With Child km-3

by Laurie R. King

  "My dad? Oh, he's been dead for ten, eleven years now. He was a good man, honest, hardworking. He ran a store that sold fresh fish and seafood. My grandfather - his father - had a fishing boat out of San Diego, and Dad had all sorts of cousins and uncles who let him have the pick of their catch."

  "He sounds… well, ordinary."

  "He was, I suppose. What they call 'the salt of the earth.' "

  "I wonder what that means? I'll have to look it up when I get home." She took out a slim book with a sunflower on the cover and made a note.

  "Do you write everything in your diary?" Kate asked.

  "I write a lot. My words for the day, things to remember, ideas."

  "Not so much daily happenings?"

  "Sometimes, if I think they're the kinds of things that will interest me in ten years."

  "Ten years, huh?"

  "Did you keep a diary?"

  "For a while. Just daily things - who did what to whom, tests, teachers. Dull stuff."

  "I like keeping a diary. It helps me think about things."

  "What kind of things?"

  "Just… things."

  "You want me to put on a tape?" Jules offered.

  "Sure."

  "You have some great music, but some of these people I've never heard of. Who's Bessie Smith?"

  "Old-time blues, real old-time."

  "Janis Joplin I know; Al has a couple of her tapes. She's incredible."

  "The woman sings straight from her - she sings with feeling."

  "What were you going to say?"

  "A word your mother wouldn't want me to use. I'm afraid I'm not a good influence on you, Jules."

  "I know all the words."

  "I'm sure you do. And their derivation from the original Anglo-Saxon, no doubt."

  "I'm sorry. I must've been showing off again."

  "Showing off? Hell no, I get a kick out of the sorts of things you know."

  There was a brief silence as Jules went through a shoe box full of cassettes.

  "Do you want k.d. lang or Bessie Smith?"

  "Bessie Smith is a little hard on the ears. Put on k.d."

  "She's supposed to be gay, isn't she?" Jules slid the tape into the player and adjusted the volume.

  "So I heard."

  "Did you know you were gay, when you were a kid?"

  "No."

  "Sorry. Do you mind talking about it?"

  "No, not really."

  "Meaning you do."

  "Meaning I don't. What did you want to know?"

  "Just if someone always knows their orientation."

  "Some part of you knows from the beginning. Lee knew from the time she was eight or ten. I was in denial for years."

  "Until you met Lee?"

  "Until long after I met her."

  "Did your family think she had made you into a lesbian?"

  "Good heavens. How did you guess that?"

  "It was in a story I read one time. Actually, being gay or straight seems to be inborn, doesn't it?"

  "About the same percentage of the population is born gay as is born left-handed. Left-handedness used to be seen as a moral flaw, too."

  "Are you serious?"

  "The word sinister refers to the left hand."

  "God, you're right."

  "And you can force a leftie to write with the right hand, just as you can force a lesbian to act straight. With much the same damage to their psyche."

  "Do you think I might be a lesbian?"

  "Frankly, no. Do you?"

  Jules sighed. "I'm afraid not."

  Kate began to laugh. "Being straight is nothing to mourn over, Jules."

  "I know, but I always wanted to be left-handed."

  "Are you sorry you didn't go to Mexico with your mom and Al?"

  "No. Not at all."

  "You just seem distracted."

  "Tired, I guess. It's been a really busy fall term."

  "You're sure that's all?"

  "Yes."

  "Jules, why did you cut your hair off?"

  "I just wanted a change."

  "You sure it wasn't out of solidarity with my bald head?"

  "No. I think I cut it because my mother didn't want me to." Silence followed this admission. Then she said, "Guess it's kind of a stupid reason."

  "Hey, if you can't use that reason when you're thirteen, when can you?"

  "Oh well. It'll always grow back."

  TWELVE

  Another rest stop on the same freeway, but this one was more of a park than a mere parking lot with toilets, and this time, without Lee, Kate did not have to take the closest possible spot to the block of rest rooms. Instead, she drove past the center of activity, past the RVs and dogs and cranky children, around the van giving free coffee and brochures about the dangers of drunk driving, to pull the Saab into the farthest parking spot. Silence descended. Kate reached back for her jacket, and handed Jules hers.

  Outside, on the tarmac, it was cold, but a bleak afternoon sun struggled for an illusion of warmth. Jules walked off to the toilets, and Kate left the parking area to stroll up a small rise of scruffy lawn. There was a river on the other side of the grass, fast and full and gray and cold, although, when she had scrambled cautiously up onto the boulders that formed the banks, Kate could see a lone fisherman downstream near the freeway bridge. She chose a flat rock on the top of the ridge, pulled her hat down over her ears and her coat down as far as she could, and she sat, watching the water go past.

  Jules came after a while, stood and looked; then she, too, sat. Her hand came up to brush at the cropped hair on the back of her head.

  "Still feels funny?" Kate asked.

  "I'm getting more used to it. I don't feel so… naked anymore."

  "You sorry you did it?"

  "No, I like it. It feels… How does it feel? Unprotected. Risky. Daring."

  "Freedom is always a risky business," Kate intoned.

  "Philosopher cop," Jules jeered. "But I don't think I'd go as far as Sinead O'Connor. I'd get frostbite of the scalp."

  "She probably wears hats a lot, in Ireland."

  "I want a hat like yours - a nice warm hat." Jules pulled her collar up around her unprotected ears and pushed her bare hands into her pockets. "I wonder where fishermen get their clothes," she said after a while. "That water must be freezing." They watched the still figure, totally swathed in hat, coat, gloves, and hip waders, standing in the water. The only bits of human being actually showing were the circles of wrinkled skin around his eyes and nose - which were surrounded by the balaclava hat - wisps of white hair straggling from underneath, and the very tips of his fingers. He noticed them watching him, and raised one hand slightly. They waved back at him. "Those are cool gloves," Jules said, the final word accompanied by a shiver. Kate stood up. Her head was clear now, but it was beginning to ache from the cold. She handed Jules the keys.

  "You get in the car; I'll just be a minute." Kate walked across the vacant portion of parking lot toward the ugly green cement-block building, where she gingerly eased her bare skin onto the icy toilet seat, washed her hands in water from a glacier, and walked out of the open doorway into an arctic blast and what at first glance appeared to be a tribe of Afghan gypsies with Frisbees. At least twenty college-aged kids, swathed in layers of colorful ethnic garments, had emerged from a resigned-looking bus and were spilling out across the pavement in chattering confusion. Three neon green plastic disks sailed back and forth between gloved hands while sandwiches, plastic food containers, and thermoses were pulled from nylon backpacks. The odors of damp wool, cigarettes, curry, and stale dope hit Kate's frozen nose, and she paused to absorb the spectacle. She had been too young for the first onslaught of the true hippie movement, but each generation of university students seemed to discover it anew. Once, her second year at UC Berkeley, she had taken a trip like this, with half a dozen others to New Mexico during the winter break…

  A trio of nearly identical twenty-year-olds pushed unseeing past her, three lithe bodies in
boots and jeans and Mexican sweaters, carrying on a high-speed conversation.

  "- think they'd have a microwave or something. My uncle has one you can plug into the cigarette lighter -"

  "Yeah I mean, cold lentils are pretty gross."

  "That sauna we stopped at was pretty cool, though."

  "I don't think that bus has a cigarette lighter —"

  "Why couldn't they put them in these rest stops? I mean, they have those hand dryers, so why not a microwave?"

  "Yeah, like you could put a dime in for thirty seconds —"

  "Like for a Tampax or something."

  "Why not? It'd be a public serv - Oh God!"

  "Oh shit, that's cold!"

  "Jesus Christ!"

  "Why can't they heat these goddamn toilets?"

  "I'd pay a dime for —"

  "— Stand up on the seat like they do in —"

  "God, I wish I was a man!"

  Grinning hugely, Kate tucked her hands under her armpits and walked back to the Saab. Another group of refugees from middle-class America were on the ridge overlooking the river, one of the girls looking like a sheep with a camera. She waved her furry arms to arrange her victims, two boys and a girl wearing a glorious coat, into a pose of buffoonery, and when she was satisfied, she snapped two pictures, took one of the frozen fisherman, and turned to take two or three more of her companions below, arrayed around the sides of the bus. Jules was still standing outside the car, shivering and watching the activity with the half-envious interest of a younger generation. Kate shook her head at lost youth, got in behind the wheel, and started the car. They drove off beneath a shower of Frisbees.

  The car warmed up rapidly, as did they. Kate's cold-induced headache did not fade, however, and she was torn between the desire for fresh air and the soothing stuffiness of the heaters. Then, when half an hour later Jules suggested they stop for dinner early, her stomach gave a lurch at the thought of food, and her heart sank.

  "Well," she said in resignation, aware now that she really was beginning to feel ill, "I had thought we'd make it to Portland tonight."

  "That's okay then," Jules said. "I'm not starving."

  "No, I mean I don't think we'll make it. I'm afraid we're going to have to stop, anyway."

  Through the incipient nausea and the tightening throb of her peripheral vision, Kate saw Jules look at her quickly.

  "Your head?"

  "I'm afraid so. I haven't had one for nearly a week; I thought they were over. Sorry."

  "Oh God, Kate, don't apologize. Just stop."

  "I could go on for another hour, I think."

  "Why?"

  Why indeed?

  "We can't just stop. It'll have to be a place for the night, so I can go to bed. I'll be fine in the morning," she lied. She would be shaky and distant tomorrow, but functional.

  "There're a couple of motels and restaurants two exits from now - that's what made me mention dinner. The sign said five miles."

  "Would that suit you?"

  "Sure. I have a book."

  "I'm really sorry about this."

  "Oh hey, it's a real hardship, stopping at four o'clock instead of seven. Like, major downer, man, I just can't stand it; I'll have to walk to Portland without you."

  "Is downer back in? I've heard cool and even bummer, which was out of it by the time I was growing up. Bad trip will be revived next." Kate was trying, but it was getting bad fast.

  "Cool is cool, but out of it is out of it," Jules informed her.

  "Wouldn't you know?" she said lightly, and in a few minutes, she asked, "Which do you want, Best Western, Motel Six, or TraveLodge?"

  "Which one has cable? This one says it does, but that one is farther from the freeway, so it'd be quieter."

  "Jules, choose. Now."

  "Turn right."

  Kate signed the register with unsteady hands, one small and fading part of her carrying on in the onslaught inside her tender skull, arranging cable for Jules's room, arranging meals on the bill, taking the keys, aware of Jules, solicitous and worried at her elbow, practically guiding Kate up the stairs and dumping Kate's bag on the chair.

  "Can I do anything for you?"

  "Pull the curtains shut, would you? That's better."

  "Do you want a doctor or something?"

  "Jules, please, I just need to be alone and quiet." She squinted across the room at the girl and saw the fear in her eyes. "Jules, I promise you, I'm okay. It's just a kind of spasm that happens. I've had them before, and I'll probably have them again. They're" - she had to hunt for the word -"temporary. In the morning, I will be fine. Now, you go have some dinner." The lurch of her stomach was almost uncontrollable this time, and she swallowed the rush of saliva in her mouth. "Watch MTV until midnight, and I'll see you tomorrow. Did I give you the car key?"

  "Yes. I have it. And should I take your room-key, just in case…?"

  "I really don't want you to come over, Jules, but if it makes you feel better, take it." And go! she wanted to shriek. Jules either saw the thought or sensed it, because she picked up Kate's room key and went to the door.

  "Jules, I'm really sorry."

  "Don't worry, Kate. I hope you sleep well."

  "G'night." The door started to close, but one last stir of her carrying-on self urged Kate to say, "Jules?" and the girl stuck her head back in. "Don't go anywhere, will you? Other than the restaurant."

  "Of course not," the girl said, and closed the door firmly behind her.

  Kate took six rapid steps to the toilet, where she was comprehensively sick. Afterward, she washed her face with tender care, brought each shoe up to untie the laces before stepping on the heels to pull them off, and then slid gratefully between the stiff, sterile sheets. And slept and slept.

  In the morning when she woke, Jules was missing.

  THIRTEEN

  It did not help, being a cop. There was no armor against this, no reserves of professional impersonality to draw from, no protection. If anything, being a cop only intensified the horror, because she knew the dangers all too intimately. Kate had a full portfolio of images to draw from, all the dead and mangled innocents she had seen in her job, feeding into the standard reactions of any adult whose beloved child has disappeared: the rising tide of panic when there was no response next door and no familiar butch haircut in the restaurant, the muttered fury of just what she would do to the child when it turned out to be a false alarm - how could she put Kate through this routine, she who had always seemed so responsible? Why didn't she leave a note, a message? And by God, if she was in the shower all this time, oblivious to the pounding and shouting - The only way to keep from losing it, Kate's only hope against the almost overpowering urge just to bash her aching skull against the metal post that held up the overhang on the walkway, was to find the armor of Police Officer, buckle it on, and cope.

  She tried very hard, but it would not stay in place. "Yes, of course I looked in the restaurant. I looked in all three restaurants," she told the man at the reception desk, a different man from the sharp-eyed Middle Easterner who had been there the night before, though like enough to be a brother or cousin. But stupid. "Nobody saw her since last night. I just want the key. Yes, I know it's not on the hook - the man who was on duty yesterday gave it to us but the girl in that room took it, and I can't find her. Just let me borrow your master key; I'll bring it right back. Oh, surely you can leave the desk for two minutes." The armor slipped, and the elemental and terrified Kate looked out. She leaned forward and snarled into the clerk's face, "I'm a police officer, and I'll have your balls in jail if you don't have that room open in thirty seconds."

  It was not until Kate stood in the doorway of the empty room and saw the bed and the three keys on the table - one for the car and two for their rooms - that the cold precision of routine slid into place. The coverlet was wrinkled, the pillows piled against the head-board, a black remote-control device lying to one side: the bed had not been slept in. The television at the foot of the bed was on,
showing the menu screen and giving out no sound.

  Kate's hands went automatically into her pockets, her ingrained response to avoid contamination of a crime scene. The clerk was peering over her shoulder, but Kate did not move from the doorway. "Go and call the police," she told him, her voice impossibly level. "Tell them there may have been a kidnapping." How can I be saying those words? her brain yammered. I'm the one who answers the call, not the one who makes it.

  "There is a telephone just there," the clerk said.

  "Call from the office." When he did not move, she snapped, "Sir, now. Please."

  He left. She stepped into the room, her eyes darting across every bit of floor and surface. At the door to the bathroom, she took her right hand from her pocket and, using the backs of her fingernails, pushed the door open. The toilet had been used but not flushed (a true child of California's perpetual drought, Kate thought absently), one glass had been unwrapped, and there was a crumpled hand towel on the fake marble of the sink. Beside the towel lay the new zip bag Jules had bought on the shopping trip in Berkeley, filled with the new cosmetics she had bought in the drugstore in Sacramento, but Kate could see no sign of a toothbrush or hairbrush, and she did not want to disturb the bag to look. Back out in the room, Kate checked the closet: empty, though one hanger had been pulled out from the cluster that was pushed against the end. She felt in her pocket, pulled out a pen, and used it to open the drawers: empty, all of them, but for one that held stationery and a Gideon Bible. She closed the drawers and went out of the room just as the excited clerk came back up the stairs. She put the key that he had given her into her pocket and asked him, "When does your cleaner come?" His face was avid, greedy as a panhandling drug addict, and she had to push down a surge of pure hatred.

  "She's down at the other end, downstairs. She works her way up here by about ten or so - another hour at least."

  "She mustn't go in. No one can go in there. Tell her."

  "But what happened?"

  "I don't know. Go back to your desk. And don't go off duty without permission."

  "Whose permission? Look, I must be somewhere at noon —" But Kate turned her back on him, and he went off reluctantly to deal with the checking-out guests.

  The vehicles of officialdom drifted in one at a time, the local police in a marked car, a curious sheriff's deputy and an equally bored highway patrol officer, on his breakfast break, followed by an unmarked police car. With each of them, she found herself answering familiar questions, could hear herself sounding like every adult she had ever questioned regarding a missing child, panicky and guilty and under thin control. The sense of unreality that always followed one of the bad headaches increased until she felt as if she were taking part in a dream.