What You See in the Dark (18 page)

Two glows later, the orange tip darted to the side and went out as the driver flicked the butt to the gravel. She heard him
whistle softly again, but the dog seemed near its owner, the whistle calm and reassuring. The driver’s boots shifted across the gravel, heading back to the diesel truck, but then he paused yet again, this time urinating—a heavy, long stream hitting the ground before the boots resumed walking. Arlene could see the light in the truck’s cab turn on again as the driver opened the door, his voice saying something to encourage the dog to get inside, and then he lifted himself back into the cab.

Arlene sighed, relieved, and ducked back a little, anticipating that the headlights of the truck would sweep over her again. She crouched down, waiting, but as the moments slipped by, the truck didn’t move. She kept anticipating the engine turning over and the truck getting back on the highway to search for another motel. But nothing. “Sweet Jesus,” she muttered when she realized the driver was bedding down for the night, the silence growing deeper and deeper. She braved another sidelong glance through the rear window, still fearful that the driver might suddenly turn on the engine, the headlights catching her like a fox in the road. The truck remained still. Nothing passed on the highway.

The tension in her body hardened further in the December cold. Arlene could feel it in her fingers. She wouldn’t last much longer, dressed as she was in her nightgown. She draped the housecoat over herself and sat up a little straighter, craning for a better look at the truck. In the other direction, the front door of her house seemed impossibly far away. She racked her brain trying to recall if she’d locked the kitchen door on her way to bed earlier that evening—maybe sneaking around to the side of the house wouldn’t rouse the driver or the dog.
But now everything she did, Arlene knew, would carry a sound, just like the driver’s boots, the dog’s prowl of her premises, the driver relieving himself on the ground. The dome light of her truck would turn on, but maybe the driver wouldn’t see it, now that he was bedded down for the night. She would have to slip out of the truck quietly and click its door shut, then scurry up the steps to the house.

He could be exhausted and already asleep. He could’ve drunk a beer or two on the road just before he made the turn-off, the alcohol making him drowsy. But how many nights had she herself been awakened by movement in the parking lot, one of the drivers who’d checked in going right back out to the Bakersfield bars?

Her feet numbed at the toes. She could not wait much longer.

Arlene took a deep breath. She grabbed the door handle, absolute ice to the touch, and held it for a long moment. Maybe it would be best to put the coat on first. She slipped it back on, arranging herself, and was surprised at how much noise she made by doing so. She shot a last look back at the diesel truck, but nothing, so she took the door handle once again and this time pulled.

The dome light blazed like an accusation, and she scrambled as quietly as she could out of the cab. The truck door groaned. Her feet thudded onto the gravel. Alarmed by the noise she was making, she shut the door as softly as she could, the dome light extinguishing, but she couldn’t hook the latch. She pushed the door a little, finally hearing it click shut, but she could see, even in the dark, how the door wasn’t flush with
the frame. From the diesel truck came the faint but perceptible growl of the driver’s dog, alert to her movement. Arlene crouched down, listening for the growl again. She imagined the dog sitting up in the seat, paws resting on the door, studying her malevolently through the window of the cab. Her body ached from crouching, the slumped posture, the cold. Just that pathway to the house, just those steps, just the screen door, just the twist of the knob. The dog remained silent, as did the road, so Arlene bolted, trying her best to half run, half tiptoe to the house, the cold gleam of the windows taunting her with their proximity, but by the time she hit the steps, she was so overcome by the fear of being caught, by the anticipation of the driver calling out
Hey!
into the night, that she disregarded the creak of the screen door and how it always slapped against the frame, and rushed in, shutting the door behind her hard enough for the window to shudder.

Yet even after she made it inside, she kept looking out, with the same foolish impulse that forced her to run back into the house on some mornings to check the electric coffeepot, its unplugged cord coiled safely away. The trucker had remained asleep, the dog not barking, and she turned out the living room light, one window going dark, signifying motion to anyone who might be looking. But no one was looking. She knew this now. It was well past midnight and anyone still awake would be only half so, nodded off in front of the buzz and static of a television set, the local stations not able to fill insomnia’s empty hours. There was no need to be nervous, but she remained so as she walked into the kitchen, filling a teakettle with water and setting it to boil so she could ward off the chill of having been
outside, wondering if her silhouette appeared in the windows, a ghostly form to an onlooker from the road. The ugly feeling was unshakable, that sense of being watched. Arlene reached over and turned out the kitchen light, one more light extinguished in the house, leaving her alone with only the blue flame of the stove, startlingly bright. So bright, she was surprised how easily she could manage a teacup from the cabinet, a spoon from the drawer. At the first sign of a coming whistle from the kettle, Arlene removed it from the stove, carefully pouring hot water by the glow of the blue flame, something to keep her eye on as she sat in the kitchen.

What’s a mother to do?
Arlene thought. She saw her mother in the Bakersfield courthouse, her dedicated mornings of dressing up in her best outfit to sit through proceedings she could not possibly have understood completely, then coming home in the afternoon to air out the dress and make it ready for the next day.
What’s a good mother to do?
Willful and stubborn, sitting in silence while she heard exactly what her own son had been accused of.
What’s a good mother?
Arlene considered the chasm she had to cross to be like her mother, to be confronted with the irrefutable, yet still acknowledge her own flesh and blood. A son no matter what.
Here is a knife. Here is a gun. Here is a bloody set of clothes. Here are your son’s hands.
Deep down, she knew she could never be like her mother, long dead now. Upstairs, she remembered, was Dan’s bloody shirt on the dresser, but now she did not feel the sense of panic. There would be more to dig out of by trying to hide the shirt than by allowing its discovery. She would show the police officers, lead them
right to it, her arms crossed over the flaps of her housecoat, and they would never think to inspect her garment and trace it back to an earlier moment of desperation.

Arlene sat at the table, warming her numb fingers against the teacup. There were hard days coming. Tomorrow, would she go to work? Would she be able to simply carry on with the business of the day, serving coffee, swiping change off the tables and dipping the coins into the pocket of her apron, making it clear through her silence that she would not be entertaining anyone’s nosy questions? How fast would the talk start swirling? With the patrol officers coming into the café at 6 a.m. on the dot for scrambled eggs and hash browns? Wouldn’t her face grow more severe by the hour? Wouldn’t her hair, pulled back in a bun, look even more like a gesture of resignation to her coming old age?
Let your hair down,
one of the young waitresses had told her, about six months after Frederick had left her, when it was clear to everyone that the male regulars had gotten wind of her situation. She had felt ashamed about it: feeling abandoned on the one hand, desired on the other. Not good enough for her own husband, yet not damaged at all in the eyes of the lonelier bachelor farmers.

But this was different. How much time would pass before people began to ask her questions directly? How thick would the silence be when she walked over to a table of customers and everyone politely gave their orders? Would it be better or worse if Dan were caught, arrested, and dragged back to Bakersfield? How would it look if he disappeared, Arlene still walking around free? The young waitresses would cross paths
with one another in the back kitchen. The whole town would be talking about her.
What kind of mother raises a son like that?

Sitting in the dark of her kitchen, Arlene wasn’t sure if the clarity was real, but she understood her mother now. With her hands on the teacup, she felt for the warmth, its measure, its certainty, the way she had felt the laugh rumble from Frederick’s chest, a discovery. She searched her own mind now in the same way, her own heart. What it took to sit in a courtroom when the entire world was against your son. What it took to sit there and know the silent judgment being cast upon you, the way you had to raise your head and walk in and out of the courtroom with conviction. Nothing you could do would bring back the victim everyone was grieving over. Nothing could be done in terms of real justice. Mercy wasn’t anywhere in the law. Neither was forgiveness. Or clemency. If it was, someone would have called out and said there were two mothers in the courtroom—why should they both suffer?

Could Arlene do that at least? Walk in and out of the café and face the day with her chin held high?
Mrs. Watson. That woman. Her son.
Long years awaited, whether or not she rose from the kitchen table, went back to bed, or remained sitting until dawn. Ahead were long years of being Mrs. Watson, with no one remembering Frederick, no one remembering she had a first name, even though it was on the red badge she pinned to her uniform every day. A waitress, but no one’s ex-wife. No one’s daughter, her family long gone. But everyone remembering she was the mother of that young man who had done that terrible thing.

She resolved to stay at the kitchen table until dawn. She
resolved to stay until the police officer came with his inevitable questions. She resolved to point to the room at the back of the house and tell him what was in there. She resolved to tell him about what Dan had wanted her to do with the truck, how she had refused to do so because she was a mother. Arlene looked outside at the dark shape of the diesel truck and felt for the man inside. She had forced him to remain in the cold, huddled uncomfortably with his dog to pass the night, all because she hadn’t had the wherewithal to act like a woman first and not a mother, a person who cared about someone else’s well-being, not just her son’s.

Arlene thought about walking back out there and rapping on the door of the truck, showing the driver to one of the rooms and telling him with great apology that the fee would be waived. She decided against it, only because she was going to be facing life very soon—questions, suspicions, accusations—and these would be the last quiet hours she was going to have.

She thought back to that morning years before, when she had stood in the hallway of their old farmhouse, her brother maybe or maybe not in that back bedroom, and she had listened for some kind of noise to tell her that he was in there. Instead, her own mother rose and disturbed the quiet of the house.
Arlene, honey,
her mother had said.
What are you doing up so early, my love?
And then her mother began making an enormous breakfast in the kitchen.

The hours passed in the dark, Arlene transfixed by herself, by the silent truck in the parking lot, by the huge well of her coming life. The tea went cold. The blue flame burned. When the sky started to change over in the east, she finally rose from
the table. She turned on the light. She took out eggs and sausages from the refrigerator, pancake mix from the cabinet. She set coffee to boil. She worked with resolve, remembering how her brother had walked into the kitchen to the smell of their mother’s cooking, his hair matted, and he made a playful grab for her and brought her to his lap as a cup of coffee was presented to him. The pans sizzled hot on the stove.
Thank you, love,
Frederick used to tell her, after their big Sunday dinners. Arlene made hearty portions and set everything on a breakfast tray—the coffee in a carafe, the eggs and sausages and toast and pancakes covered with a larger, upside-down plate to keep everything warm as she made her way outside and over to the truck.

The sky readied itself for day in the east. Arlene cleared the steps carefully, making her way to the diesel truck. The December morning clipped her with a sharp chill, her breath in the air. The dog sensed her even before she had taken a few steps, but she kept her resolve. She would move forward. There was only forward.

From the road came the familiar sound of tires, of a car slowing down. As she looked to the road, the police car rolled into view, and she stopped. The dog barked madly and she heard the driver call out, “Buddy!” in a tired voice, then again when the dog raised its paws to the window. The police car slowed down and she could see in the coming clarity that there were two officers inside. They parked the car and she felt her hands go numb. “Buddy!” the driver yelled, and she could hear him rising up in the cab. She wanted to keep going, but the distance was too great, too long, the simple path into the storybook
forest too dark, too dark. She felt her hands give up and drop the tray as the officers opened the doors to the patrol car, the food spilling all over the gravel, the plates shattering, the coffee carafe tumbling. Arlene looked at the truck driver’s breakfast and then at the two officers approaching and she collapsed to her knees, weeping. She wept hard. She held her face in her hands and the morning was cold and she wanted to go back inside to the safety of her little house with the warm yellow windows.

“Mrs. Watson?” said one of the officers, approaching her. He came in to the café every day, just past the lunch hour, and ordered a grilled cheese, home fries, and a cola. “Mrs. Watson?” he called one more time, his boots on the gravel. He came closer, closer. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and bent down to her. “Arlene?”