Kids These Days (7 page)

“Is there anybody I should call?” I said.

“Just go over to the fish camp tomorrow like we planned. Go on with your day like it was any other day.”

“Any other day I'd be riding with you.” It was a stupid thing to say, a kid thing, but I couldn't help it.

“You'll be fine. Go get a lay of the land. I'll be out by the afternoon, and we'll be back to normal.”

“That's all?”

“I just wanted to tell you this wasn't me. And I'll tell you the whole thing, too,” he said, waving a hand at the ceiling. “But, you know, anything you say, and all that.”

“It can't be that bad if they're letting you talk to me.”

“That's what I thought. But I still get to spend the night for free.” I could hear the lights humming. He said, “Carolyn's OK?”

“She's with Alice. She seems alright.”

“You're lying.”

“A little. But she is with Alice.”

“It's good you guys are here,” he said. “I'm glad you're down here.”

“Alice is good in a crisis,” I said.

“Well, we found ourselves one of those.”

The door opened. The policeman put his head through. “Time, gentlemen,” he said, and shut the door again.

“They only give us five minutes,” Mid told me.

“You're OK,” I said. “You're sure?”

He looked down at the table. “It could be worse. The guard back there told me they go out for barbecue for dinner, so that's what they're bringing me tonight.” The cop knocked on the door again, but didn't come in.

I said, “Maybe if you just apologize, this'll all clear up.”

“I tried that. No dice.”

I looked behind him, at another door. “How is it back there?”

“I'm the only one here,” he said. “So far, anyway. So I haven't had to make a shiv out of my toothbrush.”

“Funny,” I said.

“I'm here all night. Tip your bailiffs.”

“Mid, what
happened
?”

“I'll tell you tomorrow,” he said. “When it's all over. I will.”

The cop came in, and there was a moment where I felt like I might be supposed to hug Mid, to pull him close and say something that would get him through the night, but by the time I got any of that worked out, the cop had turned him around, walked him through the door in the back of the room, and he was gone. A minute or two later the cop came back for me, took me out the way I'd come, gave me my change and belt back. He locked the door behind me. Carolyn and Alice were in the same place I'd left them.

“They're bringing him barbecue,” I said.

“He likes barbecue,” Carolyn said. She blinked, squeezed her eyes shut. “This is so wrong,” she said. She stood up. “I need some air.”

Alice asked me to finish up whatever needed finishing. I told her I would. I held the door for them, let them out into the afternoon. I went to the desk to ask the woman if we needed to sign back out, anything like that, but she wasn't there. It was silent in the room. No radio, no TV, nothing through the walls. I turned around, and Carolyn and Alice had gone past where I could see them, and for a moment I had this unshakeable feeling that I might be the only person left on the planet. Like Mid and Carolyn and Alice and the woman behind the counter and the baby and Varden and all of them had winked out of existence, and I was who was left. Me. I would survive on Tab and sheer force of will. I would leave messages for future civilizations. I would paint elk on the walls of the jail. Then the woman reappeared behind her desk, stared at me, said nothing. I said nothing. She slid her glass closed, and I went outside.

In the parking lot, Carolyn was sitting in the open side door of their SUV. The clouds were banking up out west like we'd see a thunderstorm later on. This was what happened most afternoons—three thousand degrees, then an afternoon storm, then three thousand degrees again. Carolyn said, “I don't know what I'm supposed to tell the kids.”

“Would you like us to come over?” Alice asked.

“Maybe. But I need to tell them first.” She seemed far away. You couldn't blame her. “I have to tell them first,” she said again.

“We can call you,” said Alice. “We can bring you dinner.”

Carolyn thumbed her car keys around the ring. “That sounds fine,” she said. “Let me get home, and I'll call you.”

“Or we call you,” Alice said. “Either way.”

Carolyn pushed a button on the truck key, and the horn honked once. She pushed it again. Same thing. “Leecy?” she said. She was crying again.

“Yeah.”

“What the hell?”

Alice sat down with her. “He'll be home tomorrow.”

“What if he isn't?”

“He said he will be.”

“But you know, this morning, he didn't mention any of this might happen.”

“He probably didn't know,” I said, trying to help.

Carolyn looked up. “He better goddamn not have.”

“Let us cook you dinner,” Alice said. “Get home and get settled in and call us, OK?”

“Settled in?” she said.

“You know what I mean.”

Carolyn sat still a long time. “Thank you,” she said, finally.

Alice said, “You don't have to thank me. This is what happens.”

Carolyn said, “This is definitely, definitely not what happens.”

“Go home,” said Alice. “Go home, and then call us.”

“I guess I'll do that,” she said, and she got up, got herself in behind the wheel, hugged Alice through the open window, and then drove away, left us standing in the parking lot. We walked over to the car. I let Alice in on her side and she sat down, left the door open. I did the same on my side.

“Jesus,” she said, leaning her head back against the rest. “Is it me, or are we at the jail?”

“I don't think it's you,” I said.

She took the keys from me, put them up on the dash. Then she ran one hand down her side. “The Bundle of Joy does not care for this,” she said. “The BOJ does not care for this at all.”

By seven o'clock, we still hadn't heard from Carolyn. Alice wanted to go over there. I managed to get her to agree to at least wait until eight before we called to see what was going on. My position was: Give her some privacy. Alice's position was: Shut up. I'd left her sitting in the condo, at the glass-topped table, holding the phone in one hand, and picking at a shell-shaped pink vinyl placemat with the other. I was out on the balcony overlooking the parking garage. It'd been a tense afternoon. We'd fought about which balcony was the front or the back, whether the ocean side was the front or not. Once we'd worn that out, we moved on to whether there was any food in the house, whether the blinds on the beachside sliding glass doors were rusting, what kind of problem it would be if they were. I guess we felt like we couldn't go at each other over Mid. I kept making the wrong moves, choosing the wrong sides—and through it all, I couldn't stop thinking about the ultrasound room, how dark it had been in there, how bright the picture of the baby on the screen looked. I was certain Alice was working on that, too. She had to be.

I was running the scores and highlights in my head, watching the sun try to go down, wondering if Mid had any kind of view from his room, his cell, whatever it was, when the Camaro showed up, parked itself lopsidedly across a couple of spaces. The driver's-side door jawed open. At first there was nobody, and I had the crazy idea the car had driven itself over, some yellow reinvention of a dead TV show—but then there was Delton, standing on our parking deck. I opened the front door. I said, “You're probably going to want to come out here.”

“I'm busy,” Alice said.

“Has Carolyn called?”

“No.”

“Well, if she calls, tell her Delton's here, OK?”

“Who?”

“Olivia. Delton. She's here.”

Alice stood at the other end of the hall. “You want me to tell her what?”

“Downstairs,” I said. “On the parking deck. Come see.”

“How did she get here?”

“You'll like that, too.”

“There's not some chance you're enjoying this, right?”

“Just come see,” I said.

Outside, she kept a little space between us, leaned on the metal railing. Delton looked up and saw us, but did not wave. “Oh, hell,” Alice said, pushing the heel of her hand into her forehead. “Oh, no.”

“Right?”

“I'm going down there,” she said.

“Give her a minute,” I said.

“Whose car is that?”

“It might be hers. I'm not sure.”

“She's fifteen years old. It can't be hers.”

“Mid's been driving it. He said he was thinking about getting it for her.”

“That? For a child?”

“It's got low miles.”

“My God,” she said. “He belongs in jail.” She walked away, disappeared into the stairwell at the end of the building. When she came out again down on the roof of the parking deck it was like a magic trick, the slap of her shoes coming back up at me as she moved toward Delton, who was sitting now on the hood of the car. They talked, but I couldn't hear anything. At one point Alice held her hand out, and Delton gave her the keys. I wouldn't have thought of that. There was some school counseling for you. Every now and then one of them would look up at me, so I went inside, switched balconies. They didn't need me watching. Alice had it under control.

The beach was mainly emptied out except for a red pickup driving our direction, stopping every few hundred yards for a minute or two, then starting again. There was an orange light going on the roof. I found Sandy's binoculars, fooled with the focus until I was dialed in enough to see that it was a woman driving the truck, that when she stopped, she was getting a rake out of the back and smoothing a path from where the beach was flat back up to these cordoned-off areas in the dunes, places where stakes had been driven into the sand and pink tape strung between them, maybe three or four feet on a side. She got back in, drove a little, stopped and raked in another landing strip. There was a taped-off spot just past our buildings. I hadn't noticed it before. A sign was stapled to the stakes, but even with the binoculars I couldn't read it.

Alice and Delton came in behind me. I heard Alice tell her where the towels were, heard the bathroom door open and close. I still had the binoculars up to my face when Alice came out. “She's taking a shower,” she said. “We thought that might make her feel better.”

“Is she OK?”

“Well, her dad's in jail.”

“Besides that, I meant.”

She sat down, let out a long breath. “I don't know that there is much besides that, really.”

“Did you call Carolyn?”

“She asked me not to. She said she wanted to do it herself.”

“Are you sure we shouldn't—”

“Please don't ask me that,” she said. “She asked me to wait, and I decided the ten minutes it'd take her to shower wouldn't make a whole lot of difference. God, I want a glass of wine.”

“You could have a half,” I said. “Want me to open a bottle?”

“I think I'll just shut my head in the sliding glass door a few times instead.”

“It'll work out,” I said.

“Empty promise,” she said. “You don't know that.”

The phone rang, and we looked at each other. It was loud. It rang again. “We have to get that,” I said.

“I know,” she said, but neither of us moved. The answering machine picked up.
This is Sandy Wilkes
, Aunt Sandy's voice said. We hadn't changed the message. It felt weird to keep it, weirder still to erase it. We'd been meaning to get a new phone and save that one on a shelf in the closet.
If I'm not here
, her voice said,
I must be out. Please leave your name and number, and I'll get back with you as soon as I can.
I was holding her binoculars. We were sitting in her chairs. Delton was getting ready to use her monogrammed purple towels. The machine beeped, and then there was Carolyn's voice filling the condo, saying, “Leecy? Are you there? Jesus Christ, is Olivia with you? She left a note. Pick up. Goddamnit, I need you to—”

Alice was already at the phone, telling her yes, Olivia was here. “She's fine,” she said. “She's in the shower. She wanted to call you when—”

Delton opened the bathroom door, stuck her head out. She said, “Is that my mom?” Then she saw me. “Oh,” she said, and shut the door.

“Sorry,” I said.

Alice slid a stool away from the little pass-through bar to the kitchen, looped the phone cord around her wrist, accidentally pulled the phone off the counter. “Shit,” she said, trying to pick everything back up. “Are you still there? Hello?” She pressed the button a few times. Other than the shower running, it was dead quiet in the condo.

“She's gone?” I said.

“She'll call back,” she said, and the phone rang again.