Mad River Road

by Joy Fielding

  Jamie said nothing. She lay on the brown-and-black bedspread, unable to move.

  “It’s your fault, you know, for being so damn sexy,” Brad continued, zipping up his fly and straightening his clothes. “You make me crazy. You know that?”

  It’s my fault, Jamie repeated silently.

  “Come on, girl. You better get up and get dressed. We’ve been here long enough.”

  Jamie struggled to get up, pushing herself off the bed and onto her feet, her legs giving out as soon as they hit the floor. She crumpled to the carpet, as if paralyzed.

  “Oh, God.”

  “Careful there, Jamie-girl. You don’t want to go getting blood on the carpet.”

  Blood? Jamie thought. She was bleeding?

  “We’ll clean up back at the motel,” Brad was saying as he pulled her to her feet, maneuvering her jeans back over her hips, then zipping them up when her fingers refused to cooperate. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  They were halfway down the stairs when they heard footsteps overhead and looked back to see a light come on in Mrs. Dennison’s room.

  “Oh, God.”

  “Mark? Is that you?” Mrs. Dennison called warily, flipping on the hall light as Brad and Jamie reached the bottom step. Then, “Jamie?”

  Jamie froze, as if a giant net had suddenly descended on her head.

  “Jamie, is that you?”

  “Get out of here,” Brad yelled, galvanizing Jamie into action.

  She tore open the front door, fleeing into the night without stopping or turning around.

  It was only as she was being sick on the sidewalk next to her car that Jamie realized Brad wasn’t beside her. She looked back up the street just as the light disappeared from Laura Dennison’s room.

  NINETEEN

  At first Emma couldn’t decide what to do with her newfound freedom. It had been so long since she’d had an entire Sunday all to herself. When Lily had first suggested taking the boys for the day—breakfast at the International House of Pancakes, followed by a trip to the Art Institute, then lunch at McDonald’s, and finally a movie—Emma had been against it. She disliked fast food almost as much as she disliked art galleries, and a vague but persistent headache at the base of her neck made the idea of sitting in a movie theater with a bunch of noisy five-year-olds something less than appealing, but how could she refuse when Dylan was staring at her with those big eyes filled with such obvious longing and Lily was smiling that sweet smile of hers? “It’s just that I have so much to do,” she demurred as Dylan’s features pinched together in disappointment and his eyes welled with tears. Not to mention my profound shortage of cash, Emma refrained from adding. The thought of wasting what little money she did have on something she wouldn’t enjoy …

  “Oh, you don’t have to come,” Lily had assured her brightly, as if she’d been expecting Emma’s response. “Let me take the boys. My treat.”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t let you do that.” Her protest sounded weak even to Emma’s ears.

  “Of course you can. You looked after Michael last night. Today is my turn.”

  “Well, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  “I want you to come too, Mommy,” Dylan had piped up.

  “I can’t, sweetheart. I have way too much to do.”

  “What do you have to do?”

  “All sorts of things.” Emma knelt down beside her son. “But it’s up to you, sweetheart. You can spend the day with Michael and his mother, going to the movies and all that other fun stuff, or you can spend the day with me, running errands and all that boring stuff. It’s your choice.” Some choice, she thought, hoping Dylan would feel the same way.

  “I want you to come with us,” he’d responded, as if she hadn’t spoken at all.

  “That’s not an option.”

  “What’s an option?”

  “It means you either go with Lily and Michael or stay home with me.”

  Dylan didn’t like her definition of option, and they spent the next five minutes going around in increasingly tight circles, but ultimately he’d made the only sensible choice and left with Lily and her son for breakfast at the International House of Pancakes.

  “I’ll have him home by five o’clock,” Lily promised as Emma watched her son disappear down the street with his new friends.

  Emma was surprised by the ease, even the eagerness, with which she’d let him go, considering the tight reins she’d held on him this past year. But Lily was so sweet and so reliable, Emma couldn’t imagine anything bad happening to her son while he was in her care. Lily would guard Dylan as if he were her own, Emma knew, feeling giddy and light-headed at the prospect of eight whole hours with no one to answer to but herself.

  It was only later, as she stood in the shower, letting the hot water cascade around her head and shoulders, that she realized she hadn’t even asked Lily about her date last night. Not that she’d had to. Lily had been positively glowing when she’d shown up outside her screen door at barely eight o’clock this morning, so obviously the date had gone well. She’d just tell Lily she hadn’t wanted to question her about her evening in front of the children. Hopefully Lily might have a few salacious details to divulge later, although the fact that she’d shown up so early this morning probably meant the detective hadn’t slept over. Emma swallowed two Excedrin as she wiped the steam from the bathroom mirror. “I look awful,” she said.

  Her reflection nodded its agreement. How long’s it been since you had a decent haircut? the face in the mirror asked.

  Emma pictured the new hairdressing salon that had recently opened in the same plaza as Scully’s. What was its name? She’d walked past it just the other day. Nan’s Place? Nancy’s? Nadine’s? “Natalie’s,” Emma remembered, the large white poster in the small salon’s front window coming into sharp focus, proudly announcing it was now open for business, including, for a limited time only, Sundays from ten to five. Emma wondered how much Natalie charged for a trim. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t afford it, no matter what it costs.”

  Sure you can, her image argued. How long’s it been since you treated yourself to anything?

  “Too long,” Emma said out loud, tugging on her hair and deciding to walk over to the strip mall as soon as her headache disappeared. First she’d have her hair styled and trimmed, and then maybe she’d go shopping. Hell, she had eight hours. Might as well get started.

  The salon was surprisingly busy for a Sunday morning, and Natalie was booked until noon, so Emma settled for a stylist named Christy, even though Christy looked to be suffering from an even worse hangover than Emma. Maybe it was the loud reggae music playing in the background, Emma thought as Christy led her to the sinks at the back of the salon. Christy was a skinny young woman in a yellow-and-black-striped jersey, a black miniskirt, yellow tights, and heavy, black combat boots. She looks like a giant bumblebee, Emma thought, settling into the chair at Christy’s station as Christy threw a black cape across her shoulder and ran a comb through her freshly washed hair. The yellow-and-black motif continued into Christy’s geometrically cut, chin-length bob, which was dark yellow with an inch of black roots, as well as in the mustard yellow ring that ominously circled her left eye.

  “I tripped,” Christy said before Emma had a chance to ask. “Not that anybody believes me,” she continued, unprompted. “Everybody assumes my boyfriend clocked me one, but Randy’s the sweetest guy you ever met, I swear. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. But people give him such looks when we’re out together. You wouldn’t believe. It’s funny, but it’s embarrassing too. I feel like wearing a sign that says ‘He didn’t do it,’ with an arrow pointing in his direction. You know, like those T-shirts that say ‘I’m with Stupid.’ It doesn’t help, of course, that he looks like such a bruiser.”

  “Same thing happened to me once,” Emma volunteered. “I tripped over my son’s toy and went flying into the corner of the kitchen door. Everyone assumed my ex was responsible.”

  “So, you’re divorced,”
Christy stated, combing out Emma’s shoulder-length dark hair and studying her in the mirror. She reached around to guide Emma’s chin to her right and then her left.

  “A year ago.”

  “Yeah? I’ve never been married. I mean, why bother, you know? It’s just a piece of paper. All this fuss they’re making about gays getting married? I say, if they want to, let them. I mean, pretty soon they’re going to be the only people who want to get married. What are you thinking of?”

  It took Emma a few seconds to realize that Christy was referring to her hair. “I don’t know. Maybe a few inches off the bottom?”

  “I think we should thin out the sides a bit too. Give ‘em some shape. Right now they look a bit too much like cocker spaniel ears for my taste.”

  Emma felt her spine stiffen. Her hair resembled the ears of a cocker spaniel? This from a woman who looked like a bumblebee? “Whatever you say.”

  “Oh, I just love it when people say that.” She began combing Emma’s hair with greater purpose and determination. “So, what do you do?”

  Emma ran through a silent list of possibilities. She could be anything her little heart desired. Doctor, lawyer, police detective. Anything but the failure she was. “I’m a writer.” Surely Lily wouldn’t mind if she borrowed her identity for half an hour. She might even be flattered.

  “Yeah? Cool. What sort of things do you write?”

  “Short stories, articles for magazines. I’m working on a novel.”

  “That’s so great. I really admire people who have a talent like that.” She began snipping away at Emma’s dark hair. “Where do you get your ideas?”

  Emma sighed. Why was it that people were never satisfied, that they always felt the need to know more? More to the point, why was she always putting herself in this position? She knew how stupid, how ultimately destructive her behavior was. Still she couldn’t help herself. Because the truth—the whole truth and nothing but the truth—was that it hurt too much when the lying stopped. “It’s hard to say.”

  “They just come to you out of the blue?”

  Emma almost laughed. “Apparently.”

  “Wow. That’s so interesting.” Christy began cutting into the sides of Emma’s hair. “So, you got a boyfriend now?”

  Emma nodded. Hell, she was already in pretty deep. Might as well go all the way. “He took me to Joso’s last night for dinner.”

  Christy looked unimpressed, as if she’d never heard of Joso’s. And maybe she hadn’t. “Yeah, so, where’d you meet him?”

  “Over at Scully’s.”

  “Yeah? That Jan’s quite a character, isn’t she? I’d love to get my hands on her hair, drag her into the twenty-first century. And all those trophies!”

  “They’re pretty impressive.”

  “I heard her husband left her for her plastic surgeon.”

  “I think it was his nurse,” Emma corrected.

  “That’d be interesting, don’t you think? Working for a plastic surgeon?”

  “Not really. I worked for one a few years ago,” Emma said, thinking, here we go again. “It wasn’t that interesting. Except for the movie stars coming in.”

  “Yeah? Like who?”

  Emma shook her head. Would she never learn? “I really shouldn’t say.”

  Christy made a face of disappointment that was a duplicate of Dylan’s face when he didn’t get his way. “So, what were all these movie stars doing coming to Ohio?”

  “I was living in California at the time.”

  Christy made a face that said, Of course. I should have realized that. “I guess you’ve moved around a lot.”

  “I guess.”

  “Probably gives you lots to write about.”

  “I guess,” Emma said again, growing bored with the conversation. That was the other thing about lying. It was exhausting. She closed her eyes, grunting at appropriate intervals to indicate she was still listening, although in truth, she’d pretty much tuned the now one-sided conversation out. Luckily, Christy didn’t seem to notice, and if she did, she didn’t seem to mind. She continued babbling the entire time Emma was in her chair, her voice a sedative, lulling Emma into a state of blissful semiconsciousness.

  Emma pictured herself floating on a pink rubber raft in the middle of a bright, blue sea. The reggae music emanating from an overhead speaker became a live band playing from the upper deck of an imagined nearby yacht. A party was in full swing. Someone threw a glass of champagne overboard, and Emma caught it and lifted it into the air, toasting the ship’s handsome captain as a hot wind blew into her ear, and mermaids played with her hair.

  “So, what do you think?” a voice was asking, slicing into her reverie with surgeonlike precision.

  Emma opened her eyes as Christy returned the blow dryer to its table. She leaned forward in her chair, mesmerized by her shapely new cut, shorter by several inches and softly layered at the sides. “It’s beautiful. I love it.”

  Christy smiled proudly as she whipped the black cape from Emma’s shoulders. “Would you like to book now for your next appointment? Six weeks should be about right.”

  Six weeks? Emma tried to remember how long it had been since she’d planned anything that far in advance. Who knew, after all, where she’d be in six weeks? And yet, suddenly, for the first time in more than a year, she was feeling, if not secure, then at least a little settled. She was feeling, if not exactly happy, then at least a little hopeful. Her world no longer felt so insular and circumspect. It showed signs of expanding. She had a new friend, and the possibility of more. Even more important, her son had a new friend. Perhaps his nightmares would soon cease, and along with that, the nightmare that had been the last year of their lives. She smiled at her reflection. Nothing like a new haircut to make you feel that all was right with the world. “Six weeks. Sure. Why not?”

  Emma floated out of the salon, stopping to linger in front of Marshalls discount department store—how she’d love a new spring wardrobe to go with her new haircut, she thought—before reluctantly continuing on her way. She passed Scully’s, waving at Jan, who stood behind the reception desk, wearing a fluorescent orange headband that matched the bright orange of her lips, the neon color clearly visible even through the thick glass of the front window.

  Jan smiled and waved her inside. “Hi there. Thinking about taking out a membership? We’re having an introductory special. Only two hundred and fifty dollars to join and thirty dollars a month, plus a free mug and T-shirt.” She reached under the counter, pulled out a large black mug with Scully’s scribbled in gold lettering across each side, and sat it on the counter.

  Emma laughed. Did the woman never give up? “Actually I was just over at Natalie’s. Having my hair done,” she added when Jan failed to comment. “You like it?”

  “Very nice. Now all we have to do is get that tummy in shape.” Jan patted her own flat abdomen for emphasis. “I could personalize a program for you, if you’d like, have you in the best shape of your life in no time.”

  It suddenly occurred to Emma that Jan had no idea who she was. Even though they’d spent an entire evening together only two nights before, Jan didn’t recognize her. It’s the new haircut, Emma assured herself, wondering what it was about her that failed to register. “Jan, it’s Emma,” she said, unable to disguise the impatience in her voice. “We met the other night. At Lily’s.”

  “Of course we did,” Jan said without missing a beat, although her eyes betrayed her. “I was just teasing. Are you looking for Lily?” she continued, looking longingly toward the exercise room, as if she were wishing she could slip through the glass. “She doesn’t come in on Sundays.”

  “Neither do a lot of people, from the looks of it,” Emma said, observing the lone, middle-aged woman on the treadmill, and trying to keep the smirk out of her voice. Payback, she was thinking, for Jan’s failure to recognize her. “Is it always this quiet on Sundays?”

  “It’s early. It’ll start to get busy soon.”

  Emma walked over to
the cabinet containing Jan’s many trophies. “You actually won all these?”

  Instantly Jan’s face brightened. “I certainly did.” She sashayed around the counter, walking toward the trophy cabinet. Open-toed, hot pink stilettos peeked out from beneath her hip-hugging, gray sweatpants.

  “How many are there?”

  “Oh, I’ve lost count. At least thirty.” Jan unlocked the cabinet with the key that dangled from a coiled, lime green, rubber bracelet on her wrist. “I have at least as many at home.”

  “What are they for?”

  “Oh, all sorts of things.” Jan reached inside the cabinet, extricated a small bronze statuette of a preening female bodybuilder. “This one is for Mrs. Ohio Bodybuilder. And this one”—she exchanged one trophy for another, this one a large silver bowl—“was from a competition I won in Boulder, Colorado, four years ago.” The phone rang. “Can you excuse me a minute?” She returned the bowl to the cabinet, ran around the counter to pick up the phone. “Hello? Noah?” She covered the receiver with her hand, turned back to Emma. “My nephew,” she said proudly. “Just graduated from M.I.T.”

  Emma nodded, as if she were impressed.

  “You got two job offers?” Jan repeated, smiling and raising two fingers in Emma’s direction. “That’s wonderful. And you want my advice?” She straightened her shoulders, winked at Emma. “Okay, so offer number one is for a job that’s not all that exciting but it’s with a large company and it pays megabucks. And offer number two pays next to nothing, but it sounds really interesting, and you think you’d really enjoy it. And you know which one I’d tell you to choose, but you’re still not sure what to do.” Jan looked a little taken aback. “Which one do you think I’d tell you to pick?” There was a pause, followed by an impatient shake of fiery red curls. “You think I’d tell you to pick the job that pays nothing but that you’d enjoy? Are you crazy?” Jan demanded, throwing her hands up in the air. “Who says you’ve earned the right to enjoy yourself? I want you to make a living, for God’s sake. I want you to be self-sufficient. I want you to be able to support yourself.”