Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail (4 page)

As a nurse explored her arm, trying to find a vein, the doctor said, “It would be highly unusual at your age, especially if you've never been pregnant before. Still, healthy babies have been born to women your age.” By his tone, Jackie thought he may as well have said, “People your age have been said to sprout wings and fly. But I've personally never seen it.”

The tube attached to the needle was enormous. Her blood was dark, almost black. As she felt the blood rush into the tube, a wave of nausea hit her and she saw the room go dim. She tried to think of something peaceful. Her stomach knotted.

“We'll dispose of that urine sample for you,” the nurse said.

After work, Jackie picked up Tobrah at day care. Tobrah had been getting premium stars almost every day. “She's just original, not screwed up,” Jackie had informed Annabelle. Tobrah was sitting at a table, her head bent over a finger painting. Splotches of blue paint streaked her face.

Swabbing at the paint on Tobrah's cheek, Jackie said, “Hey, that's not your color. Your color is green.”

On the way home they stopped at the videotape store. Jackie held Tobrah's hand as they crossed the shopping-center parking lot. At the curb Tobrah burst free, and then inside the store she stared at a woman on crutches.

“Don't stare,” Jackie said quietly.

Tobrah whispered, “I think she fell out of an airplane.”

“Where did you get such an idea?”

Tobrah was already looking at videotape boxes on display.

“Let's see
The Love Bug,
” Jackie suggested.

Tobrah made a “yuck” face. “I want to see
E.T.
”

“But we've seen that twice. Don't you want to see something else?”

To avoid a scene, Jackie abruptly checked out
E.T.
She didn't want anything to spoil the evening. She felt almost romantic about it. Once or twice she felt fleeting, squirming sensations inside her abdomen. She didn't want Bob to know. It was too private.

During the movie, Jackie kept her eyes on Tobrah's activities—coloring pictures, dressing her doll, beating her heels against the couch, searching under the couch cushions for lost doll jewelry. The little girl seemed self-possessed, as if each small action had a meaning and intention. Jackie knew Tobrah was haphazardly testing out the world, but she wondered if the little girl was actually being brave, in the face of the knowledge that she was an orphan. As Tobrah recited dialogue along with the movie, Jackie washed the popcorn bowls and put away the popper. She found a half-popped kernel in her shirt pocket.

At the end of the movie, Jackie grabbed Tobrah, squeezing her in an urgent hug.

“Who do you love?” she asked, but Tobrah squirmed, pushing her away.

A Tinkertoy wheel skittered across the kitchen floor, making tap-shoe sounds.

The next afternoon, during her break, Jackie called the clinic for the results of the test.

The doctor said, “You're not pregnant.” He paused, then said, “We could run some hormonal studies to see what's going on. My guess is that you're going through normal midlife changes.”

Jackie saw a supervisor pass by with a cup of coffee. The coffee sloshed on the floor but he didn't notice. The man didn't even realize he had spilled it on his pants.

She slammed the receiver so hard it jumped off the hook. The sudden dial tone was like a siren.

Jackie and Tobrah walked the full length of the mall, stopping at every store that interested Tobrah. The little girl was enthralled, but Jackie, in a daze, hardly noticed what was before her. Tobrah ate pizza, drank an Orange Julius, got a bag of Gummi Bears. They tried on sneakers, looked unsuccessfully for a My Little Pony purse, cruised through a store of kitchen paraphernalia, caressed piles of summer cotton sweaters and T-shirts, hit every toy section.

“I had a good time,” Tobrah said in the car on the way home. She might have been a little visitor, politely thanking her hostess.

“Where did you learn to say that?” Jackie couldn't imagine her father as a model of good manners.

Tobrah didn't answer. She played with a cassette tape, opening and closing the plastic box. She opened the glove compartment and shut it. It was growing dark, and the Friday-night traffic swirled around them. Ahead, a car made a sudden left turn in front of an oncoming SUV. The night was alive, full of lights and speed, and Tobrah was straining against her shoulder harness, moving in the seat restlessly, as if she had to see everything.

At the house, the telephone was ringing as they came through the door. It was Bob, wanting to know what they were doing. He was excited. “Let's all go to the Bigfoot competition over in Sikeston tomorrow. We can take the camper and spend the night.”

“I can't think about it right now. We were at the mall and we're tired.”

“I'll bring a cooler and we'll get some barbecue.”

“I'm afraid if we take Tobrah, you'll get stressed out.”

“Don't be silly! Me and Tobrah are buddies.”

“Those monster trucks might scare her.”

“Kids love that stuff. Hey, Jackie, you're making excuses. You need to get ahold of yourself.”

“Everybody seems to know what I need.”

“Let's do it. We'll start out early and make a day of it. I'll pick you up at eight o'clock.”

“I don't really want to go.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No. I can't explain. I'm just tired.” Jackie realized that if she had been pregnant, she definitely wouldn't have told Bob—not for a while anyway. Did all women feel this, that they had to shut everyone else out when it came to their love for a child?

With Bob still insisting he was coming over early, Jackie said good-bye, then noticed the mail she had brought in. There was a letter from someone named Carnahan in Arkansas. She didn't know anyone in Arkansas.

Dear Miss Holmes,

My sister was Becky Songs Holmes, Toborah's mother. My sister was deceased on August 8 of last year (cancer). I understand you have custody due to terms in Ed Holmeses' will. In the interest of the child, I am applying to be her legal guardian. I can give Toborah the home she deserves. My husband and I have three children—ages eight, ten, and twelve, and Toborah would be the youngest. I'm sure they would be happy to have a new little sister. We have met Toborah before, when my dear sister passed away, and we did not want to take the little child from her daddy. He seemed to need her so much after losing his wife. We have only just now heard about her daddy's unfortunate fat and heard how Toborah was taken to Kentucky.

Fat? A typo, Jackie realized. But Toborah? She continued reading details of the arrangements to have “Toborah” brought to Arkansas, and what they had to offer: her own room, a dog, a brother and sisters. Mr. Carnahan was a textile worker, and his wife, Linda, who wrote the letter, worked for the telephone company. The letter was so pretty. Jackie was overwhelmed by its authority. But the one little mistake blew it. Jackie wadded the letter and tossed it into the wastebasket. She ran water into a plastic jug and watered the plants. She cleaned up the sink and loaded the dishwasher. With a paper towel she wiped up a spot of cranberry-juice drink from the floor. Then she heard Tobrah in the bathtub, splashing and singing loudly, playing.

“Stand up,” Tobrah was saying. “Your hands against the wall.”

Jackie hurried down the hall to check on her. She didn't know at what age a child could take a bath alone. She had been so unprepared. Tobrah was like a dream, a desire for a child—a desperate wish that had come to Jackie late in life. She had to catch up somehow, read some textbooks, do it right.

Jackie was up before sunrise, packing a small bag. She hurried Tobrah out of bed, through a bowl of cereal, then into the car. She drove toward the lake, forty miles east. After the sky grew light, they stopped at a mini-mart. Jackie had coffee and a muffin, and Tobrah had a doughnut. By eight o'clock, when Bob would be pulling up at her house, they had reached the lake. It was a place Jackie had visited many times, years ago, between husbands. It used to seem peaceful and vacant, without variety or possibility. It had soothed her because it made no demands on her. But now it seemed charged with life, confusing and complicated. A coal-filled barge headed toward the locks. A flock of birds flew over noisily, like a cheering section. Pleasure boats were already shooting through the water.

At the nature center they got a brochure with maps of the trails. Jackie guided Tobrah down a short trail called the Waterfowl Loop. They saw geese gathered at the shore. As they approached, the geese trundled into the water like pull toys.

Tobrah said, “A mother goose takes off flying backwards to teach its baby goose not to fall. If you fly backwards, you can't never fall.”

She flapped her arms and ran backwards.

“Watch where you're going, honey,” said Jackie, reaching out to catch her.

Three deer enclosed in a pen moved shyly away from the fence, as Tobrah staggered past and whirled to a stop. She stared at the deer. Later, outside the nature center, Jackie and Tobrah saw a small owl tethered to a post. The owl swiveled his neck, his eyes following them curiously, like anxious moons. Jackie imagined that he was amazed by the sight of Tobrah. The park ranger stared at her, too. People would think the child was hers, Jackie thought. They might think that she had been with some strange man and created this child. She wished it were true.

The ranger said, “At night we take the owl inside so a great horned owl won't swoop down and get him.”

“What's his name?” Jackie said.

“We don't give the wildlife names here because we don't want to encourage keeping wild animals as pets.”

Inside the nature center they saw stuffed animals. A ranger stationed there said, “All the animals you see here were road-kills. That bobcat was a road-kill from last summer. He weighed twenty-two pounds, I'd say.”

“I want a kitty like that,” said Tobrah.

“My mother's cat is part wildcat,” a fat woman said to the ranger. “He's got those whiskers and big cheeks.” She puffed out her own cheeks, becoming the cat for an instant.

“I don't believe a bobcat would ever mate with a house cat,” said the ranger.

“Well, you might change your mind if you saw my mother's cat,” said the woman indignantly.

Jackie smiled and squeezed Tobrah's hand. Tobrah jerked away. Her body was tensed, trembling—almost, Jackie thought, as though she were on the verge of a convulsion.

“What is it, Tobrah?” Jackie asked anxiously, squatting down to look into the child's face.

“Kitty,” Tobrah said, in a voice as close to despair as Jackie had ever heard. Tears rolled down Tobrah's cheeks.

Jackie held her close and tried to soothe her. In a few minutes Tobrah was over the outburst, and by the time they reached the car, she seemed to have forgotten about the cat. It was just something Tobrah thought she wanted, but she could live without it, Jackie told herself. A child's whim. Who wasn't a child? she wondered. Adulthood was a role people played. They forgot that they were just pretending. It was all bluff and fluff. A man at work used to say his long-haired orange tomcat was all “bluff and fluff.” He would say it a couple of times a week, as if trying to convince everyone of his superiority over his cat, a pathetic thing for someone to have to do.

She had parked the car in the shade, and some gummy pollen had dotted the windshield. She wiped at it with a tissue. Tobrah was singing to herself, echoing the birdsong from the woods. A pickup angled into a nearby parking spot.

When her father wrecked his pickup, he was probably driving recklessly, childishly, Jackie thought. He took her to the carnival once, she remembered, and she rode the bumper cars. He thrust a cloud of cotton candy into her hand and left her at the bumper cars with a string of tickets while he flirted with a woman at the merry-go-round ticket booth. For an hour, Jackie rode, bumping and steering with devilish glee, happy with her freedom. Her father disappeared from sight. Her steering wheel was sticky from the cotton candy. When he came back for her, all he said was, “I'll bet you qualify for a driver's license by now, Little Bean.” She had forgotten that nickname until now, and she didn't know where it came from.

Tobrah got in the car, crushing a paper cup in the seat. Without being told, she fastened her seat belt, fumbling for only a moment.

“I'm ready,” she said.

Tunica

Liz had the sebaceous cysts removed from her head the day before her trip to the casinos down in Tunica. The five bumps were small, requiring only a stitch each, so afterward she wasn't sure they were relevant to her fortune. The dermatologist's name, ironically, was Harry. She couldn't keep a straight face while he performed the operation, which was almost pleasant. There was something erotic about the feathery sensations of having her numbed scalp slit and tugged. It felt like a cat licking her hand.

With the deadened spots on her head tickling into life, she drove across town to her mother's house, the radio blaring a group called Pit Bulls on Crack. She felt ebullient, like a lightbulb about to pop. She honked at a Buick spraddled across an intersection, then hit the horn an extra giddy blast. Whenever she felt the smoldering fire inside her about to burst into flame, she knew it was time to head for Tunica. Her friends frequently instructed her on what she ought to do—like file a restraining order against her husband, sign up for kick boxing, join some support group or other—but Liz stubbornly resisted. Everybody had an answer and a twelve-step program. There were more answers than questions anymore, she believed.

She swung into her parents' neighborhood, a claustrophobic little cluster of FHA-financed houses. Her mother's rust-bucket Cutlass blocked the carport, so Liz had to park on the street. Through the glass of the kitchen storm door, she saw her mother, Julie, on the telephone. When Liz entered, Julie said to the telephone, “I've got to go. My daughter's just come in from having her head worked on—these knots that run in families? It's the knottiest bunch of people I ever saw. I always say I married a knothead.”

“Who was that?” asked Liz as her mother cradled the receiver.

“Oh, somebody from a phone outfit trying to sell me their package deal.”

“You were on a
junk
call?”

“They said I could get long distance cheaper than what I'm getting.”

“Who do you ever call long distance?”

“Well, maybe I
would
call somebody if it was cheaper,” Julie said. She grabbed a sponge and came at Liz, as if she intended to wipe her off. “I've got some bad news,” she said. “Peyton's mama's in the hospital. She had a stroke and is in a coma.”

Liz's mind zigzagged as she listened to Julie fill in the medical details about Daisy, Liz's mother-in-law. Daisy was not so old, but she smoked heavily and lived on deep-fried cuisine. Liz grabbed the sponge from her mother and set it on the toaster.

“How bad is it?” she asked.

“Bad. Peyton said if you were there, maybe she'd come to.”

The idea threw her. “Does he think I'm some kind of faith healer? He never had any faith in me.”

“Don't get smart. Peyton needs you with him at a time like this.”

“Well, I don't need him,” Liz said. “I've written him out of my script.”

If her mother knew the truth about Peyton, she would not have made such a suggestion, Liz thought. She wished she had driven straight to Tunica and learned about Daisy later. She dreaded seeing Peyton, and she had always been uncomfortable around her mother-in-law, who judged her by her clothing. Before saying hello, Daisy always eyed her up and down.

Julie said, “Here, let me see that head.” She poked through Liz's short hair. “Why, they didn't shave a hair.”

“They don't do that anymore,” said Liz, wriggling away. “And they don't let you keep the knots. They send them off to the lab so they can charge you more.”

“You used to could make a bracelet out of your gallstones,” Julie said. “I was looking forward to that if I ever got gallstones.”

“You can cancel that little dream,” Liz said. “It's probably against the law now.”

Liz and Peyton had separated six months ago, when he went to jail for possession of cocaine. By the time he was released (prematurely, in her opinion), she had decided she could be free of him. She wouldn't allow him to stay in the house, so he moved into a small apartment above a friend's auto-body shop and got work laying sewer pipes. Liz had made Peyton take all his tools and tackle and videotapes. His gun collection had already been confiscated when he was arrested—the shotgun in the closet, the Weatherby .243 varmint rifle over the mantel, and the handguns in various drawers. Now she wouldn't even call him when she needed his vise grip to open a stuck window lock. For jar lids she used a “rubber husband,” a gimmick that came free with a set of stemware. But Peyton was a nagging presence, like the shotgun that had been propped in the closet. He had begun to leave threatening messages on her answering machine. He swore revenge and demanded that she behave like a wife. “You belong to me,” he had said.

At home Liz ignored the new messages on her answering machine and opened a beer to settle her head. She microwaved some popcorn and watched a romantic made-for-TV movie, trying to pretend she didn't know about Daisy's stroke. She badly wanted to go to Tunica on the excursion bus at dawn. Gambling was her way of mocking the dull predictability of her life, and Daisy's stroke—an actual surprise—confused her.

When the telephone rang, she didn't answer. Her caller I.D. showed Peyton's number, and when she heard his wheedling voice on the answering machine, she lowered the volume. She wanted to keep Peyton away until after Tunica. He would need petting and forgiveness, and she didn't feel capable of offering any. Although she had thrown out his
Guns & Ammo
magazines, there were still reminders of him in the house. Stuffing extruded from holes in the couch, worn from five years of TV evenings with Peyton. She had once hoped they could have a nicer place someday, and she had imagined decorating it with country-kitchen antique-style milk jugs and egg baskets and calico-print chickens. When she married him, she felt exhilarated at each new purchase. But their furniture was cheap, and it wore down at about the same rate as their marriage, faster than the payment schedules. Now she thought about the way he used to sit in front of the TV, a gun in his lap. He would be taking it apart, putting it back together, as if it needed exercise to remain operable. She remembered him caressing the barrel, loving on it as one would fondle a baby. Night after night, Peyton sat watching TV with one of his guns astride his lap—dismantling and reassembling it, concentrating hard.

Peyton had roared into her life. She was seventeen and he was twenty-four. He seemed mysterious, as if his pockets were loaded with taboos, like candy treats. She fell for him because he was a stud—wearing studs and black leather and frenzied hair and a pair of motorcycle boots that could stomp her heart into submission. He was comfortable in his body, with a cock of the head that implied a secret, superior knowledge—his crotch still warm from the heat of his Harley. The way he moved—casual, unhurried, luxuriating in his muscularity—called to her, like an evangelist inviting her to come forward and get her soul saved. She didn't know he was a drug dealer. He quit for her sake, he told her later, but she soon decided she had married too young, a mistake that delineated her life as clearly as an arranged marriage in a remote culture. When she began working nights, she felt relieved that she wouldn't have to watch the revenge thrillers he had begun renting. Then he drifted into trouble, back into dealing. It was so easy, he told her, he couldn't stay away from it. It beckoned him, like a lighthouse. “You never saw a lighthouse in your life,” Liz pointed out.

Now the telephone rang again. She picked popcorn hulls out of her teeth. In a commercial, a farmer was walking with his dog in a field of soybeans. The fields were green and pretty, edged with mist. The video whizzed through scenes of the man's life—his marriage, the birth of a baby, then his daughter's wedding, with her wedding dress whirling among the bushy plants. The commercial was for a weed killer for no-till soybeans. It made farm life look rich and grand and satisfying. But it also made a life span seem as short as a season's crop.

In the morning, as she stepped out of the shower, she heard the telephone ringing and almost burst into tears, thinking of Peyton's mother, who always looked fresh as a daisy—however fresh that was. Daisies actually smelled like vomit. The telephone stopped ringing.

At the shopping center, the bus was packed with senior citizens and several lone eccentrics Liz recognized from earlier trips. She found a seat near the rear of the bus and shoved her tote bag on the floor against the wall. She was dressed in her new wide-legged shorts, with a tight tank-top and a loose poppy-print shirt. In her bag was a fleece throw, in case she got cold on the bus.

Suddenly Peyton slid into the seat beside her, startling her. He had tracked her down with his bad news. Waves of goose bumps rippled across her skin.

“Where were you?” he asked. “I was at the hospital all night.”

“Is she all right?”

“She's still in a coma.”

She sat quietly as he told her about the nightmarish night at the hospital and the doctors' cryptic, noncommittal comments. His hard shoulder pressed against her. His plaid shirt was fresh, but his jeans had twin rips above the knees. He was wearing the jeans with the Confederate flag patch on the right thigh.

“What do you think you're doing, Liz?” he asked. “Your mama said you needed to be with me. She told me you were going to Tunica to blow your paycheck.” He slapped her bare knee.

“Don't touch me,” she said.

“I'm coming with you.”

“You would leave your sick mother to go play the slots?”

“You need me to go along with you—for your own good.”

“I don't need you to chaperone. I
told
you I wrote you out of my script.”

“Hey, I like them shorts of yours.” He poked her thigh, making a motion like a mole snouting through dirt. She knocked his hand away with her fist.

She didn't know what to say. Peyton had always neglected his mother, so Liz wasn't surprised that he would duck out now. As the bus lurched out of the parking lot, Peyton tilted his seat back and adjusted the bill of his cap to shade his brow. He reminded Liz of a character in a movie, one of those criminals played by a handsome actor with a smirk. His cobra-head tattoo peeked out of his shirt sleeve. She hadn't missed that at all.

“How come you're off work?” he asked.

“I'm working twelve-hour shifts now, so I get more days off.”

“They cut your hours,” he said.

“But I got a raise—a dollar an hour.” Liz watched for the sun, which was on the verge of rising behind Wal-Mart. “You're ruining my day,” she said. “You ought to go stay with your mom.” She had no idea what he was feeling about Daisy.

“I'll be good,” Peyton said, patting her leg. “I won't get in your way.”

“I'm not loaning you any money when you lose yours. As far as I'm concerned, you're on your own.”

“I won't go near the blackjack tables,” he said. “Where were you yesterday? I tried to call. I went by the house.”

Liz shrugged. “Had my knots cut out—don't touch my head.”

“Won't your brains ooze out?” He flashed one of his Three Stooges smirks.

Peyton was bleary-eyed and fuzzy-faced. In jail he had lost weight. Actually, he looked good, Liz thought, since he grew his hair back. In jail, he experimented with shaving his head, but it looked peculiar.

“Did you see that guy in the second row?” Peyton asked rather loudly. “His blubber hangs off into the aisle. I can see it all the way back here. People like that should just be put out of their misery.”

“Don't be stupid.”

“Well, I say it's time to rid the world of blubber-butts. And queers. And liberals. And people who drive Lincoln Navigators. And David Letterman.”

“That kind of talk gets old,” she said angrily. “Decent people don't talk that way anymore.”

“Chill out, babe. You've been watching too much television.” He gave her knee a little squeeze.

She had never figured out how to talk to him when he got like this. “At least I haven't been in jail,” she said finally.

“One of these days you'll come to a bad end, Liz.”

“Speak for yourself.” She opened her magazine.

“Mama wanted us to stay together,” he whispered in her ear. “She just couldn't bear knowing how we turned out. I believe that's why she had a stroke.”

“That wouldn't cause a stroke.”

“I think you still love me,” Peyton said. “I'm coming home with you tonight,” he said. “To
our
bed. I miss you. Can't you see I'm full of hurt? And now my mama's dying. Are you going to kick me when I'm down?”

She wouldn't answer. She flipped magazine pages.

“You're not getting away with this any longer,” he said.

They sat in silence for a while, Liz fuming. Peyton was interfering with her new mission to straighten out her life—which she could not have explained to him even if she had a week's time. Now apparently they were running away together, and everyone would blame them for abandoning Daisy on her deathbed.

As the bus approached the confluence of the Ohio River and the Mississippi, Liz could see the famous ninety-five-foot steel cross towering in the distance. It appeared to extend a frightening embrace in all directions. After crossing the rivers, the bus headed south toward Arkansas. Peyton, slouching beside her, seemed to be sleeping. To steady her mind, Liz worked a word-search puzzle in the magazine she had brought. While he was in jail, she had felt tranquil, but she couldn't focus on what her future held; it seemed like a fragile bubble that popped when she tried to visualize it. She hadn't expected him to become so possessive after she threw him out. He made her feel that she was unjustly finding fault. One day a couple of years before, some cops were beating a suspect on the TV news, and Peyton said, “Goddamn, why didn't they just kick his head in while they were at it?” It shocked her into reassessing his brutal swagger. She had thought it was typical male bluster; he was cool, spouting his charges at the world. But that day she saw him differently. He seemed small and pathetic. It takes a while to know a person, she kept telling herself.