Lake Overturn (6 page)

Winston looked over his shoulder. “It’s pretty,” he said, and looked back to the road. On his second look he noticed she was crying. “What are you doing? Don’t cry.”

Gary turned to look at her.

“It’s so ugly,” Wanda whimpered.

“It’s not ugly, it’s pretty,” Winston said. “I told you so already.”

Wanda looked down at herself. The front of the dress showed squares as regular as floor tiles—the creases where the dress had been folded and placed into a plastic bag, which was then shipped in a box with the fifty other dresses exactly like it from the distribution center to the Dress Barn. Wanda had once worked in the stock room at K-mart, so she knew how this worked. Wanda would hang and tag the garments, then quickly steam away the creases. Dress Barn didn’t even bother to steam their dresses. This was why no one shopped there, except Mexicans. Wanda was sure neither of these boys’ mothers would ever be caught dead in a Dress Barn dress.

“Seriously, Wanda, don’t cry. This is important. You can’t get weird about this.”

“I’m not cryin’,” said Wanda. “And I know it’s important.”

Wanda quickly ran her hands over the fabric, then she wiped her face, rested her hand over her mouth, and looked out the window.

Winston softened his voice. “Really, Wanda, you look
so
pretty. Doesn’t she, Gary?”

Gary didn’t want to lie. Wanda could tell he agreed with her and pitied her. But he lied anyway: “You look pretty,” he said.

“You two just shut up. I’m sure you think I’m cryin’ just to get you to say that.”

“No, Wanda, you look really pretty. Blue is your color.”

“Winston, I’m gonna do my job. Don’t worry. I’m gonna play the part, and I’m gonna do good. There’s no reason to lie and say it’s a pretty dress when it’s ugly as homemade sin.”

“It’s pretty and it’ll do,” said Winston. “And if everything goes right, Gary will take you and buy you a better dress after.”

Wanda looked to Gary, expecting him to protest, but he didn’t. He grinned and nodded.

“You’re sweet,” said Wanda. She felt like she was done crying.

For a while she watched the countryside go by. It was a busy time. Monstrous machines lumbered slowly through the fields gathering food off bushes the way whales filter krill from the ocean. The biggest creatures ate the smallest—she had seen this on
Nova
.

“Theresa Wojciechowski,” Wanda practiced. “Theresa Wojcie-chowski.” Then she tried a more conversational tone:
“Theresa Wojciechowski.”
It was an interesting name, and had dignity. It came from far away on a boat and kept its chin up against the battering winds of the sea. Gary’s mom probably had to spell it out for people several times a day.

Wojciechowski? I never heard a name like that. What kinda name is that?

It’s Polack. My husband is a Polack.

Gary’s friends probably called her Mrs. W, even though it sounded like a V. Theresa Wojciechowski.

“I think you’ve got it,” said Winston.

“Huh?”

“You can stop saying that name over and over.”

Wanda gave it one more try in a cocktail-party voice. “Ther
e
sa Wojcie
chow
ski.”

Both boys laughed. Gary shook his head guiltily.

“Do your friends call her Mrs. W?” Wanda asked.

“No.”

“What do they call her?”

“Theresa.”

Wanda hardly felt older than these boys, but here was a difference: she would never have called a friend’s mother by her first name.

As they approached Boise, Winston gave Wanda a brief description of what had happened. They had gotten stoned with some friends on the Boise strip on a Friday night, and their good time had gotten a bit out of hand. Wanda listened, but not closely. How much of these details would Gary have told to his real mother? She didn’t want to over-prepare, especially since, although Winston hadn’t put it into words, it seemed her job would be to sit and contritely accept whatever punishment the judge handed down.

They took the City Center exit, and Wanda felt a thrill that overcame both the craving and the nervousness. Even though she was grown-up and had been to Portland, it still excited her to see the tops of Boise’s two tall buildings peep over the horizon. The highway was landscaped here on the entrance to downtown, with red lava rocks and spider-shaped juniper bushes that seemed never to grow from year to year.

“Okay, Wanda, are you ready?” Winston asked when they reached the courthouse.

Wanda pulled the hat onto her head and opened the door. The dress was too long, and as she climbed out of the car, she stepped on the skirt. She bent over to brush dust off the hem and put her hand to the car for balance, the very moment Winston was closing her door. He reached out to stop it from slamming, but only managed to slow it. The door banged Wanda’s thumb and bounced back open. Wanda yelped.

“Oh my God,” Winston said. “Are you all right?”

She stood upright, and a stoic look came over her face. She held her thumb in her other hand. Winston took this bundle in his own two hands and squeezed. His eyes were desperate and penitent. Wanda clung to her role; it helped with the pain. “I’m okay,” she said.

Winston slowly opened his hands and cupped Wanda’s fist like a captured butterfly. Then Wanda opened her hand. It wasn’t so bad—just a little smear of blood and a mark that looked like a smudge of blue ink.

“It’s fine,” she said. And it was. She was a mother now.

She turned to Gary, and took from him the wad of tissues he had found in the car. “Thank you, Gary,” she said.

They entered the courthouse. The woman at the front desk looked up their names (“Theresa Wojciechowski,” Wanda said with an emphatic nod, then she spelled out the last name fluently as if she were singing the alphabet) and gave them a card with their assigned courtroom number. “Now, you just go right on up there, have a seat and wait to be called, ’K?” the woman squeaked in the over-enunciated voice women use with children. Did she talk like this to the hardened criminals who came through here?

Wanda led the boys up the wide limestone staircase, found the courtroom, and quietly went in. It was two o’clock; right on time. They sat in the back row and waited. Wanda held a tissue around her thumb in such a way that it was almost unnoticeable.

To her surprise, the judge was not an old man with white hair. He was a Mexican, and only perhaps in his early forties. He did, though, wear the kind of reading glasses she expected judges to wear, low on his nose. He had no accent.
A judge!
thought Wanda.
He must be the most powerful Mexican in Idaho.

The judge heard one case after another, all men, all drunk drivers. Sometimes the arresting officer was in court to report the details of the case but, more often, the clerk read aloud from an officer’s statement. The sad men told their lies, gave their excuses, and made their apologies. The judge nodded patiently and unbelievingly, then elevated his eyebrows and handed down harsh sentences as casually as a doctor writing a prescription. The men reacted by dropping their heads, stunned. When he permanently revoked a repeat-offender’s license, the bent old man whimpered, “How’m I gonna git home?” This was the one moment the judge’s temper flared: “You’re going to have to start thinking about how you’re going to get anywhere, sir, because you’re not driving.” The old man was shaking visibly as he walked down the aisle and out the door.

Wanda was a bit disappointed. There was no gavel to slam, and none of the offenders took the witness stand. They just sat at the long table in front. She had been hoping to take the stand, like the mothers of murdered children did on
L.A. Law
. On the other hand, it would be good to sit with the table blocking the horrible dress from the judge’s view.

After an hour, Wanda’s attention began to wander. From her place between the boys she imagined she could feel warmth from Winston’s shoulder. She resisted the temptation to look over at him. She wished that he was again desperate and apologetic, squeezing her hands in his. Wanda lay her hand, with its thumb wrapped and dully throbbing, on the bench next to his. She knew he would never hold her hand, but she wanted it to be there, available, even for an unintentional brushing, a spark.

Winston inspired in Wanda a quiet, blinking respect. He seemed to confront and move people aside as easily as someone flips through garments in a closet—as if he owned them. She had met him at the apartment of Gideon, a pot dealer who lived in her complex. Who was this good-looking kid sitting on the floor, smoking pot, and playing a race-car game on Atari? He seemed completely at ease with Gideon’s friends, some of whom had done time. He called them douche bags when their cars tumbled and burned. Then he looked at his watch and said, “Shit, I’ve got to get home.” He didn’t say it, but it was dinnertime. He leaped up, paid Gideon for a bag of pot, which he threw in his gym bag, then left, having failed to notice Wanda.

“Who’s Junior?” Wanda asked Gideon.

Gideon screwed his face up and smiled with his rotten teeth. “Some rich kid. Why you want to know?”

Wanda slugged him in the arm. There was something perverted about Gideon. Wanda had always wondered if he had bent over for the men in prison.

The clerk called them. “Gary Waj . . . Waj-check—?”

“Wojciechowski!”
Wanda sprang up and dragged Gary forward. Before sitting, she smoothed her dress and registered on her face a look of humility and perseverance.

A few moments passed as the Mexican judge read some papers. Then he looked up. “Is Officer Smith here?”

“Here, Your Honor.” A policeman rose from his seat and came up to occupy a spot at the other table.

Then the judge looked over his glasses at Wanda and Gary. “Forgive me. Could you tell me how to pronounce your last name again?”

Gary inhaled to answer, but Wanda cut him off. “Wojciechowski, Your Honor. I’m Theresa, and this is my son, Gary. It’s a Polack name, Your Honor. My husband is a Polack.”

Everyone laughed, even the policeman. Wanda glanced around the room quickly and tried to smile. What had she said?

The judge stiffened for a second, then he relaxed, took off his glasses, and folded them. He allowed this moment of levity before getting down to business. “Thank you. Tim, why don’t you give us your report? No need to stand.”

“Well, Your Honor, about eleven p.m
.
, Friday, September fifth, we got some calls about kids raising hell on the strip, turning over garbage cans, a coupla car windows smashed. Officer Reade and I was standing on the corner of Ninth and Idaho, and we hear a disturbance mid-block. A business owner, Mr. Merrick of the pharmacy down there, was arguing with a buncha kids, knocked over the city trash outside his store. Some of the kids run off, but Officer Reade and I apprehended two of ’em: one’s this young man, the other was over eighteen. There was no blood alcohol level. We ticketed the boys and let ’em go.”

“Thank you.”

Gary, now under the judge’s unbroken attention, looked down at his hands, which were twisting and knotting, his fingers bright red.

“Young man?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you overturn a city waste receptacle?”

Wanda detected the slightest smile behind the judge’s stern expression.

“No, sir.”

“It’s customary to address a judge as ‘Your Honor.’ ”

“Excuse me, Your Honor.”

“Would you mind telling me who
did
upset the receptacle?”

“This kid Carl.”

The judge looked away impatiently, then quickly back to Gary. “And did you or
this kid Carl
or any other member of your party overturn any other waste receptacle or break any car windows or damage any other property that night?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Do you mind looking at me when you answer?”

“Sorry, Your Honor.”

The judge eased himself back into his chair. “Tim,” he said without looking away from Gary, “I don’t know if I believe this young man.”

The officer smiled and looked down.

“Your Honor, might I say something?” Wanda said.

The judge looked a little wary. “Yes, Mrs. Wojciechowski.”

“I would never dream of interrupting the proceedings, it’s just that we’ve played out this scene in our living room about a hundred times over the past two weeks, and I thought I’d save you some time. Gary swears up and down he didn’t do it, and so does Winston, Gary’s friend, the over-eighteen kid. Well, there’s been days when we’ve believed them and days when we didn’t. Finally one night, after praying and thinking it over, things became perfectly clear to me. I turned to my Lawrence and I said, ‘Honey, whether he did it or didn’t, the punishment’s the same. Whether he overturned one receptacle or he smashed them car windows too, I want to soundly punish Gary in a way he won’t forget.’ Lawrence agreed with me, Your Honor.

“See, Gary’s always been a sweet, gentle boy who minds his manners. That’s the type of boy I raised. Not some ruffian who barrels down the street in Boise raising Ned. The biggest animals on earth, Your Honor, whales, eat the smallest, little bitty shrimp. I will not let my Gary become some monster that eats and destroys without thinking. I’ve seen it happen to other men. They hurt and kill and damage property, then go on their way without looking back. I’d rather Gary be a shrimp who fights fair. The meek shall inherit the earth, that’s what I’ve always taught him.”

The craving in Wanda’s heart and the pain in her thumb throbbed in unison now and overcame her. She choked back tears and lifted the tissue to her face, until she realized it was speckled with blood. She wiped her eyes with her other hand. Gary placed his hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Your Honor. I’m almost done. Gary won’t tell us the names of those other boys. Says he just met them that night. Carl. I don’t know no Carl. Well, whoever it was, Gary won’t be seeing them for quite some time. Gary’s been grounded since that night, and will be for the next two months. He lost his car privileges except to and from school. He does his homework, spends some family time, then goes to his room.