The Art of Crash Landing (24 page)

I never looked back to see if she heard me.

L
uke doesn't say much on the way home from Richard Hambly's except to ask if I'm hungry. We drive through a McDonald's, which wouldn't have been my first choice, but for once in my life, I keep my damn mouth shut. I'm not always good at picking up clues, but I can tell that Luke is annoyed, and I don't blame him. First he had to drive me to the middle of nowhere and then he had to watch me make an old man cry.

When we pull up in front of my grandmother's house, Luke turns to me and asks, “So, did you get what you wanted?”

I'm pretty sure he's not talking about the Quarter Pounder and large fries in the bag on my lap, but I'm not sure how to answer his question. Mr. Hambly's story didn't shed any light on what happened to my mother, but it did explain Fritter's refusal to discuss my grandfather's death. In the end, the visit with Hambly was a little like ordering a Happy Meal but ending up with a Big Mac Combo. I didn't get what I wanted, but I got more than I expected.

“I'm sorry I dragged you into this,” I tell him. It's not answering his question, but it's what he wants to hear.

He tips his head in acknowledgment of my apology. “Is hanging out with you always this interesting?”

I grin. “I've been compared to a natural disaster.”

“Which one?”

“All of them.”

Luke snorts a little laugh. “I'll shore up the levies for tomorrow night.” This is his way, I think, of making sure that our date for tomorrow is still on.

The evening sunlight illuminates the left side of his face, accentuating his cheekbone and chin, while casting a shadow across his full lips. He's turned toward me, one very muscular arm draped over the steering wheel. Good Lord. He's actually quite handsome. How could I not have noticed before?

“We may need extra sand,” I reply, reaching over to ruffle his hair, just the way he hates it.

O
nce inside the house, I notice that my already filthy jeans now have a grease spot on one leg. I can put off doing laundry no longer. After eating, I go upstairs to try on some of my mother's old jeans, but they are way too small. The only pants that fit are a pair of groovy aqua velour sweatpants, so I put those on, gather up a load of clothes, and trudge out to the garage. The washer and dryer are circa
I Love Lucy
, but I persevere.

I call Queeg to check on him, but Min He answers his phone. She reports that his biopsy went well, but he's sleeping now. When I ask her to please let him know that I called, she asks why I didn't call earlier. If I had a good answer to that question, I'd give it to her, but since I don't I tell her that it's none of her damn business. She hangs up without saying good-bye.

It's time to start my stakeout, so I turn off all the lights and sit on the sofa to wait. Sigh. There's enough of an evening glow
coming in through the windows that I can kind of read, so I pick up a magazine from the coffee table. I flip through the pages, mostly thinking about how quiet the house is without the dogs and how much stakeouts suck. But I also find myself wondering: is it marketing genius or some more subtle cosmic force that makes every elderly person on the planet subscribe to
Arizona Highways
?

I
t's full dark when a noise startles me awake. Once I remember where I am and why I'm asleep on the couch, I sit up and rub my face and listen for the sound that woke me. I hear it again; it's coming from the kitchen.

I pad to the kitchen doorway and peer around the corner. There's just enough ambient light for me to see what's making the noise. It's Tawny wedging herself through the little doggy door. I watch in wonder as she inches her way forward. It's exactly like childbirth, but only if babies emerged from the womb fully clothed and cursing under their breath. She has one shoulder through the door, and as I watch, she squirms until the other pops through. I wait until she's struggling to get her hips in without losing her pants, and then I turn on the light.

The look on her face is priceless, simply too good not to save. I pull out my phone.

“Smile!” I take the picture even though her expression could in no way be mistaken for a smile.

I grab her a beer and set it on the kitchen table, pull out two chairs and then sit in one and wait. Meanwhile, she's rocking back and forth, pausing to pull her pants up every so often until she finally gets the rest of her body on this side of the door. Standing, she brushes herself off and then comes over to sit at the table.

“You should join a circus,” I say.

She twists the top off the Bud and gags down a swallow.
“How'd you figure it out?” She's trying to act cool, but I can tell she's secretly pleased that I've discovered how clever she is.

“You're not as smart as you think you are.”

“Whatever.”

“You were careless. Leaving my stuff in your truck, and there was a cigarette butt in the turd you left on the shelf this morning. I happen to know the Winstons have a cigarette habit.”

She thinks about this and nods. “Where are they, by the way?”

Her question catches me by surprise. I'd assumed that she had them, but her confusion looks genuine.

“You tell me. They were gone when I got home last night.”

Her expression changes from tough to stricken. “They were here when . . .” She pauses, reluctant to confess.

“The gate was standing open when I got home last night.”

“I thought I shut it,” she says, blinking back tears.

“I know.”

“I meant to shut it—”

“The latch is messed up. It could've happened to anybody.” I don't like the girl, but her guilt makes me squirm.

She nods and sniffs.

“But my other stuff didn't run away.”

“Other stuff?”

“The guitar strap, the camera bag, about a thousand negatives.”

She shrugs. “Not ringing any bells.”

“Come on, the strap doesn't belong to me, and the camera bag was my mom's.”

“So?” Tawny keeps her expression cool. She's trying to tough this one out.

“Please,” I say, surprising both of us, I think.

Tawny sighs and sets down her beer. “Okay.”

On our way out to the truck Tawny explains that Fritter
instigated the theft—of the negatives, anyway. According to the girl, when she mentioned our plans to print some of the old negatives at the house, Fritter went ballistic and insisted that Tawny make sure that didn't happen. The girl's plan had been to swipe the negatives at some point when we were working in the darkroom, but when I bailed on her and went home with Father Barnes, she instituted an alternate, more punitive plan.

“But,” I say, “the dog door?”

Tawny grins. “Pretty cool, right? I'd already done it a couple times since the old lady died. It's quiet here. A good place to smoke and drink beer.”

This explains the beer in the fridge and Tawny's familiarity with the house.

“And Fritter wanted the negatives because . . .” I'm hoping she'll fill in the blank.

“I have no idea.”

“Why did you agree to help her?” I ask. “Considering all the dog shit you've brought into the library, I thought your goal was to annoy her.”

“She said she'd take me off bathroom duty for the rest of the summer.”

“And it was worth it?”

The girl shrugs. “That old lady eats a lot of prunes.”

Tawny climbs in the truck and then out again, holding Nick's strap and the camera bag. I take them from her, tell her good night, and walk back up to the porch. At the front door, I turn around and look at the girl, still standing next to the truck. From this distance she looks like a little kid waiting for her mother to drive her somewhere.

“What time is it?” I call out.

There's a flash of light as she checks her phone. “Almost midnight.”

I don't know why I do it, but I'm pretty sure it has everything to do with the thought of her sneaking into an empty house and sitting there, all alone, trying to learn to drink beer. “Do you have those chemicals you picked up at Gandy Graphix?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she replies. “But Fritter made me give her all the negatives.”

“I wasn't lying when I said I found some hidden. Let's go see what's on them.”

She wastes no time grabbing the sack from the truck and running to join me on the porch. It's dark, but there's enough light for me to make out the stretch of white teeth in her smile.

I'm not mad at Tawny about last night, but I'm not stupid. I make a show of counting the number of strips in the packet before I hand them to Tawny and show her the light box.

“Pick out one strip. We'll print a couple pictures tonight.”

She replies, “Three?”

Three is not my definition of a couple, unless we're talking about a Jenna Jameson movie, but I tell her fine.

A few minutes later, she brings over a strip and with a little laugh says, “Let's do the last three on here.”

“What's so funny?”

“You'll see.”

In the amber glow of the safelight, I explain each step as my mother once explained them to me. I give her the tongs to agitate the print, and when the image starts to appear, she tells me to close my eyes, so I do. I don't have the heart to tell her I already got a peek when I looked through the enlarger.

With my eyes closed all I have left is the sound and the smell of the darkroom. I smile. It's the closest I've felt to my mother in a very long time.

“You know, when I was little, I was afraid of the dark.” I'm whispering, but I don't know why.

Tawny makes an amused sound. “Not me. I love the dark. Always have.”

“What are you afraid of?” I ask.

For a few seconds the only sound is the soft sloshing of the print moving back and forth in the tray, then she says, “Needles.”

I laugh. “I didn't see that one coming.”

I can hear the smile in her voice when she replies. “Yeah, well . . . I overcame my fear, I guess. Piercings are cool.”

“Plus, I bet they do a great job of pissing off your mother.”

She laughs softly. “You still afraid of the dark?”

“Nope.”

“So what are you afraid of now?”

I know the answer to this one. I'm afraid of going home to Nick, and then to the next guy and the next. I'm afraid of getting an abortion and I'm afraid of having a child. I'm afraid of booze. I'm afraid of the inevitable, the day I can no longer fight the current. I'm afraid of becoming my mother.

“Drowning,” I say, and it's the truth.

There's another quiet space filled with darkness and a chemical smell and memories. If my mother were here, what would she tell us?

“Time to rinse,” I say. I sound just like her.

O
nce we put the papers in the water tray, I lead Tawny into the bathroom, attach the tubing to the faucet and clamp it tight. I leave her to rotate and rinse the prints since this is all still supposed to be a surprise for me. She sighs when I tell her ten minutes, but she doesn't argue. When she returns to the darkroom, I turn on the overhead lights and then stand back and watch as she clips each print on the wire. The photo that Tawny thought was so funny is of a boy, lithe and taut as only a teenage man-boy can be, standing
outside, surrounded by trees, his laughing face upturned and his arms outstretched as if he were trying to embrace the whole world. He is wearing nothing but tennis shoes.

“Wow,” I say. “He's hot.”

Tawny looks at me and frowns. “Don't be a perv. He's like my age.”

“That was taken thirty-five years ago,” I remind her. “He's probably a grandpa now.”

“Ooooh that's right,” she replies. “Gross.”

I
'm not surprised when Tawny asks if we can print some more tomorrow night. I tell her that I have a date tomorrow—a real one this time—and extract from her what seems to be a sincere promise not to break in again, by assuring her that we can print more photos Saturday. That being said, I still plan to hide Nick's strap, the camera bag, and the negatives before I leave this house again.
Once bitten, twice shy,
as Queeg would say.

Before she goes home, I ask Tawny if she might be able to procure me a somewhat illegal item. The girl laughs and tells me it won't be a problem. Since I'm broke, we end up with a you'll-owe-me-one sort of agreement, which pleases her a bit more than I'm comfortable with. Nobody wants to owe a favor to someone who doesn't think twice about carting around dog poo.

Once she's gone, I wander through the house turning off lights and making sure the doors are locked. I put some dog food and water on the front porch and in the back, just in case, and then I walk upstairs. Back in the darkroom, I grab all the negatives and take them over to the light box. With the images so tiny and all the tones reversed it's hard to see details, but as far as I can tell the only obviously interesting one is the naked boy, which is funny, but surely not theft-worthy. I can't imagine what that old woman
is after, but if my mother had some juicy photo of Fritter, it's not here. I gather up the negatives and turn off the light box. I can't decide if I'm disappointed or relieved.

Before I leave the room, I look again at the damp prints hanging from the wire. The boy is lovely, of course, but it's the next photo I study with interest. It's of a car, and if I'm not mistaken it's a Malibu from the late 1970s. I'm betting it's a '78 model. I'm betting it was red. The last photo is a picture of the girl who will someday be my mother. She is looking at the camera. At me.

Her smile hints at a secret.