The Removed(33)

At Barnacle Bill’s, I read Colette and sipped coffee for over an hour before I left, heading back up the slope toward my house. I stopped at the edge of the lake and looked out over the gray, wind-rippled water, thinking about how I could never feel at home anyplace else. From an early age I knew that I would likely never marry, so different from my friends at school, who all wanted to move away and marry someone and have a family. I never dismissed the idea, but I didn’t entertain it either, and while I realized that a desire to live alone was strange, I could never understand why none of my friends felt the same way. The silence of the lake and the solitude was what I enjoyed most. The wind strengthened and felt cool for a moment, like a perfect fall day. I walked back home.

I considered walking down to my parents’ house, but my instinct was that I needed to see Vin. Even though I honestly felt less attracted to him, I still wanted him to want me. Maybe it was a strange obsession, but I didn’t care. I rode my bicycle in to the YMCA down on Main Street, where I knew Vin and Luka often went in the afternoons. There weren’t many cars in the YMCA lot, and I pulled my bicycle up to the front. I waited outside for a few minutes, thinking about what I would say if they saw me. I would tell him I was checking out prices for a membership. I was considering joining. By mere coincidence, that’s what I’d say to Vin.

For a moment I watched some kids dance in the spray of a fire hydrant down the street. I headed inside, where I saw three guys at the front desk. They were young, probably college age, and only one looked like he lifted weights. The other two were thin and gangly. They looked more like the type of kids who spent summers home from college sleeping until noon and playing video games all day. I asked them where the youth program was meeting, and one of them told me they were upstairs in the game room and should be down any minute. I thanked him and walked down the hall to the vending machines and tables, where I sat and watched a group of elderly women do water aerobics in the indoor pool. I played on my phone a while, until I heard a group of kids and saw them coming down the stairs. They were out of control, hurrying and laughing. I’d walked back down the hall about halfway when I saw Luka running out the door. From the front desk I could see him outside, walking away with Vin. I decided not to follow them and stood still as they got into the car. One of the gangly guys at the desk kept asking me if I needed help, but I didn’t say anything. I waited until Vin drove off before I went out the doors and back to my bicycle.

THAT EVENING VIN CALLED as I got out of the shower. I hurried to my bed to answer my phone.

“Do you want to go out to dinner?” he asked.

“I’d rather just fuck you somewhere,” I said.

“Whoa,” he said. “Hell yeah. I got a sitter for Luka, so let’s do it. But I need to eat first. I’m fucking starving over here.”

“Me too,” I said.

About an hour later he picked me up at my house but waited in the car for me to come out. He wanted to go somewhere nice but couldn’t decide. I suggested we drive to Tulsa and go to the restaurant in the Cherokee Casino because I knew the manager there, and we could sneak into the buffet by entering through the kitchen. Vin said the idea of a buffet sounded good, but I wondered whether he just liked the fact that dinner would be free.

The restaurant was crowded, so it wasn’t hard for my friend Lucille to let us in. Lucille never let me pay even when I offered. Leave it for the tip, she would tell me, which I told Vin about at our table. Lucille was a friend I’d been at school with years ago, whose mother held a high position in the tribal council. The casino was a gold mine for the tribe when it opened, and it only got better as it increased in size and development, soon adding a hotel and pool next door and bringing in concerts and boxing matches and other entertainment. I hadn’t seen Lucille for a while, so we talked for a few minutes about her family, and I introduced her to Vin.

As we ate, we settled into a silence that, strangely, felt awkward despite the night we’d spent together. The silence irritated me, I realized as we ate, and I watched him devour his food without saying much. I was unsure what he was thinking about us, or if he was thinking about us at all. I asked him if he ever took Luka out to the casino’s pizza buffet, where kids eat free on Fridays, and he said it was one of Luka’s favorite restaurants, except that the noise of the arcade games and music was too much stimulation for him. It was too much stimulation for all of us, I said.

“I saw my dad today at his house,” he told me.

“He’s still sick, huh?”

“He’s lost a lot of weight. The in-home nurse was helping him. It’s horrible to see.”

“You have a really cute kid,” I told him, changing the subject. “Luka’s a real doll. You spend a lot of time with him? I could watch him sometime if you need someone.”

“I guess,” he said, eating.

“He’s a great kid. He seems interested in lots of things. Artistic, huh? Imaginative?”

“I guess,” he said. “I’d probably coach Little League sports if the opportunity ever arose, but that’s probably not happening with Luka.”

Clearly Luka was not at all what Vin had hoped he would be. Because of his autism, he was more interested in sitting outside looking through binoculars at squirrels and birds than throwing a baseball. But I liked Luka. In a way, he felt like he could be a son to me, or a little brother. I was so wounded after Ray-Ray died that I was never a very good big sister to Edgar. I wanted to know more about Luka—what his favorite color was, what he liked to eat and drink. I wanted to know his teacher’s name, his friends’ names, his favorite subject in school, his hobbies. He was a wonderful boy, I could tell, and I knew he liked to ride his scooter in his driveway, play with a remote-control car, and also pretend to be a bird, which was odd for a boy his age. I could teach him Cherokee words—tsisqua (“bird”), osiyo (“hello”), Agiyosi, inalisday vhvga (“I’m hungry, let’s eat”)—and help him do his homework, teach him about girls and school and life. I’d helped Edgar with his homework when we were young because Mom and Papa worked so much. We didn’t have much time for ourselves back then. I could tell Luka I knew what it meant to struggle for time with loved ones. I could tell him I’d always wanted a son.