Hugo & Rose (7 page)

The boys strained to look out the windows, searching for familiar faces. Teammates. School friends. At the registration tents, Rose spotted the mom-with-the-implants.
What was her name?
She wondered if she was divorced yet. Rose felt bad for her.

*   *   *

Later, after she had found a parking space, the boys whined, chattering as she smeared their skin with sunscreen next to the parked car.

“You got it in my eyes.”

“Well then, Isaac, you're a big kid, you can put it on yourself next time.”

Rose hated putting SPF on the kids as much as they hated having it put on. It brought out the worst in all of them, making the kids wiggly and impatient while turning Rose grouchy and snappish.

Adam was shivering. “It's cold.”

“I warmed it up in my hands.”

“You didn't even say sorry!”

Rose looked at Isaac. “What?”

“You got it in my eyes! You didn't even say sorry.”

Isaac was scowling at her, his mouth hard. Next to him, Adam clutched his arms, gooseflesh rising in the wind.

“Say you're sorry, Mom!”

Rose broke. Pissed at Isaac, hating that look on his face. She was angry. Angry that she had to be responsible for such a thankless task. Angry that he had the audacity to be angry with her. Angry that she even had to be on this shitty field, in this shitty wind, in this shitty town.

“I'm sorry, Zackie! Okay? I'm sorry!”

“Hi there!”

Rose turned to the bright voice behind her.

It was what's-her-name. Mom-with-the-implants.

“Rose, right?”

Rose stood, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Sorry. We were having a moment.”

The other woman smiled. She put a sympathetic hand next to her cleavage. “No, no, I get it! Totally get it. I just … Isaac is on Simon's team and I thought … maybe you could use a hand.”

She gestured over to the curb, where a good-looking blond boy was bouncing a ball on his knee. This must be Simon. Rose noticed the way he was aware of people watching him execute the trick. Exhibitionism ran in the family.

Her name flooded back to Rose. Kaitlin, her name was Kaitlin.

“Thank you. That would be great. That would be amazing.… Zackie?”

Isaac scowled at her. But he shouldered his bag, marching his way toward the curb. He was upset with her now, but hopefully by the time the game was over …

“Thank you, Kaitlin. Seriously. Thank you.”

Kaitlin glanced at Adam, who had pulled his legs up under his shirt and was balancing on the running board. Penny was beginning to pull at the straps of her car seat. “Don't worry. My husband ‘works' on Saturdays, too. It's hard enough with one, I can't imagine with three.”

Rose recognized the look on Kaitlin's face.

It was pity.

*   *   *

Thoughts crowded Rose's mind as she watched Adam's team play.

She
feels sorry for
me
.… She knew my name even though we've never spoken.… She knew about Josh, the kids …

Rose laughed, but it wasn't funny.

People were
talking
about her. Just as they had been talking about Kaitlin and her boobs and her struggling marriage, they had been talking about Rose and her absent husband. Of course they had.

People thought she was pathetic. Barely keeping it going. And she hadn't given them any evidence to the contrary.

Clouds were stacking against the mountain range. From this distance, Rose could see them piling against themselves. The wind was picking up.

*   *   *

They put the tournament on hold. Officials had run around pausing games still in play. Lightning had been spotted. Everyone was to head elsewhere and await word.

Rose was still collecting their things when the rain started down, pelting the stragglers running toward their cars. Rose struggled to keep a grip on the cooler, its plastic grips awkward in her hands. She was soaked by the time she reached the van. The boys watched her as she opened the back, their faces stoic.

Adam hadn't had any problem leaving. He'd barely played, spending most of the game sitting on the sidelines.

But Isaac had been doing well. He had scored a goal (“You missed it, Mom”) and didn't like being interrupted.

Rose tried to keep it positive as she climbed inside. She forced cheer into her voice. “They haven't canceled it yet. Maybe it will clear up.”

Isaac frowned. “It won't.”

Rose sighed and looked at her son.

Zackie. Little boy. Child of my body.

Sometimes I wish you weren't so like me
.

Adam blew a cloud onto the window. Drew a happy face in its mist.

“I'm hungry.”

*   *   *

There was a line of cars backing out of the McDonald's drive-through; it wrapped around the building and curled onto the street. Through its windows Rose could see it was a madhouse of displaced soccer players, their damp heat fogging the plate glass.

Penny was wailing in the back. Rolling her head from side to side. Tired of being in the car. Rose knew how she felt.

“We could go inside.” This from Isaac.

“We're not going inside.”

“We never go inside.”

Rose drove past the line of cars, searching. Hemsford was a small town, not much more than a pit stop off the highway on the way to better places. A few motels. A few more gas stations. On her way in, Rose had spotted a small Christian publishing factory. But other than that and the soccer fields, a two-minute drive gave you the entire tour of the small strip of its main drag. After that you had to turn around and head back.

Why would anyone live here?

Just before the turn, Rose spotted it.

“The Orange Tastee,” read the faded street sign. Next to the words was a cartoon of a manically grinning Orange with arms and legs. It wore an orange blossom as a hat and winked at the cars below.

For a second she thought it was shuttered, a relic of the town's better days; but the lights inside were on and the paint on the windows declaring, “Soft Serve 99¢!” was fresh.

And its drive-through was empty.

Rose turned into its parking lot and the boys erupted into complaint.

“What is this place!”

“I want McDonald's. I want a Happy Meal!”

“Change of plans, guys.” As long as this place didn't serve rat-poop tacos, they were getting lunch here.

“Do they have Happy Meals?” Adam was whining, worried.

“I don't know. Maybe. We'll find out.”

Penny's wailing changed pitch, picking up on the tension. Isaac crossed his arms. “You promised us Happy Meals. This place doesn't have Happy Meals.”

Fuck fucking Happy Meals!
thought Rose.
With their cheap pieces of landfill fodder and pink slime burgers. I wish I'd never taken you to McDonald's, so I wouldn't have to hear about it all the time. So I wouldn't give in to your whining. So I wouldn't use it to give me five minutes of peace once a week.

But aloud she said, “Maybe they have something
like
a Happy Meal.”

Isaac dug in. “They don't. Only McDonald's has Happy Meals.”

“I want french fries. Do they have french fries?”

“You promised, Mom! You promised!”

Penny's wails were high-pitched, piercing, cutting around the interior.

And then suddenly Rose was screaming.

“Quiet! Please! Just shut the hell up!”

Instant silence. The children stared at her. Stunned.

Rose rubbed her forehead.

“Are you okay?” crackled a deep voice.

No,
thought Rose.
I am not okay. Nothing about me is okay.

“Ma'am?”

Rose looked around for the source of the deep voice. Outside her window sat a fiberglass version of the winking Orange, its grinning teeth replaced with the battered grille of a speaker.

Rose looked at it for a moment. Trying to find her voice. Trying to find her sanity.

“Uh … Kid's meals?”

“We got 'em.”

Rose took a breath. In the back, the kids were still silent. Frightened of their mother.

She managed, “Three, please.”

Rose pulled forward. Clutching the wheel. Knuckles white.

You do not cry in front of the kids. You do not cry in front of the kids.

But she
was
crying. She wiped at the hot welling in the corners of her eyes. Fighting it. Trying to calm the stress.

“Nine fifty, please.”

Rose looked over. At the pickup window a pair of hands held out three small bags.

Rose riffled through her purse, finding calm in this simple interaction. She could regain her hold of the situation. Reassure the kids. Maybe they were all just hungry. Some food would fix it. Some food would make it all go away. She handed over a twenty and took the bags, distributing them back.

“Make sure Penny only eats one fry at a time, okay, Isaac?”

Zackie nodded, stuffing fries into his mouth. Rose took a breath. It would get better.

“Your change.”

“Thanks.” Rose reached out to the pile of bills from the hands, looking up at the cashier holding them—

It was Hugo.

 

six

Of course it couldn't be Hugo.

Rose stared up at the cashier, mouth open. It couldn't be.

But it was.

There above her, in the window of this crappy fast-food restaurant, was the face of the man she had been dreaming about since she was six years old. It was a face she had seen grin down at her as they flew upward into the clouds. A face she had known as a boy and watched grow into a man.

It was him.

Older. Heavier. With glasses. But definitely
him
.

He turned back to the register, never really looking at her. Even from behind, the angle of his neck, the way his earlobe met his jaw …

Hugo.

Rose's heart slammed against the walls of her chest. She wasn't breathing.

Honk!
A car was waiting behind them. Impatient for its turn.

Rose pulled forward, a small sip of oxygen finally making its way into her lungs. She paused in the parking lot, her foot on the brake.

Hugo.

That was Hugo.

It couldn't be, but it was.

Hugo in the building behind me. Hugo in a paper cap. Hugo in real life.

Hugo.

Hugo.

Hugo.

The van was filled with the smell of fried potatoes and salt. The children ate quietly, listening to the rain hit the roof of the van, a tin tap-tapping the only sound. Rose's mind raced.

*   *   *

Years before, when she was pregnant with Isaac, Rose had seen her aunt Barbara walking away from her in the international foods aisle of the grocery store.

What's she doing here?
Rose had thought, delighted at the unexpected chance to catch up.

She had gotten as far as shouting “Bar—” when she remembered that Barb was dead. That she had been dead nine years, since an aneurysm had quietly plucked her from life. That Rose had helped her cousin pick the jewelry Barb's corpse would wear for the viewing. That she had let the flowers from the church wilt in the heat of her car during the gathering afterward at her uncle's home, and when she returned to it that night, it had smelled overwhelmingly of lilies, stale water, and floral foam.

The woman at the other end of the aisle stopped and turned toward the stilted sound Rose had made. Rose's eyes met hers for a moment, and the details that had made her “Barb” melted away in the contradictions. The high-waisted jeans over the flat landscape of her butt, the dry ginger cast of her hair, the slight hitch in her gait: The “Barb-ness” of her was still there, but it was subsumed by the “not-Barb-ness.” The angle of her eyes. The gray cast of her skin. The slackness of her face.

The woman had looked away quickly and Rose had shuddered, pretending to study the rack of lasagna noodles while she composed herself.

Later, when she told Josh about the encounter, he had said that that sort of thing happened because the brain was a “pattern recognition machine,” but it was a lazy one. Rose's brain had taken a shortcut, its best guess given the stimuli it was given (
ass, hair, walk
), and sent a ghost down the aisle of the Piggly Wiggly.

When Rose had said it was “spooky anyway,” Josh had grinned and said the human brain was the spookiest thing he could imagine. “It's all dark corridors and creaky staircases,” he had said in a mock dark voice before launching himself onto her with a kiss.

Sitting in the parking lot of the Orange Tastee, Rose tried to use the memory of Josh's voice to slow the heart racing beneath her seat belt.

To a brain, a person is nothing more than a pattern. A collection of stimuli …
What had Josh called it?
A neural pathway.

That's what had happened.

Rose racked her mind for the details that would melt him away. The “un-ness” that had dissolved Barb that day in the grocery store.

They did not come.

Maybe if I just got another look at him …

But she shook that thought off as soon as it arrived. Barb at least had been real. She had once been a living, breathing human with children and a wicked tennis serve.

But Hugo?

Hugo was never real. Rose was not asleep and on the beaches of her dreamland. She was conscious and sitting in her car in a shitty small town in eastern Colorado.

*   *   *

The tournament was canceled. Isaac's coach sent a mass text, which Rose received just as the kids were finishing up their meal.

Isaac took the news better than expected. The unfinished game defaulted in his team's favor, meaning that the winning goal had been his.