Losing Clementine (21 page)

In my room, I turned on the Discovery channel, sat on the unwashed comforter with the busy floral pattern so useful for disguising bodily fluids, and unwrapped my complimentary plastic cup. I poured the tequila into it one shot at a time. I could've drunk from the bottle, but I'm a lady.

Three shots in I ordered kung pao shrimp and egg rolls and watched beavers mate until both the beaver and the food came.

Tequila does not go with duck sauce. I don't care what anyone tells you.

It was 10
A.M.
, and I had a cold, wet, industrial-grade washcloth pressed to my face and the back of my head resting on the tub. The lights were off, and the blackout blinds were drawn. I was, I decided, prepared to leave my room and go in search of a hangover cure just as long as the world agreed to turn off the sun for the next twenty-four hours.

By 11
A.M.
, I was in a chain diner that served breakfast all day and separated its booths with frosted glass dividers. While I'd waited for a table, two kids in matching green soccer uniforms complete with knee-high socks had run around pretending to score goals. One of them stepped on my foot in cleats. I cried out louder than was necessary just to get their mother's attention. It hadn't worked. She had no sympathy left for bystanders. Then my table was ready.

I ordered coffee from a woman with long, yellowing, unpainted nails that reminded me of witches and glittery eye shadow she was at least sixty years too old to wear. She brought the whole pot. I wasn't sure if that was normal or I just looked that bad, and I couldn't see through the divider to check on anyone else's table.

The coffee was the kind you don't want to drink black but is all right with enough cream and sugar. I tasted some and then added more cream every few sips as I made room in the cup. I no longer wanted to vomit, but it was unmistakably true that my skull had been cleaved in two somewhere over my right eye. I drank more coffee and talked myself into moving enough to pull my cell phone out of my pocket.

I called information and winced when the operator picked up. I kept my eyes closed for the entire call. Things were better that way. “Anywhere in Kansas… Jerry Pritchard… None?… Thank you.”

I hung up. It was a long shot anyway.

“My husband was from Kansas City. Lit out of there so fast, you'd think somebody set his pants on fire.”

Oh, good, I thought, a chatty waitress.

“I've never been to Kansas,” I said.

“Ain't in Kansas. Kansas City's in Missouri, which don't make a damn bit of sense, but there you go. You know what you want yet?”

“Mexican scramble.”

“Bacon or sausage?”

“Sausage.”

“White or wheat?”

“White.”

“Buttered?”

“Dry.”

“Got it.”

She walked away, and I drank more of my cream laced with coffee and artificial sweetener. Then I called back the operator with the too-loud voice.

She must've been in the bathroom because a guy picked up.

“Jerry Pritchard in Missouri,” I told him. “Anywhere in Missouri.”

He came back with three numbers. I made him wait while I dug in my bag for a pen. I didn't have one. I didn't even have a lipstick. I told him I'd call him back. He offered to put me through to the number of my choice.

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “I didn't even think this would work.”

Then I hung up, which is when I noticed my heart was pounding. I liked it better when I was just looking. I liked it better when the universe wasn't throwing me a bone. I liked it better when I didn't have to think about what I'd say when the asshole picked up the phone.

“Hi, remember me? The fruit of your loins?”

I probably wouldn't say that.
Loins
is a gross word.

I drank more coffee because caffeine would certainly help lower my heart rate and tried not to think so damn much. I wished I had some of my pills to take. I wished I had some pot.

I'd plugged his name into a search engine a few times a year for ten years. You'd be surprised how common names are. Nothing that was clearly him had ever popped up. There were a lot of things that might have been—a Rotary Club listing, 5K race results. I'd thought, for a while, that a man in Texas who blogged about conservative politics might have been him, but he turned out to be lifelong military, which couldn't have been right. Cyber-stalking strangers, squinting at Facebook photos for a family resemblance, all of those things felt safer.

My waitress came back ten minutes later with a pile of bright yellow eggs flecked with diced tomato and green onion and oily, reddish chorizo. Next to it, lying like felled logs, were good ol' American sausage links with toast triangles piled on top. She set the plate down in front of me, and the eggs wiggled a little wave.

“Hey, you know anything about a little town about forty miles from here off Highway 99?” I asked. “It's not even a town. It's like a neighborhood or something. Maybe twenty-five houses all by themselves.”

“Creepy quiet?”

“Yeah.”

“Don't be going down there, honey. That's them Word of Our Savior people. Gonna go all Branch Davidian one of these days.”

“It's a cult?”

“You better believe it. You go down there you're likely to end up wearing brand-new sneakers, drinking poisoned Kool-Aid, and going to meet your maker on the big spaceship in the sky. The county sheriff don't even like going down there.”

“Great.”

“They all run into their houses and pull down the blinds like you're gonna bite 'em or something. Got a neighbor that was trying to sell magazines door-to-door. That's who told me. What a waste of time that racket was. You want any hot sauce with that?”

“Yes, please.”

She came back a minute later with hot sauce, the check, and four aspirin that she dropped next to my coffee cup.

“Been there,” she said.

Always nice to know you really do look that bad.

Outside, the sky was bright and the sort of pure light blue that people paint nurseries. I sat in the car with a napkin and the pen I'd used to sign the credit card slip. I looked at my cell phone and then out the windshield for a while. An old woman with a cane in one hand and her husband's arm in the other stared at me as they shuffled and clomped past on their way to pancakes. They were both wearing dress pants, and her purple rayon blouse was tied at the neck with a big bow. I hit the speed dial. Jenny's voice mail picked up. I didn't leave a message. I was supposed to be the boss, the grown-up, the one with answers. I wasn't supposed to ask her what I should do.

Quick like pulling off a Band-Aid I dialed information and got the three numbers. I wrote them on the napkin and then tossed it in the glove box. Yesterday's white plastic sack from the drugstore was still in the passenger seat. I changed the bandage on my arm just to have something to do that wasn't thinking, then turned the car south, turned the radio up too loud, and headed home.

Hours later, showered and curled up in bed, I gave my full attention to the yellow legal pad on my lap. I'd been practicing this letter in my head for a year. I wanted to get it down now. There would be a lot to do at the end, and this wasn't the sort of thing you rushed. I would probably need to do several drafts.

I sat at the kitchen table. The sun was well on its way to precisely overhead. I had showered and then straightened my hair products, throwing out the ones I wouldn't be needing anymore. I wiped out the sink with a wad of toilet tissue and then went to the fridge for breakfast and spent some more time throwing out expired condiments. It occurred to me it would no longer be prudent to purchase unripe fruit. I made toast and then ate a Twinkie when the toast proved woefully inadequate. I made coffee and stood at the counter while it dripped. I did not look at my computer. I did throw a glance at the unfinished canvas across the studio.

I hated it. I hated everything about it, which was normal. Each piece has an emotional life cycle that plays out in my head. Inspiration, excitement, doubt, loathing, hope, determination, acceptance. I was hurtling through doubt and planting my feet firmly in loathing, which wasn't as upsetting as it used to be early in my career. I didn't know that was normal then. It took a few years for me to see this always happened and a few more to discover it happens to every artist. We all hate everything we do at one time or another. Eventually, we forgive ourselves for sucking so damn bad and go on because there's no other choice. They should teach that in art school.

I still didn't want to work on the piece of crap. Not at all. Never again. I would've thrown it out the window if it would fit through the opening, which it would not. That was too bad, because work was the last excuse I had not to sit down at the computer, and I didn't even have that.

I went to the desk in the corner that used to be Jenny's, a small wooden thing simple enough to have been made by Shakers, and opened the single center drawer. I took out the large spiral-bound book of checks, each with a stub attached for record keeping. It was half-empty, with just those little receipts left, all filled out neatly and completely in Jenny's looping hand. I wrote out a check for her to cover the night at the museum, put it in an envelope, added a stamp, and walked it down to the mailbox.