Nobody but Us (14 page)

And my dad? Shit, there’s a reason I got a blank spot on my birth certificate. If there’s anything to learn about him in Elko, or anywhere else, it’s that I don’t want to be nothing like him. I ain’t really sure what it means to be a man, but it sure as hell ain’t what he thinks it is. Whoever he is.

Zoe nods off next to me, and she’s still sleeping when we pass the “Welcome to Elko” sign, but she don’t miss much. The town’s about what I figured it would be: brown and low buildings, golf course of green, and housing developments off the freeway. It’s just us and a couple of eighteen wheelers on the road. I turn off when I see some businesses to the right. Zoe wakes up then and glares at me through her rose-colored glasses ’cause I didn’t wake her sooner.

“What? There ain’t nothing to see.”

We run through a grocery store, pick up some sandwiches and chips, and I ask the guy at the checkout if he’s got a phone book. I flip through the names, figuring Misty ain’t gonna be listed. It’s been a long time since I got dumped on her doorstep. She’s probably moved away by now. And Mary Torres ain’t gonna be in here. I almost check, just to see if she’s back for some reason. Could I face her if she was? I don’t flip to the
T
s, just find Mrs. Fletcher, Misty’s mom, and let that be enough. I point to the address and ask the guy how to get there. He mutters about how close it is but draws a map on the back of our receipt anyway, like we’re idiots.

We head back to the car.

I sit in the driver’s seat longer than I need to.

“Are you okay?” Zoe asks.

I don’t remember the house, what Mrs. Fletcher looks like. Don’t matter. I guess she’ll look pretty different after fourteen years, even if I could remember.

“All right. Ready to see where I was born?” Zoe pops open the bag of chips and crunches one. I figure that’s a yes. We head into a busier part of town. I got this weird feeling that if I look up at the right moment, I’m gonna see a woman with my eyes and my hair standing on the side of the road, waiting for me to come home. But the only person on the sidewalk is a short man in black cowboy boots.

Zoe points out directions and I drive where she says, but it’s stupid. I can’t get myself to tell her I don’t remember none of this, and even if I did, I don’t wanna go backward. Last night screwed with her head and now she wants me to have some good memory come alive, or something, so I don’t feel so bad no more. I knew I shouldn’t have told her about what I did to Ben.

“We should just get out of here,” I tell her as we go back over the highway. “There ain’t nothing here.”

She ignores me. I’m figuring out how stubborn she can be.

I kinda like it.

The house is yellow, a real pretty kind with white trim. None of it looks familiar: the white fence, the rosebushes, the door with the square window. What I really wanna know, though, is which of the two houses on either side used to be my mom’s. Blue or white? Squat rambler or adobe? I pick the Spanish-looking one on a hunch and race to catch up to Zoe. She’s already rung the doorbell.

“I don’t remember this place.”

But the wrinkled old woman who opens the door and stands in the shadow of the screen—that face jogs a memory from pictures or dreams or something. She looks in our eyes, then when we don’t say nothing, looks at our hands.

“You selling something?”

Zoe digs her elbow into my ribs, and her bony-ass arm hurts.

“No. We ain’t selling nothing. We’re just … I don’t know if you remember a kid you took in a long time ago …” How the hell’s a conversation like this supposed to start?

The woman steps closer. Her hand’s on the screen handle. She wrinkles her wrinkles as she gets a good look at me.

“William Torres?” she mutters. “That you? Look at you. You’re a man,” she says, and pushes on the screen. “Years’ll do that to a person. Come in, both of you. I have cookies. Not homemade, but you kids eat shit anyway. Get in here. Can’t see you too well out there.”

Zoe holds the door for me and I step into the house.

HE LOOKS AROUND LIKE HE JUST AWOKE FROM A deep sleep. Takes in the furniture in the living room, swallows a few times, and runs his hand through his hair. I wasn’t sure he’d remember any of this, was afraid it wouldn’t do any good to come, but now I’m glad we’re here. He breathes slowly, as though he remembers the smell in the room, and catches my eye as the old woman grabs snacks from the kitchen. He takes me in his arms and kisses me in the middle of the hallway. A reassuring kind of kiss for him, I think.

“That’s sweet. This your girlfriend?” Mrs. Fletcher shoos us into the living room and we sit side by side on the couch, her across from us on the love seat.

“This is Zoe,” Will says. He opens his mouth to say more, but nothing else comes out.

“Julie. Nice to meet you. Are you from Colorado, too?”

“Colorado?” I repeat. “No, North Dakota.”

“Way up there? How’d the two of you meet, then?”

“At school. Will came to my school.”

Julie looks at Will to confirm my words. He nods and she waits for more story to come, but there is nothing but an awkward silence, during which the clock on the wall ticks away the seconds too loudly. I clear my throat, hoping Will will say something, but it’s Julie who breaks the oppressive quiet by standing and shoving cookies in our hands.

“I remember when Misty used to babysit you. Then your momma took off and didn’t come back. You were so little you probably don’t remember none of it. Folks told Misty to contact your grandma, but we all remembered Alba when she lived here, and no one said anything when Misty didn’t call her after all. Now look at you. So tall. And you got yourself a girl.”

Will fidgets with the car keys, twisting them around his finger until he winces. I’m not sure if he’s making that face at the keys or the question he asks next. “So, do you know where my mom is? Or my dad?”

Julie’s look changes and she leans close to Will. “If Mary knew who your dad was, she’d have married the guy and wouldn’t have had her nervous breakdown. That’s why Alba abandoned her, you know. Couldn’t stand the sight of her good Catholic girl as an unmarried mom at sixteen. So she left for heaven-knows-where and Mary did her best before it got to be too much. I bet you hate her, don’t you? Your mom. But I bet she thought she was doing right by you. Misty’s always been a good girl with a smart head on her shoulders.”

I grip Will’s hand as hard as I can.

“Where’d she go? My mom.”

“Don’t know. She didn’t leave an address. Could be dead for all we know. Mary Torres was the kind of girl to let anyone talk her into anything. It’s what comes of being raised by a woman with an iron fist.”

Julie tucks a mink-gray curl behind her ear. “I’m calling Misty right now. She’s going to be floored to hear I have you in my living room again.” She picks up a phone from a side table and begins dialing. “You used to chew on that table right there. Surprised it didn’t kill you, with all the chemicals people put on furniture.”

Will and I both look at the table as Julie dials and, sure enough, the edges are ratty and missing finish. Will laughs.

“Misty, you are not going to believe who I have here—well, how in fucking hell did you know that?” Julie puts her hand over the receiver and looks our way. “She guessed it right off the bat. Says she knows you just turned eighteen. She always kept track of your birthday, you know.” She transfers her hand to her waist and gives us a saucy look. “Quiet, Misty. I’m old, I don’t got to stop cussing. What? What’s he look like? Not much like the boy we knew. Tall. He’s good-looking. He brought a girl.”

Will laughs again and it sounds like he’s on a carnival ride, with the riotous lift in his laughter rising right before the sound drops away completely.

“Yeah, you’d better talk to him.” Julie reaches the phone across the space in between the couch and the love seat. My hand goes to take it, because I’m not sure if Will is ready, but he beats me to it.

“Hello?”

There’s a scream we can all hear on the other end, then the shrill sound fades into sobs.

“Put her on speaker,” Julie demands.

Will obediently presses the speaker button and we can all hear Misty struggle for breath.

“Stop crying, girl. You can’t talk to the boy if you’re blubbering.”

Misty responds with what I think is a demand to take her off speaker, but it’s hard to be sure because the words are broken and muffled.

Will looks at me, uncertainty filling his face.

“Ask her how she’s been. What she’s been doing,” I whisper.

“Is that your girlfriend?” comes the voice on the phone, and there’s a moment of the three of us just looking at each other until we all dissolve into giggles. “I’m Misty. I don’t know if Will ever told you about me.”

“He told me about you. You were one of his good things.”

“He always was a sweet boy.”

“What’ve you been doing?” Will offers.

“Just living. Working. I got married twelve years ago and moved to California. I have two girls now. I’ve never—I never told them about you. Because I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. But I want to, all the time. I get to tell them now. What are you doing in Nevada? How’s your grandma?”

“She died a long time ago.”

There’s a moment of silent anticipation as we wait for Misty to find the right thing to say.

“I’m sorry,” she finally murmurs.

“If you’re saying that for me, you don’t gotta bother. We’re both in a better place.” There’s a moment of silence when we look at our laps or the clock or the wall. Misty’s breath rattles in the phone.

“Will. I tried to keep you. I called three different lawyers, and each one told me the same thing: I had nothing over your grandma. It didn’t matter that I’d raised you or that we were as good as family or that I loved you—no one cared because your grandma was blood. But when she came and took you, that was one of the worst days of my life. I’ve waited a long time to hear from you again. Where have you been? Where did you go when your grandma died?”

“My uncle’s,” Will says. “Then my aunt took me to North Dakota with her, but when she got married, I went to the state. Stayed with a few different families until they put me in the group home in Fargo. I kind of got in some trouble in school.”

Will stops talking and studies a small spot on his jeans before going on again.

“Got kicked out of one for fighting and then another one for … fighting again. Then they moved me to a new home … but that didn’t really work out, neither. The home leader told the state I’d be better off out somewhere I could work, ’cause I needed to stay outta trouble. So I got shipped out to the boonies and spent a summer and part of the school year working on a ranch.” Will shrugs, as though Misty can see him. “Wasn’t too bad. But some genius figured out I wasn’t even enrolled in school there and they made me enroll. But that was, like, a couple months ago, and I took off right when I turned eighteen.”

“And that’s it?”

“They tried to get me to graduate, then hang around and do this program. Community college with housing and stuff like that. But I just wanted to get the hell outta there.”

“And you came to Nevada looking for your mom?”

“No,” he says. He hesitates, slowly tracing the pattern of the couch with his finger. “But … you know where she is?”

There’s a sharp sound on the other end.

“I don’t think
she
knows where she is, baby boy. But let me tell you this—and it took me a little while to figure it out—your mom knew exactly what she was doing when she left you with me. You probably think she dumped you … that she didn’t want you.” Misty takes a deep breath. “Listen careful when I say this: your mom loved you enough to put you somewhere safe. That girl was always up and down—just like your grandma. She could have been sorted out with medication, but there was no one telling her to get to the doctor. You’d see her one time and she was high as a kite. The next time she’d have hit rock bottom.”

Will runs his hand through his hair. “Was she clean?”

Misty sighs, and we can hear her settling down into a chair or couch. “Not drugs, Will. It wasn’t that. It was her brain. It didn’t work right. She was always up when she was pregnant. Always smiling. I’d never seen her so happy for so long. Her mama—your grandma—was out of the picture and she had the house to herself and all those good hormones. … I thought things were going to be okay for her, even by herself. Then she had you and she sank.”

Will clenches a fist and makes a sound in the back of his throat. “So I fucked her up.”

Three “
No
s!” come at Will, but it’s my eye he catches to search for affirmation that he didn’t destroy his mom. I touch his wrist and he blinks.

“It wasn’t you,” Misty says. “It happens to lots of women after they have a baby. And for her it was worse because she already had problems. She lay in bed for weeks. Couldn’t get out of the house. Wouldn’t answer the phone. I let myself in every day to check on you two. I know she thought about what she was going to do. She loved you. She wrote me a letter, telling me all kinds of things. I still have it. You come see me, I’ll give it to you. Mom?” Julie lifts her head from where it had been resting in her hand. “Write down my address and number. Will, you better come see me as soon as you can, hear?”