Angry Management (5 page)

Daytime Manager Bob Newman starts to soften.

“It was a train.”

“What?”

“Her parents. They were killed at a railroad crossing. A train.”

He glances at Sarah, who’s still trying to get her breath. She looks plenty pathetic.

“Remains were unrecognizable,” I say.

“You better be telling me the truth, young man.”

“On my mother’s grave, sir.”

“Your mother’s dead, too?”

“Oh, no, sir. I meant to say on
her
mother’s grave.” I nod toward Sarah.

Daytime Manager Bob Newman disappears for a moment, then returns. “Listen, son, Sandy left in pretty bad shape. I have no idea what it was all about, but we were all very worried. She worked here for years, and all of a sudden she was just panicked. If the two of you help her, more power to you. I’ve written her address on this slip of paper with the phone number she had all the time she worked here. Several of us have called; all we’ve
gotten is the answering machine. I’d appreciate it if you said you got this address from a family member.”

“Your wish is my command. We were never here. And don’t worry, she’ll be overwhelmed to see us.” Overwhelmed is a word with a number of connotations. I should write political speeches.

“Slight right turn in one-point-one miles.” I love my GPS lady. For most of my driving life, she has been my girlfriend. She doesn’t get mad no matter how many times you cross her. The worst she ever says is, “At your earliest convenience, make a legal U-turn.” That and “Please return to the highlighted route.” Even if I’d had fifty girlfriends, I’m pretty sure Bathsheba would be the most forgiving one. I call her Bathsheba because in real life she gives me directions on the road; in my fantasy life she gives me directions in…never mind. That’s over. I’ve got a girlfriend.

My girlfriend is pretty quiet right now as we head for the address I finessed from Daytime Manager Bob Newman.

“He said they were still getting the answering machine. You don’t run off and leave your answering machine. Bet she’s there. Keep driving?”

Sarah is crouched, her feet planted on the dashboard.
Mere mortals would lose a foot doing that in my car, but I barely notice. You don’t pull protocol on your girlfriend when she’s riding toward hell. And when she can arguably kick your ass. “Keep driving. I mean, what could she have to lose after we tell her my dad’s put away for at least fifteen years? It’s not like I want to live with her.” She’s talking herself into it.

“Exactly. And this can be the first step on her road to forgiveness.”

Sarah shoots a look at me that, were it a snake, would be an Inland Taipan, which lives in Australia and can put out enough venom with one bite to kill a hundred people.
One
person dies mondo rapido. Even a fat guy.

“Well, maybe not forgiveness.”

“Maybe not.”

“Redemption, then. For her. Not you. Her.”

“Just drive,” Sarah says. Should this relationship flower, I can imagine there will be one or two difficult times.

“Destination on the left in point-five miles,” Bathsheba says. Sarah takes a deep breath, scrunches farther into the seat.

I see the U-Haul truck first, parked at the edge of the first lawn in the Mountain Homes trailer park.

“You have arrived,” Bathsheba says as I pull next to it.

“Wait here.” I walk around to the back to see the truck half loaded. The front door is ajar, and I hear movement inside.

“She’s in there,” I tell Sarah when I get back in the car.

Sarah nods; stares.

“Wanna turn around and go?”

She shakes her head, her lips pursed.

We sit a moment, watching. I do
not
know what to do. When Sarah is this focused, you wait; and you build anxiety.

I can’t take it. “You want me to stay in the car or go in?”

She looks over at me, then back at the giant U-Haul.

“At least we got here before she took off,” I say.

“I wish I knew what I want out of this,” she says finally.

“You’re wrapping things up,” I say. “Ending this part of your life and moving on. Closure, as they say.”

“There’s more than that.”

“Say it.”

“All my life, the one thing I’ve never been able
to let go of is ‘what if.’” What if my dad hadn’t come home that night? Or what if he’d just broken my arm or thrown me across the room? What if my mother had found a way to protect me, to get me away and run? The one thing everyone always said was that I was a beautiful kid. I changed my mother’s life. She used to walk down the streets all haggard and depressed, wearing sunglasses on cloudy days or long sleeves on warm days to hide the bruises. Then I came along, and people who would never have noticed her, at least noticed
me.
And she felt like someone. I was pretty enough to get my mother noticed.”

“You lost a lot.”

Understated like a true dipshit.

“I’ve never been able to stop saying ‘what if.’ I think I want her to tell me there
is
no ‘what if,’ that there was no way she could have done anything different. Destiny. It
had
to happen.”

“What would that do?”

“I could stop hoping,” she says, and closes her eyes. “I could stop wishing.”

This probably isn’t the time for it, but I can’t help myself. “Listen, Sarah. I don’t know what last night was to you, or what this trip has been. But I’m in this. I mean, I thought I was never going to get
the chance to sleep with…to have…to
make love.
I thought it would never happen. I’ve been a comedian and I’ve been in-your-face all my life, but I’ve never been boyfriend material. I’m fat, but more than that, I’ve always been scared. My parents,
all
of them, have been great when it comes to taking care of me and loving me and making me feel wanted, but there’s enough neurosis among them to start a fucking clinic.”

Sarah stares.

“Listen, I’ll swim. I will. I always knew I’d have to do something after football to keep me from blowing up like the
Hindenburg.
Swimming could be it. It’ll take some work. I’ve tried it; I’m no natural. But I’ll do it. I’ll pare down like your other fat friend.”

Sarah puts her hand on my knee. “Angus,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“Would you shut the fuck up?”

Another request I’ve heard before.

“I just need to get through this, okay? We’ll talk about all that later. It was the first time for me, too. It was nice.”

“I wanted you to know you can’t lose
everything
if you don’t want to,” I say. “I will shut the fuck up now…but remember…”

“Angus.”

“Shut the fuck up?”

Inside the single-wide, Sarah’s mother looks up from the cardboard box into which she is cramming her Melmac dishes, and turns instantly pale.

Sarah says, “Hey.”

Her mother sucks the air out of the room.

In the dead silence I step forward. “I’m Angus,” I say, putting out my hand. “I’m Sarah’s, uh…chauffeur.”

She ignores my hand; or, more likely, doesn’t see it. “What are you doing here? I thought—”

“You’d never see me again?” Sarah says. “I thought that, too. I came to tell you my dad’s in jail. It’ll be at least fifteen years before he’s eligible for parole. You’re safe. I thought I needed you to testify when I was here before, but it’s over, that’s all. I thought you should know.”

Sarah’s mom drops the plate she was holding into the box and sits back on the floor, speechless.

I was born Mr. Fix-It. I cannot reconcile the silent scream between them, but even
I’m
smart enough to keep my mouth shut.

“Is there a way,” Sarah says, and hesitates, points to her face. “
Was
there a way for this not to have happened?
Was there
anything
in you that could have grabbed me and run? Or escaped before it even was possible?”

Sandy Byrnes rises, tears streaming down her face, closes the maybe ten feet between them, shaking her head with each step. She touches Sarah’s face. “No,” she says. “I was weak, nobody. I’m still nobody. Whatever awful thing he was going to do, he was going to do.” She looks at her watch, then toward the front door. “I’m sorry,” she says. “You can say whatever you want to say to me, or think whatever you want to think. It can’t be half as bad as what I tell myself every day.”

Sarah nods. Her shoulders slump. I can’t tell if she’s defeated or relieved. Then, “If it helps,” she says, “some people stepped up to help.”

Her mother breaks into sobs, nodding. “It helps.”

“And because of them, I won’t be nobody. I won’t be like you. I’ll try to stop hating you, I will. I’ll try to forgive you. But I can’t say that will happen.”

Her mother continues nodding, bent over. Tears fall directly to the floor. “You have to go now,” she says. “You’ve seen all there is of me.” She straightens up, takes a deep breath, glances at her watch again, then nervously toward the door. “Please. Go.”

“Is that the last word you want me to hear?” Sarah says. Ice forms in her voice.

Sandy starts to respond, glances at the door again, and simply nods.

I rise and put my hand in the middle of Sarah’s back. “Let’s blow this pop stand, baby,” I whisper. “You got all you’re going to get.” In my heart of hearts, I want to beat Sarah Byrnes’s mother to death. In the furthest corners of my imagination I cannot accommodate
anyone
having done what she did, lived all those years with it, then simply saying, “Go.”

We stand on the stoop outside the trailer, catching our breath. A girl, maybe junior high, peddles her bike up the street. A dog barks. The wind rustles a broad-leafed tree. We walk toward the car; Sandy Byrnes stands in her doorway, looks down the street, and I see a flash of panic. She glances back at us. “You need to go,” she says. “Hurry.”

Something is not right here. Hell, there’s a lot not right, but something specific. I see the girl on the bike approaching. She looks right at us, peddling faster. Sarah’s mom looks directly at her, turns away.
That’s
where the panic is coming from.

“We’ll go in a minute,” I say, and squat.

Sandy disappears into the trailer.

Sarah says, “Let’s go now, Angus. I know what I need to know.”

“In a sec,” I say, and stay put.

Sarah walks to the car. The girl rides past her, and their eyes lock. The girl slows. Sarah turns. The girl drops her bike in the yard, glances back at Sarah, says hi to me, and yells, “Mom!” She disappears into the trailer.

Sarah freezes, staring at the bike lying on the lawn. I run to her, trace her gaze to the bike. Attached to the middle of the handlebars by two thin wires, a personalized license plate—the kind you get in any drugstore in the country—reads
SARAH
.

“Let’s go,” I say.

Sarah stalks toward the trailer.

“Come on, Sarah. Let’s go.”

She disappears through the door.
Shit.

Might as well make it a party. When I get to the door, Sarah is face-to-face with her sister. Backlit by the living-room window, their profiles are astonishingly similar. My Sarah is bigger and stronger, but Little Sarah is a miniature replica. Their mother sits on the couch.

Little Sarah says, “Hi. Who are you?”

“I’m Sarah.”

“Really? Me, too. What are you doing here? Do you know my mother?”

“Not really,” Sarah says. “I knew her a long time ago.” She reaches up, almost involuntarily, and runs the
back of her finger along Little Sarah’s face. Little Sarah doesn’t pull back, stares at Sarah’s scars.

“What happened?”

“A guy burned me,” Sarah says, and turns toward the door. “Get me out of here,” she whispers, and steps past me.

In less than a minute we’re speeding toward the freeway.

“She replaced me.”

I start to protest, reframe it, but no. She replaced her. We’ve driven in silence more than an hour; leaving the outskirts of Reno, then Sparks, in the rearview mirror, hurtling into the desert. I’m averaging twenty miles above the speed limit, trying to get the girl I hope to love far away from that horror as fast as I can. Man, nobody should have to go through that. That shit is biblical.

We ride another half hour or so, then, “Right when you think things can’t get worse.”

“It gets
way
worse,” I say back.

I want to say, It’s okay. Screw her. You don’t need her. But it’s her
mom
. I mean, she marries a guy mean enough to scar you for life, then he does, then she
leaves
, for Christ sake. She
leaves
. How do you not take your
kid with? I can’t stop asking that question. I mean, you buy your kid a dog, the dog gets rabies, and you send them out to play? It isn’t okay; it will never be okay, so I don’t say, “It’s okay.”

“She was pregnant. She left because she was pregnant,” Sarah says. “That girl was just the right age. I was already ruined, and she knew she couldn’t protect her new baby.” She shakes her head, stares out at the desert whizzing by. “But she named her Sarah.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I tell her. “That’s just so goddam low.”

She plugs in the Nano, and John Dawson Read sings sweet through the car speakers. “A friend of mine is going blind…”

“When I was little,” Sarah says after long miles of the same song over and over, “I couldn’t shake the idea that something was wrong with me. I mean, I knew I was burned, I knew
that
was wrong, but I couldn’t shake that something was wrong with me before that. I thought I
must
have been shiny before it happened, because everyone
said
so. But it couldn’t have been true, because every shiny thing I ever had, I protected; little charms and rings you got out of Cracker Jack, steely marbles, cheap necklaces. If it was shiny, I sheltered it. Even if my mother didn’t take care of me,
I
would have
found a way to protect me if I was really shiny. That’s what I thought.” She shakes her head, and for the first time in our short life together, I watch her floodgates give.

I pull the car onto the shoulder, shove it in park, and wrap my big ol’ meaty arms around her. She struggles for a split second and melts, sobbing until the front of my shirt feels like my undershirt at the end of two-a-days in August.