The Long and Faraway Gone (4 page)

“That's why you're going, not me
.
” Gavin stood. “Oklahoma. Shit. What's in Oklahoma? The wind sweeping down the plains. Have a nice trip.”

 

Genevieve

September 1986

Genevieve stood, sweating, and watched the guy make Indian tacos. After every third or fourth taco, he'd pause, pop a zit, and then sniff his fingertips.

That pretty much captured it, Genevieve's definition of hell: stuck baby-­sitting your little sister at the Oklahoma State Fair, a thousand degrees in the shade, the funk of cow shit fuming out from the livestock pens so thick you could taste it, and the Indian taco guy popping zits like they were going out of style.

Oh, and all that while totally straight. You know, just in case hell wasn't hellish enough.

No drugs. No drugs?

Genevieve was sweaty, her hair dead on her shoulders, her mascara melting. She watched Mr. Indian Taco pop another zit. Genevieve wished someone would remind her, please, why she had chosen today of all days to take Nancy Reagan's advice.

No, drugs!

Genevieve, hey, can't we talk about this?

No!

Genevieve's little sister, Julianna, had reached the front of the taco line. She glanced back at Genevieve and grinned. And waited. What was the little goofball waiting for? It took Genevieve a second to realize that her sister was wearing Genevieve's favorite shades, her wood-­framed Vuarnets.

Brat!

Genevieve gave her the finger. Julianna lowered the Vuarnets and lifted one eyebrow like Tom Cruise in
Risky Business
. Genevieve refused to smile, but, God, the little goofball could crack her up. Even when Julianna was being a total pain in the ass.
Especially
when she was being a total pain in the ass.

That was kind of a genius gift, Genevieve supposed. An even more useful survival skill, probably, than being pretty or smart or whatever.

Genevieve studied Julianna as she paid for her Indian taco and tried to guess if her sister would ever be pretty. Right now, age twelve, five years younger than Genevieve, Julianna just looked like the goofball twelve-­year-­old she was. Sort of cute, Genevieve supposed, but—­all those awkward angles and mismatched parts—­like a cute pterodactyl. There were times when Genevieve would glance at Julianna and think,
You never know, maybe she'll grow into those legs someday and turn a few heads.
And then other times Genevieve would think,
No, get ready world, for a gawky, horse-­faced girl who cracks everyone up and marries a sweet dull guy three inches shorter than she is.

Genevieve had always been pretty, but she hadn't turned
pretty
pretty until the summer before high school. Nick of time, and what a welcome relief that had been. Because Genevieve wasn't smart, and she didn't have a genius gift for cracking ­people up. At least nobody but her goofball little sister.

Who laughed like a spaz when Genevieve leaned over and studied the Indian taco and said, “Does Indian taste like chicken?”

“After this,” Julianna said when she finished laughing, “I want to go see the freaks.”

Yeah, Genevieve thought, like that was gonna happen when she wasn't on drugs. “You're the freak. Give me back my sunglasses.”

“Oooh,” Julianna said. “I'm so sexy. Everybody look at me. You can't take your eyes off me. I'm
Genevieve
.”

With a French accent and a flirty little cock of her hips. Genevieve refused to smile. She grabbed back her Vuarnets and put them on. With—­a second later, just when Julianna was about to bite into her taco—­a flirty little cock of her hips that made her sister laugh again like a spaz.

Two preppy college guys in Izods were scoping Genevieve out, from over by the freshwater taffy. She took off her Vuarnets again and held that thing between her teeth—­the arm of the sunglasses or whatever it was called—­while she pulled her hair back through a scrunchie. Just to watch the two college guys watching her. See? Genevieve had a genius gift, too.

College guys often had good drugs. Too bad that Genevieve was not, today, on speaking terms with drugs.

No! Can't hear you, drugs! Lalalalalala!

“Your mouth is too big for your head,” Genevieve told her sister. “You better hope your head grows, or you're gonna look like one of those snakes that can unhinge their jaws to eat an antelope or whatever.”

“Then I can join the freak show. Do you remember Dad and Stan?”

Stan was the world's smallest man, barely three feet tall but perfectly proportioned, a perfect little doll man. He sat inside a tent, on a tiny chair, in the center of a roped-­off sawdust ring. ­People stood at the rope and stared at him. Genevieve and Julianna's dad had taken them to see Stan once. Their dad shared his popcorn with Stan and asked him what he thought about Gerald Ford.

Their aunt used to say, about their dad, that he never met a stranger.

But no way did Julianna remember any of that. Genevieve had been barely nine when their dad was killed in a car wreck, which meant Julianna would have been barely four.

“You don't remember Stan. You were too little.”

“I wasn't. I remember that Dad and Stan talked about politics.”

“You just remember me telling you that.”

“I don't! I remember Dad—­”

“Shut up!” Genevieve said. She felt a slash of rage, white hot, blowing up out of nowhere. Here one second and then gone again so quickly that she was just a spectator, too close to a train that rushed past and sucked the breath out of her lungs.

She glanced at Julianna and felt bad. She wanted to explain:
It's not you. Well, mostly it's not you. It's you and it's not you. It's you, yes, because you're twelve years old and you shouldn't need a baby-­sitter to take you to the fair.
Genevieve, when she was her sister's age, was running wild on the midway with her friends. Buying plastic barrels of root beer and spiking them with cheap rum. But Julianna was their mother's precious baby, and—­especially after what had happened last month at that movie theater across town—­she wouldn't let Julianna out of the house without a police escort.
My precious baby, Julianna, if anything like that ever happened to her, I would just et cetera, et cetera.

And if anything like that ever happened to Genevieve? Genevieve noticed that their mother didn't get all melodramatic about that.

Their mother didn't want to let Julianna go to the fair at all. But Julianna begged and begged, and finally their mother caved.

“I trust you,” she warned Genevieve, meaning of course that she didn't. She hadn't trusted Genevieve since the DUI last year. Since the time she'd caught Genevieve smoking pot when she was fourteen. Since ever, really.

“You're driving me out of my mind,” Genevieve told Julianna. “It's like getting tortured. It's like getting tortured by a Nazi who smells like watermelon Jolly Ranchers.”

Julianna giggled and bumped her head against Genevieve's shoulder like a puppy. She was so easy. She forgave and forgot, and rainbows filled the sky again. It made Genevieve furious. Julianna should tell Genevieve to go screw herself. She should tell Genevieve,
Screw yourself, you selfish, moody, mean bitch of a big sister.

Genevieve just wanted to
bite
someone. God. It was the heat and the cow-­shit funk. The funk of rancid egg-­roll grease and generator exhaust as they walked up Food Alley toward the carnival games. It was—­oh, yeah, by the way—­
no drugs
.

What she would give right now for a single line of pure white snow. Genevieve shivered, just thinking about the ignition, the surge, the world filled suddenly with Tinker Bell sparkle.

Howard, alleged expert on these matters, had admitted to Genevieve that saying no to drugs and booze didn't get much easier with practice, not really. The craving never faded. Howard claimed he could still taste the first sip of scotch he'd ever taken.

“Not even a little easier?” Genevieve had asked.

“Maybe a little,” he'd said. Howard, who was always so full of shit. That was the best he could do?

Julianna, excited, turned onto Carnival Row. Genevieve groaned. She wished now she'd picked up an extra weekend shift at Sonic. Carhopping for crotch change was preferable to this.

Well, maybe not. But half a dozen of six, or whatever the saying was.

C'mon, Genevieve. Be reasonable.

No, drugs! Shut your trap for two seconds, will you?

The minute Genevieve graduated from high school—­seven months and counting, you better believe it—­she planned to flee Oklahoma City, to fly, to get out of Dodge. She thought she might head to California. Or New York City. Thailand, maybe, where she'd heard that ­people lit paper lanterns that floated up into the night sky. Genevieve was up for anywhere, as long as it was far, far away.

“Oooh!” Julianna said.

“Oooh!” Genevieve said. “What?”

“Let's play the balloon game!”

The balloon game was a race. You used a pistol to squirt water into the mouth of a plastic clown. If your balloon popped first, you won a prize. Stuffed Pink Panthers hung like meat from the rafters of the booth.

“I know what!” Genevieve said.

“What?

“Let's not and say we did.”

“Please! Please, please, please?”

“Give me a Jolly Rancher,” Genevieve said.

A goat roper in a big cowboy hat won the first race. So Genevieve forked over two more bucks, and they tried again. Julianna won this time. She squealed and jumped around. The carny who ran the booth produced a Pac-­Man key chain and told Julianna that if she won again, she could trade up to the next level of prize.

“Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater,” Genevieve told the carny. He was a lot older than she was, close to thirty, but sexy in a sort of dirty, long-­haired, hippie way, with a dark, dirty tan and blue eyes and a diamond stud earring. A tattoo of a snake curled round and round one muscular forearm.

“You're rubber and I'm glue,” he said, smiling and dangling the key chain from his index finger.

“I think you've got that bass-­ackwards, Mr. Pumpkin Eater,” Genevieve said.

“Says you.”

“And the horse I rode in on.”

She reached out and flicked the key chain so that it spun around his finger. He laughed, and Genevieve thought it might be the best feeling ever—­to stop, if just for a second, thinking about drugs.

Although, God, just imagine the amazing drugs that a sexy, dirty, hippie carny probably had access to. Doy.

“Genni!” Julianna, meanwhile, was bouncing off the walls. “I want to play again!”

“Or you're gonna pee your pants, presumably?”

“Genni! C'mon! Please?”

Genevieve turned back to the carny. “If my little sister doesn't win a Pink Panther, she's gonna presumably pee her pants right here. You are officially warned.”

The carny looked Genevieve over. He took his sweet time, very sexy, and then yawned, and then stretched, and then yanked down one of the stuffed Pink Panthers.

“What the hell?” the goat roper who had won the first race complained. “That ain't right!”

The carny snapped around—
­snap!
—­and gave the goat roper a stare so electric with menace that Genevieve expected the colored lightbulbs that trimmed the booth to buzz and dim.

The goat roper blinked. And he wasn't some small sissy guy either. He looked away, then slid from his stool and slunk off. Genevieve heard him mutter something under his breath, but only when he was at a safe distance.

The carny turned back to Genevieve and smiled. It was official: Julianna was no longer the only girl at the balloon race about to pee her pants with excitement.

“So, hey,” the carny said. “Some of us are gonna party later. Just after dark, out back at the trailers. Why don't you come by?”

“Whatever,” Genevieve said. She grabbed Julianna's wrist and pulled her away from the booth. Julianna hugged her Pink Panther like she'd just given birth to the baby Jesus. Genevieve waited till they were almost to the end of Carnival Row before she glanced back. And sure enough there he was, the sexy carny, watching just like she knew he'd be.

G
ENEVIEVE HAD STARTED
smoking pot when she was fourteen. Everyone smoked pot. Who didn't smoke pot at parties? Or on break from your shitty job at Baskin-­Robbins, the only place in town where you didn't have to be sixteen to work. You could lie about your age to get a job at other places—­a lot of ­people did that—­but why bother? Those jobs were none the less shitty.

Pot was fine, but pot was boring. Ludes made Genevieve feel gross and sluggish. Cocaine, on the other hand—­oh, my. Genevieve had been introduced at age sixteen, when she and her friend Lacey snuck into a college party. That first rush was like nothing Genevieve had ever experienced before.

Why, hello there!

Most normal humans, like her friend Lacey, could do drugs on the weekends or at parties and then go on with their normal human lives. Genevieve, apparently, was not a normal human.

God. The stupid shit that Genevieve had done when she was on drugs. And she had done it without a second thought.

But why blame the drugs for that? According to her mother, Genevieve had never given a second thought to anything. Her mother said Genevieve had never cared about anyone but herself.

So please explain why Genevieve, if she was so selfish and self-­centered, had practically raised Julianna by herself those first few years after their dad died. Fixing her breakfast, fixing her dinner, giving her baths. Julianna permanently attached to her like she was a tumor or something, even after Julianna was way too big for Genevieve to carry around on her hip.

While their mother worked all day and ran around with her girlfriends all night and only managed to drag herself home so she could yell at Genevieve about the laundry not being done.