The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel (44 page)

There was a pay phone next to the Texaco gas station on the corner, but Jory didn’t have any money. She stood across the street from the gas station and stomped her feet. There were no cars at the pump, but she could see that the station was lit up and there was someone inside. Jory walked across the street and with a pounding heart opened the glass door. A tiny bell dinged and the man behind the counter looked up from the notebook he had been writing in. “Hey there,” he said. It was warm and bright inside the station and it smelled marvelously of gasoline and new tires. Jory felt suddenly euphoric as if she had reached a place she had been searching for all her life. This sensation was just as quickly replaced with another, equally strong one. “I need to make a phone call,” she said, blushing furiously. The man in the blue overalls gestured toward the pay phone with his pen. “Except that I don’t have any change.” Jory could feel how hot her face was becoming. “I didn’t bring any with me,” she said, “and I really need to contact someone.”

“Contact,” the man said, as if he had never heard the word before. He scratched at his cheek, and Jory noticed that he had a tattoo between his fingers much like Grip’s. The man’s fingertips were all stained a greasy gray-black. He was probably only in his twenties, but his blond hair was thin enough that the light from overhead shone through it and revealed his rounded pink scalp.

“Well, I guess you can use this. But it can’t be long distance.” He picked a red rotary dial phone off the counter and moved it closer to Jory. “Gotta dial nine to get out first.” He also pulled a dog-eared phone book up onto the counter and pushed it toward Jory. “Phone book,” he said.

She began thumbing through the tissue-thin pages. Arco didn’t have that many residents. The yellow pages section was thicker than the white. Jory turned another page and then ran her finger down the list of names until she came to the one she wanted.

“Yeah?” Grip said, his voice sounding as if he had been asleep and wished he still were.

Jory’s heart lurched. “It’s me,” she said.

There was a moment of silence on the other end. “Jory?” Grip sounded suddenly much more awake. “What’s going on? Did something happen?”

“Can you come get me?” Jory could feel her eyes starting to fill. She scrubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. The gas station man peered up from his notebook at her. She turned slightly sideways. “I’m at the Texaco station on Sixteenth Avenue.”

Grip said nothing for a second. Then she heard him sigh. “Your dad is going to kill me,” he said. “He’ll probably call the cops.”

“No, he won’t,” said Jory. “I don’t think.”

“Oh, yeah,” Grip said. “He most definitely will.”

Jory listened to him breathing into the phone. “Okay, then,” she said finally. “Never mind.”

Grip sighed again. She could hear him doing something, pulling coins or keys out of his pocket. “Stay inside till I get there,” he said, and hung up.

Jory put the receiver in the cradle and pushed the phone back toward the gas station man. “Thank you,” she said.

“Supposed to get real snow tonight,” the man said. “First one of the season.” He turned a page in his notebook and leaned his elbows on the counter. “Need some snow tires?”

“I guess not,” said Jory.

“You never know,” said the man. “Here,” he said, and handed Jory a nickel. He pointed over to the two candy machines that stood next to the wall. “The Boston Baked Beans are good.”

Jory took the nickel and walked over and inserted it into the candy machine’s slot. She twisted the silver handle. A handful of brownish red pellets filled her hand. She spilled them into her mouth and began to chew.

Outside, the snow was coming down in earnest. The flakes were fat and slow and drifted through the air like duck feathers, swirling sideways as much as down. The gas pumps each wore a small rounded hat of snow.

“And it isn’t even Thanksgiving,” said the gas station man. He shook his head happily.

Grip had the ice cream truck’s heater going and the windshield wipers on. He didn’t come inside the gas station, so Jory ran out to the truck and hoisted herself up into the leather passenger seat. “Hi,” she said breathlessly, glancing at him and then away. The last time she had seen Grip he had been shirtless and struggling with her father. He was now wearing a heavy wool jacket buttoned up to his chin. It was orange and brown plaid with a fur collar. Jory had never seen it before.

Grip pulled the truck out of the parking lot. They drove down Sixteenth Avenue, the wipers making a protesting sound against the mostly dry windshield. Jory slid her hands beneath her thighs. She watched the snowflakes hitting the windshield and melting instantly against the glass. After they had gone a block or two, Grip turned. “How ’bout I take you home,” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’m not going back.”

“I think you’d better,” he said, and glanced in the rearview mirror.

“Why?” Jory noticed that he had red and gold whiskers sprouting all over his face and his hair sprung in unwashed spirals from beneath a faded blue watch cap. He looked tired and not particularly glad to see her. “Are you still worried that my dad will call the police on you?”

“It’s crossed my mind.”

Jory could feel her throat constricting, as if she had tried to swallow something a little too large. “So you would help Grace run away, but not me?”

“Is that what you think you’re doing?”

Jory said nothing. They drove on in silence past Arco’s downtown area, past Rol’s Car Bath and Tic Tac Towing and Super Thrift Drug. Jory watched a man wearing only a windbreaker slip on the icy sidewalk and catch himself by grabbing on to a lightpost. She tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. “She’s really horribly annoying, you know. When she was little, she wouldn’t let my mom and dad undress her for bed, so they just had to let her sleep in her clothes every night. And if she didn’t get her way, she would cry until she passed out. They thought about sending her to a psychiatrist when she was ten. I heard them talking about it.”

“Stop it,” Grip said.

“She’s half insane.”

“I mean it, Jory.”

“You just don’t know yet because you haven’t lived with her. Oh, wait,” she said, turning and looking at him. “I guess you have lived with her, haven’t you? So now you’ve seen her complete and utter freakiness in action.”

Grip turned the truck’s wipers on high. “She’s your sister,” he said. “And you love her.”

“Just like you do, right?” Jory could feel the lump in her throat becoming something solid, a burning densely packed lump of heat that was scalding her from inside.

“I’ll take you out to Mrs. Kleinfelter’s,” said Grip. “You can call your father from there and tell him where you are.”

Jory stared out the passenger window at the snow. At the way it was covering everything with white, making the houses and buildings and fields so much cleaner and prettier than they actually were. “She’s having someone else’s baby,” Jory said. “What do you think about that?”

“I think that’s old news,” Grip said, but he pressed on the gas pedal and the truck swerved slightly across the middle of the road. He spun the steering wheel to the left and the back end of the truck swung around in a wide arc. Jory grabbed the door handle. The truck drifted sideways toward the edge of the road and then slid slowly to a halt with a muffled thump. They sat in stunned silence as the truck engine idled and the wipers continued to squeak back and forth.

Grip rested his head against the top of the steering wheel. “God
dammit
,” he said.

“She’s only seventeen,” said Jory. Her voice cracked. “That’s not so much older than me. Than
I
.”

“Jory,” said Grip. “You’re just a kid. A fucking little kid.”

“No,” said Jory. She put both her hands up to her face and shook her head. Then she let her hands fall back into her lap. “You kissed me,” she said. “And you meant it. And that was after you knew Grace.”

“That was a mistake,” said Grip. “I should never, ever have let that happen.”

“You left me the record!” said Jory, her voice rising further still. “All the
X
’s and
O
’s.”

“Oh, God.” Grip shook his head. “I was just trying to say good-bye. And to let you know I still cared about you.”

“Are you going to marry her?” Jory asked. She pressed at her eyes with the heels of both hands. “Is that what’s going to happen?”

Grip looked down at the floor of the truck for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said. His voice was very sad. “I’d like to.”

Jory gazed at him openmouthed. “You’d be my brother-in-law.” She laughed once then, a strange laugh that seemed to rip and tear as it left her throat.

“Look, I’m so sorry if I hurt you,” Grip said. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know anything was going to turn out like this.”

“You don’t think of me like your sister,” said Jory. “Not even close.”

“No,” said Grip. “I don’t. But I think I could learn to.”

Jory shoved the truck’s door open and got out. Her feet slid in the snow on the road and she almost fell.

“Hey,” Grip called. He leaned out toward the open door. “Get back
in
here.”

Jory slammed the truck door shut and balanced herself against its side. Snow was coming down against her face and hair and the back of her neck. She could feel its icy wetness seeping into the collar of her sweater. She slid sideways down the shoulder of the road and into some snowy grass. She had no idea where she was, but she started marching blindly across what looked like a farmer’s field, its brittle weeds whipping wetly against her pant legs. She was stumbling up and down a snowy hillock when she heard the truck door slam and Grip yelling her name. She crossed her arms and tried to walk faster. She could hear him running behind her now, trying to catch up, and then she could hear him breathing and panting, his boots pounding heavily against the ground. At this, she too began to run, and she had a sudden memory of playing Fox and Geese with her father at Christmastime and of the joy-filled terror in knowing that there was no escape. Knowing that the person chasing you, the large male person chasing you, would soon be on you and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, you could do. Jory was running full out now, her arms flailing and her feet sliding beneath her, but Grip grabbed her from behind and she tried to twist out of his grasp and they both fell to
the ground. For a second she smelled snow-covered dirt and the wet wool of his coat and felt the sensation of his full weight moving on top of her, something thick and pleasurable rising in her even though her arm was pinned painfully beneath her. Grip breathed heavily in her ear and she felt the sensation again, more strongly this time, and she squirmed wondrously against the whole length of his solid bulk, but then Grip was thrusting himself off her, pulling her up with him. “Get up,” he said sharply, even though she was already standing. They stood in the field breathing plumes of smoke out into the snowy air. “I
hate
you,” she said, and he dragged her back to the truck by the arm.

They drove on past the water tower and the sugar beet factory and the alfalfa fields now covered in snow. The Birds Eye plant was shut for the winter, but the farmhouses on Chicken Dinner Road each had at least one light burning steadily, and several of their chimneys were now curling with smoke. Grip turned the truck onto Deer Flat Road and made his way down to the end to Mrs. Kleinfelter’s house. He pulled into the driveway and then stopped the truck and turned off the ignition. He turned in his seat and took one of Jory’s hands in his. She jerked her hand away as hard as she could, but he was stronger and wouldn’t let go. He turned her hand over in his and traced the lines in her palm with his finger. “You’re going to be fine,” he said. “And everything that’s happening now will only be a funny memory later on.” He frowned at her and folded all her fingers down one at a time until they were wrapped around his. “You’ll look back on this and you won’t be able to imagine that you ever felt this way. No really.” He shushed her head shaking. “You’ll be embarrassed to think you ever cared about a weird old guy like me.” He nodded. “You’ll grow up and meet a hundred more guys and you’ll probably break all their hearts and you’ll never give me a second thought, except to laugh and wonder what in the hell you were thinking.”