Random (Going the Distance) (9 page)

“Let me see those, baby,” she says, and it warms me. I give her the clothes.

Her machine is in the kitchen, and she starts some water running into the tub while she sprays something from a squirt bottle on the spots. “Ammonia and Palmolive liquid,” she says. “It saves me buying uniforms all the time. If it works on blood, it oughta work on this okay.”

“Thanks.” I sink down in a kitchen chair. “And thanks for coming out.”

“Men just don’t have a lick of sense sometimes, and you’re the kind of girl they get crazy over. You’re going to have to learn how to stand up for yourself a little better, child.”

That stings a little. “I thought I
was
. I was trying to get Rick to leave.”

“Did you know the other one was coming?”

I shake my head. “I just met him. I really did leave my books in his car.”

She drops my clothes into the washer. “You hungry? I have some meatloaf and potatoes here.”

“Yes, please.”

From the cupboard, she takes a plate and hands it to me. “Help yourself. I’ll make us some tea.”

So I slice a hunk of meatloaf, which is the food you always complain about when you’re a kid and then it tastes so good when you’re really hungry. The potatoes are fluffy and thick, and there’s even gravy to ladle all over the plate. I’m licking my fingers before I even get to the table, where she’s laid a napkin, and a fork and knife.

“You cook for yourself all the time?” I ask.

“Who else is gonna do it?”

I dig into the potatoes—salty and buttery and hot. “I dunno. Most people don’t seem to cook that much if they live alone.” In the background, that sad saxophone plays. It underlines my loneliness.

“That’s what’s wrong. You want to feel good, you have to eat good food. I like cooking for myself. It makes me feel loved.” She brings two cups of tea over to the table, then sits down. In the harsh overhead light her lines show, along her mouth and beside her eyes. Eyes that have seen a lot, I think.

“I’ve been learning.”

“I’ve noticed.” She eyed me across the table. “So, what’s going on with that boyfriend? Are you breaking up with him, or is this just a fight? I don’t want to make the wrong call.”

I take a breath and let it out. “We broke up last night and I want to stay broken up, but he doesn’t.”

“All right, then. If I see him, I’ll call the cops.”

He scared me tonight, I realize. I nod.

“And the other one?”

Tyler’s face, the cheekbones flushed as he drove away, floats in my imagination. “That one I like, but I don’t expect him to be back.”

A smile edges Electra’s lips. “Oh, I reckon he will.”

* * *

In the morning I pour the last of my milk on the next-to-the-last bowl of cereal. After yesterday, splurging on Flaming Finger to the tune of $1.25, I’m down to less than $30. I never got my clothes washed, either. I wonder if I’m brave enough or if it’s weird to ask Electra if I could borrow her washing machine.

Probably weird. I’ll run by the laundromat, too.

I’m going to have to visit Henry and ask for a small loan. I’ll get a check on Monday—at least I hope so—but it all goes to rent, along with what I’ve saved all month to cover the other half.

The only problem with that plan is that it takes a lot of gas to get down to Henry’s place. And if I’m going to live on my own, shouldn’t I be making it work myself?

Waves of worry wash over me again. My stomach is gurgling so much I can barely eat.

It’s still early, but I shower, weaving my hair into a braid. When I step outside, there are roses on the step, with a card. Rick’s handwriting says
Jess
.

With a sigh, I pick them up and put them on the back step for Electra. I’m not going to look at his roses for days, but I’ll read the card when I’m in the mood. It’s a little depressing to be breaking up with him. I know him, and I know he’s sad, but I have to stay strong.

* * *

Henry’s house is on the southeast side of town, where things used to be the country and have been swallowed up by rashes of cheap houses. Airplanes fly over ten times a day, so low you can sometimes see the faces of people in the windows. My mom’s collection of wind chimes ring and clatter on the porch, and Henry has put plastic flowers in pots all the way along the sidewalk and steps, orange and red and white and blue and pink and even green. The porch used to be one of my favorite places, but it’s super crowded now with all the pots of flowers and stuff he needs to sort out, so there’s only one chair left to sit in. Two dogs are sleeping in it, Muffin and Mikey, two ragged Shih Tzu rescues with rheumy eyes and the cutest paws in the world. I stop and scrub their heads and bellies. “Hi, guys. How you doing?” Little tails wiggle. Muffin licks my arm happily. “Where’s Henry, huh?”

I can hear clanging from the backyard, so I skirt the house for now and follow a path through the tall grass and weeds to the magical wonderland of Henry’s backyard.

He’s a little crazy—it just has to be said. I think he was always eccentric, but he loved my mom like she was ice cream and sunshine and music and Fourth of July all wrapped up in one package. When she died, he slipped over the edge. It’s a kind-crazy, an artist-crazy, as beautiful as it is exasperating.

The backyard sprouts dozens of sculptures made of scrap he collects from the dump. There are whimsical animals, unicorns and dancing bears and dragons studded with marbles that shine in the sun, spirals and pinwheels and abstract things that only he understands. When we first moved here, when I was eight, he was only just starting to make them, and it was the most magical place I’ve ever seen.

I duck between a rearing dragon that’s twelve feet tall with a long tail that loops around his feet, and a spiral ringing with dozens of lazily clanging bits of metal, to peek into the work shed. “Henry?”

He’s welding and doesn’t hear me. I don’t want to startle him when he’s so focused, so I stop where I am and wait. His hair is getting really long now, falling in his face, and there’s a soft grizzling of beard on his jaw. Blue sparks shoot out from the metal on his table, and he’s wearing his usual uniform of grimy overalls. The washing machine broke a while back and he takes his stuff to the laundromat, but he figures the overalls are protecting his clean clothes anyway, so what’s the point in washing them?

Two more little dogs hurry over to greet me, a sleek dachshund he found by the creek, Joey, who is the sweetest thing you ever met. She comes over and gives me sad eyes for love. The other is Diane, a three-legged apricot poodle who sniffs my foot and hurries back to her dad. Ginger, of course, has the place of honor in a chair. She’s the alpha of the bunch.

Henry notices me then and lifts the mask from his eyes, grinning. “Hey, sweetheart! This is a nice surprise.” He limps over to give me a kiss on the cheek and look at me hard. “How’re you doing? How’s your friend?”

I lift a shoulder. “I’m okay, but Virginia’s in a coma. I saw her yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, kid.” He doesn’t offer any false hope, like
She’ll be okay
. We both know that’s not always true, that life sometimes takes turns you’re not thrilled about. “Want a cup of coffee or something?”

I shake my head. “I was wondering if I could use your computer to look for jobs.” I stick my hands in my back pockets. “And if you have $50 you can loan me until I get back on my feet.”

“Of course! You know you can come here any time. And I just got my check, so I’m flush.” He winks a bright blue eye at me. He’s still handsome, Henry is, beneath the lostness. I wish he’d find somebody willing to take care of him, help dig him out of the hole he’s in.

“Are you sure you can afford it?”

“I’m sure.” He pats my back. “I’m gonna finish up here. You know where the computer is if you can wade your way through the mess.”

I smile halfway. “Thanks.”

The house really is a mess. It used to just be cluttered before my mom died, the ordinary kind of cluttered that shows up when three people live in a small place with a couple of animals. We only had two dogs then, Muffin and Mikey. My mom scoured everything down every Saturday, shaking out the sheets and mopping floors and shining up the bathroom. I vacuumed and cleaned the kitchen. Henry took out the trash.

After my mom died, we tried, but things just started piling up. It started in the dining room with mail that needed sorting, and newspapers and magazines he never got around to reading, magazines that my mom subscribed to on the table, since there was no way we were going to eat in there, not when all we could think about was my mom’s empty place.

So the junk pile started there. Mail, and then an empty box or two, some stuff Henry picked up at a garage sale or five. A bike.

We ate in the living room in front of the TV, taking turns cooking the easy stuff we knew how to make, frozen waffles and eggs, macaroni and cheese from a box, hot dogs and chips, grilled cheese sandwiches.

I tried to keep up with things, I truly did, but Henry was like a hurricane of clutter, and it spread like a virus from the dining room to his bedroom to the living room, and finally the kitchen. It’s not quite ready for that hoarders show—you can still walk around, mostly, and he keeps certain islands of sanity. He keeps the kitchen sort of clean, if by clean you mean you can actually see the sink. His couch is cleared, and you can still close the bathroom door.

But there’s stuff everywhere. Clothes in baskets and books in teetering stacks and just…stuff. Stuff and stuff and stuff. He doesn’t seem to notice.

The computer is in a corner of the living room, close enough to the couch that it’s spared too much junk. I move a jacket, two books and some papers out of the way and sit down. At least here I have plenty of time—no librarian looking over my shoulder—so I check Craigslist for jobs. Gay bartender, roller skating server, no and no. A couple of actual possibilities, a diner on the west side, which will be an expensive drive, and a fast food cook at McDonalds. I can work McD’s—it’s still only minimum wage, but I’ll work two jobs if I have to. I apply there, too.

Henry is lost in his workshop, and I apply for every job that I might be even slightly qualified to do, and then there’s still time, so I find a Coke in the fridge and sit back down to do the fun stuff.

I check email, and there are several acknowledgements that I applied for various positions and three notes from high school friends. Nothing much, so I head to Facebook and catch up with everybody. Of course Virginia hasn’t posted, but I’m surprised to see that no one has posted to her wall, either. I take a second to put the news up there.

Virginia was involved in the car/building accident at Billy’s June 21. She’s in the hospital with multiple injuries. I’m sure she’d like cards and letters c/o Penrose Hospital.

I post it and sit there sipping Coke, wondering how her boys are doing, who’s taking care of them. I don’t even know how to find out.

Then, as embarrassing as it is to admit, I look up Tyler Smith. Such an ordinary and yet not-ordinary name. His page comes up, showing a photo of him laughing into the camera on a snowy mountain. The banner shows a creek I recognize as the one that flows through Manitou.

Even in the photo, his eyes are an incredible color, blazing out of the screen to snare me, and I’m suddenly thinking about the way we kissed yesterday, kissing and kissing and kissing. I can feel the ghostly imprint of his body over mine, the heat coming off us in an orange wave. My whole body tingles with the memory.

Will he call me again, after last night?

Will I call him?

I’m absolutely not going to friend him on Facebook. He can find me if he wants.

Thinking about that, I post my own status update.

Now that Billy’s is closed, I am in dire need of employment. Any leads? CALL me, please.

I also go to the relationship status and change “In a relationship” to “single.” As I’m saving it, the computer dings and there’s Lucy, the lead singer’s girlfriend, online and messaging me.

Why did you break up with Rick? It wasn’t his fault what happened.

I type:
  It’s not that. It was the last straw, that’s all.  

He’s wrecked, like can’t-eat, can’t-sleep. Missing you bad.

My chest aches.
  :( :( :(  

Lucy says,
  You have been 2gether almost 2 years! You can work it out, right?  

I stare at that sentence for about a minute. Can we? I type:
  No. Sorry.  

I’m worried about him!

He’ll be fine. Twenty girls want him every show.

Yeah, well, they aren’t booked anywhere. The fight got out and now nobody will hire them.

What I want to say is,
Not my problem.
What I do write is:
  Things will work out. They go through this now and then.  

She starts typing, but I am not into this. I type,
  At Henry’s gotta go  
, and sign out of Facebook super fast so she can’t see me anymore.

That’s when I think about my other dad, in New Zealand. I look over my shoulder, but Henry’s still outside banging and clanging. I go to Google and type
Keiran Pears
. It doesn’t sound like that common a name, since I have never known anyone else named Keiran, but a surprising number of hits show up. Most of them are in England, and I narrow my search to
Keiran Pears, New Zealand.

And there are still a bunch of hits, but they all point to the same guy. Marlborough, South Island. “Wine Spectator.” Winery. Long Cloud Winery.

We lived in Kaikoura, and I have no idea where that is, so I call up a map and type it in, and sure enough, it’s not that far from Marlborough.

My heart is pounding. Could it really be this easy? I click on one of the links, and there’s his picture.

He’s older than he is in the photos I have, but he’s still completely recognizable. Standing against a backdrop of ocean, shirtless, his hair curly and tousled and blowing in his face, he grins at the camera like there is nothing better than this moment. The winery is his, it seems. He’s married. No kids that I can find.