Nothing to Lose (10 page)

“Hey,” she said. “I didn’t mean… I mean, before I started traveling with the fair, I’d never been anywhere either.”

“And now?”

“I used to keep a map with me, X out all the states I’d been to. A few times—like with Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri—I cheated and walked across state lines just to say I’d been there. But after a couple of years, I’d been in just about every state, except Alaska and Hawaii. I’d like to go to Alaska someday.”

“And where’s home?” I asked.

The wheel had made most of a rotation, and we were near the top again. She pointed at something. When I looked, I realized it was clusters of trailers, lined up like molars, hidden behind the rides. I’d never noticed them all the times I’d been to the fair before, even though they were in plain view. “That’s home now. That’s where I live.”

“But, I mean, before that?”

“Another town, a little north of here.”

“But I meant…” I stopped, remembering what she’d said about need to know, about secrets. Who knew what she’d run away from to come here. “Tell me about Mount Rainier,” I said instead. “I’ve never seen a mountain. Is there really snow at the top all year long?”

She smiled. “Yup. And little waterfalls all over that you can find just by hearing them. And animals hiding, but you can see them if you walk quietly. It’s really pretty.”

I leaned and kissed her. It was different than her kissing me. Different than kissing other girls, too. I’d kissed plenty of girls at parties after football games, had some girlfriends, even done some stuff before Mom married Walker and it all fell apart. But somehow I felt like Kirstie knew what it was like to stand in the middle of a crowd and still be all alone.

I kissed her again now, on that double Ferris wheel that turned and dipped, turned and dipped, until I couldn’t tell if the feeling in my stomach was motion sickness or maybe longing.

Below, Cricket was letting people off the wheel. I reached for the grab bar, still dazed.

“Are we getting off?” Kirstie said.

“Ride’s over. I thought…”

“Do you want to get off?” she said, then smiled at the double meaning. “Do you want to get off the
ride?”

The sun slipped behind the funhouse. It left a gray-streaked outline of itself. The fair lights were up, pink and green and blue. The lights were loud and the fair music was louder, and Kirstie’s hands, her hair, her word,
destiny
, all stayed in my ears, shutting out everything else, all the bad stuff.

“No,” I said. “No, I do not want to get off this ride.”

That night Kirstie told me about Mount Rainier and the Mississippi River and all sorts of places she’d seen and I hadn’t. And then my mouth was on hers again, not caring about, not knowing who was watching or what they thought, and all the fair music, the sounds, and lights, and smells gave way to one song:

You were meant for me
,

And I was meant for you.

I never wanted to get off the ride.

When I got home, the light in the kitchen was on. I went to turn it off

A voice stopped me.

“Happy birthday, dear stepson,” it sang.

Walker. My radar was going nuts. Walker in a good mood, his face like a big, pasted-on smiley face, and almost as real. My every instinct screamed flight. But that wasn’t the right thing to do. Instincts were all wrong here.

“Happy birthday to you,” he concluded.

I turned. “Hello, Walker.”

Did my voice shake? He stood, back toward me, by the table. He was still dressed from work, in a gray suit so expensive and clean it gleamed like a knife in the fluorescent light. Smoke curled around his balding head. He turned.

“Out late celebrating?” Still pleasant.

“Yeah.” I huddled closer to the doorway.

A frown.

“I mean, yes. Yes, sir.”

“Your mother said it was your birthday.” Like he’d meant to throw a party. “How old?”

“Sixteen.”
You bastard.

“Sixteen…” Walker took a long drag on the cigarette, then released a puff into my face.

Don’t react.

“And never been kissed?” he said.

“Can I go to my room now?”

“No.” Walker took another drag. “Hey. I’m just trying to talk to you.”

“Right.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“What?” But I remembered and gave in. “Yes. Yes, I’ve been kissed.”

“Wouldn’t have thought so. Mama’s boy like you.”

Which I ignored.

“Been laid, too?”

Which I couldn’t.

“No, sir.”

“Good. Women are nothing but problems. But you’ve got a girlfriend? Or maybe a boyfriend?”

I looked away. A small ant, the kind Mom called a sugar ant and said you couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard you cleaned, made its way up the door frame. Did Walker see it? Not yet. But he would. I thought about the best way to kill it without Walker freaking out.

“You dumb, boy?”

“What?” I shifted from foot to foot, and as I did, moved my hand up to cover the ant.

“You don’t like me much, do you?”

I squashed the ant, my eyes never leaving Walker’s.

He continued. “Why don’t you like me? You’re such a crybaby. You get all whiny about a few everyday arguments.”

Rolling the ant corpse between my fingers, then dropping my hand to my side. I looked at Walker, and the just-being-friendly expression on his face. I wanted to blow him away.

“You think you have it so bad here?” He swept his hand across the kitchen, taking in the dark wood cabinets, the top-of-the-line appliances. “You don’t know what bad is. I grew up in a shack. Two rooms, and my daddy owned both of them. He used to set his shotgun sights on my mama when she cleaned house, made sure she did it right. Couple times he even pulled the trigger, came this close to blowing her brains out.” Walker held two fingers up, touching one another. “Think we went crying to the authorities? They’d have laughed their asses off. We helped her clean the mess. That’s just the normal way things are.”

The normal way things are. I stared at Walker, wondering if this was a warning of things to come. Wondering if he had a gun, if he’d use it. I looked down.

“I want us to get along, Michael. I’m not a bad guy.”

“Sure.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Again.”

“What was it?”

“You got a girl?”

I shrugged. Before Walker, I had girlfriends. I had a life. Now my life was avoiding Walker and his bad moods, nursing dreams about leaving home, which I could not do. Staying from some bizarre idea of protecting my mother, which I could not do either. Mom and I had been close before. Friends more than parent and child, but close. Since Walker, though, I’d found myself hating
her
almost more than I hated him. Because he wasn’t my parent and she was. Because she didn’t understand what it was like to watch. Because sometimes my escape fantasies were so twisted I even scared myself.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah.”

Walker smiled and drew a bill from his wallet. “Take her out someplace. On me.”

The bill was new. So sleek and crisp I thought it might cut me, and I didn’t want to take it, like some grateful beggar, taking his handout. But I did. A ten, cheap bastard. Still, I folded it in half, pocketed it, and started toward the door.

“Thanks,” I said.

“No problem.”

I opened the door, still feeling the ant corpse on my hand, the bill in my pocket, and hearing Walker’s words.

“Your mom and I could use some time together.”

I walked through the darkness to my room.

“You showed up,” Angela says Thursday morning when I walk into her office.

“Yeah, I’m a little surprised I did.”

“I’m not. You seemed like a smart kid.”

“Coming here means I’m smart?”

“Knowing when you need help means you’re smart. Also, your choice of attorney was brilliant.” She leans her chin on tented fingers. “So now, tell me why you’re here.”

I glance out the window. I can see the Rickenbacker Causeway bridge, and if I followed it, I could almost find Walker’s house. I look back at Angela.

“I’ve been thinking about my mother a lot,” I say. “All the time, really. I want to know if there’s anything I can do … to help her. Maybe talk to her attorney or the police. Can I do that without giving myself away? I don’t want to go to a foster home.”

“You probably couldn’t.”

Her words are like a door, slamming shut. I remember what she said about leaving the carnival, about not running. But I’m not sure I’m willing to give it up yet. I won’t give it up for nothing, that’s for sure.

“Will it help my mother if I talk to them?” I ask.

“That would depend what you have to say.”

I pull a newspaper clipping out of my pocket, one I swiped from the library yesterday. It’s just like all the others, calling my mother a trophy wife and a gold digger, making it sound like she married Walker for his money, then bashed his brains in to get her hands on it. The idea of my mother bashing anyone’s brains in is impossible to me. And this article says Walker was planning to leave her. As if.

I say, “Know what the problem is with being a trophy wife?”

Angela smiles. “I can think of several.”

“The problem is you get the kind of man who
wants
a trophy wife.” I gesture at the article. “I want to tell them this is bullshit! They’ve got it all wrong. She wasn’t the bad guy in this. He was. He beat her. He terrorized us … her. And even days he didn’t, even when he was in a great mood, there was always the threat of it, always. We never knew if he’d come home with roses or a shotgun or what.”

I remember my mother that day on the balcony, afraid to step onto the sand for fear of missing Walker’s call, because of what he’d do if she wasn’t there, waiting. Now I think if I’d only gotten her down onto the beach, I could have gotten her to leave him. But I didn’t. I’d failed. She was trapped like a minnow in a tidepool, and I never did anything to get her out.

Until now. I glance at the ocean again.

Angela’s voice interrupts me. “And do you think that will help?”

“I don’t know. You’re the lawyer. Don’t they cut you a break if you kill someone before they kill you? Self-defense or something like that?”

“If it
is
self-defense. But it’s hard to claim self-defense if you knock someone on the head from behind.”

“She didn’t…”

“The fatal blow was struck from the rear. You didn’t know that? That’s the big problem everyone’s having with her self-defense claim.”

I look away, picturing it. “He was a monster. Killing him was a public service. No one should be in jail for it.”

“See, that’s exactly the kind of thing you don’t say to lawyers. Your mother killed a man, Michael. She freely admits she did it. Her options are limited. There’s only so much you can accomplish. You need to decide whether it’s worth putting yourself on the line.”

“She doesn’t belong in jail.”

“You may be right. And this guy sounds like a total slime. But—”

“I
am
right. I can’t handle… I mean, I was out of there. I’d escaped. But I can’t go on like nothing happened. I can’t stand that she’s in jail for this. She doesn’t belong there. She’s not like people think she is. She’s just … weak.”

For the first time, Angela’s face changes. She stands like she’s going to walk toward me, but she doesn’t.

“I understand,” she says.

“You couldn’t possibly.”

“Okay. That’s fair. But I sympathize. It must be hard, living with that.”

“I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about her. What’s going to happen?”