Lone Star (4 page)

I
T WAS DARK OUTSIDE AND HER FATHER'S BLACK
D
ODGE
Durango was already parked in the clearing by the time Chloe left Hannah's and made her way back through the brambles.

Through the open window she could hear her mother's soft voice and her father's booming one. Chloe slowed down. Treading on the pine needles crunching under her feet, she inched up to the screened-in window in the
living room
.

“It's out of the question.”

“That's what I said.”

“Why would she want to go
there
?”

“She says because she hasn't been.”

“What kind of a reason is that?”

“Shh. I know.”

“I hope you were forceful, Mother. I hope you said no.”

“I was forceful. I said no.”

“But what?”

“But nothing.”

“No, I can see by your face it's something. What?”

“She's insisting.”

“So? We're going to allow the child to make all the decisions now?”

“She said something about turning eighteen.”

“Oh, so she's going to play
that
card!”

“That's what I said.”

“Why does she
really
want to go?”

“I don't know, Jimmy.”

“What's in Barcelona?”

“Nothing. It's not Fryeburg, not Brownfield, not Maine.”

“So why doesn't she go to Canada? We'll drive her to Montreal. We'll leave the girls there, then pick them up a few days later.”

“Yeah. Well. I haven't told you the half of it.”

There was rustling, cooing, small giggles. “You haven't heard
my
half of it, sweet potato. It'll give you and me a chance to stay in a hotel. Like newlyweds.”

“Jimmy, don't be bad.”

More rustling. Even some grunting.

“Jimmy, come on . . .”

Sweet God. Chloe couldn't even eavesdrop on her parents' conversation about
her
without it becoming a study in her own mortification.

“But seriously,” her father said. The cooing had stopped, thank God. “We can't let her go.”

“I agree. How do we stop her?”

“We'll just tell her she can't go.”

“I look forward to our spicy pork chops tonight over which you tell her.”

“I've never liked that Hannah. Why couldn't that no-good father of hers have gotten custody instead?”

“I think the answer is built into your question.”

“That Terri is a piece of work. Doesn't she know what's going on with her own kids? I hear Jason is always in trouble up in Portland. By the way, the raccoons got to her garbage again. Did you talk to her about cleaning it up? Or am I going to have to?”

“She told me this morning the animals have to eat, too.”

“I'm going to shoot them next time I hear them near her cans.”

“Jimmy, carry the potatoes. She better come home soon. Dinner is ready.”

There was silence. Chloe heard the pot being placed on the table.

“So what are we going to do?”

“Talk some sense into her. She listens to
you
. You're her father.”

“If she listened to me, she'd never ask for something so stupid.”

“It's not stupid, Jimmy, it's just kids being kids.”

“I never did nothing like that.”

“Okay. We did some stuff, too.”

“Not like that.”

“Worse. We were young, too.”

“Hmm.”

“You remember Pembina? The paleo flood at Red River in seventy-seven? All right, Mr. Comedian. I know you remember. We were so bad. We didn't need to go to Barcelona.”

“We never needed to go anywhere, sweet potato.” There were sounds of connubial affection.

“Get the drinks. I'll go get her.”

Pembina was where Lang was from. Pembina, North Dakota, less than two miles south of the Canadian border. The Red River is slow and small. It doesn't have the energy to cut a gorge. It meanders through the silty bottomlands. Yet every few years it floods catastrophically through the marsh at its delta. It causes immense destruction. In 1977, the river flooded, and the National Guard was called in to help the locals cope. That's how Jimmy Devine, National Guard, met Lang Thia, whose father was a prominent local businessman who made hearing aids.

Her mother didn't need a hearing aid. She came to the window near which Chloe was hiding and said into the screen, “Chloe, come to the table. Dinner is served.”

With a great sigh, Chloe peeled away from the wood shingles and walked, head hung, to the door.

L
ANG TURNED ON THE LIGHT ABOVE THE SMALL RECTANGULAR
table. They sat silently, their hands folded. They blessed their food. Jimmy said amen. Chloe asked him to pass the potatoes. Jimmy poured Lang a jasmine ice tea. Lang poured Jimmy a beer. They cut into their pork chops. The silence lasted two or three minutes. Jimmy had to get some strength before he began, though he looked pretty strong already. Chloe's dad was a big Irish guy, blond-haired once, now gray, blue-eyed, direct, no nonsense. He was funny, he was easy, but he also had a temper, and he never forgot anything, neither a favor nor a slight. It was almost his undoing, the merciless blade of his memory. Sometimes he had to dull it with whiskey. Tonight Lang eased him into Chloe's summer plans by letting him eat for a few minutes in peace while she grilled Chloe on irrelevant matters.

“Did you do your homework?”

“It's senior year, Mom. No one gives homework anymore.”

“Then what do they give you a fourth-quarter grade for?”

“Showing up mostly.”

“So no tests, no quizzes, no overdue projects, no missing labs, no oral presentations, no incomplete class assignments?”

“Enough nonsense,” said Jimmy, having fortified himself on meat. “What's this your mother tells me about you wanting to go to Barcelona?”

Her father looked straight at her, and Chloe had no choice
but to stare back. “Did my mother tell you that she wants me to enter into a story contest? Ten-thousand-dollar prize.”

“I don't see how the two are related.”

“I have nothing to write about.”

“Come to work with me for a day or two. You'll get three books out of it.” Jimmy Devine was the Fryeburg chief of police, like his father and grandfather before him. Fryeburg, Maine. Pop. 3,500. Settled in 1763 by General Joseph Frye, and incorporated in 1777, exactly two hundred years before the bad luck of the paleo floods two thousand miles away, just so Chloe could now sit impaled on the stake of parental chief-of-police disapproval.

“Really,” she said with irritation. “Books on what, breaking up domestic arguments and littering?”

“Nice. So now even my work, not just your mother's, is denigrated?”

Chloe regrouped. “I'm not denigrating, Dad. But our hearts are set on Spain. Hannah and I have been talking about it for years.” By not saying yes immediately, they were denigrating
her
!

“How in the world can Hannah afford Barcelona?” Jimmy asked. “Her mother is at the bank every other day asking for an overdraft increase. And your friend, who abandoned you to do Meals on Wheels by yourself on Saturdays because she claims she has a job, often skips out on the one lousy four-hour shift she has at China Chef. So where's her trip money coming from?”

Chloe hated how her dad knew everything about everybody's business. It was terrifying. She stopped eating and stared at her father, the bite of pork chop lodged in her dry throat. Did he know
why
Hannah was skipping out on China Chef? God, please, no. A demoralized Chloe couldn't withstand even two minutes of modest interrogation.

“Why do you want to go so much? Tell me.”

Her entrails in knots, Chloe said nothing for a moment. “It's just awesome, Spain. Why do you think I've been taking Spanish these last six years?”

“I have no idea why you kids do half the things you do.”

“I want to go. I'm not a child anymore, Dad.”

“If you're such an adult,” said Jimmy, “then what are you talking to us for?”

“I need your help with the passport.”

“Oh,
now
she needs us,” Jimmy said. “A signature. No help, no advice. No money. You've got it all figured out, big girl.”

“I don't, but . . . it's just a few weeks in Europe, Dad. It's not a big deal. Lots of kids do it.”

“Like who?”

Chloe stumbled. She didn't know who.

“It's the worst place, by the way, to have a vacation,” Lang cut in.

“You mean it's the best place! Have you been there, Mom?”

“I don't need to go to Calcutta to know I don't want to go to Calcutta.”

“Calcutta? Mom. It's Barcelona! It's on the sea. It's nice. It's fun. It's full of young people.” Did she sound calm? She didn't think so. Things were getting away from her.

“Did I hear your mother correctly?” Jimmy asked. “The two junkyard wildings down the road want to go with you?”

Well, at least it was out there. The pit in her stomach couldn't get any bigger. “Why wildings? It's Blake and Mason. You like them.”

“Don't put words in my mouth or feelings into my heart.”

“You
do
like them. Mr. Haul is still your friend. Despite everything.” Chloe took a breath. “You help him out with money, you lend him your truck, you barbecue with him. You exchange Christmas presents. Mom gives them tomatoes.”

“What does that prove? Your mother gives tomatoes to everyone, even the Harrisons who tried to have Blake's dog put down that one time. And in my line of work, I'm forced to talk to a lot of unsavory characters.”

“Yes; Mr. Haul is not one of them. And Mom and Mrs. Haul are friends.”

“Don't get carried away,” said Lang. “I drive to ShopRite with her. She is not the executor of my will. So don't hyperbolize.”

Chloe took a breath. “Now who's hyperbolizing?”

“I don't know why
anyone,
especially my daughter, would want to go to Spain of all places,” Jimmy said, getting up from the table, as if done with the conversation he was himself continuing. “Do you think there's any place more beautiful than coastal Maine? Than the White Mountains of New Hampshire?” He snorted as he scraped the remains of his dinner into the trash. “You have staggering beauty outside your own door.”

“That's what
I
told her, Jimmy.”

“Would that I had a chance to compare,” said Chloe.

“I'm telling you how it is.”

“So I have to take your word for it? I want to see for myself, Dad! Why can't you understand that?”

“Where did this crazy idea come from? Lang, did you know about this?”

“Jimmy,” said Lang, “she doesn't know anything about Barcelona. If she did, she wouldn't want to go. Believe me.”

How did one stay calm when confronted by a mother such as Chloe's mother? “Mom,” Chloe said slowly. The slower the speech, the more she wanted to shout. At the moment, she was positively hollering. “I know you
think
I might not know anything about Barcelona. But what in the world do
you
possibly know about Barcelona?”

“Chloe! Be respectful to your mother.”

“
That
wasn't respectful?” If only her parents could hear how Hannah talked to her mother.

Lang raised her hand. She was still at the table, across from Chloe. “No, no. Chloe makes a valid point. Clearly she thinks Barcelona has virtues Maine doesn't.”

“I think it because it's true,” Chloe said. “It has stunning architecture. Art. History. Culture.”

“You think
we
don't have architecture?” Jimmy bellowed.

“Houses are not the same as architecture, Dad!”

“Don't yell! Since when do you care about architecture? It's the first time in my life I've heard you use that word. Now you want to go halfway around the globe to learn more about house design?”

Chloe found it difficult to speak through a clenched mouth. “Art. Culture. History.”

“So go visit Boston,” Lang said, pushing away from the table. “There's a big city for you. It has Art. Culture. History. It has
architecture
.”

“Maine has history, too.” Jimmy tried not to sound defensive about his beloved and beautiful home state. “What about the Red Paint People?”

“Dad, okay, history is not why I want to go to Europe.”

“If not for history, what for, then?”

Brief inhale to traverse the unbridgeable chasm between parents and children.

Perhaps not so unbridgeable.

“I bet it's to lie on the beach all day,” said Lang.

“And what's wrong with the beach?”

“You can lie on a beach in Maine!” Jimmy said.

“Chloe! Look what you did. You've upset your father. Jimmy, shh.” Walking over, Lang put a quieting hand on her husband.

Taking hold of Lang's hand, Jimmy continued. “What about York Beach?” he said. They both stood a few feet away from Chloe, near the sink, united in their flummoxed anxiety for their only child. Chloe continued to sit and stare into her cold, half-eaten chop. “We've got five hundred miles of spectacular sandy coastline. How many miles does Barcelona have?”

“Is it warm?” said Chloe. “Is it beachy? Is it Mediterranean?”

“Do you see?” Lang said. “She doesn't even know where Barcelona is. It's on the Balearic Sea, for your information.”

Chloe couldn't help herself. She groaned. Clearly, in between grilling swine and grilling her daughter, Lang had opened an encyclopedia and was now using some arcane knowledge to . . . Chloe didn't know what. “Mom,” Chloe
said, so slowly it came out as
mommmmmmmmm
. A raw grunt left her throat. “The Balearic Sea is part of the Mediterranean. Look it up on a map. Don't do this.”

Undeterred, her mother continued. “They didn't even have any beaches fifteen years ago. They built them for the Olympic Games. That's your history right there. Don't pretend you're all about the Barcelona sand. Maine has had beaches for five hundred years.”

Chloe blinked at her mother. Lang blinked back defiantly. “Mom, so what? What does that have to do with anything? What does
that
have to do with me going or not going?”

“So if it's not for the beach or for history, why do you want to go? Do you want to prove something?”

“I don't want to prove anything,” Chloe said through closed teeth. “I. Just. Want. To. Go. It's Barcelona! You want to know why Barcelona and not Rome or Athens or some other place? Okay, I'll tell you. Because while you were gallivanting through the glens of Kilkenny and I stayed with Hannah and her mom, Blake bought me a magazine.”

“Oh, well, if Blake bought you a magazine . . .”

“A
National Geographic,
” Chloe continued through the sarcasm. “It had an article about Barcelona. It sounded nice. So Hannah and I said to each other we'd go when we graduated.” She wanted to scream. “We fell in love with it when we were kids.”
I
fell in love with it, she wanted to say. “We thought it would be fun to go when we grew up. And here we are. All grown-up. Her mother is letting her go. Her mother is treating her like an adult. And yet my mother and father are still treating me like I'm eleven years old!”

“Can you act like an adult,” Lang said, “and stop being so melodramatic?”

“Why, adults aren't melodramatic?”

“Chloe!”

No one spoke for a moment. Then her father did.

“You can't go,” he said, turning toward the sink. “All
I know about Barcelona is that in Spain, the drivers are considered the worst in the world.” His back was to his wife and daughter. He didn't, wouldn't, couldn't face them as he spoke. “It's a well-known, established fact. The worst drivers in the world.”

Chloe opened her hands. “I won't be driving, Daddy. I'll be so careful. You know me. I'll be good. I promise.” Her voice oozed with pity and penitence. The fight had gone out of her.

“You'll be walking, though, won't you?” Jimmy said. “While others are driving, poorly.” He lowered his head.

“Not even, Jimmy,” said Lang, caressing her husband's squared back and glaring at Chloe. “Didn't you hear her? She'll be lying on a brand-new beach. Admiring the architecture.”