“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.
Once 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.
FRIDAY
Every picture tells a story.
CHAPTER 42
It’s one of those dreams where I know that I’m dreaming, but I will myself to remain asleep. I’m back at Two Pines, sitting next to Queeg on the steps of a trailer. We’re watching my mother feed the seagulls.
She’s standing in the gravel courtyard, the pockets of her blue housecoat bulging with bread crusts and cut-up hot dogs. In one hand she holds a drink, with the other she reaches in her pocket, grabs a scrap, and, rising to her toes, tosses the food straight up. Around and around the gulls circle, banking hard, rising and diving, plucking the food out of the hot August air.
Finally, her pockets are empty, but rather than quit, she begins to throw cigarette butts, and gravel, and limes from her gin and tonic. As the birds grab and then drop the trash, their screaming intensifies but still they circle and swoop, circle and swoop, again and again, their mouths open and trusting, never understanding that my mother has nothin
g left to give.
The phone rings early in the morning. I don’t need to look at the screen to know who it is.
“Good morning, Queeg.”
“Did I wake you?”
“Of course you woke me.”
“Sorry.”
He doesn’t sound sorry.
“So how did it go yesterday?” I ask.
There’s a pause. I can picture him taking a sip of his coffee. I can hear some soft chirping in the background, so I imagine him sitting on the folding lawn chair outside his trailer.
“Bad, but not as bad as I was expecting.”
“I called last night, but you were already asleep. I should have called earlier.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he says, letting me off the hook, just like he always does. I hear a faint scratch on his end that tells me he’s lit a cigarette.
“Hey, Queeg . . .”
“Hmmmm?”
“When you were married to Mom, did she tell you about any of this? Growing up here, her family, her mother . . .”
“Not much.”
“Did she ever mention somebody named Trip?”
“No.”
“Did she ever tell you why she left home?”
He sighs. “She talked around her past, Matt, not about it.”
I nod even though he can’t see me. I understand talking around things. “But after Mom died, you called Tilda . . .”
“I didn’t know much, but I knew the name of the town where your mom grew up, so I called around until somebody gave me your grandmother’s phone number. It wasn’t a big deal. It just required a little effort.”
I understand what he’s saying. He called. He made the effort.
“Last night I dreamt we were back at the beach,” I tell him. “We were watching Mom feed the gulls.”
“Sounds like a good dream.”
“It was good because you were in it, Queeg.” My throat squeezes painfully, and I stop and swallow. “You saved us,” I tell him, and it’s almost true. He tried hard but failed to save my mother, and I guess he’s still trying with me. That’s not looking so good either.
There’s a pause in which I can hear his measured breathing. “Honey,” he finally says, “are you okay?”
“You bet.” We both know I’m lying.
“Why don’t you just come home?”
I consider telling him how the Malibu is being held hostage; it would be an explanation for my absence that he would understand. But then he’d offer to send money, and it would all get weird because he doesn’t have any money to spare. Not to mention the fact that me being here isn’t about the money anymore, if it ever really was.
“I’ve been wondering . . . why did you buy Mom the Malibu?”
“It’s a classic.”
“I know, but why that car? If she loved classic cars, why not an old Camaro or a T-Bird?”
“We saw one once. On the highway, we passed an old red Malibu. She put a hand against her window and stared at that car like it was a double cheeseburger. She twisted all around to watch from the rear window until we were well past.”
“So you—”
“I asked her, and she said that she liked it, that a 1978 Malibu was her favorite car. So I got her one.” He pauses, to take a drag from a cigarette I’m guessing, before he adds, “It was probably a mistake.”
“Why would you say that?”
“We put more into that car than it was worth.”
“But she loved it.”
“Yeah well . . . maybe.”
“No maybe about it. The very last words she said to me were about the Malibu.”
I can hear the smile in his voice when he says, “You’re kidding me!”
“I was carrying her equipment out to the car and the last thing she said to me was to be careful not to poke a hole in the seat with the tripod.”
“That damn upholstery . . . all those seams. For some reason it had to be tuck-and-roll.” His laugh turns into a cough. He pulls the phone away from his face, but I can still hear him struggle. Finally it’s over. “Sorry about that,” he tells me.
“You need to quit smoking.”
“We sure got that car looking good,” he says, ignoring me. “All it took was hard work. That’s all it ever takes, Matt.”
Queeg loves to claim that effort is the cure for every ill, but I don’t think he really believes all fixer-uppers can be fixed. He was married to my mother, after all.
“I’m serious about the cigarettes,” I tell him. “They’re killing you, Cap.”
“No point shutting the barn door after the horse is gone.”
“You don’t know where the horse is,” I say, which sounds stupid but we both know what I’m talking about.
“If I get good news from the doctor next week, I’ll quit.”
“And if it’s bad news?”
Another pause and this time I’m sure I can hear him taking a drag off his cigarette and exhaling. “Did you ever find those dogs?”
“They’ll come back home,” I say, hoping it’s true.
“I wish you’d do the same, sweetheart.”
“I know,” I reply even though I understand that the words he’s wanting are, I will.
“Is it money? Let me wire you some money—”
“Stop worrying about me and take care of yourself, Queeg. I’m fine.” I sit up and pause, waiting for the now familiar nausea to arrive. “I gotta go,” I say, hanging up as my mouth fills with saliva. I climb out of bed and head for the bathroom. The simple fact is, I can lie to my stepfather, but it’s harder to lie to myself. I’m not fine at all.
With the negatives in my purse, and Nick’s strap and my mother’s camera bag hidden in the old washing machine in the garage, I feel reasonably safe leaving the house. I don’t really think Tawny is going to try again tonight while I’m at Luke’s, but better safe than sorry. I grab the borrowed-without-permission yearbooks and a thick American history textbook from the bookshelf in my mother’s room, and take them with me out on the porch to wait for Tawny.
I’m heartened to see that most of the dog food I left out last night is gone. Of course it’s probably some stray eating it, but I tell myself it’s the Winstons. The day continues to improve when Tawny’s truck rattles up right on time. Halle-fuckin-lujah. I’m not exactly the skipping type, but there is a definite bounce in my walk as I approach the truck, carrying my purse, the books, and a manila envelope holding the 8” x 10” prints from last night.
Since I forgot to switch my laundry before I went to bed, and therefore my jeans are only now in the dryer, I am wearing another of Tilda’s tweed skirts. This one is a trace too woolen for June, and between it and the vinyl truck seat, my thighs are damp and itchy by the time we get downtown. I have Tawny drop me off at the church, explaining that I’ll walk over to the library in a few minutes. Amazingly she complies without comment. Apparently we’ve gone from breaking and entering all the way to reasonably friendly in just one night. I should have had her over for a darkroom lesson earlier.
When we pull up in front of the church, I say, “Did you bring it?”
She nods and pulls a plastic baggie out of her backpack. Inside is a very neatly rolled joint.
I take the baggie and then hand Tawny my mother’s history textbook. “Use this as your booster seat and put K through L back in the library.”
“Why?”
“If you just stick it on a shelf in Fiction or Biography, Fritter will come across it and think it was misshelved.”
She rolls her eyes to let me know she’d like to tell me where to stick it. “You didn’t answer my question.”
The truth is, even with everything Fritter has done, I hate watching her search for that damn book. But I’m not telling Tawny that. It would be a mistake to show this girl my soft underbelly.
“Because eventually Fritter is going to look in this truck and see that book, and then she’s going to be pissed at you, and she’ll fire me for not ratting you out earlier.”<
br />
Tawny bares her teeth in a smile. I’m pretty sure I have just described the exact scenario she’s been hoping for.
“I’m serious, Tawny. When I get to the library I’m going to look in this truck, and if that encyclopedia is still in here, I’m going to tell Fritter.” I hand her the borrowed yearbooks. “While you’re at it, put these back, too.”
Tawny narrows her eyes and studies my expression, trying to decide if this is a bluff. Then she scowls and leans forward on the seat to swap the encyclopedia under her skinny ass for my mother’s old textbook. I barely get the door shut before she peals out with a smoky roar.
That girl can put on her I-don’t-give-a-shit act all she wants, but I know better. Always on the lookout for a new way to antagonize people, to test their affection and find it wanting—the terms used by my high school counselor were Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Low Impulse Control. My face may be less likely to set off a metal detector, but I’m afraid that if I were in her little size six combat boots I’d be pulling the exact same kind of shit she’s pulling.
With a sigh I walk to the back door of the church. It’s not even nine in the morning and I’m already tired. It’s more than a little disheartening at thirty years old to look at a seventeen-year-old and see yourself.
CHAPTER 43
Since Karleen’s car is here, I know she’s in the church somewhere, so I wander around until I locate her. She’s carrying a broom and pushing a housekeeping cart down a long hallway lined with closed doors. I’m not trying to be sneaky, but since I’m rocking my grandmother’s skirt with my Chuck Taylors, she doesn’t hear me coming up behind her.
“Karleen,” I say as softly as possible. Still, she jumps and spins around swinging the broom hard enough that I’m glad I left more than a handle’s length between us.
“Steeerike!” I call out as she struggles to control her follow through.
“Shit! You scared me.”
“Sorry.”
“I think I peed my pants a little.”
The Art of Crash Landing Page 24