All That's Left to Tell(17)

*

Back out on the highway, the wind streaming through—the air-conditioning barely worked, and in the high sun she was better off with the windows down—she thought about it. She had never planned on not speaking with her father. With her mother, either. After she’d nearly been killed, they had taken good care of her, one or the other of them in the hospital until she was released, and then through the long months that her back and shoulder healed. Sometimes when her mother was at work, or was out with her new boyfriend, her father, who had flown home the day he’d heard of the attack, would come by and spend time with her; they’d play Scrabble, or watch daytime TV, or sometimes she would put on music and they would listen together. But he would never ask where she’d been when she’d been stabbed, why she was there, and what it meant that she’d never heard from the man she said she’d loved after the night she was hurt.

One afternoon, when she was strong enough and angry enough at her confinement, and neither of them was at home, she’d packed a suitcase and left a note thanking them for everything. She’d told them she’d be in touch. And then she never was.

Occasionally, a postcard or letter would catch up with her, an e-mail after which she’d change her address, and once or twice a phone call, but when she heard either of them on voice mail, she’d shut down the message after listening to a few words. Claire, please, if you get this … If you only knew how much … I wonder what I’ve done … They’d done nothing, really, to deserve it, and eventually the messages stopped coming.

Now, two birds were circling high in the heat, taking updrafts that pushed them above what had once been a huge lake, but now was mostly dried lake bed with edges where grass grew and cows grazed. She did not like to think about those years, did not want to remember them, that purposeless rage that drove her from town to town, and she could remember them less and less as Lucy grew and even her own childhood seemed dimmed by her daughter’s—her sweetness, her milky breath when she fell asleep in her arms, the coins and gum wrappers and occasional key she’d find in the motel rooms while Claire cleaned that she would later offer to Claire like treasures. All spring, she’d been fascinated by the swallows that were nesting under the eaves of the motel.

She liked to think of her life beginning at the moment she met Jack. She thought everyone would be better off if they could make that choice, to cancel out what had happened before, even if it were a matter of looking back, of negotiating with God, if there was one, and saying, “All right, I was thirty-one. I was working as a waitress outside of Lincoln, Nebraska, and a man walked in. It was like a country-western song. I want my life to begin with that song. I’ll give up the final ten years of my life if you cancel out everything before that and it begins with that song.”

*

From his booth seat, that first evening he had come in, Jack said, “Jesus, maybe I should find another diner.” He looked like many men who ate there, a brown face and brown arms, hair lightened by the sun, handsome in a wholesome sort of way.

“Good luck with that,” she said. “You’ll have to drive into Lincoln.”

“Well, the food sucks here.”

“Is that why you stopped by?”

“First time I’ve been here in my life.”

“So how do you know the food is terrible?”

“Looking at you. You sure aren’t eating it. Take a look at this.” He grabbed hold of her wrist and his thumb and forefinger met around its circumference. “Pretty eyes, though.”

“I take it you like corn-fed Nebraska girls.”

“I like most kinds of girls, but you’re not from Nebraska.”

He’d stayed late, and she’d gone out with him after her shift. What drew her was the ease with which he told the stories of his life, far more easily than most men, especially those from farm country in the Midwest, and it occurred to her then that someone might supplant the stories from her own life with those of another, especially if she could make herself fall in love with that other. She thought she knew even at that moment she probably could never love this man the way she wanted, but she invited him back to her room, anyway. He seemed surprised.

“You move pretty fast, Miss Claire,” he said.

“At this point in life, if you don’t move fast, you spend more time being lonely.”

“You spend a lot of time being lonely?”

“Everyone does. You do, too.”

Their first night together was like first nights with other men, not that those were frequent anymore, now that she was thirty-one, and the fevered ache of her appetites had been curbed by years and experience. He had good hands, calloused palms just below the fingers, and fingertips worn hard by work, but smooth like sanded wood, and he moved them along her thighs and belly unhurriedly, knowing the right places to touch, but wanting to be certain.

After the second time, they lay back in her bed and watched the ceiling fan spin, cooling their bodies.

“I like the way you smell,” she said to him.

He laughed lightly and said, “Gotta admit I haven’t heard that one all that often.”

“I’m serious. I do. You smell sweet. Like alfalfa. Or corn silk.”

“Got me pegged for a farmer, do you?”

“It’s not a hard guess out here. Look at your arms, your face.” His forearms to his biceps were deep brown, but his chest and shoulders were pale, his skin almost translucent.