Problem Child, page 9
“Nah. I’m Nate.”
“May I please speak to Little Dog?”
“He’s not here.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“Naw, man. He took off two, three weeks ago after some big guy came by. Cleared right out of here.”
A voice shouts out from somewhere deep inside the dim house. “Nate! Your turn, man!”
Nate looks over his bony white shoulder, then back to me, then over his shoulder again.
“May I come in?” I ask, and he sighs with relief and pulls the door wider.
“Yeah, man. Come in.” He closes the door after I step in; then he rushes toward the voice and the rumble of bass down the short hall. “You’re not a cop, are you?” he tosses back.
“Naw, man,” I answer. “Definitely not a cop, dude.” As I follow Nate, I recognize the cacophony of bass and explosions as a video game, and I emerge from the hallway into a living room graced with four young white men. A sunken living room.
The guys are draped over a U-shaped couch that looks like it was built to fit perfectly into the recessed space. Their eyes are all focused on a giant flat-screen TV above a moss rock fireplace.
The huge table in front of them is littered with at least several days’ worth of pizza boxes and enough beer bottles to nearly camouflage two big glass bongs.
“Hello, boys!” I call out above the din.
One of the guys nearly jumps from his seat at the sight of me, and I notice he has a third bong clutched between his thighs. This one is shaped like a big brown penis.
“She’s not a cop,” Nate clarifies as he grabs a controller.
“Hey, everyone!” I call out. “Anyone seen Little Dog lately?”
They shake their heads, and their eyes drift back to the screen as Nate starts playing. “He took off,” someone finally offers.
“After some guy kicked his ass,” another adds.
“Oh, really? Someone beat him up?”
“Yeah.”
“Was this after Kayla disappeared?”
“Yeah,” Nate says, “like a week later.”
I descend into the pit and nudge one man’s leg until he shifts it and leaves me room to sit down. I sink into soft gray leather and realize I’m facing a huge pastel painting of the very house I’m in. “Whose place is this?”
A couple of the guys snort in answer. “It’s Brodie’s place, man,” Nate answers. “His grandparents died and left it to him two years ago. So dope.”
Jeez, what a way to honor Nana and Pawpaw’s sacrifice. “So this whole giant place is his?”
“So dope!” Nate shouts.
“And you guys live here?”
All of them shrug. “Not really,” one says.
“On and off,” says another.
“We’re watching the place for Brodie,” says Nate.
Nice gig. “Can I buy a beer off you?” I ask as I toss another of my twenty-dollar bills on the table and grab an unopened can of Milwaukee’s Best to pretend I’m in high school again. Of course, now I notice the stench of old weed and body odor. I’ve become more discerning in my old age, and the kid next to me reeks of sweat or onions, I’m not sure which.
I drink half the beer and settle in for a little while. They’ve been fucked up for days and don’t seem to question my presence. I’ve appeared, so here I am.
After a few minutes, I find myself staring at a bookshelf full of tiny pale statues. They’re Lladró figurines. I recognize them only because I remember watching a whole segment about them on a shopping channel one day at my grandma’s house.
If that sounds like a touching moment, it wasn’t. My grandmother was a stone-cold bitch who treated me resentfully when she was forced to babysit. When I was at her house, she instructed me to sit quietly and “stop being a little cunt.” That’s a fun word to learn when you’re six. You can really shut down a whole first-grade classroom with that one.
At that age I wasn’t even a monster. Not yet. My entire life was still instability and uncertainty. My parents could never be depended on, and when they disappeared for days at a time, my brother offered cruel taunts instead of comfort.
No one took care of me, so my brain helped me do it myself by eventually shutting down anything that made me weak. I grew strong. I grew invincible. I would never have let these idiot little punks pimp me out or use me. On the contrary, I would’ve used them for whatever they had to offer.
“What’s up with Kayla?” I finally ask, and receive another chorus of shrugs. None of them even looks nervous, though I watch their faces for guilt. “Did she take off?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Onion Boy says. “She was calling Brodie a lot before he left.”
“So she’s alive?”
Nate snorts loudly. “You think Kayla’s dead? Why?”
“No one has seen her in weeks.”
More shrugs, and then someone farts and the boys erupt into guffaws. This isn’t exactly playing out like an interrogation scene from an Agatha Christie novel. “Did Kayla ever crash here?” I try.
“Sure,” Nate says.
“Great.” Without asking for permission, I get up and wander out of the room looking for any evidence of this niece of mine. There are four bedrooms, all decorated in the finest expensive eighties oak furniture, big, lumbering pieces sculpted with generic leaves and vines. All except the master bedroom, which is graced with cherrywood against mauve-painted walls. It appears that Little Dog hasn’t changed a thing in two years. In fact, a portrait of his grandmother watches him sleep at night.
Jesus.
Speaking of, a big cross hangs above the headboard in a matching cherry finish. It’s full-on grandma chic.
There are no bodies or bloody knives or even notes about how to get rid of a dead girl’s corpse. But when I wander into a brass-fixtured bathroom, I do find evidence that a young girl has been here. There are hair scrunchies and lip gloss at the makeup table. I carefully touch a finger to a compact of glittery purple eye shadow, then a flavored lip balm.
She’s just a girl. That’s all. There are no pieces of me here. Nothing I identify with. I’ve become some kind of do-gooder.
I leave the mauve-colored room and stride down the hallway, bored with this game and done with this town. “What’s your number?” I ask Nate, whose turn seems to be over. Someone else is firing a gun now, and Nate is packing one of the bongs.
He offers his phone number without question, and I tap it into my contacts, then immediately send a text. Send me Brodie’s info. While I wait, I peruse the figurine shelf, touching the pastel sculptures before picking out my favorite and sliding it into my purse. I’ve wanted one since I was six years old. The height of luxury and elegance. And now I have a pale, long-limbed woman reaching to drape pearls around her ice-cold neck. Just lovely. What great luck I have.
My phone lights up with the contact info, and I wave goodbye and leave, descending back into the real world down the hill and past the prison, to another grandmother’s house we go.
The smokestack taunts me, guiding me home.
CHAPTER 9
I’m not putting off seeing my parents; I’m just hungry.
I drive past the power plant, taking my hands off the wheel to give it the double finger as I cruise back into my hometown and then drive right on through it, back toward the county seat. I’m craving Sonic tater tots anyway, so the heartwarming family reunion can wait.
I frown when the giant cloud of power plant steam reappears in my rearview mirror, ever looming.
My dad worked at the A&I power plant for a total of ten months, but don’t get excited. That wasn’t a streak. It was ten months spread out over four different years. Despite that spotty history, he called himself an “A&I man” for my entire childhood. His last job might have been at a feed distribution center that he’d quit five weeks before, but he was still an “A&I man” through and through. It was the best spin he could manage on his work history.
He staffed all the jobs around town at one point or another, but his body rejected each of them, one by one, overcome by the idea of getting up at 6:00 a.m. five days a week.
He finally threw his back out hauling a deer carcass out of season, and then his glory years of disability checks began. Funny, even after that he could still rant for days about black people on the dole. Those racism muscles of his never got tired. Truly a miracle of persistence.
Setting my father aside for now, I spend the rest of the drive to the county seat planning my perfect Sonic homecoming. Chili dog, yes. Tater tots, yes. Cherry limeade, of course. But what kind of ice cream for dessert? Hot fudge sundae? Maybe, but they might have something new I want to try. Best to save that order for after the meal to see what feels right.
I pull into the drive-in stall, roll my window down, and order the perfect meal. When it arrives, it’s heaven delivered on a red tray, and I tear open the chili dog wrapper with glee. And just as I suspected, there is a new dessert. I chew my tots and contemplate the photo of mini-churros stuck into a bowl of soft-serve ice cream. I think I’ll try that instead of going for an old standard.
When I hit the button for the second time, the voice asks for my order, and a grand idea hits me square in the forehead. I grin with the shock of it and ask for three large orders of fries in addition to my dessert. An entire overstuffed bag of french fries is delivered a few minutes later along with my churros.
“Still hungry?” the server asks as she hands my goodies over. She’s not even wearing roller skates to entertain me, so I just roll up my window in response and enjoy my churro bowl in peace as the fries get cold. I’ll be sure to turn the vents on them when I start the car.
Nobody in my town was wealthy or even middle-class, but their parents worked and brought home groceries and cooked meals, even if those meals were just casseroles made with ground beef and canned veggies. In fact, those church-basement casseroles were my favorite kind of meal. Warm and good and filling.
My parents rarely had fresh food in the house. They just didn’t bother because they could always get in the car and pick up a meal for themselves. They also never threw food away, no matter how old it was. The oldest leftovers were reserved for me and Ricky when my parents were heading out for one of their weekend casino trips. “Still good” was a common refrain, even for old, hard fries at the bottom of a greasy bag. “There’s fries in the fridge!” my dad would shout. “They’re still good!”
Still good when fries got nasty and grainy after an hour. Still good when there was a box of macaroni my mom could have cooked up if she wanted to. Still good just because she couldn’t bother running to the store for a can of soup to feed her four-year-old before they started drinking.
These days I don’t eat fries unless they’re piping hot and crispy from the fryer. The big bag of fries on the passenger seat is already cold. By the time I get to my parents’ house they’ll be soft, the first stage of fry death. Then they’ll start drying out and hardening. I’m familiar with all the stages. Mom and Dad will keep this bag in the fridge for days, making meals out of it as long as they can. My petty spirit will linger with them over the fridge, laughing.
“Still good,” I whisper as I pull out and head back to the two-lane highway out of town.
My phone rings, and it’s my law office, so I ignore it. I’m on emergency family leave. How dare they?
As I drift out of town, I pass the richest neighborhood in the county. The street is lined with big oak trees shading the nicest houses and the biggest yards around. A couple of these homes even have genuine in-ground pools. More of them have aboveground pools, which aren’t as nice but do offer a blue and shiny glimpse for the rest of us, like a cruel elevated mirage.
I used to covet these houses. My mouth would salivate at the sight of them. I imagined that I might seduce one of the owners—middle-aged men who were all upper management in oil companies—steal him away from his wife and install myself as stepmom to one of those blond girls who wore designer clothes to her high school classes.
But the girl and her mom would move away after the divorce, of course. They’d head into Oklahoma City and live off alimony and child support. Then I’d have the house and the pool and no stepchild. I’d lie on a cushioned lounge chair all summer, piña colada in hand, hoping my old husband had another business trip that week so I could be by myself.
I’d wanted their life so badly. And now it was strange to realize I drove past this neighborhood two or three times already without noticing it. Because the houses aren’t grand at all, not to my adult eyes. They aren’t estates. They’re just fairly average two-story houses. Maybe twenty-five hundred square feet? Nothing to scoff at, but nothing to go tying yourself to some doughy old sex addict over.
I could buy one of these places right now if I wanted to, and I definitely don’t want to. But I wanted this so much at sixteen I actually walked down that street several times one summer in booty shorts, looking for a likely conquest. I didn’t see any, but a cable guy called me over to his van to show me his dick. I wrote down his license plate and called his employer when I got home, pretending to sob breathlessly over the trauma of it all. I hope he got fired and starved to death.
Ah, memories.
Now these mansions, these dreams, with brass chandeliers in the dining rooms and two-car attached garages . . . they just look like plain old houses I’d see on any street in the Minneapolis suburbs. In fact, these may be just the kind of house my boyfriend is trying to talk me into buying, and here I am resenting him.
Life is really funny, isn’t it?
CHAPTER 10
I drift out of town past the one-stories and manufactured houses in no time, and once I reach ranchland, the power plant cloud is growing bigger on the skyline. Home fire, I see you and here I come!
There is no rich neighborhood in my little town. Hell, there’s not even a wrong side of the tracks. There are simple houses, then the train tracks that bring coal to the plant and take luxury cars to people somewhere far away, and then, when you get past the rail line, it’s all rangeland. That’s it. Poor folks and cows and an obnoxious bit of industry. Not one aboveground pool to covet, though we had a deflated kiddie pool in our yard for many years.
I take a left just before the plant and head down a paved road that can only generously be called two-lane. After driving past a row of houses with neat yards, I take a left onto a packed-dirt lane just before the grain elevator. I pass behind a few widely spaced ranch homes and one small horse pasture; then the path spits me into a bare-dirt yard enclosed by barbed wire to protect the two precious rusted-out cars in front of our trailer. They’re the same two cars that were there when I left for college more than a decade ago.
In fact, everything looks the same, except that there’s a newer trailer home sitting directly next to the one I grew up in. The windows of the old house are covered from the inside by stacked cardboard boxes, as if the entire place has been filled up with a collection of junk. Red dust coats the white walls in years of layers like unshed skin.
The new trailer is tan and bright, smaller than the old one but definitely nicer, with bigger windows and an unfinished-wood wheelchair ramp that leads up to the front door. There’s even a flower box at the top of the ramp, but whatever plant was in there gave up the ghost many, many weeks ago, and just a few sad sticks poke over the sides to greet me.
I grab my big bag of cold fries from the passenger seat and set out across the dirt and patches of crunchy grass toward the ramp. It’s beautifully constructed, and the wood is smooth under my hand, so I know Ricky didn’t build it. A church group probably. My mom always made sure she was in at least two congregations at a time to maximize the number of possible potlucks and charity donations. To her benefit, I mean. Not out of a spirit of generosity.
Snorting at the very idea, I knock on the metal door.
“Sarah!” I hear my father call from inside. “The door!” But when the door opens, it’s Dad standing there, looking like shit. He’s heavier than he was ten years ago and shorter too, but he doesn’t look like a man who’s been ravaged by a stroke. In fact, his bloodshot eyes and unshaven face make it appear as though the stains on his oversize Snap-on tools T-shirt are probably bourbon. Good old Dad.
“I’m helping look for Kayla,” I say in greeting. “Was she living here when she disappeared?”
“I talked to that deputy weeks ago,” my dad growls.
“Yeah, I’m not with the county.”
“So what are you doing here?”
“I’m your daughter, asshole. Look, I even brought you a present.”
“Jane?” He squints as he takes the bag I thrust into his hand. “Jane?”
“Yes, Jane. I heard you lost your granddaughter, so I’m here to help.”
“Sarah!” he shouts right into my face. I can smell the bourbon now and I finally feel at home. “Sarah! Jane’s here!”
“Who?” my mom shouts from a bedroom somewhere.
I roll my eyes. “It’s your daughter! Returned to the warm bosom of her family!”
“What?” my mom shouts back.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I grumble. “Can I come in or not?”
My dad shuffles aside so I can step past. The trailer is new, but the furniture isn’t. I recognize the overstuffed blue sectional smashed into the tiny living room right away. I fell asleep on that couch so many times. I elbowed my drunk father awake on it far more times than that. I think I even caught Ricky making one of his children there when I was in high school. He barked at me to get the hell out or join in. I don’t think he meant it, but then again, he’s Ricky.
My mom finally shuffles down the hall, eyes narrowed in suspicion. Her stringy hair is gray now but still streaked with enough brown to look like moldy wheat bread. She’s lost about an inch in height too. Or maybe I’ve gotten straighter since I left this place behind.
My lip arches in a sneer as I take her in. I haven’t seen her in so many years. The last time we spoke on the phone, she called me a heartless bitch and several other names, so I blocked her number and moved on. That was more than a year ago now. Her small eyes widen when she registers that it’s actually me.
