Pigs in Heaven (5 page)

“Set down,” cowboy hat tells Angie. Ordering people around seems to be the m.o. of Angie’s Diner. “Tell them about the time Lucky run off with the Hell’s Angels.”

“He didn’t run off with them, either.” Angie crosses her arms and doesn’t sit.

“I want to hear about the mules that kidnapped him in Mexico.” Taylor looks uneasily at Lucky, after she’s said this, but he is beaming. This is his element. The window illuminates his face, raising the color of his eyes to a gas-flame blue.

“Oh, honey, that was unbelievable,” Angie says. “They told him they was going to shoot him.” Taylor tries to imagine stubborn four-legged animals with guns, until Angie explains that mules are men who have something to do with drug running. “If you’re anywheres near Mexico and someone shoots you for no apparent reason,” she says knowledgeably, “they’re a mule.”

Taylor is relieved to be home in one piece. She and Jax sit up in bed with his tape of They Might Be Giants turned down low, so they’ll hear when Turtle has fallen asleep in the next room. Turtle talks herself to sleep nearly every night in a quiet language no one can understand. Over the years, Taylor and Alice have had many
long-distance phone calls about motherhood. Alice told her not to worry when Turtle was three and still didn’t talk, or later, when she did talk but would say only the names of vegetables in long, strange lists. Alice still says there’s nothing to worry about, and she has always been right before. She says Turtle is talking over the day with her personal angels.

They hear Turtle sigh and begin to hum a low, tedious song. Then they hear the clunk of her comfort object, a flashlight she calls Mary, which she has slept with since the day she found it years ago in Taylor’s employer’s truck.

“I missed you,” Taylor tells Jax. “Compared to what I’ve been through lately, you seem normal.”

He kisses her hair, which smells like a thunderstorm, and her shoulder, which smells like beach rocks. He tells her, “Sex will get you through times with no money better than money will get you through times with no sex.”

“The thing I really missed was your jokes.”

“I missed your cognitive skills,” he says. “And your syntax. Honestly, that’s all. Not your body. I
despise
your body.” He drawls on purpose, sounding more southern than he needs to, though he can’t match the hard-soft angular music of her Kentucky hills.

“Well, that’s sure a load off my mind,” she says, laughing, shuddering her dark hair off her shoulders without self-consciousness. She’s the first woman he’s ever known who doesn’t give a damn how she looks, or is completely happy with the way she looks, which amounts to the same thing. Usually women are aware of complex formulas regarding how long the legs should be in relation to the waist in relation to the eyelashes—a mathematics indecipherable to men but strangely crucial to women. Taylor apparently never took the class. He wishes he could have been there when she was born, to watch the whole process of Taylor. He lies across the bed with his head in her lap, but when he realizes she’s looking at his profile, turns his face away. Although he rarely sees it himself, he knows his profile is unusual and even startles people: there’s no indentation at all between his forehead and the bridge of his nose. Taylor says he
looks like an Egyptian Pharaoh, which is exactly what she would say, with no apologies for never having seen any actual Egyptian art. Taylor behaves as if what she believes, and what she is, should be enough for anyone.

She’s not the first woman on earth to insist on his good looks; that’s not why he is in love with her. Jax has broad shoulders and hands that apparently suggest possibilities. He’s proud that he can reach an octave and a half on a piano like Franz Liszt; his one gift is largeness. When his band performs, women tend to give him articles of their clothing with telephone numbers inked on the elastic.

“You think she’s asleep?”

Taylor shakes her head. “Not yet. She’s having trouble relaxing. I learned a lot about her breathing on this trip.”

“You’re picking up certain character traits from your friend Lou Ann.”

Lou Ann Ruiz, who is like a second mother to Turtle, tends toward an obsession with health and safety. But to her credit, Jax allows, Lou Ann is making bold changes in her life: she recently got a job at an exercise salon called Fat Chance and now wears Lycra outfits in color combinations that seem dangerous, like the poisonous frogs that inhabit the Amazon.

“Is now a good time to tell you about the phone calls?”

“What phone calls?” Taylor asks, through a heartfelt yawn.

“The approximately four thousand calls that have come in since you achieved national prominence on Monday.”

“Oh, right.”

“You think I’m kidding.” Jax gets out of bed and rifles through the mess of music and lyrics on his desk. Sometimes, in his nightmares, everything on this desk sings at once. He comes back with a legal pad and his hornrimmed glasses, and reads.

“Lou Ann: wants to know if you took Dramamine for Turtle because she threw up that time in the car. Lou Ann again: to tell you never mind, it was
her
son that threw up in the car.”

“Lou Ann often called me before I was famous.” Taylor presses her mouth against her kneecap. Sometimes when she’s concentrat
ing on something else she seems to be kissing her own knees, or the backs of her hands. Jax has tried it out in private, to see how it feels to love oneself unconsciously.

“Okay,” he says, “I’m skipping all the Lou Anns.” He runs his finger down the page. “Charla Rand from the
Phoenix Gazette
. Marsh Levin from the
Arizona Daily Star
. Larry Rice, photographer from the
Star
. Helga Carter from the
Fresno Bee
.”

“The what? I don’t believe this. What do they want?”

“The story of the year. A suspense-movie plot with endearing characters, a famous tourist landmark and a happy ending.”

“Shit. Is that all of them?”

“Almost. There are five more pages.”

“Skip over the
Queen Bee News
exetera.”

“Check. Skip the
Queen Bee News
and the Lou Anns.” He turns a couple of pages and then flips back. “Oh, your mother. She called before I’d started writing everything down. She thought she saw you on the news.”

“In
Kentucky
? That can’t be.”

“Well, basketball season’s over.”

“Lord, it must have scared the bejesus out of her.”

“Don’t worry, I’m very good in crisis situations. I told her she was hallucinating. Then after I heard, I called her back and told her you and Turtle pulled through without a scratch.”

“It’s not like
we
fell down any holes.”

“She won’t completely believe that till she hears from you.”

Taylor smiles. “I’ll call her in the morning.”

“She wants a new picture of Turtle. Her theory is that in the one you sent Santa Claus looks like Sirhan Sirhan.”

“No, like Lee Harvey Oswald.”

He looks at her, takes off his glasses and throws the notepad on the floor. “How did you know that?”

“I lived with her twenty years. I know what she’d say.”

“You two ought to be in the
National Enquirer
.
TELEPATHIC MOTHER-DAUGHTER DUO RECEIVE MESSAGES THROUGH FILLINGS
.”

“We’re just close.”

“
Perversering
mother-daughter duo.”

“Would you please shut up? You’re jealous of everything, even my mother.”

“Did you and Turtle really persevere perversely?”

“I’m going to be sorry I let you keep a scrapbook.”

“It’s great material. Oh, and another news flash also: She’s leaving her husband.”

Taylor stares at Jax. “Who? My mother is leaving Harland? Where’s she going? Is she coming here?”

“You didn’t get the message through your fillings?”

“She’s
leaving
him? Where’s she going?”

“I don’t know.” He closes his eyes. “Not here. She sounded a little sad.”

“I have to call her right now.”

She shoves his head off her lap, but Jax catches her around the waist and pulls her back onto the bed. “It’s two in the morning there, sweet thing. Let her sleep.”

“Damn it. I
hate
time zones. Why can’t they just make it the same time everywhere at once?”

“Because if they did, somewhere on earth some poor musicians would have to sleep at night and go to work in daylight.”

Taylor relaxes a little against Jax, who puts his arms around her. He spreads his hands across the bony marimba of her ribs, wishing for the music they hold. “Are you in love with our garbage man?” he asks.

“Danny! Oh, pew, his truck smells like compost city.”

“Uh huh. So you’re saying you
would
be in love with him, if his truck smelled better.”

“Jax, why do you do this?”

“I’m thinking you’ll leave me, now that you’re famous.”

“A world-famous employee of a car-parts store.”

“You’re the manager. Don’t sell yourself short. You don’t need me.”

She strokes his kneecap, which is angular and hard as a box terrapin. “Jax, honey, I never did,” she says.

“I know.”

“Or Danny, or Bruce Springsteen, or the man in the moon. It’s nothing personal.”

“I know. It’s because of your mother’s guiding myth.”

“What’s that?”

“That the women in your family need men only as a remedy for minor plumbing irritations.”

“Well, maybe that’s true. And I’m here in your bed anyway, how about that,” she says. It is, technically, his bed; she got rid of hers in a yard sale when she and Turtle moved into Jax’s tiny house at the edge of town. She tips her head back until it rests against his chin. “So will you shut up about my leaving you, and is that all the big news you have for this evening?”

“I’ll show you big news,” he says, delicately biting the nape of her neck. He lifts her breasts, which fit perfectly into his hands, though he knows this is no promise that he gets to keep them. A million things you can’t have will fit in a human hand. He lets her go, gently. “No, that’s not all. There’s something else, but we can talk about it tomorrow.”

Taylor’s pulse jumps. “What?”

“Really, you do not want to hear about it now.”

“Don’t tell me what I want.”

“Okay. Oprah Winfrey called.”

She laughs, relieved. “Did she? I’ve been neglecting her and I feel awful about it.”

“It’s not a joke. Oprah Winfrey called. Not
Oprah
, but one of her producers, or researchers or something. They’re doing a show called ‘Children Who Have Saved Lives.’ ”

“Would you please save the hooha for your screaming fans?” She settles back against his chest.

“I agree with you, it’s one of the weirder things I’ve heard of. They want you and Turtle to come to Chicago.”

It dawns on Taylor that Jax is not making up Oprah Winfrey. “Why would we want to go to Chicago?”

“It’s a happening town. You could show Turtle the Museum of
Science and Industry. Since she got short-sheeted on the Grand Canyon.”

“What would I say on national TV?”

“Most of the time you strike me as having no shortage. What would you
like
to say on national TV?”

“Would they let me say
anything?
”

“Well, it’s not Geraldo.”

“I’m serious. Could I say what I wanted to, do you think?”

“She’d probably want you to stick to the general theme of children who have saved lives.”

“That’s a very weird subject,” Taylor points out. “How many could there be?”

“The Chinese say if you save somebody’s life you’re responsible for them forever.”

“Somebody else told me that! I thought he was making it up. Do you think Turtle’s life is changed forever?”

“Could be,” Jax admits. “Not necessarily for the worse.”

“I liked her the way she was.”

They are quiet for a long time with their eyes looking down, listening.

Taylor says quietly, “You know what I keep going back to? Nobody believed her. They took one look at this skinny Indian kid and said, ‘Well, ma’am, we don’t actually have a witness.’ ”

“But you believed her. And Lucky Buster lives.”

“I had to, Jax, I’m her mother. That part is nothing.”

They both listen again. Turtle has stopped conversing with the angels.

T
AYLOR IS GETTING A LONG
, hard look at someone’s bald spot. He has reclined his seat to a point where he’s closer than a dinner plate, maybe twelve inches from her face. The top of his head is covered with fine, almost invisible fur that lies flattened in a complicated pattern, like a little prairie swept by a tornado. It reminds Taylor of a theory Jax once told her about, that humans evolved from some sort of water ape and spent the dawn of civilization in a swamp. Streamlined hair patterns are supposed to be the proof, but Taylor wonders as she stares, Does that mean we moved through the water headfirst? Could be. Kids move through the world that way, running into things with the tops of their heads. This man has a scar up there, no doubt forgotten through the decades until now that it’s lost its cover.

The pilot comes on the intercom again. He’s a chatty one; right after takeoff he introduced himself as “your captain,” and Turtle’s eyes grew wide. She asked Taylor if he only had one hand. Now, after mulling it over the whole afternoon, it dawns on Taylor that the only captain Turtle knows about so far is Captain Hook. She may never get on a plane again without envisioning a pirate at the helm.

Captain Hook now explains they are passing over the Mississippi River, and that if he can do anything to make the passengers more comfortable they should just let him know. Frankly, although she doubts the captain can help her out here, Taylor doesn’t feel comfortable being intimate with a stranger’s hair loss. She doesn’t even know the top of Jax’s head this well. She’s looked at it, but not for three and a half hours.

Turtle is finally sleeping. She seems to be coming down with a cold, and really needed a nap, but was so excited she sat for hours with her face pressed hard against the window. When the window turned icy cold, even when there was nothing to see but a vast, frosted field of clouds spread over a continent, rutted evenly as if it had been plowed, Turtle still stared. Everybody else on the plane is behaving as though they are simply sitting in chairs a little too close together, but Turtle is a child in a winged tin box seven miles above Planet Earth.

Taylor hasn’t flown before either, and for the first few hours she felt the same excitement. Especially when they were taking off, and before, buckling up, watching the stewardess show how to put on a yellow oxygen mask without messing up your hair. And before that, leaving the airport: walking behind Turtle down the sloping hallway to the door of the plane, stepping across from solid ground to something unknown, furtively checking the rivets around the door, but what can you do? She has no choice but to follow her daughter into this new life she’s claimed from a fortune cookie.

Chicago is tall on one side of the freeway, open sky on the other, because of the lake. Taylor never thought of Chicago as a beach town, but there they are, hundreds of people in swimsuits throwing Frisbees into the wind. It’s the first week of June. She and Turtle are cruising down the freeway in a long white limousine with smoked-glass windows and baby blue velvet upholstery. As they speed away from the airport, people in other cars turn their heads to try and get a look inside this vehicle of mystery. The driver calls them both “Miss,” as if they are the types to travel everywhere by limo.

It occurs to Taylor that this would be quite the line of work, driving Oprah Winfrey guests around: some would be royalty and some would be famous murderers or men with a wife in every state, and if you’re only the driver you’d never know which was which. You’d have to play it safe and treat them all politely.

“This is the best-planned city in the nation,” the driver explains. Turtle is glued to the window, still. “It all burned down in the great fire of October 8, 1871. Everything went. Two hundred million dollars of property damage. So they had the opportunity of starting it over from the ground up.”

“I’ve heard of that fire,” Taylor says. “I heard it was started by a cow.”

“No, that is not true, that is a myth. The Great Chicago Fire was not started by a cow.” He hesitates a little, and Taylor realizes she’s blown their cover; bringing up the subject of livestock has put them more on the criminal than the royalty side of the fence.

“Well, it makes a good story,” she says. She doesn’t care if he thinks she and Turtle are serial killers. He still has to take them to their hotel.

For all this city’s famous planning, the traffic is horrible. As soon as they turn away from the lake toward the tall glass buildings, they are mired in a flock of honking cars. The driver has evidently finished with the glories of his city. Once in a while as they sit there he hits the horn with his fist.

Turtle sneezes. She’s got a cold, there’s no getting around it. Taylor hands her a tissue out of her pocket. “How’re you feeling, Toots?”

“Fine,” she says, blowing her nose carefully, still looking out the window. Turtle almost never complains. Taylor is well aware of how unusual this is. If all you knew about kids came from watching the sitcoms, she thinks, you would never guess there were children on earth like Turtle.

“Mom, look.” She pulls on Taylor’s finger and points at a City of Chicago garbage truck, which is stalled next to them in the traffic jam. A fancy gold seal painted on the side gives it an air of magnifi
cence. The driver smiles down at them from his perch on high. Then he raises one eyebrow and winks.

“Why’d he do that?”

“He thinks you’re cute,” Taylor says, “and he likes my legs. Also he probably thinks we’re rich.”

“But we’re not, are we?”

“Nope, we’re not.”

“He gets to drive a better truck than Danny’s.”

“Definitely.”

Taylor is wearing a skirt—something she’s not accustomed to, but Lou Ann insisted on loaning her a nice beige suit for Oprah Winfrey. She claimed it was against some regulation to wear jeans on television. Jax got a good laugh out of that, but to his credit, he is nicer to Lou Ann than most guys would be.

Taylor gets a nervous stomach when she thinks about the taping tomorrow morning. She suspects these shows are just a way of making a spectacle out of bad things that happen to people. But Turtle really wanted to do it. She’d never understood before that actual people could appear on television. She seems to have a vague idea they will meet the Ninja Turtles.

The garbage guy is still looking. He has curly hair and a terrific smile. Taylor crosses her legs and raises her hand just a little. If he can really see in, he’ll take it as a wave.

He does. He makes a small motion with his chin, indicating that she and Turtle should abandon their limo in favor of his garbage truck. Taylor gives it some thought, but decides to go ahead with Oprah.

“It’s an adorable outfit,” the wardrobe woman tells Taylor, “but I’m just suggesting something a little more feminine. We have this little jumper from wardrobe, see? The color would look absolutely super on the set.”

Lou Ann can have the last laugh now: Oprah Winfrey’s people don’t want Turtle to wear her overalls on television. The overalls are
brand new, bright green, perfectly decent. “That dress is ten sizes too big for Turtle,” Taylor says.

“Doesn’t matter. We just pin it in back, see? Nobody sees the back. That’s the secret of TV—you only have to worry about what shows up front, your back can be a mess. And we’ll put this bow in her hair, okay, sweetheart? She’ll look super.”

“She’ll look younger,” Taylor says. “If that’s what you’re going for. She’ll look like a baby doll that saved somebody’s life.”

The woman crosses her arms and frowns. Her short, black hair looks wet and oiled, like a sea otter. The comb rakes through it stay perfectly in place. “It’s going to be difficult,” she says. “We’d have to run her mike wire up from the back.”

“You can manage,” Taylor says, knowing this can’t be the problem. Men wear pants on television every day of the week. The other guests are not being harassed about wardrobe concerns. Taylor met them all in the hotel lobby this morning while they waited for the limos. There’s a Cub Scout who flagged down help when his scoutmaster collapsed on their tenderfoot survival hike; a fourth-grader who saved her sister from a pitbull attack by hitting it with a dog dish and the whole Barbie Dream Date ensemble, including the convertible; and an eleven-year-old who drove the car home when her baby-sitter passed out from multiple bee stings in a city park. Taylor feels, frankly, that the eleven-year-old showed bad judgment all around, and the other two probably just acted without thinking. Turtle is the youngest and has the best story. She doesn’t see why they need to blow it out of proportion by dressing her up like Barbie’s baby sister.

The small green room where they are waiting is crowded and tense. Turtle fidgets, and the wardrobe woman hovers, her raised eyebrows still pushing the question.

“What do you want to wear?” Taylor asks Turtle.

Turtle hugs herself. “This,” she says.

Taylor smiles at the sea-otter woman. “Looks like she’s made up her mind.”

The woman pushes the purple jumper against Turtle’s front,
looking at Taylor. “I really think, look, don’t you? It’s so much more of a visual.”

“My daughter said no, thank you.” Turtle recoils from the bunched fabric, and Taylor narrows her eyes at the woman, who seems nevertheless to be holding her ground. A makeup man comes over at a trot. He’s wearing the laced-up, tassely loafers that people call “boating shoes,” even though most of them will never lay leather to a boat. Taylor wonders why everyone here seems dressed for some kind of sport—the secretaries in leggings, the camera crew in running shoes, all bustling around frowning, with nothing the least bit sporty on their agendas. It’s as if they’re expecting at any minute a sudden announcement: Vacation starts
now
.

“You have wonderful cheekbones, dear,” the makeup man tells Taylor, and he lobs her in the face with a powder puff.