Stop Here (13 page)

“Is that where you want to go?” It never crossed her mind.

“Eventually. To law school.”

“So that's why you want to lose a limb in war.”

“Jesus! You're so negative. It's a wonder I have any aspirations listening to you all my life.”

“Darla, reconsider it. It's not a smart move. We'll find money somehow, somewhere.”

“No we won't. I have no rich relatives or living grandparents. We manage, that's what we've always done. Big deal! Not only will the army bonus help, I'll have veteran's benefits. It'll make all the difference.”

“I can't stop you after July, but waiting gives you a chance to change your mind. You sign up today, it's over.” She wants to kick the wall.

“Let me get ready.”

Reluctantly, she gets off the bed, shoves her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. “Did you see my note about dinner tonight?” But Darla has shut the bathroom door.

She listens for her daughter's tuneless voice to belt out a song in the shower. The staccato beat of water on plastic sends another message. Darla's pissed at her mother's refusal. Someday she'll understand. Maybe. She smells gas. The pilot light is out again. It could be the wind, so she shuts the window above the sink. Instantly, it's too hot. She's beginning to hate this kitchen. All kitchens. Opening the oven door, she strikes a match; it catches. She'll insist Darla apply to a good college. Then she'll find money somehow, at least for the first year. She remembers the costume jewelry, the silver watch, the wedding band her mother left her, the whole package worth a few hundred at most. That should pay for a day or two of college. Christ! Borrow from Rosalyn? She can't ask her now. There's Murray. She'd rather rob a gas station. Then Darla would have two parents in prison. Great!

She grabs a bowl, breaks two eggs and beats them so hard the table trembles.

• • •

“This pub . . . you never have to wait,” she says, dropping the car keys in her bag.

“They have good Bloody Marys,” Darla offers.

“When did you . . . ?”

“Oh, Mom, you're so predictable. I plan to have one tonight. Is that a problem?” Darla sashays ahead in a calf-length peasant skirt that swirls as she walks. She's built like her father, the long narrow body. Her deep, dusky voice is his as well.

“I'm refusing to argue with you.”

“Okay then. Is there a particular occasion for this dinner?” Darla tosses back. “Someone new in your life? Changing jobs?”

“All of the above,” she offers, enjoying a momentary lightness.

Beer and fish smells mingle. Netting hangs from the ceiling, a cardboard mermaid caught in one. Blue haze floats under fluorescent lights. Background music adds to the appreciable noise. In a high-backed booth with wooden benches, they open their menus. A woman and four antsy kids sit nearby.

The waiter, not much older than Darla, eyes her daughter appreciatively while scooping away two extra settings. He pours water and whips out his pad, stuff she's used to doing herself. They order drinks. She chooses fish and chips; Darla wants the clam and corn dinner.

“So, Mom?” Her daughter smirks.

“What?”

“You're not dropping fifty dollars here for nothing.”

“Then what am I doing?”

“Buying my compliance?”

“Let's eat and enjoy, okay?”

“That'd be good.”

The waiter returns quickly, the drinks festooned with celery and slices of lime. Again, he eyes Darla. “I hope she's old enough?”

“I'm her mother, you think I don't know her age? Christ!”

“Okay.” He leaves. Darla grins.

“Good, Mom, that was believable. Anyway, I'm only weeks from legit.”

“Wrong, sweetie. Legit here is twenty-one.”

“That's as retrograde as everything in the burbs.” Darla scans the room looking for proof.

“It's that bad living here?”

“Suffocating. People talk about anyone who's not like them.”

“You find that everywhere.”

“At least in the city there's shame.”

She decides not to ask how she knows. “Is Michelle's family that way?”

“Her father is.”

“Do you ever think about your father?” Her heart speeds up.

Darla stares at her. “What?”

She shrugs. “Just wondering.”

“Mom, you don't wonder. What about my father?”

“Nope.”

“You never mention him. He left you with a baby.” Darla's eyes are steady on her. “How come you never remarried or even considered it?”

“You don't know what I considered.” She tosses out the straw and drinks straight from the glass. The spiciness nearly chokes her. More likely it's the conversation. There are truths she's still afraid to tell this girl. That's the horror of a lie. You have to keep lying.

“Mom? Where are you?”

“Right here. The drink is dynamite.”

“Answer my question.”

“I never married because I was never divorced.” She speaks low, as if the woman in the next booth were interested.

“There's a statute of limitations. All these years of abandonment . . . you don't know where he is . . . it's automatic . . .”

“You'll be a good lawyer.”

“This isn't about me.”

Yes it is, she thinks. And ponders ordering something stronger, a double scotch neat, but that'd be a giveaway.

“How come you don't date?”

“I went out with that Luke guy, remember? You didn't like him.”

“Mom, that was ages ago. Don't tell me you stopped seeing him for my sake.” Her daughter glares at her.

“Of course not. He turned out to be mean. Drank too much, too. I don't know. He didn't appeal to me. I'm having a hard time discussing boyfriends with my daughter.”

“We're not discussing your habits in bed.”

“Darla!” She finishes the drink and immediately wants another.

The waiter sets down their plates. Her food looks greasy, heavy, impossible to digest.

“Mom?”

“What now?”

“Are you a lesbian? I don't care, I'm just curious.”

She stares at Darla, whose sudden childlike expression breaks her. “I don't know how to stop you from signing up. If there was a father around, he might change your mind.”

“How would that work?” Darla sounds angry, but anything's better than that scrunched face. “My father would say, don't go, and I'd be scared to disobey him?”

The sudden clamor in the next booth is a relief. Water's wiped up, new napkins brought, children reseated.

“You still didn't answer my lesbian question.” Darla's eyes on her again.

“I'm not a lesbian.”

“Do you hate men because of how he treated you?”

“He treated me well.”

“Oh what a consolation. A sweet guy who left you hanging.”

“You're getting drunk.”

“On one Bloody Mary? I doubt it, Mom. But it's good for us to chat like this. Not that I learn anything. You have a way of telling me zip, you know that?”

The girl's right. Mila, the queen of doublespeak, but it's no longer enough, not by a long shot. “Do you worry about what you don't know?”

“That's an interesting question. At times.”

“I'm going to order another drink, then I'll tell you something.” Maybe
she's
drunk.

“Uh-oh.” Darla teases, though her eyes widen some.

She hails the waiter and orders a scotch neat. Then she chews on a piece of bread to put something in her stomach. “How's the food?”

“Fine.”

Two of the kids climb noisily on and off the next bench. She can feel the vibrations. Someone should stop them.

“I bet those kids are a handful.”

“Mom!” But she won't look at her daughter.

“You were like that, couldn't sit still. I can remember, I think you were five—”

“Mom!”

Her gorgeous girl will leave and maybe never return. What then? What now?

The waiter places the scotch in front of her. She takes a sip, the medicinal taste a reminder of the unpleasantness to come. And why is she doing this? Her cheeks are hot, her face flushed, a slight buzzing in her ears. She remembers like it was yesterday the two policemen at her door, the baby she didn't know how to comfort fidgeting in her arms.

“Mom, I'm waiting.”

“Your father's in prison. He's been there sixteen years. We agreed you shouldn't know. That you should grow up without feeling stigmatized by his mistake.” Each word a piece of flint cutting her throat.

Her daughter stares at her.

“My father's a criminal!” Darla's voice rises.

She nods. Her heart pounding now, she chokes down the scotch, which isn't helping, it's hard to breathe.

“You think lying about it makes me less the daughter of a criminal?” Darla pushes away her plate. “Did he murder someone?”

“There was a robbery. A person was shot. The law said anyone involved was guilty.” Her robotic tone isn't helping. If she stops to take a breath she won't be able to go on.

“Did the man you call my father pull the trigger?”

“No. He was there, that's all.”

“That's all! Jesus frigging god!”

“Darla!”

“You visit him on the sly?”

“I've never visited.”

“Beautiful. You don't know where he's locked up, or it's just inconvenient?” her voice scary sweet.

“That's not important.”

“What's important is how manipulative you are, lying to me all these years, laying it on me now to paralyze me. Think again, Mila, and think hard. Because you've given me even more reason to get the hell out of here.”

Mila? She's been banished. “Your father—”

“Stop saying my father like I know him.”

She takes a deep breath. “Jimmy was in the first Iraq war. It ruined him. He came back more restless than ever. He could hardly sit still, never mind keep a job.” She can taste the bitterness. Even in bed he slept in fits and starts, except when he made love, the only time he could get out of his head. “He wanted money quick, just the way you do.”

“Must be in the genes,” Darla shouts, and bolts from the table. The woman in the next booth looks up.

• • •

Driving slowly, she rolls down the windows and scans each side of the road for Darla. Christ! What did she accomplish? Alienated her daughter . . . broke a promise. God knows what Darla thinks about any of it. And what did she expect from her daughter, a smile, a freaking hug? She opened the damned box, didn't she?

The heat in the car is suffocating; there isn't a breeze. It's hot like it was the last time she saw Jimmy when the A/C in the motel room was broken. He was afraid to open a window. They made a bed out of an empty dresser drawer and sat hunched over the baby talking softly. Jimmy's earnest expression, his hands pressing hers, his positive tone so certain. He knew the way for her to follow. He'd get to Florida, set up and send for them. If he was caught, ended up in jail, Darla must never know. He left money and took off. The baby woke up crying. She rocked her till morning and never did crack a window.

Her daughter's nowhere she can see, probably doubled back and called Michelle to pick her up. One thing is certain: Darla isn't on her way home. She doesn't want to go there, either. She heads for Sully's bar.

• • •

It's dark inside. A few regulars stare at the muted TV screen or maybe at their own ravaged faces in the mirror. She finds a small table in the rear. Fraying high school pennants decorate the wall, a faint yellowish light from the jukebox playing oldies. She hears the front door open and close but doesn't look up. She's tempted to cry but it won't do any good. The lying is over but not the anxiety, which fills her with cold, hard fear. She calls her home number. Useless. She leaves a message on her daughter's cell phone to contact her immediately. She scrolls down to Michelle's number, calls her. No answer. Leaves a message there, too. Where would Darla go this time of night?

The bartender, a tall, slim man in his fifties, waits impassively for her to decide. She glances at the soiled page that stands in for a menu, the smudgy print hard to decipher. Nothing she wants. She orders a double scotch neat, water on the side. Jimmy drank bourbon. She did, too, all those years ago. She liked so much of what he liked.

Her finger traces the table's gouged surface. Jimmy carved their initials in whatever tree trunk caught his fancy. It pleased her, the same as their long walks did, her hand in his the whole time, chatting about anything and everything. Old memories flickering again in her brain, it's her fault, saying his name aloud like he's part of her life.

The bartender places a sizable glass of scotch in front of her. Jimmy wrote her one letter from prison insisting she go on without him. That it was the only gift he could offer. She took it. Things happen to people every day; she knows that. Still, after his arrest, the separation was unbearable. He lived in her head, walked at her side, appeared wherever she went, at work, bars, laundromat, the supermarket. Holidays were hell. The pain was so intense something inside her finally switched off, released her. What exactly that was she never figured out. Explain that to her daughter.

How is it possible for someone who never knew her father to follow in his footsteps? It's eerie. She tries Darla's cell again. Damned gadgets go to voice mail after a few rings. How many times can she say call your mother? Darla often mentions clubs where they hang out, but did she listen to the names? Hopeless. Oh lord. When did he come in?

Murray, carrying a drink, strides toward her in dark slacks, white shirt. “Look who's here? Can I sit?” He doesn't wait for permission.

She nods anyway, helpless.

“How come you're here?” He's drinking neat like her.