Interstate 35N â Monday, June 19, 1995
S
he woke around midnight, mouth
dry as cotton, startled by the press of darkness against her windowpane. The rain must have startled her from sleep; the roof of the bus was under fire from the noise and she sat up, her neck aching, glancing nervously around the dim interior. It wasn't crowded, thankfully; Bryce had the entire seat to herself, and she pulled her old blue hooded sweatshirt more firmly around her freezing shoulders.
She hadn't known what to pack and hadn't brought much as a result. An outfit for the funeral seemed the most important, and she had stuffed a jean skirt and dark blue blouse with tiny buttons into her ancient duffle, along with a pair of white sandals. She was currently wearing old jeans and flip-flops, her hair in a tight ponytail, and to her horror, she realized her period had started a few days early, joining her here on this Godforsaken Greyhound in the middle of the night in a rainstorm. She tipped her forehead against the cold smoothness of the glass, wondering what state they were driving through right now, how long it would take to get to Minnesota, a place in her mind that seemed glacial, something like Alaska, where sled dogs transported people to and fro. She knew that was ridiculous, though probably it was colder there than Oklahoma, at least. She had thrown in two sweatshirts just in case, one old t-shirt, cut-offs and an extra pair of jeans, which left barely enough room for a toothbrush, make-up bag and her pajamas. No tampons, nor had she a sympathy card for Daniel Sternhagen, her very own grandfather.
Around 11:00 the next morning, under a clear blue sky, she bought tampons with her stash of 75 dollars, hating to spend almost five of it on gas station issue. She was stiff and angry, an anger that swelled from her belly and into her throat, anger that had helped her feet keep moving when she switched buses in Des Moines, Iowa with tissues stuffed between her legs because she'd been forced to improvise on the bus. Either that or bleed through her jeans. A small part of her took a moment to breathe a sigh of primal relief at the realization that she was not indeed pregnant despite occasionally forgetting to take her pill and performing mutiple unprotected acts of indiscretion with a total stranger.
Jesus, Bryce
.
“How much farther to Rose Lake?” she asked the gas station attendant. She knew they were in Minnesota as of 9:00 a.m.
“âBout two hours,” he replied, a zit-faced teenage boy who grinned widely at her as he rang up her Kotex and a Snickers bar. “It's pretty there,” he went on, and Bryce tried to appear mildly interested. “Lots of camping.”
“Great, thanks,” she told him, grabbing her things and stuffing them into her purse.
The bus was even more empty than the one in which she'd left Oklahoma yesterday; most everyone had unloaded at the huge, dingy Minneapolis station, and Bryce tried to doze against her balled-up sweatshirt but found herself distracted by the view flashing by out the window. The congestion of the city had been left behind, revealing forests of Christmas trees and tempting, glimmering patches of lake after lake, which glinted blue promises at her sweaty skin. The air was humid and warm, but scented by the sharp green tang of pine needles. Bryce redid her ponytail at least 20 times as the afternoon flashed past her window, hating to admit how nervous she was to meet her relativesâ¦a word she used in the loosest of terms. She felt no connection to these people, the Sternhagens. All she felt was resentment, and the desire for a few answers. Even two or three answers.
Why does my mother slit her wrists? Why have you never come to find us?
Just when she thought she couldn't handle being alone with her thoughts for another moment, the bus was wheezing and sighing into a right-hand turn. Bryce read the wooden sign with a hint of surprise:
Sternhagen's Pull Inn
. Beneath that, in smaller letters:
No Vacancy
. The âNo' was a wooden block that could be removed. The bus lumbered onto a gravel road bordered on either side by towering pine trees. She sat up straight and cleared her throat, swished her hair, wished she had been able to shower and pop some Midol. At the very least smoke a quick cig, but there was no chance in hell of that right now.
Bryce felt a renewed surge of hatred for her mother as the bus groaned and came to a halt outside what appeared to be the main office of a campground. More trees circled a clearing occupied by a squatty wooden building with shingles for siding; people were milling about in swimsuits, towels slung around their hips, and two big dogs stood at attention, barking excitedly at the bus. As she climbed from her seat, her belly tight and aching with cramps, Bryce heard someone call, “Hey, she's here!”
The bus driver had climbed down to excavate her bag from under the bus and was outside already as she emerged into full sunlight, squinting, unsure what to expect. Certainly not the redheaded woman who ran, literally ran, from within the wooden building and wrapped her arms around Bryce with no compunctions whatsoever. Bryce, reeling from the contact, could do nothing but allow herself to be hugged.
“Would you look at her,” the woman said moments later, holding Bryce out at arm's length, her face split by a wide grin. “Honey, I haven't seen you in 18 years, but I'd've recognized you anywhere.” She was freckled and sunburned, a dark blue bandana tied over her hair, which hung in a long braid down her back. She was pretty the way women in soap commercials were, healthy-looking, with no discernible make-up. And though she was much older than Bryce recalled, the woman's face did indeed register in her memory.
“Hi, Erica,” she said, and cleared her throat after hearing the gravel in her voice.
“Hello, sweetheart. We've been so excited all day, waiting for the damn bus to get here. Come and meet your cousins.” Erica was a no-nonsense woman, Bryce could already tell. There was no awkward talk from her about where Michelle was, and for that moment Bryce was incredibly grateful.
Two girls were hanging out by the wide double doors, busy shushing the dogs, and Bryce's heart pounded harder for a moment, but they both smiled with apparent delight and she relaxed a few degrees.
“Bryce, these are your cousins Evelyn and Emma,” Erica announced, and the girls came forward and gave her quick hugs, one after the other. Evelyn was older, probably about 14, with beautiful red-gold hair and a mouthful of braces, while Emma, somewhere in the neighborhood of 10, had messy blonde curls, skinned knees, and a shirt tie-dyed with a zillon shades of blue. Evelyn wore cut-offs over a yellow tank suit and both talked a mile a minute, exactly like their mom.
“Bryce, what a cool name!” said Evelyn, reaching to take her bag. “We, like, thought that you were a boy!”
“Yeah!” giggled the littler one, as one of the dogs licked her face madly. “But Daddy said, no, you were a girl like us!”
“These are our dogs,” Evelyn told her. “They pretty much live here at the office in the summer. But our house is just over that hill, up the road.”
Bryce finally found her voice. She couldn't help but be charmed by the lively chatter. Both girls had eyes the blue of a July sky and couldn't seem to keep themselves from smiling. “You guys live here?”
“Yes, in the house over the way,” Evelyn explained. For the first time, her face clouded. “Grandpa used to live with us.”
“Our grandpa died,” Emma added, studying Bryce soberly.
Bryce's her heart sped up again. Inside she was squirming with discomfort, but she managed, “I sure am sorry about that.”
“Daddy said he was your grandpa, too,” Emma said. “How come you never met him?”
Erica, who had been conversing with a middle-aged couple, turned back to her daughters and gave Emma a narrowed eye. “Ev, why don't you take Bryce up to the house while I get things squared away down here. Riley will be here in just a few minutes, and then Em and I will be right up, k?”
“Okay, Mom,” said the older girl, shouldering the duffle bag and fishing a pair of keys from her pocket before disappearing around the corner of the building.
“Bryce, honey, you make yourself at home, have a shower, whatever you need to do,” Erica told her as Evelyn reappeared driving a green golf cart. “Grab something to drink, a snack, and I'll make a big supper when we get home.”
“Okay,” she said; there was nothing else to say to this woman. In short order she was a passenger in the golf cart, being driven up a gravel road through what appeared to be an unending pine forest. The sun came through in spikes of light and dagger shadows, courtesy of all those needles. Bryce gripped the edge of the cart with one hand as securely as possible; her cousin was flying along practically in the middle of the road, without seeming to notice.
“So, you guys own a campground?” Bryce asked.
Evelyn took her eyes from the road to answer, but didn't slow the pace. “Yeah, ever since I can remember. Grandpa sold the farm where Daddy grew up, way back before I was even born, and bought the Pull Inn. We sell for the farmer's market still, though, 'cause we have an apple orchard, and Mom grows a ton of pumpkins in the fall.”
“That must be fun,” Bryce said, feeling like a flake, but Evelyn went on with enthusiasm.
“Yeah, it's way fun. We, like, get to swim and camp all summer, and Daddy, Cody, Uncle Matty and Grandpaâwell, he
used
to, I guessâtake people on hunting expeditions and snowmobile trips in the winter.”
“Who're Cody and Uncle Matty?”
“Oh, Cody is Emma's twin,” Evelyn went on, and Bryce felt kicked in the teeth. She doubted Michelle even knew they existed, her own nieces and nephew. But Evelyn's next words made her jaw drop. “And Uncle Matty is Daddy's baby brother. He's really sweet, he's almost like our
big
brother in some ways, me and Cody and Emma's, 'cause his mom died when he was little, and he and Grandpa have always lived with us.”
“Really?” was all she could manage. Did Michelleâ
Jesus, Bryce, of course she knows
.
She just didn't think it was worth telling you about
. Was the evil Lydia his mother? Was that why Michelle had failed to ever mention her youngest sibling? The golf cart hit a huge bump in the gravel, sending them about a foot off the vinyl seat, and Evelyn laughed hysterically, calling out, “Sorry!”
The next moment she was slowing to a crawl, and on the lefthand side of the road a house appeared, with a gravel driveway curving out in welcome. The sprawling two-story structure was sided in a cheerful yellow, with a heavy-duty porch that wound all around the outside. The woods opened up enough for a large yard, where an enormous swing set, two blue picnic tables and a shed shared the space with a garden and around eight millon flowers. Evelyn came to a head-snapping halt, apologized again before hopping deftly out and unloading Bryce's bag, but Bryce remained where she was, simply taking it all in through wide eyes.
What a beautiful place
, she thought, caught off guard. So green and quiet and lovely. Lilacs were blooming in an explosion of pale purple all along the far edge of the porch. A wooden swing was positioned just beneath the bushes, so that the person sitting in it would be bathed all over with the fragrance. It was a home that radiated happiness, she thought. No one who planted so many purple petunias could be unkind.
“No one's home,” Evelyn told her as they entered a screen door which had been unlocked. A fat orange cat lay on its back in the square of sunlight coming through the door, and it didn't so much as stir when they walked past. “You can shower and get ready upstairs. Mom cleaned out the guest room for you, and there's a little bathroom right off of it, too.”
Bryce was treated to a quick tour through the living room (dominated by a massive stone fireplace), the kitchen (gleaming and polished), the dining room (graced by a table that could have seated 20) before following her cousin up a flight of stairs to a long, wood-floored hallway. The second door on the right was “her” room, a small, square space occupied by a white bed with tall posts, a round pink rug, and two tall, narrow bookshelves. An actual bouquet of roses in a glass vase was placed on the bedside tableâ¦real roses, not the tight, scentless blooms sold wrapped in cellophane at gas stations, but luscious-smelling, open-faced, candy-pink roses, which filled the room with their perfume.
“Thank you, Evelyn,” Bryce told her young cousin, and the girl's face flushed with pleasure as she set the duffle on the floor.
“I'll see you later,” Evelyn told her, turning to go. Then, to Bryce's surprise, she peeked back in the room. “I'm glad you're here,” she said, and Bryce smiled back.
Me, too
, she thought, for whatever inexplicable reason. Like a good buzz, she let the feeling ride without understanding exactly why.
Me, too
.
***
The first
thing she did was smoke, as soon as Evelyn was out of sight on the golf cart. She sat on the swing beneath the lilacs and marveled at the sheer insanity of her life: here she was, a total stranger to these people, being welcomed into their house like a good friend. The bus ride from Oklahoma seemed like a bad dream in the vicinity of a million lilac blossoms, under a cloudless sky in Minnesota, thousands of miles from the dusty shithole of Middleton. Bryce blew smoke at the blueness above her, letting some of the tension leak from her shoulders, letting her mind drift sleepily.
She had thought of him about every two minutes since Saturday night, and here he was again in her head as she pushed a gentle rhythm with one bare foot against the porch floorboards. Granted it was only two days since it had happened, and she was as likely to see him again as she was to get her long-gone virginity back, but somehow it didn't
feel
over. Maybe she was just sleep-deprived. Or insane. Insanity was probably more likelyâ¦
but oh God, his eyes
â¦they were burning in her memory, and his lips, the dimples in his just-slightly unshaven cheeksâ¦his chest, rippling with muscleâ¦the way he had brought himself all the way into her with the first stroke. She coughed and almost choked on the last of her smoke, and the cigarette came from a finite amount, she reminded herself. It wasn't likely she would be able to procure another pack until she boarded her bus come this Thursday. So these better last; she drew the remainder of it, savoring, and then journeyed down to the grass to grind it out, careful to flush the butt upstairs in the tiny bathroom linking her room with another.