Jerk, California

  The mother shrieks, and turns. She blocks my way to the door. She’s not moving, but I can’t stop. I lurch, slip on a volume, and tumble into her midsection. We plow to the floor.

  “Let me go!” she screams, and kicks and claws. Muted wails of children, their noses pressed to the glass, fill the store.

  “Get off her!” Trish’s hands tug me backward, and I jump to my feet.

  The woman stands with a huff, counts her cheering children, and then jabs a finger into my chest.“I tell you, he attacked my children. He attacked me!”

  “Easy—easy now,” Trish reassures. “He did throw a book at Jimmy, but it was an accident.” She shakes her head. “I can’t believe he would deliberately hurt anyone.” Trish looks at the books scattered over her floor.

  I sniff hard. I want to speak, to defend myself, but the store is a disaster, and I deserve whatever I get.

  “That young man is violent. Look around.” The woman gestures above her head. “He’s a monster!”

  “I’m really sorry, Thelma. Go on and calm your kids. Let me have a heart-to-heart with the boy.” Trish places a hand on her back and eases her toward the door.

  Thelma glares at me over her shoulder.“Heart-to-heart. He needs a belt-to-rear. I don’t care how big he is.” She flattens her blouse and marches outside.

  Trish turns and watches me jump and jerk. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

  I glance at her and stare down at the book clutched in my hands. It’s a Bible.

  “I’m not married!”

  The story takes a long time to untangle, but I owe Trish the cover-to-cover version. She doesn’t make it easy and stands cross-armed, eyes like slits.

  “George sent you here,” Trish repeats.

  “He did.”

  “You don’t know why.”

  “I don’t.”

  “And the girl is along for the ride.”

  “Guess so.”

  “Well, Turk and I never—” She sighs and glances around the store. “This is quite a mess you made.” Trish’s jaws tighten. “Quite a mess, indeed.”

  chapter thirty-two

  I STACK BOOKS IN PILES ON THE FLOOR. MOST look pretty good, but a few are ripped or creased. Trish doesn’t help me—she’s on the phone, where her angry voice drops to whispers.

  “I won’t have—do you realize what they did in our—I don’t care if George . . .”

  I’ll leave town as soon as I’m done. And the way Naomi sounded in the kitchen this morning, I’ll travel alone. Then her mom can fly in by Lear jet and take her home, and she’ll be happier anyway.

  “Leave the rest,” Trish says, and sets down her phone.“Turk wants to see you. He’s watching Aaron’s game.”

  I look at my hostess. An hour ago she was full of compliments and now she won’t look at me. Suddenly I hate being ignored. Look at me angry, look at me and laugh, but please look at me.

  “I hadn’t planned on lying, but it got going and I didn’t—”

  Trish raises her hand. “Turk.”

  I wander in the direction of distant light poles. There’s no hurry, and it’s too hot to move faster. My trek takes me over nasty stretches of sidewalk, but I’ve fallen enough today, and I pay close attention.

  It’s a nice town, really. Folks work in front of their homes, trying to beat the afternoon inferno. They stop and wave as I pass. If I hadn’t just wrestled a woman in a bookstore, if I hadn’t told the truth, I might say hello. But I did, so I can’t.

  I cross the highway that runs through town and stop.

  The windmill! I’ve been busy hauling around our lie and forgot about it. Must be here somewhere. Where are you, Dad?

  I scan for anything that resembles a mill.“Nothing. Probably crumbled years ago.” I turn back toward the field and trudge into the ballpark, one big sweat ball.

  Seats are filled despite the heat, and the game’s in full swing. Turk cheers loudly from his spot on the top bleacher. He quiets when I clang up the bleachers, but he doesn’t catch my eye. We sit in drippy silence for two innings. His silence is more horrible than Trish’s. I wish he’d holler like Old Bill, but Turk doesn’t. He sits quietly and lets me bake to death.

  The sun beats down on my hatless head. Turk gulps mouthfuls of water from his gallon jug, but offers me none.

  “You’re late,” Turk says. He looks me over, turns back toward the game. “Is it clear?”

  “Wha—” I cough gravel from my parched throat. “Is what clear?”

  “What’s been done? You defiled our home. Broke our trust. Brought shame upon your name. Wronged Naomi.”

  I nod until I hear Naomi’s name.

  “It wasn’t my idea. Well, not like I never thought of it before, but she—”

  “A man’s job is to protect at any cost.”

  Protect what?

  Turk shakes his head. “Putting yourself above her. Weak.” He sighs. “I wish James was here.”

  I blink hard.

  “Are we talking about the same thing?” I turn toward him and squint. “Nothing happened. I did screw up with the lie thing, but I tried to make that right. So why come down on me?”

  I shake my head violently and almost fall off the stands.

  “Take some water.” Turk hands me his gallon. I empty his jug.

  “She’s a beautiful woman, Jack. Either take care of her or leave her to someone who will. Choose.”

  How can I leave her if I’m not with her?

  “Choose!” he thunders, stands up. People on risers turn.

  “Please,” I whisper, and tug on his T-shirt. “Sit down.”

  “You disgraced a woman in my home.” People stare and murmur. “I was witness. A public wrong deserves a public announcement!”

  Have mercy!

  “You still refuse to make a choice?” Turk stares at me.

  “I didn’t refuse,” I hiss. “I nodded, I nodded! I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  Turk draws a deep breath through his nostrils. “A simple decision: take care of her or leave her. Simple.”

  I look around. They stare and whisper and I feel like a zoo animal. Sweat pools at my feet. I’ve never had such a hot nightmare.

  I bury my head in my hands.

  “Choose, Jack. Choose. Choose now.” Turk bends over, but his voice is just as loud.

  The word throbs in my ears. My body twitches to its rhythm. My shoulder jerks—choose, choose.

  It makes no sense. Naomi doesn’t need defending. And she’s the one who should choose. Dirk, me, some other guy. Chant at her for a while.

  Turk folds his arms and stares at me with the same stare his wife used.

  “Okay!” I stand and hold up both hands. “I’ll take care of her!”

  Fans nod, satisfied, and turn back to the game.

  “Okay, Jack.” Turk pats my back. “Let’s get home. I left Naomi with Mother, but she’s probably home by now.”

  I stagger after my abuser and get into his van.

  “It’s a hot one.” Turk smiles as if he humiliates young men every day. “If you need air-conditioning, please tell me. You can choose.”

  “Take care of her!” Words fly out of my mouth on instinct, and I feel like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

  chapter thirty-three

  LUNCH. SUPPER TIME. STILL NO NAOMI.

  It’s just as well, because the volcano named Trish shakes and rumbles. Fragments of sentences seep out between clenched teeth, and I don’t want to be near her when she blows.

  Trish pushes lettuce around her dinner plate, but doesn’t take a bite. Lucky for me, she seemed satisfied with Turk’s handling of my situation.

  “Where’s that Naomi?” She breathes deep. “We’ve a matter to settle. That girl looked me in the eyes as she told that story.”

  No one answers. Seems everyone’s afraid of the eruption and beelines out of the house as soon dinner’s done.

  S’pose I should look for her. I leave a note on the upstairs table—don?
??t want to hide anything else—and jog to the hospital. I pause at the entrance and start to pace. I couldn’t see the outside of the place last night. The bricks and small windows. Looks just like the Princeton Medical Center, and now I don’t want to go in—hospitals like this make me nervous.

  They have since my childhood tests.

  “We pop these under your skin. The probes show us electricity in your brain. It won’t hurt.” My nurse smiled. “Then you need to lie perfectly still for an hour.”

  “Why? Where’s my mom? I want my mom!”

  The nurse pressed on my chest, tried to get me flat on the examining table, but I wouldn’t budge. “She’s in the waiting room, and you can see her when we’re done, but now I need you to be still for me.”

  “No!” I cried, and pushed her hand, the one that held the little needle that she wanted to jab into my head. I kicked at the tray covered with little needles and wires and it clanked to the floor.

  My nurse’s smile left. Three more nurses walked in, shut the door behind them, and held me down.

  “Mom!” I screamed. But she didn’t come.

  I’m not six years old anymore. I’m here to find Naomi.

  My chest loosens, and I step inside. Straight ahead, nurses laugh in a glass room behind the nurses’ station. Looks like a party. They probably just restrained a kid and stuck wires in his head. Time to celebrate.

  I slip by them and head down a long hall. My head swivels as I read names scribbled on whiteboards outside of each room.

  Esther Penner. Grandma.

  I peek inside. Grandma beams. Her hands fold neatly on the sheet that covers her, while an IV drip pumps her with a variety of liquids. Happy drugs. She’s out of it.

  “No Naomi,” I whisper.

  I backtrack into the doorway, and Grandma turns her head. Her eyes, sharp and clear, focus on mine.

  “Now, there’s a Keegan. Come on in. I know I look old and scary with all this stuff.” She picks at the tape that keeps her IV needle in place. Makes me wince.

  I walk toward the bed. “No, you don’t.” My shoulders jump. “Now, that’s scary.”

  “I always liked those little ‘hellos’ in James. And Francine, of course. They made it easy to locate you Keegans.”

  “Francine?”

  “Your grandma, yes. We’d stay with them whenever we traveled home to California, which, I’d add, was quite often.”

  “Where in California?” The feeling I had outside the hospital floods me again.

  “Oh, we’d visit San Diego, San Francisco. I never enjoyed Los Angeles.”

  “No.” I move nearer to the bed. “Where’d Francine live?”

  Grandma looks hard at me, as if she’s trying to figure out whether my question is a joke. The confused look stays throughout her answer.

  “Why, the same place Francine lives now. Where I grew up and Turk and your father were born. Jerk, of course.”

  “My own grandmother.” I mouth the words and clear my throat. “I’m going to see my own grandmother? And she has Tourette’s?”

  This grandma watches me pace the room, her eyes calm as calm. I plunk into the visitor’s chair, stand back up—I can’t stay still.

  “You’re driving to see Francine?” she asks.

  “I’m—I’m driving to Jerk.”

  She nods. “Does Francine know you’re coming?”

  “Don’t know.” I kick a chair.

  “Be gentle with her, Jack. She’s been through a lot.”

  I slow my pace. “Like what?”

  “She’s been through James.”

  I freeze, and Grandma closes her eyes, yawns, and lets her head fall to the side. “It’s hard to be hated by the child you love.”

  “Hated?”

  “But I suppose it’s hard to accept the ones through whom diseases come.” She yawns again. “Glad you’ve been able to.” Her next yawn ends with a snore.

  There is no reason to cry. But tears fall anyway and I feel close to Dad for the first time in my life.

  I let Grandma Penner sleep for fifteen minutes. It’s all I can stand.

  “Grandma?” I pinch her toe. “Hey, wake up.”

  She opens her eyes, looks tired. “Did I drift off? I’m sorry. I am terribly old, you know.”

  “Don’t sound it.”

  Grandma nods. “Too old for this earth.” She smiles. “But that girl of yours—she looks so young. You look so young. Is she still here?”

  “Don’t know. That’s what I came to find out.”

  Grandma turns her head and strains to look out the window. Her view is a brick wall and a trash Dumpster.

  “Is the sky blue today?” she asks.

  “Yes.”

  “And is it hot?”

  “Yes.”

  She sighs. “In here it’s always the same.”

  I nod. I want to stay beside this woman I hardly know. I could tell her anything and she’d understand—I’m sure of it. It’s wonderful, and terrifying.

  I plop down beside her. “Mind if I sit here?”

  “Can she cook?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “A good meal. You look well fed.”

  “Naomi? I don’t know if she cooks.”

  Grandma scowls. “I’ll talk to her. How about sewing. Does she do your mending?”

  “She didn’t tell you.” I exhale slowly. “We’re not married or anything.”

  Grandma sighs.“Explains the secrecy. Doesn’t mean God can’t make something beautiful out of it. Is there wedding talk?”

  I roll my eyes. “It has come up lately.”

  “Needs to, Jack. Baby needs a father like it needs air.”

  “Baby? We’re not—”

  Grandma looks past me. I turn. Naomi stands frozen in the doorway with a dinner tray. “They just have chicken tonight.” Naomi licks her lips, and her big eyes shift to me. “Have you been here long?”

  “Not really.” I stand. “Can we talk in the hallway?”

  “Why?”

  Her response hits me sideways, and I look toward Grandma.

  “Such a handsome couple. Don’t worry.” She reaches for my hand. “It won’t be easy, but God will help you through it. New life is so beautiful.”

  The tray hits the tile with a crash.

  Chicken and mashed potatoes cover the floor of the empty doorway. Grandma squeezes my hand, and I glance at her, wild-eyed.

  “Now go after her,” she whispers.

  I back slowly toward the door.

  “Can’t you run, Jack?”

  I nod, leap over the tray, and weave between nurses staring at the exit. By the time I explode out the door, Naomi’s a tiny figure that gets smaller by the moment. I throw off my shirt and breathe deep.

  “Here we go.”

  chapter thirty-four

  I’D FORGOTTEN NAOMI HAD BEEN TRAINING FOR a marathon.

  She runs straight out of Hillsboro. The road is narrow and hilly, without any shoulder, and Naomi runs in the center of the right lane. Cars whiz by us from the front, honk from the rear, but we don’t break stride.

  I catch her three miles outside of town.

  “Na-Naomi. Stop.”

  She pounds on, legs striding, eyes steeled, as if I don’t exist. But I do, and I lean in to her shoulder.

  “Naomi!” I reach for her arm. She pulls free and finds extra speed.

  I accelerate. “No more!” I grab her arm with both hands and yank. Her body doesn’t want to stop. It tugs and swings and flails, and her hand catches me hard across the cheek.

  “Are you having a baby?” I move my hands to her shoulders and straighten her. She glares at me, wriggles away, and backs into the oncoming lane. A car swerves around her.

  “No!” She staggers around, throws her hair back.

  “Naomi! Are you having a baby?”

  “No!” She runs at me and gives me a shove.

  “Are . . . you . . . pregnant?”

  She doubles over and heaves, but only sobs com
e out.

  “Oh God!” She falls onto a knee. I jump toward her and haul her limp body off the road.

  “What a fool I am,” I whisper. It all makes sense. The ups and downs and cries. “I bet pretending did take it out of you.”

  We huddle against the guardrail. Each passing semi brings stinging stones and honks and a smelly gust of wind.

  I sting inside, too, because we’re not married and now I know she doesn’t belong to me, but last night she acted as if she did.

  I hold Naomi a long time—enough for her to feel several strong jerks. I want to run away myself, run away from myself, but that never works, so I stay and press my back into the metal rail and hope Naomi doesn’t stick out her leg at the same time a truck comes by.

  Within my arms, I feel her strengthen. She shifts, first those legs, then her middle, as life creeps back into her body.

  “You two okay?”

  The deep voice floats out from a pickup parked behind us. We both turn, but Naomi shifts her gaze to me. “I am now.” She gives me a hug.

  “This probably isn’t the safest place for that kind of behavior. You sure you two don’t want a ride somewheres?”

  I raise eyebrows at Naomi, who nods.

  The man shrugs, smiles, and drives off. Naomi stands and pulls me to my feet.

  “Come on,” she says, and bounces toward town. I must’ve missed something because I’d have sworn that minutes ago she was a sobbing mess. Naomi spins, lifts her arms, and lets them flop against her sides.

  My mouth falls open. “There was a girl sitting right there.” I point to the guardrail. “She was in tough shape—”

  “You don’t know how light I feel!” She’s got that right. She runs toward me and grabs my twitchy left arm. She tries to steady it, can’t, and laughs.

  I plod beside her. She’s pregnant. My fake wife, fake girl-friend, fake everything, is pregnant. I glance at her stomach. Couldn’t have happened too long ago, probably while I worked at her place. Probably I was outside slammin’ plants and she and some jerk were inside—my stomach turns.

  “I sat there with Grandma and pretty soon I’m talking about my family, and then I’m talking about you, and suddenly I’m talking about it. I almost slipped and let on about the marriage—”