The Miracle Girl

by Andrew Roe

  By then he was up in Oregon (a stint driving a truck for an antiques dealer, a two-­week construction gig outside Portland). In addition to the more spiritual I’m-­not-­a-­traveling-­soul insight, he also had the financial epiphany that he needed to stay put in one place for a while and save up some cash for himself and to send home. And that was when he had the thought: Go to Vegas. He said it out loud, like the words needed to be uttered in order for it to happen, for the sentence to come true: “Go to Vegas.” Not Vegas itself, but Henderson. Cheaper to live. Growing economy. Lots of jobs and opportunities. No state income tax. Right next to the light and awe of Vegas. And it wasn’t like he had a lot of other ideas. Plus he had a friend who’d recently moved to Henderson from Downey and who’d split up with his girlfriend, so he had a place to stay rent-­free for a while.

  He worked his way west toward the Oregon coast, then down Highway 101 and into Northern California, passing through rainy towns he’d never heard of: Crescent City, Orick, Fortuna, Garberville, Leggett, all in Humboldt County, which he saluted by firing up the soggy remains of an ancient joint he exhumed from the back of the ashtray. The highway twisted, the trees tangled their way up the hills and beyond. Redwoods, he assumed. There was so much between the Oregon border and San Francisco. He never knew. Yes, these were definitely places where you could disappear, especially up there. That was when it struck him. He was the type of person who really could disappear. No one would know. No one would make the necessary phone calls. No one would post flyers with his gruesome school yearbook photo. No one would mount the media campaign. There wouldn’t be any ribbons or buttons or press conferences. He’d just vanish—simply, without documentation. And who would miss him? He had no brothers or sisters. His father had died young, a heart attack at the age of forty-­nine, the year after John graduated from high school. Long before that he’d left John’s mother, who never recovered and back then worked nights in a mattress factory, so John was often alone as a boy and later as a teenager, his mother in the end moving back to Michigan, where she was from. John’s only real connection to anything, anyone, had been his wife and daughter. And now those ties were severed, too.

  When he finally hit Los Angeles and it was early morning and the sun began rising and there wasn’t much traffic, he sped up, powering east, moving faster like there was someone behind him, in pursuit. He thought of one of the few quotable things his father had ever said: Whatever you wind up doing to yourself in this life, just don’t let the past bite your ass.

  THEN HE LOOKS up, hoping the TV will throw him a rope, save him from something he can’t name. He looks up, up. The bar lights dimmer, darker now. But which TV? So many TVs, so many options. Welcome to America. At last he goes with the TV that’s closest, proximity winning out. It’s not sports. It’s not a commercial. It’s a movie he’s seen before, but it’s been years (high school?), and he can’t remember the title, the plot, anything. And there, next to him, is the old man with the oxygen tank. Except the oxygen tank is gone, missing. He’s wearing a blue Wal­mart vest. Smoking. Eyes moist and glazed and full of untold regret. He’s standing, technically swaying, but not for long, because he’s falling, falling forward, his face landing smack on the bar, bone meeting lacquered wood, and the terrible, thudding sound causes John’s shoulders to wince and rise, the old man’s old face twisted and ruined, grimacing, all gums inside his mouth, a pink nightmare, and John grabs him by the shirt so he doesn’t crumple to the ground and hurt himself even more.

  This all brings the bartender over, arms waving, and he’s even surlier now, yelling, “Fuck, Wendell, fuck. Not again.”

  AFTER HIS FRIEND’S place, he found an apartment a couple of blocks away, a generic one-­bedroom, month to month, parking space not included. There were Howard Hughes periods when he didn’t get out all that much. No frills, no extras. Read the same Stephen King paperback three times. He frequently reminded himself that it was probably about time he did some sit-­ups before it got seriously out of hand. Most meals were smuggled in from the outside and consumed over the kitchen sink for maximum efficiency. The curtains didn’t close all the way, allowing in a thin strip of unwelcome light. He didn’t talk to his neighbors and they didn’t talk to him, both parties sensing the mutual need for discretion.

  He burned through most of the cash he’d saved up, did the job search thing, answered ads he was underqualified for and overqualified for, one day landing in the offices of TempPeople, the manager, Phil, saying they look for only the best and brightest without cracking a smile. He was offered the job right then and there, started the next day. And so now every few weeks he’s sent somewhere else, a new office, a new system and new names to learn and then forget, where he files and answers phones and faxes and collates and stacks and does whatever he’s told, one time driving to Walgreen’s to pick up a home pregnancy test for a secretary. Nights, he came home and sometimes didn’t bother turning on the lights, sitting in the dark until he remembered who he was and what he did. Every other day or so he picked up the phone to check and make sure it was still working. Mail arrived for Current Resident. It was a life. Every Saturday he put money into an envelope and sent it off to his wife, no return address, no note, just the cash.

  THE BARTENDER NOW saying that’s it, he’s had enough, he’s going to call the cops once and for all, and the old man begging please don’t please please don’t, practically crying, also saying they’ll fire me they find out and where’ll I be then? The bartender picking up the phone and dialing.

  “Wait,” says John, who’s managed to transfer the old man, Wendell, to his stool. “Don’t call. I’ll take care of him. I’ll get him out of here. I’ll take him home. I need to call a cab anyway. I’ll drop him off on my way.”

  The bartender stops dialing.

  “You’re volunteering to take care of this broken-­down bag of bones?”

  “Yes,” John says, without understanding why.

  “Fine,” says the bartender, putting down the phone. “Get him out of here. Get him the fuck out of here and out of my sight and the next time you come back you’re drinking on the house.”

  John hauls the old man outside to wait for the cab. Leans him like a rolled carpet against a rusted newspaper dispenser rack (Las Vegas Weekly) and hopes for the best. The desert air—thick, oppressive, ever vigilant—assaults, even at this late hour; he’ll never get used to the weather here, never. Music and voices spill out of the Well. A few smokers have congregated on the sidewalk, watching their practiced plumes rise into the air while complaining about the lack of a professional sports team in Nevada.

  “I’m Wendell,” the old man says, only it comes out more like “Iwenal.” Wendell extends a chapped-­to-­hell hand, waits for John to shake it. And once John does, the old man doesn’t let go, latches on to John like an anchor, the last fellow human being on the planet.

  “Where do you live, Wendell? I’ve got a cab coming. Just tell me where you live and I’ll drop you off, help you get situated.”

  “I’m a greeter.”

  “What?”

  “Greeter. That’s what I do. It’s my job. You come in the store. You walk in. I say hello, how are you. Maybe you see me, maybe you don’t. But I greet. I need to greet. It’s what I do.”

  “Didn’t you have an oxygen tank earlier?”

  “Sold it,” says Wendell, the left side of his face growing redder by the minute, only three teeth total, it looks like. “Needed cigarettes. Now they’re gone, too. Everything gone.”

  The cab pulls up, and John manages to insert Wendell inside the vehicle, his body heavier than expected, still some weight and heft to him despite the stick-­figure frame.

  “How’s your face feeling?” John asks after he tells the cab driver where Wendell lives.

  “What face?”

  “Your face. From when it hit the bar.”

  Wendell, collapsed and limp against the half-­open car window, the alcohol and Marlboros seeping off of him like a force fie
ld, feels his cheeks, his defeated chin, as if feeling his face for the first time, a new discovery after all these years.

  “Still there,” he concedes. “Never much of a face to begin with. Ha ha. You make do with what you have. Or not. I’m old. Hell knows, I’m old. But probably not as old as you think. Hey, are you one of Bobby’s friends? Is that it? You tell him, you see Bobby, you tell him I said hi. You tell him I understand. I understand. I’d probably be the same way I was in his place. You tell him I’m doing OK. You tell him he don’t need to worry none.”

  John’s head spins: from the booze, from the barreling cab, from the mission he’s apparently on.

  When they get to Wendell’s, the cab driver says no way, he’s not going to help, you’re on your own bub, this ain’t a charity service, which means John’s working solo now, lugging Wendell out of the cab and onto the sidewalk and up a short flight of stairs. The apartment complex’s architectural distinction defined by concrete and gates. Because John’s drunk, too, it takes a good ten minutes to make it all the way to Wendell’s apartment on the third floor. John starts trying out the different keys on Wendell’s key ring. And it’s then, with Wendell leaning against him, his eyes now closed, that the old man violently pukes. A volcanic spew. Which covers the front of John’s shirt and pants. Sure. Of course. Why not. This is part of it, this is part of his well-­deserved penance, this is what he must endure because of what he did.

  Wendell opens his eyes, surveys what was once inside and is now outside. Barely any damage to his Walmart vest, just a little dribble of fluid. Then he looks over at John, narrows his failing gaze, like he’s trying to place him from somewhere in his past: one of the many faces that have come and gone, and are now lost.

  “I’m a greeter,” Wendell says. “Next time you see my Bobby, you tell him I’m OK. You tell him I’m a greeter and I’m doing OK. You tell him I’m not fuckeroo’d yet.”

  THE HANGOVER FROM the Well lasts a good two days, the entire weekend spent on the couch and in significant pain. Impressive. Mission accomplished. And the smell from Wendell’s vomit? It’s the first thing that registers (his nostrils twitching at the memory) as he awakes this morning, Monday, and silences the chirping alarm. And so the day begins: shower, shave, breakfast while dressing and getting ready for work.

  His current TempPeople assignment is at a company that prints DVD covers for porn flicks. The people who work there (mostly women) don’t look like porn people, they are middle-­aged, overweight, tired, very un-­porn. He works in the warehouse, filling orders, inserting covers into plastic jewel cases, boxing up stacks and stacks of packaged pornography and calling UPS for the 3 p.m. pickup. The person who usually has this job got a DUI and lost his driver’s license for three months, and because of the inadequate Clark County bus system, he couldn’t make it to work. The company wanted to keep him on (he’s a good employee, he shows up), so John is here, temping. The guy’s name is Alfonso, and John has to wear a shirt with an embroidered patch that says ALFONSO because, as one of the tired women pointed out, why should they go to all the trouble of ordering JOHN shirts when John would only be here for three months? Didn’t make sense.

  When he arrives at Dazzle Productions for the day, he heads right to the break room, where two of the women (Tisha and Sharon, or maybe Sherry?) are sitting at one of the tables and talking about a story they heard on the news this morning, something about a mother microwaving a baby. Birthday streamers and signs hang here and there, leftover from a party that occurred weeks ago; no one had bothered to take the decorations down. That burnt coffee smell common to all break rooms.

  “It’s John,” announces Tisha, pouring a generous stream of powdered creamer into her coffee. “California John. Quiet John. Good morning, Quiet California John.”

  “Morning.”

  “The next time you go back to California, John, can you tell all those people there, all those fine California people, tell them there are enough of them over here already. We’re good. We got enough folks. Can you do that? A favor for me and the rest of Nevada?”

  “Sure.”

  Tisha turns back to the other woman (Sandy?). “Now where was this? Florida? It sounds like a Florida thing.”

  “Florida. Or Arkansas. One of those two.”

  Then it’s back to him: “You got kids, Quiet John?”

  He usually tries to avoid the kid question whenever it comes up. Or he lies to keep things simple. But here, in this situation, with these tired women, he decides to say yes, admit the fact of his complicated parenthood.

  “Just one, yeah.”

  “One don’t hardly count,” says Tisha, who has like twenty kids and walks with a cane.

  “How do you think a parent, a mother,” she continues, “puts one of her own, a little baby, in a microwave like it’s popcorn or something. I don’t get it. You get it, John?”

  “No I don’t.”

  The other woman (yes, it’s Sandy, he’s pretty sure now) takes a bite of a Frisbee-­sized Danish. Mouth full, she says, “It’s too much. You hear something like that so early in the day, it’s too much. I just want to drink my coffee and eat my highly caloric pastry, thank you very much.”

  John shrugs his way out of the break room (the world, the crazy world we live in, what can you do?), walks down the hall toward the men’s bathroom, where he’ll avoid his face in the mirror and put on his ALFONSO shirt. He’ll go into the warehouse. He’ll breathe the plastic-­y smell of all those DVD cases. He’ll start filling his orders. The work will take over. The time will pass. And he’ll think of Wendell’s sad old-­man apartment, empty and anonymous, the way he laid him down on the sofa, how Wendell thanked him and then closed his eyes and it seemed final, like those eyes would never open again, and John walked back to the cab and threw up himself, the contents of his own stomach winding up in the gutter and sidewalk.

  And he’ll think of the past, too, and what he’s done. Because this is what you do when you’re living with the fallout from a decision that you can still taste in your mouth and see when you close your eyes. He’ll think of going back, as he always does, and he’ll also wonder if too much time has passed. Each day banishing him further. Yes, he’d freaked, he’d flinched, he’d fucked up. Plain and simple. Part of a long lineage of guys, men, dudes, fucking up. And now, here he is in the desert, living sparse and seeking silences, he’s beginning the process of working his way back—day by day, week by week, month by month—and to become someone who would never do such a thing again, would never even think such a thing, a man who can stand seeing himself in the mirror and not look away.

  3

  | Anabelle |

  THE MAN WAS there, and so was the woman. But the man wasn’t her father, and the woman wasn’t her mother. They were someone else. Sometimes she’d pretend. They were just the man and the woman. Blank. Blank as the blank whiteboards at school after you come back from a vacation and there’s no smear or ghost letters. They didn’t know her. She didn’t know them. Sometimes she’d pretend.

  Sometimes, too, she’d go all day without speaking. It was like a game. She’d decide in the morning. Then do it. Or not do it. Not speak. As the woman sat her down and combed out her long, long, long hair in the mornings, she’d decide. At school, if Mrs. Stinson called on her or asked her how her additions and subtractions were going, she pointed to her throat. “Are you sick, dear? Does your throat hurt?” And she nodded. She nodded yes or no, or, to say I don’t know, lifted her shoulders and eyebrows as high as they could go and made an I-­don’t-­know-­type face. She realized that most of the time you didn’t need to talk. Your body could do the talking for you. It was a powerful thing, not speaking. People noticed it more than speaking.

  And when she did speak, she’d sometimes make up her own language and say the new words aloud, whispering them to herself. Instead of living on Shaker Street she lived on Flizpertid Street. Dog was zloom. Cat was swilterfuzz. Every word that she thought of she gave it another name. It was ea
sy, making up the names. They just came to her. She didn’t even have to try. The dry-­yuck taste of her hair when she put it in her mouth and chewed and they told her no.

  When she had enough words memorized, she tried out her new language on the man and woman. “What are you doing? Speaking in tongues?” And she didn’t know what that meant. So she stuck out her tongue. They laughed. The man and woman thought that was funny and it was nice to hear them laugh.

  She played. She played spy. She tiptoed and made no sounds whatsoever. Everything got louder when she did this. Like someone had turned up the volume. The quieter you were, the more you heard, the more you noticed. She listened when she wasn’t supposed to. She heard things, the man and the woman having conversations, talking when they thought she was asleep.

  “I mean I know I’m no expert. But. It seems like she, sometimes, she just doesn’t seem right to me. Something’s a little off, you know? She’s just a little . . . off. I look at other kids and then I look at her. It’s not the same. She’s not like other kids. Just to compare. The periods of not talking. And then when she does . . . Those voices and words that she uses. It’s like she’s another person when she’s in these, what, states.”

  Different. Off. Not right. Not like other kids.

  “She’s fine, John. She’s six. She’s a little girl. How many times have we been over this? I was the same way. Shy like that. Always observing, always absorbing. Always in my own little world, according to my mom. ‘You were a deep thinker from early on, always thinking.’ Don’t worry. I work with kids and kids go through phases. She’s figuring things out.”

  She played and she sat on the sidewalk in front of their house, which wasn’t really their house, it was someone else’s. She did this for hours and hours, rocking, concentrating, watching the people and the cars and the sky. She looked at the sky and searched for planes. Sometimes you could see them, sometimes you couldn’t. It depended on the sky. How ucky it was. If there was too much uck, you couldn’t see them. But if there wasn’t, you could see them. Planes passing overhead like dreams. There were people inside the planes even though it didn’t seem like that was possible. But there were. There were people in there who, inside that plane that looked like it was going really really slow but was actually going really really fast—people who lived in houses and ate peanut butter and had pets and burped and farted and slept and drove to the market on Saturdays and cried when someone died and went away. She imagined them all as friendly, the kind of people you’d like to invite for a sleepover. Although she, herself, didn’t have sleepovers.