Walk Me Home (5 page)

“Sure,” Carly says. “Just this once.”

Truth is, Carly needs this moment, too. Even sixteen-year-old grown-ups sometimes need a celebration. Especially when times have been hard.

She takes out her little book and stands, examining the machine until she finds a shiny silver label. It says this machine is serviced by Harmony Vending, 21900 Navajo Boulevard, Holbrook, AZ 86025.

She copies down the address.

“Are all five of those things seventy-five cents?”

“Yup,” Jen says.

She pauses. Doesn’t write anything for a minute.

“Three dollars and seventy-five cents,” Jen says.

“I knew that,” Carly says.

It’s half true. She
would
have known that. Given a little more time.

“I also found one other thing,” Carly says. “There was a first-aid kit back there. And I opened it up and took out two big adhesive bandages. You know. In case I get blisters from these new boots. Just in case. My heels are feeling a little rubbed.”

“OK,” Jen says.

“Are
your
feet OK?”

“The best. These cross-trainers are the bomb.”

“Good. So…”

“So…what?”

“So, should I put that in the book?”

“Hmm,” Jen says. Her mouth is full of black licorice. “We don’t know what they would cost.”

“I was just thinking, if the guy were here and I said I had blisters, he’d probably give them to me. I mean, I think they’re to hand out. Not to sell.”

“I guess.”

“So you think it’s OK?”

“Probably. Yeah.”

“You don’t think it’s sort of…breaking a promise to ourselves? Like our honesty system is breaking down some?”

Jen chews in silence for a moment, her eyes closed.

Then she says, “Maybe a little bit. But I don’t think it’s a very big deal.”

Carly nods a few times. Then she looks down at the wire hanger and carefully bends it back into wire hanger shape. It looks a little worse for wear. But she hangs it back up on the pole in the back office. It’ll still hold coats, which is the main thing. And then only the adhesive bandages are a little over the line.

Carly calls Teddy’s cell phone number from the pay phone while Jen washes up in the ladies’ room, an odd bathing system with paper towels, liquid hand soap, and water. Jen always seems to find a way to be gone while Carly calls.

She braces herself for the recorded announcement of how much is left on the prepaid calling card she bought herself on that miserable Christmas in New Mexico with her mom and Wade. She doesn’t really want to know. She knows it can’t be much. She shouldn’t be leaving messages every time. She’s been running it down too fast.

It’s just around two minutes. It’s running out.

It rings. And rings. And rings. The way it used to when Teddy was out of minutes on his cell phone. Then Carly hears a click, like Teddy picking up the phone.

“Teddy? Teddy, is that you?”

Silence.

“Teddy?”

It’s a recorded message. A woman with a robotic, irritating voice. She says, “I’m sorry. The cellular number you have reached is not in service at this time, and there is no new number.”

Carly hangs up fast. In case the woman was planning on saying more.

Jen is all dressed again in her clean shirt when Carly gets back into the ladies’ room. She’s washing out her socks and underwear in one sink. She looks up, apparently startled by what she sees in Carly’s face.

“What’s the matter?” Jen asks.

“Nothing. He just wasn’t there.”

Carly leans over the other sink and drinks her fill of cold water.

“You look like something’s wrong.”

“No, everything’s fine,” she says, then dries her face on her sleeve. “We’ll just try him again. He must be working a second job or something. I’m sure he’s in his own place by now. And I just bet he has to work a lot.”

She’s hoping Jen won’t ask why working two jobs would prevent him from answering the cell phone in his pocket.

“Maybe he’s out of minutes. And can’t afford more.”

“Yeah! Maybe.”

“What would we do then?”

“I could call his work tomorrow.”

Until she hears herself say it, she doesn’t realize it’s that simple. Of course. She can just call Ralph. The guy he’s been working for. Ask him to get a message to Teddy. She’s a bit shocked, in fact, that she didn’t think of it until now. A weight lifts from her full belly, leaving her feeling light and clear again.

“Do we know his work number?”

“No, but we know it’s Ralph Martin Construction. So we can get a listing.”

“Doesn’t that cost a dollar? Or two? How much is left on the phone card?”

“I don’t know, Jen. We’ll figure it out. Want me to wash your hair?”

“Yeah. Definitely.”

She leans Jen forward into one of the sinks and wets her hair thoroughly under the tap. This station is so old that there’s actually hot and cold running water, both coming out of one tap, so you can make it just as warm or cool as you like. And you can leave it running. Not like those new ones where you press down and the water blasts as long as it feels like blasting, then stops on its own.

She soaps Jen’s hair with liquid hand soap because it’s all they have.

As she’s rinsing it out—and it’s no small job to get all the soap out of Jen’s thick, coarse hair—she says, “Wait till we get home. Till we’re living with Teddy again. We’ll get that hair conditioner that smells like mangoes. And shower gel.”

“I hate that foofy stuff,” Jen says. “It’s for girls.”

“You’re a girl. Stupid.”

“I’m not a girl like
you
are.”

“And we’ll have clean sheets every few nights…”

“How do you figure?”

“Because I’ll wash them myself. And we’ll put lotion all over ourselves every night, and we won’t have scaly elbows and flaky shins.”

“I couldn’t care less about elbows and shins. I just don’t want to ever walk anywhere ever again. If you say go get the mail at the end of the driveway, I’ll hook up some kind of little cart to take me down there. Like an old lady cart. Or I’ll get one of those bikes with the ‘chicken power’ motors. And we’ll have wieners and beans
every night for dinner and candy bars for dessert. Not candy bars for dinner.”

“You’ll get sick of wieners and beans.”

“I could never get sick of wieners and beans.”

“OK. I think I got all the soap out. Squeeze out most of the water over the sink. And then dry it with paper towels as much as you can. I’m gonna wash up now. Don’t look.”

“Why would I look?”

“I don’t know. Just don’t. And don’t leave your socks and underwear hanging on the stall doors like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because we might need to scram out of here fast in the morning.”

“Oh. Right.”

Carly strips out of everything but her socks, then looks up to the milky glass window into the alley. It has a hole about twice the size of a baseball broken out of it. In the outside light, she can see a light mist of rain falling.

“It’s raining,” she says.

“You’re kidding.” Jen’s combing her wet hair and can’t seem to immediately break away from that to look for herself.

“Just a little bit of rain.”

“Thought it never rained in the desert,” Jen says, popping up.

“Sure it does. Just not as much.”

They stand side by side a moment, staring.

Then Jen says what Carly hasn’t quite gathered together yet.

“Damn. The one time we can’t stand out in it.”

They stare awhile longer, then Jen makes herself comfortable—at least, as comfortable as one can get on a tile floor, curled in a fetal position, using her pack as a pillow.

Carly jumps up, bracing her hands on the windowsill, and reaches her face up to the hole in the window, still naked, a mist of light rain on her sunburned face.

She wakes knowing she dreamed about Teddy in the night. But, try as she might, she can’t remember
what
she dreamed about him. She scrambles for it like something precious pouring down a drain. But it’s already gone.

ARIZONA

May 12

“Hey, a gas station,” Carly says. “With a little food store. Finally. Finally we can get something to eat.”

“But there’s nobody getting gas there,” Jen says.

Carly’s special system relies on people. People who can be talked out of a little money. The trick is to be clear that their parents are only slightly lost or briefly delayed. That they can rejoin their parents right here, right at this station, if they simply stay put. All they need is a little something to eat while they’re waiting.

“Somebody will come.”

Jen looks around nervously. Surprisingly few people have passed them all morning.

“What if they don’t?”

“Well. There’s somebody working in the store. That’s as good as anything.”

But when they get there, there’s nobody working in the store. Just a hand-lettered sign on the locked door.

CLOSED THURS MAY 12 OWING TO FAMILY EMERGENCY.

They sit down on the curb by the door.

“May twelfth,” Jen says. Like it’s a thing that couldn’t possibly be true.

But Carly knew that already. She’s been counting days.

“The pay phone is outside,” Carly says. “I’ll call Teddy’s work.”

But she knows she probably can’t. Not with the time she has left on the card.

She marches over to the phone, dials in the numbers for her calling card by heart. And finds out the card is less than a minute from spent. Not enough to call directory assistance. She walks back to where Jen is sitting, careful to feel as little as possible.

“What happened?” Jen asks.

Carly sits down beside her. “Card’s used up.”

“Oh.”

They sit awhile longer. The sun is almost directly overhead. It’s warm for May. Nothing like summer desert heat. Just warm. Maybe eighty. But when you’re walking in the sun all day, it adds up.

Carly looks up into the sun, squinting and watching light radiate out from that yellow beast. Somewhere inside herself she knows it’s desert straight through Arizona and halfway into California. And that it will be summer soon enough.

Except Teddy’ll come and get them. Teddy will save them. They won’t be walking by then.

“Know what really burns my butt?” she asks Jen. “If Wade hadn’t had to order steak and eggs, I’d be making that call right now. Takes a special kind of son of a bitch to ruin your life even after he’s dead.” She squints up at the sun again. “Think he did it on purpose?”

It’s that thing nobody’s said. So far. Carly wonders if Jen will think she means the steak and eggs, and the way it robbed her of
phone card money. But no. Of course not. Jen won’t think that. Jen will know exactly what she means.

“I’ve been trying not to think about it.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“I don’t know, Carly. I don’t know what to think about that.”

“Never mind. We’ll just worry about what’s right in front of us.”

Carly levers to her feet and walks over to the water and air island, the place where people fill their radiators and tires. To check and see if the water hose is running. It is. So she waves for Jen to come.

Maybe it’s not the kind of water you’re supposed to drink, she thinks. But she tries it, and it tastes normal. She gulps it down for a good minute, gorging herself, then hands it off to her sister.

“I’m going to dial the operator and tell her it’s an emergency. That I’m a minor and I’m stranded and I don’t have any money and I have to make a call and get help.”

In other words, exactly what she’s so carefully hidden from everyone but Jen since this journey began.

She doesn’t wait for an answer. Just marches to the phone and follows the instructions for dialing the operator.

“Hello?” she says. “Operator? I have to find a number and I have to make a call and I can’t pay for it. I’m only sixteen, and I’m out here with my twelve-year-old sister and our mother is dead and I have to call my”—a quick flinch, as she reminds herself to lie—“father and he’ll come pick us up. I don’t have any money to put into the phone, but it’s an emergency, OK? We’re in trouble.”

Humiliatingly, in the middle of the last sentence, she starts to cry. Because she’s not lying. It hits her as she hears the words come out of her mouth. Teddy is not their father. But everything else is true.

“I need to call Ralph Martin Construction in Tulare, California.”

The operator doesn’t even connect her with directory assistance. Just gets hold of the number somehow. Even dials it for her. And it must not be collect, either, because Carly doesn’t have to give her name.

Next thing she knows, she’s talking to Ralph. Just like that. It makes her stop crying. She feels thoroughly rescued.

“Ralph. It’s me, Carly. Is Teddy there?”

A long silence. Too long.

“Jocelyn’s kid?”

“Yeah, Ralph, it’s me. Can I talk to Teddy? It’s really important.”

“Honey, Teddy doesn’t work here now.”

“Where does he work?”

“I don’t rightly know, hon. He just up and left. Couple months after your mom moved you guys to New Mexico. Said he couldn’t stay in this town another minute.”

“Did he say where he was going? Think hard, Ralph. Please. Really, please. This is really, really important.”