coming,” Roy says. He opens the glove compartment, takes out his brand-new ten mil Auto Glock 20 with the fifteen-round magazine. “Somebody special.”
6. Worse Than Sex
Fern has been my best friend since the first day of first grade. She sealed the deal by finding my shoes. Brand-new shoes strapped onto my pudgy little feet by my mother barely an hour before a group of marauding third-graders—big as invading Huns to me—knocked me down on the playground, pulled up my dress and threw my brand-new shoes into the woods behind the school.
There must have been adults overseeing us, but I have no recollection of that. All I remember is being devastated. Destroyed. These were the shoes I’d insisted on when shopping for my new school outfits. Expensive, from the way my mom pursed her lips and looked worried, but I’d made a fuss and she’d given in. Now the precious shoes were gone. I couldn’t go into the school barefoot—mortal shame—and I couldn’t go home. I was lost. The new world of first grade had ended before it even began.
I cried so hard I couldn’t see. And then this big girl came out of the fog of tears, a lovely girl three years older than me, with bright, beautiful, almond-shaped green eyes and wonderfully curly hair. She put her arm around my shoulders and helped me smooth down my dress and promised to find my shoes. She did find them, and helped me strap them on, and twenty-five years later whenever I get irritated with Fern, or find her wearisome, I think of the shoes, and that seals the deal all over again.
So it’s Fern who gets the first distress call.
“Kelly ran away,” I say, my voice breaking. “With a boy.”
“Oh, Jane! No way! I have to sit down.”
Fern has the wireless, carries it to her favorite chair, the soft leather recliner that belonged to her ex-husband. Poor Edgar. A sweet guy but no match for Fern, not in marriage, not in divorce, not in life. I know she’s using Edgar’s old chair because I recognize the sound of the squeaking springs as she settles in, pushes back, lifting her size-ten feet. “There,” she says. “Tell me everything.”
I try, but naturally, Fern being Fern, she interrupts long before everything gets told. “So you’re telling me Kelly stayed out all night and skipped out on her summer job? Welcome to the club, Jane.”
“But she’s never—”
“That you know of. Please. She’s sixteen. Everything but their name is a lie. Sometimes the name, too. I got these calls for Cheyenne? Frat boys looking for Cheyenne. Is that like a stripper name? Jessica was calling herself Cheyenne at some club, gave out her home number. Unbelievable. Jess has a tested IQ of one thirty-five, but at clubs it apparently drops to about sixty-five.”
“So you’re telling me not to worry.”
“No, no, no. Be very worried. Just don’t think you’re alone.”
“But what if she’s having sex?” I ask plaintively.
That gets a laugh out of Fern. Laughter so hearty it seems to warm the receiver on my phone. “If, Jane? Did you say if? Of course she’s having sex! Why else would she stay out all night with Smike?”
“Seth. His name is Seth.”
“He told Kelly his name is Seth and she told you. He could be Smike for all you know. Or Squeers. Or Snagsby. Probably something with an S. Like Sex.”
Fern is riffing now, trying to make me laugh. I know what she’s doing, but I can’t help responding, and my heart unclenches. A big, tension-relieving sigh and anxiety begins to recede like the tide.
It’s so much easier on the phone. If Fern was here I’d be worried she’d see the tears in my eyes and go all soft, and then we’d both be blubbering.
“I hate it that they grow up,” I tell her, taking a deep breath.
“No you don’t,” she responds. “Not so many years ago you were praying she’d get the chance to grow up. Your prayers were answered.”
“True.”
“The miracle kid. She’s a character. They broke the mold. What a personality she has! If the average person has a hundred watts, Kelly has five hundred, all of it beaming. One day she’ll make you proud, but right now all she wants to do is blow your mind. And maybe Smike’s little thingy.”
“Fern! Please!”
“His little mind, too.”
Nobody enjoys her jokes better than Fern herself and that gets her laughing until she can barely breathe. After a while, after we’ve both enjoyed a few moments of silent communion, she goes, “So, you got a battle plan?”
“Grounding doesn’t seem to mean much.”
“Means nothing. Not unless you can lock ‘em up and throw away the key. What you gotta do, you gotta scare some sense into her.”
“And how do I do that?”
“With Jess I used to grab my chest, make my face go all white. Make her think my heart was about to stop.”
“You can do that, make your face go white?”
“Years of practice scaring my own mother.”
“I can’t fake a heart attack, Fern.”
“A seizure then. That’s easier. All you gotta do is drool.”
I’m crying now, but tears of laughter.
“It’ll be okay,” Fern says, shifting to serious. “You’ll see. Kelly’s a good soul. She’ll know what to do, even if you don’t.”
“You really think so?”
“I really do. But just in case, can you fake a nosebleed?”
I’m still smiling ten minutes later when I enter Kelly’s room. My intention is to rummage around, see if she left a contact number for Seth. No doubt it’s right there on her computer somewhere, but her computer is forbidden to me. The personal computer, Kelly has explained, is like a diary. Therefore no peeking, on pain of death. To which I agreed. Not the death part, of course, but the general idea. So in my mind her computer is off-limits until one second past noon. Until then I’ll stick to her address book, the handy little purse-size one I gave, assuming she hasn’t taken it with her.
Can’t find the address book. What I do find, nestled way back in the drawer, very nearly gives me that seizure Fern was suggesting. A photo album I’ve never seen before. Quite new, very slick.
Pictures of my daughter doing something really awful. Something worse than sex. Far, far worse.
7. When Sleepy Voices Make It Snow
Once when Roy Whittle was a boy—just the one time—Pap took the whole family to a carnival in Belle Glade. Some kind of harvest jubilee thing, where they blessed the dirt and prayed for the sugarcane, or anyhow that’s how Pappy explained it, in the brief interval when he was sober and smiling.
