Bill Warrington's Last Chance Page 13

“Sorry,” April said. “That’s all we’ve got.” She emphasized the “we.”

  The attendant snorted. “You and Gramps, eh?”

  He stood and took a step to his right so that he was standing in front of her, the counter and the waters and the hundred-dollar bill between them.

  “Well, I’m sorry that’s all you got. But I still can’t change it.” He looked at the bill. “We don’t usually get people in here flashing a lot of money around.” He leaned forward. “Unfriendly people.”

  “I’m not flashing anything around.” Something about what she’d just said didn’t sound quite right to her.

  The attendant smirked.

  That did it for April. There had to be another gas station or 7-Eleven down the road, even though this one was the first one they had come across for miles. Her grandfather would just have to wait. It was his own freakin’ fault. He’d wanted to take the back roads, for some reason. Stare out the window at passing trees. She was sorry he was thirsty, but there was no way she wanted to spend another second sharing space with this weirdo.

  “I just wanted to buy some water. But . . . whatever.”

  She reached for the bill. As she touched it, the attendant slammed his hand on half of it. The tips of his fingers touched hers. April pulled back.

  “Maybe we can work something out,” he said.

  The coolness on the back of April’s neck zoomed down her back.

  “I mean, we have several options here,” he said. “I could pretend that I thought you handed me a ten-dollar bill. Didn’t see that third zero. You’d get water, and a few bucks’ change to boot. I mean, if your grandpa got this kind of money, he probably wouldn’t even miss it.”

  “Can I please just have my money back?” April said, her voice small.

  “Of course you can.” But the attendant didn’t move his hand. “Nobody here saying you can’t. Still a free country. But then you wouldn’t have your water, and you ain’t gonna find another station or store or nothing on this road for miles and miles.”

  She knew that he was telling her something, with that “miles and miles.” She just couldn’t process it at the moment.

  “In fact, you’re the first ones to stop by since about six o’clock,” he said. “Sometimes I go through the whole shift and nobody comes in here.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. What was okay? “I guess we’ll just have to go without.” Another of her mother’s sayings: go without.

  “Well, now, hold on,” the attendant said. “Like I said, we got options.”

  He leaned back to look out the window at their car. April did the same. Her grandfather was sitting with his head against the window, the way he did when he dozed off while she was driving. The attendant smiled again. He leaned closer. April smelled tobacco. Her stomach felt funny again.

  “You do something for me,” he said, slowly, his eyes wandering, “and I’ll let you have those waters for free.”

  Leave, April heard in her head. Turn around and get out. But she couldn’t. Even as she knew she should, she couldn’t. She would never again make fun of a horror movie where the victim stood immobile while the knife or hatchet or whatever was about to kill came closer and closer.

  The attendant smiled again. “What do you say?”

  Things were starting to spin. The attendant, his left hand still on the bill, moved his right hand to beneath the counter. April heard a zipping sound.

  “Check it out,” he said. “You want your water, don’t you?”

  When she and Heather were both about nine years old, Heather found a stash of porn in her older brother’s closet. Among the lurid magazines was a videotape. She showed it to April one afternoon after school. April still remembered the title: Back Door Booty. And she remembered getting sick to her stomach when the camera zoomed in on the eponymous action.

  “What’s the matter with you?” the attendant asked, his face red. “Look!”

  April lurched forward, grabbing onto the counter. It was a vomit projectile of Exorcist proportions. The attendant yelped and jumped back. He looked down at the dark, wet Rorschach-type pattern that had suddenly soiled his shirt. But what April saw—as the attendant jumped about, looking for something to wipe himself with—was a fantastically ugly thing, a swollen veiny worm made uglier still by splotches of sickly brown and green.

  The dragon on his neck strained to get at her. The attendant opened his mouth to yell again but another spasm seized April and she let loose with the second liquid missile. It wasn’t as powerful a stream as the first, but, because he was standing away from the counter, it hit him lower, a direct hit. He jumped back farther and hit his back against the rear counter where he kept coffee and cigarettes. April saw the coffeepot jiggle and splash. He screamed in pain.

  “Get outta here!” he screamed. He hadn’t been able to stuff himself back inside his pants, and April was surprised at how suddenly vulnerable he was, how powerless he looked. She knew without actually forming the thought that he couldn’t come after her, couldn’t make a call, couldn’t do anything until he took care of his goddamned penis. “Get the fuck out!”

  April wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She saw that she had leaned far enough forward to avoid soiling her clothes. She also saw that the hundred-dollar bill had largely escaped, but the two water bottles had taken a severe hit. She grabbed the bill.

  The attendant was still hopping about, screaming, trying to zip up.

  April shoved the bill in her pocket and started toward the door. Before she reached it, though, she stopped, turned, walked to the cooler, and took two clean bottles of water. Then she walked out.

  It took all her willpower not to run. It seemed important not to do so, although April wouldn’t have been able to say why.

  “Nice and easy,” she said softly, using the words her grandfather used when first teaching her to drive. “Smooth and steady.”

  Her grandfather was apparently asleep, his head against the passenger-side window, mouth forming a small O. April wondered how he had slept through all that, as if what had happened a few moments ago had raised a ruckus that could be heard for miles.

  “Grandpa,” she called. He didn’t respond. She called his name again, but he didn’t move. She tried to see the rise and fall of his chest, to make sure he was breathing, but her own breathing was so heavy that she didn’t trust her initial impression that he was completely still. Dead still.

  Her hands were shaking, but she managed to get the key in the ignition. Swallowing the bile that rose up in her, she forced herself to think only of the immediate task at hand. Foot on brake. Turn the ignition. Shift into drive. Ease up on the brake—nice and easy. Check mirrors. Check ’em again. Press down on the gas pedal, smooth and steady.

  She turned left—hoping that she was now driving in the same direction she and her grandfather had been traveling before they stopped. It had to be. She remembered turning left into the gas station. So she should turn left to get back on the road in the same direction.

  “Grandpa, is this right?” she asked. “Am I going in the right direction?”

  Her grandfather didn’t move.

  Keeping her eye on the road, she reached over and, hesitating at first, fearful of what her action might confirm, poked her grandfather.

  “Is this the right way?” she asked again. Again, no response.

  She gripped the steering wheel tighter and forced herself to take a few deep breaths. She tried to deny what she knew to be true: God or someone somewhere hated her and everything was crashing down around her. Her grandfather was dead—dead!—and she had not a clue about what to do. She was in the boonies filled with pervs. Her dreams of singing, of San Francisco, of escape from Woodlake, Ohio . . . all gone. And what had she been thinking, anyway?

  She tried to focus on staying to the right of the white lines, tried to empty her mind. They—she!—had a full tank of gas; she was bound to end up somewhere before the tank ran dry. But then what?

  Maybe sh
e should count, out loud, the divider lines in the middle of the road, the way she did as a little girl at the start of a road trip with her parents. She knew it drove her parents, especially her father, crazy. Out of the corner of her eye she could see, as she counted, the turn of their heads toward each other, the palms-down motion that her mother made to signal her father to keep calm. But at about number 50, he’d ask that April not count so loud; it was hard for him and her mother to talk—as if they ever did. At around 150, he’d “suggest” that she count to herself. But April would protest that she couldn’t keep track that way. Her father grunted and let her continue for a while, but she never made it past 223 before he ordered her to sit back in the seat and be quiet, and let others enjoy the ride, too.

  Now April couldn’t count at all. The numbers got jumbled. She bit her lip to stop the tears. She told herself to be strong. Can’t pull over and cry like a little girl. She wasn’t in the back of her parents’ car anymore. She needed to take care of things herself, handle things. She tried to form a plan. But what could she do? She didn’t know where they were, where a hospital was, nothing. She sure as hell couldn’t turn around and go back to the gas station for help.

  The thought of that gas station almost knocked her off the road.

  And then, suddenly, her grandfather sat up. He looked ahead, as if trying to spot a landmark, then turned to April.

  “Did you see that? Did you see him hit that ball?” he asked. He was smiling, his eyes wide with wonder. “Maybe he’s not a fruit, after all.” He sat back and stared ahead, his eyes fixed on something far away. “Wasn’t that great, Clare?”

  A few minutes later, April heard him breathing deeply and knew that he had fallen back asleep. Or had never awakened. She kept her eyes on the road, which seemed to stretch out before her forever.

  Sweaty hands, balls of fire.

  Balls on fire.

  April started laughing so hard she thought she might have to pull off to the side. That sobered her up. She had no intention of stopping until the tank was dry.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Marcy found herself in April’s room. She’d been wandering through the house again and ended up here, as she often did when her mind would not slow and her eyes burned and her legs screamed out for movement. She’d been home alone plenty of times when April was at school or sleeping over at a friend’s, but the house had never seemed as empty as it did now.

  She stood at the foot of the unmade bed. The first thing she would tell her daughter when they returned home would be, “Now, go up and make your bed.” April would see the light. She would see that her mother wasn’t one of these soccer moms who caved in to their children, who cried at the first tough situation. She would see that right was right.

  The closet door was open, where April’s clothes hung haphazardly on hangers or were piled in wobbly stacks on the shelves or lay in multicolored puddles on the floor. Her desk, though, was highly organized: pens in their holders, notebooks stacked neatly in the corner, photographs—April and her at the beach, toddler April and Patrick in front of their home, a dozen or so pictures of April and her friends, cheek to cheek—were taped collage-style on the wall behind the black computer monitor. Her keyboard and mouse sat on the desk surface, waiting. Those were the only things Marcy had touched in April’s room for years, other than the clothes she rearranged when she brought in new ones. Things would be different now if she hadn’t touched those things. But she’d had to do it, she told herself whenever the question popped into her head, which was often. No use thinking about it.

  But she did anyway.

  She’d had the right to do what she did. She was the mother.

  Marcy started out of the room. Maybe she should clean it up a bit, a sort of welcome-home gift for when April came back.

  No. That would be rewarding bad behavior.

  What she really should do, she thought, was trash the place. Strip the bed, upend the mattress, throw the computer monitor through the window, and rip down all the posters.

  Those posters. Those goddamned posters.

  She looked above to the one she hated most: the skinny pervert holding the guitar between his legs, the skanky singer with her hand on the neck of the guitar as if she were holding his dick. Why on earth had she allowed it to stay up there, where April could stare at it while lying in bed, all the time in the world to be brainwashed into how much fun these people were having, how rich they were, how popular and how okay drugs and promiscuous sex were. April had of course challenged her, asking how she, Marcy, knew that they were into drugs and sex, insisting that for all she really knew, Don’t Care was a Christian band.

  All the more reason to believe they’re into drugs and orgies, Marcy had responded. Ever heard of Jimmy Swaggart, Jimmy Baker, all those other . . . Jimmies?

  But that wasn’t the argument that had led to all this. The argument that started all this began, as the huge ones always do, unexpectedly. It was the day after The Slap, as Marcy had come to think of the first and only time she had ever struck her child. April was in the family room watching TV while Marcy was putting some clean clothes in her closet. On the way out of the bedroom, she noticed that April had left her computer on, with her e-mail program open.

  Marcy didn’t hesitate, and a few minutes later yelled down for April to come up immediately. When April arrived, Marcy pointed at the computer and told her that she had opened the “Sent” folder and read several of the messages. And she wanted to talk about the one she had sent to a boy named Keith Spinelli, the one that sounded a little too forward, a little too available, a little too goddamned slutty.

  Marcy’s shoulders slumped now as she stood in front of the computer. She recalled how April’s eyes went wide, her face red. She seemed unable to breathe for a moment.

  How could you? It’s not enough you slap me around—you have to pry into my personal stuff, invade my privacy?

  April had chosen the very words that would trigger an avalanche of guilt and doubt. She had only slapped April once.

  I’m the mother. I have the right. I don’t have to apologize.

  Marcy had turned and walked out of the bedroom. April put her whole body into slamming the door, achieving the ear-splitting thwack that echoed in Marcy’s head even now. A moment later, she heard the click of the lock. She felt this, too, like a gob of spit in her eye.

  The thing to do, she figured, talking herself down, was walk away. The thing to do would be to wait, to give April time to work out for herself the realization that, when it came to the happiness and well-being of her daughter, Marcy would do anything.

  Proud of her response, certain that she was reacting with more insight, more maturity, more plain old common sense than most mothers would in similar circumstances, she went downstairs, yanked out the vacuum cleaner, and started in on the family room carpet that she had vacuumed the day before. As she pushed the machine around, every now and then she thought she heard a noise, and she’d switch off the vacuum and turn, expecting to see April—red-eyed, sniffly, apologetic. But no, the sound must have been something in the vacuum cleaner, something she hadn’t noticed before. Maybe it was dying—another thing she’d have to take care of. When she’d vacuumed the carpet twice, she sorted the laundry. An outside observer would have guessed, given her pace and industriousness, that she was the hired help, eager to finish for the day. Marcy had wondered, as she created piles of T-shirts, underwear, and dark socks, if April would ever truly appreciate the incredibly mundane ways that her mother demonstrated unconditional love. She wasn’t like the other mothers. She didn’t belong to a country club—didn’t want to, even if she could afford it—and sit around gossiping and drinking instead of paying attention to—taking care of, for chrissake—her family. Instead of lounging about, she worked. She always looked for ways to bring in more money for her and April, better ways to earn a living, to create a life. What was she guilty of? Being a good example? Marcy slammed the lid of the washer down and started a load of w
hites.

  Marcy asked herself if she had appreciated all the things her own mother had done for her? Had she even considered the question before? As the washing machine groaned and swished, it occurred to Marcy that her mother’s death had wiped out almost all the memories of her mother doing motherly things. She’d forgotten about the mother before the visits to the hospital, before the long naps during the day, before the hospital bed and the other equipment moved in. And what did she remember from the mother before? Only one recollection cooperated. Her mother had come into their TV room. She’d sat on the couch and bent over to tie Marcy’s shoes while Marcy rattled on and on about a television show. Marcy looked down at the top of her mother’s head and then leaned back a little so she could see her mother’s face, and she noticed it was splotchy, her eyes red.

  “Are you crying, Mommy?” she asked.

  Her mother finished tying Marcy’s shoes.

  “Go out and play, honey,” she said. “Stay in the yard.”

  That was it. That was the most vivid interaction Marcy could remember before her mother fell sick. Maybe her mother, wherever she was now, in whatever realm, had something to do with this inability to conjure up other memories. Maybe her mother was telling her still to stay in the yard.

  She had planned on veal cutlets, which happened to be April’s favorite. But after this, maybe she should just heat up some frozen lasagna. No, she’d gone out of her way to stop for fresh veal. She breaded the cutlets, threw them onto the frying pan, and started making a salad. How many mothers even bothered with a goddamned salad?

  The scent of veal usually brought April into the kitchen to ask when dinner would be ready, but Marcy wasn’t terribly surprised when it didn’t happen this time. So should she go call up to April, tell her to wash up for dinner, as if nothing had happened? Hell, no. The ball was in April’s court. She knew the food was there. If she wanted to eat, she needed to come downstairs.

  Marcy set the table for two. She let the veal fry a little longer than she normally did, waiting for April. Finally, she took one of the cutlets for herself, put the other on a plate, and put it in the oven to keep it warm. She put some dressing on her salad and ate that first. The kitchen was quiet. No noise from upstairs filtered down. Finally, Marcy ate the veal, cleaned the kitchen. When she was done with the dishes, she was so angry that she took the cutlet out of the oven and threw it in the trash.