Blue Field(22)
She nodded. The breeze sifted the needles on a stand of spindly pine. A tourist trading post then a gas station emerged by the side of the road—tricks, she thought. Ruses to convince her the truck wasn’t rolling in place while the surround peeled like rind. More beguilements when Leo banged a right into the motel parking lot. The grounds appeared devoid of vegetation. The single-story cinderblock structure, topped by a low-slung roof and with one filmed-over window like a newt eye peering dimly from each of its seven rooms, created an effect of dormancy. It was as if the place were rooted below ground and hadn’t taken yet. He parked next to her car and rested his hands near the hillock where his jeans rose over his crotch. You want I can go in with you, he said.
She let herself from the pickup and slammed the door. Her image blotted its shiny surface and then the truck revved out of the lot, taking her reflection with it.
She entered the room. Double bed with threadbare coverlet and knotty-pine walls. A clutch of nickels and pennies on the dresser. Yesterday’s underclothes heaped on the floor in a study of conjugal squalor. On the other side of the flimsy wall, Jane’s room. Marilyn crumpled onto the bed and rummaged in her mind as if through a toolbox—she needed to call Jane’s family, say the right thing. But only a sprawl of scaffolding and ingeniously placed mirrors appeared. She curled onto her side. Last night she’d played her part well, had taken no small role in broadcasting an ardent thwucking of the headboard against the panelling. As if to say, Here lies the passionate duo. What lies, she thought now. Sweat pushed above her upper lip and she licked at it. She felt as if she’d been rushing for days and weeks and years and now the rushing had stopped.
Miraculously, she slept. Merciful blackness. And woke to Rand hunching through the door. I know, he was saying into his handset. Thanks, me too, I can hardly believe. Yeah, she did. Drained them. Fuck yeah. To the last breath.
Then he was off the phone and right back on again with a similar script as he paced the floor. She got up. She folded her clothes and in the bathroom zipped her toiletries case. She got it—the elites drew together to protect against the know-nothings who might close off sites and shutter shops dealing in services for the technical sort. She understood too the need to exhort and extol, to tell each other they were very sorry but look how brave their endeavor was, to not quit now. What might she contribute to all this? she wondered. I’m glad you’re safe, Rand. Sorry now? Sorry as I am? While she had questions for Rand, the questions she had for herself were larger. She closed the bathroom curtains. She peed and flushed and cried into a towel. She flushed again and splashed water on her face then slit open the door. No, he said. Another passage, a new one. No idea how far back it goes.
She clicked the door shut again and knocked her forehead against the wood until black spots rashed her vision. When she finally re-emerged he was quiet, lying on the bed. Tears leaked from his eyes. After a moment he spared her a glance—all it took for her to go to him. Though his embrace was limp, she was grateful enough to hate herself. She clung to him for a moment. Then she bungled from the room, bashed her bags in the back seat of the car and jammed the key in the ignition, her self-loathing a wizened pea that kept shifting and irritating but also soothed since it was hers, all hers. At least something was.
22
She veered onto the highway and shot past the flyspeck town and then the two police cruisers stationed at the turn-off to Rand’s base camp. The late sun burrowed in the side window and heated half her face. Poor farmland unscrolled. She passed the Dairy Daughter, the Hi-Style Donuts. Jane had dubbed much of the drive scenery-lite. What, Marilyn wondered, was the scene of Jane’s final escape? It escaped Marilyn. She could only picture dense and mud-stuffed. She wanted to imagine just one open passage and tug as if it were a thread and have Jane tug back. Marilyn wanted the skipping rope they’d bound each other with as cowgirls and astronauts roaming the Allen family’s dishevelled backyard—Roger that, got a Red Planet dust storm moving in, keep together, don’t lose track—to bind still. But she had lost track. Her fault. She’d let Jane go this morning. Let her get taken up with Rand and diving in the first place. Unbound, bawling, Marilyn gassed the car hard. She took a hand off the wheel and rummaged a tissue from the coin tray. She felt woozy, smudged as if stupid with sex. She removed her other hand from the wheel and knuckled the growing bump on her forehead. A horn blared and she grabbed the wheel again and swerved, tasting metal, blood from her bitten lip, soiled breath.
She stopped for coffee and a chocolate bar. Huge clouds massed in the darkening sky. On the road again she passed a farmhouse with a hand-lettered sign in front. FLOWERS 4 SALE. U PICK. She swung around at the first turn-off and parked on the dirt drive. She climbed the wooden porch steps and knocked on the screen door while something, a loose shingle maybe, beat on the roof. There was a slow clopping from beyond the door and then a tinkle of unseen chimes and a middle-aged woman appeared behind the screen. She emitted a few asthmatic noises and her face, blurred by the wire mesh, appeared gaunt and streaked with imperfectly applied foundation and blush. Full auburn bob that might be a wig. A faded pink jersey outfit sacked around her frame. Marilyn understood she was staring. The flowers? she stammered and the woman punched her lips together pow-pow and disappeared back into the house. The shingle, if that’s what it was, tapped like a shoe and finally the screen scritched open an inch. Knobby fingers extended a pair of scissors. Marilyn accepted them. A single swollen digit pointed to her far left.