“You first,” we say together.
“No, you first.” Two voices as one.
We dig around under the covers for our sweats. She giggles when she finds my underwear and tries them on. “Wow,” she says. “Boxers or briefs? Tarp.”
“She was at this breakfast place in the Sands,” Sarah says. “It won’t be easy if we find her; when she saw me last time she ran for it. God, I hated her that day. She was the only one who could save me, and she knew it. Shit! People thought my dad was so cool because he raised me alone. They had no idea what a beast he was.”
“But he’s in the slammer now,” I say. “You don’t need her to do anything but talk. How could she at least not give you that?”
“Think what it would be like to face me if you were her. Forget what I want. How much would you hate yourself if you walked out and let your kid be raised by a monster? How could you look them in the eye?”
“I know. I couldn’t. But wouldn’t you want some shot at redemption?”
“You and I would, but you and I wouldn’t have done what she did.”
This conversation is surreal. I’m trying to imagine the unimaginable, which Sarah has lived. She’s such a hero to me. If this were my mom, I’d be down here with a baseball bat.
“It was awful last time. I let everything ride on it. I sat in that car with Ms. Lemry on the way here and envisioned everything but what happened. It was five minutes from the time we saw her in the restaurant till it was over. I survived the next week only because of Moby and Lemry. There’s no substitute for a family, but real friends can save you.” She stops in the middle of the sidewalk and turns to me. “When you’ve wandered in the desert all your life, you’d be surprised what one sip of water can do.”
I’ve been aware of people’s subtle glances all this time we’ve been walking. Sarah’s scars aren’t in a league with Elephant Man or that kid in Mask, but they’re the first thing you notice. This is what it’s like for her on any street in any town, all her life. I would be tired.
“Sandy Byrnes? She worked here until about a month ago, but she left to go to California.”
“Dang.” I’m talking to Daytime Manager Bob Newman at the counter. As determined as Sarah is to go through with this, when we walked in she got short of breath and sat on the bench where others are waiting to be seated. “A month. Do you know where in California?”
“I believe it was Redding. Up north near Mount Shasta.”
“You don’t have an address or, like, a number? Maybe her cell?”
“I’m certain we have her numbers from when she was here, but I’m not at liberty to give them.”
“We’re relatives.” Then I do what I do almost as well as I played football; I lie my ass off. “We came down to surprise Aunt Sandy. She hasn’t seen us for almost ten years. We both graduated from high school this year and came down on vacation, you know, like, to surprise her. She used to baby-sit for us.” I point to Sarah. “That’s my cousin. Her parents died in a car accident when she was little. She lived with us, but Sandy took care of us mostly.”
Daytime Manager Bob Newman starts to soften.
“It was a train.”
“What?”
“Her parents. They were killed at a railroad crossing. A train.”
He glances at Sarah, who’s still trying to get her breath. She looks plenty pathetic.
“Remains were unrecognizable,” I say.
“You better be telling me the truth, young man.”
“On my mother’s grave, sir.”
“Your mother’s dead, too?”
“Oh, no, sir. I meant to say on her mother’s grave.” I nod toward Sarah.
Daytime Manager Bob Newman disappears for a moment, then returns. “Listen, son, Sandy left in pretty bad shape. I have no idea what it was all about, but we were all very worried. She worked here for years, and all of a sudden she was just panicked. If the two of you help her, more power to you. I’ve written her address on this slip of paper with the phone number she had all the time she worked here. Several of us have called; all we’ve gotten is the answering machine. I’d appreciate it if you said you got this address from a family member.”
“Your wish is my command. We were never here. And don’t worry, she’ll be overwhelmed to see us.” Overwhelmed is a word with a number of connotations. I should write political speeches.
“Slight right turn in one-point-one miles.” I love my GPS lady. For most of my driving life, she has been my girlfriend. She doesn’t get mad no matter how many times you cross her. The worst she ever says is, “At your earliest convenience, make a legal U-turn.” That and “Please return to the highlighted route.” Even if I’d had fifty girlfriends, I’m pretty sure Bathsheba would be the most forgiving one. I call her Bathsheba because in real life she gives me directions on the road; in my fantasy life she gives me directions in…never mind. That’s over. I’ve got a girlfriend.
My girlfriend is pretty quiet right now as we head for the address I finessed from Daytime Manager Bob Newman.
“He said they were still getting the answering machine. You don’t run off and leave your answering machine. Bet she’s there. Keep driving?”
Sarah is crouched, her feet planted on the dashboard. Mere mortals would lose a foot doing that in my car, but I barely notice. You don’t pull protocol on your girlfriend when she’s riding toward hell. And when she can arguably kick your ass. “Keep driving. I mean, what could she have to lose after we tell her my dad’s put away for at least fifteen years? It’s not like I want to live with her.” She’s talking herself into it.
“Exactly. And this can be the first step on her road to forgiveness.”
Sarah shoots a look at me that, were it a snake, would be an Inland Taipan, which lives in Australia and can put out enough venom with one bite to kill a hundred people. One person dies mondo rapido. Even a fat guy.
“Well, maybe not forgiveness.”
“Maybe not.”
“Redemption, then. For her. Not you. Her.”
“Just drive,” Sarah says. Should this relationship flower, I can imagine there will be one or two difficult times.
“Destination on the left in point-five miles,” Bathsheba says. Sarah takes a deep breath, scrunches farther into the seat.
I see the U-Haul truck first, parked at the edge of the first lawn in the Mountain Homes trailer park.
“You have arrived,” Bathsheba says as I pull next to it.
“Wait here.” I walk around to the back to see the truck half loaded. The front door is ajar, and I hear movement inside.
“She’s in there,” I tell Sarah when I get back in the car.
Sarah nods; stares.
“Wanna turn around and go?”
She shakes her head, her lips pursed.
We sit a moment, watching. I do not know what to do. When Sarah is this focused, you wait; and you build anxiety.
I can’t take it. “You want me to stay in the car or go in?”
She looks over at me, then back at the giant U-Haul.
“At least we got here before she took off,” I say.
“I wish I knew what I want out of this,” she says finally.
“You’re wrapping things up,” I say. “Ending this part of your life and moving on. Closure, as they say.”
“There’s more than that.”
“Say it.”
“All my life, the one thing I’ve never been able to let go of is ‘what if.’” What if my dad hadn’t come home that night? Or what if he’d just broken my arm or thrown me across the room? What if my mother had found a way to protect me, to get me away and run? The one thing everyone always said was that I was a beautiful kid. I changed my mother’s life. She used to walk down the streets all haggard and depressed, wearing sunglasses on cloudy days or long sleeves on warm days to hide the bruises. Then I came along, and people who would never have noticed her, at least noticed me. And she felt like someone. I was pretty enough to get my mother noti
ced.”
“You lost a lot.”
Understated like a true dipshit.
“I’ve never been able to stop saying ‘what if.’ I think I want her to tell me there is no ‘what if,’ that there was no way she could have done anything different. Destiny. It had to happen.”
“What would that do?”
“I could stop hoping,” she says, and closes her eyes. “I could stop wishing.”
This probably isn’t the time for it, but I can’t help myself. “Listen, Sarah. I don’t know what last night was to you, or what this trip has been. But I’m in this. I mean, I thought I was never going to get the chance to sleep with…to have…to make love. I thought it would never happen. I’ve been a comedian and I’ve been in-your-face all my life, but I’ve never been boyfriend material. I’m fat, but more than that, I’ve always been scared. My parents, all of them, have been great when it comes to taking care of me and loving me and making me feel wanted, but there’s enough neurosis among them to start a fucking clinic.”
Sarah stares.
“Listen, I’ll swim. I will. I always knew I’d have to do something after football to keep me from blowing up like the Hindenburg. Swimming could be it. It’ll take some work. I’ve tried it; I’m no natural. But I’ll do it. I’ll pare down like your other fat friend.”
Sarah puts her hand on my knee. “Angus,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“Would you shut the fuck up?”
Another request I’ve heard before.
“I just need to get through this, okay? We’ll talk about all that later. It was the first time for me, too. It was nice.”
“I wanted you to know you can’t lose everything if you don’t want to,” I say. “I will shut the fuck up now…but remember…”
“Angus.”
“Shut the fuck up?”
Inside the single-wide, Sarah’s mother looks up from the cardboard box into which she is cramming her Melmac dishes, and turns instantly pale.
Sarah says, “Hey.”
Her mother sucks the air out of the room.
In the dead silence I step forward. “I’m Angus,” I say, putting out my hand. “I’m Sarah’s, uh…chauffeur.”
She ignores my hand; or, more likely, doesn’t see it. “What are you doing here? I thought—”
“You’d never see me again?” Sarah says. “I thought that, too. I came to tell you my dad’s in jail. It’ll be at least fifteen years before he’s eligible for parole. You’re safe. I thought I needed you to testify when I was here before, but it’s over, that’s all. I thought you should know.”
Sarah’s mom drops the plate she was holding into the box and sits back on the floor, speechless.
I was born Mr. Fix-It. I cannot reconcile the silent scream between them, but even I’m smart enough to keep my mouth shut.
“Is there a way,” Sarah says, and hesitates, points to her face. “Was there a way for this not to have happened? Was there anything in you that could have grabbed me and run? Or escaped before it even was possible?”
Sandy Byrnes rises, tears streaming down her face, closes the maybe ten feet between them, shaking her head with each step. She touches Sarah’s face. “No,” she says. “I was weak, nobody. I’m still nobody. Whatever awful thing he was going to do, he was going to do.” She looks at her watch, then toward the front door. “I’m sorry,” she says. “You can say whatever you want to say to me, or think whatever you want to think. It can’t be half as bad as what I tell myself every day.”
Sarah nods. Her shoulders slump. I can’t tell if she’s defeated or relieved. Then, “If it helps,” she says, “some people stepped up to help.”
Her mother breaks into sobs, nodding. “It helps.”
“And because of them, I won’t be nobody. I won’t be like you. I’ll try to stop hating you, I will. I’ll try to forgive you. But I can’t say that will happen.”
Her mother continues nodding, bent over. Tears fall directly to the floor. “You have to go now,” she says. “You’ve seen all there is of me.” She straightens up, takes a deep breath, glances at her watch again, then nervously toward the door. “Please. Go.”
“Is that the last word you want me to hear?” Sarah says. Ice forms in her voice.
Sandy starts to respond, glances at the door again, and simply nods.
I rise and put my hand in the middle of Sarah’s back. “Let’s blow this pop stand, baby,” I whisper. “You got all you’re going to get.” In my heart of hearts, I want to beat Sarah Byrnes’s mother to death. In the furthest corners of my imagination I cannot accommodate anyone having done what she did, lived all those years with it, then simply saying, “Go.”
We stand on the stoop outside the trailer, catching our breath. A girl, maybe junior high, peddles her bike up the street. A dog barks. The wind rustles a broad-leafed tree. We walk toward the car; Sandy Byrnes stands in her doorway, looks down the street, and I see a flash of panic. She glances back at us. “You need to go,” she says. “Hurry.”
Something is not right here. Hell, there’s a lot not right, but something specific. I see the girl on the bike approaching. She looks right at us, peddling faster. Sarah’s mom looks directly at her, turns away. That’s where the panic is coming from.
“We’ll go in a minute,” I say, and squat.
Sandy disappears into the trailer.
Sarah says, “Let’s go now, Angus. I know what I need to know.”
“In a sec,” I say, and stay put.
Sarah walks to the car. The girl rides past her, and their eyes lock. The girl slows. Sarah turns. The girl drops her bike in the yard, glances back at Sarah, says hi to me, and yells, “Mom!” She disappears into the trailer.
Sarah freezes, staring at the bike lying on the lawn. I run to her, trace her gaze to the bike. Attached to the middle of the handlebars by two thin wires, a personalized license plate—the kind you get in any drugstore in the country—reads SARAH.
“Let’s go,” I say.
Sarah stalks toward the trailer.
“Come on, Sarah. Let’s go.”
She disappears through the door. Shit.
Might as well make it a party. When I get to the door, Sarah is face-to-face with her sister. Backlit by the living-room window, their profiles are astonishingly similar. My Sarah is bigger and stronger, but Little Sarah is a miniature replica. Their mother sits on the couch.
Little Sarah says, “Hi. Who are you?”
“I’m Sarah.”
“Really? Me, too. What are you doing here? Do you know my mother?”
“Not really,” Sarah says. “I knew her a long time ago.” She reaches up, almost involuntarily, and runs the back of her finger along Little Sarah’s face. Little Sarah doesn’t pull back, stares at Sarah’s scars.
“What happened?”
“A guy burned me,” Sarah says, and turns toward the door. “Get me out of here,” she whispers, and steps past me.
In less than a minute we’re speeding toward the freeway.
“She replaced me.”
I start to protest, reframe it, but no. She replaced her. We’ve driven in silence more than an hour; leaving the outskirts of Reno, then Sparks, in the rearview mirror, hurtling into the desert. I’m averaging twenty miles above the speed limit, trying to get the girl I hope to love far away from that horror as fast as I can. Man, nobody should have to go through that. That shit is biblical.
We ride another half hour or so, then, “Right when you think things can’t get worse.”
“It gets way worse,” I say back.
I want to say, It’s okay. Screw her. You don’t need her. But it’s her mom. I mean, she marries a guy mean enough to scar you for life, then he does, then she leaves, for Christ sake. She leaves. How do you not take your kid with? I can’t stop asking that question. I mean, you buy your kid a dog, the dog gets rabies, and you send them out to play? It isn’t okay; it will never be okay, so I don’t say, “It’s okay.”
; “She was pregnant. She left because she was pregnant,” Sarah says. “That girl was just the right age. I was already ruined, and she knew she couldn’t protect her new baby.” She shakes her head, stares out at the desert whizzing by. “But she named her Sarah.”
“I don’t know what to say,” I tell her. “That’s just so goddam low.”
She plugs in the Nano, and John Dawson Read sings sweet through the car speakers. “A friend of mine is going blind…”
“When I was little,” Sarah says after long miles of the same song over and over, “I couldn’t shake the idea that something was wrong with me. I mean, I knew I was burned, I knew that was wrong, but I couldn’t shake that something was wrong with me before that. I thought I must have been shiny before it happened, because everyone said so. But it couldn’t have been true, because every shiny thing I ever had, I protected; little charms and rings you got out of Cracker Jack, steely marbles, cheap necklaces. If it was shiny, I sheltered it. Even if my mother didn’t take care of me, I would have found a way to protect me if I was really shiny. That’s what I thought.” She shakes her head, and for the first time in our short life together, I watch her floodgates give.
I pull the car onto the shoulder, shove it in park, and wrap my big ol’ meaty arms around her. She struggles for a split second and melts, sobbing until the front of my shirt feels like my undershirt at the end of two-a-days in August.
“You’re way shiny,” I tell her. “You are.” She shakes her head no and sobs harder. I stroke her hair and rub her back and we sit.
I awake to a sharp rap, and my driver’s side window is filled with the torso of a Nevada highway patrolman. “Everything all right in there?” he says as I roll down the window.
“Yes, sir.”
“So why are you parked on the freeway and not at the rest stop two miles down the road?”
“It was kind of an emergency,” I say. Sarah sits up, her scarred face streaked, hair matted.
“I was told on my radio this car’s been here more than two hours.”
“Yes, sir.”
He bends down, peers in. Sarah glances at him, then away. But he sees her and must think he’s looking at some of the most seriously pathetic shit he’s seen all day. He nods. “This is unusual enough for probable cause,” he says. “I could search your car.”