One man led to the next man. Through Lyle the girls met the Twinkies, and they each chose one of them, Catherine taking the shyer of the two—he wouldn’t have been the shy one in another situation, but everything of course was relative—and Misty took the other. Which? Catherine would not be able to recall, twenty-five years later. After the Twinkies, because of the Twinkies, they met two other men, at a bar. From that bar, they were invited to another bar, the F.O.P. bar, where they were often the only girls. Underage among cops; could anything have been more satisfying? The cops they selected—first Catherine, then Misty—led them to their next men. Misty chose, or was perhaps chosen by, a mean cop. Catherine went with a gentle, older man. He did not allow her to drink when they were together. Tommy, he was named. And so began the de-escalation of Catherine’s wild phase. She was, it seemed, not so feral or far-gone as she might have believed. Tommy gave her a wise, kind smile and recommended books. He watched birds and kept a record of what he’d seen. They met without Misty, which had never happened before. They went to movies and shared popcorn, Pepsi, Junior Mints. He wasn’t old enough to be her father, but he was old enough to be her protective elder brother, her still-hip, fuckup young uncle, her teacher, her friend. The night the F.O.P. bar was raided, Tommy made sure Catherine wasn’t there.
“You have to go to college,” he told her. “You don’t want to regret that. College is the best part. I promise, you’ll love it.” Her parents had been saying the same thing, but it was him she listened to. Tommy, who could only have sex if she lay facedown on the bed, his body uniquely fierce and nearly violent against her back, almost as if he were ashamed to let her see him that way.
Misty wasn’t going to college. If Misty didn’t get her act together, she wouldn’t graduate from high school.
She must have finally received her GED, Catherine thought; Misty surely had turned around that slide she’d been on those days, gotten traction somewhere, somehow, and climbed out. After Tommy, Catherine had dated one of her professors—a colleague of her mother, somebody in between the sanctioned and the un-. He was another wizened soul, protector and admirer. Western civilization. Philosophy. Alcoholic, pothead, but educated, pensive. Slowly she was emerging from the debauched place she’d resided for those few years with Misty Mueller.
And Misty? The men whose hands she’d been passed through had also shared traits. But she’d opted for more danger, more brutality, selecting, it seemed, against safety, or maybe simply selecting what seemed familiar, familial. The girls had begun with twins, Ron and Don, who were identical, nearly indistinguishable (which one of them blushed more easily? Because that was the one to whom Catherine had been drawn, the one who felt some small degree of shame, a modicum of alarm), and then they’d parted ways, each choice leading each girl further from the other. Three men later, and they were no longer best friends. Misty’s boyfriend rode a motorcycle, carried a knife, and had a parole officer. Catherine’s was pale and slender, holder of a Ph.D., a man who wore sandals to walk to work at the university.
With him, she’d gotten pregnant twice; he’d come with her to the abortions, apologetic and kind, unstinting in his after-care. Who had fathered Misty’s child? Catherine wondered. And how surprising it was to think that it was Misty, in the end, who’d become a mother, and not Catherine. Dr. Harding would never have predicted that.
Nor would Catherine, she admitted to herself, seeing again that red-faced hysterical infant, that stranger’s child squalling in the hotel room bathtub, Misty unmoved on the bed before the TV.
The photos on the walls of this tidy bungalow were of Misty, her little girl, and their dog. The daughter resembled Misty to such a degree that Catherine felt returned to high school. The basset hound look, the half-lifted lip. The heaviness and apparent torpor in her posture. Slow-moving and methodical. Unflappable. Her eyes straightforward and challenging. Catherine had liked that about Misty, too. This was why she had been drawn in. Misty wouldn’t lie, she wouldn’t pretend, she wouldn’t veer. She would not buckle to parents or teachers or men at bars. She was fearless, loyal, in love with intoxication, adventure, a challenge, prepared to always say yes. This girl in the photos might as well have been Misty, Catherine’s best friend.
CHAPTER 11
I DON’T LIKE to spend money,” said Randall on the first day of their trip to Houston.
“Me, either,” Cattie agreed. So far, so good. Ito’s car got twelve miles to the gallon; by her calculations, the remaining three hundred dollars she had saved, plus the two hundred Ito provided, would barely suffice. She had packed the trunk full of single-serving-size potato chip bags, Joanne’s contribution to the journey.
“I mean, I have money,” he went on, “but I don’t like to spend money.”
“Okay.”
“It’s the principle of the thing.”
What thing? Cattie wondered.
They left during a snowstorm, which probably accounted for why the gas station attendant failed to notice that they hadn’t paid for the tank of gas. That, and Randall’s military fatigues. Everyone seemed either enthusiastic—handshakes, a nod of gratitude—or embarrassed—averted gaze, muttered greeting—when he made his appearance. It was interesting to be his companion. People probably thought she was his girlfriend or wife, somebody who could be either happy to have him back, or sad to see him going.
The litter of puppies only made the whole situation more adorable. At McDonald’s, the teenager in the drive-thru provided six free Happy Meals. Randall wouldn’t let Cattie give the dogs any of them. “Beef and wheat and potatoes are unhealthy for dogs,” he told her. “That cow milk’s no good, either, but probably the bitch needs some calcium.” He kept disturbing the wholesome impression of their entourage by casually referring to the mother dog as “Bitch,” as if it were her name. The word never failed to make Cattie balk. That he used it without thinking made him seem a little criminal.
He preferred driving at night, so Cattie and the dogs slept then. At daybreak, he looked for large chain hotels that always had a breakfast bar, do-it-yourself waffle machine or pile of bagels, free coffee, free juice, free bananas. Powdered doughnuts, if they were lucky. They parked in the back of the building, then wandered around to the front, young soldier and his wife, hungry for their complimentary food, friendly with the day clerk. Later in the morning, Randall stopped at restaurants with booths, then stretched out on one side and took a nap while Cattie drank coffee on the other side. As far as she could tell, this was all that boarding school had taught her: to drink coffee. To know the difference between gourmet and diner types of it. To fill it with sugar and cream and sprinkle nutmeg on top if somebody offered.
When he roused himself, Randall washed in the restrooms, shaved, and applied deodorant. His fatigues were designed for inconvenient durations of wear. Moreover, a napping man in a uniform didn’t have to explain a thing. The coffee was always on the house. Someone would invariably offer to pick up Cattie’s tab, and she packed away leftovers for Randall—pancakes, hash browns, piles of bacon. A piece of pie for later. A cheese sandwich for the little lady.
“When did you first adopt this no-money policy?” Cattie asked him on the third day. She’d surreptitiously paid for the last tank of gas, not wanting to attract undue attention. He had a talent for finding the station that allowed you to fill up before paying, the aged mom-and-pop, on-its-last-legs place where the local farmers trafficked, a place where, if you lollygagged long enough at the counter, fingering souvenirs or car parts or nicotine products, they might forget you’d gotten gas at all an hour or so ago. The routine was to pull in and for Cattie to take the dogs two at a time to try to train them to pee outside while Randall used the pump. Then he’d move the vehicle to the parking slot by the front door. They’d ask for water for the dogs, a bathroom for Cattie, directions to a motel (where they’d never stop for the night), and the name of a friend of Randall’s who’d mentioned the town once in a tent or foxhole or other faraway frightening place. “
Jared Peabody,” he’d say. “Brandon Del Mar.” Soldiers he’d known. A boy who’d died or had his legs blown off or his mind messed up. The locals would shake their heads, speculate on what other nearby town he might have mistaken, what soldier boy of their own he might be meaning. It was a wonder to behold.
Her mother would have liked this about Randall, Cattie thought. Her mother enjoyed getting away with things. Riding with him, fooling people this way—this principled bit of amusement—made her imagine her mother watching them, approving or at least being entertained by it. Plus, Cattie was heading home. Surely her mother would have been in favor of that.
Even when they got caught—the unpaid bill at a station in Ohio—the fellow who chased them down on foot (catching up at the first stoplight) apologized when he reminded them they hadn’t paid. “I’m so sorry!” Cattie cried, from the passenger’s seat, a blush rising on its own to her cheeks. “I’m so sorry, I forgot!” and whipped out her wallet to hand the guy two twenties. Randall had sat stony-faced, staring out the windshield with his chin quivering and his right eye twitching, for all the world as if he planned to sock Cattie in the mouth the minute they drove away. The gas clerk was frightened, seeing that expression on the soldier’s face. He was probably exactly between their ages, Randall’s and Cattie’s; he probably had a girlfriend like her, neither beautiful nor ugly, merely average, invisible. Forgetful, careless, a little slow. And he himself was most likely always worried about what was the right thing to do. His glance at Cattie said that he believed he’d made a grave mistake and that he was very sorry.
“Can’t always win,” Randall said mildly when the light changed.
“You win a lot,” she said. “I’m shocked.”
“People are dumb.”
“Or maybe just nice.” Both, she thought. And also clever and scared and cruel and distracted. And also so involved in their own lives that they often didn’t quite pay attention to others’. Didn’t notice when others weren’t doing the expected thing. In part, it seemed that Randall was fascinated by discovering just that about them, as if he’d been sent out to test the routines they’d allowed themselves to fall into. To shake them out of those.
They traveled south, but it never got warmer. Instead, it got flatter, bleaker, more desolate. Plains: they were very plain. Nothing but road and fields, wind and snow, heaps on the horizon that never turned out to be substantial mountains but only mere clouds, harbinger of further cold. These were the same states she and her mother had driven through last summer, going the opposite direction, Max riding in the back seat in her kennel. They’d taken the interstate, stayed in luxury hotels, ordered room service, visited famous sites and judged most of them overrated. When no dogs were allowed, they enjoyed sneaking Max in, breaking the rules, getting away with it.
Like this money thing with Randall, there’d been no point to it except being naughty. Just for the sake of naughtiness.
Randall made sure the dogs were comfortable. He never forgot to give them water, check their eyes, probe their fleshy bellies, poke at their meager stools. It was he who’d known to provide worming meds back in Montpelier. When the newspaper lining their box in the back seat was wet or soiled, he changed it immediately. He stroked the mother dog, who now was in the habit of holding her face against his leg, leaning into him while he ran a hand over her flank. She could not get enough attention. Randall did not begrudge her need. “Good bitch,” he would murmur; sometimes he had to remind her to get back to her babies. His tenderness was what Cattie trusted, more than any other thing about him, his large fingers gently twiddling the dog’s ear, the vague tremor in his hand irrelevant, just then. It was what permitted her to fall asleep slack and unguarded against the window on the passenger side, or, later, when her neck grew tired from jerking constantly upright, to lie down with her head almost touching his thigh as he drove through the night.
When they landed in the ditch, it all fit very precisely into her dream. How rapidly the mind made a story. In her dream she was flying a plane, skimming over the Rockies; the crash was into a peak obscured by clouds.
“Blowout,” said the person in the pilot’s seat. Was it an order, Cattie wondered? Would blowing out help relieve the tightness in her throat? Before she could ask, he was gone. From the back came a chorus of high squealing. Cattie’s actual circumstance surged through her. She liberated herself from the seat belt—source of pain—and cracked her door to ignite the dome light.
The puppies’ box had dumped onto the rear floorboard, and they were underneath it, their mother in the adjacent foot space, nudging at the overturned cardboard. When Cattie lifted the box, she discovered one of the six puppies missing. “Goddamn,” she said. They kept dying on her. She was afraid to stick her hand under the seat.
The trunk suddenly shook. Randall appeared at her door. “You okay?”
“A puppy is missing.”
He reached through her legs, his face suddenly there at her knees, looking up at her. “Here,” he said, pulling the poor thing out. “Not dead,” he added, so that Cattie would open her eyes. “Also, no spare tire. It’s a witch’s tit out here, I’ll tell you what.” He swung shut Cattie’s door, leaving her in a brief span of dark, then came around to climb back behind the wheel. Light, then dark, then the sound of his palms bouncing on the dash. Behind Cattie, she could feel the dogs resettling themselves, pushing against the seat, mewling as their mother adjusted for this new nest. “Let me think,” Randall said, although she’d already known better than to ask what now. She was grateful to be unharmed, the image of the mountain peak still flashing before her eyes. She’d been convinced the end was upon her, in her dream. Despite never having been in Colorado, never approaching a mountaintop in a plane, she was certain she’d experienced an authentic scenario.
Dreams were useful, that way. You could figure out how you felt, having something right in your face. Since her mother’s death, Cattie had broached the topic of her own more than once, guessing that she was indifferent to the prospect. But the plane crash notified her otherwise. She’d been terrified and sorry to think it was the end; apparently she did not want to die.
“What you want to bet those other three tires is just as dry and pitiful as the one that went?” Randall said. This was a rhetorical question, so Cattie didn’t respond. He went on with other nonanswerable queries, the heels of his hands now bouncing on the steering wheel. Cattie wanted to ask where they were and what time it was, but held back, arguing to herself that it couldn’t much matter, really. There had been not one other car on this road since she’d tuned in to their situation, not a single other set of headlights. What did that mean? The wind rocked the vehicle every few minutes. Snow blew up from the ground, although the sky was clear.
“When my mother’s car wouldn’t start, she called AA and joined over the phone. They came and towed her right then.”
“Three A’s,” said Randall. “And you best have a credit card, for that.”
Her mother was also in that other club of A’s, the double one. She’d quit drinking when she realized she was pregnant with Cattie. “You saved my ass,” she’d told her cheerfully, heading off to a meeting every now and then.
And then there was that disturbing drunk phone message in the middle of the night last fall.
Cattie flipped open her cell to listen to her mother’s other voice, the saved sober message from summer. The screen claimed to be seeking service; it must have been doing that for a while, because the battery was nearly depleted, the device hot in her hand. Poor thing, she thought, switching off the power. “We can just buy new tires,” she told Randall. “How much do tires cost?” When he didn’t respond, Cattie began to feel frightened of him. She couldn’t see his expression, and maybe he’d had just about enough of her nonsense, silly girl stating the obvious beside him in a car in a ditch. Where, he was probably longing to shout at her, did she think they were going to find a tire store in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere on a road wit
h no other traffic? Idiot, he was probably thinking. Fucking dumb-shit girl.
Wait a minute, Cattie thought. Why weren’t there any cars on this road? “Are we lost?” she asked aloud, one fear overriding another.
“Maybe,” he said.
“Why?”
“I like back roads,” he said. “I like the scenic route.”
“But …” She didn’t continue. They both knew she shouldn’t nitpick about “scenic” things that could not be seen in the dark.
People assumed Randall had been to war, and he let them assume it; vet was the best person he’d ever been, the one that required the fewest explanations. But Ito’s vehicle worried him—he didn’t trust that grinning fag’s eager urgency to send him and Cattie off in it, as if there were a trick involved. He’d been working on paranoia with his psychologist, back at camp, but maybe they’d not made particular progress. Moreover, the car’s paperwork seemed quite sketchy, and there were no dated stickers on New Hampshire plates; he’d spread mud over the first digits back there. He had wisely chosen small roads, blue highways, and locally owned gas stations. There’d been no cameras at most of the places where they’d eaten. But now the tires were going to explode, one after the other, and they were on a county road somewhere in Missouri. It was extremely cold, and only three thirty a.m., so there were hours more of cold before them. He genuinely appreciated Cattie’s seeming calm. She was not going to lose her shit, which most other girls would have done. Crying: how he hated it.
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