Problem Child, page 5
“What niece? Where? What happened?”
“One of my brother’s many children, of course. His first one, I think. Down in Oklahoma. I don’t know her.”
He only looks more alarmed. “How old is she?”
“Sixteen.”
“But . . .” He shakes his head hard, as if he’s trying to clear it. “How did you find out?”
“Someone called.” He raises his eyebrows at my words and gestures impatiently for more information.
Tipping my head back in weariness, I call on my best storytelling capabilities and find little to nothing to tap into. “One of my brother’s baby mamas tracked me down online and called the office. A couple of times. I finally took her call this afternoon. She explained the situation.”
“And that situation is . . . ?”
“You’re a regular Curious George tonight.”
“Jane, come on! This is awful. Tell me everything.”
“She’s sixteen. She’s been in a little trouble. She vanished four weeks ago. Maybe she just ran away. No one seems to know or care.”
“But the woman who called you cares.”
“Yeah.” I wiggle my legs against his thighs, looking for attention, and he obliges by settling his hands on my skin. “I guess Joylene cares. But the state doesn’t care, and the cops don’t care, and neither do her parents.”
“Jesus, they sound just like your parents.”
“Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and all that. And that place is a whole goddamn orchard.”
“Do you think she ran away?” he presses.
I shrug. “I don’t know. If I ever met her, she was a baby at the time. I guess I did meet her, but I don’t remember. Still . . .” I glance at him under my lashes, studying his open face. “Apparently she’s a lot like me. That’s what Joylene said. Everyone says she’s like me.”
“Oh. How so?”
“You know. She acts like me. And if that part is true, she’s logical and straightforward, so she’s probably fine.”
He squeezes my calf, his hand a warm anchor for my body. “That’s not true at all. Didn’t you need help when you were a little girl?”
I shrug.
“You did. Someone should have helped you, Jane.”
No. Not really. I didn’t need help by the time I was sixteen. I needed help when I was a neglected, needy seven-year-old, and I didn’t get it, so I learned to help myself. No one can go back in time and rescue Baby Kayla any more than they can rescue stupid Baby Jane. What’s done is done.
“Anyway, she asked me to help.”
“You should!” he says immediately.
“How? I’d have to go down there. There’s nothing I can do from here.” As soon as I say it, I realize I want to. I want to get out of my office and stir up trouble and track down this girl who might be like me. I’m bored. And let’s face it, I don’t want to deal with Luke and his ridiculous fantasies about what our life could be like together. I want to get away from here.
“You can get some time off, can’t you? This is an emergency.”
“Yes,” I answer. It’s almost inevitable now. This is how I make decisions. I think of something, and if I like the idea, I do it. Trying to deny myself just makes me cranky and delays the outcome. “God. If only my family were from Southern California. I really don’t want to waste vacation days in the middle of nowhere.”
“Family leave?”
Hmm. I don’t know the ins and outs, as I don’t have that kind of family, and I’m certainly not any kind of caretaker at all. “I’ll check into it. But maybe they’ll be sympathetic.”
“Your niece is missing! Of course they’ll be sympathetic.”
That’s news to me. Girls are thrown away all the time in our world. The only thing going for her is that she’s a white girl, but even that advantage was pretty much lost once she started shoplifting. And if she’s not a virgin, forget it. She’s worthless trash at this point! Not that I’ll let the firm know that.
“You really think I should go?” I ask, not to reassure myself but because I want him to think he helped decide to give me a break from relationship talk for a while.
“Definitely. You’re smart as hell and you’re an attorney. At the very least, you can light a fire under someone’s ass and see what’s really going on. And, at best, maybe you’ll find this girl.”
“Perhaps. But there’s a better-than-even chance she’s just staying with some inappropriately aged boyfriend.”
“Still not good.”
I shrug and pick up the book I’m almost done with. My cat bounces up from the floor and lands silently on the coffee table before stepping onto the couch. She considers me a moment, then climbs between my calves to settle onto Luke’s lap. I roll my eyes at her betrayal, but I’d pick Luke for warmth too. She’s rewarded for her superior choice when he absentmindedly strokes between her ears, and I watch her eyes narrow in satisfaction. Those are my moments of affection she’s stealing, but I’ll let her have him for a little while.
“And . . . ,” he ventures quietly. I hear what I don’t want to hear in his voice and I tense. “Maybe this could be a good time for you to think about us.”
“‘Us’?” I snap.
“Whether you want this to evolve or not.”
“What does ‘or not’ mean? You’re presenting this as some kind of choice, but it reads more like an ultimatum.”
Luke rolls his shoulders before slumping into the couch. “It’s really not. But if I buy a house, we might not see each other as often. Right now you’re only ten minutes away from my place and my job. I don’t want to spring this change on you. I’m trying to involve you in the decision.”
“This hardly seems like the time.” I pull my legs back, hoping to stop this now. “My niece is missing.”
He’s a good guy. A genuinely good guy, so I know mentioning my niece will make him feel guilty. I see his mouth twist with it. But he still doesn’t stop talking. “I know, but this might be just the break we need to think it through.”
“Now it’s a break. I see. You need to come right out and say it. You’re breaking up with me.”
“No, I’m not. Not at all. I love you. I want a future with you. I’m just not sure you’re determined to have a future with me.” He snags my hand and looks me straight in the face. “Are you?”
No, I’m definitely not determined, because it’s not possible. I’m not normal. I’m not a wife and mother and soft place to fall. There are new studies that claim sociopaths can feel something like love, but it’s our own kind of attachment, shallow and selfish. Or even more shallow and selfish than most people’s claims of love are.
I loved Meg. I know I did. But that wasn’t the same as romantic love. It wasn’t commitment and fidelity and promises. It was friendship. This is something tighter. Something strangling.
Every once in a while, like right here in this moment, I want to be what other people are and I hate who I am. I hate what my parents made me with their terrible combination of emotional abuse and their genetic predisposition.
I wanted to kill them many times when I was Kayla’s age. I wanted to burn down that trailer with them in it, blame it on a cigarette or a space heater or nothing at all. But luckily my own self-interest won out against raging teen hormones. I wanted to punish my family, but I did not want to go to prison and struggle for money and social standing for the rest of my life. I wanted more and better. So I let them be.
And most days I truly like what I am. It makes me strong. I saw how the world destroyed my best friend, using her own feelings to grind her into nothing. She killed herself to escape from that. To finally make it stop. She died and left me alone, and now Luke is all I have, and that can’t last forever. It can’t. I don’t have enough emotion inside me to cloud out the stark reality of our chances.
“This obviously isn’t going to work out,” I mutter.
“Why would you say that? Jane, come on. We get along great. We get along so damn well, I want to spend more time with you. Why does that scare you?”
“It doesn’t scare me!” I shove his hand away and stand up. “I’m not good at relationships, and I’ve told you that. I’ve been very clear about it. You said that was what you liked about me, and now you’re asking me to”—I wave a frantic hand in the air—“do this?”
“Yes. I’m asking you to do this. Move in with me, Jane. It’ll just get better.”
“Who says it will get better? That’s ridiculous. We both agreed that we have issues, thanks to our shitty families, but everything has been working really well, and now you’ve screwed it up. I can’t do this. I can’t be that.”
“Be what?” Now he’s standing too, his voice rising along with his body.
“Some kind of . . .” I growl in frustration and pace to the fridge to pour more wine. “I don’t know. Some kind of constant fucking companion. A stupid, nurturing idiot.”
“Jane, listen to yourself. There’s nothing stupid about loving someone.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “Really? Tell that to Meg.”
I loved her. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but I loved her, and she left. Loving her brought me pain, and I don’t accept pain. I put it behind me and I won’t ever accept it again. I have to get out of this.
“Jane—” he starts, but I shake my head.
“You should go. I need to make travel arrangements.”
“I get it, okay? I know what your family was like. And I know it hurt you so much when Meg died. But can’t we just try?”
“Try what? Settling down? Fuck up a little family together, just like both our parents did? What’s the point, Luke?”
He knows better than this. His own mother focused so much manic, destructive energy on him in childhood that he didn’t speak to her for most of his adult years and has always sworn he doesn’t want a traditional life. That was why he liked me.
“The point is that I love you,” Luke says, “and I’ve never wanted to live with anyone before either. Never. But I want to live with you, so you take that however you want. Just . . .” He throws up his hands in exasperation. “Go on your trip. Think about it. Really think about it. And decide what you want to do when you get back.”
He dons his jacket in quick tugs, telegraphing his anger, wanting me to feel it and respond. But I can’t feel it, just like I can’t feel much of anything. He grabs his wallet and keys and jerks the door open, wanting some words from me that I don’t know; but just as he’s stepping out and closing the door behind him, he stops.
I stand there staring. I have techniques for making people like me, but I have no tools for smoothing things like this over, because I usually don’t care. This time I do care, but all I can feel is outrage that he’s doing this to me. Making me hurt when he’s supposed to love me.
The tight expectation in his face sags to disappointment. “Call me, okay? Let me know what’s going on with your niece?”
“Sure,” I say, “whatever.”
Luke waits for another heartbeat before closing the door. He’s finally done talking, at least. I take the bottle of wine to the couch and sulk, waiting for my cat to pay attention to me. I’ll look into plane tickets tomorrow. I’m too exhausted to bother tonight.
CHAPTER 5
The Oklahoma City airport has changed. It’s beautiful now, buffed to a shine by energy-industry money into a very modern facility. I rent a car and tell Siri to find me a good barbecue restaurant on my way out of town. Home is still two hours away.
Home. It doesn’t mean to me what it means to other people. I scowl at the very idea of nostalgia. Even if someone had a great childhood, it was still childhood, full of powerlessness and dependency. Why would anyone want that back?
I don’t understand that any more than I understand why I would want tiny people depending on me. The idea of children feels cloying and gross. Just being loved by Luke is sometimes too much. It feels like he needs me, and I want to hurt him for that. And lately, very occasionally, it feels like I need him, and that’s a violent crack of lightning inside me. Another good reason to end this.
I’m free now. Glad that I left. The sticky, niggling hints of fear and commitment are washed away with the distance.
Sighing, I turn my mind toward planning my lunch. I’ll definitely have brisket and maybe a few ribs with extra-spicy sauce. Corn bread with honey butter. Pudding for dessert. Sweet tea.
“Mmm. Sweet tea.” I smile as my phone tells me to exit the freeway and turn onto Freedom Street.
Freedom Street. Jesus Christ. There’s a fucking Indian reservation five miles from this spot. And I’m the screwed-up psycho in this world?
The barbecue place is tiny and run-down, and there’s a Route 66 sign in the corner of the window even though Route 66 is half an hour south of here. But Siri was looking out for me. The food is almost as good as I want it to be, and the young Hispanic guy named Felix who serves me is very pleasant to look at and quite flirtatious. All in all, a good afternoon.
I didn’t have any trouble getting time off work, because I didn’t give them an opportunity to imagine they should be upset. I emailed my bosses over the weekend and presented the issue as an emergency, assuring them I knew I could count on their support. They wouldn’t have dared to contradict me, especially when I mentioned that Kayla is my firstborn niece. I was only sixteen years old when she was born. The first grandchild in the family!
That’s all true, though I barely remember anything but the scorn I felt for my stupid brother, who was turning twenty-one and on his way to his first state prison stint when the baby arrived.
Regardless, now I’m on paid short-term leave. I suppose I shouldn’t have abandoned Rob to his own devices at this delicate juncture. If I’m gone more than a week, he might be the golden boy again by the time I get back. But Jesus, he was boring, and, hard work or not, he’ll never live down his drunken fuckup. I can pick up my campaign when I get back and continue slowly destroying his reputation. And if I find my wayward niece? I’ll make sure they all know I’m a goddamn hero.
I grin at the idea and set off toward home sweet home.
The land is flat and ugly, drying out with the dying sun of fall, and the suburbs go on forever now, broken up by tiny old towns that have been shriveling since they got bypassed by the interstate. There is no freeway to my old stomping grounds. Not enough people want to go there. It’s all two-lane highways and stop signs at every main street. But the highways are built wide enough for trucks. Lots of trucks.
It’s been so long since I’ve driven here that I’m startled by the red of the dirt. I’d forgotten it. I’d never even noticed it growing up, to be honest. But now I see the huge wounds in the earth leaching iron into puddles like spreading blood. Construction on a new house has opened a huge, pretty gash filled with reddened rainwater. It’s a startling change. The soil of Minnesota is black as pitch.
When I was young these scrubby lands were dotted with pumpjacks bobbing up and down. They pulled crude oil from the ground and provided nice points of interests in the landscape, like lolling cattle. I don’t see any bobbing pumpjacks now. No big oil derricks either. They’ve all been replaced with boring pipes that bring the natural gas out of the rock. The few pumps I do spy are stubby and misshapen, working to press wastewater and earthquakes into the ground.
Ah well. Maybe I’m nostalgic after all. I want things to be what I expect them to be, and this all looks stupid to me.
An hour into the drive, I crest a rare rolling hill and see something brand-new, and this time it’s something so delightful, it makes me gasp with delight. Windmills! Huge white windmills!
They seem a mile high as their blades turn slowly in the wind. I squeal in wonder at the beautiful scene laid out before me. A dozen of these giants are scattered over ranchland, and as I keep driving, more peek over the horizon to reveal themselves. They look like colossal robots marching toward an invasion, determined to defeat all the things I hate about this place.
So perfectly beautiful. I can’t believe Oklahoma found yet another energy to farm. It’s quite an accomplishment since that Silkwood scandal put the kibosh on the nuclear industry here decades ago.
I’m impressed. I’m also a little giddy. This is exciting.
I was bored before this trip, and that’s a dangerous state for a girl like me. Something cool and unexpected suddenly becomes catnip, and I want to roll around in it. When I was younger, that meant a dangerous affair or a high-risk scheme, but now I’m feeling a strange rush of endorphins over these inanimate objects. Maturity, I guess.
A mile down the road I see that one of the towers is relatively close to the highway, and I slow to roll down my window. I’m surprised at the silence of this great beast. I’d expected a whomp-whomp sound, but the blades turn too slowly for that. They are masters of disguise, actually seeming larger from a distance than they are up close. Something about the proportion makes this illusion possible. I clap my hands in wonder.
What pure delight to find that the stolid metal soldiers follow me through my whole drive. I feel like their general, in charge and taking stock.
Though I lose sight of them occasionally as they stick to a faint rise in the land, looking for the highest points, they soon return toward me in a wave like they can’t resist my draw. When I near another that looks close to the road, I pull into a narrow dirt lane that ends abruptly at a metal gate just thirty feet into the scrub pasture.
After turning off the car, I put my shoes to the red dust. I can see a door at the base of the metal tower, and it’s only about a hundred feet past the gate. I want to be up close in the worst way. And there’s a chance there won’t be a lock, or a bigger chance that someone could have forgotten to lock it.
It’s a long shot, but I still ignore the “Private Property” sign and climb over the metal gate to pick my way through rows of crop stubble. I can’t tell what it was from the few inches that stick from the ground, but a small herd of cattle graze on the leftovers a quarter mile away. People think cows are so docile, but these beef cattle are half-wild and mean as hell. Take it from my misspent youth: you do not want them riled up and freaked out. At least all the calves have been weaned and separated and de-balled, so the group seems comparatively laid-back with no babies to protect. They’re far enough away that I’m not worried, but bovine trampling in rural Oklahoma is not the way I plan to go down.
