Valentine(29)
I am bound and determined to keep my kids safe here in town, but I miss the sky and the quiet. Almost from the minute we moved into town, I started thinking about moving out. Not back to the ranch, but someplace as quiet as the ranch used to be, before screwworms and oil-field companies, before Dale Strickland drove up to my front door and turned me into a coward and a liar.
In my twenty-six years of living, I only have been out of Texas twice. The first time, Robert and I drove up to Ruidoso for our honeymoon. It feels like three lifetimes ago—I was seventeen years old and three months pregnant with Aimee—but I can still close my eyes and call to mind the Sierra Blanca peak standing guard over that little town. I can still breathe in long and slow and remember the pine trees, how their sharp, stinging odor grew stronger when I folded a handful of needles in half and squeezed them in my hand.
We returned home three days later after a stop to see Fort Stanton, and for the first time in my life I noticed the way the air smelled in Odessa, something between a gas station and a trash can full of rotting eggs. You never smell it when you grow up here, I guess.
The only other time I smelled those trees was two years ago, when I told Robert that Aimee and I were driving up to Carlsbad for three days to visit an elderly second cousin he didn’t even know I had. We left town to the news on the radio that nine people in Denver City had died from a hydrogen sulfide leak.
What’s hydrogen sulfide, Aimee wanted to know, and I told her I had no idea. Who’s the Skid Row Slasher? she asked. What’s the IRA? I changed the channel to the college radio station, and we listened to Joe Ely and the Flatlanders. When we reached Carlsbad, I kept driving.
Aimee—I looked in the rearview mirror at a pickup truck that had been tailgating us for the last five miles and eased my foot off the accelerator—how about you and me go to Albuquerque?
Aimee looked up from her Etch A Sketch and frowned. How come?
I don’t know, see someplace new? I hear there’s a brand-new Holiday Inn downtown that’s got an indoor pool and a pinball arcade. Maybe we’ll drive up to the mountains and see the Ponderosa pines.
Can I have a souvenir?
No souvenirs this time, just memories. The words stuck in my throat and I eased toward the shoulder to give the truck as much room as possible. When the son of a bitch finally passed, he pulled up right next to me and laid on the horn and I nearly pissed myself. Eight years earlier, I would have given him the finger. Now, with my child sitting in the front seat next to me, I gritted my teeth and smiled.
People who live in Odessa like to tell strangers that we live two hundred miles from anywhere, but Amarillo and Dallas are at least three hundred miles away, El Paso is in a different time zone, and Houston and Austin might as well be on a different planet. Anywhere is Lubbock, and on a good day, it is a two-hour drive. If the sand is blowing or there’s a grass fire or you stop for lunch at the Dairy Queen in Seminole, it could take you all afternoon. And the distance from Odessa to Albuquerque? Four hundred and thirty seven miles, a little more than seven hours if you don’t get caught in the speed trap outside Roswell.
We had just enough time for a cheeseburger and a quick swim in the pool before bed. While Aimee was in the bathtub, I called Robert to let him know we were safe and sound in Carlsbad and my old cousin was still full of piss and vinegar. He grunted and said something about the difficulties of reheating the King Ranch casserole I had left thawing on the kitchen counter. Cover it with aluminum foil, I said, and put it in the oven. After we hung up, I sat on the bed and looked at the receiver. I was ten weeks pregnant and just the thought of another baby made me want to hang myself in the barn. Robert wanted a son, maybe even two of them, but Aimee was enough for me. I’d been thinking about trying to get my GED, maybe take some classes at Odessa College.
Three miles from our hotel, on a street lined with adobe houses, in a red-brick and cinder-block building so nondescript that it might have housed anything from a bearing supply company to an accountant’s office, there was a women’s clinic. It had a front door made of heavy glass and there were no windows. The parking lot could accommodate no more than a dozen cars and pickup trucks, and behind the building, completely exposed to the sun, there was a picnic table with two wooden benches and several overflowing glass ashtrays. We sat down at the table, and I explained to Aimee that she was going to stay in the waiting room while I spoke with a man about building us some new furniture for our front porch, which was the least interesting subject I could dream up. My appointment was at 10:00, but we lingered in the sun until a few minutes past the hour. There was no doubt in my mind about what I was doing, but I was loath to move off that bench. Look at that pickup truck with a rooster painted on the side, I said. Do you smell meat cooking? Is that little old lady walking a pig? When Aimee said she needed to pee, we went inside.
This is legal, I kept telling myself, has been for nearly two years. But it was hard to feel that way with a pack of lies, four hundred miles, and a state line under my belt. I stepped up to the window and spoke as quietly as I could, all while sliding three hundred dollars that I had taken out of my private savings account across the counter. I might have been buying cocaine, I was so covert.
The receptionist smiled and slipped the money into a drawer. She handed me a clipboard and looked over my shoulder at Aimee. Mrs. Whitehead, who is driving you home after the procedure?
No one, I said. I am driving myself.
You need somebody who can drive you home. You have somebody?