Valentine(30)

I drove up from Texas.

Ah, I see. She paused and began chewing lightly on her fingernail. Are you spending the night here in town?

We’re at the Holiday Inn, I said, keeping my voice low.

The new one that’s downtown? She smiled, speaking a bit more quietly, and I nodded.

Okay, good, she said. Some women try to drive all the way home, and that can cause some complications. You’re lucky, she said. You’ll be in for about two hours.

Two hours! I looked back at my daughter, who was sitting on a chair with a bag of potato chips and her Nancy Drew book. The woman reached across the counter and touched my hand. This happens all the time. We’ll keep an eye on her.

I stood there blinking hard and trying to bring the woman’s hand into focus. Her fingernails were painted the color of pink tea roses and she wore a plain gold band on her left ring finger. Thank you, I said. Her name is Aimee.

To my daughter, I smiled brightly. I’ll be back in a jiffy.

Don’t worry, the woman called as I pushed open a swinging door and nearly walked into another woman, a patient, standing just on the other side. We’re going to have a fine time! Would you like an ice-cold Dr Pepper, she asked my daughter.

Yes, ma’am, Aimee said. Have fun with the furniture man, Mama.

We stopped at Whataburger on our way back to the Holiday Inn. Aimee watched cartoons while I threw up in the bathroom and waited for the cramping to pass. That hamburger didn’t agree with me, I said when she knocked on the bathroom door. Just give me a few minutes.

That afternoon, she swam and played the pinball machines while I sat on a lounge chair and drank a couple of salty dogs. Early the next morning we headed up to the Sandia Mountains to smell the pine trees. Pi?on, spruce, fir, juniper—I closed my eyes and imagined us living in a small wooden cottage deep in a forest full of creatures without intent or malice, a place where you might get hurt, but not because anything meant to harm you.

Between stopping every hour at a filling station so I could change my pads—and twice more so Aimee could throw up some of the candy I let her eat at the hotel—we didn’t get home until nearly midnight. To my daughter, I said: I won’t ever ask you to keep anything from your daddy unless it’s really important, and this is really important. To my husband, I said: I have a bad yeast infection. Don’t touch me for a while. Four months later I was pregnant again, and this time, hardly believing my own stupidity, I decided to have the baby.

When I was a little girl, time really did seem to fly. Summer days, I’d get on my bike after breakfast and in three beats of my heart, it was time for supper. Now I look at the kitchen clock and can hardly believe how early in the day it still is. It is not even ten o’clock and I have nursed the baby three times since he woke up at six. My right breast aches a little, and when I touch my nipple it feels hot and hard. While the baby quietly fusses in his crib, Aimee jumps up and down on her bed yelling, I am bored, day in and day out. I am bored!

It is the third day of summer vacation.

When the phone rings, I almost jump out of my own skin, but it’s only Keith Taylor’s secretary. There’s been some trouble with Gloria’s mother, she tells me, but they are hoping Gloria will still be able to testify. When I ask what the trouble is, she won’t say. When I ask if I can see Gloria, maybe talk to her and see how she’s doing, Amelia is silent for a few seconds. How are you doing, Mary Rose?

Oh I’m fine, I say brightly. Don’t worry about me!

I want to tell her that my kids are safe here in town, in this house. Men call me at all hours of the day and night, and some women too, but every nasty thing they say is about them and not about me. I have my old rifle at home, and a new pistol in the glove box of my car. Instead, I thank the good lady for her call and say my goodbyes.

On the floor in front of the washing machine, the laundry is breeding like a coterie of prairie dogs. We are out of milk and eggs, and I have promised the Ladies Guild at our new church that I will be at their meeting later today. The baby screams like he’s just been stung by a yellow jacket, and then, as if on cue, Aimee falls off the bed and hits her head against the dresser. A howl rises up from the bedroom. A goose egg is already starting to form on her forehead, but mostly she is pissed off that I won’t let her out of the house alone, not even for a minute.

In the weeks immediately after Dale Strickland raped Gloria Ramírez, people gathered in fellowship halls, bars, and break rooms. They stood in their front yards and lingered in the aisles at the grocery store. They held court in the parking lot at the cafeteria, and distracted football devotees at the practice field. I listened to it all. The rest I got from the radio or newspaper.

Strickland’s mama and daddy are back home in Magnolia, Arkansas, and if you believe the local paper and some of the more vocal citizens in town, he’s a good kid. According to Pastor Rob on his usual Sunday broadcast, he had never received so much as a speeding ticket. If he ever missed a day of football practice or church, nobody in his town could remember it, and he had always been one hundred percent respectful to the local girls. His father, a Pentecostal preacher, had mailed letters and testimonials from members of his congregation to the DA’s office testifying to the quality of his son’s character. Rumor had it that Keith Taylor brought an extra card table into his office, just to have a place to put them all.

An editorial writer noted that the accused had, on the night in question, been awake for two straight days after taking some amphetamine tablets his foreman had given him, a common practice in the oil fields, and while nobody condoned drug use—people were still talking about Art Linkletter’s daughter—the pace of work in the oil patch sometimes called for men to push themselves in unhealthy ways. Men are fighting out there, the writer noted, fighting to pull that petroleum out of the earth before the ground caves in around a well, fighting OPEC prices and Arabs. In a way, you could say they were even fighting for America.