Friendswood (31 page)

Willa was afraid her mother would smell it on her. “Nah.”

The sun prickled in her eyes. Over by the old tennis courts, sharp triangles danced on their corners, and the heat fell hard on her bare arms. Dex told them he'd started work as a busboy at Casa Texas, as he'd quit being the trainer for the football team. “I just realized I hate too many of those bastards.” He exchanged a glance with Dani that Willa couldn't read.

Dani punched the end of her cigarette into the concrete lip of the pool. “Look, Willa—we have your back. We want you to make those shitheads pay.”

Willa felt something squeezing just next to her heart. It wasn't her heart, but just next to it.

“I have to tell you something,” Dex said, poking a stick at the small blue cup at the lip of the pool, where there was a tiny dead brown frog floating. He didn't look up, but kept tapping at the cup. “I was there
that day at the Lawbournes'. I swear I didn't know what they were doing . . .”

She began to shiver—a sensation of ice on her neck and under her arms. She started to get up, but Dani grabbed her hand, so she stood awkwardly there above them, looking down at the glossy tops of their heads.

Dex didn't turn, but spoke into the pool. “I thought you were there with Cully, so I didn't say anything.”

Dani looked up at her and squeezed her hand. “Dex could go with you to the police. He remembers things.”

“They put something in your drink,” he said. “I mean, I heard at the end what they were doing, but I didn't believe it, and then I left. I feel like shit about that. But they put something in your drink. Bishop Geitner had it planned all along. He wanted to prove something.”

Willa's heart seemed pulled by a string in the direction of the road; she took her hand away from Dani's, and she started walking.

Dani and Dex got up and followed her. She climbed over the fence, went around the side of the country club where the wall crumbled into a disconnected toilet, past the bushes with red berries and a broken water meter. When she got to the front, the tree branches looked low and drooping, and in the grass she saw a yellow plastic bug-eyed cat, its face smeared with dirt.

Dex ran up behind her. “It's been killing me to know all this stuff.”

She couldn't look at him.

“Honey,” said Dani, “I want you to see your way out of this.”

She wished they'd be quiet.

“I'm going home,” Willa said.

“Listen,” said Dex. “You want to know how much I fucking hate them?” She was crying now, but there was a pressure still in her forehead that wouldn't release. “Last night, I slashed Trace's tires. I went to his house and cut them with a knife, and I broke the windshield. And I drove to Brad's house, and I did the same thing to his shitty car, but keyed it along the side. He ran out but he didn't catch me.” Beside her now, he
pushed his shoulders back and clenched his teeth. “I didn't fucking care. Let them catch me.” He bent to pick up a bottle from the street, threw it down again in a rage, shards of glass flying up beside him.

He bent to pick up another bottle at the curb, and she kept walking.

It's not going to change anything, she was thinking, winding past the Summers' house on St. Abbans. She could barely see where she was going. Behind her, she heard glass shatter again on the street.

The road seemed to flick up and fall down again beneath her.

“FUCK FUCK FUCK,” Dani screamed. Willa turned. Dex sprawled near the jagged pieces of glass. He started to get up and cradled his bleeding elbow in his hand, the bright red seeping through. She couldn't help it. She turned away again and kept walking.

L
EE HAD BEEN DEEP
in a dream of bluebonnets and lilacs, moving and proliferating like accelerated film time, over garbage heaps, spilled gasoline, tossed-out celebrity magazines. Because she wasn't responsible for the growing, it had made her feel almost unbearably happy. And it ran on without her, even as she woke up to the phone ringing.

“Hey, beautiful.”

It took her a few seconds to recognize his voice. “What the hell, Jack? It's three in the morning.”

“Is it? I've lost track.”

“Where are you?”

“I'm just driving around—it calms me down these days. And the best thing is, in the middle of the night, there's no traffic.”

“What does Cindy think of all this?”

“Oh, I don't think she has any idea.”

“Surely she notices you're not in bed.”

“Nope. She takes these pills now. Sometimes with a little wine—and she's out. Dead to the world.”

A car horn blared in the background.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I haven't been able to say it, but I think you know, right? They told me three years, but I don't think they ever really know.”

She felt a fire jump in her chest. “Well.” He could still have decades to go. He could still get better.

“Remember that day she rode the neighbor's horse? I about killed you when you told me about it, but then you used your womanly wiles, and she was good on it anyway.”

“I didn't want her to be held back by your fears.”

“I know. I still won't get on one after the things I've seen, but it was strange how it was fine, in the end, watching her. Like something outside me was protecting her.” There were shapes in the dark witnessing this, leaning forward. “I'm glad she got to do that. She loved riding that horse, didn't she?”

Lee squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “She did.”

“I want to see you. I want you to come up here.”

“You're driving around drinking beer, aren't you?”

“Does it really matter? There's no one but me out on these roads. Hell, it used to be legal anyway.”

“God, I hope there's no one out. Will you at least pull over for a little while?”

“Alright.” He sighed. A minute later, it was quieter. “Here I am.” Those days after the funeral, in the house, Lee walked helplessly from room to room, with nothing to do with herself. The doctor had given her pills to calm her. Every time she opened a door and Jess was not there, Lee would have a vision of her tossing a drape of hair over her shoulder, or the way her eyes lowered while she listened to music, how she talked with her hands when she was upset, as if holding out what she said as an offering.

“Jack?” He seemed so drunk he might not be able to hear. There was a way Jess smiled when he played the harmonica, as if she didn't know whether to laugh at him or just enjoy it. “Jack?”

“Good night, then,” he said.

He hung up. She tried to call him back but he didn't answer. She thought about calling the police to ask them to go check on him, but
she didn't want him to get arrested for a DUI on top of everything else—she finally decided he was probably telling her the truth—he was sleeping it off right there on the side of the road. That would be just like him.

B
ACK AT WO
RK,
the phone rang almost immediately. A woman wanting to make an appointment for a mole check, and then a man called because he was losing his hair. “For no reason!” he shouted into the phone. “No reason at all!” Lee had to hold the earpiece away from her head. She looked up at the note pinned to the bulletin board: “Order cotton swabs.” Over the past few weeks, she had been glad for the distraction of faces printed with anxiety, irritation, or boredom, for the job of soothing. Just then, Char and Willa walked into the waiting room, and she was surprised, because she hadn't noticed
Lambert
on the books. Char just waved at her as she left, leaving Willa to tell Lee she had a 4:15 appointment. “He's running a little late, I'm afraid,” said Lee.

“That's okay,” said Willa. She went to a chair and took out a book.

It turned out that Sue, the nurse, had to leave early. “I want to get out of here at a decent hour,” she said to Lee. “Will you take the last appointments back to the rooms?”

“Sure.” Lee picked up the phone and talked to a drug rep and made an appointment for Doc to meet with him. She called an insurance company to ask why they hadn't covered a lab test.

At 5:15, Willa was the last patient, and Lee led her back to the examining room. Willa hitched herself up on the paper-covered table and rolled up her sleeve. “My mom wants the doctor to look at this.” She held out the inside of her forearm, which was raw and dark red, with dry flaking skin along the edges. It looked almost as if it had been burned.

“Oh dear.” Lee studied the mark. She wrote “laceration or rash?” in the chart. “I'm sorry he's late, Willa.”

“The thing is,” she started. “I mean, that's okay—I know I told you a
while back at that Christmas party? I've been writing there on my arm in my sleep—I think. But my mom doesn't know that. I mean sometimes I sort of remember the words I wrote and sometimes I'm surprised.”

“You're scrubbing it off?” said Lee.

“Yeah.”

“I understand.” With everything that had happened to Willa, Char could only address the rash. Of course. Because you could rub a cream on it, clean it up.

“I don't want her to know about the writing.” Willa sat with an expectant look, her young complexion perfect and pale under the harsh fluorescent lights, only a tiny red dot on one cheek, more visible because of the surrounding perfection. Her legs in dark jeans wrinkled the white paper on the examining table. How many times had Lee sat like this with Jess in a doctor's office? The huge silence, and the tiny, bright room. The chrome and glass sterile instruments lined up on the counter nearby. Lee found herself staring at the girl's graceful small hands, the red chipped fingernail polish. “What could it be?” asked Willa. “I mean, did I do this to myself?”

“We'll have to let the doctor take a look. It might be a simple allergic reaction, you know. Something with the ink. Or the soap you use?”

“Maybe. I've been getting headaches and stomachaches too. Might also be from the allergy.”

Lee had laid warm washcloths on Jess's forehead for the pain. She'd rubbed ice on the soles of Jess's burning feet, wanting to exchange her own body for her daughter's. There should have been a way to do that. All that technology and they couldn't substitute a mother's body for her child's—it seemed ludicrous. One time the pain was so bad Jess asked her to lie down beside her in bed so she could squeeze Lee's arm. Jess's grip had been so tense that it left a bruise.

“Is it really that awful looking?” asked Willa.

Lee realized she'd been biting down on her lip. “No, sweetheart. Probably he just needs to give you a prescription.” Willa's face seemed to
absorb all of the light in the room, air conditioner humming in the silence. She wanted to be kind to the girl beyond what would have been reasonable. She wanted to mother her. Doc's sneakers squeaked down the hallway, and then he breezed in with his white coat and string tie, whistling. “Hello, there, ladies.”

T
HAT NIGHT,
as she went about making dinner, she kept thinking about Willa, how so little had been done for her, how curious it was that she'd been writing on herself, recording maybe what no one would say. And it was worrisome that she had the headaches with the rash. How many brain tumors had she recorded in Jess's high school class alone? Three. But then again, Lee imagined cancer everywhere now, even in those who were perfectly healthy.

As she chopped the zucchini, her anger stoked up again. The girl had not been protected. She had not been heard. As she rummaged in the back of the cabinet for the cheese grater, she came upon an old dish and pulled it out, sticky and covered in dust. It would need to be washed. It was a plate that Jess had painted decades ago, a funneling storm of colors beneath the glaze that had once been meant to be, what? a house? a tree? Holding the dish, she felt more tenderness than anger, and as she stared down at the swirling blues and purples, she thought of Char in all this, how she hated mess.

Back in high school, she kept in her car a container for candy and a small box for emergencies that contained tissues, aspirin, Windex. She'd hated not being able to explain why her parents split, worried about the gossip, and Char had finally told her friends: “Some people just don't match.” It had been a good enough lie when they were girls, to cover up her mom's affair. But what happened to Char's girl—there was no way to order it or to hide it.

Lee ate dinner, listening to talk radio, and as she was cleaning up,
washing the dishes, the heavy garlic press slipped out of her soapy hand and fell into the water, and she heard it crash on the plate. She fished around in the water, and the sharp edge cut her finger. Stunned, she held up the broken, jagged piece of ceramic as a small stream of blood dripped down her soapy hand. The piece was blue-black, ugly, and she pressed against it, weeping, not because of the cut, but for the pain inflicted upon them all. She couldn't let go of it.

S
HE DROVE PAST THE STRIP
MALL
made up of fake wood houses, past the Texas Rug Company and the Children of God church built in an old Kmart, and it seemed to her she'd been timid all this time, that her talking and complaining, even her one small act of sabotage, all of it had done nothing. Of course it hadn't made a difference. She passed the fireworks stand in Alvin. There was a neon sign of a busty woman, kicking up her legs, and next to it, a sign that said
RED DAHLIA, SHO
T PALM, AERIAL BARGE
. How much could her best friend, Rush, have been listening? She didn't know how Rush could stand five minutes with Avery Taft, the perfect smarminess of his manner, the way he wore his jeans with a crease down the middle of each leg, the way he squinted his eyes so no one could see what he was thinking. It made Lee wonder how well she really knew Rush, how well she even knew herself.