Tonight, too, she preferred the softer light. Still wrapped in the towel, she sat at her little dressing table and lit the candle. She ran a comb a few strokes through her hair—it never needed more—and she touched a drop of perfume into the hollow of each shoulder. Then she leaned forward on her elbows and looked thoughtfully into the mirror.
Why was this night different? Usually, what she saw was her anger, her increasing sharpness. Usually, when she sat before her mirror, she saw the lines beginning, the marks of fatigue and chronic resentment. She would frown at her hair, cut roughly and only when she remembered, always in her eyes, always needing a trim. She would hold her hands out before her and scowl at her ragged fingernails—she couldn’t stop biting them! And how much longer would her skin stay good, always working out in the sun and the sand of the desert?
So why was this night different? Why, tonight, did her reflected self please her? Why, tonight, did she lift her head, holding it a little sideways, showing herself that she had inherited the good bones of her Scandinavian ancestors, the fine jaw and high forehead and the graceful hairline? Why, tonight, did she think she was beautiful?
She blew out the candle, leaving only the silvery shadow of herself reflected in the mirror. She saw her shoulders, narrow and delicately formed despite her strength, exposed above the towel, remembered Cal’s eyes, holding her immobile, and she wondered why she’d been so afraid, so tense.
—I’m not going to hurt you—
She closed her eyes.
Stop this, Jamie!
She stood up and turned away from her reflection. She dropped the towel onto the chair and slipped a fresh nightgown on over her naked body, letting its lacy straps settle into place on her shoulders. She lifted the pale blue blanket and the flowered sheet and as though she were fleeing to a hiding place, she slipped quickly under them, eager to sleep and avoid her thoughts.
But they came anyway.
First, a memory of his body, as though her hands were moving over him, running down his arms, his back, up under his shirt and around to his chest. He was probably not tanned—cowboys never took off their shirts when they worked. Then she thought of his hands; they were the kind of hands she liked, strong fingers, with a good reach to them and fine black hairs along the back, hard-working hands, but clean—she’d noticed that. And his face—a good face, thoughtful—she could still see the black eyes, the steady gaze . . .
But then the other thoughts, the demon thoughts, the spoilers, hurried in quickly to fill her mind.
Why am I in such a hurry to trust him? He didn’t tell me a thing about himself, practically. Drifted into town from Nevada. Hired on to the old Winder place. Drifted in, he’ll drift out again. They all do.
He could have a wife up in Idaho or in Wyoming. Or both, for all I know. With a bunch of kids somewhere. He could be a divorced man, paying alimony to a couple of wives. And child support for a mob of kids. For all I know.
He could be a hatchet murderer. Or a bank robber. Honestly, Jamie, you told him practically your whole life story and you didn’t find out a thing about him.
He hurt himself, somehow. He favored the one leg, remember? And he rubbed his knee like it was really aching. But you never asked him, did you? No, you were too busy pouring out your guts. And he never told you much of anything, did he?
Cal Cameron. Nice name.
Wonder how he hurt himself.
Cal. Calvin. Nice old western name. The Callisters, Gordon and LaRaine, named their third boy Calvin. Always call him C.C.
Cal Cameron. Seems like I heard that name before. Was it something good? Something bad?
But Jamie was asleep before she could remember.
Chapter Six
Saturday morning started with a fast cup of coffee and a telephone call to the service station.
” It’s the fuel line, Charlie. Just totally rotted out on me, just like you said it would. It’s down at the Canyon Rim, in the parking lot there.”
“Jeez, Jamie, my guys are real busy this morning.” Charlie Bitts’s voice, high-pitched and harassed as always, crackled through the telephone. Behind him she could hear the flat, mechanical voice of his radio, putting out the morning weather report and the end-of-the-week futures quotes on grains and precious metals. In the background were the usual body shop sounds of banging tools and the spitting noise of the air compressor. She could almost smell the sharp tar of grease and oil and diesel fuels rising up from the blackened concrete floor.
“Charlie, you’ve got to help me out. I’ve got to have the car by eleven-thirty this morning, quarter to twelve at the latest.”
“But jeez, honey, it’s Saturday.”
“I know, Charlie, and I wouldn’t ask, but it’s my day to be with my kid.”
There was a silence on the other end, and Jamie knew old Charlie was doing his best.
“Well, tell you what I can do,” he said at last. Then another longish pause. She could picture him pulling the kerchief out of his back pocket and rubbing it over his balding head and down his long, lean, stubbly face. “I’ll pull Jimmy off the job he’s doing now and send him down with the tow truck. Meantime, I’ll take a look, see if I got me a kit for that old Honda of yours somewheres here on the shelf. We get a little cleared-away space here this morning, I might could get that line replaced for you in an hour, hour and a half.”
Before she could even say thank you, he added, “If we get it together in time, I’ll send someone over to pick you up. Are you to home now?”
“I am. And Charlie?”
“Yep?”
“I surely do appreciate this.”
“Well, don’t thank me yet. Let’s see first can we get her working in time. I better get hustling right now.”
“You bet, Charlie. And Charlie, say hello to Darlene for me, okay?”
“You betcha. I’ll just be sure and do that.” And he hung up.
She poured a second cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table to contemplate the day that lay ahead of her.
If all else failed, she told herself, she could take the old pickup out back, but it wasn’t an idea she liked. First of all, her father would probably insist that he was going to need it today. And second, everyone in town knew that old wreck was Lee Sundstrom’s vehicle, and she didn’t want Mandy to be seen riding around in it. The more distance she could keep between her father and her daughter, the better for Mandy.
She wondered sometimes if Lee himself understood that. Maybe that was why he never talked about his granddaughter, never asked about her, never seemed even to want to see her.
But you’d think a man would want to know his granddaughter, and would want to see her. Would want to love her.
But there’s only one thing that man wants.
Someday, Jamie figured, Lee’s drinking was going to be a problem for Mandy—maybe it already was. In fact, the chances were good Edna Nixon was making sure that Mandy knew all about her rotten granddaddy. That sort of “doing-good” damage came as natural to Edna Nixon as spit to a hound dog. All the more reason to get Mandy away from her.
As though in an accompaniment to her thoughts, Lee was waking up noisily. She heard him in the front room, the couch was creaking as he dragged himself upright, head hanging, and coughing, coughing. She heard him rummaging for a cigarette, heard the striking of a match, and then he was stumbling, shuffling, toward the stairs. He stopped when he saw her sitting in the kitchen and took a step or two to lean against the door frame, looking at her dizzily, his sandy hair hanging thin over his eyes, the cigarette dangling from his mouth, smoke drifting upward over his face.
“What time did you get in?”
“Not late.”
He made a sound, a bad-tempered grunt, turned, and went heavily up the stairs.
She called up the stairs to his retreating footsteps. “I may need the truck today.”
“No way. Got to see a man later—” The door slammed hard behind him.
That sonofabitch! Didn’t eve
n ask why. Wouldn’t know or care, of course, today’s my day to see Mandy.
She sat there silently for a couple of minutes. Feeling sad.
But jeez, it’s like a poison in the system, hating your own father.
Too much hating, Jamie. Hating your father, hating your kid’s father, hating the town fathers. Ah, shit!
There must be decent men, men who feel good about their kids, men who are careful of their wives, their marriages, careful of their families.
Well, sure there are. Gordie Callister is one of the good ones. And Charlie Bitts, he was another. But jeez, they’re so rare and you have to be so careful.
Like last night.
What about last night?
How would Cal Cameron be with a wife, with a kid? How much could you tell from the way a man holds your hand?
Not a good way to be thinking, Jamie. So he held your hand. And he let you talk your heart out, which you did, like a jerk. And what does all that mean? Could be you’ll never hear from him again.
Her phone rang.
And Jamie jumped, really startled, and then laughed at her own response, as though she’d think for a minute there was some magical force out there in the world that would put Cal Cameron on the phone just as she was thinking about him.
She pulled out her phone, but it was only Charlie Bitts to let her know he had in fact come through for her and Jimmy would be by with the old Honda no later than eleven-thirty.
* * *
She could see the little blonde head in the window, bobbing up and down, even as she drove toward the house on Fourth East.
Inside, Mandy had been squirming impatiently for the last twenty minutes, kneeling on the sofa that stood in front of the parlor window, peering over its back. The moment she saw Jamie’s car pull up to the house, she slid off the sofa and ran to the front door, her red tennis shoes slapping on the polished wood floor.
“Mommy’s here! Mommy’s here!”
Jamie was just getting out of the car when the screen door banged open and Mandy came running down the front steps and across the yard.
“Hey there, sweetie!”
Jamie held out her arms and knelt in the edged grass as Mandy’s greeting almost knocked her over. The child locked her arms around her mother’s neck, her white-blond head snuggled up against Jamie’s, the corn silk of their hair mingling and shining in the noontime sun. “Let’s go let Grandma know we’re leaving now,” Jamie said, standing up and taking Mandy’s hand.
They went up the front steps and Jamie waited on the porch while Mandy ran to tell Edna that Jamie had arrived. Even Mandy knew Edna wouldn’t willingly have Jamie in her home.
Edna came to the door, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Her distaste for Jamie marched before her, a gray rigidity that pinched her face and stiffened her back.
“Do you think maybe this time when you bring her back you could see to it she’s not filthy dirty.” Sniping at Jamie was the only way she knew to talk to her. “Last time I had to work for hours trying to get the stains out of her shirt. Finally had to just throw it out and buy her a new one.”
Jamie rarely responded to Edna’s jabs. Certainly not in front of Mandy. She let her eye meet Edna’s hostile gaze only for a moment and then she looked past her former mother-in-law into the dark parlor where Ervil could be seen sitting in his usual straight-backed arm chair, pretending to read the newspaper. A steep shaft of mote-filled sunlight, the only light in the shadowed room, cast its musty beams into the corner behind Ervil and lit up a large and ancient rubber plant that had stood there for as long as anyone could remember. Edna’s needlepoint pillows were all over the place and on the wall there was a cross-stitched sampler.
The Lord’s Blessing Dwells
Where the Righteous Reside
It was a tidy, hateful house, full of its own dry rectitude and there wasn’t a day that Jamie didn’t suffer with the pain of having Mandy call this dark place home.
She took Mandy’s hand in hers and together they turned to leave the porch. “Let’s go, sweetie.”
Mandy was already tugging her down the steps with Edna’s voice crackling after them.
“And don’t bring her back late! I’ll have dinner on the table at six! You hear?”
Jamie let that slip past her and, as they crossed the yard, Mandy whispered to her, “I wasn’t filthy dirty!”
“I know that, honey.” Jamie leaned down to kiss Mandy’s cheek. “I know you weren’t filthy dirty.” It was bad enough how much she and that wicked old witch hated each other. At least she could try to keep Mandy out of their war. “Grandma just really works very hard keeping everything super clean, so I guess even a tiny little bit of ketchup looks like a whole bottle to her.”
She opened the rear door and got Mandy buckled into the car seat. Then she went around to the front and got behind the wheel. From the back seat, Mandy said, “I didn’t mean to get dirty. Maybe if we got me a new shirt, Grandma would be glad.”
Jamie started the car. “Tell you what,” she said. “What we really need to do first of all is get us a big hamburger and a chocolate shake. How about that? And then we can go for a ride all the way to the Big Buy over in Butcher’s Fork and we can get you a new shirt.”
Then the old biddy can’t complain about having to buy a shirt for her granddaughter!
“And if I promise I’ll be real, real careful,” Mandy said, “and I don’t spill a single drop of ketchup, cross my heart, can I get some fries, too?”
“Oh, honey” Jamie slapped her hand impatiently on the steering wheel, her anger at Edna Nixon almost too great to restrain, “You can have all the fries you can eat, and you don’t have to worry about the ketchup!”
* * *
At the plastic-topped table inside the IceeFreez, Mandy dragged the last fry through the puddle of ketchup on her paper plate, swirled it around a couple of times, and then held the soggy thing over her head, turning her face up to let it drop into her mouth. Jamie was glad Mandy had already forgotten about trying to stay spotless.
Such stupid nonsense. You can’t expect a little kid to be clean all the time. Isn’t that why God made washing machines?
And especially on her one day out of every fourteen that she got to spend with her mother, not even the whole day, she ought to be able to be just a kid!
Is it any different when she gets to see Ray? He can get to see her any time he wants and he wouldn’t even notice if the child rolled around all day in a corral. What does Edna say then?
Jamie sipped at the chocolate shake once and then slid it across the table to Mandy, who took a long pull on the straw, almost draining the big paper cup.
And just how much time was she spending with Ray? And what did they do together?
“Sweetie, have you been over to Daddy’s place lately. Do you get to see Daddy very much? Does he—do he and Tina—take you out?”
The cup was empty but Mandy kept sucking, sweeping the straw around and around the narrow base. She kept her eyes lowered, as though the inside of her cup had suddenly become very interesting. When she didn’t answer the question, Jamie, concerned now, spoke as gently as she could.
“What’s the matter, honey. Is there something you don’t want to tell me?”
Mandy’s fine little brow puckered up before she spoke, and she kept staring into the cup. “Mommy,” she said finally. “I feel funny at Daddy’s house.”
“Funny?” Jamie asked. “At the trailer?”
“They act funny when I’m there.”
What’s going on? If that bastard is doing anything to hurt her . . .
“Who acts funny? Daddy? Or Tina? It’s all right to tell me sweetie. I know you didn’t do anything wrong.”
Mandy’s little face looked so serious and she was keeping her eyes away from Jamie. “Well, once when Grandma was real sick and Grandpa had to drive her all the way to Salt Lake City to go the doctor—”
Jamie hadn’t known about that. But even if Edna was seriously ill, no o
ne would have bothered to tell Jamie about it.
“I didn’t know Grandma was sick. When was it? Was it after I saw you last time?”
“Yes. Grandpa had to take the day off from work to go with her. So I had to stay with Daddy and Tina and I had to sleep overnight.”
Suddenly she got down from her chair and came around the table to climb into Jamie’s lap. She started to play nervously with the buttons on Jamie’s shirt.
“They have a lot of parties, Mommy, and the people act funny. They sort of laugh a lot, and they cry too, and they run out of the trailer like they don’t know where they are. And there was this one man, he wanted me to do something. I didn’t know what he wanted. He said to me, ‘Here, kid, sniff some of this stuff. It’s real good stuff.’ And Daddy was laughing and he said, ‘Hey lay off her, she’s only a kid.’ And Mommy, I was scared. And then Daddy and Tina went away and I didn’t see them anymore.”
Jamie had to hold her tongue against the rage that blazed through her. Her arms went around Mandy who snuggled closer and put her thumb in her mouth, something Jamie hadn’t seen her do for a long time.
“And Mommy,” Jamie almost couldn’t hear her now, “I got under the bed and slept there all night and I wanted so bad for you to come and get me. And the next day, there was only Daddy and Tina, and they were sleeping on the sofa, and they didn’t even know I’d been under the bed all night.” A couple of tears rolled down Mandy’s round cheeks and her tiny chin was all dimpled and quivering. Jamie took a paper napkin from the tray and wiped the child’s face.
“Mandy, honey, you were really good to tell me. Don’t be afraid at all, sweetie. You didn’t do anything wrong. Not a single thing. You were a good girl. You are a good girl.” She pressed the napkin around the tiny nose. “Now, blow.” The child did, and Jamie hugged her. “There. That’s my good girl.”
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