“Cleaning rooms and changing sheets and towels is the same wherever you go.”
“You haven’t changed a bit, Dahlia Waller. It’s still Waller, isn’t it?”
“Last time I checked,” I joke and realize the joke might be on me.
“So, you have a place to stay? We can talk about a room if you need one.”
“I’m living with my mother. For now,” I say and check my watch. Tallulah collapsing in the dirt driveway of the farm quickly replaces the image of my mother smoking on the porch. I just need a job, that’s why I’m here.
“You’ve caught up with all your friends from high school yet?”
“Not really. Don’t care to do any catching up.”
“So it’s just you and your mom then? No boyfriend?”
He’s as creepy as he ever was. “Me, my mother, and my dog,” I say.
“You have reliable transportation?”
“I do,” I say and point at my car sitting outside. “How much do you pay an hour?”
“Ten an hour. With overtime you can make five hundred a week easily.”
“Do you need references?”
“You said you had medical problems. Is that what they’re going to tell me when I call?”
“Just about,” I say and look out the window. The rooms start at 101 through 120 on the bottom floor, 201 through 220 on top. I shouldn’t have any problems keeping the numbers straight. “What shifts do I work?”
“Eight in the morning to eight at night. You can take a lunch hour but as long as you remain on the premises and respond to requests if there’re any, I’m not going to fret over paying you through lunch. That’s what Ariana does. Works out well.”
He explains that he makes coffee at five and gets donuts at eight. There’s a room in the unattached building where he lives. He starts the laundry but we’re responsible for drying and folding. “Ariana does the eleven to midnight shift, sometimes longer. I hope you’re flexible.”
I look out the window and see the unattached building with three more rooms. “What’s in there?” I ask. “More rooms?”
“One of them is mine. One for storage. But like I said, if you need a place to stay, I can arrange that. I won’t charge much for it.”
“That won’t be necessary. When do I start?” I ask, hoping he won’t change his mind.
Bordeaux enters the room behind the counter and emerges with a clipboard and paperwork. “You can start tomorrow. I’d appreciate it. One more thing. Do you want to get paid in cash?”
Cash only. I know what that means: off the books. No paperwork. I fill out the form—name, address, phone number, previous employer.
“What’s the matter?” he asks.
“Nothing. Is this all you need?”
“That’s all,” he says and reaches for the clipboard.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?” I slide the clipboard over the counter and smile.
“Eight in the morning. I’ll show you around then. Wear black pants and a gray shirt. No one really wears uniforms around here.”
Bordeaux goes on about laundry and linen and comforters and I continuously nod but I move closer to the door and look out the window. Bobby is still sitting in his cruiser. From time to time I see him lift up a white cup to his lips. If I didn’t know any better I’d say he’s watching me. The phone rings and I gesture toward the door, get in my car, and leave the Lark Inn parking lot.
I realize that every single time I’ve seen Bobby, he was parked at the Filling Station. The day he saw me when I came into town, when he waved at me and I ignored him. We met there before we went out to the farm, and there were other times I passed the Filling Station and he was parked there. Every single time, as if he’s watching something. Or somebody.
I make a left and an immediate right and park on the west side of the Filling Station, where the pumps are. I enter the building and I walk through the aisles, pretending to look at Twinkies and cans of Chef Boyardee. I eventually grab a six-pack of water, and on my way to the register, I see smoke drifting from the cruiser’s driver’s door. I pay and leave through the front door, the one facing the Lark Inn. I walk slowly, and Bobby, with a set of binoculars in his lap, writes notes in tiny squares of what looks like the printout of a spreadsheet.
“Covert operation?” I ask and laugh when Bobby jerks.
“What the hell, Dahlia,” he says and tucks the papers inside a file and the file underneath a black canvas bag on the passenger’s seat.
“What are you doing here? You sure like this place,” I insist, jokingly, but Bobby isn’t smiling.
“Catching up on paperwork,” he says and turns down the chatter of the police radio. “What are you doing here?”
“Just applied for a job.”
“At the gas station?”
“No, the Lark Inn. Remember, I’m in the hospitality business.”
He’s silent for a long time. His hand jerks as the cigarette’s lit tip reaches his fingers. He throws it out and gets out of the car and steps on it. “So you thought the Lark was a good choice?”
“I have to work somewhere, right?”
Bobby stretches as if he’s been sitting for quite a while, his muscles stiff and tight. I haven’t really thought about him being a cop and I wonder how that came about. His father, Ramón de la Vega, was the first Mexican sheriff in Aurora twenty years ago, but Bobby always vowed to never become a cop. He loved sports and I imagined him as a high school coach, baseball or football.
I tell him about the well, the shed door that won’t open, Tallulah being at the vet having surgery. Bobby seems distracted, not really listening, looking over his shoulder one minute, across the street the next, as if he’s determined not to miss anything. Then, like a slow-falling hammer, a thought comes to me; he is watching the Lark Inn.
“Anything I should know?” I ask.
“About what?”
“The Lark Inn. Working there. It’s not like I have a choice—between the plumber and the vet, I need to make some money.”
“Did he tell you?”
I look at him, puzzled.
“He? Did he tell me what?”
“Did Bourdeaux tell you Jane Doe stayed at the Lark?” Bobby’s voice trails off. There is something in his eyes, they are too brown, too glossy.
My Jane stayed at the Lark. I’m attempting to process his comment.
“No, he didn’t.” There’s the Barrington, the Lark, and a Holiday Inn Express about twenty miles from here. I recall the news, the fact she had stayed at a hotel in town. I had never really thought about it. I’m not sure what to do with that. Not only do I not know what to do with it, but I can’t make sense of it. “How would they know she stayed there? Do they know her name?”
“Bordeaux said a woman fitting her description stayed for one night and that the computer was down and he checked her in manually, never updated the system. Claims paperwork got lost. She stayed one night and left the next day. Paid in cash. ‘I don’t remember her name, if that was her.’ Those were his words.”
“Are they sure it was her?”
“Witnesses are still being interviewed. It’s a motel, and people pass through. It’s not ideal. They are still investigating but they are pretty sure it was her. But you can’t tell anyone. It’s an open investigation.”
“Is there more?”
“More what?”
“Bobby, I’m not stupid. There are facts they don’t release to the public. Like where she stayed. Is there more?”
“I can’t say much else, but she wore this.” Bobby reaches into his wallet and pulls out a copy of a photograph. A charm bracelet. A simple chain-link with a lobster clasp. There’s a ship’s wheel, a compass, a globe, a suitcase and a camera, an airplane and a passport, and a sombrero. Random and cheesy sterling baubles, a dime a dozen. Far from an engraved bracelet with a name
and a date that would help identify her. How has no one missed this girl? How did she disappear unnoticed?
“I won’t tell anyone,” I say to reassure him and wonder why he would carry the copy in his wallet.
“Not a soul. Promise?”
“Are there others?”
“What others?”
“Missing women.”
He stares at me. The police radio gurgles, then a dispatcher comes on. A mutter, then a squawking, lots of gibberish, nothing but a fuzzy radio voice. “I have to go,” he says and turns the key.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say and grab my water off the hood of the cruiser.
I watch Bobby take off, and just when I lift my hand to wave at him, he rolls up the window, tires spitting gravel.
Twenty-one
MEMPHIS
MEMPHIS sucks smoke deep into her lungs, trapping it. She craves the nicotine and continues to hold in the smoke as Dahlia reaches the end of the driveway. There are many memories she tries not to hold on to yet she can’t help when they arrive and wills them to depart just as quickly.
The dog makes it harder and harder for her to ignore certain things she’d rather forget. Memphis likes the dog even though it’s difficult to look at her with her engorged nipples drooping toward the ground, and Memphis wonders how many litters she’s given birth to.
How unfair life is, she thinks; everything rises and falls with the womb you emerge from. If Tallulah had had a proper home, she would’ve been spayed and well fed and sleeping on a couch at night, but she is nothing but a stray with a worn-out body, covered in hairless spots from ticks and bites and sharp fences. Memphis imagines other dogs nipping at her when she tried to get away from them or avoiding sticks swung by callous hands while searching for a safe place to rest. Memphis shudders and her heart aches for the dog. She has always had a soft spot for animals, more so than for humans.
After the dust on the driveway settles, Memphis walks toward the shed. She tells herself that she can do this. She’s thankful for the meds, grateful for the escape the little orange bottles allow, appreciative for the log-like sleep at night, twelve hours at a time.
The windows of the shed are nailed shut but partially visible, the panes are cloudy and distorted but it’s all the same to her, and there’s no need to look through them anyhow. She can name every single item in that shed. The door is still temperamental but she remembers it well and knows just how to coax it open. So are the rules with old and stubborn things; one must know just where and how to push and secrets come rambling out like dice from a cup.
Memphis enters the shed and in a flash she stands in the midst of a vast darkness. There are remnants of sulfur in the air. It’s been decades, yet the pungent vapor fills her nostrils, turns her stomach. She looks down at her hands and then her feet, but she can’t see a thing. Her eyes can’t penetrate the darkness no matter which way she turns; it is brooding and rotating around her and the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She can almost hear muffled voices bouncing off the walls. There’s a ripple of mocking laughter, becoming louder, and it presses in on her.
And so she waits until the ghosts of the past join her and complete the memory of the first time Quinn set foot in the shed.
“What are you working on and what’s that paint on your fingers? I washed your clothes and they are splattered with that white stuff. They’re ruined. Are you painting something?” Quinn had said.
“I’ll be more careful,” Nolan had said as he gave his hands a good scrub with the dish brush.
“And?”
“And what?”
“What are you working on?” Quinn had insisted.
“Just something to pass the time.”
Quinn watched Nolan dry his hands, one finger at a time. His jeans looked as if someone had taken a paintbrush and with a swift flick of the wrist splattered paint all over them.
“Nolan, what are you doing out there every day in that shed?”
“I told you, something to pass the time.” Nolan’s voice was hard and sharp, as if she had asked him to divulge some sort of secret.
Quinn turned and shut off the stove.
“Breakfast is ready,” she said and went upstairs.
Later, when she heard voices from the TV coming from the living room, she went out the back door, toward the shed. She was going to get to the bottom of this.
—
Memphis hears the revving of an engine and jerks back into reality. She makes her way out of the shed, slamming the distorted door shut behind her. Back on the porch, in the warped kitchen window she sees the trancelike haunted expression on her face.
Maybe it’s time, she thinks; time to tell Quinn’s story. She has nothing left to lose, really. What’s done in the dark must come into the light.
Twenty-two
DAHLIA
MY mother and I have been living on the farm for a few days now. After hours of cleaning and moving boxes, she sits ramrod straight in the only chair we found on the back porch that has successfully braved the elements. Its wrought iron back resembles the fanned tail of a peacock and looks almost like some ornate Victorian lawn furnishing. More likely it’s just a cheap import. Everything else on the back porch is in shambles: Tons of shattered clay pots lie spattered about as if someone took a bat to them. The screens look like birds have clawed at them, leaving holes the size of fists. Every surface is caked in bird excrement, and abandoned nests are tucked in the rafters—just another part of this house making my skin crawl.
I sit on the front steps with my back propped up against the railing. When I move, it moves as well. Not only does my mother act differently since we’ve arrived, but her face has undergone a peculiar transformation. Before she had this slightly upturned mouth and somewhat flared nostrils; both now have relaxed. Her forehead, though wrinkled, is no longer tense. I have yet to probe the fact that she owns this farm and the almost fifty acres around it but I decide to let that rest for now and give her time to settle in.
Once the sun has gone down and the mosquitoes descend upon us, we go inside. The floor plan is simple; four rooms on the first floor, kitchen to the right with an attached dining room and a large walk-in pantry, on the left an office and a living room. The top floor has three bedrooms and a bathroom. Two of the bedrooms have old wrought iron headboards and beds and the very last room on the left in the back is a storage room. It is filled with boxes and stacks of books that have collapsed onto the floor.
The day I returned from the vet, we began making the place habitable. We pulled the dusty and mold-covered linens off the beds and replaced them with fresh sheets. The mattresses were in surprisingly good condition. I offer my mother the master bedroom, and she seems to want to protest, but then she thinks otherwise and I claim the bedroom across the hall.
Moving boxes and opening windows, allowing the dust to be disturbed one last time before we wipe, sweep, and mop it all up, reminds me of all the places I lived with my mother. Over the years I have revisited some of them in my mind, although I don’t recall them as true memories, but merely as a part of my brain that I allowed to remain unclaimed until I found Jane.
During that first seizure in Jane’s hospital room I felt the presence of something substantial. It has also occurred to me that maybe I just happened to be with Jane in the hospital at that moment and still I am not sure what it all means exactly. The subsequent seizures felt as if I was transcending this world and I was tuning in to some earlier space in time. There were waves of energy, and something was being communicated to me. I’ve been ignoring Dr. Wagner, haven’t seen a neurologist yet, but I take the meds religiously, and I feel comfortable waiting it out, allowing it to run its course.
Some memories float on the surface: the idling trucks, the stench of troves of cattle by the side of the highway when we lived above a gas station on Highway 281. My mother worked nights and we s
tayed in a small room above a garage, a small one-man operation with a man in greasy overalls. His last name was Herring and he had a head of gray hair, thick and straight, like bristles of a broom. I told him that a herring was a silvery fish with a single dorsal fin and a protruding lower jaw. And that’s exactly how he looked. He wasn’t amused and told me to get out of his garage.
The Herring era ended abruptly. One night my mother woke me and told me to pack up and that “we need to get out of here.” We hardly owned anything in the room we slept in and within an hour we rushed across the parking lot to our car with a few bags in our hands. As we drove off, I looked back and there was an irate woman getting out of a station wagon, running to the garage door, pounding the metal enclosure.
We drove through the night and when the sun came up, a Welcome to New Mexico sign greeted me. Land of Enchantment. We ended up on a street with motels, liquor stores, Chinese restaurants, and an occasional used car dealer lot with colorful pennants and balloons swaying in the wind. My mother pulled into the parking lot of the very last building on the street, the Moment Motel. There was a simple black-and-white Help Wanted sign in the door. She pulled up to the front door and checked herself in the mirror.
“Wait here,” she said and applied lipstick.
“Are we going to stay here?” I asked, my legs propped up against the passenger’s seat.
“We’ll see,” she said and locked the car door.
As I watched her enter the motel, her likeness in the window one of beauty and confidence even after a night of driving though the darkness, only the old Buick stuffed with our possessions belied the picture of her success. I took in the cracked parking lot, the chipped paint, the humming soda machine, and the sound of a vacuum cleaner drifting toward me from afar. My mother emerged what seemed like thirty minutes or so later, with a key in her hand.
If Wichita Falls was Herring’s domain, New Mexico was Bruno Nettle’s time to shine. He was the owner of the Moment Motel and hired my mother on the spot. In exchange for her work and a paycheck he allowed us to live in the very last room at the end of the T-shaped complex. I even remember the number: 210. The 0 was slightly crooked and the room smelled of lavender. Not the real thing, but the artificial scent of lavender flowers in a waft of alcohol. The Moment Motel was where we stayed for a long time. We got there when I was about six and didn’t leave until I was eight. It was the longest time we stayed anywhere.
The Good Daughter Page 21