Cold (13 page)

After a moment, she said, “We did.”

“We did, what?”

“We put him away, Warren.
 
When he found out about us, what did you think would happen?
 
What did you think he’d do?”

“I don’t have to think.
 
I
know
what he did—he went com
plet
ely nuts.”

“That’s right, Warren.
 
We knew it would happen eventually.”

“Yeah, well you seemed to like it there for a while.”

“A very little while.”

“You used to like a good fuck, Noel.
 
Noisy, too.”

“Let’s just say I wasn’t thinking then,” she said.
 
“We drove Norman to it.”

“Oh, that’s right.
 
You and me.
 
You and me and your father’s lawyer.
 
And Raymond Yates disappearing—let’s not forget that, how that influenced things.
 
We
all
put Norman away, but only
you
feel guilty.
 
Guilty enough for the rest of us.
 
But—” he raised both hands, “but I know, it’s not that simple.”
 
He went to the office door and before he let himself out, he said, “I know what it’s like when all you want to do is get out of something.
 
Me out of the Navy.
 
You out of our marriage.
 
Norman out of prison.
 
Everybody wants to get out of something.
 
Ever wonder why that
is?
 
All over America, the land of the
free,
and everybody just wants to get
out
of
some
thing.
 
Yeah,
right.”
 
He pushed open the door, got in his car and drove off, toward downtown.

Noel picked up her magazine and tried to finish an article about an ancient mastodon found frozen in the Artic Circle.
 
Scientists hoped to clone a new animal that would be a hybrid of musk ox and mastodon.
 
She put the magazine down.

Sent.
 
Warren had said
sent.

She’d written Norman plenty of letters, but she’d never sent them.

Except one, and she wasn’t sure if she’d ever sent it.

Six

It was almost ten when Norman reached North Eicher.
 
The town appeared to be the same as ever.
 
The snow was a veil, which kept the edges soft.
 
Rooflines of houses.
 
Small brick buildings downtown.
 
St. Luke’s steeple.
 
Store signs:
 
Ron’s IGA, Hautamaki’s True Value Hardware, LeSerge’s Game & Fishing, John’s Pizza was now Joey’s Pizzeria.
 
Hair Apparent had been replaced by Bo Tangles.
 
But Erma’s Bingo Shop was still in business.
 
The bars were all the same:
 
JD’s, The Blue Antler, Sally’s Pub, The Green Plaid Tavern.
 
All of them had neon signs in the front window advertising non-alcoholic beers because someone down in Lansing had introduced a law that prohibited neon signs that promoted alcoholic beverages.
 
At the corner of Hemmila and Linden, Pierre’s Pasty Shop was now Thai Princess.
 
Before Norman went away you couldn’t even get an egg roll in North Eicher.

On the far side of town the road approached the intersection of Linden and County Road 337, which locals called Laughing Pike Road because it went north through the woods for about forty miles and terminated at Laughing Pike Point on Lake Superior.
 
It was the one road in and the one road back.
 
At the intersection was Jacques’ Diner and the Deer Run Motel.
 
Norman pulled into the parking lot of Jacques’, which was closed.
 
He felt close now and he needed to be patient, careful.
 
It was how he’d survived inside, keeping everything slow and to a minimum.
 
You appear to be a threat, you’ll be treated like a threat.
 
He could never accept that he was where he was, and after about a year inside the life he thought he should be leading here in North Eicher became a distortion.
 
Occasionally he would talk to his friend Gary on the phone.
 
Gary had moved down to Escanaba for a job manufacturing storm windows and doors, but his family was still in North Eicher and he helped Norman keep up.
 
Gary told him that Warren had married Noel, and that she had had a baby girl.
 
She was named Lorraine, and she was born on February first.
 
Norman also knew that nine months before the child was born he and Noel had gone down to Door County in Wisconsin for Memorial Day weekend.
 
It was his child, he was certain.
 
And it was his life Warren had been leading, which apparently Warren had screwed up.
 
Gary told him that Noel and Warren were on and off but now had really split up.
 
Her father owned the Deer Run and she was working the desk nights.

•

There was a cot in the small storage room behind the front office and around ten-thirty Noel lay down and closed her eyes.
 
Through the nights at the motel she read a lot, surfed the internet on the computer, and dozed.
 
But it was never really sleep.
 
And the fact that she’d taken all those pills earlier wasn’t helping.
 
She was tempted to take another white, just to get her up off where she was now, a dull, alert state that tended to cram her thoughts together so that nothing seemed interesting.
 
Finally she was able to lie down and close her eyes, but her mind was still going.
 
So when she heard the front door open it wasn’t a matter of waking suddenly.
 
Getting up, she pulled her sweater down over her hips and went out the door to the front office.

Norman stood across the counter.
 
His face was pale, his cheeks hollow in a way she could never imagine; but it was his eyes—how deep they were in their sockets—that caused her to gasp.
 
She exhaled slowly.
 
“I heard you got out.”

He simply nodded.

“You walked away in the blizzard?”

He nodded again.

Suddenly her knees seemed to quit and she had to support herself by placing both arms on the high counter.
 
“Oh, Christ,”
she whispered.

He watched her, looking uncertain; then he went over to the coffee machine and filled a Styrofoam cup.
 
“You got to sit,” he said, bringing the coffee to the counter.
 
She took the cup in her right hand and, keeping the other hand on the wall, she lowered herself until she was seated on the carpeted floor.
 
She couldn’t see him, until he appeared at the end of the counter.
 
He seemed afraid to move too quickly, to come too close.

“I’m shaky,” she said.
 
“This is
so
weird.”

He reached into the pocket of his overcoat and took something out, something small enough to conceal in his palm.
 
Stepping toward her, he looked like someone testing lake ice.
 
When he was close enough he leaned over, extended his arm and opened his palm, which held two white pills.
 
Certs.
 
“I think you need sugar,” he said.
 
“There was a guy inside who got the shakes all the time.
 
They gave him candy bars.”

“They’re not the ones with that Nutrisweet?”

“No.”
 
He smiled and it did something to soften his face.
 
“They’re the real thing.”

She took the Certs and put both in her mouth.
 
Her hand was shaking so much she had to put the cup on the floor.
 
After she chewed and swallowed the first two Certs, he gave her the rest of the roll.
 
“It’s working,” she said finally.
 
“It’s like I’m slowing down.”

He knelt on the floor and sat back on his haunches.
 
“I could get a candy bar or juice or something.
 
Is there a vending machine?”

She shook her head and ate the last of the Certs.
 
“I’m all right, really.”

For a moment she thought she was going to cry; she could feel the muscles around her eyes and mouth tighten.
 
Instead, she shook her head furiously until it made her dizzy; then she slammed the back of her skull against the wall and closed her eyes.
 
“It
works,”
she said, laughing.
 
She banged her head again.
 
“It works.
 
When I was a girl my friend Amy said that if you do that when you think you’re going to cry you won’t.”
 
Opening her eyes, she said, “But I don’t recommend it too often—because it makes you see those little stars off in the corners.”

•

Warren left The Blue Antler with Bobby’s ex-wife’s cousin Leah.
 
She waited tables at Jacques’ Diner and spent most nights over at Bobby’s house since her husband had moved down to Chicago.
 
Warren drove around town slowly while they split a joint and passed the schnapps.
 
Leah was in her early thirties but she could pass for twenty-five in dim bar light.
 
She kept her hand on his thigh as they drove.
 
He knew she was really angling for a hit of coke.

When they finished the joint, he pulled his truck into the parking lot at Jacques’ Diner.
 
He pulled up between the dumpster and side of the small building, so that he could see across the street and through the plate glass of the Deer Run Motel’s front office.
 
Sometimes he sat here throughout the night by himself and watched Noel work behind the counter.
 
The office appeared empty now, which he knew meant she was in the back room on the cot reading or sleeping.
 
Or maybe she was just lying there in orbit.
 
Seemed that when he saw her lately there was usually that quickness in her eyes.
 
Though she gave him all sorts of shit when she saw him, he still kept her well supplied.
 
It might help bring her back.

“Whyn’t we just go back to Bobby’s?” Leah said as she tipped the bottle of schnapps up to her mouth.

“Got something for you.”
 
He took his vial out of his coat pocket.
 
“There’s not much left, so I think Bobby’ll have to miss out on this party.”

Leah took the vial.
 
Her fingernails were long and painted dark purple with little flecks of silver.
 
She held the vial, which was shaped like a clear plastic bullet, up to her right nostril, pinched off her left nostril and inhaled quickly.
 
“Oooh yeah.”

She held the vial out to him but he shook his head.
 
“Not much left.
 
Finish it.”

“Thanks, baby.”
 
Leah worked the vial into her other nostril, inhaled, and then lay her head back against the seat.
 
She put the empty vial on the dashboard and then rubbed her forefinger over her gums.
 
“How ‘bout something in return?” she said.

“What a concept.”

“Uh-huh.
 
I give great concept.”

They both laughed but Warren kept his eyes on the motel as Leah undid his belt and zipper.
 
The florescent ceiling lights in the office seemed painfully bright.
 
Once, several months after they were married, when he had stopped in at the motel in the middle of the night, he found Noel dozing on the cot and as soon as she saw him she began undoing his belt.
   

He glanced down at the top of Leah’s head.
 
Her blond hair was so fine it seemed to float above his lap.
 
He placed one hand on the back of her skull, and with the other he took a drink of schnapps.
 
The snow that passed through the light from the motel office was absolutely horizontal, as though there were no such thing as gravity.
 

•

It was hot in the office and Norman had worked his coat off.
 
He was sitting on the floor now, his back against the cabinet door under the counter.

“I got your letters,” she said.
 
The color had returned to her face.
 
Something about her skin was different—it wasn’t as plump and smooth as he remembered, though the way it was now suited him fine—and he suspected it had to do with having a child.
 
“Why’d you stop sending them?”

“I don’t know,” he said.
 
“Guess it seemed pointless after a while.”

“They made me mad at first,” she said.