by R. A. Nelson
In the parking lot I’m suddenly hammered with the realization: This is it.
This bleary, insane mess is the culmination of twelve years of steadfast, unrelenting effort; over thirteen thousand hours, eight hundred thousand minutes, untold millions of separate moments, mostly forgettable, others that made all the difference.
This place I’ve been so familiar with, the faces, walls, doors, smells, sounds, angles of light—I haven’t been in the library in a week—now I’ll never see it again. Not once. Everything is over. It’s my turn to wail.
Mr. Pendergraff waves at us from the double doors.
“Goodbye, young lady,” he says. “I hope you’ll think about what we’ve said here today.”
Young?
Goodbye, indeed.
critical mass
It’s bad.
But I can’t help it. Mom is so trusting.
But I’ve got to escape. This is killing me.
She’s in front of me in her daisy-yellow Bug, driving ten miles an hour below the speed limit, left blinker stuck in the on position. Three times I’ve nearly rear ended her.
At the next intersection, I turn right without signaling and let her go.
With any luck, it’ll be blocks before she notices. This is mean, even monstrously cruel, but I don’t care. I can’t face them both. Right now I’d rather worry them to death than answer their questions. My whole life I’ve been a Good Girl. I’m ready to be a little bad.
I don’t know where I’m going. I fight to keep from turning down the road to Sunlake. No.
Clouds are gathering. We could use the rain. A torrent, a flood, something to push me off the road, carry me into the ocean, where I can slip beneath the waves. Just park and watch the fish swim by as I rot.
Have I eaten? What day is this?
I’m nearly out of gas. Maybe I should drive straight out of town, see how far it takes me, then get out and walk into the woods. There are places where you can walk for miles without seeing a road or another human being. Is this true or just my fervent wish?
Why do people need other people so much? Why can’t we just do our work and go home? Why do we have to talk and touch and dream together?
This feels like something pretending to be my life.
How could things have gone this wrong so quickly? It was his choice; all he had to do was stay the course. He destroyed everything.
I’m driving too fast; does that matter? It’s an act of will to keep Wilkie between the lines. But hasn’t that been what I’ve always done up to now? Lived between the lines? What made me think I could go outside them? How could he have given me that kind of courage and then pulled it all away?
Is he thinking about me now?
I can taste tar blowing through the vents.
Vacation.
Just like Mom wanted, I’m suddenly ten years old again.
I can see the ocean.
We’ve driven a million miles to get here.
North Carolina, the Outer Banks National Seashore.
I’m walking down a sharply descending strip of sand; the surf comes in very rough here. A little ways out the bottom suddenly drops, becomes a long wedge of hard sand, a place where the edge of the continent is about to crack off. You can see it plainly when the sea pulls back between waves. This is where the surf strikes each time it falls, where the ocean sucks at every particle of sand, water, weed, makes them broil on top of this knife cut in the bottom.
I wade out to see what it’s like. Suddenly I can’t move my legs.
I see Mom and Dad a football pass away, but they might as well be on Mars. They can’t reach me, can’t even hear me because of the crashing surf.
The earth tumbles beneath my feet. I’m going under. God has just sat down in his bath. I’m rolling on the knife edge beneath the waves; there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m going to be rolling on this underwater ridge forever. Until I’m beaten microscopic, become a part of the sea, scattered. Still, I fight it, clawing at the sand. It’s scratching and tearing at me. Finally my lungs are bursting; I can’t battle the pull anymore. I let go.
Suddenly I’m up in the light, flung far from shore.
They had to get me with a boat.
Blink.
Where am I?
Suddenly it’s there again, not the ocean, but the road in front of me. I’m driving. I’ve traveled an unknown number of miles without seeing anything but memories. There’s a billboard up ahead, huge and orange-yellow, with a line of painted green mountains in the background. The lettering is ominous, large, black:
Alicia’s father. Mr. Sprunk.
I remember that awful lizard face. From the wedding.
The road blurs; I’m weeping again.
This is the thing about life I’ve never really understood until now: we try so hard to control it, but bad things happen anyway. The only real control is an anti-control, a letting go. Like I did at the ocean when I was ten. That’s what nature really wants.
Okay.
The steering wheel is loose in my hands.
I let it slurry back and forth, feeling Wilkie’s tires shimmy on the pavement. A dull tingling starts at my temples. Spots are spreading across my eyes.
My hands leave the steering wheel.
I don’t know if this is a conscious act.
There’s a long moment when everything is perfection; Wilkie’s alignment is Good and True. I run straight down the road, an electron in a particle accelerator.
Then.
Wilkie swerves, nearly jumps the median, recovers valiantly, slides across two lanes, heading for a group of corrugated buildings. Horns blare and rubber squeals.
Emily.
Good-by to the life I used to live,
And the world I used to know;
And kiss the hills for me, just once;
Now I am ready to go!
hearts on mars
A miracle.
That can only be what it is—instead of drifting into another car, nailing a telephone pole head-on, flinging us from an overpass, Wilkie has brought me here.
The car skids to a bouncing stop. Someone is still honking as they fly on down the road. Wilkie rocks on his ancient suspension; the engine cuts out and starts ticking. I close my eyes and lay my head on the steering wheel.
My heart is a hunk of Martian hematite, bloodless, frozen, pitted.
I nearly died. Nearly killed other people too. But somehow I’ve been saved.
After a time I lift my head and gradually my vision clears. I become aware I’m in a broad, empty parking lot surrounded by power poles with yellow guy wires. Nearby stands a group of low buildings. One has a sign in the window:
I’m not stupid enough to believe it’s a message for me. It’s some kind of sale that ran a very long time ago. But I’m certain about one thing:
I’ve entered a new country I never thought I would see. My second life.
Why here? Why now? There has to be a reason.
I think about this awhile. Crank Wilkie’s ignition. Slowly pull out on the road heading back the way I came.
Looking for the address on the bottom of the billboard.
lizard killer
Get out.
My legs are shaking.
I haven’t eaten since yesterday. The sun is blinding. Wilkie’s hood is warm. I lean against it to try to clear the dizziness. My brain is coated with a fuzz; everything around me has a dreamlike quality. Maybe this is what an aneurysm feels like in the last microsecond before the blood vessel bursts.
Life number two.
I’m trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do with it.
Mom’s cell phone buzzes in my pocket. I slowly punch in a trembly text message: I’m okay home soon.
Mr. Sprunk’s office is last in a row of cookie-cutter brick cubes. Architectural style: Hand It Over. Plastic curtains are drawn across the big front window. Something tells me they are never opened. I walk toward them in a dream-fog, grip the handle as firmly as I c
an, step inside.
There is no bell. This does not feel like entering heaven. The interior is dark and smells of paper.
My eyes adjust. The paneling is thumbtacked with dozens of square topographic maps. Dad taught me how to read them when I was a kid. The swirling contour lines are hills, mountains, flood-plains. Each map bears the name of a particular quadrangle of land: MOONTOWN, VALHERMOSA, RED BOILING SPRINGS.
Four leather chairs sit against the walls. I’m desperate to sit again, but I resist the urge. At the far end is a counter covered with office flotsam. A subdivision plat hangs above it: WALDEN PONDS. Photographs alongside the plat show tiny lakes molded around a golf course, sterile as new underwear. Not exactly Thoreau’s Life in the Woods, I tell myself dully.
A partially opened door behind the counter leaks white-green fluorescent. Is anyone here?
Yes. Some large and energetic creature is rustling around in there.
I approach the sound carefully, conscious I’m making myself quiet. I peer through the gap in the door: a powerful back squeezed into a dark suit coat hunkers across my field of view.
If I slip out now, he’ll never know I was here. I make myself wait, heart drumming.
The door suddenly opens all the way.
“Hey.”
Mr. Sprunk comes in, rolling his massive shoulders. He’s even bigger than I remembered. His brow is furrowed, making him look permanently suspicious. His upper lip juts out to meet the tip of his nose, reptilian.
“I didn’t know anybody was out here,” he says. “Can I help you?”
He’s got a bad case of Elevator Eyes—they jump between my face and my barely existent boobs, settling somewhere in between. I realize I don’t know what I’m going to say.
“Um. I need to speak to you, Mr. Sprunk.”
He scowls curiously. “I’m really busy right at the moment, young lady. I’m on my way to a closing.”
“A closing?”
“Could you come back another time?”
I think about it. Will there ever be another time like this?
“No, I don’t think so.”
He steps up to the counter as if he hasn’t heard me, runs his thick fingers over a bristling pile of legal documents. For the first time I see it, the gun. It’s a small pistol sitting on top of a black leather holster in the middle of all the paper. I don’t know anything about guns. I wonder what it’s doing there, what he could possibly use it for.
“I carry it for copperheads when I show land,” Mr. Sprunk says, following my gaze. He straightens and his eyes dart to his watch. “Okay. You’ve got two minutes.”
“I’ve got something to ask you.”
“Well.”
“It’s about your daughter.”
This gets his attention. The elevator goes back up. “Alicia? What about her?” He squints. “Do I know you?”
“No. I mean—I know your son-in-law, Mr. Mann.” Matt the Jesus Phreak’s definition of the word know rings in my ears.
“Mr. Mann. You mean Ricky?” The elevator drops a couple of floors.
“Yes.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Um—how did they meet?”
“What?”
“Mr. Mann—Ricky and Alicia, how did they meet? How long have they known each other?”
“How old are you?”
I shift on my feet, uncomfortably aware of my sneakers. Mr. Sprunk stalks around to my side of the counter, moving with a dangerous muscularity. One of those men who can be accommodating only so long before his cerebral cortex starts to itch.
“Why are you asking me this?” he says.
“Do you know?” I say. “How they met? I need to know.”
“Why don’t you just ask Ricky?”
“I did. He won’t tell me.”
His face goes slack. “I think I’m beginning to get the picture. Look, I—”
“Please. This is really important to me.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you.”
It feels strangely unfair to say the same thing Mr. Mann has been saying to me.
“Then I guess we’re both out of luck, honey,” Mr. Sprunk says. “Now I really do need to be going.”
I stand my ground. “It’s a simple question. Why is everybody so mysterious about it?”
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to excuse me, sweetie. Damn it.” He turns on his heel as if he’s forgotten something in the back.
I’m going to do this. I am. “He’s my teacher,” I say. “I was sleeping with him.”
Mr. Sprunk stops, pulled up short. “Who?”
“Mr. Mann. I was sleeping with him when he married your daughter.”
Even in my dreamy state, my courage amazes me; I’ve somehow found it, inside, of all places, my fear. Mr. Sprunk makes a kind of proto-laugh, bites it off. He turns his head slightly, blinking slowly, a crocodile considering its options.
“Why are you telling me this, darling?” He’s using those words, honey, sweetie, darling, like curses.
“I—I just thought you’d like to know.”
“Bullshit. There’s a reason for everything. You made this up; you’re trying to get something out of me, trying to get me to do something for you.”
Am I?
What do I want him to do, break Mr. Mann in half? Take his body to Red Boiling Springs and throw it down a sinkhole?
The arrogance, both of ours, is breathtaking.
“You’re one of those people.” I hardly believe the audacity of my own words. “Everything’s about you, isn’t it?”
I’ve never talked to a grown-up this way. I think he’s getting off on it. He licks the corner of his mouth, studying me more closely, a loose kind of awareness dawning.
“Wait a minute. I thought I recognized you. You’re that gal who crashed the wedding, aren’t you?”
I hover between the truth and a lie and decide on neither.
“Yeah. The one with the purple dress and the hat. That was quite a package you gave my daughter.” His teeth are clenched, but he’s smiling. I realize this is his closest approximation for happiness: he’s pleased with himself.
I ache to slap him. I do the next-best thing.
“So you don’t care that I was sleeping with him? That he doesn’t really love Alicia? That all the times he’s with her, he’s really thinking about me?”
Suddenly he’s leaning into my face, crushing my wrist in his big hand.
He cares.
“Listen to me, girl.” His pores are ugly and huge. His breath smells of coffee and hamburger onions. I feel faint again. “Don’t you ever come around me or my family again. Do you hear me?”
I nod, glancing at the pistol on the counter. So close. This is how things happen, I realize. All you have to do is be willing to go just a little bit further than most people. And your life changes in a moment.
He gives my arm a final devastating pinch before letting it go.
“Now get out of my office.”
He turns and goes into the back room, begins digging through a stack of papers.
Go.
I’m in the parking lot before I truly realize I’ve done it.
Slipped the copperhead pistol into the back of my jeans.
shovel of fire
Supper.
Chili cheese fries at the mall.
I throw them up ten minutes later.
All I can think about is Mr. Sprunk’s pistol in Wilkie’s glove box. How I’ve always hated guns. How I’m terrified of going back to my car.
“Oh, thank God, thank God,” Mom says over and over when I call from the food court. I tell her I’m sorry. She pleads with me to come home. I promise.
I put the phone away. It immediately starts to buzz in my pants. I shut it off.
I limp from one end of the mall and back. My hip still hurts from falling off Mr. Mann’s balcony. My mouth is sour. My fingers tingle as if they aren’t getting enough blood. Calm down. Find a quiet place. The boo
kstore. But isn’t there anyplace I can sit? It’s criminal to have to stand and read.
Criminal.
Will he call Mr. Mann? Try to find out who I am? Send the police to my house?
God.
I squat cross-legged in the back corner with the picture books. This is the only reasonably private place in the store. I flip through Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. I like these pictures, comfort food for the mind. There’s Mike Mulligan, just as he always has been, sturdy, sure, competent. There’s his steam shovel, Mary Anne, joyful in her anticipation of work. They’re digging the same square hole they were digging when I was four. I like the color of the dirt as it flies out of the hole. It reminds me of clouds or the flanks of a friendly animal. I like the growing fury, Mary Anne’s eyes, the hell-bent focus, her bucket mouth biting into the earth.
Now the page that always scared me—Mary Anne sitting in the basement, all those pipes driven into her side, her caterpillar tracks gone. All that power, energy, drive, stopped forever. They’ve made it where she can’t run, can’t dig, can only sit, her body pierced with ductwork, immobile.
A fire burning her insides up.
the parent particle
Home.
“Nine,” Dad says when I come through the door.
Has Mr. Sprunk called? The police? This is what I’ve been dreading the most. Why I stayed away from the house as long as I could.
I try to gauge his face. His eyes are set, gray little circles, brows heavy. He seems more tired than usual. Here it comes—the shame, the great disappointment we’ve been building toward after so much promise. Ever since we started pulling away from each other after I got into high school. All ready to drop on my head.
“What can we do to help you?” he says.
I throw my arms around his neck and kiss his cheek and try not to cry. “You just did, Daddy. You just did.”
Not bad for a man who can calculate the value of pi to more than fifty thousand decimal places.
rosetta stone
Nothing.
For three days.