by Judy Troy
“Isn’t she a good driver, Mike? I told you that. She’s nice and careful.”
Mike was standing in the road, halfway between the car and the motel, waiting for his father to walk toward him and for Inez to go inside. But she didn’t go inside. She stopped in the open doorway. “Get the wine out,” she told Glenn.
“Okay. Great,” Glenn said. “Come on,” he said to Mike. “Come in out of the snow.”
Mike spoke as cautiously and judiciously as he could, for Inez’s benefit, not for his father’s. He understood now that everything depended on her reactions. “I thought I would leave now,” he said. “That way I won’t get home too late. I thought we could talk for a minute. Then I’ll take off.”
Inez scowled at Mike. “He doesn’t want to be around me,” she told Glenn.
“That’s not true,” Glenn said. “That doesn’t sound like Mike.”
“Who does it sound like then?” Inez said icily.
“Nobody,” Glenn said. “That doesn’t sound like anybody I know. Right, Mike?”
Mike looked toward the far end of the motel, where the station wagon was parked. What if he walked down there? he thought suddenly. Would it scare his father into doing what he wanted? What if it didn’t? But Mike was too worn-out to think beyond that. Meanwhile, Inez’s small eyes were fastened on his face.
“Mike?” his father said. “Let’s have one glass of wine and eat dinner. Are you a drinker these days? Then you can be on your way. A glass of wine won’t hurt you as long as you eat.”
“He doesn’t want to be here!” Inez shouted, and Mike’s father flinched.
“Let’s talk inside, Mike,” he said urgently, looking up and down the road. “Look at us, standing in the cold like fools.”
“Don’t call me names!” Inez said. “Call yourself whatever you want, but leave me out of it!”
“Mike, please,” his father said, moving toward him. “Just to get her inside,” he whispered. “Please. So she doesn’t leave with the car.”
“What?” Inez said loudly.
“Just one more hour,” his father pleaded.
INSIDE, Glenn poured wine into three plastic glasses. He clinked his own glass against Inez’s without making a toast, and he and Inez drank theirs quickly. “So everything went smoothly,” he said to her. “I knew it would. I knew I could count on you.”
“You don’t know anything,” Inez said. But with her next drink the anger went out of her voice; she poured Glenn a second glass, and topped off Mike’s, where he stood next to the window, wearing his jacket. “Take that thing off,” she said. “Can’t you tell it’s warmed up in here?”
“I fixed the heater while you were gone,” Glenn told her, his voice no longer sounding so lively. Mike watched the two of them—the way Inez moved rapidly and his father navigated warily around her. Mike told himself that all he had to do was be careful around Inez, to make sure she stayed. That was one thing his father was right about. Otherwise the only person there with a vehicle would be Mike. That would have occurred to him sooner if he’d had more sleep, if he’d felt healthy the way he used to, a long time ago. He looked out the window at the snow, and at dusk turning into night.
In the kitchenette Inez was pouring herself a third glass of wine. “Go for it,” his father said, and she reached out and put her hand on his crotch. He jumped away. “Oh,” she said, laughing. “You didn’t mean that?”
Glenn turned back to the stove. He stopped smiling. He looked so intense that Mike was afraid something was happening to him—a stroke or a heart attack.
“Dad?” he said, using that word for the first time since he’d gotten there.
“What?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
Then dinner was ready, and though Mike had stopped drinking, his father and Inez hadn’t. “I’m glad you’re here,” Glenn told Mike at the table. “Inez understands that you have to leave soon, and I know this has been tough on you. But now you can see how it’s been for me. I wanted you to see it from my perspective.”
“What’s this ‘it’ you’re talking about?” Inez said. She gestured with her arm and knocked Glenn’s wineglass off the table.
“Goddamn it,” he said angrily. “Can’t we have one meal where nobody spills anything?”
Mike hadn’t heard his father say that in years. It was what he’d said whenever Mike had spilled anything as a child. How often could that have happened? Mike thought now. How irritating could it have been?
Inez had stopped eating. “Who the hell spilled anything at lunch?” she said, her voice cold and dangerous-sounding.
“I don’t know,” Glenn said. “Somebody.”
“Nobody,” Inez said.
“Mike did, didn’t he?”
“No.” She got up from the table and stood in front of the small stove. She lit a cigarette from the gas burner.
“Don’t smoke while we’re eating,” Glenn said. “I’ve told you that before. I hate that.”
“I don’t care what you hate.”
Mike stood up, sick and dizzy. “Just back off,” he said to his father.
“I’ve been backing off,” Glenn said. “I think that’s obvious.”
“I think that’s obvious,” Inez said. She walked up behind him and stubbed out her cigarette in his food.
Mike’s father crossed the room and opened the front door. He shut it hard behind him.
“There he goes,” Inez said. “Into the cold without a jacket. If that isn’t crazy.” She lit another cigarette and sat down at the table. “You haven’t eaten a thing,” she said to Mike. “That’s a good steak you’re wasting.”
Mike, the cigarette smoke in his face, hurried into the bathroom, vomited, then sat on the floor with his head down, his hands cold with sweat. He tried to picture himself four hundred miles away, in Wheatley. He imagined driving out to Crow Lake, lying down on the front seat of his truck, and letting himself sleep.
“Mike?” Inez said. She pounded on the bathroom door. “I don’t see him. I don’t know what happened to him.” She banged on the door until he opened it and came out.
“It’s too dark to see anything,” he told her.
“No. That’s wrong. I can see the car.” She opened the front door. “Glenn?” she called. She waited a moment. “He’s not answering. Maybe he’s too far away.”
“That’s probably it,” Mike said. Inez looked at him hatefully. “I’m agreeing with you,” he said. “I’m saying you’re probably right.”
She opened the door again. “Glenn!” she shouted into the night.
“Listen,” Mike said. “Don’t yell like that. Come inside.” He touched her arm; when she stepped back in he pulled the door shut. “It’s okay,” he told her. “He’ll come back. He’ll walk in here in just a few minutes.”
“He was done with his food!” she said in a high-pitched voice. “I was just putting garbage into garbage!”
“Maybe he wasn’t done,” Mike said. “Maybe he had a little steak left on his plate.”
“That was your plate, with that nice steak left over! I don’t know why you don’t eat what’s put in front of you!” She opened the door again. “Glenn?” she called tenderly. “Come back in, honey. Warm yourself up.” She crossed her arms. She turned around and faced Mike. “Why does he want to make me so unhappy? What is he punishing me for?”
“The cigarette,” Mike said softly. He watched her face change from distraught to hopeless. She closed the door and sat down on the thin, worn carpeting. It’s all right, Mike wanted to tell her. People get over being mad. People walk out and then they come back. But he couldn’t say anything. Like her, he watched the door.
TWENTY-EIGHT
THE room was too warm now, and there seemed to be no way to adjust the heat. The kitchenette was cluttered with dirty dishes and pots, the bed had not been made nor the sleeping bag rolled up. Inez had not moved. She was sitting with her knees pulled up, making small, moaning sounds, and Mike thought that he should try
to comfort her. But he was afraid that she’d use it as a reason to get crazier, even. He stayed where he was, his stomach hurting, looking at the wallpaper behind her. It was yellowed and old. Everything in the cabin was discolored. Probably nothing had ever been nice. If you weren’t depressed when you walked in, you’d want to kill yourself by the time you left.
“Look,” Mike said. “I’ll see if I can find him.”
The snow was falling less heavily, and Mike walked far into the field across the road, then back and behind the motel, where he and his father had stood earlier. He felt better being outside in the cold darkness. The wind was decreasing, and an owl was calling from somewhere behind him. The pine boughs were blanketed lightly with snow.
“Glenn,” he said softly, as an experiment, to see how strange it felt to say the name. But it seemed even stranger to say “Dad”—because his father never had been one, really, he knew, not the kind they showed in movies and Father’s Day commercials. And even if those were phony, his father still hadn’t been one in Mike’s own mind.
He stood in back of the motel, breathing the cold air, knowing that he didn’t want to find him. Because he’d gotten where he was on his own. He’d managed this far without him.
In the next moment there were footsteps and voices, and his father and Inez were hurrying toward him. “I didn’t know where you were,” Glenn said, panting. “Inez wouldn’t tell me.”
“Fuck you,” Inez said.
“Come on now. Don’t be like that. I’m here now.”
She gave him a black look, then vanished; Glenn—with Mike following only because he was sick again suddenly—ran after her to the front of the cabin and inside, where she was furiously throwing her belongings into a small flowered bag.
“I was at fault,” Glenn said. “I know that. I made a mistake.” He pursued her into the kitchenette. “Tell me what you want me to say!”
“How about nothing?” Inez said. “How does that sound?” She zipped up her overnight bag and put on her coat. She was out the door, with Glenn running after her, when Mike got past them to the bathroom.
By the time he came out, his father was standing at the open door, alone. The car was gone. Mike thought he saw movement at the other end of the motel, near the station wagon, but whatever he thought he saw was gone when he looked again.
Behind him now, his father was packing. “She’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said. “But I won’t wait more than ten. Then we’ll have to get in your truck and leave.” He was throwing things into the duffel bag Mike had taken to summer camp ten years earlier. For a second Mike could think only of standing in that clearing, watching his mother help his weeping father into the car. Inside the duffel bag his mother had left a note: “Try not to be homesick. We’ll be back for you in two weeks.”
“Where are your keys?” his father said. “Let me have them just in case.”
“In case what?” Mike said.
“In case anything happens.” He got out a plastic trash bag and threw everything in the kitchenette into it: dirty dishes, leftover food, the contents of the refrigerator. Then he put on a pair of gloves and cleaned off every surface in the room with a wet towel. “Isn’t this something?” he said to Mike. “Doesn’t this remind you of the movies we used to watch?”
Mike shook his head.
“Get your things together. What did you bring?”
“Nothing.”
“Then watch the window for me.”
Mike put his cold hands against the cold glass, watching for Inez’s car. If she would just come back, he thought, he could walk out the minute he saw her headlights. He could walk out and be in his truck, driving away, in less than five minutes. He could leave, even if he didn’t find out anything from his father, as long as his father had somebody else to turn to.
Glenn put the duffel bag and trash bag next to the door. “Do you have any money?” he asked Mike.
Mike gave him thirty dollars—all but five of what he had.
“Good,” Glenn said. “Where are your keys?”
“I have them.”
“Give them to me. I’ll drive. I don’t mind. It will look less suspicious than you driving me.”
“Driving you where?” Mike said.
“I’m not sure yet. Maybe Cleveland.” He switched off the light and came toward Mike. He held out his hand.
“Give her more time,” Mike said. “You said she’d come back. You said you were helping her.”
“She’s crazy.”
“But not completely!”
“Okay,” his father said. “Forget Cleveland. I can make do with Minneapolis. We can be there in two hours.”
“She’ll be back before then!”
“Just give me the keys. I’m only asking this one thing. After Minneapolis, you can turn around and drive back to school.” His thin face was tightly pale. “If you didn’t want to help me,” he said, “you shouldn’t have come.”
Mike stepped back from his father then. He looked at the hand he held out—first for money, and now for this, which Mike should have realized from the beginning.
“I want to know what happened,” Mike said. “I want to know why you did what you did.”
His father glared at him. “She grabbed my arm,” he said. “I never intended to shoot her. It was at least sixty percent her fault. Because she was like you are now,” he told Mike fiercely. “She was going to leave me when I needed her.”
LEAVING, and leaving his father in the cabin, alone, wasn’t as hard to do as Mike had thought. He just opened the door. But behind him his father was crying. His shoulders were hunched and his arms were loose at his sides. Tears were streaming down his face into his collar.
Mike went into the bathroom for Kleenex. Standing in front of the sink, in the harsh brightness of the overhead light, he stared at his own face in the mirror. It was just a sound, he told himself, and after a while it would stop. It wasn’t going to kill him to hear it, no matter how bad it made him feel.
He delivered the Kleenex to his father, who followed Mike outside and down the dirt road to the rutted path leading into the woods. Mike wanted to stop and explain that there were things you couldn’t make people do—even people who loved you. But he kept walking instead, and by the time he unlocked his truck, his father was twenty feet behind him, standing without a jacket in the middle of the snow-covered trail. Mike drove out slowly, watching his father move aside, finally, letting him go.
MIKE drove for thirty minutes before stopping to call Tom DeWitt from a pay phone outside a closed gas station. He dialed the third number, the one that was cellular, and hoped that it would just keep ringing. He was willing to stand all night in the cold, listening to it ring. But Tom answered. “We know,” he said. “Don’t say anything. We’re at the motel now.”
Mike held the receiver, looking at the road and snow and at his blue truck, parked safely in the darkness.
“Where are you?” Tom said, and Mike told him the name of the gas station, and the town it was close to. “Stay there,” he told Mike. “Just sit in your truck until I get there.”
Mike, waiting in the darkness, already knew most of what Tom would tell him later: that the red-haired woman at the motel was a police officer, and that there were more police with her; that they had listened in on Glenn’s call to Mike at school and had followed Mike before that, in Brookings; and that Tom had been in Brookings, too, more than once. And, most important of all, that Tom’s letter had correctly predicted that Glenn would contact Mike, would try to involve him.
Mike had been too worried about himself—that was what he thought now. He should have been smarter about that letter. He should have believed it more, and he should have trusted his father less. He should have said no when he called. He should have done nothing. Because Tom DeWitt would have caught his father soon enough anyway, without him.
TWENTY minutes later Mike saw headlights, coming fast. Then Tom was getting into Mike’s truck, his heavy jacket swinging open
to reveal a shoulder holster and gun. His face was chapped from the wind. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“Tell me what happened.”
“Your father’s under arrest. He’s all right, not injured in any way.” He settled himself into the seat and pulled his jacket closed, over the gun. “You’re in the clear,” he told Mike. “The important thing is that you didn’t help him. All that matters in the end is what you do.”
Mike watched him brush snow from his hair and jacket—as if he’d been out hunting just deer, Mike thought. “Does that go for you, too?” he said bitterly. “Is that why you feel so good now?”
“Who said I felt good?”
“Don’t you?”
“It’s not that simple,” Tom said. “Sometimes you regret things you have to do. Sometimes you can’t find another way to do them.”
“So you screw people over.”
Three state police cars went by, heading west, one after the other, the headlights shining in sequence into the cab of Mike’s truck. “My dad?” Mike said, and Tom nodded. They both watched the cars for as long as they could see them.
“Sometimes you screw yourself, too,” Tom said, in a less certain voice. “Not usually, but when you want to stay in touch with people afterward.”
“My mother?”
“You and your mother.”
Mike looked at the dark, empty highway. For the first time he knew something significant that Tom didn’t: It wasn’t Tom DeWitt Mike’s mother cared for. But Mike didn’t feel even glad. He looked at Tom’s weathered face and his thinning hair, and felt bad for him.
“I haven’t called your mother yet,” Tom said. “I wanted to wait until you were away from here. But I’ll be honest with her. I’m not asking you to keep our surveillance of you secret.”
“But you’d like to.”
“Would it do any good if I did?” He smiled at Mike without looking happy. “Yes. I would like to. But I won’t.”
“What was the point of the dog, at the motel?” Mike asked quietly. “Whose dog was that?”
“It was just a prop,” Tom said. “Your dad likes dogs. He doesn’t think of them suspiciously.”