Backseat Saints Part 11

Car picked up on the second ring. He sounded sleepy, like I'd woken him up. He coughed, then made a throwaway "Heh," sound, so short that it was almost swallowed, and the "lo" stretched itself out long, tilting up into a question at the end. It was pure Alabama, and hearing that accent washed off whatever coat of sticky sugar Mrs. Fancy had put on me. I was Rose Mae Lolley, the prettiest d.a.m.n girl from Fruiton High. Boys like Car Kaylor had always been as malleable as Play-Doh in my hands.

"Car! I swan, I'd know your voice anyplace," I said, and flipped the lid off Mrs. Fancy's s...o...b..x with two fingers.

There was a pause, and then Car said, "Holy smoked h.e.l.l. This can't be Rose-Pop Lolley?"

"Right first time," I said. It gave me a little s.h.i.+ver. No one but Jim had ever called me Rose-Pop. "I was lying around thinking about old home folks, and I thought I'd see if I could find you."

Talking to Car felt like a good kind of creaky; marriage to a man as jealous as Thom had held my flirty girl muscles still for too long. Now I was stretching them, remembering the moves.

The folded birth certificate was right on top, and I lifted it out and set it aside. I looked down into the box. A rattle. A square of pink cotton, maybe cut off a swaddling blanket? A soft rabbit with a bell inside him.

I gave the contents a stir while Car yapped about his job laying floor for Home Depot, but it didn't unearth the Social Security card. Car was telling me about his job's great benefits package, but I nudged him off the now, asking about his old high school girlfriend. I was casting about for a crafty way to bring up Jim, but I didn't have to. Our star quarterback's vanishment was the single largest event that happened in my cla.s.s's four-year run. Car brought it up himself.

I poked around in the box, hunting that card, and made the kind of interested, admiring noises that encourage men to talk more. Car had only the dimmest recollection of running into Jim on his last night in Fruiton, though he confirmed Jim had been at Missy Carver's party. "Truth told, I was wasted, Rose Mae," he told me. "I think Jim was hanging with Rob Shay and Jenny."

"I don't remember Jenny," I said. I found I'd taken my hand out of the box so I could poodle one finger around in my hair, just as if he could see me. I dropped my hand and moved the belled rabbit out of the way. Underneath him I found a teeny book with a picture of a pink rattle on the front. I knew if I opened it, I would see someone's best penmans.h.i.+p listing Ivy's date of birth, weight, and inches. Maybe a page to record her first smile and another for the first time she rolled over. After that, the pages would be blank.

"Sure you do, pig-faced blonde. Pig-faced in the cute way," Car said. "Jim was wasted, too, at that party. And he didn't stop drinking there. I remember they found beer cans busted open all over his wrecked Jeep. You never did hear from him?"

"No," I said. Jim had last been seen on the side of the highway, pointing his thumb away from me.

"If you was my girl, I would have called you at least before I took off," Car said. "Oh, wait. Weren't y'all broke up?"

That irked me instantly, for no rational reason. I moved the baby memory book and flung it, harder than I needed to, out of the way. I still didn't see the soft, unlaminated card I'd clocked before, and this was irking me as well. "Just for a day or two. We'd have gotten back together," I said, trying not to let my sudden wash of red temper color my voice.

"Still, that's probably why he didn't call you, Rose Mae. Y'all was broke up," Car said. He sounded now like he was explaining a very simple thing to someone who was maybe not too bright. All at once, I wanted to reach through the phone and slap him sideways. Back in high school, he'd had these meaty, round cheeks that were already yearning downwards, hoping to become jowls. I could imagine exactly what my palm would sound like, smacking hard against one.

"We always broke up when he was drinking," I said, quiet, trying not to get sharp.

He laughed. "Shoot, you musta ditched his a.s.s three, four times a year. Rob Shay had a nickname for you, did you know that? He called you 'Delicious. .h.i.tler,' because you were hot, but you gave Jim righteous h.e.l.l if he so much as licked the dew off a beer can."

"That a.s.s," I said with forced cheer. I'd always liked Rob Shay, but the red wave of angry I was trying to squelch had put a shake in my voice even so. I couldn't help but add, "We always came back to each other, Car. Us breaking up didn't mean a thing."

"Well, it meant he didn't feel like he had to call you afore he went off," Car said. He still sounded doggedly overreasonable, pus.h.i.+ng me past my desire to slap and deep into throttling territory. His tone changed to coddlesome, and he added, "What about you? You still single? You still fine? You was so fine, Rose Mae."

"Naw. I turned gay and got super fat," I said. "You take care, Car." I hung up. I was breathing hard, like I'd taken a sprint across loose sand.

I picked up the folded birth certificate and felt the slickness of the paper between my thumb and index finger. Official paper. Legal. A paper that meant something in the world outside my closed front door, if I could find the card that went with it.

All at once I realized how shortsighted I had been: If I took these things, I wouldn't need to find Jim Beverly at all. I was dumbstruck by the simplicity. With a new name, with a new ident.i.ty that clipped four years off my age, with real ID, I could truly become a different person, a person Thom Grandee would never find.

"Ivy Wheeler," I said. I didn't know who that was, but I'd bet she had a razor-sharp bob and never wore ballet flats. The real Ivy and I already had at least a few things in common. She'd been a southern girl with a s.h.i.+thead for a father, just like me. I picked up the plushy rabbit with my free hand, wobbling him back and forth to make his tummy bell jingle. I could see Ivy, living somewhere green and unfamiliar with a few hills and a cool breeze. Fig trees and lemon groves.

Dammit, it was California. Again. I gave the rabbit an angrier shake, but all he had in him was sweet, light bells, m.u.f.fled in his stuffing. Ivy'd also had a mother who couldn't stand to leave. Even after Ivy died, her mother couldn't bear to leave the man Ivy had come from, couldn't leave the rooms where Ivy had breathed and cooed and slept.

"Wonder what that's that's like," I asked the rabbit. He had an earnest, cream-colored face; this was not a rabbit who got sarcasm. I tossed him back on the bed and kept digging, looking for that Social Security card. Screw California. If I was Ivy, I could go anywhere. Thom could search for his Ro, angry and ready to end her, but I would have ended her already. He could live out his life in Texas, free of me, with his big red heart still thundering away inside him. like," I asked the rabbit. He had an earnest, cream-colored face; this was not a rabbit who got sarcasm. I tossed him back on the bed and kept digging, looking for that Social Security card. Screw California. If I was Ivy, I could go anywhere. Thom could search for his Ro, angry and ready to end her, but I would have ended her already. He could live out his life in Texas, free of me, with his big red heart still thundering away inside him.

Ro Grandee wanted this last part so badly: the simple fact of Thom alive and in the world. As soon as I recognized this longing, this deep yearn of hers to leave Thom breathing, I understood the reason.

Ro Grandee wanted something to go back to.

I pulled my hands out of the box as if it had suddenly gone heated. How long could I stand to be out on my own? After Jim, heading west from Alabama all the way to Texas, I'd always found myself a man. Patently bad ones, happy to give me a ride off the edge of the world since they were heading that way anyway. I'd traded them out the same way I traded out cities, never learning how to trade up. Thom was the best of the lot, the only man since Jim that I had loved.

I had a few hundred bucks and an ancient revolver to my name. I'd be broke and dead lonely in a strange place, trying to scratch a shallow, safe hole in the chalky dirt. I was getting close to thirty years old, and that would still be true, no matter what Ivy's ID would say.

How long until a dark night came when I longed for the devil I knew so badly that I let Ro Grandee creep up over me and call him? She would tell him where I was. She would say, "Thom. Come and get me," and let him decide what that meant. The gypsy had told me there was no simple way out of this marriage, that it would come down to him or me.

I couldn't find the d.a.m.n card anyway. I tossed everything back in the box. Stealing from Mrs. Fancy, especially after how she'd treated me today, felt flat wrong. Tracking Jim, that was the main thing. I put the lid on and picked up the box to put it away, but Phil had slithered off the bed without me noticing. As I stepped toward the closet, he threaded himself between my legs, pitching me forward. The lid flew right back off and everything inside the box went airborne, arcing across the room.

The booties separated and dropped, and the birth certificate sailed sideways like a paper airplane that had been badly folded and thrown all wrong. The silver cup pinged off a baby spoon and rolled until the wall stopped it. The rattle and the belled bunny plopped down side by side in a chiming patter. Everything hit the floor in a second, two at most. Except one thing. Ivy's Social Security card must have gotten stuck inside the baby book, hiding, but now it fluttered out as the book dropped. It caught the air exactly right and fell slowly, slicing back and forth, riding the air like a moth wing.

As it fell, I had time to think the words coin toss. coin toss.

Then it landed. I dropped to my knees, already gathering objects, but I was looking toward that card. It landed writing-side up. My hands stopped their busy tidying. The day I'd seen my mother in the airport, she'd been tensed to bolt from the moment our gazes met. She was grabbing her things to run when she fumbled her tarot deck. The cards slid and scattered, and almost all of them fell facedown. Every card except one fell facedown.

That one card had told her that she had to stay. She'd refused to tell me which card had shown itself and paused her, but its message had changed her course and then mine. Now Ivy's Social Security card had fallen faceup, as if it too had something to say.

I knee-walked to the card and looked at it, really looked at it, for the first time. When I had opened the birth certificate before, I'd skimmed the name Ivy Ivy, taken in the birth date, but then my gaze had gone right to the words Janine Fancy Wheeler Janine Fancy Wheeler and stayed there. I hadn't read it carefully. But here the message was, plain and obvious, no mysterious swords or burning towers. The card's top and bottom were edged in red-and-blue scrolling. Sandwiched between the curlicues were nine numbers, dark against the white card, and three words in plain black type: Ivy Rose Wheeler. and stayed there. I hadn't read it carefully. But here the message was, plain and obvious, no mysterious swords or burning towers. The card's top and bottom were edged in red-and-blue scrolling. Sandwiched between the curlicues were nine numbers, dark against the white card, and three words in plain black type: Ivy Rose Wheeler.

Janine had named her baby Ivy Rose.

I left the card where it was and reached instead for the Ziploc bag. I opened it and carefully lifted out the tuft of baby hair. It was clipped into a pink bow barrette with tiny teeth, made to hold fine strands. It was dark hair, but a lot of babies are born with a head full of dead black hair. It lightens as it meets the sun, or it falls out altogether and brown or blond or red stuff grows in under.

This tuft didn't look like that. It was a true dark brown, as rich and glossy as mink. I tilted my head forward so the wings of my bob closed around my face, and I held Ivy's little tuft up against my own hair. Ivy's all but disappeared, so close were they in color.

Half an hour ago, Mrs. Fancy had reached to tuck my hair behind my ear, her fingers lingering in the strands as she told me all the good things she wanted for me.

"Oh, s.h.i.+t," I said to the room.

I packed up the rest of Ivy's baby things with the reverence they deserved, putting the hair back and getting all the air out of the Ziploc bag, checking the silver cup for dings. I saved out the Social Security card and the birth certificate, and then I put the box away.

I put Ivy's papers in my purse. I would go to the DMV tomorrow and get Ivy a driver's license. I'd need to find a family of local Wheelers and lift some of their junk mail for proof of address. That would absolutely be a felony, but it would be my first, because taking these from Mrs. Fancy wasn't stealing. She'd said, "Take anything that suits you," and Ivy Rose could suit me to a tee.

But only if I first made d.a.m.n sure Ro Grandee had nothing to come back to.

I would use the ID to travel invisibly, to find Jim, and I'd be Rose Mae long enough to get him to burn my bridges for me. With Thom gone and Jim beside me, I'd be ready to rebuild myself into someone nicer. With nothing to go back to, Jim and I would be entirely free.

CHAPTER 9.

I FOUND HIM. FOUND HIM.

It took ten long days. Every night, I played my own version of Scheherazade for Thom, 1,001 pieces of tail, taking the tension out of his broad shoulders when he came home from Grand Guns. It eased me, too, this endless, brutal s.e.x that left us both as spent and wasted as a beating, but only an eighth as sore. He did hit me once, but only a glancing backhand. Another day, after a run-in with his daddy, he shoved me into the wall. These were squalls, though, over before they truly started.

He didn't get angry enough to flip my mother's final card and end me, and I didn't get angry enough to pour Drano into his corn chowder and go stomping off, vindicated, to prison. When the sun went down, we took the day's frustrations to our mattress and hurt each other just enough. The nights bought me the days, and every day, I stole time on Mrs. Fancy's phone, hunting for Jim Beverly.

By sundown on the tenth day, I knew exactly where he was.

"You're different," Thom told me that night, in the dark. We lay side by side on our bed with four inches of cool air in between us. I could feel sweat, mine and his, drying on my skin. Gretel, with her usual impeccable timing, had hopped on the bed and flopped down between my calves two minutes after I'd come like a screaming eagle and thrown myself backwards off him. Her snores and the warmth of her had soothed me close to sleep, but when I heard how flat his voice had gone, my eyes popped open wide and my nerve endings tingled.

"It's a haircut, Thom," I said. "It's a couple of new tops."

"I mean you're different here," Thom said. His big hand thumped the slice of bed between us for emphasis.

"I don't know what you mean," I said. It sounded like a lie even to me.

"Every night, Ro. That's a lot, even for us."

"Are you complaining?" I said, boosting myself up on my elbows, incredulous.

He made a short, hard, barking noise. It was a scoff or a laugh, hard to tell in the dark room. "No. But that thing, with your back to me..."

I lay back down and asked, "Reverse Cowgirl?"

"Yeah, that," he said at the same time I said, "Giddy-up," trying for levity.

He went on as if I hadn't spoken. "You never used to like that. And you do that thing with your teeth now, and that scissoring thing. That's all new."

I could see where he was going. When a wife brings home new bedroom tricks, a certain kind of husband starts to wonder where she learned them. I turned on my side and looked at him. My eyes had adjusted, soaking in the moonlight coming through the sheers. I could see his profile etched against the windows, but it was too dark for me to get a good read of his expression. I didn't need to see to recognize the thought behind the words. Who is he. Who is he.

It had always been his most dangerous question. For him to ask it, even obliquely, was a harbinger. It was a more dangerous question now, because the answer was no longer Ro's endless, true a.s.surance of fidelity. Now the answer was, He is Jim Beverly, and in four days, when you head to Houston with your daddy for that gun show, I am going to Chicago to righteously screw him until he remembers his promises. I am going to reclaim him. He is Jim Beverly, and in four days, when you head to Houston with your daddy for that gun show, I am going to Chicago to righteously screw him until he remembers his promises. I am going to reclaim him.

Reclaim was the right word, because Jim was living in sin with a girl from Fruiton High. Arlene Fleet was her name, and she hadn't even made my call list, though I remembered that scrawny, dark-eyed weasel quite clearly. Jim had never dated her officially, but rumor had it she'd put out for every member of the football team and half the county besides. She'd stuck in my brain because she was the only person at Fruiton High to ever suspect me of stealing.

She saw me nab a chocolate cookie from her pretty cousin Clarice. Clarice was a leggy blonde with honey-colored skin, and Jim Beverly had had dated her. I'd thought Clarice's smile was both too dim and friendly and too wide and white, so that she looked to me like the love child of a cannibal and a Labrador retriever. Still, a lot of boys went for her, including mine. dated her. I'd thought Clarice's smile was both too dim and friendly and too wide and white, so that she looked to me like the love child of a cannibal and a Labrador retriever. Still, a lot of boys went for her, including mine.

Stealing her cookie was a victimless crime, as I'd never once seen Clarice Lukey eat dessert. I planned to slip the treat into the sad brown paper sack of this kid whose crunchy mama packed his lunch every day: spelt bread with nut b.u.t.ter and homemade yogurt that smelled like baby urp.

I drifted by with my best underwater walk and palmed the cookie. When I looked up, Arlene Fleet's big eyes were aimed my way across the table, glossy black and blank as an animal's. After that, she seemed to be creeping around the edges of every room I was in, staring at me with that same fever-bright, accusing stare. Her name did not appear even once in my notepad, as I could see no possible connection between a scrub like Arlene Fleet and my quarterback boyfriend, but she had him now. Not for long. If I could soothe and feed and s.e.x Thom through the next four days, he'd be off to Houston. I'd go to Chicago and take Jim back from her.

"Honey," I said to Thom. "Sugar. Of course it's different now. You know I'm off the pill."

He turned on his side toward me, and now the moonlight was entirely behind him, making his hair into a faint gold halo. I could see nothing of his face, and my own was pointed directly into that scant light. My eyes must have glittered at him in the dark, hard and s.h.i.+ny as a feral cat's, too reflective for him to read them.

"I thought about that. It seems like that would make a girl... mus.h.i.+er," he said.

I laughed out loud, a harsher sound than I intended, and said, "Like they make babies on TV? Slow? With the covers up? You want to get all missionary, Thom? If you like, I can stare up at you all weepy and think about Pampers while you pump away. That sound fun?"

"No, thank you," he said. "Don't be like that. I thought you'd want baby making to be more romantic."

"I don't feel romantic," I said. "I feel more like, I don't know. Primal."

"That's pretty clear, Cowgirl," he said, and I could tell by his voice that a little smile had snuck up on his face under cover of this darkness.

"That's Reverse Cowgirl to you, bub," I said, making my voice sound smiley back. "Mrs. Reverse Cowgirl."

"So we're having National Geographic National Geographic s.e.x," he said. "Primal." s.e.x," he said. "Primal."

"You bet," I said, and that was true, because nothing was more primal than survival. Reproduction was absolutely not going to happen. Ivy Wheeler, proud new licensed driver in the great state of Texas, had driven her sweet a.s.s directly to Planned Parenthood. I'd committed some ident.i.ty fraud to get a supply of pills that would not show up on Thom Grandee's insurance. Three wheels' worth were hidden under the bathroom sink in my tampon box, uneasy roommates with a votive candle and the rosary beads I prayed through as a penance every time I took one. To Thom I said, "We are leopards making more leopards. We are sharks making more sharks."

"If you want to do it like leopard sharks, I'm your boy," Thom said, his tone light, but another thirty seconds pa.s.sed before he lay back down.

Who is he had been pushed back, but it had not gone away. Thom was searching for his Ro, wanting her sugar-talk that could change on a dime to a sa.s.s-mouth, wanting her penchant for yielding to him and enraging him by turns. I would not be her for him, not for five minutes. I couldn't afford to be her for thirty seconds, but Thom's favorite question had surfaced, and that meant I was running low on time. had been pushed back, but it had not gone away. Thom was searching for his Ro, wanting her sugar-talk that could change on a dime to a sa.s.s-mouth, wanting her penchant for yielding to him and enraging him by turns. I would not be her for him, not for five minutes. I couldn't afford to be her for thirty seconds, but Thom's favorite question had surfaced, and that meant I was running low on time.

It had taken too long to find Jim. I'd had to rely on the information of the kids who'd been my kind, football boys, mostly. I'd learned early there was no point calling the girls, especially the ones that Jim had dated, when I tracked down Dawna Sutton.

She was now a social worker up in Boston, and she ended the conversation forty seconds in, saying, "Yes, I remember your piece-of-s.h.i.+t disappearing boyfriend. I hope he's dead and frying deep, deep, deep in deepest h.e.l.l. As for you, I don't think you spoke more than nine words to me in school. Meanwhile, a live baby with a crack problem got pulled out of a Dumpster this morning, and I have to find a place for him. Your 'good old days' chat can go suck it." She hung up.

None of the girls Jim had dated had cause to feel any more friendly than that toward me, so I stuck to folks that did.

After days of dead-end conversations with boys who had last seen Jim at Missy's party, I got aholt of Bud Freeman, former linebacker, currently married to Clarice Lukey. Judging by the noise at their house, she'd pumped out about a thousand angry babies for him. No one else had even had an inkling of where Jim spent the blank hours between leaving Missy's and wrecking his Jeep, but over the thunder of rioting toddlers, in the middle of a walk down memory lane, Bud told me. He said it off the cuff, almost in pa.s.sing.

According to Bud, Jim Beverly was out at Lipsmack Hill with Arlene Fleet the night he disappeared. My breath stopped. Lip-smack Hill. With Arlene Fleet. I knew perfectly well there was only one reason to go up on top of Lipsmack. I'd traded my virginity for Jim's on a scratchy picnic blanket atop that very spot.

I asked Bud for Arlene's number, but Bud snorted. "She won't talk to you. She lit out of Alabama close to ten years ago, and we ain't seen hide nor hair of the girl since."

"No kidding," I said, and another memory was surfacing. One time, when Jim and I were broken up, a pack of cheerleaders tried to get a rise out of me by saying they'd seen Arlene wearing his letterman jacket. They told me Jim had been walking Arlene down the hall with an arm around her shoulders. I'd said, "Charity work, clearly," in a breezy voice, though I'd felt it like a fast, pointy elbow to the kidney. A few days later, Jim and I were back together, and I'd forgotten it. I asked Bud, "Do you know where she's living?"

"Chicago, and she don't truck with nothing or n.o.body from back home. She's a.s.s-rat crazy, Rose Mae."

"Like, in an inst.i.tution?" It was a fair question. Arlene's mother had spent more than one "vacation" at the special hospital over in Deer Park.

He chuckled. "Well, I reckon not. But she's crazy. She ain't even been home to see her mama. Ain't talked to Clarice for more than a minute on the phone for years now, and as kids Arlene was welded to her hip. I couldn't hardly get my Clar alone for half a minute."

I didn't answer. I myself had zoomed out of Alabama like the state itself had lit my tail on fire. I had not spoken to my own father in more than a decade. For me, Arlene's behavior lived next door to normal.

"She married?" I asked. I was remembering something else, too. I'd seen Arlene with Jim together once myself, at the movies.

Bud said she wasn't married. She was teaching college English at a big state school in downtown Chicago. But she had a fellow, he said. One who was comfy enough to answer the phone at her place. They'd never heard a word about him from her. No name. Not even an admission he existed.

It was a lot to process. Arlene Fleet had been with Jim out at Lipsmack the night he disappeared. Arlene had followed me all over school for months, watching me like... like the other woman might. She'd had his jacket. I'd seen them out together. Arlene had fled Fruiton the same way Jim had, same way I had, the first red second she could. Now she was half a country away, living with a mysterious man. She wouldn't visit home. She never told her family about her fella.

As I got off the phone with Bud, it struck me that she and I were of a type. The other girls Jim had dated had been as unlike me as he could find. Tall girls, redheads and blondes. Arlene had been a teeny, dark-haired, waxen thing. She was like my photocopy, but pale and fuzzy round the edges, made on a broken-down machine.

I tapped Mrs. Fancy's phone b.u.t.ton to get a dial tone, then punched in 411. "Chicago, Illinois," I told the operator. "I need an address and a phone number for Arlene Fleet. Two e's."

It was that simple. She should have changed her name or ditched her family altogether, as I had done. And was about to do again. I tapped the disconnect b.u.t.ton again and dialed Arlene's number. Three rings, and she picked up.

"h.e.l.lo?" she said. Almost a decade in Chicago, and her accent was still pure backwoods Alabama. "h.e.l.lo?" she said again, sounding like me before some Texas got up inside my mouth.

Behind her I heard another voice, asking her something from across the room. It was deep, a man's voice, not a boy's. I strained to catch the tones. It could be Jim. Older, with a wider, deeper chest; I could imagine him sounding like that. But it wasn't the voice that made me sure. What made me sure was the way Arlene Fleet shushed him, nervous and immediate. Her voice was worried, much louder, when she said, "Who is this?" into the phone. "Who is this?"

She had him. He was there, and she was hiding him still, all these years later. I made my voice husky and tried to talk like a Yankee. "Wrong number. Sorry." It came out sounding like a Muppet with a cold, but it worked.