Hot Springs (22 page)

He had a quick nap, then took a shower and put on clean clothes, walked to the same bar he’d been in last night and ordered a burger and fries, ate in the smoke and friendly noise of the place. When he stepped back out into the early evening an hour later, it was with the pleasant sensation of a full stomach and of having had a couple of beers among men. He could get along here. He could get along anywhere. He walked to the big house and rang the bell.

This time Bernice answered. She had on tight jeans and a shiny blue top that exposed her shoulders and emphasized her breasts. She looked good, going-out good, and he hoped it was for him.

“It isn’t the Jehovah’s Witnesses,” he said. “And I’m not running for office. I’m just letting you know I’m still here.”

“Where did you stay?” She bit at her thumbnail nervously.

“What’s the difference?”

“I worried about you.”

“I slept in the truck. I’ve done it before. But today I rented a room, one street over, on Frederick.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I just walked around. There are signs all over advertising rooms. I saw one of these old houses with eight mailboxes out front. How the hell do they get eight apartments out of three floors?” He leaned his hand up against the door frame. “Do I have to stand out here all night?”

She let him in. They sat again in the parlor. “Don’t you think this is all a little ridiculous?” he said. “We love each other. Let’s move on from there.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Not even close. A few beers. Should have seen me last night, though.” He could see there was something wrong. “What?”

“They called today.”

“Who did?”

“
They
did.”

“Bernice, you have to say things in a way that makes sense. Who called?”

She pointed up toward the ceiling. Her face seemed pale to him, and her eyes, though bright, looked tired and shadowed.

“Emily? Is she OK?”

“She’s upstairs talking to Jesus. Listen, they know where we are. Worse, they know
who
we are. I don’t know why I ever thought they wouldn’t.”

“Tell me exactly what happened, all right? Who called?”

“Tessa Harding.”

“And how did she get the number?” But even as he said it, he was pretty sure he knew. “What did you tell her?”

“I didn’t tell her anything. When I heard her voice, I hung up the phone.”

He stood and went to the front window, peering out over the top of the shutters. There was nothing unusual, just parked cars and the green exuberance of the trees, a stylish-looking woman in a short skirt and heels walking a small, brown dog.

“This is bad, right?”

“Let’s get Emily,” he said. “We bring her downstairs and we talk to her. Ask her what she wants. That’s what they did with me when my parents split. My old man had this woman he used to see a couple times a week, and then my mom started up with the neighbor. So Dad moved out and rented this dump on Route 1 that came with a broken-down MG in the yard. Told me if I came with him, he’d teach me about cars and we’d fix it up together. That was going to be the big prize.”

“And?” she asked. “What did you choose?”

“I picked her.”

“Because you already knew he was a liar, and that stuff about the MG wasn’t true?”

“No, he did give me the MG. We got it running, just like he said. I crashed it a couple of years later, wrapped it right around a phone pole. Lucky again—I just walked away. I chose her because I thought that of the two of them, she was the one who was going to need the most help.” He belched, tasted onions, pictured the small house in West Windsor, the green living room with the RCA color TV on its wheelable metal stand, the neat rows of
Reader’s Digest
and Condensed Books by the mantel. “A lady came, with a briefcase and greasy brown hair pulled back. She said she was from the court, and I figured I was going to jail—that someone had found out about the LSD I kept hidden in the toe of my old basketball sneaker. Then I realized it wasn’t about me at all, it was about my parents.”

“You were how old?”

“Fifteen, I guess. It didn’t stick, though. They got back together two years later.”

“Well, Emily is five. She can’t make a decision.”

“Even so,” he said. “I think we should find out. What if she wants to go home? It makes a difference.”

“I’m her real mother,” said Bernice.

“What do you think that even means to her? She doesn’t know about sex, does she? She probably thinks when God wants there to be another person on earth, he just beams them down with a big laser transporter.”

“It’s not your problem what she does or doesn’t know.”

But then she materialized in the doorway. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi, honey,” said Bernice. “You surprised us. What’s going on upstairs?”

“We’re having a tea party.” She came in and sat beside Bernice, leaning her head against her shoulder.

“Oh, good. Tea.”

“Emily,” said Landis, trying to sound upbeat. “Do you ever miss your other house?”

“Hey,” said Bernice.

“I’m just asking.”

Emily looked right at him. “Where do you go when you’re not here?”

“I go around the corner. Just one street away. I’m renting a very nice room. You can come see it sometime, if you want.”

“Can I have a Fig Newton?” she asked Bernice.

Bernice touched the side of Emily’s face. “Still a little warm. Anyway, of course you can. But first, answer Mr. Landis’s question. Do you sometimes, ever, even a tiny bit, wish you were back at your other house, your Colorado house?”

She nodded.

“But you like it here, too, right?”

“Uh huh,” she said.

“See?” said Bernice. “She knows what’s what.” She stared down at her hands for a moment. Outside, a light rain had begun, the tapping
on the roof over the front porch reminding Landis of the way rain had sounded from inside his trailer. “OK,” she said. “Let’s get cookies. Then in about a half hour or so, we’ll have dinner.”

All three of them went into the kitchen, and Bernice found the package and handed two cookies to Emily, who ran off with them, back toward the entrance hall and the front stairs. The kitchen counters were a mess, with plates and pots left out, and blue plastic Safeway bags strewn around from where Bernice had unpacked groceries and simply left them.

“I know,” she said. “I’m getting around to it. Stop judging me.”

“The way I see it,” said Landis, “we have two choices. We can either run, or we can stay here and get a lawyer. Because that’s where this is going, eventually.”

“You mean I have choices. You are just some person who followed me from Colorado.”

The phone rang and they both looked at it. “It’s her,” said Bernice. “I know it.” When she made no move to answer, Landis picked it up.

“Hello?” said a woman’s voice.

“Hello,” he replied.

“Oh,” said the voice. “I didn’t expect—please, can I just talk to her?”

“Depends,” said Landis. “Talk to who?”

“Emily.”

“Hold on.” He held his hand over the receiver. “She wants to talk to Emily.”

“She can’t.” Bernice spoke in a hot whisper. “I told you not to answer.”

“No, you didn’t. You just said it was her.”

“Well, now what?”

“I don’t know. What’s the difference, really?”

“Are you serious? What’s the difference?”

Landis put the phone to his ear again. “Listen,” he said, politely, “do you think you could call back? This isn’t the best time.” Then he hung up.

They stood staring at each other. Outside, the rain was picking up, as was the wind, and the old glass rattled in the window frames. The phone rang again, and they let it go for a while, but after the sixth ring, Landis picked up again. “Yes?” he said.

“When?” asked the voice. “When should I call back?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “How about later on? Around nine?”

“She goes to bed at eight thirty. Do you put her to bed at eight thirty?”

“I don’t know. Right around then.”

“And give her a bath?”

“Of course. All right, 8:30.”

“Can I read her something?”

He covered the mouthpiece again. “She wants to read her something.”

Bernice’s cheeks had flushed an angry pink. “No, she can’t read her anything. And she can’t call back. What the hell are you doing?”

He spoke into the phone. “Maybe not the reading part.” From the other end, he heard what sounded like a hiccup. “Please don’t worry,” he said. “Everything is fine here.” He hung up.

“Look,” said Bernice, “will you babysit? I have to go out to this bar. I’m training to bartend. Some guy I used to know runs it.”

“What the hell?”

“You heard me.”

“How, exactly, were you planning to do this? What if I hadn’t come over?”

“I’d have brought her with me, or maybe left her with my dad for a few hours. Forget it, it was just an idea. She’s not your responsibility.
You don’t have to worry.” On tiptoes, she reached into the cabinet and brought down a box of spaghetti, which turned out to be open, and its contents cascaded over the top of the ancient gas range.

“You weren’t going to leave her alone, were you?”

“No,” she said. “Of course not.”

Landis helped her pick up the spaghetti. “I’ll stay,” he said.

“You sure?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I won’t be out too late. Midnight or earlier.”

“Do you figure on these being your regular hours?”

She ran a hand through her hair. Her dark roots were getting more apparent. “I’m going to see if there’s an afternoon shift I could do. This will just be training. I’m going to paint something in there, too.”

“Paint what?”

“I don’t know yet. A mural. Like Giotto.”

“Like what?”

She brought an aluminum pot out from a cabinet below the counter and went to the sink to fill it. “Giotto. I’m going to paint the walls.”

“Why?”

“Do I have to have a reason?”

“I guess not.” Landis watched her work, conscious, suddenly, of how pretty she was. “Who is he, this Giotto?”

“Giotto isn’t the guy. Giotto is a famous painter. Was. He painted a lot of walls.” She turned on the flame and adjusted it. “Are you eating with us or not?”

“I already had something.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“No,” he said. “I’ll just watch you.”

She got out a jar of tomato sauce, tried to open it, then handed it to him. He popped the lid and handed it back.

“You’re going to paint this guy’s walls?”

“Jesus, Landis. I don’t know. Now that we’re found out, I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I’m not running. I’m staking out this little patch of ground.”

He picked up a saltine from the counter and bit off the corner, put it back down. “What is he, an old boyfriend?”

“Not even close. Actually, he used to go out with my mom.”

Stepping up behind her, he slipped his hands around her waist and rested his chin on the top of her head. “I missed you,” he said.

“You did?”

He pressed against her, moved his hands up, stroked her shoulder. It had been a long time since they’d touched. Her head smelled familiar to him, salty and shampooed, the skin almost unnaturally hot, as if a few centimeters farther in, her brain was working too hard. She backed into him and made a quiet, sighing sound. The pot in front of them came to a boil, foam climbing toward the edges. He moved his head and kissed her where she liked it, on her neck, running his lips back and forth lightly there. He wanted her badly, and he could tell she wanted him, too. He undid the top button of her jeans and she didn’t stop him, but instead gasped in a way that made him hard with desire.

“Hey,” she said, abruptly, pulling away and removing his hands. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Just making sure you remember who I am,” he said. “Who we are.”

She buttoned her pants back up, turned, and squinted at him. “I know who you are,” she said.

In the parlor, Emily took Landis’s order. “Woof?” she asked. She held a pencil and an invisible notepad.

“I’d like a nice, juicy steak,” said Landis. “Medium rare.”

“Woof.”

“And a side of french fries, and some coleslaw, and some Mallomars.”

“Woof woof.”

“You don’t have Mallomars?”

“Woof.”

“Well, then just substitute asparagus, OK?”

“Grrrrrrr . . .”

“Never mind then. I’ll take whatever the chef recommends.”

Emily yipped, then danced off toward the kitchen, and Landis paged through a book he’d pulled off the built-in bookcase, a history of Western art, and tried not to think about how he was probably being played for a first-class chump right now. He thought maybe he’d look up Giotto. He opened to an interesting-looking page, but was interrupted by Emily skipping back in.