What You See in the Dark (22 page)

All the young people sat quiet, listening to the thin coward on the screen, and Arlene listened, too, her hands on her purse, but finally she rose to her feet when the coward put his eye to a peephole in the wall, and they all saw, yet again, the Actress in her underclothes. Yet again—and in a bathroom! She’d had enough of such filth. Arlene rose to her feet and walked with purpose up the aisle, the silhouettes in the dark leaning to see around her. She could hear the pull of a shower curtain and she grimaced at the audacity of people like that Actress, people like that Director, people who reveled in adultery, in bras and cleavage and hairy chests, in theft, in deceit, in madness, in nakedness, in peepholes and lurid spaces. Arlene pushed her way through the velvet-padded door of the screening room and out to the plush carpet of the lobby, no one out there except the clerk at the concession stand.

“You can’t come back in, ma’am,” the clerk protested when he noticed that Arlene was heading for the exit, but she paid him no mind. She clutched her purse even harder when she heard a burst of screaming from the audience, but she moved on, not turning around. She was missing the answer, surely, to the jagged titles on the movie poster, and the screaming continued
faintly, a hint of laughter even as the door to the Fox closed behind her. Who would want to know such things? She stood in the early evening of Bakersfield, the street lined up and down with the other patrons’ cars ready to take them home.

What a change—to go from the dread of being talked about as the mother of Dan Watson to stupidly wondering if the young people in town would think of her as a woman offended by a film, stomping out in indignation.

She went to work the next day and faced her usual stoic customers, looking for some sign that one of their sons or daughters might have mentioned seeing her at the picture house, but no one said a word. She set late-breakfast plates in front of Vernon and Cal as she always had. None of the young waitresses asked if she’d seen any films lately. No one said a thing.

All the days could do, she realized, was roll along. For all her shame in admitting that the spectacle on the screen had embarrassed her, no one actually cared. She was nothing but a shadow in the dark.

Over at the girl’s apartment, no other cheap bouquets ever showed up, and she began to wonder if there might even be another story attached to the one she had seen. Maybe it hadn’t even been left in memory, but was the remnant of a date gone wrong, some young people at the bowling alley, perhaps.

August passed. The fall came, with the light softening in the window. December rolled past, and with it the first anniversary of that young girl’s death, but no one looked at Arlene in silent knowing. Not the other waitresses, not Vernon, not Cal, not that young deputy who would come in for a grilled cheese, home fries, and a cola.

People were going to forget that girl, Arlene realized. Just as they were beginning to forget her—Arlene Watson.

The days kept going. She spread the news of the world on the café counter and watched the stories swallow up her hands, ink all over her fingertips. The light stung in the windows again, announcing spring, anticipating summer.

“Has anyone come to see you about your motel, Mrs. Watson?” Cal asked.

It was July. It was 1961. She looked up at Cal.

“You’ve been asking me that question for years, Cal.”

“The planning is over,” he said, pointing to the newspaper. “They’re building.”

She had known they were. She didn’t let on that she had stood on the edge of the motel parking lot, shading her eyes west. Past the fiery line of sunset, she could see nothing but empty space there, a horizon pulled taut. She didn’t know what she had expected to see—cranes, maybe, or the elevated ramps and thick pillars of highways like she had seen on television.

“Why would they come see me?”

“Are they anywhere close to your property? Could they buy you out?”

There hadn’t been much letup in her motel bookings. Sometimes weekends were slow, but that had always been the case. Still, from the banter of some of her more talkative customers, she knew the route was being built well west of her.

“I have no idea how close I’ll be to the highway.”

“It’s a freeway, not a highway,” said Vernon.

“Freeway or highway, what’s the difference?” she asked.

“We already have a highway,” said Vernon. “That’s the problem.” He sopped at his eggs over easy with a piece of bread and grabbed his silverware to demonstrate. “See these two lanes?” He placed the fork and knife next to each other. “They’re going in the same direction. There’s two other lanes right next to them going in the opposite direction. Just like the highway we have now.” He hovered his hand over the silverware, as if it were a car traveling. “Problem right now is that we run right through Bakersfield and Tulare and Kings-burg and so forth. The city traffic slows for all sorts of reasons. Stop signs or speed limits or cars pulling into motel parking lots.” Vernon motioned his hovering hand slowly to the right of the silverware. “With the new freeway, you don’t have none of that. Just a straight shot through. You get on by a ramp and you get off by a ramp. Easy breezy. No stop signs, nothing to slow the traffic down.”

“So?” she asked. “How’s that different?”

“Come on, Mrs. Watson,” said Cal. “Don’t tell me you can’t do the math. If I’m paying a trucker to get a load of eggs to Sacramento, do I want him there in five hours or seven? He could do five on the freeway because he never, ever has to stop or slow down. Unless he wants a cup of coffee.” He held out his cup. “That’s a different story.”

She poured, and Vernon finished with the silverware demonstration, taking them back up once again for his breakfast. “I hate to say it, but Cal was right all along. You should start thinking about selling that motel if you can.”

“No, Vernon, I can’t let that go.”

“Darlin’,” he said, putting down his utensils, “you’re just not going to have people stopping at the motel anymore. Not unless one of those ramps is close by.”

“People will still use the old Ninety-nine. Why wouldn’t they? You don’t just tear up a road that goes through town.”

“Arlene, you want to see it? You want to see the freeway with your own eyes?” Vernon asked. “What time do you get off shift today? I’ll drive you out there myself.”

“I get off at three.”

“I’ll be here.”

That afternoon, Vernon followed her to the motel. He drove a brand-new truck, sturdy and somehow elegant for its size and what he used it for. Vernon, she knew, was the kind of man who kept his possessions meticulously clean. She regretted that it was a Tuesday—the motel parking lot sat empty for lack of customers, and she hated for Vernon to see this. Arlene hurried from her vehicle with keys in hand, if only to keep Vernon from surveying the scene and saying something about her spotty business.

His truck was comfortable and the ride smooth. The air conditioner was on low, but the cab felt almost cold. “I’ve been watching them start on this thing for years. Just bit by bit. And they’ve got people working from here all the way up through Sacramento.”

“That’s good work, I guess,” Arlene said. “There’s always people looking for a job around here.” She looked out at the fields rolling by, and for the first time in a while, she thought of her older brother.

“I knew your husband, Frederick, a little bit,” said Vernon. He cleared his throat.

“How so?” She knew this but, surprised that Vernon had mentioned Frederick, put up a pretense.

“In town. You know how it is. Good people.”

The truck hummed along and Arlene waited for him to continue. She realized, too late, that she hadn’t said anything in agreement.

“I think he would’ve wanted you to sell that motel,” he said.

“He ain’t dead, Vernon,” she said. “He left me.”

“Arlene, he’d want you—”

“I could give a good goddamn what he would’ve wanted me to do.”

Vernon pursed his lips a bit. “What I mean … what’s best for you …” That didn’t sound right either and he stopped with a brief sigh. “It’s just a bad decision to hang on to that place, Arlene. Believe me. I’ve got property. You might end up with taxes on a place you can’t afford if the money stops flowing in. That’s all I’m saying.”

Up ahead, finally, she could see how the landscape had changed. Up ahead, she could see what it meant when Vernon said “ramp.” The road elevated in the distance.

“See that?” he said. “That’s the freeway.”

He slowed to a crawl and then turned the truck onto a dirt lane bordering a vineyard. The bumpy lane paralleled the new freeway, a deep ravine and fencing separating it from the site. Vernon guided the truck among the holes and the kicking dust and then finally stopped. “There it is.”

The two lanes shot north. The pavement seemed to glisten in the afternoon sun, a fresh gray, free of oil or grit, almost reflective in its newness. The lanes spanned wide, with generous
shoulder room on either side, and even though Arlene could see enormous mounds of earth and gaps in the pavement only several feet away, it was clear that the freeway was a progression unimpeded. Up ahead, she could see the beginnings of a ramp and a completed overpass.

“Ah, that,” said Vernon. He eased the pickup truck along the dirt lane as far as the property line allowed, and Arlene could see why he had driven that distance. An enormous green sign loomed: union avenue.

“That’s the exit?”

“Straight into town,” said Vernon. “That means if someone takes that off-ramp and is looking for a place to sleep, your motel will already be behind them.”

The truck was still running, the air conditioner going at its low hum, still cold. Even so, Arlene could feel the sweat beginning to stick to the back of her waitress uniform. They sat in silence for a while, Vernon not turning off the truck.

Finally, Arlene shook her head slowly. “I wouldn’t know how to handle all that … paperwork … and … well …”

“You need to do it, though,” said Vernon, and he reached over and set his hand on top of hers. His hand was enormous and she could feel the calluses on his palms from his hard work. It was sweaty from having held the steering wheel. His hand did not move and neither did his fingers, and Arlene’s heart beat fast at his gesture. She waited for him to say something, maybe something about Frederick, what a fool he had been, but Vernon said nothing, and for a moment, Arlene wondered if his hand was nothing more than reassurance, that he recognized the gravity of her situation more than she did. When this
thought crossed her mind, Arlene found herself oddly moved, and she felt tears coming, a knot in her throat. She swallowed hard to keep from crying.

Vernon moved his hand to her knee.

She pulled away as if touched by fire. “Vernon … ,” she said.

“Arlene, I just want you to know …”

“Take me home,” she said. “Please.”

What she had wanted was a quick drive home, but instead she had to endure the slow ease of the dirt lane all the way out to the main road. Their silence deepened and she kept expecting Vernon to offer a measure of apology. He stayed quiet, and Arlene felt the tears form and fall. She had no choice but to wipe at her cheeks and she turned away to the side window to do so, but she knew Vernon had seen her.

“I’m real sorry, Arlene … ,” Vernon began when he had pulled his pickup to a stop back at the motel parking lot, but by that time, Arlene had already opened the door to the truck cab and jumped out. She hurried to the house, listening for Vernon’s truck to gear. It finally did as her hands shook, trying to get the key into her front door lock.

She felt deeply shamed for the rest of the afternoon. That’s what the feeling was, in the end, a deep shame. Arlene could not identify what it was about Vernon or his gesture or her tears that prevented her from touching her dinner that evening, that kept her with her eyes open all night, lying in bed with her hands involuntarily smoothing her stomach, as if she were trying to keep something from rising. Whatever it was, though, felt exactly like all of those afternoons in the first months after Dan had disappeared, the eyes in the café silently watching her,
felt exactly like the moment she had moved through the darkness of the picture house, her shadow laughable in its anonymous anger. She was no one that anyone had to worry about, and to think that someone like Vernon might ever have held feelings for her. What a fool not to have seen it, not to have believed it. All this time, she had been thinking of herself in the way others saw her—an abandoned wife, a lowly waitress, an aging woman whom no one could even bother to gossip about anymore—but Vernon himself had not.

The next morning, she rose with a bleary resolution to apologize to Vernon, somehow send him a sign that she, in fact, understood what he was offering, that his gesture was not unlike the shine of the camera bulbs in the movie magazines, a promise of a different life altogether. He had her best interests in mind, saw her as belonging in another space, not the motel, maybe not even the café.

But Vernon did not come in for his usual breakfast, Cal sitting alone with his newspaper. The next morning, he did not come either. Cal made no mention of Vernon’s absence and she was too embarrassed to pose an innocent question to him about Vernon’s whereabouts, to ask if Vernon had taken ill. Arlene let the anticipation sit. The small dot within her knew better. It knew in the same way she knew something when she stepped out of the picture house, when she saw the taillights of Dan’s escape, when she rested her head on Frederick’s chest on their wedding night, when she spotted her brother on the road, years and years and years ago.

Things change, the small dot told her. But she was not going to be able to.

This was July 1961. Vernon never came into the café again. That fall, Cal married a clerk from the shoe store, and the two had a baby, and the farmers who came in to fill where Vernon and Cal had once sat were not much interested in either Arlene or her daily newspaper reading, the outside world being something they would rather not deal with.

She wished now that she could remember the day—the exact day—when she stopped looking at the café door in anticipation. The day she stopped waiting for a policeman to come in to report on Dan, Vernon to come in with his hat in his hands. Time just passed.