“I did all the righteous stuff. I was a good girl.”
“You never had sex with him?”
“Jesus, Birdie.”
“Well, I don’t understand why you didn’t tell Leeda.”
“I tried. You heard all the stuff she said to me.”
“But you could have sent her an e-mail or written a note or something.”
“She already thinks she knows who I am. She did before she knew me.”
“But you guys love each other.”
“Birdie.” Murphy leaned back on her hands. “It’s not gonna happen. And I don’t want you to say anything to her about it. Promise me.”
Birdie looked dubious. “But I could…”
“Birdie, promise me.”
Birdie blinked a few times. “Okay. Okay. But you’re friends with me, right?”
Birdie hugged her around the waist.
“It’s hard to be mad at you, Bird.”
“I know. I’m so sweet.”
“You are.”
Murphy hugged her back, feeling the defined spaces of her spine.
“I hadn’t really noticed, but you’re getting your birdie legs back, Bird.”
Birdie shrugged and smiled, pushing her hair behind her ears. “Am I?”
Murphy couldn’t believe how much better she felt. She was buzzing with electricity to have Birdie back in her life. It felt like a miracle. She wanted to do something for her.
“So things suck with the farm, right?”
Birdie nodded, unable to speak.
“I guess there’s nothing we can do about that.”
Birdie shook her head, her lips trembling. “No.”
“Well, you should have a vacation, then.”
Birdie half laughed. “Yeah. How about the Greek isles? Let’s leave tomorrow.”
Murphy smiled. “My car won’t make it to Greece, but I think it has enough juice for a shorter trip.”
“To where?” Birdie asked softly.
Murphy grinned. The idea had taken hold like a vision. Of course, it had to be done.
“My dear, duh. My car can make it all the way to Texas.”
Chapter Twenty-one
“You turn here.”
Murphy peered through the right corner of the windshield toward where Birdie was pointing.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yeah, it’s here.”
“Bird, seventy-five is straight ahead.”
“I know the back way.”
Murphy looked at Birdie, whose wide-set brown eyes were staring at her placidly, and pressed the corner of her lips down to communicate that Birdie didn’t know what she was talking about, but what the heck. She took the turn. They passed a pecan farm on the right and then a few open fields.
“Left on Mossy Creek.”
Murphy looked at Birdie again, and Birdie smiled innocently back at her. Behind them their stuff was covering the seats—Murphy’s army bag and Birdie’s matching teddy bear suitcases her grandmother had given her. Also, a jar of dill pickles Birdie had brought and two bags of pretzels, along with two bottles of strawberry cider. One of Murphy’s bras had found its way out of her bag and wrapped itself around the pickles.
Birdie had told her dad she was with her mom. She’d told her mom she was with Leeda. Murphy still couldn’t believe she’d had the guts to do it. Already Birdie had gotten a look of terror on her face three or four times—never mind the look on her face when she and Murphy had gotten Enrico’s address from her dad’s office—and mentioned to Murphy that maybe they should turn around. They hadn’t even gotten to the highway yet.
They were definitely coming at town a back way from the orchard, and it was starting to get familiar. Murphy leaned forward and peered far over the steering wheel.
“Birdie.”
Murphy tapped her foot on the brakes, which squealed as the car slowed. They came to a stop a couple hundred yards before the driveway of Breezy Buds Plantation, aka the Cawley-Smiths’ mansion.
Birdie had her feet up on the dash and her eyes straight ahead, her eyes big. “I told her she could come with us.”
“Oh Jesus.”
“Murphy, come on. I need you guys to get along. I need Leeda to come too.”
Birdie saying she needed Leeda felt like tiny Charles Manson fork stabs in Murphy’s heart. She wanted to make it somehow so that Birdie didn’t need Leeda.
“Well, maybe if you’d rather hang out with her…” Murphy didn’t expect this tack to work, it was so obvious, but Birdie looked at her with her upper lip slightly puckering and then disappearing into her mouth. She looked wounded and sorry, which made Murphy wounded and sorry.
“God.” Murphy felt her chest filling up with warm fuzzies for Birdie, who couldn’t fathom manipulating people the way Murphy had just tried to do.
“She might be really sorry,” Birdie suggested.
Murphy considered this. Maybe Rex and Leeda had talked about the kiss. Maybe they’d even broken up. If Leeda knew it wasn’t Murphy’s fault, she probably felt terrible. She would probably grovel. And Murphy would have to think about whether to take her back or not.
“Do you think so?” Murphy asked, hating to sound so unsure and pathetic. She nibbled on a hangnail on her thumb.
Birdie nodded.
“Did she say that?”
“She used our advice for the bachelorette party.”
Yellowbaby clunked into the semicircular driveway of the Cawley-Smith house, where the crepe myrtle made a crimson soldier’s bridge over the road, dropping tiny fuchsia petals onto the windshield and on top of the car.
“I’ll go get her.” Birdie went up to the door and disappeared inside while Murphy sat with a butterfly in her stomach and tried to look careless. Never, never, never would she let Leeda see her rattled. She was the last person who would ever see that.
The door cracked open a few minutes later, but it wasn’t Birdie or Leeda who exited. Rex emerged from the door and walked up to the car. Panicked, Murphy looked in the rearview mirror. There was his car parked behind her, in the alcove in the bushes.
Rex came up to the car and bent down to look through the passenger window. Murphy didn’t bother rolling down the window or leaning over to open the door. He looked at her sadly and gave her half a wave, pulling his hand out of his pocket only for a moment before he tucked it back in. Murphy looked down at the door handle, then gently waved back and let herself meet his eyes for a moment. Looking at him through the glass felt like being an animal in the zoo. Murphy would probably be a python.
Rex looked thoughtfully at her for another moment, and then he stood and walked toward his car.
A few minutes later Leeda and Birdie emerged carrying enough luggage to fill two Yellowbabies.
“Hey, Murphy,” Leeda said coolly, opening the door.
“Hey.”
“Where am I supposed to sit?” The question was clearly directed at Birdie.
Murphy rolled her eyes.
It was going to be that kind of trip.
“No matter how many times you press that button, the AC is not going to work.”
“Oh.” Leeda pulled her manicured finger away from the snowflake-marked button below the radio, then fiddled with the tweezers that stuck out of the tape deck. “We should have taken the Beemer.”
Murphy’s shoulders, which Birdie had a great view of from the backseat, stiffened so visibly she looked like a football player. Birdie could feel the negative energy oozing from the front of the car. She sighed and leaned closer to the open window, feeling the breeze on her face. They had crossed the border into Mississippi about an hour ago, and the air had gotten both thicker and smellier.
“It smells like bayou,” she said, hoping to spark a conversation. “I bet there’s alligators.”
Both Murphy and Leeda were silent.
“Have you guys been counting the armadillos?”
“No, Birdie. How many have you seen?”
“Twenty-three. All dead.”
>
Silence.
“It’s so mysterious. I never see live ones on the highway. It’s like they arrive from the woods already dead.” Birdie knew it was a stupid thing to say, but she was desperate.
“Maybe the noxious fumes from Yellowbaby are poisoning them before we can get to them,” Leeda offered.
“Ha. Maybe,” Murphy said, very pissed off.
Birdie turned her focus back to the dusk rushing up on the car outside and the sound of the swamp bugs hitting the windshield. She had the surreal feeling that she wasn’t here at all. Not in this car with Murphy and Leeda. Definitely not on her way to go see Enrico. She doubted that was going to sink in until she actually saw him. And then she would freak out.
The thing was, once she stood in front of Enrico, there was no going back. It wasn’t like at the orchard, where she could make some excuse for bumping into him. This was what she needed. A no-escape clause. She only wished she could have brought Honey Babe and Majestic. The silence in the car was oppressive and it made Birdie feel lost and sad. She leaned between the two girls, determined to change this.
“I hear iguanas love it when people pet them. Can you believe it?”
Neither girl even bothered to answer.
“Well, wake me when you want me to drive.” Birdie, annoyed, but decidedly above showing it, cradled her soft squash blossom cardigan between her cheek and the window and let the buzz of the tires underneath her and the soothing hiss of the night air put her into a half-awake coma.
Somewhere in the middle of the night she woke up to see that Leeda had taken over driving. Birdie fell back asleep and didn’t wake up until the sun was out.
“Where are we?”
Leeda looked back over her shoulder, her face drawn and pale.
“Louisiana.”
Birdie took over the driving, and Leeda moved to the back, her long legs crunched up like the curls of a pretzel as she lay across the backseat. Murphy sat reclined on the passenger side with her head back, her mouth hanging open.
Birdie turned the radio on low to weatherband. It was a habit, living on the farm.
Scattered showers throughout much of the Southeast, the results of tropical storm Jude moving toward the coast of Florida. And then nothing. The radio had crapped out.
Birdie looked at Murphy, who shrugged. “Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you get unlucky.”
They switched again in the early afternoon, Birdie moving into the passenger seat. She didn’t know why she was so tired, but she conked out again, waking only when she heard the engine stop much, much later.
She looked up, expecting it to be another gas station, and then her stomach lurched.
They were at a row of two-story, redbrick apartment buildings. The area was kind of dingy, mostly pavement, surrounded by a Krystal and a Krispy Kreme. Everything looked like it had been built in the seventies.
“Here we are, Bird.” Leeda turned around in her seat and grinned at her blearily. Birdie was suddenly touched. Both of her friends looked so tired. And it was because they were doing something nice for her, Birdie.
She told the girls she wanted to freshen up first, so they headed over to Krispy Kreme. She walked into the bathroom and locked the door behind her, then looked in the mirror.
She looked terrible. She splashed cold water on her face and finger-combed her hair, then tried to smooth out the crinkly crushed wrinkles in her gauzy white embroidered shirt. Actually, cleaned up a little, she didn’t look so bad. Her lips were pink and rosy and the sleepiness seemed to make her eyes bigger and softer looking. She almost looked sultry. And she looked thin. Thinner. The summer’s hard work had paid off on her body, and she hadn’t even noticed.
Birdie took the barrette out of her long auburn bangs and readjusted it. She looked clean and pure and pretty. She was ready.
She walked back into the main area, where Murphy and Leeda were sitting across a table from each other but facing the counter, parallel. Birdie decided to take half a dozen doughnuts to Enrico and chose carefully the ones she thought he might like. Then they walked across the street.
“It’s number twelve,” she said, scanning the doors. She almost hoped that there was no number twelve and that they were in the wrong place entirely. But there it was, to the left. Murphy and Leeda followed her to the concrete stoop.
“Um, do you guys mind waiting in the car?”
“Sure,” Murphy said, smiling at her encouragingly. “You can do it, Bird.”
“Do I look sweaty or anything?”
Both Leeda and Murphy shook their heads.
Birdie turned back to the door, listening to the sound of her friends walking away. She raised her fist to the door and knocked. No answer. She looked back at Yellowbaby. She knocked again.
Then she tried the knob, not expecting it to give, but it did.
The living room she entered consisted of cream carpet, a tan couch, a La-Z-Boy, and several books, in Spanish and English, lying open on the floor, on coffee tables, on the staircase. It was no mistake. Birdie smiled nervously.
“Enrico?”
She walked into the hallway. “Hello?”
She peered into the two doorways. The bathroom and the bedroom. Enrico’s bed was there, all messed up. The whole room smelled like him. It made Birdie’s knees wobbly. But he wasn’t here.
Then she heard the music. Birdie turned and walked toward the sliding glass door, which was open. Her heart jumped into her temples. She approached the threshold of the door.
There were two loungers on the concrete patio. One of them was empty. Enrico was lying on the other one, a book resting on his side.
On his lap was a girl with short black hair.
Birdie took a step backward, her instincts kicking in.
And then the girl bent forward, and Enrico’s face appeared over her shoulder, and his eyes met Birdie’s. He squinted for a moment, like he couldn’t quite make sense of what he was seeing. Then the girl on his lap turned around.
“Birdie?” he asked, sliding the girl up and standing.
Birdie scratched her chin hard. “Hey, Enrico. Hey…” She nodded at the girl, trying very desperately to make it look like she was happy to meet her. But the girl smiled weakly, unsurely.
“Birdie, what are you…?”
Birdie laughed. “Oh, ha, you know, we’re on a road trip. And I…brought you these doughnuts.” Birdie’s eyes were welling up with tears.
“I…” Enrico’s dark eyebrows descended low in concern. It was obvious he was faltering between asking her if she was okay and pretending he didn’t notice she wasn’t.
“So, um, hi…Actually, we…”
Birdie couldn’t get the rest of the lie out. It would have been ridiculous anyway. She closed her mouth instead. She laid the box of doughnuts down gently next to where she stood. And then she turned and ran.
Leeda was sitting in the driver’s seat and Murphy was sitting against the hood of the car when they saw Birdie run out of Enrico’s town house, her hair flopping behind her and her arms pumping.
“What the hell…?” Murphy and Leeda caught each other’s eyes. It was probably the first time they had actually made eye contact the whole trip. And then they watched Birdie cover the rest of the parking lot in a sprint.
She came panting up to the car and leapt in through the open passenger door. Behind her, appearing on his stoop, was Enrico.
“Let’s go!”
“What?”
“Get in the car, Murphy!”
Murphy did what she was told, looking dazed, and Leeda turned the key in the ignition.
“Birdie, what’s going on?”
“Just drive!” Birdie groaned.
The engine was turning over and over. While it did, Enrico jogged up to the side of the car. “Birdie?” he called through the window, his voice muted by the glass.
Behind him Leeda could see that a pretty Latina girl had emerged from the front of the house. Her heart flopped. Oh, damn.
Murphy t
urned around in her seat. “Birdie, can I roll down the window? The guy clearly wants to talk to you.”
Enrico was crouching and staring in the window. Leeda looked over her shoulder. Birdie had dropped her face behind her hand.
“Please just drive.”
As soon as she could get the car in gear, Leeda threw it into first. The tires peeled in the gravel and they jerked forward and stalled.
“Oh God, kill me. Please kill me,” Birdie said from the back.
“Sorry!” Leeda started the car a second time, throwing it into first again, and this time pulling away with a jerk.
Birdie was saying it over and over again into her hand. “Please kill me.”
“Bird? Bird?” Murphy was now leaning over the back of her seat. “Don’t say that, Bird.”
Leeda couldn’t help looking in the rearview mirror as she squealed out of the parking lot. First at Birdie, still hiding in her hands. And then, in the background, at Enrico, standing in a cloud of dust, coughing, and looking as love struck as anyone she’d ever seen.
Thirty years after Georgia’s last devastating tropical storm, its landlocked acreage braced for another pounding from Mother Nature. Bridgewater’s stores taped Xs on their windows, and in an unprecedented maneuver, the twenty-four-hour Kuntry Kitchen closed its doors. Yellowbaby, an aging Volkswagen, whose radio was held together by a pair of tweezers, failed to report how serious things had become. Its driver, Murphy McGowen, tuned in once, but all she heard was salsa music.
Chapter Twenty-two
“We should probably stop here for gas,” Murphy said, nodding to the gauge.
Leeda kept her eyes straight ahead on the road. “I can see for myself. And I don’t like Exxon. I like BP.”
“You think you can tell the difference between Exxon gas and BP gas?”
“I think I’m driving and therefore I get to pick where we get our gas.”
In the backseat, Birdie clenched and unclenched her teeth. She had used to think hell was being in a room full of people she didn’t know. But now she realized hell was actually being in a small car with Murphy and Leeda, two people she knew better than anyone.