When You Believe (21 page)

The harvested cornfield to the south of the interstate looked like a child who’d been forced into a bad haircut for the first
day of school.

“Did you know—” She talked about nothing around a hunk of hamburger bun, trying to bring herself back for the girl beside
her. “—that you should always get your hair cut in the new of the moon?”

Shelby stared out of the window at the cornfield. She took a sip of soda.

“Or else your hair will get stringy. Like that cornfield over there.”

“That can’t be true.”

“It’s true. At least that’s what they say in Missouri. It’s an old Ozark tale.”

“Yeah, but we aren’t in Missouri anymore.”

Lydia smiled toward the windshield. “Things can’t be true in one place and not be true in another.”

“No?”

“No.”

Lydia drove on for miles after that, with Shelby drawing curlicues with fries in the ketchup on a napkin.

“Why
did
you bring me, Miss P?” the girl asked finally.

Lydia’s hands playing over the steering wheel as she teased. “Maybe just because I wanted someone to help me unwrap my hamburger
while I was driving.”

Shelby didn’t fall for it. “
No.
I’m really serious. I want to know.”

“Do you?”

A nod.

“I felt like I should,” Lydia said. “That’s it. It made me peaceful, thinking of having you with me. What do you think?”

“I think that sounds nice.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Lydia grinned, “Did you bring your driver’s permit with you? Do you feel sure enough of yourself to spell me?”

“You want me to
drive?”

“
Sure. What do you think?”

“Oh,
yes.
” Shelby bonked her head on the roof, she bounced so high.

“Don’t hurt yourself.” A sideways glance and a little grin. “You sure?”

Another bounce of joy. “
Yes,
I’m sure. I’ve practiced a lot with Tom.”

“Okay. If you think you’re ready. It’s fine with me.”

“I’m
ready!”
She unzipped her purse, scrabbled around in it until she brought out the much-prized scrap of paper. With a vast amount of
confidence, she waggled her permit in the air. “Tom told me I was doing really well. He said he thought I’d be okay on a highway
if I ever wanted to try.” She surveyed the horizon that seemed to curve off of the edge of sky. “When you live in Shadrach,
you have to drive a long way to find a wide road.”

There wasn’t much else that needed to be said.

The city park they found when they exited at Vandalia suited their every purpose. The fast-food trappings, which had seemed
to mushroom in the sack on the front seat, were tossed into a rusty metal drum. The swings swayed lazily in the breeze, moving
as if some child had just run away from them. A shredded soccer goal, its cords billowing and falling like cobwebs, squatted
sideways beside an open patch of grass.

Shelby made a wary circle around the goal. For the first time Lydia realized that, since the dance, she hadn’t even talked
about replacing her soccer ball. Lydia made a mental note to stop somewhere and get her a new one. A big sporting-goods shop
in a city, where they could find something colorful from The World Cup. Or maybe one endorsed by Mia Hamm.

For now, though, it didn’t seem to matter. Shelby played air-soccer, sidestepping, zigzagging nothing between her feet, shooting
masterfully for a score.

“Very good!” Lydia applauded.

“Thank you.”

For Lydia there were leaves in this place, plenty of maple leaves to wade through. Hundreds of leaves, thousands of leaves,
deep enough to pick up armfuls and fling overhead. Then the teeter-totter, which Shelby straddled like a seven-year-old, lifting
it with the handle.

“Come do this with me!”

“Oh, good grief. It’s been years.”

Teeter-tottering does come back. The heavy rivets in the middle, the chain that dangled and locked it down. The handlebars,
which seemed much lower and smaller than they ever used to seem. The broad seat that had to be straddled like a fat Shetland
pony. Oh, yes, and the splinters. Both of them were screaming, trying not to scoot.

“When I was a little kid,” Lydia said as she soared up and Shelby went down, “Uncle Cy used to gather all the leaves from
the whole place for my Christmas present. He’d rake for weeks, getting that skirt of land clear beside the marina. He’d bag
them up with the idea that, when we all came in for the holidays, he’d burn them.” Shelby went up and Lydia went down. “But
he’d dump them out the first day we got there and we’d turn cartwheels and hide in them. We pulverized them, running through
them. He had to gather driftwood from the lakeshore if he wanted a bonfire.”

Up and down they went. Up. Down.

“Once, when I was a little girl?” and Lydia loved the way the girl’s voice lilted up at the end of her sentences. “My real
dad, not Tom, but my real dad? Before he and my mom split up, he built me a tree house and we spent the night there. It was
really fun. After he left, it fell apart, though. My mom wouldn’t let me climb in it anymore. It made me really sad.”

“You ought to see if your dad would come build it again. When I was little, I got a unicycle for Christmas.”

“When I was little I wanted a drum…”

“. . . and I wanted a monkey…”

And on and on they went, until the sky and the earth and the world had gone up and down so many times that they both felt
silly and dizzy.

. . .

SHELBY TOOK FINE
to the driving. It had been smart, coming off into town so she could get a feel for the LeSabre on slower roads. She leaned
forward with her foot plastered to the brake, shifted
plunk-thump
into drive.

Her first mash of the gas pedal surged them forward.

Lydia fought to keep from saying it aloud.
Okay, Shelb, turn on your blinker and signal. Keep your speed on the entrance ramp, you’ll do fine. Don’t worry about that
truck; ease on out into your lane. There you go.

After ten minutes of sitting a little too forward in the seat, keeping her forearms a little too stiff, glancing a few times
too often over her shoulder toward her blind spot, Shelby leaned into the seat, relaxed her elbows, and found the rearview
mirror again. Lydia offered her a piece of Dentyne. Another half hour and she was still chomping on the same piece of gum,
humming to the radio, flipping her hair out of her eyes, as if she’d been driving on an interstate every day of her life.

Then she kept her eyes straight on the dotted center line and started to giggle.

“What are you laughing at?”

“That thing in your yearbook.”

“What thing?”

Shelby rolled her eyes. “‘I know you will go far in life, especially with the rhino noise.’”

“Oh.” Lydia rolled her eyes. “
That.”

Driving along, both of them staring straight ahead and grinning.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“You going to do it?”

Lydia left her arms crossed over her thighs and stared at the headliner in the Buick. “Let’s see.” She was thinking.

“Come on,
please.”

Lydia took a deep breath through her nose that went clear down to her pelvis. Let the breath out. Pursed her lips and shook
her head again. “Naw.”

“Okay. Never mind. Don’t do it. Don’t—”

It came from beneath Lydia’s throat, her mouth closed and set in a firm line, a guttural bubbling moan that vibrated the whole
car.

“Oh, my
word.”

“Watch your lane.”

“Oh, my
word.”

“You’re going to get us killed. You’re weaving all over the road.”

LYDIA TOOK OVER
the wheel again late in the night. She drove while Shelby drifted off to sleep. A few headlights pinpointed the darkness;
she had no sense of distance, couldn’t figure out how far ahead of her they were. Every now and then, an eighteen-wheeler
would burst past from behind, barreling along in the fast lane, wheels whining at ear level, yellow watery streams of light
that your eyes could still see after they had gone.

When she grew sleepy herself, she pulled off onto the shoulder. The night was endless around her; it felt like the roof had
disappeared off the sky.

She leaned her seat back and turned her head sideways, taking one private, long look at the girl.

Shelby slept with her cheekbone propped in one hand, her other hand cupped slightly over the saddle of her hipbone.

Her breath came in silent belly-rises the way the young always breathe. Only once or twice did Lydia hear an audible sigh.

There was nothing to keep Lydia company on this empty stretch of highway, nothing except for the stars. She thought of the
first time she had really looked at Shelby’s birdlike hands, the fingernails chewed to the nubs. She thought of Sam’s proud
little chip of a diamond blinking in the sun, a symbol,
NO TRESPASSING
. She thought of how she’d looked at Shelby’s hands that day in her office, had heard the things Shelby was saying, had cried
out for Charlie, had thought how those teenager hands could have once been her own hands, too.

A slight breeze, the song of the trees, an intuition speaking within her that, even though she had cried out for it, she had
almost forgotten how to hear.

Oh, Father. Show me. Please let me see and know what you want from this.

Maybe they should have spent the night somewhere. Lydia closed her eyes and stretched her neck against the backrest. This
was a long drive to be making alone. Or with a teenaged girl, for that matter. When people on one end knew you’d left but
people on the other end didn’t know you were on the way.

Truth alone will never set anyone free, beloved. But it is in the
knowing
of the truth that you will be changed.

Lydia started the car, loving the heater for the warm air it chugged on her legs. She glanced again at Shelby and steered
out, pressed the accelerator to speed. Six hours on either side of silence. Maybe a person really could hear God. Maybe in
all this stillness, if you weren’t just trying to grab it the way you grabbed a sandwich at the diner, not taking it on your
own terms, in your own time.

Your insides have been a hard and crusty rock, Lydia. Use the sledgehammer of my Word to chisel away your hurt, to understand
my love. And you will come to know . . .

“Oh, Lord,” she whispered aloud. “Can you hear me? Do you know what I’m asking of you?”

And she drove on until morning thinking she was alone.

O
h,
my goodness! I can’t
believe
this. I absolutely cannot
believe
this.” The neighbors must have heard the squalling sound clear down to Simms Road. “What a
surprise
. Isn’t this fun, Jim, having her drive up like this?
So
much more fun, because it wasn’t even
planned.”

“Hey, Lyd.” Her father’s hard, long arms around her, taking her in. “You look tired. Everything okay?”

“Yeah, Dad.” One of those things you said when you were just coming in the driveway. Later, if she had a chance to say that
her work had been hard, at least she could tell him that much. “Everything’s fine.”

“Good. I like to hear that.”

“Mom. Dad. I’d like to introduce you to my—” The door opened on the far side of the Buick and swung wide.

“Oh, my
goodness,”
Nancy hollered again, cradling her cheeks in her palms. “Oh, I just
knew
it. I just
knew
something was going on.”

“What?”

“I just
knew
you wouldn’t be able to wait until—”

Nancy glanced over at the car again and froze. Shelby had gotten out and stood with her fingers touching the chrome.

“I’d like to introduce you to my friend, Shelby Tatum.”

“Hello,” Shelby said, blushing.

“These are my parents. Jim and Nancy Porter.”

“Hello.” Nancy tried to pretend she hadn’t missed a beat.

Jim stepped forward and made a flourish of shaking the girl’s hand. “We’re so glad to have you here, young lady. Two beautiful
women to grace our supper table in the evening.”

Nancy was still trying to figure it. A woman’s intuition. She’d been expecting someone else to climb out of the car. No matter
what was going on, Nancy always seemed to know. “We just thought—”

“It’s okay, Mom.” Lydia draped her arm across her mother’s shoulders and walked with her inside.

“Oh, Shelby, honey. We are just
very
glad to have you, too.”

Lydia sighed when she entered the door. It was nice to walk in and have this house be lived in. Newspapers were tossed on
the piano bench. Yard-work shoes were plopped beside the mudroom door, one foot still in front of the other, the way they’d
been when they’d left her dad’s feet. Open mail fanned in a stack on the kitchen table.

So much more cozy, the way it was now, than the lemon-oiled coffee table and the flowers on the countertop and the clean towels
hanging on the racks.

Those things made her feel too much like a guest.

“You got bags, Lyd?” Then, to Shelby, “You got a suitcase, young lady? Let’s have those Buick keys. I’ll bring everything
in.”

“That’s okay, Mr. Porter. I’ll get it.”

“Nonsense.”

“Here, Dad.” A wink at Shelby. “We each have one bag. It might be too much for you. We’d better help.”

Of course, when they went outside, he didn’t open the trunk. He went straight to the hood and clanged it open instead. “Hm-m-mm.
Engine looks good. How’s the car running?” The hot engine was still ticking. He checked a hose-fitting or two.

“It’s doing great, Dad. That alternator is really hanging in there. It certainly did fine on this trip.”

“Belts okay?” He yanked one.

“Yep, think so.”

Inside again, Nancy had coffee on, sugar cubes out, and cookies on a plate. The house smelled like pot roast. Lydia had forgotten
what it was like to walk into a place with kitchen smells. She was always running out for a deli chicken or pasta-to-go in
a paper tent.