A Little Hope(8)

In the trunk is a soft wool blanket. Do they know how many times Von took her to the overlook and they sat on that blanket and stared at stars? Do they know how he covered their children with that blanket at a drive-in picture?

She wants to kick something.

She thinks she could kick Betsy, even.

Darcy is ashamed. She always thought she’d come here one day and rescue the car. Wash it again the way he used to, or take it on a road by herself where the trees were high, and the breeze would blow through her hair, and she’d miss Von properly—finally—but she’d tell him she was okay. Look at me doing this. Driving her for you.

The truth is she couldn’t stand looking at Betsy. Every time she’d come out to their garage to get into her own car, the sight of Betsy would give her a sudden leap of hope: just that second-long trick was too much. She had gotten rid of Von’s truck when he was sick. “I ain’t gonna be hauling concrete blocks anywhere anymore,” he said. “But when I’m better, we’ll take Betsy all the time.”

She remembers first telling their son, Luke, about the rental garage. Sweet broken Luke—broken from his girlfriend, Ginger, leaving; broken from his father dying; broken from the pain of always being too sensitive and never being able to shake things off. She remembers his sullen face when she handed him the keys so they could put Betsy in storage, and she followed him the five miles in her car.

How she watched Betsy with regret that day, its navy blue body gleaming, its simple red taillights, its small rectangular window and cloth top. It was wrong to be putting the car in storage, wrong to have made Luke drive it with all his father’s touches still inside—Von’s sunglasses in the glove compartment, his plastic bag of quarters for the tolls.

She pauses now and thinks about Luke in the driver’s seat. How defeated he must have felt putting his dad’s car away for good. Maybe that’s what led him further into that world: the pills, the drinking, the—whatever else.

Maybe she had asked too much of him by having him help her do such a heartbreaking task. Wasn’t that the person she always was—the woman who asked too much of everyone? Making their daughter, Mary Jane, practice and practice the scales on the piano when she was in junior high, shaking her head at Luke because he wore a shirt that was too wrinkled, getting the lawn service to come back because they left some grass clumps around her alstroemeria bed.

She clutches her purse and walks away from the garage. She will be relieved to get back in her own car. To run to the market for muffins, and to the bank with yesterday’s deposit. She will relish being at the cleaners where she can sit in her small office for a few minutes and settle herself.

That day they brought Betsy here, Luke stepped out of the driver’s seat. She can still see the scene as if it’s a clip played on repeat. The car made that soft clicking sound it always did after it was driven. The interior light switched off when he gently closed the door. Luke put his hand to the windshield and glanced inside one last time. She remembers thinking how he looked like a young Von then: the light whiskers on his face, the way his shoulders slumped just a bit, his ears, his jaw.

“That’s that, Mom,” Luke said. He held the keys with the plastic Hula dancer on the key chain in his palm. He smelled vaguely of cigarettes. He looked at his feet, and Darcy said nothing. She was always too complicated a woman, too restrained. He worshipped his father. Those two hardly ever fought. Von would always be thumping him on the back or flicking his ear. “Hey, Lukey,” he’d say.

The day they put Betsy away, she should have gotten out of the car. She should have hugged Luke. She should have just given him the keys and let him take Betsy. What would that have meant to him?

She longs to have a do-over. She would go back to that day. She would stand beside her son, reach for his shoulder the way other mothers do. She would have said something smart like, “I know, dearie. I know.”



* * *



Darcy opens the door of Crowley Cleaners. The stereo is not on, and the room seems odd without the usual sound of “Mainly News,” an NPR segment she looks forward to. She hears the hammering sound of the sewing machine in the back.

Tabitha, the thin college girl who works the register two mornings a week, gives a shy wave. “Hey, Mrs. C,” she says.

“Good afternoon, Tabby,” Darcy says. “I brought mini pumpkin muffins for anyone who’s interested.”

“Definitely me,” Tabitha says. She gently plucks a napkin from the pile Darcy places on the counter. Her fingers hover over the tiny brown muffins and she picks the smallest one.

The sewing machine whirrs behind them, and Darcy can see the seamstress Frederica in her cubicle, hunched over the green paisley bridesmaid dresses for that wedding. They look like a tapestry, not like wedding attire. She wonders what kind of wedding Luke would have had if he had married Ginger, that sweet girl who called the house all the time. The one who went on to become a veterinarian in Georgia.

Behind Frederica are spools of thread and a bright spotlight angled on the sewing machine. Darcy wonders if Frederica will be able to see the redness in her eyes, the tiredness of her face under the makeup, but when Frederica looks up, there is something parallel in her expression. Something so defeated or frightened that it almost makes Darcy gasp.

Darcy holds her hand to her heart, and the two women stare at each other—so equivalent, it seems. Frederica’s eyes are devastated. What has happened? What has broken? She knows Frederica has a husband and daughter—a perfect family. Did he leave her? Is someone sick? Maybe one of her parents?