has lost it. Maybe never had it.

At the rattling of the front door, M.B. pushes herself up on her elbows. There: the yawn and click of the aluminum combination. Quick, she grabs her bathrobe and starts toward the hall.

“Mom?” Jersey calls from the guest room.

M.B. does not answer, but calls, “Kitty?”

The creaks from the guest room signal that the girl is moving herself into her wheelchair. “What's going on, M.B.?”

“I'm checking.”

There is no way to separate from one another those feelings of weariness, despair, and mortification that come over M.B. at the sight of Katherine crouched on the balcony, staring down at the parking lot through the wrought iron rails.

“Come inside, honey,” M.B. says. She does not turn as the wheelchair's footrest taps up against the storm door behind her. “Come inside and I'll make you French toast.”

No. Katherine shakes her head. At some point in the night, she must have put a couple of M.B.'s hot rollers into her hair, for several sausages of curl lie across her crown. She has been crying. Her eyes are swollen, red; the skin beneath them is creased from lack of sleep.

“Pancakes? Waffles? An omelette?”

Katherine extends her throat to bleat, “I wan' Car-er!”

It is almost seven-thirty by the time M.B. has eaten her own breakfast and cleaned up the various spills and messes that Katherine created during the night. Seven-thirty is late enough, she decides, that she can reasonably slip into her bedroom and call Fair Oaks and ask them to have someone fetch Katherine.

“Oh?” says the receptionist, a young woman who drives M.B. wild with her habit of speaking in questions. “But we don't do that, Mrs. Milhause. I guess we figure you'll bring her back yourself?”

The morning sky over parking lot H appears plundered, as if it could not support a single breath. After nodding to a neighbor who politely pretends to think nothing of Katherine's occupation of the balcony, M.B. crouches down to say, “Kitty, you need to get dressed so Jersey can walk you back to Fair Oaks before lunch. There'll be trouble if you ain't there by lunch.”

Katherine grabs the top of the balcony railing and yanks herself to her feet. “I
wanna
go!” she says indignantly. “I see Car-
ter
there!”

Because M.B. does not have the heart to tell the poor thing otherwise—let them tell her at Fair Oaks, she thinks—she simply holds the door open for Katherine to pass into the unit, but, lo and behold, before Katherine is even inside, here comes Carter Clay, pulling into the lot below in his rusty, dented van.

A rotten apple. Jersey once said the rusty van made her think of a rotten apple, and today M.B. can see what she meant.

Desperate embraces are something Carter has grown accustomed to receiving at Fair Oaks, but though he pats Katherine
Milhause's heaving back as patiently as he would pat the back of any Fair Oaks resident, his heart constricts with the bitter knowledge that he is no longer merely the anonymous source of so much of this woman's misery; no, now he has made his own self important enough that his
absence
can actually increase her pain.

Over the top of Katherine's head, Carter looks up to the balcony. There is M.B., watching Katherine lift Carter's hand and kiss it and hold it to her cheek.

“Katherine.” Carter restrains her busy hands in his own. “You know how we talked about you getting out of Fair Oaks? Well, I come to see what you'd think about me taking you and Jersey back to Arizona.”

Katherine's first response is a whoop that could easily be mistaken for a sign of pain, but when she turns to M.B., she is all smiles. “Car-er's here to take me Ar-zona!” she calls.

Carter's face blazes under the full force of M.B. and Katherine's attention. He is exhausted from his sleepless night, but does his best to sound alert and reasonable when he reaches the balcony and speaks to M.B.

Katherine and Jersey want to go back to Arizona, and he's been thinking, he could take them there. Just to see how it would go, you know? And take Jersey up to that clinic in Phoenix?

For a moment, the look in M.B.'s eyes alarms Carter—
Rear End called, she knows everything
—but then M.B. is pressing her hands to her cheeks and laughing, holding open the door to #335, come in, come in.

“Where's Jersey?” Carter asks.

“Oh, she's feeding the ducks.” M.B. waves toward the big windows that overlook the golf course. “But let me think,” she murmurs. “Let me think.”

Carter steps over to the windows. The golf course and grounds of Palm Gate Village are so clean and organized that he feels as if the outdoors might actually be indoors.

There is the girl, sitting in her chair by the little water hole.

“When did you mean to go?” M.B. asks.

“Well, right away. Right—now, I thought. If that don't seem too nuts.”

M.B. looks at his face as if it is a clock and she needs the time, then, just that quickly, she turns away. “But I don't know that Jersey'll go with you,” she says. “She should. It's what she's been wanting—to go there.” M.B. drums her fingers against her lips. “Would it be too awful—because she's so stubborn—”

Anyone could see that it is with some effort that M.B. laughs. “—I mean, what if we just throw everything in the van before she gets back? You three go out for a ride, and after you're a ways down the road—well, a few hours, I guess—you tell her you're taking her to Arizona. So it's—a
surprise
, see?”

“But tricking her”—Carter breaks off as M.B. rushes down the hall to the guest bedroom.

“You tell her you're taking her to that clinic in Phoenix,” M.B. calls over her shoulder. “That'll get you on her good side. But, hey, grab that box of garbage bags under the kitchen sink, and we'll pack in them so Jersey don't see suitcases. And, Kitty, you watch the window and tell us when she starts back, hon!”

“I don't know,” Carter says, but he hurries to the cupboard under the kitchen sink and reaches for the box of bags—in the process knocking over another box, which then causes an unnerving clink: glass hitting glass in the recesses of the cupboard.

Carefully, he pats his hand toward the cupboard's rear wall and finds he has not broken, only tipped over, the bottles. Mad Dog 20–20. One full, one half-empty.

“Didn't you find them?”

Carter jumps as, coming up from behind, M.B. grabs the box of bags from his hand.

“I just—” he begins, but she is already hurrying off, and he closes the cupboard doors, and leans against the sink for a moment to catch his breath.

“Hi, Car-
ter
.” Eyes still swollen, Katherine waves from her post at the windows when Carter passes through the living room.

“How you doing?” he says, and smiles and waves back.

In the guest room, M.B. stuffs into a garbage bag: books, colored pencils, a ball of fuzzy yarn, bright clothes still on their hangers, shoes, the
JERSEY ALITZ
knapsack that strikes a blow to Carter's belly. M.B. looks up—a little.breathless—and points to a
bag by the door. “Take that down, too. That's Kitty's purse. It's got her house keys and all. Do you need money?”

“I'm okay.”

“‘Cause she's got money, you know.”

“We'll be fine.”

On his fourth or fifth trip to the van—they have almost finished the job—Carter veers off into the kitchen. “Thirsty,” he calls to Katherine when she turns from the windows to smile at him through the pass-through. “Keep your eye out for Jersey!”

The fake cheer in his voice disgusts Carter, but that disgust does not prevent his turning on the tap and noisily opening a number of kitchen cupboards, including the one beneath the sink, as he mutters, “Glass, glass, where's a glass? Okay, here's one!” He lets the tap fill one of M.B.'s tumblers while he nestles the unopened bottle of MD 20–20 into the least full of the bags in his charge.

“She come!” Katherine sticks her head in the pass-through just as Carter closes the cupboard. “She com-ing, Car!”

Carter's big heart never ticks the nervous tick of a small heart, but it does beat harder. Boom, it goes. Boom, boom, like a ship banging into a pier. A big tree hitting the ground after a long fall.

Boom, boom, boom.

“Let's go, let's go!” M.B. runs into the hall with a last bag for each of them. “Let's go!”