doing, what are you looking for?”
Blake was searching through Jimmy’s truck. “Looking for those damn siren lights. I want to slap them on top of the truck when we get on the highway. You said we should hurry. Turn the suckers on. Scare the shit out of the cars in front of us.”
“No! You can’t use them, Dad will throw you in jail for sure.”
“It’ll be worth it.”
On the way to the church, Chloe wanted to tell Blake she was happy for his company but didn’t know how to phrase it without sounding like an idiot, so she didn’t. She liked it when Hannah used to come with her. Chloe drove, Hannah navigated, though she was awful with directions, but they had some laughs getting lost. And the old people enjoyed seeing the girls. Chloe got dressed up a little, wore jeans without holes.
But today Blake was driving her. It was better. Until he said, “So why didn’t you tell me Hannah doesn’t come with you anymore?”
Chloe fake-studied the map. “You know, you should teach Hannah how to drive.”
“You should teach Hannah how to drive. I tried.”
“So did I.”
The two of them chuckled. “Let’s just agree she’s a reluctant learner,” Blake said. “But it’s in your best interest to teach her, not mine.”
“It’s in your best interest to teach her, not mine.”
“What are you, four? Stop mimicking me. Do you want to be driving her around Bangor when you two start college, the way I drive her around here?”
Chloe was very, very busy with the map. “Maybe she’ll get a car and I won’t have to.”
“Where’s she going to get a car from?” Blake said. “If she has any money saved up, it’ll be spent on empanadas in the Ramblas.”
So he was reading up on Barcelona too. That made Chloe smile, until she recalled Moody. Thinking of her grandmother coming for dinner and, oh God, going to the cemetery made Chloe tighten her spine, squeeze shut her lips and reveal to Blake nothing about her other anxieties: the lack of their funds, the lack of permission, the lack of passport, the lack, the lack, the lack.
She said, turn here, but Blake was already turning. He could find the dirt roads around Fryeburg and Brownfield blindfolded. He seemed to have an innate ability not to get lost even when the rural roads were unmarked. His navigation skills were pretty impressive. When she praised him, he replied by asking why she was dressed so nicely. She pretended she wasn’t dressed especially nicely; how to explain that the old people enjoyed looking at her? But the thing that was great about Blake was that no question lingered in his hyperactive brain for long, and often, when the answer was a few seconds in coming, he would make up his own reply, which was what he did now.
“The young girl,” he said in a dramatic voice, “who got all dolled up to feed the elderly vanished one Saturday afternoon. Where did she go? Perhaps her ironed jeans were found in the pond nearby?”
“Why would I lose my jeans in the pond?”
“That’s what I’m trying to get to the bottom of, Haiku,” he said, and guffawed.
He was so silly.
“What does my denim have to do with your story?”
“I don’t know yet,” he replied. “I’m merely collecting information.”
“So I’m not even the end of your story, just a random detail?”
“Nicely punned. I said I don’t know. Look in my notebook—no, not that section, the one in the back that says descriptions. See if there’s anything you like.”
He had written out fifty pages of notes on lakes, junk he had found, birds building nests during spring—and the garden by her house! He was incredibly prolific. Every minute observation was in his spiral.
“Why is my garden here?” In his random musings, he had written about her wine-red tulips, the coral knockabout roses, the orange nasturtium and the hot pink azaleas blooming outside her windows.
“Never know what I might need.”
“Before I vanish,” Chloe said, closing his notebook, “you might want to have me do something amazing or idiotic.”
“Losing your pants is both, don’t you think?” He poked her in the arm as he drove. “Why are you all freaked out about Moody? She’s your grandmother, not Freddy Krueger.”
“That’s what you think.” Chloe sighed. Everyone in the large Devine family lived in fear of Moody. She could not be argued with, or negotiated with. She could not be reasoned with. She believed what she believed, said what she said, commanded what she commanded. I’ve seen too much to bother arguing with the likes of you, was Moody’s standard reply to anyone in her family who dared raise a squawk in opposition. Only Chloe’s father had spoken out against her, and the result of that was that mother and son had been on the outs for the last seven years, since Uncle Kenny died.
The old people became notably enthusiastic when they saw that a tidied-up Chloe did not come alone. “Who is the young man?” Mrs. Van Mirren said with a meaningful smile.
This is Blake, Hannah’s boyfriend, Chloe would say to Mrs. Van Mirren, Ms. Rivers, Mr. Mann and Mr. Warner. They asked where Hannah was. They asked about Mason. They asked when the prom was, and when Europe was. They gave her money. Five dollars, two dollars, seventy-five cents. They would not take no for an answer. This is for your trip, they said. Take pictures. Write things down. Don’t forget. Life is long. You won’t remember if you don’t write things down or take pictures. Are you excited about college? We’ll miss you when you go. We love you. Blake, we love this girl. Take another dollar.
Lupe was last, because she lived the farthest, in New Hampshire, in a tiny hamlet called Jackson, ten miles from North Conway.
Just as Chloe had told Blake, outside a yellow painted storage shed sat Lupe, in a wooden chair planted outside her front door. In the window box under her one white window bloomed purple nasturtiums. “I planted those for her,” Chloe said. Lupe, shriveled like a bald bird in water, gummed a smile and waved. She was white from top to bottom, white hair, white shirt, white bracelets, white pants, white socks, white shoes. As usual, she wore most of her jewelry. If not all her jewelry. Three necklaces, a cross, a dozen jangling bracelets on each wrist, and rings on every finger. When she waved to Chloe and Blake, she trilled like a wind chime.
“Izh thish Mashon?” she said, as if she didn’t have her dentures in.
“No, Lupe, it’s his brother. Blake.”
While Lupe was vigorously shaking Blake’s hand and appraising him, Chloe pulled out Lupe’s lunch, the last one in the hot box, and stepped inside the woman’s one-room house to get a tray and some silverware. Though who was Chloe to tease Lupe about the size of her habitat?
“Lupe, Blake came with me because he’s entering a story contest.” She set the food on a tray in the old woman’s lap. “Did you read about it in the paper? The Acadia Award for Short Fiction. I told him about your box of jewelry.” Chloe poured Lupe some ice tea, put a napkin near her elbow.
