The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo (19 page)

They stuck to the plan. They would remake their lives. To a person, the Kalamazooans had a vested interest in making it work. They’d voted on it, all except the children and the institutionalized—an amazing show of solidarity, an unheard-of level of support. By following the proposal to the letter, they believed there could be freshness in familiarity. Originality in a copy. New in the old. Change without change.

Of course, they soon realized what the Mapes family already knew: Such dreams are more impossible than swallowing a city.

Your three-year-old’s primitive drawings, the autographed photo of Ray Bolger, the deck of cards you bought in Paris when you were eighteen, love letters written to your ex-sweetheart, porno tapes you couldn’t admit to having, the half-ounce of weed in your bottom drawer, the flattened penny you placed on the tracks in 1957, the one poem you’ve ever written, penciled on a napkin.

No one had calculated the value of these possessions. They hadn’t thought it through. They’d been caught up in the heat of the moment. Sure, a few people undoubtedly secreted away their most cherished tokens before Audrey came calling. But most didn’t. As time passed and they settled into their “new” lives, they felt a nagging incompleteness, an unnamable sensation of loss. Something wasn’t right. They squirmed in their recliners.

“I don’t think they gave us the same one we had before. This thing puts my ass to sleep.”

“Honey, give it time. That old one was broken in, remember?”

“Humph.”

Discomfort turned to annoyance.

When the local news went to its nightly “Audrey Watch,” they grabbed the remote. Switched to CNN. MSNBC. Fox News. On every channel, the millennium was approaching. Computers weren’t encoded properly. Y2K loomed on the horizon.

The family gathered in front of the TV, shivering.

In 1999, McKenna rented a car and drove to Kalamazoo. Like most Americans, she had earned her license on her sixteenth birthday. Unlike most Americans, her fourth time behind the wheel came at age twenty-seven.

She preferred public transportation. McKenna rode the bus to the Old Kent on Plainfield where she worked as a full-time teller. The twenty-minute trip allowed her to read, think, and write before she had to turn off her mind and deal with customers for eight hours. Every day, she sat in the same bus seat—third row, left side. When someone happened to be in her spot, she took the nearest one available, but this always soured her mood and meant that she would have a bad day.

She had worked at the bank for four years, since earning her B.A. in philosophy and English from Aquinas College. Murray had long ago stopped asking if McKenna was going to “use” her degree, as if an education was a screwdriver.

One year ago, she’d completed her conversion to Catholicism. She and Grandma Pencil attended weekly mass together at St. Monica’s. The two were tall and lean, of identical height, with severe cheekbones. No makeup. Their shoes were low-heeled and closed-toed. They favored conservative, loose-fitting dresses, earth tones or navy blue, sometimes with a subtle floral pattern. Occasionally, they wore each other’s clothes. When entering and exiting the church, arms linked, people asked if they were mother and daughter.

Driving on the open expressway, McKenna was overwhelmed. She felt vulnerable. She’d never been naked in front of anyone, not since she was a baby, but this is what she imagined it would feel like. Her flaws were on full display. Every person in every car whizzing past was witness to a petrified lady gripping the wheel of a tin can, and they laughed at her. She was drifting over the center line, driving too slowly, sitting with improper posture.

She refused to speed up. Rolling along with nothing but a thin layer of metal between her and the pavement? Fifty-five was fast enough, thank you. McKenna knew about metal. Kalamazoo knew about metal now, too. Metal was a joke.

Despite the pleasant June weather, she kept the windows closed. Too noisy, that wind. The radio on, but very low. Air conditioner off. She heard it used up gasoline, and she was not going to be stranded out here. Just in case, she’d made certain there was a gas can in the trunk. And flares and a first aid kit. And a crowbar on the seat next to her. She nibbled daintily at the Hershey bar her father had given her.

Neither Murray nor Toby wanted to come along. If they had, she wouldn’t be driving, that’s for sure. She wouldn’t be so tense. She had asked. Pleaded. Laid a guilt trip.

“Almost
two years
, Dad. Don’t you even care how she’s doing?” “I can throw a rock and hit someone who’ll tell me how she’s doing. I don’t need to go to Kalamazoo for that.”

“She hasn’t been on the news in months. She could be sick.” Toby came through the front door and immediately closed all the living room blinds. “Watch the windows. There’s a blue Saturn out front. Probably some goddamn freelancer snooping around.” “
Please
, Dad. I’m officially begging.” “Sit down, Kojack. That’s McKenna’s Saturn.” “Kenny’s?” Toby chuckled. “My bullshit meter’s going off.” “Don’t call your sister that. It’s stupid. Grow up.”

Toby had gotten his own apartment in 1998 and was now a supervisor in the Outdoors Department at Lowe’s Home Improvement. He could really talk awnings. On the weekends, he flexed his oily wares for regional bodybuilding competitions. Murray still put in his forty at Hanson Mold, still bought five Lotto tickets a week, still bore the white beard he’d grown after Misty died nine years ago. He lived alone and no longer cracked Catholic jokes.

“Okay, Mr. Discipline,” Toby said. “What ever you say.” He dropped into the recliner, which groaned. He looked at McKenna. “So why’d you rent a car, Ken?”

“To see Audrey.”

The playfulness drained from his face. “Are you fucking
crazy
?” On his temple, a pair of veins bloomed. His knee bounced. “Tell me you’re kidding. Is she kidding, Dad?”

Murray, eyes closed, hands folded, gently rocking, didn’t answer.

“Why would you do that?” Toby said. He was on the verge of tears. “Oh wait, let me guess. You’re a
Christian
now. You want to save her soul. Did Grandma put you up to this?” His searched the room for something inexpensive and dramatic to smash, so he could make his point without using these pesky words. Finding nothing, he sputtered, “Can’t that old bag leave Audrey alone?”

Murray opened his eyes. “Cool it, sport. Annabelle’s recovering, remember. And she’s still your grandma. You better hope you never end up in a hospital.”

“Grandma has nothing to do with it,” McKenna answered. Her heart was in a sprint, threatening to snap her chest like finish line tape. Her voice, however, sounded relaxed and steady, and she was proud of herself. “She’s my sister. She’s family.”

“Those reporters are going to eat you alive. Look at you.”

“Are you scared of something I might say?”

“Everything.” He shook his head. “Anything. Fuck.”

She understood Toby’s concern. The media blitz had only recently ebbed to a tolerable level. From October of 1997 until May of 1999—nineteen solid months—legitimate reporters and paparazzi alike had been daily presences at the house. From the beginning, Murray, Toby, McKenna, and Grandma Pencil had sworn a solemn oath to never say a word to the press. Whenever possible, they would avoid being photographed. Since this was inescapable, however, Murray bought everyone huge sunglasses. He also suggested wearing hats and engaging in unabated nose-scratching whenever stepping outside.

“Why don’t you come, Tobe?” McKenna said. “We’ll rescue Audrey together.”

He thought about this, trancelike. A small vertigo nested in his eyes. At last, he seemed to wake up and see the living room, his father, McKenna. He drew a deep breath through his nose. “I think she needs to rescue us.”

Audrey wasn’t tough to find. She had arrived downtown. Main Street was closed. A circumventive detour connected the east and west sides of the city. Traffic was heavy everywhere, and frequent blocked lanes exacerbated the problem. Construction workers held STOP and SLOW signs, allowing only one stream at a time to pass. New power lines, new street signs, new bus stops, new homes and buildings.

Drivers were ornery. They mouthed obscenities, tapped the roofs of their cars, threw up their hands, punched their steering wheels.

As McKenna was pushed along with the flow, not knowing where to stop, the radio DJ began talking. She turned up the volume.

“If you are
tired
of Chopin, then by all means, drop by the studio and donate any of your classical records or CDs. Anything! And by ‘studio,’ I refer of course to the reconstructed basement of my parents’ new-but-not-new house, our temporary WMUK base of operations. Official word, again, from the powers-that-be, is that it was administrative ‘oversight’ not to preorder even
one
of the records Audrey was planning on turning into
dinner
. . . Whew. But bygones and all that. Here we are. One hundred watts of power from a five-hundred dollar transmitter kit, generously donated by the fine folks at McDonald’s, where good food equals good times. I’m playing selections from
Chopin’s Greatest Hits
if you missed the first eleven times I’ve pointed this out. This one’s for you, Audrey A big fat
thank you
, Audrey! Good luck eating the Radisson this weekend. Why the hell not. And bite me, FCC. This is your campus public radio, WMUK.”

McKenna found a parking place on a residential side street. She walked to Rose Street and followed it four blocks north. Downtown Kalamazoo looked like a war zone. Fire trucks and ambulances. Vacant lots gutted by excavators. Lots planed by graders. Herds of yellow machines roaming the streets like dinosaurs. Pile drivers, front loaders, cement mixers. Thick-armed men unloading bricks from flatbeds. Construction workers in orange vests smoking on the curbs, dozing off, leaning on their shovels. Towering mounds of dirt everywhere. Jackhammers clanking, ripping through pavement. Cops posted on every corner, hurrying the occasional dazed citizen around open sewers and pyramids of aluminum pipes. A haze of dust stung McKenna’s eyes and coated her tongue.

“You’ll need one of these, ma’am before you go any farther,” a woman said. She stuck a filter mask into McKenna’s hand. Mc-Kenna strapped it on and took a dozen steps before she realized that the woman had been a nurse.

McKenna arrived at the corner of Rose and South. The traffic light wasn’t functioning, and no cars passed along the roads, but she stopped anyway. She recognized Bronson Park on her left. Grandma Pencil had started the war there. McKenna felt a dull ache through her body, like the beginning of a fever. This place, that moment, had made her what she was today. Turning to her right, she expected to see the library. Nothing. Years ago, they’d vacationed along this road. Three pairs of Mapeses. Mom and Dad holding hands. Mom two years from dead. There should have been a row of brick buildings on both sides of South Street—a pastry shop, a dentist office, an eyeglasses store, a coffee shop, a bar.

But now, shaved scalps. That’s what was left. Two rows of shaved scalps, each one cordoned off by yellow tape. Lonely, tidy piles of swept rubble all that remained of the businesses.

McKenna’s view extended two blocks, all the way to the walking mall, where the buildings remained intact but no one walked. The entrance to South Street was blocked by orange barrels and manned by a pair of police officers. When they saw McKenna gawking, one of them spanked the air,
keep it moving
.

The next intersection was Main Street, which was also barricaded and could not be crossed. The end of the line. One block east, the Radisson hotel—what was left of it—stood in plain sight. Once the tallest building in the city, it was now half its original size. The top had been sheared off at the fifth floor, jagged like a broken bottle.

“Are you lost?” someone asked.

It was another police officer. Even partially hidden behind a filter mask, he was quite handsome. His eyes were the same soothing brown as the Hershey bar McKenna had just brought back into her mouth for the seventh time. Wavy hair, lightly dusted. Kind wrinkles encircling his eyes.

And what if she answered, “Yes, Officer Mitch. I
am
lost.”? What then? Would a dimple form on his cheek? Would his eyes sparkle? Would he lift and carry her, like Toby used to carry Audrey? Would he whisk McKenna past the barricades to the scarlet horizon, into a new life? Would he teach her, at last, how to be a woman?

“This is a restricted area,” he said. “Want me to call you a cab?”

“My sister is eating your city,” McKenna answered. “And I need to speak with her.”

Two hours later, she was issued a hard hat and a pair of earplugs and escorted to the Radisson.

They had scrutinized her driver’s license, then contacted the police chief, who contacted the Executive Director of The Mapes Initiative, who contacted Audrey’s legal representatives, who contacted Mayor Bowman, who contacted the Executive Director of The Mapes Initiative, who contacted the police chief, who contacted the foreman of the Zone 12 construction team, who sent an envoy in a telehandler to drive McKenna to the hotel.

“You’re really her sister, huh?” the envoy said. “Let me guess—older? You don’t look like her.” He was barely more than a kid. Lean and rangy, with unconvincing stubble. Wearing a sleeveless orange vest and a hard hat. His right shoulder sported a black tattoo of Audrey, a bust. She looked like a Hollywood starlet, with pouty lips, heartbreaking lashes, flowing locks.

“You’re a fan?” McKenna asked.

“Me personally, hell yes,” he said. “Don’t have to worry about college for my boy. Last two years there’s been more work than I can handle. I don’t see the family much, but I’ve saved a buttload, ma’am. A buttload.”

“Do most people feel like you?”

“Sure,” he said. “Why not?” He coughed, and then hacked a ball of phlegm out his window. “I hear griping, definitely. More lately. I think people are tired of it. Some ain’t been paid in a while, either.”

“I thought she saved Kalamazoo. That’s what the news said.”

“I don’t know about that. Tons of money from all the merch, that’s for sure. Went into the rebuilding, right into our pockets. I guess it saved us for a while. I’m going to drop you off right up there.”

“So what changed?”

He stopped the vehicle. “Who knows? I mean, she
has
been breaking the rules lately.”

“What rules?”

“She’s supposed to go in order, right? They made a whole plan for her to follow.” He drew a circle in the air with his finger. “Start on the outskirts, work her way in, a spiral. That way, everyone knows when she’s coming. Companies have their ‘Audrey’s At the Door’ shindig, pack up the personals, get out nice and calm. She’s also supposed to eat at night. This wig shop down that way?” He pointed vaguely. “Don’t tell anyone about this—they’re trying to keep it hush-hush—but Audrey’s not supposed to touch anything on the mall until next week. On Wednesday, she comes charging in at nine in the morning, starts chewing. All the wigs, the mannequins. Freaked the shit out of the customers. Owner tried to shoo her out with a broom. She ate the broom, almost took off the guy’s hand.”

“Go figure.”

“Talk to that gentleman over there,” the kid said. “He’ll take you to Audrey.”

“Thanks for your help.” McKenna stepped out of the telehandler. Before she closed the door, the kid leaned toward her.

“Oh, and tell her ‘Hi’ from Chet,” he said, winking.