Lake Overturn (18 page)

“Sure, Daddy.”

Chuck held the handles of a large paper shopping bag in one hand. “I was just going through some things in the basement and—what was the name of that kid you were helping with the science project?”

“Enrique.”

“Yes, Enrique,” said Chuck. He sat on the edge of Abby’s bed and put the bag down between his feet. “I don’t need all these things. They’re accessories to the train set—trees, houses, stuff like that. They’ve been sitting down there gathering dust. You said Enrique was building a model of Eula, right? Well, maybe he can use these.”

“Are you sure, Daddy?” Her father’s train set was his favorite possession. It was worth a lot.

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m too old for this stuff anyway. See if he wants it.”

“Okay.”

Chuck remained for a moment. “You know I love you, right, sweetheart?”

Abby nodded.

“All right, then.” He rose and kissed Abby on top of her head. “I’m off to bed. Good night.”

“Good night,” said Abby. Chuck walked out into the hallway. “Daddy?” He poked his head back in. “Are you all right?”

He knew what she meant by this, and he appreciated her concern. “Yes, sweetheart”—Chuck smiled and said this firmly, so she would believe him—“I am okay.”

“Good night.” When the doctor had his private meeting with Abby three years ago, he had told her to watch for “certain signs,” one of which was the giving away of treasured possessions. He had been careful not to mention what such signs warned of, but Abby knew. Her father must have confessed suicidal thoughts.

His depression had been less sadness and more a general loosening of his hold. He lost weight and this was evident in his drawn face and in his walk: his feet touched the ground soundlessly as if he barely weighed anything. According to the cliché, happy people “walked on air,” but Abby knew that, in real life, happy people stepped strongly and felt the world under their feet. She remembered leading him into the school gym for parent-teacher conferences when her mother was away. He squeezed her hand so tightly that it hurt, and turned a harrowed look from teachers to students to the basketball court beneath his feet, as if it would drop away, leaving him to float up to the rafters. It had been the most terrifying moment of Abby’s life, to see her father so frightened.

But Abby wasn’t concerned now. His feet were not lifting again away from the earth. In fact, despite his sadness about her mother, he seemed to be clutching life stronger than ever. And he was giving away only the accessories, not the trains.

The next morning Abby awoke too early, as she often did, and couldn’t go back to sleep, so she ate a banana and decided to go for a drive before school. She took her father’s bag out to the car and peeked in as she set it into the trunk. Tiny trees in boxes. She lifted one out. The tree trunk was painted in great detail—minute brown and black brushstrokes whorled at a tiny knot—and the leaves were rubbery flecks that seemed to have been sprayed on. She put the box back in the bag and closed the trunk.

Dawn lit the hazy gray sky pink, and the birds chirped in staccato, as if they, like Abby, were cold. Abby drove out of town, through the wheat and alfalfa fields, where children stood in twos and threes on deserted corners, waiting for the school bus. The closest house that must have been theirs was far away across the field. She passed the last field and entered the rippled landscape that led up toward the Owyhee Mountains. Here the sagebrush never changed color but remained forever the same silvery blue, a shade other plants turned only when they were dead. But while sage would have looked pale next to a plant that grew in a more generous climate, it looked positively lush in comparison to the tumbleweeds that tangled with it and the yellow cheat grass that sprang up between its branches. After a half-hour drive Abby looped back into Eula. The oaks and elms, which until a month ago had been the same earnest green as that tiny model tree, had now turned bold shades of red and yellow. All these extravagant colors had been borrowed from a state far from Idaho.

That afternoon Abby took the bag to the lunchroom, where all the junior high kids were eating and hollering and doing tricks with straws and milk boxes. Abby spotted the two sitting by themselves: Gene, poor kid, was a weirdo, but Enrique was like a little chubby-cheeked angel. He leaned forward across the table toward Gene, apparently giving him some sort of instruction. Then he looked up, saw Abby, and beamed. Abby went and sat down at their table.

“I have a present for you,” she said.

“Really?”

“It’s for your model.”

She slid the bag toward Enrique, and he looked into it. “Neat!” he said, taking out a box of trees. “Can we really use them?”

“Yeah. They’re yours.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want them back after?”

“No.”

“Where’d you get them?” Enrique asked, taking out a boxed silo, then a house.

“They’re my dad’s. He collects train stuff. But he wanted to get rid of some of it, and I had told him about your project, so . . .”

Enrique’s face turned, and it seemed to Abby that the fact of the gift had suddenly caught up to him and, seeming like charity, hurt his pride. He put the house, still in its box, on the table, and frowned at it.

“Anyway . . .” Abby said apologetically.

Enrique was torn. He had immediately fallen in love with these tiny things—the fact that they could be used in the science project had barely registered—but the idea of accepting a gift from Mr. Hall made his guts freeze. In the weeks since he had come to suspect that Mr. Hall was the one who had kissed his mother, he had grown to hate this man he had never seen, but to whom he had assigned, in his imagination, thick white hair and a carnation in his lapel—Blake Carrington on
Dynasty
. Now this underhanded tycoon was using his sweet, unsuspecting daughter to send Enrique gifts. Was it a way of moving in on his mother?

But this stuff was neat.
Really
neat. It was all Enrique could do not to open the box and lift out the house to see if its front door opened on tiny hinges, as it seemed it might. If Enrique was strong and refused the gift, how would he explain it to Abby? She might be hurt, and to hurt Abby was more than he could bear.

“It might help?” offered Abby. In the pause, she had come to feel ashamed of her family’s wealth.

“Thanks, Abby. It’ll help a lot.”

Now it seemed that Enrique had simply been made solemn by the generosity of the gift. Relieved, Abby reached over and pinched his shoulder. He smiled. She turned to Gene, who tucked his chin and looked away, and gave him a thumbs-up he couldn’t have seen. “Well, guys, good luck,” she said. She rose from her chair and returned to study hall.

“C
OOP?”

He lowered the newspaper to reveal Wanda. “Well, howdy, little sister.”

“I figured I could find you here. You know, I can walk here from my place.” She seemed to be apologizing for having disturbed him at the Denny’s counter, his daytime sanctuary.

“Well, have a seat. Gina?” he called to the overweight waitress who sat in a booth, balancing her checkbook. “This is Wanda, my baby sister.”

“Hey,” the women said to each other.

“You want somethin’?” Coop asked Wanda.

“Iced tea?”

“Iced tea for the lady.”

“Shore thing,” Gina said. She scooted out of the booth, leaving a cigarette burning in the amber glass ashtray.

Coop turned to Wanda, who looked pretty, her cheeks full and her eyes weathered but lively. With a twinge of sadness, Coop had a sense of all the things Wanda had seen with those eyes. It had started so early for her. Coop’s childhood had already been over when their father died, but Wanda’s had hardly begun. Funny—when she used to show up on his doorstep, high or needing to get high, Coop had never wondered what she had seen, he had just wanted to be rid of her.

Gina set a massive plastic glass of iced tea before Wanda and returned to her booth.

“So,” Coop said.

“It’s been two weeks,” Wanda said. “I’ve been thinkin’ and thinkin’.”

“And?”

“I’m ready, Coop.”

“Well, then, there you go.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Coop didn’t need to put Wanda through the wringer. He could see that she was clean, and that she was serious. “I don’t have the money on me,” he said. “I’ll have to go to the bank. And I have one small requirement.”

“What is it?” Wanda asked.

“While I’m at the bank, I want you to visit with Uncle Frank.”

“Oh.” Wanda had expected Coop to interrogate her, to take long breaks to stare off and consider, to make her work for it. But this surprised her. Wanda still blamed Uncle Frank for setting off everything bad that happened in her life by killing her father. Coop had somehow forgiven him, but he couldn’t expect the same from her. Then again, it was only for a few minutes—a small price to pay, from Coop’s perspective. “All right,” she said.

“Gina?” Coop said. “Save my seat? I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

“Don’t keep me waiting too long,” Gina said without looking up.

“Do you want that to go?” Coop asked Wanda.

“No,” she said. She took a long drink of the iced tea just so she wouldn’t leave behind a full glass. It wasn’t nearly as good as her own.

Wanda felt a little guilty. The truth was, she had already been to Portland. She had gone through a round of tests and two interviews with agency staff members, and now a couple had asked to meet her. She needed more money to get back to Portland.

After she had last visited Coop, Wanda had gone through the most difficult week since the death of their mother. She had cut her pills into tiny quarter pieces and allowed herself only one a day. The difference between half and a quarter was surprisingly drastic. Wanda would pace the house in desperation, arguing with that side of herself that came up with reason after reason why she should be allowed one more chip of pill, then charge out into the street for a long walk. Wanda was careful not to walk past Gideon’s unit, which was just down the block from hers. There was always a half-smoked joint in his ashtray awaiting visitors, and to walk by his door was to face the possibility of ducking in for a quick smoke. Instead she would walk around the corner past the empty lot where someone had set up a little shrine—a statue of Mary in a bed of plastic flowers, a knocked-over oil drum before it to sit on. She hadn’t realized its purpose until she saw an old Mexican lady kneeling in the grass there, praying. Then she’d charge through neighborhoods where women in their curlers would turn from their soaps to watch her pass. No one went for walks, not around here. She’d reach the canal, where she’d throw in a handful of dirt to watch the red cloud roll along and disperse into the black water. The canal moved about as fast as she did, and gliding along it kept her mind off the ache. At night it took three sleeping pills to ease her into sleep—legal sleeping pills that she bought over the counter.

She felt she had earned the trip to Portland to register with the agency. She had earned the right to lie about her police record and her last name.
Wanda Coper
, she had written, and they hadn’t noticed the missing
O
. She had earned the right to reverse two digits in her Social Security number. A friend had used these tricks to register twice for welfare. They had made a photocopy of Wanda’s ID, but she figured that would just sit in her file. And she had earned the right to play a role in her interview with the psychologist—that of an independent country feminist, looking to do good for gals in need. In reality, she had a fundamental, if illogical, belief that once a couple’s baby was growing inside her, she would no longer crave anything.

But Coop had told her not to come back for two weeks, and it had been only one.

Wanda looked up Wojciechowski in the phone book and dialed the number. A woman answered, bringing to mind the round face of Mrs. Wojciechowski on the sports club membership card.

“Is Gary there?”

“Just a sec.
Gary! Phone!
. . . No, it’s a girl.”

A girl. It was enough to make Wanda smile, despite her nervousness.

“Hullo?”

“Gary, it’s Wanda.”

“Oh. Hi.”

“I was wondering if you could drop by. I have somethin’ I need to talk to you about.”

“What is it?”

“It’s real important.”

“I can’t get away.”

“Gary, I need three hundred dollars. To go to Portland.”

There was a long pause. Wanda had inflated the amount a little, since she knew Gary could afford it. And she allowed
Portland
to hang in the air. Ever since she was little, Wanda had known what people meant when they said, in a certain tone of voice, that a girl had gone to Portland. It meant she had had an abortion.

“I’ll bring it over tomorrow night,” Gary said.

The grave and stony look on Gary’s face when he handed her the envelope made Wanda regret it all for a moment. She had aged him. “Thank you,” she said, and was going to invite him in, but he turned and walked quickly back to his car. She would have explained if he had come in!

Gary was the age, Wanda mused after he left, that he wouldn’t doubt that he had gotten her pregnant with that one shot. These boys listened to their mothers’ frantic warnings, and the message they received was this:
The girl will always get pregnant.
He didn’t know the facts. Maybe Gary considered it a punishment from God. Maybe he would go through his life counting, year by year, the age his child would have been.

She soon put aside these remorseful thoughts. She had the money, and she construed things to make the ease with which she acquired it an indication that she was on the right track.

She did the same now, with Coop. He wouldn’t be funding her first trip to Portland, but her second. What was the difference? She hadn’t lied to him. She had been prepared to, but Coop hadn’t required an explanation, so she felt, really, in the clear. This was what the Catholics called a “sin of omission.” It was a term she had learned from an old boyfriend, Ricky, the only Catholic—and the only Mexican—she had ever dated.