Lamb

by Bonnie Nadzam

  “That won’t happen.”

  “Just say okay, Gary.”

  “Okay, Gary.”

  “And if I come back and you’re gone, I’ll understand you’ve gone home. And no hard feelings, okay? It wouldn’t mean we can’t—you know—hang out. Like before. Say it: no hard feelings.”

  “No hard feelings.”

  “Good. Good girl.” He squinted at her. “Are all seventh graders eleven? I mean, your friends look a little old for their age.”

  She shrugged. “I’ll be twelve in December.”

  He looked down at the floor and nodded.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  He sat on the edge of the other bed.

  “What if I want to come home? Not like I will.”

  “I’ll put you on a plane. Straight home, first class.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I’ll buy you a little purse, and fill it with money and snacks and a magazine or comic book. And I’ll send you on your way.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’ll be an open door, all the time. If you decide you can’t bear the drive back with me, if you decide I’m just like some mean old uncle, too strict, or if I preach too much, I’ll buy you the plane ticket. I give you my word.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’ll be just like vacation, so you can see some other things. Something other than this sad place.”

  She nodded.

  “You’re not like your friends, are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not,” he said. “You believe that?”

  “If you say so.”

  He grinned. “That’s my girl. So we have a deal?” He turned over his palm and spat in it, and extended his hand. She snorted, and grinned, and spat in her own hand, and they shook.

  Lamb left her in the white hotel and drove back toward the city, away from the last broken reaches of daylight as rain clouds threaded with neon blue in the rearview mirror. The girl would be there when he returned. Not because she wanted to go but because she wouldn’t take the initiative to call a cab.

  He turned into the parking lot of Tommie’s building and pulled up to the front. There was a different security guard—a heavy young guy in cheap black pants and a windbreaker with the same corporate logo on the breast. Already balding and pale and bereft of all those heartbreaking nights a young guy like him should be suffering. A young guy only has so many nights in him during his tenure on planet Earth, and he ought not squander them alone in ruined parking lots, bothering people. He came right up to the driver’s side of the truck.

  “You looking for somebody, man?”

  Lamb’s pulse raced up his neck and down his arms, the taste of his own breath foul in his mouth. “Is this Roosevelt Road?” He pointed at the six-lane. “I seem to have gotten turned around.”

  The man shook his head. “No, man.”

  “I need to go west?”

  “You can’t make a left turn here.” A small, round woman with chin-length grayish-brown hair tilted sideways a little beneath the weight of a huge canvas satchel swung over her shoulder. Lamb watched her walk by as the man gave him directions he didn’t need, and he became very, very still.

  Perhaps it was in this moment that Lamb made up his mind, when he came right up against the emptiness. And who’s to blame him if he then turned completely—shoulders, face, hands, pelvis—to the girl? She pulled him back into himself and into a concrete world that, frankly, David Lamb wasn’t quite ready to surrender. He wasn’t ready to surrender the story he thought he was in. Not in the way this parking lot and this pasty thin-haired man had just somehow rendered not only possible but necessary.

  Lamb wanted the greasy cars and the soft white bed at the hotel; he wanted to stuff ice cream and roast turkey down the girl’s tiny gullet until she puked laughing; he wanted the pain of seeing Cathy on the arm of some other man, some gentle-hearted egghead in a fleece jacket and with a beautiful red dog because she deserved those things; he wanted cold fingers and hot coffee and fried eggs and he wanted Linnie’s wine and he wanted Linnie again, her body pressed into his and the envy of men’s faces when he entered a room with her; he wanted snow disappearing into the cold pewter spill of Lake Michigan in December and he wanted headaches and sleepless nights and waking up knowing he had a heart because it was spinning in a mechanical whir behind his ribs. And he wanted all of these things twice: he wanted them, and he wanted knowing he was getting them.

  He rolled up the window against the security guard and took a left-hand turn out of the lot, sped down the street and onto 90 and into the city. He called Linnie from outside her narrow brick town house, and in less than a minute she was standing inside the gold-lit doorway in a sweater and her wonderful blue jeans, her dark hair all around her.

  “I can’t stay long.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m heading out of town for a bit, Lin.”

  “To the cabin?”

  “Tomorrow. For a few weeks.”

  “Am I invited?” She took his coat. “Come sit. Wine?”

  “Please, Lin. You’re invited everywhere. Can we fly you out? Over the weekend? Will you come?”

  “Of course.” She set two glasses on her tiny kitchen table.

  “I knew you would,” he said, and leaned back, and looked up at her.

  “Of course you did.”

  Ninety minutes later at the Residence Inn, Lamb unmade his bed, packed his belongings, ordered room service, and called Draper, who he knew was loaded down for the month, and invited him to dinner.

  “Can’t do it, Davy. Next week?”

  “Good. Next week. Call me when you’re freed up?”

  And he called Draper’s wife. Left her a message. Invited her out to the cabin too. He ate half the salad and half the halibut and set the tray on the floor by the door. Then he loaded up the truck and left the hotel.

  At a deserted Kmart halfway back to the white hotel he packed up for the road. Warm clothes for the girl, bottled water, bubblegum, potato chips, soda, paper cups, apple juice, crackers, Slim Jims, Oreos, a bag of apples. He put a quarter in a junk machine and turned the metal key and pocketed a small plastic ring in a big plastic bubble.

  When he stood at last before the door to their room, he took a single long breath, ran his hand through his hair, and checked his fly. He knocked before walking in.

  There she was, the white down blanket pulled over her head like a cape. Like she was a little old lady, a thousand years old, propped up on a mound of six or seven giant pillows. She gave him a silly grin. “This bed is awesome.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just sitting here.”

  “No TV?” He carried the plastic bag of clothes to the foot of her bed.

  “Just imagining things.”

  “What things?”

  “You know. How you imagine you’re different than in real life. Like you have longer hair. Or you’re smarter. Something like that.”

  “And you’re still here,” he said.

  “Ta-da.”

  “Are you the best girl in the world, or what?”

  She scrunched up her face.

  “I bought you a sweater,” he said, “and some blue jeans.”

  “You did?”

  “I’m going to make you a deal. Every time the temperature drops ten degrees, I’ll buy you a new sweater.”

  “Will it be cold?”

  “At night and early morning.” He opened the bag and took her things out. “I’m sorry they’re from Kmart. We’ll get you nice things when we have more time.”

  “Are we in a rush?”

  “We just want to make good time, right?”

  She nodded and took the sweater from him and put it against her cheek. “It’s soft.”

  “It’s a good color for you.”

  “My mom says it’s not.”

  “Well, moms don’t know everything.” He took out the jeans and removed all the plastic tags and set it all u
p for her at the desk. “For the morning.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You hungry?”

  “Nope.”

  “You ready to hit the sack?”

  “Sure.”

  “You want a bedtime story?”

  “I’m not six.”

  “I know how old you are. Who doesn’t like a bedtime story?”

  “I’m too old.”

  “Well, I’m going to help you get over that. You’re lucky you found me. I’m going to keep you on the straight and narrow.”

  “Sounds boring.”

  “That’s what everybody thinks. Now come on. Did you wash your face?”

  “Yes.”

  “With soap?”

  They both looked at the bathroom counter where the hotel soap was stacked in a pile of three shiny paper squares. The girl groaned and stood up. “What are you, my dad or something?”

  “That’s a good way to think of it. That’s exactly how I want you to think about it.”

  • • • • •

  They would have been on the east-west tollway, bright white farm-field daylight, when Lamb sped past the last county sign for Rock Island, Illinois. The girl sat beside him in her new yellow sweater, watching the road as if the reels of flat highway needling fast and straight ahead were the opening credits of some film she was either bound to watch or in which she had just willingly agreed to perform.

  They’d left the hotel in the dark, didn’t stop for breakfast until a rest stop past Aurora. And because she was his lookout, his sidekick in the passenger seat, he bought her a syrupy hot chocolate from a machine and made a little wide-eyed show of adding extra packets of sugar. The lookout, he said, stirring the cocoa, has to keep her wits about her, has to be alert, must be the eyes and ears.

  “Unless,” he said, starting the truck, “you want to turn around and go back home now?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’ll tell me when?”

  “Okay, but I won’t want to.”

  “I’m serious. You tell me when.”

  “I will.”

  Down the road they tapped their cups together at the hour when school would have started, and she wanted to toast again when she figured Sid and Jenny were being questioned for the first time.

  “Were they so very awful?” he asked her.

  She nodded.

  “What was the worst thing they did.”

  She turned and stared out the window. “What they said.”

  “What did they say?”

  “The worst?”

  “The worst.”

  “They pretended like no one else was in the room and had this really loud talk while we waited for the teacher. Sid said it was no surprise that I hooked up with you. And Jenny said I must be used to it since my stepdad makes little visits to my room every night. And, you know, everybody was looking at me.”

  “Did you leave the room?”

  “He’s not even my stepdad. They’re not even married.”

  “You stayed. Did you cry?”

  “No.”

  He glanced at her. “Is it true about Jessie?”

  “No. He takes me swimming in the morning and they make this big thing out of it.”

  “I see.”

  “I guess it doesn’t sound as bad as it really was.”

  “No,” he said. “It sounds pretty bad.”

  The girl turned to him. “Gary?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Why didn’t you ever get married?”

  “I suppose I never found the right girl.”

  “Oh.”

  “Did you ever have a boyfriend? Like Jenny and Sidney?”

  She shrugged and looked out the window. “Not like that. Not serious.”

  “What’s serious? Like you weren’t in love?”

  “Not hooking up or anything.”

  “Hooking up.”

  “Like messing around.”

  “You never?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “What is that?” Lamb said. “Like it’s no big deal?”

  She shrugged.

  He slowed down. “I don’t like that, Tommie.” He steered the truck onto the shoulder and put it in park.

  “What are we doing?”

  “I’m going to tell you something really important,” he said. “Are you listening?” He reached into his front pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. He sorted them, and held up a penny. He turned it over in his hand. “What year were you born?”

  “Nineteen ninety-six.”

  “I was forty-four years old.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t say whoa. Makes me feel like I should take you back home.”

  She slid her hands beneath her bottom and tipped her head. “What were you doing back then?”

  He stopped turning the penny and looked at her.

  “I might tell you sometime,” he said, as if he were surprised to be saying it.

  “Okay.”

  “Do you know how much a stamp costs?”

  “Like fifty cents?”

  “In nineteen fifty-two, Tommie, a first-class stamp cost a man three cents.”

  “Whoa.”

  “In nineteen fifty-two, Tommie, the United States federal government spent about sixty-eight billion dollars. Total.” He looked at her. “That doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?”

  “Not really.”

  “We need to do a better job learning about the world around us.”

  “Don’t do that. Jessie does that.”

  “Does what?”

  “Says we when you mean me.”

  He put his hands in his lap. “You’re right.”

  She shrugged.

  “Shrug it off. Get real good at shrugging. That girl? She’s a shrugger. Nothing gets to her.”

  She looked at him sideways and rolled her eyes.

  “It hurts my feelings that you shrug and roll your eyes. That you talk like you’re already grown up. That you don’t know about nineteen fifty-two. I’m trying to help you here, I’m trying to tell you something important.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Christ, the people your age. There isn’t a wild place left on the planet for you. There isn’t a code of decency or manners left for you to break. And what do you do? You shrug.” He took her hand and turned it over and pressed the penny into it. “Your piece of the year I was born. Don’t lose it. That might be all you get.”

  She looked at the penny in her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “Someday,” he said, “we’ll rent a trailer. A silver one. Just like it was fifty years ago. And you’ll be seventeen and we’ll put you in a long skirt and tie your hair back with a dotted yellow scarf and drive across the country, from ice cream stand to ice cream stand. We’ll map it out just right, so that every city we hit is in the peak of springtime, cool wind and green puddles and white blossoms and all of that. Bright sun and rain shaking out of the trees and new birds and you and your yellow scarf.”

  “Will you pick me up at school?”

  “In the silver trailer.”

  “Deal.”

  “Listen, Tom. Can I ask you a serious question?”

  “What.”

  “Yes or no.”

  “Yes.”

  “You haven’t hooked up with a boy, have you?” Her skin went pink behind her freckles. “You maybe lied to Sid or Jenny and said you did, but you never really did, did you?” She shook her head. “Because it’s a very big deal,” he said. “The biggest deal. And listen. I want you to hear me. In case you’re having funny thoughts. I am not going to kiss you. It’s my way of honoring you. Do you understand? It’s my way of honoring nineteen fifty-two. And the little cabin out there. And the river.”

  “That’s all real?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The cabin and the river?”

  “Isn’t that where we’re going?”

  “I mean the shop with the pickle jar. The horse. That’s all
pretend.”

  “It’s all real, Tommie.”

  “For real for real?”

  “I’m not a liar.”

  “Me either.”

  “Good. I know you’re not. You sometimes talk silly, but you’re basically a pretty good girl, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I know,” he said. “Hey, where’s that penny?”

  She opened her hand and he took the coin, put it on the end of his thumb, and pressed it to the center of her forehead.

  “Ouch.”

  “Ssh.” He pressed hard. “There,” he said, “the year I was born, printed right on your beautiful freckled forehead.”

  She touched it but couldn’t make it out.

  “Can you feel it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Heads or tails?”

  She felt again. “Heads.”

  “It’s tails.” He grinned. “Know what that means?”

  “It means you win.”

  “No,” he said. “Don’t think of it that way.” Beside the truck a semi hurtled past, then another. “I’ll tell you what it means. It means you’re my good luck.”

  She smiled.

  “I sort of knew it the minute I saw you.”

  “You did?”

  He rolled down the windows. “Stick your hand out there, will you?” Sunlight flashed on her little gold ring with the fake pink stone. “Memorize that,” he said. “There will be days when you’re back in Chicago, all grown up, lines in your face, and there will be no tall grass and be no birdsong and no wide-open road and you’ll wish you were back here. You’ll wonder what ever happened to that one old guy who drove you around that one September.”

  The road was still. No cars, nothing but the highway and the bright sky and the fat sun. No witness but the hushed and high green corn.

  “Gary,” she said. “I know it’s not just for a week.”

  He looked at her.

  “I know you had to say just a week or we never would have left.”

  “Don’t say that,” he whispered. “It isn’t true.” He stared at her, his face suddenly very warm.

  She stared back at him.

  “Is this a bad idea?” His voice was clear and careful in the new quiet. “I think this might be a really bad idea. I think maybe we better turn around.” He picked up Tommie’s hand. “Listen,” he said. “I want you to think about how this looks. You’re in middle school. You’re smart. You know some things. You’ve seen the news, right? Say right.”