Desert Crossing (6 page)

Beth's brow twitched and she looked at him curiously. “Thanks.”

“Jamie,” I said, trying to get his attention. “We should call Dad.”

He hesitated. “Yeah. Maybe you could do it? Tell him we probably won't get there tonight.”

I went back to the bedroom, and as soon as I opened the door, the dogs came pouring out, snuffling and whining. They raced toward the living room, and I heard Beth yell at them. I sat on the edge of the bed, dialing my dad's work number. He wouldn't be in his office; he almost never was. He was a sales rep for an insurance company, and he spent half his time on the road.

I listened to the four short beeps of his answering machine, then the impersonal friendliness of his work voice: “This is Bob Martinez. I'm away from my desk right now, but leave me a message and I'll return your call as soon as possible.”

I took a deep breath. “Dad? It's me, Lucy. We're calling from New Mexico, some place outside Albuquerque. We…” I tried to think how to say it. “We had kind of an accident, you know, with the car. Nobody's hurt—” I took another breath. “Well, we're not hurt, but we think we hit somebody, a girl, and she's—” I scrunched the hem of my T-shirt and pressed it against my stomach. “We don't really know what happened. It was raining so hard, we couldn't see. But she's dead. The girl is dead. So now we're here and we've been talking to the police. And Mom said, well, Mom wondered if maybe you could come…”

As soon as I said it I wished I hadn't. I didn't want to ask and hear him say no, even though the reason would be a good one, and when he explained, it would make so much more sense for him to stay in Phoenix and for us to work things out on our own. I held the phone closer. “But, um, probably you don't need to do that. I mean, we're at this woman's house and things are sort of under control now. But we won't get to Phoenix tonight. We have to stay until—” A long, sullen tone cut me off. The machine clicked.

I carried the phone back into the living room, which was filled with the smell of fresh paint. Beth knelt on the speckled drop cloth, her face tense with concentration. She had a brush in one hand and was dabbing the bottom of the sculpture with turquoise.

“That's pretty,” I said. “That color.”

She didn't look up. Jamie and Kit were sprawled on the couch, watching her.

“Did you get him?” Jamie asked.

I shook my head. “I left him a message.”

“That's okay. We can try him again later.”

I held out the phone to Kit. “Want to call your parents now?”

Kit kicked at a pile of newspapers. “Maybe later.”

I walked past them and sat on the floor, next to the wild twist of metal at the base of the sculpture. It was hard to figure out what it was made of, but when I looked closely, I could see a tailpipe, two dented license plates, and something that looked like a barbecue grill.

“When do you think we'll get our car back?” I asked.

Jamie frowned. “When they get the lab results, I guess.”

“Are they…” I swallowed. “Did they say anything about the beer? They aren't going to … arrest you or anything?”

Kit blew out his breath hard. “God, you're so negative.” He turned to Jamie. “I can see why you didn't want to drive the whole way with her by yourself.”

I looked at Jamie, stung. But he was ignoring us, watching Beth paint.

“So why do you use car parts and pipes and stuff?” he asked.

She moved the paintbrush over the steel with bold strokes. “I like using things people get rid of,” she said.

Kit trapped a sheet of newspaper under one foot and slid it back and forth on the floor. “How come? I mean, I've seen things like this before, made out of metal. You could get a piece of stainless steel, brand new, and really do something cool with it. None of this crap with old license plates.”

Jamie smacked his shoulder. “Shut up.”

“Hey,” Kit said, rubbing it. “I was just asking.”

Beth sat back on her heels and balanced the paintbrush between her thumb and forefinger. She looked from Kit to Jamie. “That's all right. People are entitled to their opinions. This isn't for everyone.”

“What is it?” I asked. “What's it called?”

“Joshua Tree. I do natural forms. That's the point. Nature out of machines.”

I could see it then. The twist of the trunk, the way the pieces of metal gave it a texture, roots, bark.

Jamie leaned forward, smiling at her. “I like it. It's different.”

Beth shrugged. “This is just the base. I do it in pieces.”

Kit cocked his head to the side. “It doesn't look like a tree.”

“When I put the whole thing together, it will.”

“But I still don't get it. Why do you use junk?”

Beth considered him for a minute. I knew she was trying to decide whether it was worth having this conversation. I felt like warning her that it wasn't.

She went back to painting. It was hypnotizing to watch. Her hand was so steady, so sure of what it was doing. I leaned my head against the sofa.

“It's pretty abstract,” she said. “A way of seeing things.” She hesitated. “There's so much ugliness around, you know? What you see on the highways, on city sidewalks, shoved behind people's garages. All the junk. Nothing in nature is like that. Nothing is ugly like that.”

Kit looked at Jamie. “She hasn't seen Lisa Becker,” he said.

I hit his leg with my fist. “Shut up, Kit.”

He turned on me, annoyed. “What? She's not a friend of yours.”

Beth just shook her head, giving up. But Jamie was still watching her. “Go on,” he said. “Finish what you were saying.”

She sighed. “I don't know. It's hard to explain. Since I started doing this, it's changed the way I look at things. Now, when I notice a smashed can on the side of the road, I don't see somebody's trash, I see the potential for…” she paused.

“A sculpture?” Jamie asked.

“Well, yes. Art.” Beth smiled at him, a widening smile that lit up her whole face. “If you look at the most ordinary thing long enough, it can seem beautiful.”

“Huh,” Kit said. He seemed unimpressed. “And people pay you for this stuff? You make a living doing this?”

“Well, sort of. I teach art classes for half the year.”

“Yeah?” Jamie leaned forward. “You teach? I bet you're good at that.”

Beth looked at him. “Why?”

I watched him, thinking how goofy it was. He was using his same old moves on this middle-aged woman who couldn't care less.

“I just mean, you're so good at painting and all, I think you'd be good at explaining it to people.”

She shrugged. “They're two different skills. I'm not as good at the teaching as I am at the painting. I don't really like having to deal with people.”

Jamie and Kit and I looked at each other. That shut us up.

11

After a while, Jamie said, “Could I take a shower? I feel pretty gross from last night.”

“Of course. There are fresh towels in the bathroom closet.”

Kit and I stayed there in silence, watching the sculpture change with the paint. Finally, the distant whine of the shower stopped and Jamie called, “Did you guys get my bag from the car last night?”

“Yeah, it's in the study,” Kit said. He got up and wandered down the hall. After a minute, I followed him.

Jamie came out of the study toweling off his hair. “Is Beth still painting?” he asked.

The expression on his face was completely familiar, a kind of eager alertness, exactly how he looked when he and Kit were talking about some girl he liked.

“Jamie, she's got to be in her thirties,” I whispered, appalled.

He looked annoyed. “What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about you hitting on Beth, you moron. What are you doing, talking and talking to her? And you tried to put your arm around her in the truck.”

“I did not!”

Kit laughed. “So what if he did? She's sort of hot. She's got the older-woman thing going.”

They were incredible. It was one thing at the diners and the gas stops. We were never going to see those people again. But we were in this woman's house. “She's got gray hair,” I said, gasping.

Kit considered that for a minute, then shrugged at Jamie. “Yeah,” he said. “She could be kind of saggy. And she was a bitch about the beer.”

Jamie balled the damp towel in his fist. “Back off, Luce. What's it to you, anyway? I'm not hitting on her. I just like her, that's all.”

I turned away. “When have you ever liked somebody and not hit on them?”

“Oh, give me a break.”

Kit laughed again, grabbing my shoulder and shoving me down the hallway. “Yeah, give him a break. You're too young to understand.”

That made me so mad I stopped talking to them. But they didn't seem to notice. They headed into the kitchen and Jamie called to Beth, “Hey, can you take a break? Want some coffee?”

“Does that mean you want me to make you coffee?” Beth called back.

Jamie laughed. “Yeah. Do you mind?”

And amazingly, she didn't. She rinsed her hands at the kitchen sink, and Jamie and Kit immediately went into high gear, both of them. They were grinning and chatting, complimenting her on the sculpture, the house, the coffee. It was crazy. How could they do this when we were in so much trouble? How could they turn that part of themselves back on, like a switch, when a girl had died?

Beth seemed to wonder the same thing, because as she poured their coffee, she said, “The police are going to call later. Did Lucy tell you? When they're finished with the car.”

Jamie winced, nodding. Kit looked at the table.

“That girl,” she continued, “she wasn't much older than you. But there's something really strange about it. She was miles from anywhere, and nobody walks along the highway out here. I wonder where she came from.”

“She wasn't banged up, either,” Kit said. “Like, wouldn't you expect that, from the car?”

Jamie frowned at him, starting to say something, but Beth answered first. “I don't know. If she were struck and thrown, the injuries could be mostly internal.”

We were quiet, thinking about her. Where had she come from? Maybe somebody woke up this morning, missing her, worried about her. They didn't realize she wasn't coming back.

“Sit down,” Jamie said to Beth, pulling a chair away from the table.

Beth shook her head. “I'm going back to work.”

“Come on. Sit with us.” He called the brown dog, Toronto, over to him, ruffling her ears while she leaned against his leg.

Beth hesitated, but Kit refilled her mug, saying, “Oh, come on, what are you going to do, stick another hubcap on that thing?”

Shouldn't she be offended by that? I mean, he was talking about her work, her art. But for some reason it made her laugh. And when she laughed, she seemed even prettier.

Beth looked from Kit to Jamie and asked, “Have you been friends a long time?”

Jamie took her arm, smiling at her, and tugged her down to the chair, so she was crowded between them. Then they began telling their stories. Their you'll-never-believe-what-we-did stories. I'd heard them all: the practical jokes and close calls and times when they said the perfect, hilarious thing at exactly the right moment. It was too intense suddenly. Like they usually were, but more of it. This was a performance.

I could feel myself disappearing, bit by bit, fading into the room. So I left. I went back to the bedroom and got my sketchbook. Then I sat in the hallway near the door, listening to them talk. I didn't know what to sketch, but I drew quick lines on the page, and after a minute, I realized I was drawing her face. The girl.

In the kitchen, Jamie was saying, “Digger—he's the principal, Mr. DiGennaro—is a total hard-ass. He canceled the senior chorus trip to Chicago last December because three guys on the chorus council were caught drinking—”

Kit snorted. “Yeah,
after
school, and in their own cars. That was totally bogus.”

Beth looked confused. “Wait, you two are in chorus?”

They both laughed. “No way,” Kit said. “They're all losers. But we can't stand Digger.”

“Yeah,” said Jamie, leaning forward. “So, listen, Digger'd just gotten this new car, an Acura, nice car, he was totally into it—”

Kit interrupted, “And there was a faculty meeting before school, so we got there early, and we brought, like, four bags of Oreos—”

Jamie started laughing. “And right there in the parking lot, we Oreo-ed his entire car. You know, pulled the Oreos apart and stuck them all over his windows. It was so great. The whole top half of his car was black.”

I heard Beth's voice lift in amazement. “The principal's car? And you didn't get caught?”

“That was nothing,” Kit said.

I glanced through the doorway and watched them, that weird choreography they had, feeding each other lines, finishing each other's sentences, playing to Beth as if she were the only person in the world. She was laughing, but I couldn't tell whether it was at the stories or at Jamie and Kit.

Jamie grinned at Kit. “Remember the toilets in the teachers' lounge?”

Kit tilted back his chair and whistled. “Oh my God, that was so great. That was magnificent.”

“What?” Beth asked, still laughing. “What did you do?”

Jamie leaned closer to her. “You're going to love this. We snuck into the teachers' lounge before school and put Saran Wrap under the toilet seats, between the seat and the bowl. We stretched it so tight it was completely clear.”

“No,” Beth protested, her hand over her mouth.

Jamie was cracking up. “You couldn't see it at all. Remember, Kit? Mrs. Bottner got so pissed.”

“Yeah, pissed
on,
” Kit said.