by Naomi Niles
Dickie shrugged. “Hey man, I’m just trying to help.”
As I was on my way out the door, Dickie stopped me. “By the way, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s another race coming up in a couple weeks. The prize this time is phenomenally higher than last time.”
I paused at the edge of the garage and turned toward him. “How much?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars,” he replied.
I let out a low whistle. “Shit, I bet Adam’d love to have that.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t want it. Anyway, and they’re tightening security to make sure this race isn’t interrupted like last time. If we can get the car fixed up in time, you’ve got a good shot at winning it.”
“I won’t be upset if I do. We just need to get this muffler replaced, and it’ll be good to go. Though the way Penny drove it, I think she’d have an even better shot at winning the money. I’ve gotta figure out a way to enter her into the contest in my place.”
“Well, if you think of one, let me know,” said Dickie as he returned to wiping down the hood. “You’re the one banging her, so it’s not like you would be losing money.”
“Got that right.” I gave a salute of farewell and left.
There was no one else in the store when I came in. Behind the counter, Penny was dancing while the portable radio blared a ‘90s pop song. My heart skipped a few beats as I stood there watching her. There was something so seductive about the way she moved her body that made my pulse race. For a moment I was transported back to the hotel room while she danced in front of me, pressing her hips against me with a smirk and an air of not giving a damn.
Seeing me standing there watching her, Penny grinned shyly and ran to turn off the radio. I followed her with my eyes, feeling somehow both amused and turned on. She didn’t even have to take her clothes off to be sexy. She just was.
I had to fight back a fierce urge to walk up to her right then and tell I loved her. Was that an appropriate thing to say when you had only been dating someone for five days? Probably not. And it might have led to us passionate making out there at the front of the store.
Get it together, Savery, I chided myself. You’re in public.
Penny turned back to the counter and folded her hands professionally in front of her as though nothing had happened.
“Hey,” she said quietly. She looked about as nervous as she had felt when we had first started making out on Saturday.
“Hey, you. I heard someone ordered me the parts that I needed without telling me.”
Penny averted her eyes innocently. “I don’t know who it could have been. Sounds like you might have an admirer.”
“I must,” I said with a smile. I leaned over against the counter hoping to quiet my body, but this had the effect of bringing my face closer to Penny’s. From here I could count every freckle on her nose. I could also see that she had been crying.
“What’ve you been up to the last few days?” I asked. There was so much more I wanted to say, but we would have to start there.
“Just taking care of my dad.” She shrugged. “I haven’t been out anywhere.” There was a touch of resentment in her voice as if she blamed me for the fact that she had been trapped inside her house.
It occurred to me only for the first time that I had never clarified whether we were officially dating now, or whether what we had done over the weekend had been just a casual hookup. Undoubtedly, the same question must have occurred to Penny. She must have been agonizing over it, and maybe that was why she had been crying.
After we’d both stood there awkwardly in silence for a minute, she added, “What have you been up to?” in the same accusatory voice.
“Not a whole lot. I went skeet shooting with my dad, and my brother, and my brother’s fiancée on Sunday afternoon. The two of them are fixin’ to get married, and they’re still in that honeymoon stage where they think the world of each other. Then we went back to the house, and Mama had made us roast squash, savory slow-cooked pork, and an apple pie.”
“That sounds fantastic, actually. Why haven’t I been over to your house yet?”
“You’re welcome to come over sometime. I’ll have to let my mom know you’re coming, but I’m sure she would love to have you. She always gets excited when we have—um, friends over.” Given that we hadn’t yet defined our relationship, I didn’t want to say girls. “She’ll put an old Glenn Miller recording on vinyl and stand there in the kitchen talking to you while she roasts the corn.”
“Oh, perfect. Now I have to come over. Is she one of those Edith Bunker ladies who wears floral dresses and plays the piano during dinner as everyone is finishing their meal?”
“Yes, actually. Even has the glasses and everything.”
“I can already tell I’m going to love her.” She had her hands in her back pockets, and the glow was slowly returning to her face. “Well, would you like to see the muffler you ordered? It’s right back here.”
“Sure.”
I thought she was going to lead me into the back room, but instead, we went through it and out the door at the other end. Nic was standing in a dusty corner under a green-tinted bulb unpacking a large box; she stood up as we came through, looking puzzled.
Yesterday’s rain had cleared, and the air smelled faintly of damp and fresh-cut grass. The morning sun cast a warm glow over the red-and-white observation tower and a large, level field spotted with molehills.
“Isn’t this the loveliest place for a picnic?” Penny said with a soft sigh.
“It really is.” I had a sudden image of the two of us coming out here one weekend when the lot was deserted, eating sandwiches out of a large wicker basket and making love in the green grass. Then after the sun had set, we would lie down together and try to count the stars. “Do you come back here often?”
“One night, I slept out here because I was locked out of my house,” Penny replied. I turned and stared at her in surprise. “I woke up the next morning with fertilizer in my hair and a large dairy cow standing over me. She had escaped from a neighboring farm and was just wandering through town quietly grazing on whatever grass she could find. That was a really lonely time in my life. I’m a lot better off now.”
“How’s your dad doing? The last couple times I’ve come over, he hasn’t been around.”
A look of distress flashed across Penny’s face. Casting her eyes down at her sneakers, she kicked a chunk of gravel shyly into the grass. “Do you want to go talk on the tower? We’re a lot less likely to be interrupted up there.”
“Yeah, are you sure you won’t get in trouble?”
“There’s nobody else in the store, and I don’t think Nic will care. Honestly, sometimes I wonder how we even manage to stay open with the amount of business we get. You’re probably the only thing keeping us in business right now.”
“Well, I do what I can.” I desperately wanted to ask her if she was okay—she sure didn’t look it—but I decided to wait until we had reached the top of the tower. Penny led the way up the ladder. Although the sun shone warmly, a cool wind was blowing in from the east carrying the scent of azaleas and pine needles.
Penny sat down at the edge of the tower and swung her legs over. Somehow even in her dingy work uniform, she looked weirdly sexy. She had such an innocent face with those long lashes and large eyes and that perfectly smooth, pale skin. She smiled at me as I sat down, and I could tell, without her having to say anything, that she wanted me there.
“I feel bad for not having told you this sooner,” she said, sweeping her hair out of her face. “We don’t talk about it much outside of the family, but my dad hasn’t been doing very well lately. He’s battling an aggressive form of cancer.”
I’d have thought she was pulling my leg if the tone in her voice wasn’t so deadly earnest. “How did I not already know about this? I feel terrible.”
“It’s okay; it’s my fault for not telling you. He didn’t want a lot of people knowing, so if anyone asks, we tell them he�
��s on sick leave. Only a few of our regular customers have put two and two together. The rest just assume he’ll be back to work in a few days.”
“Is he ever coming back?” I couldn’t think of any other to ask what was really on my mind.
“We don’t know, honestly. The longer it goes on, the worse it looks. The doctors keep telling us it’ll be okay, that he’s a fighter, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had any hope for his recovery. They said the cancer was confined to his testicles and that they had isolated it, but I’ve seen it affecting his brain, changing his personality.”
“That could just be the radiation treatment,” I replied. “I had an aunt who underwent chemotherapy when she came down with breast cancer, and she became a completely different person. It doesn’t necessarily mean your dad is hopeless.”
Penny grimaced uncertainly. She had been despairing over her father’s condition for so long that it was hard to think of anything I could say that would help her.
“This is just making me realize I don’t know anything about death,” she said, her voice cracking slightly. “I believe that when he dies, he’ll go and be with Jesus, but will he still be able to see me? Can I just sit there and talk to him? I don’t know how it all works.”
“That I couldn’t tell you.” My parents had raised us religious, but I couldn’t make heads nor tails of the Bible. “I’m sure this won’t be the end of him.”
“I really hope that’s true. Wouldn’t that be terrible if he just died and that was the end? If he just ceased to exist? I keep trying to wrap my head around it. I realized I don’t really have any proof of life after death, other than what I’ve read in the Bible and stories my dad’s told me about the ghosts in our family. He says my mom appeared to him a few days after she died. He says it wasn’t a dream. She told him how she wanted him to raise me.”
“That might have just been his grief talking. I know a lot of people see ghosts right after a loved one dies, but that don’t prove nothing.”
Penny let out a sniff of contempt and glared at me. I hadn’t realized what an insensitive thing it was to say, given the present subject of discussion. “I’m sorry—that probably wasn’t what you needed to hear right now.”
“No, it’s okay,” said Penny, staring out over the grassy expanse. “You were just being honest about what you think. I hate it when friends try to give me false hope. I think that’s one reason I haven’t wanted to talk about it much. When I tell them he has cancer, the first thing they say is, ‘Oh, he’ll get better!’ I know they just want to encourage me, but they don’t know that.”
I wished I had been better prepared for this conversation; we were wading out into deep waters now. She had clearly spent a lot of time thinking about death and the afterlife. I had never given it much thought, apart from a sense that wherever we went after death, it was probably good and nothing to be stressed about.
“I wish I knew what to tell you,” I said with a shake of my head. The urge to reach out and take her hand was strong, but I resisted. “There’s not a lot of goodness or justice in this world, and sometimes our loved ones die before we’re ready. Nobody really knows where they go, and anyone who says they do is trying to sell you something. But that don’t mean we’ve gotta give up hope. I don’t think death is the end of every story. I don’t know where or how, but I’m sure you’ll see your dad again.”
I thought maybe I had said too much. I half-expected Penny to be offended and storm off. Instead, she leaned her head on my chest and lay there for a minute shuddering quietly and trying hard not to cry.
“I wish the world wasn’t such a mysterious place sometimes,” she moaned. “I wish we could know why certain people suffer, and I wish we could know whether or not it was going to get better. I always thought the world was a safe place, but the older I get, the more I feel my guarantees and securities being stripped away. And just—where will I go when I don’t have my dad to depend on? Who’s going to support me? I’m not ready to be an adult in this world, but lately, I’ve had to be, for both of us.”
While I was still formulating my response, she got up and walked over to the railing. For a long moment, she stood leaning over it, swaying precariously back and forth as the cool wind blew her hair back.
“Isn’t it strange?” she asked quietly. “I could just—jump off so easily. And then what would become of me?”
I began to feel a sense of unease, like maybe I should go over and stand next to her. “It’s a long drop,” I said, shielding my eyes from the sun. “You could fall and seriously hurt yourself. Even if you didn’t die, you might break a leg or a rib.”
“A few years ago, just before I dropped out of college, I visited New York City. I have the most vivid memory of standing on the subway platform and watching the trains roll in. I used to think how easy it would be just to nudge myself over the edge—how it would all be over in less than a second. It might not even hurt…”
With a feeling of extreme apprehension, I leaped up and ran over toward her. Right away, Penny turned and buried her head in my chest, clinging to me tightly.
“Oh, Darren,” she moaned. “I don’t want to die; I don’t! But sometimes the burden of living is too much. And I don’t want to have to sit here and watch my dad dying, knowing I can’t do anything about it, knowing the pain he’s in, knowing that might be me in another twenty years. It would be so much easier just to end it all right now.”
“You know how much I would miss you if you did?” I said low in her ear. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in ages.”
Penny glanced up at me in surprise. “Even better than the money?”
“God, so much better.” Bending low, I brushed my lips over her hair. “Even if I won another hundred thousand, that would still be true.”
For the first time since we had ascended the tower, Penny smiled. “Thank you for saying that,” she replied, wiping a tear from her eye. “I sometimes feel like the world would be better off without me. It’s hard to imagine Nic, or my dad, or really anyone missing me for more than a few days.”
“I can almost promise your death would be the worst thing that had ever happened to me.”
“Almost?” Penny repeated with a coy smile.
“One time in sixth grade I accidentally ate a whole thing of wasabi and had to be rushed to the emergency room. Nothing in my life will ever be quite that bad, but your death would be close.”
“I can accept that,” she said with a resigned shrug. “I guess we’d better get back down there before Nic starts wondering where I’m at.”
“You never did show me that muffler,” I said as we descended the ladder.
“Maybe you can come back and get it some other time. It would give you an excuse to come back, at least.”
“How about if I just took you out to dinner on Friday?”
Penny paused with her left foot on the bottom rung. “Would you really? I would love that.”
I’m not sure why, but for a moment I had worried that maybe she would say no. Relief flooded through me as I realized we would be going out again this weekend.
“Just an ordinary date this time?” she asked. “Nothing dramatic or death-defying?”
“Penny,” I said with a shake of my head, “as long as you’re there, nothing is ever gonna be ordinary.”
Chapter Twenty
Penny
Ever since our trip to Round Rock, Dad had been asking when I was going to let him read my book. Normally I had a strict policy of not letting anyone read my books until they were finished, and sometimes not even then. But Dad insisted on it. “If I wait until you’re done, I may never get a chance to read it.”
“Why wouldn’t you?!”
“Imagine you were directing a Star Wars movie and a ten-year-old girl with cancer came up to you and asked if she could see it as her dying wish. You’d have a hard time saying no.”
“Well, you’re not going to die,” I said in as calm a voice as I could manage. �
�But because I like you and I need another pair of eyes, I’ll send you the first five chapters. You have to promise me you’ll be honest about it. I don’t want you lying and telling me you love the story if you think it’s awful.”
“Remember, I graded essays for twenty-five years,” Dad replied. “A lack of honesty was never failing.”
“Well, if you hand me the story back with a giant ‘F’ at the top, I’ll probably go to my room and cry, but I think I would prefer that over dishonest encouragement.”
When I left for work on Friday, Dad was sitting in the kitchen window reading the first chapter over a cup of tea. By the time I returned home that night, he had finished it.
“What did you think?” I asked him. In spite of my initial hesitation, I was genuinely curious. “Come and talk to me while I’m putting up my hair.”
Dad came and sat down at the end of the bed while I studied myself in the vanity. After agonizing over it for a couple hours with Nic, I had decided to wear a sleeveless black beaded top and a pair of high-waisted jeans.
“There’s a lot going on in this story,” he said, “a lot. I almost think there’s too much plot.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing, is it? I tried to keep the story moving along at a fast pace. I don’t want the reader getting bored, putting the book down to get a cup of coffee and then getting distracted and never coming back to finish it.”
“I sometimes think having too much plot can be as boring as too little. Like, it’s great that your characters are falling in love and flying around Berlin, but you haven’t given as much attention to their internal struggle.”
“Internal struggle?”
“See, the real story inside any story is how the protagonist grows and changes. Like, the thing that makes the original Star Wars so compelling is how Luke is transformed from a scruffy nerf-herder into a brave, confident young man.”
“Interesting…” I loved Dad’s insistence on using Star Wars analogies despite the fact that I had never much cared for Star Wars.