The Spark and the Drive (24 page)

Mary Ann stood behind him, and for a moment I imagined her smiling, celebrating another act of retribution. But without hesitating she held him by the shoulders. I don’t know if he even felt it; he seemed less than human in his detachment from her touch. As he shook his head at the Z-28, like a captain watching the final mast go down, she stayed beside him, closing her eyes as if to infuse him with the sedative of her understanding.

And all at once it was clear that he wasn’t the object of her malice. Maybe he had once been, when the hurt, the indifference, still stung. But not now. Mary Ann wanted the jobs to stop coming. She wanted the shop to close.

PART THREE

32.

The ’Cuda had a smooth wood-grain steering wheel with a matching pistol-grip shifter, and I mean it was scary fast. On empty roads I broke loose the tires with a bump of the throttle, the rear end swinging as if on a frozen pond, the backseat filling with burning white air, and I studied the counter slide. I tried to own its power and measured my advances in rpm, daring myself to bring the Stewart Warner tach close to redline, hammer down for just another second, like holding your hand over a flame.

I played in my mind the movie of Nick finessing the wheel of the ZL1, never overreacting, even as the front tires began to float before the car’s gravity evened out. And then it was about the shifting. You could hit second too hard and send the ass end into another slide; you wanted to chirp the tires, not bake them. I pushed the car to maybe half capacity and was terrified.

Mary Ann didn’t come in on the day, a week later, when Nick and I signed titles over. I’d planned to take her for a test drive and show how the steering shook a little over sixty, how the transmission shifted funny from second to third. An hour left before closing, I went down and stashed a few mementos in the Nova in a way that looked accidental: a tube of ChapStick, half a pack of Certs, a socket, two Allen wrenches, a matchbook from Hog Wild. They say smell is our strongest memory trigger, and I brought down the stick of deodorant I kept in my toolbox and rubbed it over the carpets and headliner.

The next evening my Nova, now Mary Ann’s, was parked in the driveway when I arrived home. I hurried in through the garage. On the back deck she was grilling burgers while April dunked nylon straps in a bucket of soapy water in the backyard, and though I’d about leapt out of my car, I decided at the last second not to show my excitement.

The old Char-Broil grill shot up flames a foot long where the burners had rusted out, and I grinned vaguely at Mary Ann standing over it as I bounded down the wooden steps to give April a hug. “Look,” April said, pushing me away to dip her straps into a bucket of foam and water. When she ran across the lawn a tube of oily bubble followed her and left a rope of slime when it popped.

Mary Ann and I were cordial that evening, by which I mean we had pointless, reflexive conversation. I thought she was only tolerating me for April’s sake. In the bathroom I rehearsed unimpeachable monologues, after which I told my reflection to just let it go, to be forgiving and love unconditionally. But when I came back down Mary Ann eyed me evasively before returning to a jigsaw puzzle they had going, and I wanted to tell her exactly what I deserved. That is the thing—entitlement, not love—that conquers all. I saw glimpses of the path to insanity as I suffocated on my feelings.

“So now you hate me?” I said, in the kitchen one night while April was watching TV.

Mary Ann looked up from chopping black olives. “Is that what you think?”

“I wouldn’t have said anything. I mean it, Mary Ann.”

She set down the knife and sighed.

“It’s not your fault,” I said. “If you’re embarrassed, I mean. He’s the bad guy. He’s the one to blame.”

She brushed hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “Tell you what. I can let it go right now, if I can just say something first.”

“Of course you can.”

“You wanted to remind me so I’d hate Nick. Is that true?”

I shrugged. After a moment I said, “Yeah.”

“Then you shouldn’t have said it, Justin. Not to any woman. Your heart told you that, didn’t it? That’s what you should be asking me to forgive.”

“Okay. You’re right. Would you?”

“I think so.”

“What can I do?” I said. “I mean to help with that?”

“Why does April have bad dreams?”

“We don’t know.”

“Is it because people pull away from her? Your father. Your mother, now.”

I nodded, though the doctor had said that there didn’t have to be a reason at all.

“She needs to be sure you won’t leave her,” she said. “You have to tell her that. You have to let her know.”

*   *   *

That night we read
Come Back, Amelia Bedelia
together. I was a fearsome Mrs. Rogers telling poor Amelia, “Now go!”, and I was the other angry bosses that couldn’t excuse her blundering. Mary Ann as Amelia, so misunderstood and dejected, melted me with her quiet lines and her sad, blinking eyes.

After we finished the book April sat up suddenly from the pillow. “I am a very important person,” she said and looked stunned.

“That’s right, you are, sweetie,” Mary Ann said, and before she looked at me I said to April, “You sure are.”

“Do you dream about all the fun you’re going to have in the world?” Mary Ann said. “You’re going to see everything. Everyone’s going to love you.”

“And you love me, too?” April said.

“Of course I do. Of course, of course. You knew that, crazy.”

“And you love Justin?”

I should have seen this coming, but my heart was racing, everything suddenly at stake. Mary Ann was right, I couldn’t wait, and when she smiled at April it wasn’t a real smile, but a lobotomized smile that provoked me more than any answer she might give, and I lurched over the bed to tickle April and call her Ms. Nosy and explode the moment into unsalvageable shards.

Downstairs I followed Mary Ann into the kitchen where she finished a glass of water from dinner. I struggled for something to say, but she wasn’t far from her purse, and its presence on the counter was the only evidence I had that she wasn’t about to leave.

“I’d like to take her somewhere on a day trip,” she said.

“Just you two?”

She sighed and set down the glass. Then she turned resolutely, as if she were about to say one thing, but she seemed to change her mind. And whatever she was seeing on my face was the truth. I couldn’t pretend to be okay. I was empty.

She would have said no. She didn’t love me. I was sure of it by her expression, her eyes as deep and sad as they’d been that day in the parts room, after hearing my phone call with Kimberly.

“You can come with us, Justin,” she said. “You’re invited.”

I took her hand lightly, as a friend, and led her away from her purse into the living room. We sat on the couch together. It felt like a last chance, and I was careful not to say anything ambiguous or emotional. After a minute she picked up April’s Cabbage Patch doll and set it on the coffee table. “I understand why he did it,” she said. “He wanted another baby.”

“He told me that.”

“But did he tell you he went crazy? Did you know that part?” She was urgent, and I braced a little for what she might say next.

“He was holding Joey and shouting at me. He said to fill the bathtub with warm water and put salt in it. I mean, it was too late. He was holding Joey and you could see it was too late. I was supposed to get the batteries, all the nine-volts, and put them in the bathtub with the saltwater. I was opening the smoke detector when the paramedics came. If they saw Joey in the bathtub with the batteries, can you imagine? He’d still be locked up.”

She stopped talking and looked at her lap, where one thumb rubbed the other as if sharpening a knife. She wasn’t going to break down, though. She shook her head, and like that the door to the memory seemed to close. Whatever had gone on at their house, the past few weeks had brought her to some kind of resolve. And it made me uneasy that she seemed so assured, that I couldn’t somehow fix things for her.

“He’s going crazy now,” I said. “He wants to build a time machine. He thinks you can redo the past over and over.”

“He told you that?”

“Mary Ann, he needs to get help. One of these days he’s going to drop a car on himself or fall into an engine. Maybe run somebody over, I don’t know.” But none of my melodrama evoked a reaction. The idea of the time machine seemed to hang in her mind, softening her mouth and putting her into a daydream that made me invisible.

Headlights through the window ran over the fireplace, and the garage door opened. I jumped to my feet. “Let’s go out and have a cigarette.”

“I don’t want one,” she said. And as I watched her stand and walk around the coffee table, these were the things I couldn’t say without yelling: Would it kill you to have a cigarette with me? Aren’t I worth five minutes?

As Mary Ann was getting her purse, Mom came in with two bags of groceries. “I stopped at Grand Union,” she said to me. “Can you get the rest of it?”

Mary Ann took a bag from Mom’s arms and set it on the counter. “I can’t come by until next week. I’ll call when I know my schedule.”

Mom looked from her to me, and I looked away. “She’ll miss you,” Mom said.

I followed Mary Ann out to the garage, intending to ask in the driveway what exactly she meant by her schedule, but at the side door she turned and gave me a sudden kiss on the mouth. I was too stunned to speak. “Help your mom,” she said and went out to her car.

I carried all four bags at once, thinking only about a cigarette, hoping it could be everything I needed it to be.

“Is she not feeling well?” Mom said when I set down the bags on the counter.

“What do you mean?”

“She looks tired,” she said, lifting two Wonder Breads out of a bag. “Or like she’s getting over something.”

*   *   *

That night I drove out to Waterbury and turned on Cooke Street. Like before, I parked at the convenience store, hiked in through the park, and hunkered under the window.

Mary Ann was sitting not with him on the couch but in the easy chair against the wall, where she was reading a magazine by lamplight. The TV was on, and Nick was either watching it intently or was distracted reading and marking up his books.

I felt depressed watching them. There was nothing. She would look up from her magazine and be thinking, what? I’m ready to not want anymore. Let me be old. She was at peace with her surrender, and I wanted to throw a rock through the window of their tranquility.

I planned to wait and see what the sleeping arrangements were, but a breeze picked up and after a while I was really shivering. With the money from the stolen car—my cut from Bobby—I’d bought a lined Vanson biker jacket that I’d left at home. I stayed as long as I could stand it before I ducked and walked miserably back to the ’Cuda.

33.

Late one afternoon, Rod called me over the intercom to take line one. Mary Ann hadn’t come to work, and I was suddenly electric with the certainty it was her calling me. On my way to the parts room, I convinced myself that she’d had a change of heart. She knew what Nick was capable of and though she’d tried, she could never forgive him.

I closed the door to the parts room and then stared at the flashing light on the phone. “Be loving,” I said three times before I picked it up.

“Justin, where is she?”

“Mom?”

“Tell me where she is right now.”

“Where’s who?” I said, though I knew immediately.

“She called this morning. She asked if April could stay home from preschool. I came home for lunch at one and they’re not here. I came back at three and they’re not here. No note, nothing.”

“Mom, slow down. What time is it?”

She didn’t answer, and I thought Mary Ann might be pulling in, that the danger was over, but I heard her whimper. “Why aren’t they here, Justin?” I turned around the radio clock on the desk. It was almost five.

*   *   *

Mom was standing in the driveway smoking and holding the phone. There were no words to say because she had only one question and I had only one question. She’d been crying and I saw on her face that my saying sorry wouldn’t help. She was near a point of detonation, and I didn’t know what form it would take. Somehow it was right that I just take the phone out of her hand rather than asking for it, and when I did she folded her arms and sighed, as if she’d been waiting for something like this all along.

I called Mary Ann’s, as I had done before I left the shop, let it ring until the machine picked up. “They’re in town somewhere,” I said, giving her back the phone. “They have to be. Stay here.”

I didn’t find them at the park or downtown or at the river or at the ice-cream shop on Route 6. I drove frantically, speeding, blowing stop signs, chirping my tires everywhere, racing home when the sun went down because I thought they must be back. They had to be.

The front light was on, and sitting on the concrete steps under the front door was Mom, who stood as I was pulling in, then sat and hugged her knees.

She’d been through a stronger fit of crying, and her nose and eyes were red when I stopped in front of her. “What did she do?” she said. Every time there were headlights on the street she stood. “What is she capable of, Justin?. Tell me that now. I need to know.” Her voice was softer than I’d expected, pleading. “This is April, honey. This is our little April.”

A car slowed, we heard it before we saw it, and we both stood, but it was only Joanne Brockmeier, our neighbor we shared the driveway with, who slowed and looked at us. I thought she was going to stop, but then she waved briefly and rolled past.

“I knew better,” Mom said. “I knew … was I out of my mind? When did she lose her baby?”

“Mom.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. A year ago.”

“Oh, what did I do?” She began to speak with long intervals in between. She said things I didn’t want to respond to, that I had no response to. She’d trusted April with a crazy person. Even five years wasn’t enough time.