I
n the morning, Sam had woken up with a start after sleeping only a couple of hours. He’d tossed and turned all night, trying to figure out what to do about Finn. He knew he needed to confront him about the pot. He also needed to go out there and destroy all of the plants before that stupid cop neighbor with the stupid car-chasing dog alerted the DEA.
But now, in the kitchen, he pretends that nothing is wrong. That he doesn’t know what he knows. Mena cannot know that anything is wrong. This would kill her.
“Morning, honey. How was camping out?” Mena asks. “Were you cold?”
Sam can’t help but glare at Finn. He wonders what the marijuana laws are in Vermont. He also thinks about the way Finn looked curled up against that other blond girl. Like a little boy again. Like part of something whole. He’s clearly been keeping a lot of secrets. Just when they were starting to trust him again. Little shit.
Finn’s cheeks are flushed red, and Mena asks him if he is cold. Gives him breakfast, and then all of a sudden, all three of them are sitting together at that wreck of a dining room table. Usually Mena waits and eats after he and Finn have finished. Or she eats at the counter, the scraps of what’s left. But today, she joins them. Sits with them as they eat. If someone were to walk into the kitchen, they would look like a normal family, like a happy family.
“What’s this?” Finn asks, picking up a manila envelope on the table. Sam had almost forgotten about it.
“Just some letters from readers, I guess,” Sam says, dismissing it with a flick of his wrist. “Monty dropped it by last night.”
“Any good ones?” Mena asks. A long time ago he had shown her the photos sent by enamored ladies in Dubuque and Detroit. They’d read the missives together in bed. It had aroused Mena to know that there were women all over the country falling in love with her husband. “Anything juicy?”
“I doubt it.”
“How about Monty?” she asks softly.“What did you tell him?”
“I told him the truth. I’ve got shit. Nothing. This next book, if there is a next book, is going to take time.”
“Is that why he left?”
“No, he left because Lauren thought I was having a breakdown.”
“Were you?” Finn asks, his eyebrows raised.
And Sam snorts. “Maybe a small one.” Finn has no idea what kind of breakdown he’s about to have if he can’t get this problem dealt with fast.
Suddenly, there’s a knock on the front door.
For one awful moment Sam thinks it’s the police; breakfast turns to stone in his stomach. But then a soft voice comes through the screen. “Finn?”
“Alice?” Finn says, and quickly gets up to answer the door.
Alice,
the girl Finn was with in the tent last night, is standing there in the doorway, her eyes streaked with tears.
“What’s the matter?” Finn asks. “Alice?”
“They bumped the parole board meeting up. And they never bothered to tell us. He’s out. Already,” she says, sobbing. “My mom wants to leave for California first thing in the morning. Can I stay here tonight?”
A
ll night Dale sat perched at the edge of the bed, waiting for that couple to come back. She dead-bolted the door and locked the door chain. She kept the lights off. She thought about slipping out in the middle of the night, but she was pretty sure they knew what her car looked like, and besides, where would she go? This has to be the only motel in town. She used the pad of motel stationery she found in the nightstand to sketch out her plan, using the glow of the digital alarm clock to see.
In the morning she would put the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign on her door and walk to the library. It was probably about a mile, but she couldn’t risk moving the Bug. At the library she’d pretend she was only checking her e-mail and quickly copy directions from MapQuest (she figured it wouldn’t be safe to print them).That woman had said she’d let her in before the library was open, so at least she’d be alone.Then she’d walk back to the motel and check to see if they were gone. It looked like there were only two other vehicles parked at the motel: a beat-up red pickup truck and a shiny black Mercedes. It wasn’t too hard to figure out which one they were driving. If the car was still there, then she’d quickly drive to Gormlaith to find Sam. If the car was gone, she’d have to wait. But God, she was so tired of waiting.
She hadn’t thought about what she’d say once she actually got to Sam. She had the manuscript, of course: luckily, it had not been in her backpack at Niagara Falls but stuffed underneath her seat, wrapped in a towel she lifted from the motel in Albuquerque. Now that the laptop was gone, it was the only copy; she’d have to be careful with it. Should she offer it to him like a gift? Maybe she should stop by that drugstore she saw downtown and pick up some wrapping paper. A bow. No, that was cheesy. She needed to be professional about this.
By the time the sun finally crept up and illuminated the room in a filmy glow, she’d contemplated everything she would say to him. How she would plead her case. She’d scratched out a zillion scenarios on the notepad.
It is hot in the motel room now, as the sky and the room fill with light. Sweat is rolling down her sides as she scribbles and crosses out. She looks at the AC/heater unit under the window and realizes it is not on. She gets up and turns the knob. Nothing.
And then there is a knock on her door.
She stiffens, her eyes widening. She peers through the drapes but can’t see who’s at the door. She stands up slowly, and quietly makes her way to the peephole.
“Maintenance,” a voice says.
She is squinting to see if it really is a maintenance worker or not. It does appear to be a man in a blue jumpsuit. Against her better judgment, she unlocks the dead bolt, but not the chain, and opens the door a crack.
She can smell cigarette smoke on his breath. He’s too close. “You call ’bout your AC?” he asks.
“Are you here to fix this fucking AC?” a woman’s voice says. It’s
her
. The woman from the ice machine.
Dale mumbles,
“Wrong room,”
and quickly slams the door shut again. She hears his footsteps moving away from her door and the woman ushering him into the other room. “It’s like a goddamn sauna in here,” she says.
Dale’s sweating so badly now, her neck is starting to itch. The walk to the library is going to be a long one, but she figures she should get out now while they’re occupied. She slips on her flip-flops and a pair of shorts and leaves, running as fast as she can toward the main road.
A
t rehearsals on Saturday morning, Mena is distracted. They are rehearsing a scene where the Old Man is pleading with Eddie and May not to be together. She and Jake have to hold each other. It’s excruciating.
“Why don’t we break for a few minutes?” Lisa says. Mena is grateful. She can’t look Jake in the eyes, never mind
embrace
him.
Anne comes up to her and hands her a cup of coffee. “Hi,” she says.
“Hi.” Mena smiles. “God, I am just off today.”
“Late night last night?” she asks.
“Not really,” Mena says, thinking about Sam, about the way he held on to her all night, their bodies pressed together. Then she thinks about what almost happened with Jake. “Where were you guys last night anyway?” she asks.
“Oh God, sorry about that,” Anne says. “Oscar and I got turned around.We drove halfway to Canada before we realized we were following the wrong car. My night vision sucks. By the time we figured it out, it was too late so we decided to call it a night. How was it?” Anne asks, smirking a little, Mena thinks.
“How was what?”
“Jake’s house,” Anne says.
“Nice.” Mena nods. “It’s a nice house.”
“I didn’t mean his
house,
” Anne says.
“What
did
you mean?”
Anne’s face falls. “It’s plain as day what’s going on between you two,” she whispers. “I’m not crazy. Anybody can see.”
“Well, maybe you need your prescription changed,” Mena says. She hisses, “I’m married.”
“Sure.” Anne smiles, turning on her heel.
For the next hour, they rehearse the final scene. Mena keeps forgetting her lines. “Line?” she says.
“ ‘All he could think of was me. Isn’t that right, Eddie. We couldn’t take a breath without thinking of each other... .’ ”
Lisa recites, exasperated. “Forget it, let’s just back it up.” She flips through the ragged script. “Martin, start with
‘How could it happen?’
”
Jake’s voice, gravelly and smooth at the same time, answers: “ ‘Well, see—our Daddy fell in love twice.’ ”
Jake glances at her. Mena cringes.
“ ‘It was the same love,’ ” Oscar, the Old Man, says from the shadows. “ ‘Just got split in two, that’s all.’ ”
When they break again, Mena follows Oscar out onto the front porch of the Town Hall. They’ve got another hour left, but she just wants to get back home. She wants to take a swim, just float.
“So what happened to you and Anne last night?” Mena asks. “Where did you lose us?”
“What do you mean?” Oscar asks.
“
Last night
.You guys never showed up at Jake’s house after rehearsals. Anne said you almost got to the Canadian border before you figured out you were headed in the wrong direction.” Mena laughs.
“That’s funny. I thought Anne called you,” he said. “We stopped at the Cumberland Farms, so she could call Jake from the pay phone. When we got in the car, she said she changed her mind, she was getting a headache and wanted to go home. She gets migraines or something. She dropped me at my house. She didn’t call?”
Jesus,
Mena thinks. What was Anne trying to do to her?
F
inn and Alice go to the garden. Finn looks at the plants; the air smells like Christmas. Everything is green. This is pointless. Alice is leaving.
Leaving
.
“I’ll go with you,” he says. “To Barstow. I’ve got enough cash for a bus ticket.”
“You can’t,” Alice says. “Your parents would know where you went.”
“I’ll get on a different bus, take a different route.” Finn feels desperate, scared. He doesn’t know how he can be here without her. How he can do anything if all of a sudden he’s alone again. “I’ll meet you there.”
“And then what, Finn? My aunt lives in a two-bedroom condo.There isn’t enough room.”
Finn’s eyes sting. “Fuck,” he says, reaching for one of the plants and ripping it out of the ground. The air is pungent with the smell of it.
“What are you doing?” Alice says, grabbing his arm.
“What’s the point?” he says. “It’s not going to flower anyway. I’m not a fucking botanist. I’m just a stoner. I’m just a fucking loser stoner.”
“Don’t,” Alice says. Her eyes are brimming with tears.
He starts to make his way through the garden, yanking the plants out of the ground. His hands are covered with dirt. Everything smells green. He is yanking the plants and hurling them. Ripping them up by their roots. It feels good. He had done the same to his room after Franny died. To the posters, to the giant map on his wall. He had torn down the entire coast of California in one grand tantrum.
“Finn, stop it,” Alice says. “You’re scaring me.”
He turns to look at her and feels terrible. God, she’s so sweet. It almost hurts his heart to look at her. He feels
inside-out
. She reaches for him and he stops. This is the last thing she needs, another stupid guy going ballistic.
“You want to know where I was when my sister died?” he asks, looking at the plant, its roots dangling from his hands.
Alice looks at him, her eyes soft with concern.
“I was out on my surfboard, six o’clock in the morning, still fucking loaded from a party the night before.” He remembers the party, a bunch of losers hanging out watching
The Endless Summer,
drinking forties. Not a single girl around. Some party. “I must have woken her up when I came home. She tried to stop me from going out in the water. And I was pissed off. As I’m walking out the door with my surfboard, she says,
Don’t go out there, you’re still wasted
. Here she was worried about
me
.” He laughs. “But I went anyway, being the total asshole that I am, and by the time I came back she was dead. Just like that.
“And the thing is, my parents think I’m messed up because of her, but the truth is, I was messed up long before. If I hadn’t been, then she might still be here.”
“How did she die, Finny?” Alice asks, grabbing his arm, pulling him toward her. “What
happened?
”
Finn shakes his head, puts his head in his hands and sits down on the ground, surrounded by the uprooted plants.
B
y the time Dale gets to the library, she is hot and breathless. The woman, Effie, opens the door for her and lets her in. “Did you walk here, all the way from the motel?” she asks.
The truth is Dale almost ran the whole way, and her heart won’t slow down. She bends over at the waist, putting her hands on her knees, and nods.
“Can I get you some water or something?”
Dale nods again.
Effie disappears through a large doorway and comes back with a paper cone filled with lukewarm water. Dale gulps it down. And stands up. She feels dizzy. “Do you mind if I sit down?” she asks.
“Go ahead. Our computer guy’s almost done,” she says. “There are magazines in there,” she says, motioning to a large room with long tables and a fireplace. “Today’s paper just arrived too.”
Dale goes into the room and sits down. As she catches her breath, she flips through the slim pages of the paper. The headlines are all from the AP. She glances at the classifieds, the movie listings. Near the back, she sees an ad for a play by the Quimby Players.
Mena Mason and Jake Rogers are Eddie and May in Sam Shepard’s
Fool for Love.
August 6–8, 13–15, 20–22 at the Quimby Town Hall.
Dale starts to tremble. Mena Mason. His
wife
. They’re really here. She didn’t dream this. They are really, really here.
Effie comes back and shows her to a computer that is in a private little alcove. Dale can barely type, she’s so excited. She grabs one of the mini pencils from a plastic cup and scribbles the directions on an index card.The lake is close, just about ten miles, she figures. And there is a road that circles it. All she needs to do is find the right cabin. She remembers the woody station wagon from the photo on Finn Mason’s MySpace page. She couldn’t make out the plates, but how many woody wagons could there be? And with California plates, no less. She trembles with anticipation. But then her heart stutters. What if that wasn’t their car in the picture? This realization hits her in the gut like a punch. It could belong to the girl.This might not be that easy. She shakes her head, takes a deep breath. She’ll just have to take her chances. And worst case, at least she knows where to find Mena.
As she leaves the library, she realizes she hasn’t eaten anything since the diner yesterday. She sees a little grocery store across the street and figures she can grab a banana, a Mountain Dew, and then head back to the motel.
She’s the only person in the store. It’s so nice and cool inside, she lingers in the produce section, pretending to contemplate the baskets of strawberries, the plums. The girl working the register is wearing short shorts and a halter top. She keeps checking her reflection in the store window.
“Excuse me,” Dale says, setting the banana and soda down on the counter. Three pints of berries, a half dozen plums and some Windex. The Bug is so dirty. She doesn’t want to show up in a filthy car. She has also grabbed a magazine of slow-cooker recipes. The macaroni and cheese on the front looked so good.
The girl looks at her, annoyed.
“Could you tell me where the Town Hall is?”
“The Town Hall?”
“Yeah,” Dale says.
“Whatcha want to go there for?”
Dale feels her skin starting to crawl. “Could you just tell me where it is?”
“I think it’s that building across from the cemetery. It’s just down Main Street there. But, shoot, that might be the town clerk’s office.”
Frustrated, Dale pays her and grabs the bag without bothering to get her change.
She finds Main Street and starts walking. She’s not sure what she’s looking for until she sees it.
The woody.
California plates. It’s parked right in the dirt lot. Dale feels dizzy again; her ears buzz and hum as she looks around to see if anyone is watching. The Mercedes is nowhere to be found. She takes a deep breath, reaches into her pocket for the little pencil she stole from the library, and grins.