Red Road

by Wiltz, Jenni

  She looked at the tray her sister had brought to her, untouched, sitting on the foot of her bed. The plastic plate held a turkey sandwich and a few chips, the plain kind, without any flavor powder. She wondered what they were eating downstairs and why she couldn’t have any.

  Her dad had always told her that doing things for other people made you a good person. But sometimes doing those things meant knowing what other people couldn’t find the words to ask for.

  She swaddled the gun in Monica’s T-shirt, the one Elvira brought it to school in. Then she slipped it into her purse and set her purse by the bed.

  • • •

  On Saturday morning, she woke to sunlight streaming into her room. The concentrated rays made her sweat beneath the sheets and she threw back her covers. The clock radio said 9:45 a.m.

  She lay uncovered for a few more minutes, feeling her skin tingle as it adjusted to the cooler temperature outside her sheets. When she was little, it had seemed so natural to wake up at 7 a.m. and go into the living room to watch cartoons. Kids still thought there was a reason to get up, that something good might happen if they did.

  Grown-ups—and teenagers—knew better.

  During the night, Wellington had fallen onto the floor between her bed and her nightstand. She picked him up, smoothed his fur, and set him back on the bed. “I’m sorry I dropped you.” After a pause, she added, “I’m sorry every time I drop you.” She picked him up, crushed him to her, and kissed his fuzzy forehead.

  She reached for her favorite jeans and a plain white T-shirt, one of the few she hadn’t spilled anything on yet, and headed for the shower. Even though she’d never done it before, she followed the directions on the shampoo bottle: Lather. Rinse. Repeat. After the “repeat,” her hair squeaked when she slid two fingers down the too-slick strands.

  As she dried off, she noticed that the hand towel hanging next to Mattie’s sink was wet. Darker patches had imprinted like a Rorschach test on the pink terry cloth. Mattie usually slept until 11 a.m. on weekends. What was she doing up?

  Emma slid a plastic comb through her hair, massaged zit cream into her chin, and grabbed her purse from the bedroom. Holding it by the bag instead of the strap, she carried it down the hall. The carpet was finally getting soft again, after the multiple rounds of cleaning solution, and she wriggled her bare toes over it. She paused on the landing and wished everything could move backward in time, so that anyone who was in the kitchen would smile at her instead of just wanting her to go away.

  Her feet made no sound on the tile floor as she set her purse near the door to the garage. There were only two items missing, but she’d have to wait for both of them.

  Mattie and her mom stood together in the kitchen. Mattie held a wooden spoon in a death grip as she stirred something in a silver mixing bowl. She wore flannel PJs and her skin still had that dewy morning glow, like a baby’s. Emma closed her eyes and made a wish. Please, she prayed, don’t let her lose that.

  “What are you guys doing?” she asked.

  “We’re making muffins,” Mattie said. “Lemon poppyseed.”

  “That’s my favorite.”

  Her sister smiled. “I know.”

  Emma glanced at her mom, who shrugged and looked away quickly. “It’s your sister’s doing.”

  “Thanks, Matt.”

  “It was supposed to be a surprise. What are you even doing up so early?”

  “I guess I knew you were up to something.”

  “Forsooth,” Mattie said.

  Emma put her elbows on the kitchen island and watched her mom put muffin cups in the tin. She rotated the colors, pink and blue and yellow, so that an even number of each color was represented. “About done mixing?”

  “How would I know?”

  Her mom leaned over Mattie’s shoulder. “No lumps.”

  “Here, you pour. I always mess up.”

  Her mom took the silver bowl and poured each muffin cup half full of batter. Just like she did with waffle batter, she tilted the bowl to control the flow and didn’t spill a drop on the counter or the muffin tray. Emma looked at her sister’s face, with three faint wrinkles pulling to the surface of her forehead. She wished she could tell Mattie that she’d measure up, that there was plenty of time.

  As soon as the muffins were in the oven, her mom moved into the dining room, to the table where Emma did homework every other day of the week. She pulled a sheaf of newspaper from a stack in the middle of the table and opened it to the crossword puzzle.

  Mattie stayed in the family room and turned on the TV.

  Emma followed her mom, sitting at the far end of the table, pretending to look at the ads in the Saturday paper. Over the crenellated top of the Target ad, she watched her mom scratch through one of the clues as she solved it. She pursed her lips as she read the next clue, tapping the pencil eraser against her cheek. A moment later, she entered her response and drew a line through the clue, straight and dark. The hand that held the pencil was bare.

  How long, Emma wondered, would that sight feel like a stab in the gut? “Is Dad upstairs?”

  Her mom nodded. “It took him a long time to get to sleep after he went to bed last night.”

  “Me too,” she said. Once her dad woke up, her mom would go check on him and help him wash up. As soon as she heard water running, it would be time to go.

  She pretended to read the rest of the ads until the kitchen timer went off. “They smell done,” her mom said, scooting her chair out and going into the kitchen. Emma heard the creak of the oven door, then the squeak of the cabinet next to the microwave, where her mom kept the toothpicks.

  A rich, lemony smell wafted through the dining room. Emma closed her eyes and breathed it in. Don’t ever forget this smell, she told herself.

  Her mom carried two muffins on a plate to Mattie in the family room and brought four into the dining room for herself and Emma. She’d sliced all four and buttered each individual half. The tiny pats of margarine melted before her eyes, dissolving into amoeba-like shapes beneath visible trails of steam. Emma opened her mouth and was surprised to find her voice choked with a cobweb of tears.

  The four of them were everything to each other: earth, air, water, and fire. Her mother was the fire. Her father was the earth. Her sister was the air. That left only water for her, although she couldn’t figure out what that meant.

  Once, swimming in the ocean at Santa Cruz, she’d slipped under a wave as she took a breath. She kicked for the surface as salt water flooded her lungs. The sun above the water looked like the moon, smaller and dimmer and whiter than she’d remembered. She broke the surface of the water and coughed, hating the burn of the salt in her throat and in her eyes. The cough stayed inside her for a week. She’d never gone into the ocean again.

  They weren’t the kind of family that said “I love you.” They were the kind that showed it. They wrote it, baked it, sewed it, bought it, nurtured it, taught it, and breathed it. She understood that now, and she understood she had to reply in kind.

  “Mom, let me get you a napkin.” She scooted out her chair and grabbed a napkin, folding it in half to tuck under the side of the plate the way her mom always did.

  “Thank you, baby,” her mom said.

  The word baby struck her in her heart, laying open the whole pulpy mess. She realized how much she needed to hear her mom’s voice. The silent car rides, the dinner trays delivered by her sister . . . they left her starved, like a plant trying to grow under the dense canopy of a thousand-year oak.

  “I missed you, Mom.”

  “I missed you, too.” Her mom’s lower lip quivered. “Don’t go away again, okay?”

  For a minute, she considered changing everything. She could stay and watch TV with Mattie. Help Mom with dinner. Tell Dad what Mr. Parker said about her Lonesome Dove paper. They’d stay inside, breathing the same air, as if the house were a
womb that could nurture them until they were ready to face the outside world.

  Emma pressed her finger into a crumb that lay on the plate. She put the crumb in her mouth and sucked on it, tasting the salt of the margarine. How long would it take, she wondered, before that salt came out again in tears? Only as long as it took for Dad to throw up blood again, which would make Mom mad, which would make her mad, which would make Mattie mad. She looked at her mom’s empty right ring finger. Grandma Jennings’s wedding ring was supposed to buy them another chance, but so far, nothing had changed.

  In that moment, she understood why she was water, and the other members of her family were earth, air, and fire. Water had patience. Water carved canyons through rocks hundreds of millions of years old. Water wore down everything, even fear.

  • • •

  An hour and three muffins later, she heard a door open and close upstairs. Dad, she thought. He’d gone from the bedroom to the bathroom. Her mom snapped to attention at the sound, putting down her pencil and looking up at the ceiling. “I’d better go see if your father needs any help.” A smile teased the corners of her lips. “Save him a muffin, okay?”

  “More than one,” Emma said.

  Her mom pushed out her chair and walked to the stairs.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes?” Rays from the skylight fell on her hair, turning the brown and grey into red and gold.

  Emma’s throat ran dry and the words stuck inside it. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “I just want you to be happy.” Her mom smiled. “Nothing else matters.”

  Emma felt a swell of love inside her, threatening to split her ribs to make room for her heart. I love you, Mom, she thought. She stared at her, dimly aware that it might not be possible to do so again. It isn’t the last time. It can’t be.

  Her mom turned and went up the stairs. Emma waited until she heard the door of her parents’ room close. Six hurried footsteps carried her to the door that led to the garage. She picked her purse up from the floor, and snatched her dad’s smart phone and the extra set of car keys hanging in the cupboard next to the door.

  “Hey, are you going somewhere?” Mattie called from the couch. “I thought you were grounded.”

  She forced her lips to smile so her voice would sound normal, even while her heart hammered in her chest. “Just to the garage. I think my old yearbooks are out here.”

  “Why do you need car keys to find your yearbook?”

  “Be good, Matt,” she said, slipping through the door.

  There was no going back now. She had to open the garage door to get out. As soon as someone pressed the button, the door clanked like a medieval drawbridge, shaking the floor of her bedroom upstairs. It was so loud that her parents tried to reserve weekend errands and yard work for late morning, so as not to wake her up. She didn’t deserve that.

  Emma shuffled down the narrow walkway between a row of boxes and the car. Mattie’s old chalkboard easel, shoved into the corner by the water heater, proclaimed, “Today is not March 23, 1962.”

  The driver’s seat was cold as she slid inside and put the key in the ignition. One click of the rectangular remote clipped to the visor and the garage door rattled its way up, so slowly that Emma knew she’d get caught.

  Mattie would get Mom. It would take her at least a few seconds to explain, and another few for her mom to run downstairs. She kept her eyes trained on the steering wheel, not wanting to see the look on any face that came through the door.

  The garage door rattled its way open. Emma threw the car in reverse and zoomed into the driveway. When her tires hit the sidewalk, she pressed the button again to close the garage door. It came down rickety and slow, cutting off her view of the boxes that still held her childhood toys. On top of the boxes sat a basket that held her old lace-up roller skates, a jump rope, and a plastic ring toss. It was the last thing she saw before she sped down the block.

  • • •

  There was one stop to make before heading into East Malo Verde. She turned into the gas station four miles down the street, the one that was always crowded. No one would notice a white Buick, especially one that only stopped for a few minutes.

  She parked next to the food mart and pulled her purse from the passenger seat. Clutching it to her chest, she locked the car and walked up to the ancient payphone beside the front door. Her dad’s smart phone would be traceable; plus, she needed every second of battery life.

  She fumbled for the ridged sides of the quarters she’d dropped into her purse last night. As the phone rang, she counted “one-Mississippi” in her head, even though she had no idea what Mississippi might look like.

  He answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

  “Two Mississippi.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I wasn’t sure you’d pick up.”

  “The caller ID didn’t say who it was. Is this really your number? It’s not the one you gave me before.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Em, what’s going on?”

  “I really wanted to hear your voice.”

  “You’ve never called me before. What’s the occasion?”

  “My mom made muffins this morning.”

  “I’m jealous.”

  “What are you doing right now?”

  “Washing my dad’s truck.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’ll give me ten bucks.”

  “Wouldn’t a carwash be cheaper?”

  “I don’t get the money that way. I have prom tickets to finance, if you remember.”

  She bent her head against the shell of the payphone kiosk. The metal felt like ice against her brow. “Dan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Seeing me.”

  “Lots of people did. I was the only one smart enough to do anything about it.”

  Her stomach lurched. “I won’t forget.”

  “You can pay me back by putting me in a story. Just don’t make me look like a dick in front of Percival Everett.” He paused. “Well, you can make me look like a dick when you write about yesterday. I’m so sorry, Em. I was an asshole to you and you didn’t deserve it.”

  Her hand clutched the phone, squeezing it until her fingers left dents in the rubber coating. “You remembered.”

  “It’s your dream. That’s not something I’m going to forget.”

  “My dream,” she whispered.

  “Em, you sound weird. Did something happen?”

  “No.” She cleared her throat and forced her lips to curve like the prow of a Viking ship. “No, everything’s fine.”

  “Do you want me to meet you somewhere?”

  “Keep washing that truck. We need every penny, right?”

  “Em—”

  “I have to go.”

  “—I miss you.”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Then can you imagine how bad I’d miss you if you were really gone?”

  She closed her eyes. Every word she could say now would be a lie, and he had never lied to her.

  “Em, just tell me what’s going on.”

  “Goodbye, Dan,” she said, replacing the handle of the phone in its silver cradle.

  Chapter Thirty

  Saturday, April 19

  The marquee beneath the fast food sign contained a message in Spanish she couldn’t read. In the parking lot, she saw a Mexican family piling into a minivan with a rust-flecked hood. The mother looked fifty but she held a new baby, with five small children clustered around her. The father looked thirty, dressed in tight black Wranglers, a striped long-sleeved shirt, and a cowboy hat.

  Emma drove past them and turned onto the next block. She tucked a flyaway hair behind her ear to stop it from tickling her cheek.
Her hand smelled like the gummy black coating on the payphone’s handle.

  The payphone.

  There was still time to turn around. She could order a soda from the drive-through, paid for with the stash of change her mom always kept in the center console. But what would it solve? Everything was still ruined, and she was still herself. Even though her heart pounded in her chest, drenching her spine with sweat, she had to keep going. Stalling would only give the razor-winged butterflies in her stomach more time to fly.

  With her foot off the gas, she idled down Sobrante Street at ten miles an hour. According to the map she’d drawn in her maroon notebook, El Camino Rojo was less than a quarter-mile away. She tried to pick out landmarks as she passed, but all the houses looked the same—small stucco boxes with a two-step front porch, a living room window to the right, and a one-car garage to the left. Some bled rust from window corners or a spinning roof vent. Most of the front yards held plastic toys or play gyms, bleaching like bones in the sun. None of them had grass. They were all filled in with dirt or rocks or sand. Even the weeds couldn’t get a break.

  Two blocks later, she found it: El Camino Rojo, its street sign bent as if someone tried to run it over with a car. The name plate had two holes shot through it.

  She told her hands to turn the wheel. They wouldn’t.

  Instead, they turned onto the next block, Rossano Road. Her sweaty palms slid over the steering wheel as she leaned forward. Cars lined the curb like ants on a log. There wasn’t an empty space in sight.

  She idled along, braking over the intersection’s deep gutters. Three and a half blocks later, she found an empty spot between a lowered green Civic and an Aerostar with no paint on the hood or the roof. It was five blocks from the address she’d written down. If something went wrong and she had to run, five blocks was an eternity. It’ll work, she thought, meeting her own gaze in the rearview mirror. It has to.

  She pulled up even with the Civic, shifted into reverse, and cranked the wheel to the right. Her rear tires slapped the curb before she started to straighten out. She swore and shifted into drive, walloping the wheel in the opposite direction. Beside the street, two kids played in a chain-linked yard, scooping dirt into a cracked sand bucket. They squatted in the dust and stared at her, plastic shovels held in mid-air.