A Long Time Gone (7 page)

“No. Thank you,” I stammered, wondering why my tongue suddenly felt thick in my mouth. “I'm just waiting for my friend over there,” I said, indicating Sarah Beth, who was leaning over a case of diamond rings with Willie and pointing to ones she liked.

“That's too bad,” he said, his eyes looking into mine. I bit my lip and tried to think of something clever, but I could only stand there blushing even harder.

Mr. Peacock returned from the back room. “Miss Heathman, this is the gentleman I was telling you about, John Richmond. Let's have a look at that watch again.” He drew John over to his desk, where Sarah Beth was laying out the watch. I stayed back, wondering why I was so out of breath, and why the sight of John's forearms below his rolled-up shirtsleeves and his long fingers as they held the watch made my lungs seize up like I'd been stung by a bee.

They talked for a few moments, and after several assurances that John could fix the watch and have it ready for her by Friday, we left. I felt John's eyes on my back, but I didn't turn around. Only fast girls would encourage such forward behavior, and for my nearly fifteen years I'd been about as fast as a turtle running through molasses.

The rain had started again, and Willie had left the umbrella in the
car. So we dashed across the street to the corner drugstore and drank chocolate milk shakes at the soda fountain while we waited for the rain to stop. Willie and Sarah Beth sat facing each other on their stools, leaving me to daydream about John and wonder at my odd reaction.

I didn't mind sitting in the backseat on the way home, happy to continue my daydreams. I was jerked out of my thoughts when Willie hit a pothole that bounced me so hard I hit my head on the car's roof. I was just settling back into my seat when I remembered something Mr. Peacock had said.

Leaning forward over the front seat, I said, “Where do y'all think Mr. Peacock keeps his blind pig?”

Sarah Beth and Willie glanced at each other, then burst out laughing. Feeling like a real dumb Dora, I sat back in my seat, thinking again about John and wondering how to ask Sarah Beth if I could go with her when she returned to pick up the watch.

Vivien Walker Moise

INDIAN
MOUND,
MISSISSIPPI
APRIL
2013

“P
ut your seat belt on.”

I glared at Tripp across the front seat of his Buick. “I don't like seat belts. Too constricting.” I didn't tell him that I'd stopped wearing one after my miscarriage, and after I'd lost Chloe. That I was too much of a coward to do anything except tempt fate.

Instead of arguing, he reached over and grabbed my seat belt before crossing it over my chest and buckling it. I caught his scent as he leaned over me, reminding me of fall football games and sneaking beers behind the movie theater.

“You've gotten bossy in your old age,” I said, too numb with fatigue and the lingering effects of my last pill to argue.

He started the engine and pulled out onto the circular drive, the car rocking slightly as he hit a pothole. “And I hardly recognize you at all.”

I kicked off my shoes and tried to curl up on my seat as much as the seat belt allowed. Going barefoot was the one thing I'd brought from home that was acceptable in Southern California.

After texting Chloe from Tripp's cell phone so she'd have the
number and to tell her that we were on our way, I leaned my head against my seat and tried to stifle a yawn.

“When was the last time you slept?”

I stared out the window into the twilight, the tall oaks lining the driveway slipping by like watching sentinels. “I had a good nap this afternoon. Before that, I pulled into a rest stop near Amarillo and slept for a couple of hours in my car. Drank lots of coffee from there to Mississippi.”

He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “Pills and caffeine. That's a great combo. You must feel great.”

“I already have a shrink, Tripp, and I don't need another one. Do you practice psychoanalysis on your dead bodies?”

“They're extremely good listeners and never argue.” I heard a smile in his voice. “I have a one hundred percent success rate—all of my patients are calm and relaxed when they leave my examining room.”

I turned my head toward the window so he couldn't see my grin. “Do me a favor and try not to mention to Chloe that you're a coroner. She's very into the whole vampire/zombie thing right now—or at least she was. Wears a lot of black.”

“She's a Goth?”

“She defies labels. She's only twelve but thinks she's twenty-two. She's apparently borrowed her new stepmother's clothes to look older, so be prepared.”

The car slowed as Tripp navigated the turn onto the highway. “Were you close?”

I was silent for a moment, trying to define my relationship with Chloe. “Her mother lives in Australia and has nothing to do with her, and her father thinks she needs to lose weight and get a nose job. I was the closest thing in her life to normal.”

Two headlights appeared in the distance, the only light for miles besides the moon. “Were you close?” he asked again. His persistence probably made him a good coroner, always asking the same question until he got the answer he was looking for.

“Yes,” I said. “As much as Chloe would let someone get close to her. She'd pretty much been abandoned by her parents. I always felt like she was trying to keep her distance so she couldn't be hurt again.”

“So you had a lot in common.”

I jerked my head toward him. “I wouldn't say that. I wasn't alone like Chloe. I had Bootsie and Tommy—and Emmett and Mathilda. I didn't need my mother—or my father, whoever he was.”

He was silent for a long time, and I worried. He never argued when he was convinced that he was right.

I continued, trying to prove my point. “In the beginning I just felt sorry for her. She didn't do a lot to make me warm up to her.” I waited for him to say something, his silence compelling me to go on. “She was this lonely little girl trying to pretend that she didn't care, that she was fine on her own. I guess you could say I saw through her.”

My fingers sought out the wire-and-bead ring I wore on my right hand, and I felt my lips turn upward. “She's so creative, with this wonderful inquisitive mind. Always wanting to know how things are made. I noticed this back when she was five, when I first married Mark. Her dolls and stuffed animals always had the most amazing outfits and jewelry—designed and made by Chloe. And she loves art, and loves to paint and draw. But until I came to live with them, nobody had ever had one of her pieces of art framed or even hung on the refrigerator.”

I gripped the ring between two fingers. “She always made me think of a ballerina dancing her heart out to an empty theater.” I shrugged. “I figured an audience of one was better than none. So I kind of made it my mission to give her a great childhood—just like Bootsie gave me. I took her to textile museums and art museums, and we took sewing classes and art classes together. We had a lot of fun. And then . . .” I stopped, unwilling to open a vein without the proper medication.

After a long silence, Tripp said, “It's a long drive, Vivi. I'm not going anywhere.”

I'm not going anywhere.
His words almost made me cry. It was what he'd said when I called him in the middle of the night every time my heart was broken, or my feelings hurt, or another birthday had passed without even a card from my mother. He'd wait through long silences until I was ready to speak again, reassuring me each time I asked if he was still on the line.

I took a deep breath. “And then Mark started losing interest in me. You can't hide something like that from a child. I think it scared her. It was like she needed to start preparing herself for me to abandon her, too.”

“Did you?” he asked. “Did you abandon her?” His words thumped
against my heart. Out of habit I opened my purse, searching for my pills, frantic as I fumbled through the contents until I remembered the bottle back on my bedside table. I didn't answer, no longer sure if he'd asked the question out loud or if it had just been my conscience.

I rubbed my temples, wishing it were possible to call back angry words hurled to mask a hurt, or to unbreak a heart. I stared ahead into the night, the thrum of tires against pavement oddly soothing.

“I got pregnant. I'm not even sure . . .” I stopped. “It was an accident. Mark didn't want any more children, and I have never wanted to be a mother. Women in my family just seem to do such a bad job of it.” I shrugged. “But Chloe was so happy when I told her. It was like we both saw this new person as a chance to start over. A way to change our own lives by making sure this child had a perfect life, because we would be there to make sure she didn't make any mistakes.”

My heart beat sluggishly, my memories like silt.

“I miscarried in my seventh month. It was a girl. Chloe was devastated. She accused me of doing it on purpose. I know it was because she was grieving, but I couldn't think straight and see that at the time. And Mark told me he was glad, because he didn't want another daughter like Chloe, and she was right there in front of us, listening to every word.” I pressed my fists against my heart as if that could stop the pain.

“For the first time in our marriage I stood up to him and told him that he was a terrible father and that Chloe should be taken away from him.” I swallowed, wondering how I'd find the words to continue. Finally I said, “That's when he kicked me out. Told me to leave, that he didn't want to be married to me anymore. I don't think anybody had ever stood up to him before, or criticized him. And so he punished me by getting a restraining order so that I couldn't see Chloe. He made up all these things about me, said I was a terrible mother.” I paused. “He said that I was a drug addict.”

I reached over and rolled my window down, my lungs suddenly gasping for air. I laid my head against the top of the door, feeling the air rush at my face and fill my nose and mouth with the wet spring air that smelled of lemony-sweet magnolias and rich, dark soil.
I always thought I'd be different.

“You couldn't have been too terrible if Chloe is here.”

I brought my head inside the car and studied Tripp for a long
moment. “You should have been a priest. You're really good at this confession thing.”

“I'll keep that under advisement if I ever decide on a career change,” he deadpanned, only the flash of his teeth letting me know he was smiling.

I sighed, feeling more tired than I ever remembered being. “I'm going to try to nap before we get there. I'll need my rest so I can deal with Chloe.”

I kept the window open a crack, then leaned my head against the back of the seat and closed my eyes and slept. I dreamed of running barefoot through late-summer cotton fields with two little girls whose faces I couldn't see. We ran toward the old cypress tree lying on the ground, jumping over the deep hole at its base, our bare legs pumping in the sunlight. Midair, I looked down at the skull grinning up at me, while the scent of the alluvial soil filled the air like a prayer.

l woke up to the feel of the car stopping and something warm under my cheek. I blinked my eyes open, and found myself staring close-up at Tripp's shirt-covered biceps. I jerked upright. “Sorry,” I mumbled.

“That's all right,” he said, stretching out his arm and flexing his hand. “I didn't really need any feeling in those five fingers anyway.”

I yawned, then opened my door, surprised to find Tripp opening his, too. “You're coming with me?”

“Thought you might need backup.” Before I could protest, he'd already closed his door and moved to my side of the car to hold the door open for me as I climbed out.

“You know, I was going to ask you why you're not married, but now I don't have to. You're way too bossy.”

He clicked the lock button on his key fob, then waited for me to walk ahead of him. “I told you in first grade there was only one girl I wanted to marry. But she moved to California and married another guy.”

I stopped, my hands on my hips. “Seriously? We were seven and I'd just punched you in the nose because you didn't pick me for your kickball team during recess. And then I told you I wasn't marrying any boy from home, because I wasn't planning on staying.”

He stopped in front of me. “Yet here you are.”

I met his eyes for a moment, unable to read them. “Yes, here I am.
But only until I figure out what I'm supposed to do next.” I pushed past him. “Besides, I'd never marry a guy who didn't pick me for his kickball team.”

Tripp shrugged. “I like to win. And you were terrible at kickball. You couldn't hit water if you fell out of a boat.”

Despite the situation, I found myself smiling and relaxing, making me wonder if that was what he'd intended all along. I quickly texted Chloe to let her know we were there, and went inside the terminal.

Travelers pulling luggage or carrying overnight bags bustled around us, their harried pace bringing back some of my anxiety. We stopped in front of the Delta baggage carousel and looked for the bench Chloe texted that she'd be sitting on. It was empty. “Maybe she went to the restroom,” I said, the blunt nudge of panic digging into my ribs.

“Or maybe not. Is that her?” Tripp asked, looking at a spot behind me.

I turned toward one of the stationary baggage carousels, where a girl who looked a lot like what Chloe might look like in ten years if she became a prostitute sat necking with a boy who probably was about twenty-two.

They had identical jet-black hair, thick black eyeliner, and a lot of chains worn around their necks and attached to their clothes. They were dressed all in black, except for Chloe's red stilettos. When the boy came up for air, I saw he also had a goatee and what looked like a tattoo of a large reptile crawling out the neck of his shirt. If the two of them hadn't been involved in an intimate embrace, I might have mistaken them for siblings.

Before I could clear my head enough to figure out what I needed to do, Tripp was already walking toward them. I hurried after him, a little afraid of the look on his face.

“Are you Chloe?”

She looked up at him, her eyeliner smeared under her eyes, her red lipstick smeared on both their chins. “Who's asking?”

Tripp grabbed the boy's upper arm and drew him to his feet. Tripp was about a head taller and the boy had to look up at him, which was the intended effect.

“Dude. What's your problem? Let go of me.”

Tripp pulled him a little closer, their noses almost touching. “Do you know how old she is?”

I saw a look of worry cross the boy's face. “She said she was twenty-one.”

“She's twelve,” Tripp said slowly and clearly, pushing the boy away so that he stumbled backward, the chains hanging from his pants
ching
ing together in protest.

The kid at least had the decency to look appalled. He grabbed a black backpack from the floor and slung it over his shoulders before holding his hands up, palms facing us. “Yo, I don't want any trouble.” He began backing up, barely sparing a glance toward Chloe before he finally turned around and ran toward an escalator, taking the risers two at a time.