Taking It Page 10

  It didn’t take long.

  The car was handling funny, the engine surging. I recalled Mr. Friedlander’s lecture on overheating, how the engine gets hot in traffic, and in hot weather waiting for lights to change, so I told myself that this was happening now.

  All the engine needed was a little highway speed, let the radiator do its work. As a student, I was the one who could flush a cooling system. The temperature gauge was permanently stuck right in the middle, never showing hot or cold, one of about a thousand things wrong with this car.

  I took an off-ramp and pulled over for a while at the edge of the desert. Lincoln put his snout in my face, worried I was going to get out, worried I was going to leave him.

  “Just letting the car cool,” I said.

  I didn’t get out of the car. I just sat there, and every now and then a long diesel truck would roar by on the freeway, pinpricks of red on the corners of the trailer.

  What a mistake it is to sit here, I told myself. What did I think they would do when they caught me, give me a prize, the best daughter, the greatest sister, in North America?

  I heard the Mom-voice start up in me. If they want you they’ll find you. I didn’t start driving again even though I thought the car was cool now and it was safe.

  Coolant. I should have put in more coolant, but that didn’t matter. The road behind me was closing in, my brother on the phone to the police, the police already on the road.

  I got into the car and accelerated hard just as my mother’s voice told me I didn’t know what I was doing.

  As the needle climbed past sixty, the car drifted, all the way over to the fast lane.

  30

  The police would not turn on their flashing lights until they got close. They would use stealth, lull me into thinking there was no danger. It was like being in a department store again, the jewelry department, knowing that the security people are closing in.

  Lincoln knew before I was really aware of it—I was going too fast.

  It didn’t bother me. Speed was a kind of control. I kept the car straight down the fast lane, the headlights catching the reflection of litter in the center of the freeway, broken glass, scraps of chrome streaking by, a blur.

  The Porta-Mom was full speed now. Go ahead, if you’re so sure of yourself. Go ahead and see what happens.

  The steering wheel vibrated, but I gripped it hard. Maybe Ted would tell them I was dangerous, I thought. He would have them arrest me because he thought I was going to hurt myself. He didn’t know me very well after all, I thought, wishing I could say something to him, something to calm him down, shut him up.

  Lincoln put his snout into my ear and made a huffy bark, not wanting to deafen me with a full-throated version. Then he whined. He looked this way and that, worked his way into the backseat, the map crinkling under his weight.

  The radio was completely dead. I couldn’t get a sound out of it. At about ninety, the car stopped going any faster, began to lose power a little, and then the engine recovered, the speedometer needle falling easily toward one hundred. With the car going this fast, the vibration evened out, the ride a lot more smooth. I made the little adjustments in steering, a little to the left, a little to the right.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked Lincoln, knowing I could reassure him. I reached back to him with one hand. He was frantically shifting his weight from side to side. The map tore, and tore again, as he tossed around in the backseat. He gave my fingers a lick, but he wouldn’t sit still.

  I sighed. I would be patient with my animal companion, show him what a sweet-tempered mistress I could be. I was already being patient with the way he smelled, not exactly like the perfume department.

  Lincoln uttered one of his dog words, a moaning, howling bark that sounded almost comical, the world-famous Talking Dog.

  “Hungry?”

  I didn’t like the thought of that. There was nothing to eat. Maybe he had to pee.

  I took a firm grip on the wheel as I scented something.

  It was like knowing the store has its cameras on me, knowing they see what my hands are doing even when I don’t. I let the car gain speed even as I stopped thinking about what I was doing, watching the rearview every few seconds to see another car that looked like a police car fade away, unable to close in.

  But now I smelled fire.

  Litter from the center divide made a hiss under the wheels. It was time to slow down. It was time to ease back over to the slow lane, take another off-ramp, let the car cool.

  That’s what I wanted to do. But that’s not what happened.

  31

  There was something in the road, a black half circle, all that was left of a tire. I didn’t even see it until I was past it. I swerved, the car slipped sideways, the wheels screaming. I knew I would slow down now. Just a little slower, maybe let the needle slip back down toward eighty, maybe seventy.

  I tried to reassure myself that I was slowing down. My foot was lifting off the pedal, and I could relax. But my foot stayed right where it was. I watched myself driving, and then my hands were alive, and I wasn’t.

  I watched what they did, how they turned the wheel hard. I watched what happened next, how they had felt this coming, planned it, the lanes of the freeway vanishing.

  The car spun, the tires singing. The car swung all the way around. Headlights coming toward me, glittering. Then the car swung all the way back, full circle, the lanes of the freeway streaking under me.

  Control. I had to get control of the car. And I remembered Mr. Friedlander’s lecture, turning into a skid stops it. When the car started to swing around again, I made myself steer in the direction of the skid.

  The car stopped in its slow rotation and slid sideways until I wrestled the wheel again. There was a stink of tire rubber as I fought the car over to the edge of the road, still going too fast.

  Feather the brakes, I reminded myself.

  Way too fast.

  The car flattened something, a sign. You’re doing fine, I could hear my father say. Easy. Little by little. An orange plastic bag full of litter was ahead of me and then I could feel it explode under the car. Trash fluttered in the red glow of the brake light in the rearview.

  I feathered the brakes again. The highway was off to the left, receding. Brush slapped the bottom of the car. A chain-link fence veered toward me, brilliant in the headlights, and veered away. The ride was rough, the wheel jerking out of my grip.

  The chain-link fence swerved in, and this time I hit the brakes hard. My face struck the steering wheel, everything in the car flung forward. Lincoln slammed against the dash.

  Even then we didn’t stop, a smell of dust, the car plowing forward with locked wheels.

  We stopped. The car was filled with a booming voice, a yelling, demented god. It was a shock, and for a moment I couldn’t identify where the voice was coming from. I twisted knobs until the radio was off.

  The engine was rattling, and there was a fluttery whisper from somewhere under the hood. I set the parking brake out of habit, and turned off the headlights. I switched off the engine. The silence was solid.

  Lincoln was in the backseat again, snout in my ear. He was shuddering. I let myself droop against the steering wheel. Lincoln was making a high, reedy whistle through his nostrils. “It’s all right,” I told him.

  The dog argued, whining, yammering, then gave up being polite and barked.

  He was so loud my ears rang. I told him to shut up and I seized the door handle and gave it a good tug. The door wouldn’t open.

  I told myself to wait a second, get a better grip, try it again. The air tasted bitter. I knew the car was going to burn.

  32

  The engine was making sounds like a long breath being let out and then being let out some more. There was a smell in the air, hot metal, chemical steam. The gearshift between the seats dug into my back. All these months, I told myself, I should have been jogging, getting ready for this.

  My feet hurt, and the side window waggl
ed back and forth each time I kicked it, but nothing else happened. At last it started to crack, and finally one last kick and there were glass pebbles all over the front seat, all over me. I pulled at chunks of the glass, the stuff bending back and forth, fighting back. It broke away in my hands.

  I knew what would happen next. A burning car hisses and squeals, rubber and plastic and grease sizzling. After it burns for a while it blows up.

  I fell, hard. I was dizzy. It was cool out here, the gravel at my cheek. I coughed, inhaling sand. Lincoln tumbled out of the car after me.

  This was when it would explode.

  I got up and ran. I didn’t run very well, some of the dead plants stretching long, skinny branches that caught at me. We were farther from the highway than I had expected, scruffy weeds and sand underfoot. The earth was uneven, with bare places with nothing but gravel, and what looked like old beer cans in the starlight.

  Blood was running from my nose. I slowed to a walk, crunching dead weeds and baked plastic bags underfoot. I brushed fragments of glass off my front. When I reached the edge of the freeway I was sure someone would stop, but a car passed and didn’t even slow.

  Lincoln stayed close, and when I looked down at him he looked up at me, Now what?

  There were so many stars. I tilted my head to look and stayed like that for a while. A truck rumbled by on the freeway, and I was sure it would stop, sure that everyone could see the Mustang stuck in the middle of the desert, but nobody saw. It was the same color as much of the sand, dead white. It was like being nowhere.

  The blood from my nose was beginning to dry, the clotting factors you read about in detective stories, the blood proteins going to work. It gave me a good idea how much time was passing. The edge of the freeway was strewn with bits of glass among the coiled fan belts and ribbons of tire rubber. A bone stuck out of what looked like a scrap of fur.

  I kept looking back at the car, expecting fire, but nothing happened. The sight of the car hooked me, hurting. It was the car my father had given me, my father planning the purchase, keeping it secret, leading me out onto the front lawn that Sunday afternoon. I remembered his smile, his shy, “What do you think?”

  Minutes were passing and no one stopped. I hadn’t pictured desert like this, Barstow a scuzzy glow of lights to the west. There was a flattened cardboard box so old and dried out it was stuck to the sand. There wasn’t even that much traffic now, and when a truck approached I could hear it long before I could see it, an engine getting closer and closer and then sweeping by me with a sudden, dry wind, grit in the air.

  When someone spoke to me, I didn’t bother to answer at first. I had turned into someone who was doing nothing but waiting, standing, not expecting anything.

  Maybe it hadn’t even been that long, ten minutes, twenty. I had the vague impression of a recreational vehicle, one of those metal houses on wheels, parked way up on the road. The voice belonged to a woman, and I turned to look at her when I realized that she was close to me, saying something in a soft voice.

  “That your car?” she said, just confirming something. She was just a person, not a cop, T-shirt, short pants, rubber thongs on her feet.

  I could speak. “It’s mine,” I said.

  “Was there anyone else inside?” Gravel was creeping between her rubber soles and her feet, and she stood on one leg, took off her rubber sandal and shook out a pebble.

  There was Lincoln, I wanted to say, but he was sitting there, made nervous by the woman, peering at her from behind me.

  “Just you and the dog,” the woman said, answering for me.

  The way I nodded made her put out a hand, touching me lightly on the arm. “Are you all right?”

  33

  I was waiting for Ted.

  It was cool where I was, even a little cold, the air conditioner doing too good a job. Sometimes a car would pass on the road beyond the parking lot, a small pickup, and I was sure this was Ted. But for a long time it wasn’t, and people came into the room, people in uniform eating Chee-tos, while I breathed against the glass. I watched cars go back and forth in the smog.

  And then he was there. Ted got out of his pickup and tucked in his shirt where it had slipped out. He ran his hand over his hair. He took off his dark glasses and folded them, and put them carefully in his shirt pocket. He squinted now in the morning sunlight, walking briskly through the heat.

  I could see him through the tinted glass from the snack room, a long cafeteria table and vending machines, Fritos, Coke. There was a sign on the wall, SAFETY BELTS ARE LAW. I didn’t want him to know I had been standing there, waiting. I unfolded a newspaper, want ads, crossword puzzles. My purse was on the corner of the table.

  I noticed the shoes when he came into the room. I also noticed how much he looked like Mother, not just like Dad. He had the same way of smiling when he wasn’t happy.

  He was wearing his dress shoes, the black oxfords.

  “You got dressed up,” I said. “Nice slacks.”

  Ted smiled, but his eyes were bloodshot.

  “I look terrible,” I said, before he could say anything else.

  “You look wonderful to me,” he said.

  I folded up the newspaper carefully, a neat pile, the tiny printing of the want ads, the crossword puzzle with its blank spaces. “They said they’d x-ray my nose if I wanted, but they were sure it isn’t broken.”

  “I have some stain remover at home,” he said.

  I glanced down at my dress. It was going to take a professional cleaner to rescue this silk. It was probably hopeless. “They towed the car.” I was going to add that it was at a Chevron station with a snapped axle and an engine that would have to be replaced.

  “We can talk about it later,” he said. It was nice to sound like this, two smart people playing Conversation, “fun for the entire family.”

  Something about him irritated me. Maybe he thought it was no use telling me what he thought. Maybe he thought I was emotionally disturbed and a frank talk would be too much for me to take. Maybe the Highway Patrol officers had said as much: You’ve got a really shaken young woman there, Mr. Charles.

  “I think you’ll feel better after a shower,” he said. “Use some of that soap Connie left.”

  I held on to the table. It was one of those indestructible surfaces, false wood grain, a shiny metal strip all the way around the edge. Someone had spilled some coffee days ago, and it was still there, a beige scab.

  Ted sat down next to me, patient. But not really patient, I thought, acting patient, because he thought that was what I needed. Maybe he just wanted to get out of here.

  Ted didn’t say anything, just looked at me and took my hand. It was this gesture that made me look away and close my eyes. He held one of those, one of the hands that lied to me.

  It’s amazing how my voice can sound sometimes, calm, smooth, and other times I can hardly get a word out. This time I sounded okay—not great, but pretty good. “Your money’s in my purse,” I said.

  He nodded wearily. It took what seemed like an hour, but at last he said, “The money doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters,” I said. “What if I said I threw it all away, flung it into the wind as I drove along the freeway? What if I said the car burned up, and all the money?”

  “I’d say we should look in your purse, see if it’s there.”

  I gave him a look: Okay, maybe you’re right.

  “Where’s the dog?” he asked.

  “He couldn’t stay in the food service area,” I said, “because of the health laws.”

  “So what did they do, shoot him?”

  It was a terrible thing to say, but I couldn’t help laughing, just sitting there for a moment with my brother.

  It was hot out. Lincoln was in the shade behind a building, tied up with bright nylon rope. Someone had given him a big clean ashtray full of water, and a box of dried cat food. There was nothing left of the cat food but chewed-up cardboard.

  I waited for Ted to unlock the pi
ckup. The top of the Highway Patrol building was a collection of antennas and satellite dishes. It was amazing that so many words could be coursing through the sunlight, but I couldn’t feel any of them.

  Ted said, “We’ll pick up Dad at the airport about noon.”

  34

  We picked up Dad, the airport parking lot crowded, Dad standing outside Arriving Flights with one of his expressions, his face calm so you don’t know what he’s thinking.

  There was so much smog we couldn’t see the mountains in the distance. We were all three in the cab of the truck, and that kept us quiet, talking about safe subjects, traffic, sports—magic talk—making troubles go away for a few minutes.

  As we swung into Ted’s neighborhood, Dad said, “The insurance company will take care of everything.”

  I almost felt sorry for him. He thought maybe that was all he had to say, explain how a procedure would take care of everything, the legal mind. Everything’ll be okay—all we have to do is fill out this form. I tried to picture myself six months, a year from then, and my mind was a blank.

  In the shower you can forget there is a life out there, streets and houses. There is nothing but the hot water, and the steamy air.

  I took a long time drying myself, and I could hear them. They were talking, the two of them—contractors’ licenses, night classes in accounting. I wiped the mirror and looked at myself.

  I made my entrance, drying my hair. Dad was sitting on the couch, his hands in his lap. He was looking at me, his gaze steady. He met my eyes and did not look away. The three of us made the living room seem crowded.

  I sat there in one of Ted’s V-neck T-shirts and a pair of his jeans, the legs rolled up. When I moved a leg the denim hung baggy and loose, like I had lost thirty pounds overnight.

  I got up and went outside, Lincoln slobbering on my fingers. Dad followed me, as I had wanted him to, and I stood outside on the concrete slab. The hibiscus had lost all of its blossoms, little yellow scraps on the concrete, fragments of popped balloons.