Lake Overturn (43 page)

Jay followed Liz through this crowd. He had just enough of a buzz on that the colored lights suspended from the rafters and the strobe lights stationed on the tall speakers transported him somewhere other than the Eula High gym (which, other than the Van Bekes’ and Lina’s, was the place where he spent the most time). Around him, girls were doing the dance of the moment, borrowed from the New Wave bands on MTV they claimed to hate. They crouched slightly in their shimmering rayon and organza and taffeta, lifted and poised their hands as if to snap their fingers. But they didn’t snap. They touched one toe-tip at a time onto a spot on the floor before them, as if they were crushing a cigarette butt again and again. Their boyfriends watched them, shifting from foot to foot, some venturing to swing their hands a little.

Candy Patton was engaged in her version of the dance, which was a little freer than the other girls in her group—sometimes she threw in a clap over one shoulder—when she saw Liz and screamed.

Liz rolled her eyes and touched her hair, thinking,
At last
. She had made her way through the foyer and half the gym without much reaction beyond Mr. Dodd’s raised eyebrows.

“You look beautiful!” cried Candy as the other girls gathered around. Jay waited for a few minutes on the circle’s outskirts, then, when Liz began to dance with the girls, he looked around for a boy to talk to, and, finding no one, shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled away.

Liz danced with the girls and took in the gossip of who had shown up with whom until she felt her dress start to dampen and her hair start to fall. Then she danced her way through the crowd and passed the bank of potted palms, which marked the edge of the dance floor. On the bleachers, which were collapsed flush against the wall, hung a fluorescent-paint mural of art deco abstractions—perhaps meant to be building facades—labeled “Copacabana” and “Flamingo” in neon cursive that seemed to vibrate in the black light from the dance floor. A bright flash drew Liz’s attention to a flimsy garden gazebo where the photographer had set up shop. Surrounded by inflatable palm trees and pastel-colored balloons, Cordy Phillips stiffly encircled Sarah Fagan with his arms. They wore distressed smiles. At their feet, a large stuffed-animal alligator emerged from the “swamp” of crepe-paper rushes. They looked alike, Cordy having taken on Sarah’s daunted expression and her hunch. They were obviously made for each other. How could Liz have ever suspected Cordy was her secret admirer, or, worse, hoped that he was? She decided to put that little fantasy through the paper shredder; she had never entertained it; her conscience was clear. Liz approached a girl in line and asked how much photo packages were. Ten dollars and up. Ridiculous. Jay had already spent at least twenty-five on dinner. She wouldn’t ask for this as well. Who needed pictures? She scanned the room quickly for his periwinkle tux.

Jay had found a friend with a flask and the two had lodged themselves in a dark corner of the café behind the punch fountain. Jay was surprised to look up and see Liz pulling up a chair. “Can I have some?” she asked as she sat.

Without smiling, Jay held out the bottle.

Liz glanced around, quickly tossed her head back to take a swig, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “The portraits are, like, superexpensive,” she said in a voice suddenly mannish. “You don’t want to have one taken, do you?”

“
Fuck
, no!” Jay retorted.

The way Liz retreated in her seat made him wonder if he had spat when he spoke.

C
OOP AND
W
ANDA
sat at the kitchen table. From the living room, a crowd’s roars of laughter broke the silence. Johnny Carson was doing his monologue. “Do you want to go to the police?” Coop asked.

Wanda shook her head miserably, and collapsed onto her folded arms on the table. “They told me the next time they saw me or Hank, they’d arrest us both.”

“That was ages ago,” Coop said gently.

“Less than a year,” Wanda sniveled. Then she caught herself, straightened back up, and took a deep breath. Coop’s grin took on the aching appearance it did when his ideas ran dry. What would Melissa do in this situation? “Maybe tomorrow,” Wanda said, “I’ll go in and talk to that lady officer, what’s-her-name. Tonight, I just need to rest.”

“I’ll go pick up Maria in the morning. We’ll both come with you. Maria knows all those folks.”

Wanda reached over and lay her hand on Coop’s forearms, which were thick and hard as firewood stacked atop each other. Coop lay a callused hand on hers.

“Where should I sleep?”

“Frank’s room.” Wanda’s face froze, which made Coop laugh. “The sheets are clean. He hasn’t slept in there for years.”

They walked through the living room, where Frank sat propped up in his nest of cushions on the floor. His mouth gaped like that of a trout, and his chest rose and fell—just barely and with great effort—from the heap of his body. He opened his rheumy eyes as they passed. “I’m gonna sleep in your room tonight, Uncle Frank,” said Wanda.

“ ’Night,” said Frank. But it came out “Nah,” his pale tongue only grazing his palate.

Coop opened the door and turned on the light. Wanda had never been in this room before, and she was surprised at the neatly made bed with its gray woolen blanket and the only slightly stale smell of cedar. Coop put down Wanda’s bag and opened the window. A fox pelt hung beside the window, arms splayed as if it were embracing the wall. Pennants hung on the other wall over a small desk, on which stood three big-headed figurines of famous baseball players and a tin can full of pencils. It was a room that parents would keep just so for a long-dead son.

“Can I gitcha anything?”

“No, thanks, Coop.”

“Good night.”

Wanda sat down on the bed. Someone next door was practicing scales on a piano that badly needed tuning. One note in particular rattled like a dropped fork.

The mobile!
Wanda thought.
Lucy’s drawing!
What would Hank do to her things? Better not to imagine.

Wanda rose to examine a group of framed family photos atop Frank’s dresser: Frank himself, young and a little handsome, making bunny ears over the head of a laughing girl; a soft-focus portrait of Wanda’s father; a group photo Wanda had never seen in which she was sucking her thumb and holding Katherine’s hand—Katherine, who now lived in Boise and refused to speak to Wanda; Louis, who was now dead; their mother . . .

Wanda turned away and undressed.

“H
AVE YOU SEEN
Jay?” Liz asked her brother when she found him near the dance floor.

Winston seemed to rein in his focus from far beyond Liz and put it somewhere around her eyes. “Did he ditch you?”

“I’m so sure!”

“ ’Cause if he did I’ll kick his fuckin’ ass.”

“You’re drunk,” Liz said, spinning on a heel. Everyone was drunk, it seemed, and that one swig of whiskey had only been enough to give her a headache. The prom was at its height, but Liz was ready to leave. She had seen everyone she wanted to see, and Jay, who she had hoped would stay at her side sniggering at the entire affair, had disappointed her by lurking around its periphery, then disappearing entirely.

She finally spotted him outside in a circle of kids in the twilight of the gym’s awning. Liz approached unnoticed. “Don’t nigger-lip it,” Jay said to a boy Liz didn’t know before snatching the cigarette, scrutinizing the filter, and taking a long draw. The cherry, long and pointed as a red Christmas light, glowed in response.

Liz hadn’t known Jay smoked cigarettes. She touched his shoulder. “Can we go?” she asked.

Jay nodded, released the smoke in twin streams from his nostrils, and gave the cigarette back to the boy. He followed Liz out into the dark parking lot, past a group of girls walking unsteadily on their heels with their skirts gathered up, to the dew-streaked Maverick. Liz figured Jay would come back after he dropped her off at home. Maybe he had his eye on some girl in that group, some friend’s date. This night had proved to her that they weren’t similar at all. She had given him way too much credit.

Jay drove slowly—so slowly Liz wondered how much he had had to drink. She wasn’t worried, though. His hands were steady on the wheel and the roads were empty. She flattened her palms together and wedged them into the rayon folds between her thighs and gazed out the window, across the dark fields toward the sparkling hills that represented her neighborhood. The lake, out of view beyond, cast a green glow onto the rumpled bellies of some low-hanging clouds.

Jay passed the turnoff for Liz’s neighborhood.

“Jay?” Liz said.

He didn’t respond.

“You should have turned on Dewey.”

Was he angry at her? He certainly had no cause to be. He was the one who had disappeared. Maybe he was ashamed of himself. Maybe he had missed the turn because he was drunk, and he would take the next turn on Locust and come around the back. But the shining sign for Locust approached from the blackness and passed and the car didn’t slow. “Where are we going, Jay?”

“Aiii,”
he grunted in a strange voice.

“Is there some party?” Liz asked. “I’d really rather go home.”

“Of course there is a party,
chica
. There’s always a par-tay.” It was the stupid, guttural Cheech-and-Chong voice he and Winston liked to use.

“Well, I don’t want to go. I’m tired.”

Jay drove quietly on.

“Come on, Jay, we’ve had fun tonight . . .” she tried.

They skirted the rocky escarpment of the empty hill at whose crest the electric cross shone. Now the subdivisions were behind them and they descended toward the lake.

Liz tried to sound cool. “So, where is this party?”

“Right here, mama. There’s a party in my
pantalones
.”

Liz made a sniffing, derisive laugh and turned again to stare out the window.

Jay pulled into the boat ramp parking lot. There were no other cars here. This wasn’t the traditional make-out spot—that was in the park up the hill.

“Come on, Jay.” Liz laughed. “What’s going on?”

He killed the motor. “You want to smoke some ganja, baby?”

“You know I don’t, Jay.”

“Good, ’cause I don’ have none.”

Liz gave a phony, cheerful laugh. She adjusted herself to face Jay, and behind the folds of her dress her fingers searched out the door handle. “All right, Jay, what are we doing here?”

“We’re parking,
mamita
. Don’ you want to park?”

“No.”

“You never been with a
Chicano
before, baby?”

“Come on, Jay. This isn’t funny. We’re friends.”

He was quiet for a while, and there was no light in his eyes. Liz couldn’t tell which part of her he was looking at. Without warning, his hand shot out and grabbed her face. Liz shrieked and pushed him away, but not before his other hand yanked at her hair. She tumbled backward out of the car, scrambled to her feet, and ran away.

Jay sat for a while looking after her, feeling blank. He had thought it would be funny to scare her, but it seemed the joke was over before it began. He would just sit here and wait for her to come back. He left the door open to seem more welcoming. He sat and watched the reflected lights from across the lake flash among the waves.

Then he realized, she wouldn’t come back. She didn’t get it. He should look for her. He reached for the door handle and saw, with a stir of panic, strands of Liz’s hair in his fingers. He carefully twisted them into one cord, which he then curled around one finger and slipped them into his breast pocket. He heaved himself out of the car and walked across the lot down to the picnic tables, but she wasn’t there. Should he call out to her? No, she knew where he was. He had actually scared her. Yes, he had meant to, but only to see a new expression on that smug face, before calling it off and taking her home. (That was, unless it didn’t scare her; unless she kissed him.) He returned to the car, started the motor, and turned on the radio. It was Van Halen, a song he liked, and this helped keep down a rising, ugly feeling. He stayed there for a few more minutes in the glow of the tiny ceiling light. Then he reached across the seat and pulled Liz’s door closed. He drove slowly around the parking lot, allowing the headlights to sweep across the brush. He imagined Liz out there, crouched behind a sage bush when she saw the light coming, her dress full of burrs and her black stockings white with dust. “Fucking
stupid
!” he hissed as he slammed his fist against the steering wheel. What, did she think he was going to rape her? She couldn’t be that stupid, could she?

Jay drove the short distance up the hill to the park. He turned on his brights and made his way slowly along the circle drive, but no Liz. Two vehicles stood at a distance from each other in the parking lot overlooking the lake: a long, boatlike Ford and an empty pickup truck with a missing tire. This was Eula’s make-out spot, and in the front seat of the Ford Jay could see a couple so engaged. Jay gently rolled up into the spot beside them and was greeted by two fierce, surprised faces. He rolled down his window and, with an apologetic grimace, gestured for them to do the same. The man climbed over the woman to roll the window down. “Fuck off, kid!” he shouted. The woman breathlessly raked her fingers through her hair.

“Sorry, have you seen a girl in a dress walking around?”

“No. Now, git!”

Jay lifted a palm and put the car in reverse.

What could he do? He drove around the lake, far beyond where Liz could have walked. Versions of the same vision flashed before him: Liz crouched down like a frightened animal in this dry ditch or behind that ruined shed. How could she be so stupid? Where had she gone? He made one more drive around the boat ramp and the park, then headed toward Liz’s neighborhood, thinking he’d find her walking along the road and convince her to get back in. But he reached the subdivisions without having passed a soul.

A black mood that had settled over him at the prom (it had been almost cozy, the way it muffled his perceptions) began to lift. He no longer felt drunk. Slowly he began to see that he could be in trouble—real trouble.