“All right,” he finally said. “But you send me back a daughter in worse shape than I sent you, you pay with interest.” He hung up the phone without saying good-bye.
Chloe watched the Cherokee hit the same dip in the asphalt that she always did when she came to collect the mail. A million empty parking spaces, and Junior pulled the Jeep up beside her truck. It was like some weird evolution: Corrine’s short-bed, her own truck in the middle, Junior’s yuppie sport utility vehicle at the tag end of things. She hung up the phone and walked on over. What good would it do to try to hide? Instinctively the man seemed to sense the moment she drove into town for a checkup, or that she’d be grocery shopping in the disposable diaper aisle the very minute he decided diaper bargains weighed heavily on his mind, too.
“Lord, I wish you’d quit spying on me,” she said as he climbed out of the Jeep and shut the door. “I have enough troubles without being reminded what a faithless bitch I am every time I turn the corner.”
Junior cupped his gloved hand against her cheek. “Hey, beautiful. Ever going to tell me how you chipped that tooth?”
“I already did. None of your fucking business.” She took hold of his hand, intending to pull it away, but even gloved, his fingers felt warm, and it felt so nice to be touched that she let her own hand drop to her side. When, a long minute later, he removed his hand, her cheek felt the abrasive scrape of wind and nothing more.
“How’s my Reed?”
“My Reed is working on sleep these days. A definite improvement on her previous hobby, screaming.”
“Good. And how’s our Kit?”
“Still giving me the guilt rays and the silent treatment. Every night she cries herself to sleep in front of the stove. This whole thing is giving Hannah colitis, I swear it is. Every morning I have to clean up one mess or another. And the sand’s definitely running out of the hourglass, Junior. I can’t hold her dad off much longer, and I don’t dare send her home all fucked up when I don’t know what’s wrong. Damn, I wish she’d open up to me.”
“Open up to her and she will.”
She delivered him the look he deserved.
“You’re getting to be famous in these parts for that mean expression. Corrine tries to copy it, but she can’t even come close. Do it again. It gets me all stirred up, na’nishhod at’ééd.”
“Didn’t your mother tell you it’s not nice to make fun of girls who limp?”
“Whoa! Armed yourself with a conversational Navajo dictionary, yeah?”
“I memorize the words, and then I ask Oscar to translate.”
“Oscar’s a good friend, especially when you open up to him. Probably like you used to do with Kit.”
“Dammit, Junior, like it’s that easy. No wonder men are so confused. You think everything’s about fairness, like I tell her a secret, she tells me what happened that night.”
“I can see that you’re both working pretty hard to make what’s simple stay difficult.”
Fine lines around his brown eyes crinkled in delight. So much for his East Coast complexion, she thought. No matter what your cultural background, Northern Arizona’s dry winter sucked a person’s skin dry. She woke up every morning wishing she owned stock in Nivea face cream. “Why’s everything I say strike you so damn funny?”
“Because all the toughness in you is like old skin. So useless you’re itching to shed it. You think you need to say all those cuss words, but you don’t. You let all that go for a night with me at the Pony Soldier. Remember?” He placed his hand against her belly, and suddenly it was as if she wasn’t wearing thermal underwear and a heavy jacket at all. “Fifty times a day I think about the things you said, what we did.”
Chloe did too, but she’d stop breathing before she’d admit it. “Well, you’re a big boy, and it was only a foolish couple of hours. Get over it. Go make jewelry and be world famous.” She saw the hurt briefly visit his eyes, and was sorry she’d opened her big mouth. “People say I shouldn’t be allowed out in public.”
He took her hands in his and stepped closer. “You are definitely more interesting in private. Circumstances, Chloe. That’s all that’s separating us. Soon as you get this thing with Kit cleared up, let’s go somewhere neutral, talk things over. Decide what to do. Take a little trip. You ever been to Canyon de Chelly?”
Chloe squinted at the horizon, where the mesas stood waiting for the light to paint them various pastel colors. “Why not? Maybe Hank would spring for our gas money. Junior, wake up. The only thing we should be doing besides pretending we don’t know each other is working at developing amnesia.”
He looked to the north and the south, then drew her out of sight of the Trading Post windows, behind the rented van. She could smell the bite of exhaust a new car gave off. Her head ached with worry. He was going to kiss her, and like little hussies, all her nerve endings stood up on tiptoe. Inside, where her stitches were dissolving as they healed, things pulled uncomfortably, her flesh trying to resist the call of desire. “I don’t want you to do that,” she said, stammering the words out, stopping only when his mouth closed over hers.
“You wanted it,” Junior said softly, then kissed her again.
“Come help me down at the barn,” Chloe announced to Kit the minute she walked in the door. “We can’t much out properly, but we can scrape up some of the fresh horseshit before it freezes. Put your jacket on; it’s cold out there.”
Kit set the sleeping baby down on the blankets in the playpen and slowly began to get up and slip on her tennis shoes. “Boots,” Chloe said and opened the back door, going on ahead.
Kit laughed dryly as Chloe confronted the shovel, frozen fast to the ground in three inches of ice. “What? You think this is funny? Here a tool somebody forgot to hang up’s frozen to the ground, there’s work to be done, and you find it funny?”
Kit crossed her arms and looked away. The smirk on her face made Chloe want to grab a horse crop and smack the sass out of her. But Kit wasn’t the one who needed sense whacked into her. “Fine, then. Trot your butt up to the house and bring me a pan full of hot water.”
She watched the girl step carefully across the path of stove ashes Hank spread across the snow each morning. He had given up trying to stop her from doing any work and settled for admonitions about being careful. Maybe he didn’t know she was driving, but she could tell he suspected. Shit, he was probably checking the odometer, planning to hide her keys next. Her eyes teared up at the thought of all that caring. Every night he came in the door exhausted, took a wailing baby from her arms, and rocked her to sleep. Chloe was an inch away from packing it in, but Hank never once lost his cool. He was more adept at diapering than she could ever hope to be, continually pointing out some tidbit on child development he’d found time to read and mull over. He fell into bed and slept while she lay there worrying. On top of all that his mother was dying, and Chloe still hadn’t located the guts to tell him about what Kit had done, about that letter from Tucson, which might be from her very-much-alive mother. She gulped cold air, trying to clear her head. Thunder pawed the ice, leaning his weight against the fence, feverish with winter confinement. If I was home in the canyon, Chloe mused, by now I’d’ve hit the road. This is far too much shit for anyone like me to sort out. I’m selfish. I lie. I do all right with a dog because dogs won’t hold you to a schedule. But a baby? What was I thinking? And Junior Whitebear—there goes the wrongest move I could possibly make.
That was her old self talking, and she wasn’t the only one regressing. Seemed like for each pound Chloe’d taken off these last few weeks, Kit had added one. Inside the barn, she broke the baling wire on the second to last bale of hay. Oscar was supposed to deliver them more this weekend. There was a little of her money left, but Hank would pay the feed bill; he had the check all made out and sitting on the kitchen table. Her breasts throbbed. She nursed the baby whenever she could, but Reed never seemed to empty her. Out loud, she said, “Well, Thunder, I can’t save the world, but I have enough milk to feed s
ix hungry orphans. Maybe I can sell it, what do you think?” She threw the colt a quarter flake to settle his nerves. When she turned around to wipe her hands, Kit was standing in the barn doorway with the saucepan of water, waiting for instruction.
“You were a Girl Scout,” Chloe said. “Figure it out.”
With little ceremony Kit upended the water over the shovel blade. Just as Chloe expected, with a loud ping, a good-sized piece of metal chipped off and the shovel toppled to the ground. Thunder startled and ran around his hay into the barn.
Kit swore softly.
“You learn anything from that?”
“I guess I should have poured the water on the ground, not the shovel. Do I have to pay for it?”
“No, you have to live with it. Every time you want to dig a hole and can’t get the shovel blade to cut in straight, you’ll remember. When bad things happen, these little lessons can be very consoling.”
Kit looked up at her, annoyed. “Well, déjà-fucking-vu. You sounded just like Lita for a second there. Did you take two of those estrogen pills today by accident?”
Chloe handed her the shovel. “No, I took one, and so far I feel as mean as I did when I still had all my parts.” Thunder came out of the barn, nosed them nervously, then lifted his tail and shit all over the remains of the hay flake. “Guess what, Kit? Right behind you there’s a big steaming pile of work calling out your name.”
Kit huffed and scraped the arena with her broken shovel. Chloe stood along the fenceline, watching, pointing out a few places where the ice was slushy and making her work those down to the dirt. Then she watched as the girl hung the shovel on its proper hook and picked up the saucepan. “Come on up to the house. I’ll make us some cocoa.”
“Let me make it,” Kit said. “I’m supposed to be helping you. I’ve been such a b-i-t-c-h lately it’s the least I can do.”
Chloe nursed Reed while Kit worked in the kitchen. She listened to her daughter’s noisy suckling and felt such relief at letting all that milk go. Fill yourself up, skinny girl. Get chubby. Drink all afternoon; this bar is wide open. Junior’s face above hers in the parking lot at the Trading Post flashed through her mind, shaming her nearly to tears. It seemed like before he kissed anyone—Dog, Reed, herself—he always touched the tip of his tongue to his lips. Hank kissed like a boy just learning the art, eager to try something new every time. Junior’s kisses she’d recognize blindfolded. They were professional. And effective. Since Reed, Hank kissed her with respect, but behind it, desire lurked. Like last night, him saying wasn’t the six-week waiting period just about up? He’d done some reading—did he ever stop reading?—and thought six weeks after female surgery a woman was healed enough to make love to the man she loved. So which man would that be? Junior pressed his mouth to hers, and Chloe swore she tasted something sugary flowing between them, something as sweet as that night in the motel. Meanwhile, Hank waited patiently.
She was boxed in here, no visible outlet. She laid Reed across her lap and rubbed her back the way Dr. Carrywater showed her would relieve any gas. Her daughter stubbornly clung to things, necessary burps, the silver rattle, strands of Kit’s long red hair. Reed didn’t relish the idea of letting go any more than her mother did holding on.
Chloe cleared her throat. “Tell me what happened, Kit. You know it’s not going to get manageable until you do.”
Kit set the cocoa tin on the counter. “I don’t know why you keep bugging me. I gave my cherry away. Big deal. Get over it, okay? I did.”
“If it’s such a little deal, then what’s the harm in telling me?”
Kit sighed. “What in the hell could possibly change if you know the details?”
Chloe nodded. “You’re right. Nothing will change except you might feel a little cleaner.”
“I feel clean.”
“Because you take three showers a day, Kit? What’s up with that? You used to be fine with one.”
Kit turned the wooden spoon she’d been using to stir the cocoa over in her hands. She didn’t speak.
“Tell me. After, eventually, you can start having a life again. It won’t ever be a regular life, but it does get tolerable. If you hold it inside, this thing will eat you from the inside out.”
Kit looked straight into her eyes. “You hold it inside. You keep everything in. Sometimes I don’t even know who you are.”
“Maybe you’re right. If so, I’m a walking example of what you don’t want to become. I can’t commit myself one hundred percent to anything, not even to Hank. I’m scared and angry all the time. I’m uneducated and good for nothing except horses. I love you, kiddo. Please do this another way.”
“God, Chloe, let it go! I don’t even think about it.”
Chloe took a deep breath, damning Junior’s advice that the only way to unlock Kit was to first use the key on herself. “Did I ever tell you about the job I had at the fairgrounds?”
“No. Why? Did you break a shovel there?”
“No, I broke this.” Chloe grinned wide to expose her chipped front tooth. “Want to hear how it happened?”
Kit stirred the cocoa and stared glassily at the cacti on the windowsill. “Bet it wouldn’t make any difference if I said no.”
“That’s right. Listen up, Kit. I’m only going to say this once. You tell anybody what I said, I’ll call you a liar.”
Kit set the wooden spoon down on the stove. “This is going to make me cry, isn’t it?”
Chloe straightened out Reed’s tiny clenched fist. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s supposed to. I was eighteen when it happened,” she said. “I knew it all. Same as you, Kit, only you really are smarter than me. There was this traveling rodeo. Toured all the county fairs. The guy was handsome, headed for the PRCA, and he told me I was cute. Me, the girl who fed horses, mucked stalls, and got paid four bucks an hour to push around a wheelbarrow full of shit. Watching bullriders break their necks came free. So did being an idiot. ‘Come watch me,’ he said. ‘I win my event, I’ll buy you a cold one and a night you won’t forget.’”
“If this is how you lost your cherry, I really don’t care.”
“Will you just shut up and listen?”
“God. Sor-ry.”
“He missed the money by two points. His buddies were riding him about losing. I started to go back to work, but he said losing wasn’t any reason not to celebrate. I remember him saying that as clear as I remember anything about that night. We went to a country-and-western bar. They never even asked for my ID. The whole thing felt weird, right from the start, you know, those icky vibes you get when you’re in over your head? I asked him to please drive me back to the fairgrounds. He said, ‘No problem, we’ll go right now.’ Then in the parking lot, he opened his door and I started to climb in, but he yanked me back and started kissing me. It wasn’t what I had in mind, but I thought, Fine, just kiss him. Afterwards you can go home and brush your teeth. But the next thing I knew he shoved his hand in—” She gestured to the fly front of her jeans, across which Reed lay sleeping. “Here.”
“Okay, Chloe. You can stop now. I get the picture.”
Chloe thought about how she had been thinner then, all muscles and bone. Wiry enough so she regularly took horses over the jumps bareback. The cowboy shoved her down on the seat of this truck and with one hand yanked both her jeans and underwear down together. I’m hobbled like a horse, she remembered thinking; even if I can get away, I can’t go far. Her ankles burned, chafing as he shoved her legs apart. On top of her, he was so heavy she couldn’t find breath enough to scream.
“The buckle on his belt kept smacking me on my hip, but that was small-time compared to how awful it felt when he put his dick inside me.”
Kit shut her eyes.
“There was this little rip in the headliner of his truck, up near the rearview mirror. From time to time, I could catch a glimpse of my own face looking back at me, like a separate person, the one I never listened to.”
Kit refused to meet her eyes. Chloe was relieved. No mat
ter what Junior thought, she couldn’t tell Kit how just before he came, the cowboy had torn open her shirt, bent down, and bit her right breast so savagely that he’d lacerated the skin just above the nipple. Like some rabid animal, as if he wanted to tear it off. That whenever Reed started to nurse on that side there was this awkward and difficult moment when she remembered the cowboy’s perfect teeth in the bloody grin, and how she felt both Reed and herself struggling to move past that barrier.
“The first chance I got, I hit him with my fist. Which was the biggest mistake I made.”
Kit made a soft cry.
“Come on, Kit. The guy was twice as strong as I was. One of the times he hit me back, he chipped this tooth. A souvenir. I didn’t even feel it, I was so grateful to hear him finish, to feel him climb off of me and shove me out the door into the parking lot. Then the truck started up. The sound of that engine told me two things: I was alive and that son of a bitch had hit the road.”
Kit went to the kitchen sink and leaned over, gripping the sides. The sweet smell of scalding cocoa filled the air.
“Kit?”
“No.”
“I was going to ask if you could take the baby. My legs are falling asleep. I still have trouble getting up from this position.”
“I can take her.” They changed places, and Chloe walked to the corner window and pulled the curtain aside. She twisted her hair into a ponytail, then let it drop across her shoulders. Kit leaned over Reed, talking baby talk, her wiry mass of red hair looking for all the world like sprung copper wiring. Chloe fought the urge to open the back door and run to her truck, to just get in and drive away. “Whatever happened to you that night also happened to me, Kit. You’re under eighteen. They call it rape in the eyes of the law.”
“Chloe, it wasn’t like that.”
“Does that mean sex was both your ideas?”
Loving Chloe Page 21