The Highway Kind(19)

She took the school bus home with all the other kids who didn’t have cars, staring fixedly out the window and ignoring the cacophony around her. At home she found Margot nestled inside a fort she’d made out of the kitchen table by turning it on its side and surrounding it with the chairs, similarly upended. An old afghan was draped across the top, letting light in through its crocheted holes.

Caro wondered if any of the other girls at school had mothers who made blanket forts. She crouched down so she could see Margot sitting inside, cross-legged like a child, her wide eyes staring out of the dappled darkness. She was wearing sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt—no zippers—and her arms were pulled in close, as if they were cold. “That kind of day?” Caro said.

“Yes,” Margot said in her weird, affectless way.

Caro looked around for a plate or a paper towel or some crumbs. “Eat anything?”

“Nothing was out,” Margot said.

Caro sighed. “Want me to make you a peanut butter sandwich?”

Margot nodded.

“Okay,” Caro said, and stood up. “Cover your ears. I have to open things.”

She heard a soft whimper from inside the fort, and then her mother said, “Okay,” in a tense, muffled way that Caro knew meant that Margot had clapped both hands over her ears and was curled in a tight defensive ball. “Hands, Carrie?”

Automatically, Caro pulled her sleeves down over her hands. There was an empty pitcher on the counter; with her hands still inside her sleeves, so she didn’t touch the metal faucet, she put it in the sink and let the cold water trickle into it. As quickly and quietly as she could, she opened the drawer and took out a knife, opened the cupboard and took out the peanut butter. She had to open another drawer to get the bread and that was the worst one because sometimes it squeaked. Margot squeaked too when she heard it. There was a half a loaf of bread left: seven slices. The peanut butter in the jar was enough for two reasonable sandwiches and one scanty one. Caro made the sandwiches, put all three of them on a plate—she heard Margot yelp with fear as the cabinet door slammed shut—and slid them into Margot’s den. Then she took the full pitcher of water from the sink, got a glass down from the cupboard, and crouched down next to the tent again.

Margot still had her ears covered. Her eyes were squeezed shut too. Caro reached in and tapped her knee. “Margot,” she said, and her mother opened her eyes. Caro showed her the pitcher and the glass. “Water’s right here, okay?”

“Are you leaving?”

“My shift starts at four.”

With one hand, pale and slightly swollen from her meds, Margot pulled the plate in close to her. No other part of her moved. “You have homework?” she said.

“Taking it with me.”

“Have you ever read Simone de Beauvoir, Carrie?” Caro shook her head no, and Margot shook her head too. “Shame. I think you’d like her.” Her watery eyes, so like and unlike Caro’s own, blinked, and she made a sad, wistful noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a breath. “I wish they hadn’t gotten to the books. So many good books out there. None of them are safe.”

“Do you want to go to the bathroom before I leave?” Caro said instead of responding to that, and Margot did, so Caro opened the bathroom door and turned on all the lights and the taps. She waited outside in the hallway until Margot was done, then went in and flushed the toilet and turned everything off. She washed her own hands too, because they smelled like peanut butter, and then redid her ponytail. By the time she got back into the kitchen, Margot had returned to her fort and there was the steady sound of eating.

“I’m going now,” Caro said.

“Have a nice day, sweetie,” Margot said. Just like a real mother would.

As always, Caro thought, It’s nighttime, and as always, she didn’t say it.

On the nights she didn’t work at the hotel, she worked her old job at the Eat’n Park, in her green polyester jumper and the ribbon-bow earrings she’d bought from the cheerleading squad’s latest fund-raiser. School colors: blue and gold. Go, Golden Bears. She didn’t know if there was even such a thing as a Golden Bear and she’d never seen a bear of any color in worn-down, suburban Pitlorsville, but there were an awful lot of Golden Bear alums. If she stood there on her aching feet and listened to some fat old dude wax nostalgic about his glory days on the whatever team and smiled as if she cared, it was sometimes worth an extra dollar or two. All of the other waitresses went to school with her and most of them hated her. She had to keep an eye on her order slips or they’d magically migrate to the end of the line, and she had to keep an eye on her bag or it ended up full of ketchup. So, really, the nights at the hotel weren’t so bad. At least she got to wear nice clothes and wasn’t surrounded by people whose boyfriends she might or might not have slept with.

That night she ended up working the counter in the smoking section, which none of the other girls wanted. A guy in a blue work shirt with sewn-on patches ordered bacon and eggs; he said thanks when she brought them and not much else, but he left her a big tip and a note with his number. To the prettiest thing I’ve seen all night. Call me.

She put the note in her pocket and tried to remember the words on the patches. Was he a cop? A paramedic? A paramedic might be able to help her with Margot sometimes. A cop wouldn’t be worth it. A cop would probably call people.