by Lou Berney
He checked himself in the mirror and wanted to weep. He was no longer Frank Guidry. He looked like he sold life insurance and lived in a place like Santa Maria, New Mexico.
Well, he supposed, that was the point, wasn’t it?
The little liquor store carried two kinds of scotch: cheap and cheaper. Guidry was in no position to complain.
Tuesday morning the clouds had vanished. The air clear and crisp, the sky a bright trembling blue. He ate a stale Danish from the vending machine and drank scotch with weak coffee and stood by the window. Two little girls perched on the edge of the empty swimming pool, swinging their legs. Their mother lounged on a chaise close by. Yesterday, on his way into town, Guidry had seen a tow truck deliver the three of them here to the Old Mexico Motor Court. He guessed that the woman was the one he’d passed on the highway, standing next to the broken-down car.
Tuesday morning. Nine o’clock. Guidry had survived another night. That was how he’d begun to measure the march of progress.
The woman by the pool wasn’t bad. He’d had a look at her yesterday when they crossed paths at the pay phone. Big serious eyes, rosebud lips. She needed to let her hair down, switch to a brighter shade of lipstick, and get out of that dress—a modest high-waisted number that Donna Reed would consider square. At another time, in happier days, Guidry might have enjoyed warming her up, feeling her melt in his palm. In another life.
The bad-fitting sport coat, the fedora. Maybe he could find a pair of glasses to wear. Dye his hair? Sure, but Guidry would still be Guidry. That was the inescapable quandary. He’d still be a man traveling solo, late thirties, medium height and weight, green eyes and a dimple in the middle of his chin. He couldn’t change any of that.
Or could he? An idea formed. He walked over to the motel office and bought another Danish from the machine. On the way back to his room, he paused by the pool to admire the view of the desert.
“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” he said.
The woman looked over at him. She wore a wedding ring, but Guidry hadn’t seen any sign of a husband. “It is,” she said. “Yes.”
“Hello again. Our ships passed yesterday by the pay phone. My name’s Frank. Frank Wainwright.”
“Yes, I remember. Charlotte Roy.”
Charlotte Roy. A small-town girl, as wholesome and dull as a field of corn, with a dog-eared New Testament in her purse and uncomplicated notions about right and wrong. Guidry didn’t want to spook her, so he’d have to take it nice and easy. He was capable of that. He was capable of whatever was necessary.
He tipped his hat back off his forehead and leaned against the iron fence that bordered the pool. A chilly breeze blew, but the sun was nice and warm.
“They seem closer than they did yesterday,” he said. “The mountains do. Like they’ve been sneaking up on us during the night.”
The woman shielded her eyes with the flat of her hand and scanned the horizon. “I’m confident that we can outrun them,” she said.
Guidry laughed and glanced at her, taking a fresh look. He liked a woman who could hit the ball back over the net.
The little girls, one blond and one with curly brown hair, had turned to regard him.
“I’m Rosemary, and this is Joan,” the curly-haired one said. She had her mother’s coloring. The blondie had the big serious eyes. “We live in Oklahoma.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Guidry said.
“We’re going to Los Angeles to visit Aunt Marguerite. She lives in Santa Monica, right by the ocean.”
So they were headed west, as Guidry had hoped. He tried it on for size: Frank Wainwright, insurance salesman, traveling with his wife and two daughters. If Guidry could pull this off, he’d be practically invisible.
“That’s where I’m headed, too,” Guidry said. “Los Angeles. City of the Angels. Did you know that’s what the ancient Spaniards called it?”
“Really?” the curly-haired girl said.
“You have my word of honor,” Guidry said.
He wondered when the woman’s car would be fixed. He was optimistic. The car had looked pretty beat, and Guidry had never met a mechanic who rushed to finish a job.
“Well then, I better be off,” Guidry said. Nice and easy, don’t push it, especially the first conversation. He tipped his hat to the ladies. “So long and a pleasure to meet you. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
15
At lunchtime on Tuesday, Charlotte and the girls crossed the highway and walked into Santa Maria proper. The girls had been cooped up for two days in the car, in motel rooms. They needed to sprint and skip and spin in circles until they were dizzy. So they did. Charlotte thought of the educational cartoons that the teachers had shown back in high school (“A is for Atom!”), with the excited electrons zinging around the nucleus.
“Girls, slow down, please!” she called.
With the unerring instinct possessed by all children, Rosemary and Joan led Charlotte straight to a park with a playground. The girls swarmed the monkey bars, and Charlotte found a bench.
She was in good spirits today. Or better spirits at least. She’d had a full night’s sleep, the rain had stopped and the sun had emerged, and she’d manage to negotiate a truce between the warring armies in her mind, a temporary cease-fire. The car wouldn’t be repaired until tomorrow, so today she didn’t have to think about the past, didn’t have to think about the future. Forward to California or back to Oklahoma? No decision, at the moment, was required of her.
“Come on, Mommy!” Rosemary said.
“I’m just fine right here, thank you,” Charlotte said.
“Mommy!” Joan said.
Charlotte hadn’t been on a playground swing in almost twenty years. But the girls would brook no argument, and she discovered that it was just as much fun now as it had been then. The sky rushing toward you, the earth tilting away, the sense that for a split second you’d come unstuck from your own self. The girls laughed and she laughed and the dog felt left out. He rested his head on his paw and surveyed them with indignation.
At the grocery store, she bought enough provisions to last a few days: a loaf of Wonder Bread, cheese, apples, cereal, cans of Vienna sausages, and a package of chocolate-chip cookies. They ate a picnic—cheese sandwiches, apples—sitting on a bench in front of a bank even smaller than the one in Woodrow. Charlotte watched a woman about her age hurry down the sidewalk. Late for work, perhaps, after a lunch hour spent running errands.
On their way back to the motel, they passed a shop window packed with a dusty, dizzy jumble of used appliances: toasters, radios, vacuum cleaners, percolators, and electric griddles. Awaiting repair or for sale? Probably some of each, but it was impossible to tell which was which. Charlotte noticed a camera on the very bottom shelf, an inexpensive little Kodak Brownie Cresta, and paused for a closer look.
The shopkeeper somehow spotted Charlotte through the clutter and waved to her. She handed the dog’s leash to Rosemary and went inside.
“Hello,” she said. “The camera in the window, there at the bottom, is it for sale?”
“That old thing?” The shopkeeper, stooped and bald and wizened, with a long gray tooth pointed like a fang, reminded Charlotte of a character from a children’s story. The troll under the bridge, but an amiable one. “I don’t know if it even works, but tell me what you can spare and I’ll probably take it.”
Charlotte couldn’t really spare anything at all. “A dollar?” She knew the camera had to be worth more than that. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not very much.”
“It’s enough,” the shopkeeper said. “Today only.”
He threw in a roll of film for free. Charlotte welcomed the reminder that not everyone in the wide world was sour, sleazy, or mean. Some people out here—like this man, like their neighbor at the motel, Mr. Wainwright—were friendly and kind and perfectly pleasant.
While the girls and the dog napped, Charlotte inspected the Brownie. Fixed shutter, fixed aperture, and fixed focus, a prize you won when you m
ailed off fifteen soup labels to Campbell’s. Still, it appeared to be in good shape. Charlotte went outside and snapped a picture of the motel courtyard. The curved pool without water, the curved sky without clouds, the horizon like the hinge between two halves of an empty locket.
It was remarkable what a change of light could do to a subject. The whitewashed walls of the bungalows, so stark and ashen in the rain, had turned a deep, rich cream. The red clay roof tiles, faded before, were now the life of the party.
For dinner Charlotte decided that they could splurge and eat at the diner in town. The waitress seated them in a booth by the window. At the table next to them sat their neighbor from the motel, Mr. Wainwright.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said.
She smiled. The girls ran off to inspect the jukebox. The song playing was “Moody River.” Charlotte winced as Pat Boone crooned the big, syrupy finish.
Mr. Wainwright lifted his palms. “I’m innocent, I swear,” he said. “The crime was in progress when I arrived.”
“Any eyewitnesses?” she said.
“You’ll have to take my word for it. Find a Bible and I’ll lay my hand on it.”
The waitress brought a menu for Charlotte. Mr. Wainwright had finished his meal. He pushed his empty pie plate away and took a sip of coffee.
“So I’ve heard on the grapevine,” he said, “that you’re from Oklahoma.”
“Rosemary will tell you her entire life story if you give her half a chance,” Charlotte said. “No. Make that a quarter of a chance.”
“How do you like it? I’ve never been to Oklahoma.”
“I’m not sure you’d remember it if you had.”
“I drove through it on my way here, now that I think about it.”
“Well, there you have it.”
The girls returned to the table. “Mommy,” Rosemary said, “can we have a nickel for the jukebox?”
“Your manners, girls,” Charlotte said. “Say hello to Mr. Wainwright.”
“Hello, Mr. Wainwright.”
“Hello, Mr. Wainwright.”
“Allow me,” he said. He reached into his pocket and came up with a nickel. “Have you made your decision? What song shall we hear?”
Charlotte nodded permission, and Rosemary took the nickel from him.
“Thank you,” Rosemary said. “Joan is going to pick the letter and I’m going to pick the number. I’m going to pick number seven because I’m seven. Joan is eight. We’re exactly eleven months apart. For one month every year in September, we’re the same age. Joan is going to pick J because her name starts with J. Aren’t you, Joan?”
“Okay,” Joan said.
“Rosemary and Joan,” Mr. Wainwright said. “I like those names. You know, my grandmother’s name was Aiglentine, which means ‘rose’ in French. She was a trapeze artist back in the old country, back in France. This is a true story. One night she slipped and fell. The net caught her, but she bounced out. You think they’d make nets with less bounce, wouldn’t you?”
The girls listened, rapt.
“Anyway,” he continued, “my grandmother bounced out of the net and collided with one of the poles that held up the circus tent. She broke every bone in her leg. But that’s how she met my grandfather. He was a doctor, sitting in the stands watching the show. He came down and patched her leg back together.”
Charlotte laughed. “Did she get up and finish the performance first?”
“You’re dubious,” he said. “I don’t blame you. My grandmother was a magnificent liar. But I know for a fact that she was a trapeze artist at one point in her life. I’ve seen the pictures. Or maybe she just had the outfit.”
Charlotte told the girls to go pick their song and wash their hands before dinner. J-7 turned out to be “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” by the Shirelles. A vast improvement on Pat Boone.
“So what takes you to Los Angeles, Mr. Wainwright?” Charlotte said. “If you don’t mind me asking?”
“Frank, please,” he said.
“What takes you to Los Angeles, Frank?”
“I’m on my way there to peddle insurance. My company in New York City won’t rest until they conquer the world, so forth I go. But don’t panic, I’m off the clock till a week from tomorrow. I won’t try to sell you anything.”
“Isn’t that exactly what a good salesman would say?” she said.
“Now that you mention it,” he said, “allow me to explain the difference between term and whole life. If you ask nicely, I might give you a discount. I can be a soft touch.”
The waitress, passing by, gave Charlotte a sly wink. Charlotte ignored it. She supposed that most women would consider Mr. Wainwright a catch, with his eyes and chin and dark hair parted just so, but Charlotte was certainly not fishing.
“So you’re from New York City?” she said.
“Maryland, originally,” he said. “But I’ve been on the Upper West Side for twenty years.”
“I’m dying to see New York City. The museums, the plays.”
“I hate to be the one to break the bad news,” he said, “but you’re headed in the wrong direction.”
“Well, I’m dying to see California, too. Though as Rosemary informed you this morning, we’re not headed anywhere at the moment.”
“I thought that was you I saw pull in yesterday. Your car hitched to the back of a tow truck.”
“It was indeed,” Charlotte said.
“That’s a shame,” he said. “When will you be able to hit the road again?”
“Tomorrow, I hope. I’m to see the mechanic in the afternoon.”
“You don’t want to spend Thanksgiving in Santa Maria, New Mexico?”
“I can’t say I do.”
“Have you ever heard of karma?” he said.
“Karma?” Charlotte said.
“That’s what the Buddhists in the Orient call it. I learned this in the service. The Buddhists believe in balance. The universe tips and tilts, the weight shifts around, but karma always sets it straight again. For every wrong there’s right. Do you follow?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Your car breaks down on the way to California and you’re stranded here in Santa Maria, New Mexico, for a few days. A tough break. But now the universe owes you a favor.”
“Oh, does it?” Charlotte cocked an eyebrow. Though the notion was an appealing one. Karma. She pictured the liquid mercury in a thermometer, rising and falling, always seeking a happy medium. “I’m flattered that I have the universe’s attention. But I wonder if it might have more important matters to contemplate.”
“I’m just reporting what the Buddhists say,” he said.
“So you don’t believe in it yourself? Karma?”
He thought about the question for a moment. She liked that he took the time to do so. Most people’s ideas were so ingrained that they had every answer at the ready. Most people in Woodrow, Oklahoma, at least.
“I don’t know if I believe in it or not,” he said. “I know I want to believe it.”
The girls returned. The food arrived. While they ate, Rosemary and Joan made a list of the day’s highlights, in order from one to ten. The girls liked their lists. Mr. Wainwright, Frank, paid his check, left a good tip for the waitress, and stood.
“I’ll see you back at the ranch,” he said.
As Charlotte tucked the girls into bed, Rosemary had many questions about trapeze artists and France and broken bones and did the doctor fall in love with Mr. Wainwright’s grandmother while he was watching her perform or only when he patched her up? Joan remained silent. Charlotte had seen the question building in her face at dinner.
“Why isn’t Daddy coming with us to California?” Joan said. “To visit Aunt Marguerite with us?”
“Shhh,” Charlotte said. “Go to sleep. We’ll talk about it later.”
“Daddy didn’t come with us because he has to work, Joan.” Rosemary propped herself up on an elbow. She never suggested tentatively when she could declare emphatic
ally. “That’s why, of course.”
“Oh,” Joan said.
Charlotte saw that she was unconvinced, though. So look out. Once Joan had the scent, she was patient and relentless.
After the girls nodded off, Charlotte took the dog outside for his bedtime walk. The moon waxing, more than half full, and the sky cloudless. Every surface seemed as if it had been glazed with silver.
Mr. Wainwright, Frank, was standing at his spot by the pool fence, gazing up at the moon. She felt a tickle of suspicion—that he’d been there for a while, waiting for her. But of course that was silly.
She made her way over. “I suppose it was inevitable, wasn’t it?” she said.
“The Old Mexico is a small world,” he said. “Not that I’m complaining.”
“No?”
“Because we never did finish our conversation about term life, you realize.”
She smiled. He flirted with such good nature, his warmth seemed so genuine, that she didn’t mind. But she wondered if she should break the news to him, that his efforts were all for naught.
“When you live in New York, you forget what the sky looks like,” he said.
“I’ll have to take your word for that,” she said.
“I imagine there’s plenty of sky in Oklahoma.”
“You can’t miss it.”
He reached down to rub the dog’s ear, and his shoulder grazed her hip. The surge of desire took her by surprise, a dirty, crackling electricity. She imagined sliding her hand down his stomach and under the band of his slacks, holding him and squeezing him and feeling him turn hard in her palm. Her mouth pressed against his, her legs hitched around his waist, and her back against the fence, the iron picket digging between her shoulder blades. He wouldn’t last long. He would beg for release. And then tomorrow she would be gone. Charlotte might remember him, she might not.
The dog closed his eyes, tilted his head, and grumbled blissfully.
“Dogs tend to like me,” he said. “I can’t explain it.”
“Do you think people can change?” Charlotte said.