The Right Side

by Spencer Quinn

  “You’re talking,” Ryan said, “about another . . . sort of level? Did it work on another sort of level? Is that what you mean?”

  She nodded, this time not that tiny nod, but more emphatic.

  Ryan didn’t say anything. He closed his eyes, kept them closed for longer than a normal blink, opened them up. Then he reached out, wrapped his arm around the back of her neck, and pulled her in. LeAnne took that for a yes. So that the next day, when he said something about how much he was looking forward to September and the start of their college lives, she had the confidence to tell him she’d changed her plans.

  “Huh? Where are you going? You can still take one of those other offers? Even this late?” While she was figuring out how to put what was coming next, he saw something in her eyes and sensed bad news. “Not UCLA?” he said. Which was about as distant from Dartmouth as you could get.

  LeAnne shook her head. “I enlisted.”

  “Enlisted? Enlisted in what?”

  “The United States Army.”

  “Right. West Point’s the army.”

  “Not West Point. The regular army.”

  “Like . . . a shortcut or something? You’re an officer right away?”

  “You can’t enlist as an officer, Ry.”

  “But . . . but—so it’s like being just an ordinary . . . private?”

  “Exactly. At first I’ll be an ordinary private, second class, actually. If I make it through basic, that is. It starts September nineteenth. I report to Fort Jackson.”

  Ryan steered the Corvette over to the side of the road and stopped. “What the fuck? You’re not going to college? This is a joke, right? A joke about throwing your life away?”

  It was no joke. LeAnne folded her arms across her chest.

  “Jesus, what’s wrong with you?” Ryan’s eyes shifted, like he was working on his own answer to the question. He raised his hands, palms up. “Okay, okay. Sorry. My fault. Of course, you’re upset. Upset isn’t even the word, doesn’t do justice to all the shit—all the horrible things that happened. But is that when to make decisions? When you’re upset and not thinking clearly?”

  “When you’re upset is just when you have to think clearly,” LeAnne said.

  “Huh? Who told you that? That asshole Adelson? Why do you buy into his guru act?”

  “It wasn’t him.”

  “Then who?”

  “Nobody. I’m capable of having my own ideas.”

  “Yeah? This one sucks.”

  LeAnne reached for the door handle.

  “Wait. Stop.” Ryan licked his lips and started over. He had beautifully shaped lips. She loved kissing them. At that moment she took an inner step or two toward giving in, changing her mind, doing whatever he wanted. “I’m pretty sure I get what’s going on here, LeAnne. But you can’t make it right, what happened. No one can. And besides, it’s not your job.”

  “I know all that,” LeAnne said. “I’m doing it for me. I want to get started.”

  “With what?”

  “With what I want to do. The army.”

  “For fuck sake—West Point’s the army, and you get a great degree, and after you’re out, there’s this whole network waiting for you.”

  “Yeah, but I’m ready now.”

  Ry gave her a long look, somehow seemed to recede, like a falling tide. “You can’t make a dead person’s life turn out right.” He drove back onto the road.

  “I had a very disturbing phone call from Melanie Fraser,” LeAnne’s mother said.

  “Ryan’s mom?”

  “Correct.”

  “You know her?”

  “I do not. At least, I did not.”

  A waiter appeared. They were in a nice restaurant in Scottsdale; it had taken LeAnne almost two hours to get there from her end of the Valley.

  “Welcome, Ms. Marsh,” the waiter said. “The usual for you?”

  “Thank you, Jason. And I’d like you to meet my daughter—my oldest daughter—LeAnne.”

  “Ah. Hi, there,” said Jason, handing her a menu.

  “Hi,” LeAnne said.

  “I know you like shrimp,” her mother said. “The shrimp diablo here is excellent.”

  “I’m afraid we don’t have it today,” said Jason.

  Which was just as well: LeAnne had gotten sick on spoiled shrimp on a class trip down to Nogales the year before—her history teacher wanted her students to see the wall—and no longer cared for shrimp. She ended up ordering a BLT. As Jason headed for the kitchen, her mother leaned forward and said, “Do you like this place? Alex is a part owner.”

  “Meaning you’re a part owner, too?”

  Her mother gazed at her. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose.” The crow’s-feet at the corners of her mother’s eyes had grown and deepened in the years after the divorce, as had the single groove between them, but her presentation—hair, clothes, jewelry, all that—had only gotten better. As for what was going on in her mind, LeAnne didn’t know. Her mother had surprised her at the funeral by crying quite a bit. At the time, LeAnne had thought it was because Alex hadn’t come with her; now she wasn’t sure.

  At the moment, her mother was far from tears. “Be that as it may,” she said. “I’m here to discuss this alarming piece of news. Please tell me it isn’t true.”

  What’s alarming about it? That was one response. I’m nineteen and it’s my decision and mine alone. That was another. LeAnne went with, “I can see why it might seem a little sudden. But I’m very happy with the decision. I’m ready to move on.”

  “Whatever are you talking about? Going to West Point is moving on.” Her mother tapped the rim of her water glass with the crimson tip of her fingernail. “You can’t do someone else’s penance.”

  “I know that.”

  “And even if you could, it’s not your responsibility.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Then what is it? What’s it really about?”

  “I want to . . . to be in the world. To do something in the world.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “The world out there, where big things are happening. Not the school world.”

  “What makes you think you’re ready?”

  LeAnne sat back. She started to fold her arms across her chest. Was that a habit she was slipping into? She put her hands in her lap instead. The readiness question was a tough one, but totally fair, deserving of her best answer. The smarts you get from your mom. The rest is me, God help you.

  “That’s the question, Mom. Maybe I’m not. It’s going to be a big challenge. But I’ll never know if I don’t try.”

  “That doesn’t sound very convincing. Lots of people say they love a challenge, but very few do, in my experience.”

  “I don’t care about all those others,” LeAnne said.

  “Why would you? You’re pigheaded, just like—” Her mother stopped herself. LeAnne folded her arms across her chest, couldn’t stop herself this time. “And that? What you’re doing right now? He used to do that all the time. It drove me crazy.”

  “That doesn’t mean I—”

  Her mother’s voice rose. “Want to know what I think? Undoubtedly not. In fact, beyond a shadow of a doubt, since you didn’t consult me. But here goes anyway. This is all psychological.” She held up her hand. “And I’m not talking about some pie-in-the-sky notion to make up for your father’s wretched . . . for him. I’m talking about me.”

  “You?”

  “But yes. You’re doing this to get back at me.”

  “What the hell? That’s crazy!”

  Her mother’s face reddened. Something about the tonal change made her look like an angry cartoon of herself. “Exactly how he said you’d react.”

  “Oh, so this is coming from Alex?”

  “Where do you get the right to patronize him? Alex is an extremely successful man, not just compared to . . . an extremely successful man, let’s leave it at that. And do you know why? It’s because he understands what makes people t
ick.”

  “Well, he doesn’t know what makes me tick,” LeAnne said. “And I couldn’t care less what he thinks.” Her mother’s face got even redder. There was no turning this conversation around, not that LeAnne could see. She rose. “Also, I have nothing to get back at you for. Thanks for lunch.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  But LeAnne did not. She walked out of the restaurant and drove back to her double-wide on the far side of the Valley. Another long ride, and she was all done with the shaking at about the halfway point.

  LeAnne and Ryan got together a few more times before he left for freshman orientation, but what had worked for them on the fourth attempt did not work again. She framed a photo Bernice had taken in the desert and gave it to him as a going-away present. In the photo was a two-armed saguaro cactus that seemed to be lurching across a ridge. Bernice had entitled it One Too Many. At the bottom, LeAnne almost wrote, “To Ry with all my love,” changing it to “Lots of love, LeAnne” when she had a last-second vision of Dartmouth girls checking out the funny picture.

  Ryan’s good-bye letter arrived in her first week at basic training. She happened to be the only female in her group, and the drill sergeant in charge of hand-to-hand combat paid lip service and lip service only to the concept of women in the army. LeAnne cried silently into her pillow that night, partly because of what they had sort of had, partly because she could tell just from how he expressed himself in the letter that Ry was already turning into someone else, partly because she was alone. The next morning the drill sergeant selected her for the pugil stick demonstration. There had been a pair of pugil sticks lying around when LeAnne was a kid, and she and her dad had fooled around with them some. She remembered a move he’d taught her: “Two quick fakes with the left end of the stick—first one looks like a fake, second looks for real, but it ain’t. Then kaboom with the right.”

  The drill sergeant didn’t bother with the headgear. He got faked out left and then kaboomed right: on the point of the chin, and hard enough to make his eyes go foggy, hard enough to shake loose a new thought or two. The difference between school and real life was suddenly as clear as could be in LeAnne’s mind. She was on the right track.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The sun was low and silvery, the sky a metallic color instead of blue, by the time LeAnne had worked her way through the metro area plus the endless developments on the other side, and finally reached Lost Hills Road. Nothing had changed. Lost Hills Road was part of a development that had been subdivided but never built on back when she lived there with her dad, and would not be built on until a really big housing bubble came along. But her dad had bought the half acre lot at 2241 and now it was hers. She drove past the spot where she and Ryan had sat in his Corvette discussing drive times between Hanover, New Hampshire, and West Point, and coasted up the driveway, hard-packed dirt now pretty much indistinguishable from the surrounding desert, and stopped where the double-wide had stood. A double-wide that she’d always thought too big to move, plus there was the lanai her dad had built—how would movers handle a rambling offshoot like that?—but it had all been handled quite easily after some trailer reselling company bought it, a deposit landing in her account at the community bank near Fort Jackson. But Fort Jackson wasn’t home, and neither was her condo near Fort Bragg, leased to the perky little payroll administrator and her perky little boyfriend. This, 2241 Lost Hills Road in a community still to come, was home. She got out of the car and just stood there. The wind rose and made her eye watery, despite the protection of the sunglasses, bluing everything she saw into a kind of mirage. She liked that. It was very quiet here at home. She liked that, too.

  That night LeAnne slept in the Honda. The next morning, she drove to a camping supply store in Surprise and bought a tent, a sleeping bag, a fold-up stool, a portable camp toilet, a portable camp shower, and a tool kit, loaded them into the trunk, and got behind the wheel. Then she climbed out, went back inside, and bought a long-handled spade. She got behind the wheel again, climbed out again, went inside again, and bought a watch.

  “That be all?” said the clerk, maybe making a joke at her expense.

  There were two ways to go. LeAnne chose the peaceable route. “I’ve got other fish to fry,” she told him.

  “Huh?”

  LeAnne went home, found the cap over the water line coming up from the ground, pried it off with a screwdriver, connected the shower intake pipe, set up the tent, and was good to go by fourteen hundred hours. After that she tried out the shower—cold, but she’d had many far colder showers. LeAnne got herself good and clean under a huge western sky. Then she dressed, took some ibuprofen, four or possibly five, climbed into the car. She checked herself in the mirror, adjusting the patch strap and straightening the sunglasses, and went job hunting.

  Job hunting was overstating things. LeAnne had only worked one job before the army, and worked it successfully, so this was merely a matter of letting them know she was back and available. At fifteen hundred forty-three minutes—nice to have a watch again; LeAnne made a mental note to buy a compass of the kind that attached to the steering wheel—she drove into the parking lot at Hidden Canyon Trails. The sign was newly painted, as was the office exterior, formerly white, now red and yellow, plus the shady pen where Bruce the javelina had lived was gone, as was Willis the diamondback’s wire-mesh cage, but otherwise things looked the same. LeAnne checked herself in the rearview, straightened the sunglasses, always going crooked in the wrong way, meaning slanting low on the right side, and walked toward the office. The big barrel cactus out front was in bloom. LeAnne sniffed the pink blossoms, smelled nothing. She went inside.

  A girl stood behind the counter, chewing gum and folding brochures, a tall, strongly built girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen, with a tan face and dirty-blond ponytail.

  “Hi, there,” LeAnne said. But then she realized the door hadn’t quite closed behind her. She turned back, got that taken care of, started again. “Hi, there.”

  The girl was watching her. “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah,” said LeAnne, then got sidetracked again, this time by the sound of the girl’s voice, older than fifteen or sixteen. “How old are you?”

  “How old am I? Twenty-two. Why?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” But why did she look so young? “You look kind of young for your age, that’s all.”

  “Um, what can I do for you?” The girl—the woman—slid the stack of brochures to the side, like she was keeping them safe.

  “I’d like to see Bernice,” LeAnne said. “Is she here?”

  “Who’s Bernice?”

  “Mrs. Adelson. Bernice Adelson. The owner.”

  The woman cracked her gum. “There’s no one here of that name.”

  “Huh?”

  “The name of Bernice. There’s no Bernice, and the owner is Mr. Nasrallah.”

  The door opened and a man entered. He wore a floppy hat, cargo pants, a safari-type shirt. The man smiled and said, “My ears are red.”

  “I’m sorry?” said the woman behind the counter.

  But LeAnne got it. “You’re Nasrallah?” she said.

  “That’s right. What can I do for you?”

  A smiley, friendly type, with gentle eyes, but LeAnne saw through all that immediately. “What kind of name is Nasrallah?”

  The smile wavered, but only a little, and his eyes didn’t lose that gentle look, although they did seem more alert. “An American name,” he said.

  A smart-ass. LeAnne could deal with smart-asses, also knew what it felt like to have America in the blood, but was that the point of this visit? No. This visit was all about . . . all about . . .

  “She’s asking for someone named Bernice,” said the woman. “Bernice Adelson.”

  “May I ask why?” said Nasrallah.

  “It’s none of your business,” LeAnne said, “but she owns this place no matter what anyone says. I know because I worked here.”

  “Ah,” said Nasrallah. “Well, the truth of the
matter is that I’m the owner. I bought it from Bernice six years ago. A lovely person.”

  “Bernice doesn’t own it anymore?”

  “I’m afraid not. Was there anything special you wanted to discuss with her?”

  “Yeah,” said LeAnne, right back in gear. “A job.”

  “A job here?” Nasrallah said.

  “Where else?”

  The room went silent. LeAnne had no idea what that was about. Was it possible they doubted that she knew her stuff? “I can do everything there is to do here,” she said. “Lead the tours, run the shop, tweak the website, maintain the ATVs, you name it.”

  “Actually,” said Mr. Nasrallah, “I sold off the ATVs—not ecologically sound, in my opinion. All our touring is on foot now, and the consumer response has been very positive.”

  “Check us out on Yelp,” said the woman.

  LeAnne turned to her. Inside she was . . . it was hard to describe everything that was going on inside. She remembered Marci’s words about Iraq: It’s like hell is down below, but sometimes it pops up through the ground. That was the description she was looking for. She had Iraq inside her. That thought, or realization, and the add-on that quickly came with it—namely that she was nurturing some sort of Iraq in her womb—took all her strength from her at once. She sagged down onto the floor of Hidden Canyon Trails and sat there, her arms around her knees.