The cashier tells me it’s in downtown Branson, smack dab in the middle of all that traffic. She looks at her watch and says, “It idn’t no use, though; they’re gonna be closed by the time you get there.”
Ten minutes later, I cuss at the Good Samaritan in a Ford F-350 pickup who keeps letting other people enter the line of traffic, which causes me to miss another green light. I want to honk, but he has three shotguns on his gun rack.
By the time I find the post office, it’s been closed for twenty minutes. I make a note of where I am. I decide to give up for the day, navigate my way to the grocery store, and find fruit and yogurt, chicken breasts, ripe tomatoes, and fresh sweet corn. On the way back to the condo, I time myself so I can make another post-office trip tomorrow. I’ll ask them how they deliver to Kay’s address. Mailmen know that kind of thing. I may have to make a dry run to figure out how long I need to be gone before I get Toby (and not Eric) to join me. It starts to dawn on me how difficult that might be.
The next morning, on Independence Day, we wake up early and go fishing as the sun rises. We do pretty well, except when Toby slips near the edge of the water and the mud sucks his shoe right off his foot. He says it felt like it grabbed him and wouldn’t let go, and he cries until I splash knee-deep into the water and wash his shoe off. When we start walking again, his shoe squishes and makes farting noises as he takes each step. There is nothing funnier to a three-year-old boy than a farting shoe.
We find a suitable fishing spot, and before long, we catch a few respectable crappies. We release most of them, but Eric makes a big deal out of catching our lunch, so he sets the biggest one aside and lays out some newspaper so he can gut and clean the fish. Toby is fascinated. I didn’t even know Eric knew how to clean fish, but he seems right at home.
We make our way back to the condo to fry the fish for lunch. Eric shows Toby how to roll the filets in cornmeal first. I slice the reddest tomatoes I’ve seen in a while and serve the corn on the cob, which Toby turns into a kernel mustache. I can’t even watch Eric replicate it, purposely letting the corn stick into his mustache. They think it’s hilarious.
That night, we walk down to the marina and watch the fireworks as patriotic music plays over a fuzzy loudspeaker. I look over at Toby sitting in Eric’s lap, both their faces lit up by the synchronized explosions in the sky, and I feel an inner nudge.
I know, Mom. It’s going to be over soon. For better or worse, at least it will be over.
Eric and I take turns in the shower, which gives me time to think. When he comes out, I tell him he can take the bed tonight, and I turn away before I can see the disappointment on his face. I pretend I’m offering in an effort to be fair. I pretend I don’t realize I may be throwing away the first opportunity to share my bed in weeks.
When he protests out of chivalry, I insist. I tell him I can find a comfortable place in Toby’s room. I tell him I’ll be asleep before my head hits the pillow.
But I’m telling two more little lies. I’m not going to find a comfortable place, because I know I am not going to sleep tonight.
I sit in the beanbag chair in Toby’s darkened room in the rented condo and listen to him breathe. It is a beautiful sound, his little boy sighs permeating my awareness as I work out the details of my plan.
I regret my failure at the post office. I hope what I have is the rural equivalent of a street address, the number of a mailbox in front of a driveway, in front of a house. I don’t even know if I’ll see it from the highway.
I open the closet door about two inches, turn on the light, and move my beanbag closer so I can see the map in the illuminated crack. The light jags across the floor, up the wall, and over the flat bedspread on the foot of Toby’s bed. He’s so small. He only fills the top half of the bed, so the light doesn’t even touch him. My throat closes up, remembering that tiny body lying motionless on the dock.
I study the map until I’m satisfied. I stand up to stretch and bend over Toby’s face, close enough to feel his breath on my cheek. I tiptoe down the hallway to trace my steps in an attempt to get out of the house without waking Eric.
I sneak into the bedroom, where Eric is fast asleep, to dig my list out of the side pocket of the suitcase. Feeling I’ve been away from Toby too long, I return to his room to pack a backpack, tucking granola bars, my wallet, and the rental-car keys inside. The map. I pick it up from the carpet near the closet. A flashlight? Found one in the kitchen. I fasten the backpack, settle into the beanbag, and watch Toby.
I do not sleep.
I ruminate about how the plan will work. I’ll leave before sunrise, to give us enough time to locate Kay’s house. When I’ve exhausted the possibilities and dug a rut in my mind about this, I allow myself to think about what happens when I find her. Not whether I can find her.
All I have to do is introduce Toby to Kay and watch. See if he looks familiar. See what happens when she looks into his eyes. The windows of the soul. I will not interfere with whatever is going to happen between them. With my heart pounding, I wonder, will she see John Robberson in him at first glance?
Even if she doesn’t, I can picture how it will go. We’ll knock on the door. I’ll hold Toby up and see if anything clicks. If not, I’ll introduce him. She’ll invite us in for some coffee and we’ll talk. She’ll know exactly why Toby keeps asking for her. She’ll explain it to me and I will finally understand and maybe we’ll even laugh about it.
John Robberson will finish his business.
John Robberson will go away and leave us alone.
We’ll get back to the condo and bring bagels for Eric, who will forget that he’s mad, and I will be relieved because now he has nothing to be mad about. Even if Toby tells him about it, it will be over, so it will be okay. Maybe we’ll even laugh about it.
We will be free of John Robberson. It really is Independence Day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
*
WINDOWS OF THE SOUL
I don’t think about myself or about how I look after being up all night. Even when I walk past a mirror, the visual image doesn’t fully register. I’m in faded tie-dyed yoga pants that ride low on my hips with wide legs and an intricate Middle Eastern scroll around the legs. I forget I haven’t put on a bra. My ribbed knit undershirt is not adequate coverage for public view, but I don’t want to risk going in for more clothes and waking Eric up. I pull my hair away from my face with a couple of bobby pins to hold my bangs tight to one side, which leaves the curly part in back to splay up like a sunburst coming from the middle of my head. While I sit in the dark, I pick at a blackhead on my chin until it’s a hard red bump.
I’m on a mission bigger than my own petty concerns. I am the vessel Toby needs to make this connection. In the beanbag, an unfamiliar wash of spiritual awareness falls on me. I ask Mom if she’s there and wait to see if I will get a nudge. Whether it comes from my mother’s spirit or my own, something makes me stand up and say “It’s time” at 4:59 a.m.
I scrawl a quick note to Eric: “Woke up early. Went to the grocery store for breakfast food. I have Toby with me.” I leave it on the kitchen counter, near the coffee machine. That will buy me some time.
I gently rock Toby. “Come on, baby, you can stay asleep. Momma has to do a little driving so we can go see Kay, but you can sleep in the car, all right?”
He doesn’t wake up. He flops over and rolls out of his covers, so I can pick him up. He’s wearing pajamas with bulldozers and yellow hard hats on them, and his hair is flat on one side. He’s thirty pounds of dead weight, and I kiss his head as I cover him with a square blanket, hoist the backpack on my other arm, and open the door to his bedroom. The condo hallway is darker than Toby’s room, with the single slat of light coming from the hallway closet.
I squeeze the door silently into the doorframe behind us. The night air is cool and feels good on the back of my neck. Toby almost wakes up when I roll him into his car seat, but I flip off the overhead light. He stops squinting. I prop his head up agai
nst the cushioned side of the seat and stay there, still as a statue, until his breathing is regular again.
I throw the backpack in the front seat, put the car in neutral, and roll backward out of the parking space before starting the engine. I wait to turn on the headlights until I’m out of range of the parking-lot lights and reach down to dig the map out of my bag. Turning left past the marina, I head toward Route 76. About ten minutes later, after passing the bait shop, the Dairy Queen, and the gas station, I turn left again, onto the poorly maintained two-lane road marked by a “76” sign pocked with buckshot.
“Some big-ass road,” I say aloud, remembering how the gas-station clerk had described it. “Looks like somebody took target practice on that sign.”
I fall quiet, considering for the first time that the people who live on this road might—no, probably—have guns at home. As if to confirm the need for them, my headlights catch the shiny eyes of a possum in the road. Shuddering at its oily, repellent shape, I slow and watch the critter scurry across the road.
I look in the backseat. I’ll tell him about the possum later. He’ll like that. I wonder if I need to wake him now so he won’t be cranky when we get there. I’ll wake him when I see the mailbox. We can sit there a bit before we go inside. Besides, the sun is not due up for another hour, at least.
The numbers on the mailboxes are heading in a predictable and ascending order. I slow when I pass one or a group of mailboxes, once even getting out to read the names on the sides. Most of the mailboxes are standard-issue black like an old-fashioned workman’s lunch box, but some are shaped like mallard ducks or have messages written in hand-painted letters with big dots on the ends. Some have the name and the number; others only the number.
I pass one crooked stake and slow down as my headlights discover the bunged-up mailbox lying in the ditch, freshly decapitated. I get out, and the morning air is cooler than expected. There’s no number on that box.
I get back in the car and drive to the next intersection. No signs. The sky is changing colors. I have sweaters on my teeth and bad breath. I go straight but have no idea if I’m on the right road now. No marker of any kind. The mailbox numbers have a B in front of the number and have jumped backward in sequence.
Finally a Y-shaped intersection appears, and a pockmarked “76” sign jig-jogs back into view. I turn again and my headlights reveal mailbox numbers in ascending order again. I’m on a two-lane asphalt road with tall grasses growing in the ditches on either side and lone mailboxes separated by one-acre lots, each with its own long gravel driveway. There are plenty of trees, but none of them look like they’ve ever been trimmed. Some homes have fences; some have toys in the yard. Every home I pass now is a double-wide trailer, a mobile home disguised so it doesn’t look mobile at all.
The sun isn’t quite over the horizon. I creep along as the numbers top 500. 520. 548. On the other side of the road, 551.
Then I see it: Robberson.
White hand-stenciled letters on a black mailbox. No mallard mailbox for the Robbersons, evidently. I stop, hardly believing we’re really here. Staring at the address in my hand, with the metallic taste of adrenaline on my tongue, I confirm it one more time before I pull the car to the side of the road. I get out and look closer, the morning air a fresh shock.
Robberson.
John and Kay.
Box 584.
I crawl into the backseat, next to Toby. “Hey.” I rock his shoulders and give him a kiss on the forehead. “Time to wake up, baby. There’s someone you need to meet.”
The sky is purple, down low. Pink, if I look up. Mostly strange, unfamiliar shades of military blue and deep gray. I can’t see the sun yet.
I unlock Toby’s car-seat buckle, and he starts to stretch and rub his eyes. He crawls out of the seat and into my warm lap. I rock him back and forth in my arms, bringing him to the morning. He snuggles his soft hair under my chin in a way that I know I’m going to miss. When he grows another two inches, he won’t fit in that little spot anymore. I kiss his face again and again, saying, “Good morning, sleepyhead.”
When I can feel his body respond, I offer him some Juicy Juice, which does the trick. He’s awake now and looking around.
“Where’s Daddy?”
“He’s still asleep. But guess where we are.”
“Where?”
“We’re going to see Kay. We’re at Kay’s house. See, right there on the mailbox, it says John Robberson. And Kay. This is where Kay lives.”
I’m acutely aware that I’m repeating myself, and it sounds manic, even to me, so I stop.
He nods his head, his straw full of purple juice. I wipe his face, brush my hands through his hair to fluff up his curls. I want him to look nice.
“Toby?”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask you about John Robberson?”
“Yes.”
“What did he tell you to go say to Kay?”
“He doesn’t want her to be mad anymore.”
“Why is she mad?”
“Because of the dog.”
“Thud?”
“No, Momma, the dog in the fire. She’s mad because he went in for the dog.”
“So you’re going to tell her not to be mad about the dog? Is that what you’re going to say to Kay?”
“Yes?” and he looks at me to see if that’s the right answer.
I shake my head, sorry I’d pushed too far. Again. “Tell you what. I’m going to take you to meet Kay, and you can say whatever you need to say. Okay?”
“You do it,” he says.
“No, baby. John Robberson wants you to do it. But I’ll be right there with you, I promise.”
We get out of the car. Toby comments that it’s nighttime. I don’t consider what Kay might be doing right this minute. I assure him it’s going to be fine and point to a light coming from a window in the house.
We walk hand in hand up the gravel driveway with grass growing in the middle, between the tire tracks. I’m getting used to the crispness in the air but wish I’d thrown on a sweatshirt. The dew on the grasses smells fresh and reminds me of the urban farm at Oasis Verde.
We walk past a dirty white Chevy sedan parked near the house. It doesn’t quite fit inside the covered carport, which has boxes and gardening tools stacked high. A folding card table in the middle of the carport is piled with silverware and knitting supplies and craft materials. I can’t resist a nosy peek inside the car. The backseat has wadded-up fast food bags on the floorboard and library books strewn across the seat.
The sidewalk from the driveway to the front door is paved with bricks stuck into the dirt in an uneven curve. The gravel crunches under our feet. I shift my weight in my flip-flops, trying to keep them from clopping against my heels. Toby’s light-up shoes glow orange neon with every step. The porch light is off, but I can see in the front window. It looks like a lamp near the door is on. It’s probably a night-light, designed to give the impression the owner is home. In one way, it’s too early for us to be here. In another way, we’re way overdue.
I knock on the metal screen door. It’s cold and hurts my knuckles. I knock again, louder. My fist is in midair, ready to knock again, when a light comes on in the back part of the house. I squeeze Toby’s hand. He reaches for me and I hoist him up.
Another light comes on, in the living room now. I stand straighter so Kay won’t see me peeking in through the window.
“All right, all right. I’m coming.”
I hear the firm chunk of the latch, the loose rattle of the doorknob, the chink of the porch light flipped on, an audible expression of the visual sensation of moving from the dark to the light. In one split second. One little chink.
I shuffle Toby on my hip. The wooden door opens, but the screen door remains closed.
“What is it? Do you know what time it is?”
I don’t know what I expected, but my prior conception dissipates. I didn’t realize I had conjured up a version of my mother in my head, so it’s all I can
do not to gasp at how short Kay Robberson appears.
She’s easily in her seventies and stands before us in a pale blue housecoat snapped up crooked at the top and pulled closed by her arms, crossed in front of her. She’s five foot nothing, heavyset, with wispy gray hair the consistency of cotton candy. With the light shining behind her, it looks a little like a halo. It reminds me of Pa’s eyebrows. Kay’s eyelids are swollen and she squints, which pulls her features tightly around her nose, with soft puppy wrinkles all around the outside of her face. I can tell she was pretty once—before the cigarettes and sun and hard knocks took their toll.
“Well?” Her voice is not unfriendly, but it isn’t exactly welcoming, either.
With some effort, I don’t say anything and hope she understands. I look at Toby expectantly and shuffle him off my hip to hold him in front of me. He dangles there like a marionette puppet.
“Look, it’s pretty darn early. Whatchu need? Is he sick or something?”
I’ve vowed not to interfere with whatever spiritual interaction needed to happen, but I have to shake my head to answer her question. I straighten my arms and hold Toby out toward her. At least toward her screen door.
“Darlin’, do you speak English? Are you okay? Don’t drop him, now. What do you want?”
Please. Look at him.
I force myself to say nothing. I know it must look really strange, but I’m begging her with my eyes to see past the strangeness.
“Take that boy home. Go on, now.”
And with that, Kay Robberson shuts the door. When the porch light flips off with a decisive chink, I whirl into action.
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