by Luke Geddes
Ellie felt sorry for her, but the warmth she felt for her father in that moment couldn’t extend to her mother. There was no use in her dwelling over a failing business and marriage and her estranged daughter, Ellie guessed. These things were intangible constructs, and all that mattered to Stacey were the things you owned, the things you could hold in your hands. Or maybe it was simple: Stacey just didn’t like Ellie that much, at least not as much as she liked her collection.
Ellie gave her father one last hug. He basically blew his nose into her shoulder.
“Later, Stollers,” Seymour said. “I’ll, uh, make sure she wears her seat belt.”
But just before they made it to the door, Pete Deen caught Seymour’s shoulder in his hammy palm.
“That is mine,” he said, grabbing the MC Hammer doll by the parachute leg.
“Not so fast.” Seymour held tight to MC Hammer’s other leg like it was a wishbone. “It’s come back into our possession, you know how these things happen.”
Ellie could see Pete’s heart pounding through his unseasonal Christmas sweater. A lock of his greasy hair dripped sweat as he struggled to maintain his grip. “What do you want it for, anyway? It’s not even your style.”
“If you really want it, we’d be willing to sell.”
“Not necessary when it’s already mine.” Pete’s grip tightened. His wrist veins pulsed. A lifetime of frustration shone on his face: every spurned advance, every lonely night in front of the TV, every unmarked box on the checklists he’d compiled of his most desired toy lines. He yearned for the warm feeling of acquisition. He raised his fist in the studied position of a Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robot and—yelped upon seeing the brown plastic nub like a baby’s penis where MC Hammer’s head was supposed to be. “It’s not mint!” He released his grip and pivoted, fighting back tears. “It’s incomplete!” He ran into Hall Two.
“I guess he doesn’t want it?” Seymour said.
“Guess not,” Ellie said. She could feel her father’s gaze on her as she opened the door, but she did not look back.
And so, MC Hammer in hand, they went: Out of Wichita. Out of the Heart of America.
28 MARGARET
There were accidents and there were mishaps. There were crashes and there were bumps. There were bumps and there were taps. And what Margaret had done—rather, what her vehicle had done—had been nothing more than a tap, a love tap even, a peck between bumpers. How presumptuous of the airbag to activate itself.
On the other hand, an accident was what had happened to the RV adorned with the faces of the TV hosts Mark and Grant, though that was no fault of Margaret’s. She ought to get out and survey the scene, check to make sure no one was hurt. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the back of Patricia’s head. Her ponytail shivered in what appeared to be a sigh. She shifted and, like an afterthought, the car’s emergency lights began to blink. Margaret triggered her own emergency lights, clicked them off and then on again, trying to synchronize with Patricia’s. The door opened and Patricia stepped out on the soft soil of the roadside ditch. She appeared undazed, perfectly kempt save for a red mark on her forehead from the impact of the airbag. She began jogging, cellular phone to her ear, down the road toward the overturned vehicle.
“Patricia, wait!” Without consciously thinking to, Margaret had exited her own car and was struggling in high heels to catch up. Patricia stopped and looked back. “Patricia.” Margaret was already out of breath. “I’m so… happy to see you. How… have you been?”
“Are you crazy? People could be hurt.” Patricia kept her ear to the phone. Behind her, a door flew open and a man climbed onto the RV’s flank. Into the phone she said, “Yes, there’s been an accident…”
“Of course… anything I can do… to help,” Margaret said, but Patricia wasn’t listening. The best she could do was stay out of the way. She sat in her car and watched as her friend took charge, helping the RV’s occupants exit safely, checking to make sure no one was seriously hurt, running to the gas station for drinks and snacks while they milled about and waited for the tow trucks. Most of them sat in the grass and shouted into their cellular phones. When they squinted their eyes and gazed into Margaret’s car, she tried to send them a sympathetic look. She was here if anyone needed her, but Patricia had control over the situation. A few appeared injured, bruised or limping or cradling flaccid arms. Besides that, they were indistinguishable, sweatshirt-wearing men with dark hair and pale skin, and a couple women Patricia stood around and joked with as the police and trucks and medical personnel made their rounds. Although she did not care for their show, she was disappointed to see neither Mark nor Grant in the crowd.
The only person she talked to was a police officer who took down her story—though story wasn’t quite the word for it, as Margaret spoke only the pure unvarnished truth—after the RV had been hauled away and the TV crew with it. He seemed convinced—though why should it take any convincing?—of her faultlessness. It helped that Patricia corroborated her every word. Was that a look of complicity she flashed over the policeman’s shoulder when he looked down at his pad of paper?
It had taken a couple hours, but order was restored. Patricia’s car had been towed along with the RV, and Margaret’s heart nearly shot out of her mouth when she overheard Patricia decline the policeman’s offer of a ride. They were alone now.
This was what she had yearned for, finally, or was close to it: a face-to-face reunion with her best friend, a chance for reconciliation. There was opportunity and there was action. Margaret had the former and the intention for the latter, but she’d been through it so many times in her mind that now, faced with the reality of it, she didn’t know where to begin. Patricia stood with her hands in her pockets. There was nothing, no one, to look at but Margaret.
“Shall I drive you home?”
Patricia pulled at the stem of her ponytail, a gesture Margaret recognized as an indicator of annoyance or distraction. “My son will pick me up.” Beyond her, Margaret thought she could make out the faintest impression of the Heart of America, a beige speck in the distance.
There had been a time when in Patricia’s presence Margaret was as unselfconscious, as playful or silly, as a girl. Now she approached her best friend as uneasily as she would a stray dog. “Patricia,” Margaret said, “you were on your way back to me.” When Patricia said nothing, she added, “To the Heart of America. Booth one-dash-one-four-six.” She was getting ahead of herself, but so what? The hope that sounded from her own voice was both embarrassing and exhilarating. All this time without Patricia, she’d had nothing to lose. She’d had nothing. She searched her friend for any tiny movement or expression she could interpret as an invitation for embrace, for taking one step closer. Cars sped by on the highway, blowing autumn air into her ears. Even from out here, even above the noise, she heard—she knew she was only imagining it, but that didn’t matter—the near-silent chime of her glass collection, waiting peacefully down the road.
“I came for my china doll,” Patricia said quietly. “I’ve got a table at the flea market now.”
Margaret staggered backward, then forward. “No, Patricia, no.” This was where she ought to announce her plans for Pretty Patty’s Antiques Shoppe. This was where she should explain away all the confusion about that day. Instead she only stepped closer, but not close enough to touch.
Patricia smiled toothlessly and shook her head—it was the same look she’d once given after Margaret explained that a clueless housewife had just sold an exceedingly rare, though cracked, Theresienthal bowl to her for a few dollars at a garage sale. “It never bothered me what happened. It was how you reacted.”
“Let’s not talk about that. It was nothing.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Sure. It was nothing. A misunderstanding.” Margaret shrugged. “You broke my jar. I was upset. I overreacted.”
“That was nothing. That’s not what we’re talking about.” Patricia looked deeply into Margaret’s eyes. “I want to
hear you tell me what happened.”
Why should she have to? They both knew, why bother with rehashing an irrelevant little incident like that? It was unseemly. Margaret would have been mad if she didn’t already feel so hurt. Why couldn’t things just go back to the way they were before? “We’re friends, Patricia.”
“You’re being dishonest, Margaret. With yourself more than with me. I already knew how you felt about me. That’s not what scared me away.”
“What scared you, then?”
“That you were so scared. So damn afraid and ashamed. You’re not good at hiding what you feel. Maybe you’re just bad at knowing it.” Patricia brushed a stray hair from her forehead. “What do you think I am to you?”
“You’re my only friend. I’m not like you. It’s not easy for me to say.” Margaret took another step closer. She had already lost Patricia once, and now she was losing her all over again. If she had never met Patricia she would have been fine. Her life would have been as it always had been before. But now that she had had Patricia, and known what it was to not have Patricia, she had no life without her. “You’re Patricia. I—I love you.” Her voice wasn’t her own. The words had crawled out of her mouth from some place deep in her chest where secrets were kept. It was the voice of someone Margaret wished she could be but who she was not. Not yet.
Patricia narrowed her eyes. “How do you love me?” Her words were penetrative but her tone and expression uncharacteristically flat. Margaret felt as if she were being given a pop quiz. “What am I to you?”
“Everything.”
“What do you want from me?” There weren’t words for what Margaret wanted from Patricia, not even in the space deep in her chest. Patricia’s stance relaxed ever so slightly, her shoulders dropped a millimeter or two. She had barely moved, but something about her softened, a threshold for embrace opened, and all Margaret had to do to reach her was lift her leaden feet and drag herself through it.
And then she was watching her own hand cup Patricia’s cheek, warm and a bit moist. It was the opposite of glass: fleshy, supple, yielding to Margaret’s gentle touch. Underneath, Patricia’s jawbone was sturdy and unfragile and her teeth shone—in a wince, not a smile—like decorative pearl embellishments. She did not remove Margaret’s hand. Patricia was patient. And Margaret was patient, too. She could stay like this forever.
But that would not be fair. Margaret had something to say, to herself as much as to Patricia, a truth pure and unclouded by shame or judgment. It was something better said in action than in speech. A hand—she wasn’t sure if it was her own or Patricia’s—pulled her forward. Her face was close enough to see the impressions of the impact of the airbag. Between them they shared a breath, wheaty and a little sweet, redolent of Nilla wafers and lipstick. Patricia’s lips were parallel with her own. The texture and taste of those lips had never left Margaret’s sense-memory. They were impossibly soft, slick-wet, absorbing Margaret’s own like a tissue dropped in a puddle. She longed for them to envelop her once again.
Patricia tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. An earthquake could strike at that moment, sending all of her glass shattering against the hard ground, and Margaret wouldn’t care. She had acquiesced to desire. She wanted only one thing, and it wasn’t made of glass. She wanted to kiss the woman she loved.
But before she could, a heavy plastic object came sailing through the air, the purple parachute cloth swaddled around it glinting in the sunlight. In the blinding white flare of pain as it struck her square in the eye, Margaret knew exactly what it was and whence it had come.
29 SEYMOUR
It had been an immature thing to do, Seymour admitted, chucking it at Margaret Byrd. But what use did anybody have for that headless MC Hammer doll? Not even sticky-fingered Pete Deen wanted it. Nor did Ellie, in the backseat next to Lee’s saxophone case, screeching with laughter, not just at Margaret’s favorite rapper being returned to her, but at the sheer exhilaration of leaving home.
And leaving unencumbered, at that. There were just three bags between them, not counting the case containing Lee’s sax and the suddenly priceless original pressings of the Tears in the Birthday Cake album. He’d sold the rest: his records and stereo; his antiques and curiosities; most of his wardrobe; his accumulated kitsch, camp, crap; his whole collection of collections, to Jimmy Daniels. He was rid of it, free. Life stretched out before him—not as far as it did for young Ellie, but far enough.
All the things he’d bought and owned, his mania for collecting and completism, his belief that a person was only as interesting as his possessions, had damaged him, his love of objects superseding his love of Lee, his love of life itself. He’d been happiest when he was young like Ellie, too broke to own anything of value, not comfortable enough to want anything other than the people and experiences that were freely, newly, and abundantly available.
This Seymour knew now only because he’d sold it all.
He also knew, as he watched the Heart of America shrink, fade, and disappear in the rearview mirror, that not a day would go by for the rest of his life that he wouldn’t regret it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not exist without the support and/or influence of:
Mary South.
Sean Manning, David Litman, Marysue Rucci, Jackie Seow, Daniel Benayun, Lake Bunkley, Yvette Grant, Carly Loman, Heidi Meier, Jonathan Karp, Richard Rhorer, Elizabeth Breeden, and everyone involved at Simon & Schuster.
Richard Klein, Woody Skinner, Ian Golding, Brent Stroud, Becca Hannigan, Daisy Carlsen, Chelsie Bryant, Liz Stetler, Justine McNulty, Bess Winter, Lindsey Simard, and Jason Teal.
Jack Pendarvis, Leah Stewart, Michael Griffith, Chris Bachelder, Roxane Gay, Barbara Lowenstein, the Oxford Conference for the Book, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.
My teachers and peers at the University of Cincinnati, the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, and Wichita State University.
The Cincinnati Public Library.
My family.
Steph Barnard.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© STEPHANIE STONE
LUKE GEDDES holds a PhD in comparative literature and creative writing from the University of Cincinnati. Originally from Appleton, Wisconsin, he now lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the author of the short story collection I Am a Magical Teenage Princess and his writing has appeared in Conjunctions, Mid-American Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Washington Square Review, The Comics Journal, Electric Literature, and elsewhere.
SimonandSchuster.com
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Luke-Geddes
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Luke Geddes
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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition January 2020
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Interior design by Carly Loman
Jacket design by David Litman
Jacket photography by Suzi Sadler
Endpaper artwork by Daniel Benayun
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Geddes, Luke, author. Title: Heart of junk / Luke Geddes. Description: New York : Simon & Schuster, [2020]
Identifiers: LCCN 2019027853 (print) | LCCN 2019027854 (ebook) | ISBN
9781982106669 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982106683 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Kidnapping—Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3607.E3612 H43 2020 (print) | LCC PS3607.E3612
(ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019027853
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019027854
ISBN 978-1-9821-0666-9
ISBN 978-1-9821-0668-3 (ebook)