Eight Minutes (16 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

WINDOWS OF THE SOUL

I
don’t think about myself or about how I look after being up all night. Even when I walk past a mirror, the visual image doesn’t fully register. I’m in faded tie-dyed yoga pants that ride low on my hips with wide legs and an intricate Middle Eastern scroll around the legs. I forget I haven’t put on a bra. My ribbed knit undershirt is not adequate coverage for public view, but I don’t want to risk going in for more clothes and waking Eric up. I pull my hair away from my face with a couple of bobby pins to hold my bangs tight to one side, which leaves the curly part in back to splay up like a sunburst coming from the middle of my head. While I sit in the dark, I pick at a blackhead on my chin until it’s a hard red bump.

I’m on a mission bigger than my own petty concerns. I am the vessel Toby needs to make this connection. In the beanbag, an unfamiliar wash of spiritual awareness falls on me. I ask Mom if she’s there and wait to see if I will get a nudge. Whether it comes from my mother’s spirit or my own, something makes me stand up and say “It’s time” at 4:59 a.m.

I scrawl a quick note to Eric: “Woke up early. Went to the grocery store for breakfast food. I have Toby with me.” I leave it on the kitchen counter, near the coffee machine. That will buy me some time.

I gently rock Toby. “Come on, baby, you can stay asleep. Momma has to do a little driving so we can go see Kay, but you can sleep in the car, all right?”

He doesn’t wake up. He flops over and rolls out of his covers, so I can pick him up. He’s wearing pajamas with bulldozers and yellow hard hats on them, and his hair is flat on one side. He’s thirty pounds of dead weight, and I kiss his head as I cover him with a square blanket, hoist the backpack on my other arm, and open the door to his bedroom. The condo hallway is darker than Toby’s room, with the single slat of light coming from the hallway closet.

I squeeze the door silently into the doorframe behind us. The night air is cool and feels good on the back of my neck. Toby almost wakes up when I roll him into his car seat, but I flip off the overhead light. He stops squinting. I prop his head up against the cushioned side of the seat and stay there, still as a statue, until his breathing is regular again.

I throw the backpack in the front seat, put the car in neutral, and roll backward out of the parking space before starting the engine. I wait to turn on the headlights until I’m out of range of the parking-lot lights and reach down to dig the map out of my bag. Turning left past the marina, I head toward Route 76. About ten minutes later, after passing the bait shop, the Dairy Queen, and the gas station, I turn left again, onto the poorly maintained two-lane road marked by a “76” sign pocked with buckshot.

“Some big-ass road,” I say aloud, remembering how the gas-station clerk had described it. “Looks like somebody took target practice on that sign.”

I fall quiet, considering for the first time that the people who live on this road might—no, probably—have guns at home. As if to confirm the need for them, my headlights catch the shiny eyes of a possum in the road. Shuddering at its oily, repellent shape, I slow and watch the critter scurry across the road.

I look in the backseat. I’ll tell him about the possum later. He’ll like that. I wonder if I need to wake him now so he won’t be cranky when we get there. I’ll wake him when I see the mailbox. We can sit there a bit before we go inside. Besides, the sun is not due up for another hour, at least.

The numbers on the mailboxes are heading in a predictable and ascending order. I slow when I pass one or a group of mailboxes, once even getting out to read the names on the sides. Most of the mailboxes are standard-issue black like an old-fashioned workman’s lunch box, but some are shaped like mallard ducks or have messages written in hand-painted letters with big dots on the ends. Some have the name and the number; others only the number.

I pass one crooked stake and slow down as my headlights discover the bunged-up mailbox lying in the ditch, freshly decapitated. I get out, and the morning air is cooler than expected. There’s no number on that box.

I get back in the car and drive to the next intersection. No signs. The sky is changing colors. I have sweaters on my teeth and bad breath. I go straight but have no idea if I’m on the right road now. No marker of any kind. The mailbox numbers have a
B
in front of the number and have jumped backward in sequence.

Finally a Y-shaped intersection appears, and a pockmarked “76” sign jig-jogs back into view. I turn again and my headlights reveal mailbox numbers in ascending order again. I’m on a two-lane asphalt road with tall grasses growing in the ditches on either side and lone mailboxes separated by one-acre lots, each with its own long gravel driveway. There are plenty of trees, but none of them look like they’ve ever been trimmed. Some homes have fences; some have toys in the yard. Every home I pass now is a double-wide trailer, a mobile home disguised so it doesn’t look mobile at all.

The sun isn’t quite over the horizon. I creep along as the numbers top 500. 520. 548. On the other side of the road, 551.

Then I see it: Robberson.

White hand-stenciled letters on a black mailbox. No mallard mailbox for the Robbersons, evidently. I stop, hardly believing we’re really here. Staring at the address in my hand, with the metallic taste of adrenaline on my tongue, I confirm it one more time before I pull the car to the side of the road. I get out and look closer, the morning air a fresh shock.

Robberson.

John and Kay.

Box 584.

I crawl into the backseat, next to Toby. “Hey.” I rock his shoulders and give him a kiss on the forehead. “Time to wake up, baby. There’s someone you need to meet.”

The sky is purple, down low. Pink, if I look up. Mostly strange, unfamiliar shades of military blue and deep gray. I can’t see the sun yet.

I unlock Toby’s car-seat buckle, and he starts to stretch and rub his eyes. He crawls out of the seat and into my warm lap. I rock him back and forth in my arms, bringing him to the morning. He snuggles his soft hair under my chin in a way that I know I’m going to miss. When he grows another two inches, he won’t fit in that little spot anymore. I kiss his face again and again, saying, “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

When I can feel his body respond, I offer him some Juicy Juice, which does the trick. He’s awake now and looking around.

“Where’s Daddy?”

“He’s still asleep. But guess where we are.”

“Where?”

“We’re going to see Kay. We’re at Kay’s house. See, right there on the mailbox, it says John Robberson. And Kay. This is where Kay lives.”

I’m acutely aware that I’m repeating myself, and it sounds manic, even to me, so I stop.

He nods his head, his straw full of purple juice. I wipe his face, brush my hands through his hair to fluff up his curls. I want him to look nice.

“Toby?”

“Yes.”

“Can I ask you about John Robberson?”

“Yes.”

“What did he tell you to go say to Kay?”

“He doesn’t want her to be mad anymore.”

“Why is she mad?”

“Because of the dog.”

“Thud?”

“No, Momma, the dog in the fire. She’s mad because he went in for the dog.”

“So you’re going to tell her not to be mad about the dog? Is that what you’re going to say to Kay?”

“Yes?” and he looks at me to see if that’s the right answer.

I shake my head, sorry I’d pushed too far. Again. “Tell you what. I’m going to take you to meet Kay, and you can say whatever you need to say. Okay?”

“You do it,” he says.

“No, baby. John Robberson wants you to do it. But I’ll be right there with you, I promise.”

We get out of the car. Toby comments that it’s nighttime. I don’t consider what Kay might be doing right this minute. I assure him it’s going to be fine and point to a light coming from a window in the house.

We walk hand in hand up the gravel driveway with grass growing in the middle, between the tire tracks. I’m getting used to the crispness in the air but wish I’d thrown on a sweatshirt. The dew on the grasses smells fresh and reminds me of the urban farm at Oasis Verde.

We walk past a dirty white Chevy sedan parked near the house. It doesn’t quite fit inside the covered carport, which has boxes and gardening tools stacked high. A folding card table in the middle of the carport is piled with silverware and knitting supplies and craft materials. I can’t resist a nosy peek inside the car. The backseat has wadded-up fast food bags on the floorboard and library books strewn across the seat.

The sidewalk from the driveway to the front door is paved with bricks stuck into the dirt in an uneven curve. The gravel crunches under our feet. I shift my weight in my flip-flops, trying to keep them from clopping against my heels. Toby’s light-up shoes glow orange neon with every step. The porch light is off, but I can see in the front window. It looks like a lamp near the door is on. It’s probably a night-light, designed to give the impression the owner is home. In one way, it’s too early for us to be here. In another way, we’re way overdue.

I knock on the metal screen door. It’s cold and hurts my knuckles. I knock again, louder. My fist is in midair, ready to knock again, when a light comes on in the back part of the house. I squeeze Toby’s hand. He reaches for me and I hoist him up.

Another light comes on, in the living room now. I stand straighter so Kay won’t see me peeking in through the window.

“All right, all right. I’m coming.”

I hear the firm
chunk
of the latch, the loose rattle of the doorknob, the
chink
of the porch light flipped on, an audible expression of the visual sensation of moving from the dark to the light. In one split second. One little
chink
.

I shuffle Toby on my hip. The wooden door opens, but the screen door remains closed.

“What is it? Do you know what time it is?”

I don’t know what I expected, but my prior conception dissipates. I didn’t realize I had conjured up a version of my mother in my head, so it’s all I can do not to gasp at how short Kay Robberson appears.

She’s easily in her seventies and stands before us in a pale blue housecoat snapped up crooked at the top and pulled closed by her arms, crossed in front of her. She’s five foot nothing, heavyset, with wispy gray hair the consistency of cotton candy. With the light shining behind her, it looks a little like a halo. It reminds me of Pa’s eyebrows. Kay’s eyelids are swollen and she squints, which pulls her features tightly around her nose, with soft puppy wrinkles all around the outside of her face. I can tell she was pretty once—before the cigarettes and sun and hard knocks took their toll.

“Well?” Her voice is not unfriendly, but it isn’t exactly welcoming, either.

With some effort, I don’t say anything and hope she understands. I look at Toby expectantly and shuffle him off my hip to hold him in front of me. He dangles there like a marionette puppet.

“Look, it’s pretty darn early. Whatchu need? Is he sick or something?”

I’ve vowed not to interfere with whatever spiritual interaction needed to happen, but I have to shake my head to answer her question. I straighten my arms and hold Toby out toward her. At least toward her screen door.

“Darlin’, do you speak English? Are you okay? Don’t drop him, now. What do you want?”

Please. Look at him.

I force myself to say nothing. I know it must look really strange, but I’m begging her with my eyes to see past the strangeness.

“Take that boy home. Go on, now.”

And with that, Kay Robberson shuts the door. When the porch light flips off with a decisive
chink
, I whirl into action.

“No!” I step off the porch, toward the front window, stumbling over the peonies planted underneath, feeling the soil grind between my toes. I lift Toby as high as I can. The bottom of the windowsill is about chest height as I stand in the flowerbed. I rest his little bottom on my shoulder so he’s in full view.

“Do you know this boy?”

No answer.

“Do you? Do you know him? Look at him, will you? Just look at him!” With my hands under Toby’s armpits, his little nose practically touches the screen on the windows. Toby squirms. He really looks like a puppet now.

“Tell me! Look! Just look!”

The porch light comes on again, and the next thing I know, Kay steps out on her front porch with a twelve-gauge shotgun. She motions with the barrel of the gun and hollers, “Git!” She barks at me over and over, like she’s calling a bad dog. I pull Toby toward me and fall down in her flowerbed. Toby lands on top of me, now crying.

“Now you’re crunching my flowers!” Her face is red and her voice is shaking. I can’t tell if she’s scared or mad or drunk with power because of the gun in her hand. She stands over us. I fumble around in the soil, a pungent mix of manure and chemicals.

I experience a flood of adrenaline that starts low in my brain stem and crashes in an enormous wave of instinct and defensiveness I didn’t know I had. My yoga pants scrunch down, and half my butt is showing. Toby howls, manure mud on his face. I don’t even know if Kay can hear me.

I’m not exactly sure what comes out of my mouth. All I know is I have to disarm this old woman. I have to get my child out of that chemical manure pile.
Go, go, go.

I lunge toward her.

The next thing I know, I’m holding the shotgun, and Kay Robberson is splayed out on her back in her front yard. Her nightgown flaps up obscenely in the fresh morning sunlight, and I can see varicose veins on the insides of her knees. She moans and rolls over, clutching her back.

I scream “Get down!” and whiplash-shove Toby into the weeds. His wails rise and fall like a siren. With adrenaline pumping, I sprint to the shotgun, put a death grip on its long, cold barrel, and spin three times, grunting as I catapult it like an Olympic discus thrower.

I grunt and stagger backward, dizzy and disoriented. My pulse pounds against my temple. The shotgun whoosh-whooshes through the air like a sluggish propeller. Toby howls in the background, the squall reaching me in slow motion.