“I thought you had a reason.”
“Laurel, Pat asked me to talk to you. I told him it was none of our business. But he’s honestly worried about Mike. They’ve been friends for a long time.”
“What did he say?”
“Oh … I’m not very good at this … but Mike has.…” She brushed imaginary ashes off her shorts. “We don’t know anything, you understand. We don’t want to pry. Mike has never discussed his personal life with us, not even Pat.” Myra talked rapidly, to get it over with.
“Pat told me after you moved in that he’d gotten the idea that your husband had once had an unlucky love affair or something. Mike seemed down on women. But Pat didn’t know about you or Jimmy. This was overseas. And then when Mike got back here, he seemed to be getting over it, enjoying himself more.” Myra had to relight her cigarette. Her hand shook.
“And then I showed up?”
“Yeah. The base grapevine has been sizzling ever since; he was getting pretty popular. But he’s changed since you came here, Laurel—crabby and moody at the base and not getting enough sleep, drinking. He’s tied into student pilots for no reason. It’s not like him. And this last week he’s pulled a couple of boners in the air himself that could have piled him up.”
“And Pat thinks it’s my fault?”
“Well, things aren’t right around here. But I told him that lots of men have family trouble … I wish I didn’t get myself into these things.”
“You’ve gotten this far; you might as well finish it.”
“Do you realize he’s been out with a different woman every night this week? The strange part of it is, you don’t seem to care. That’s a lot of man you’ve got there, Laurel. I could name a number of gals who’d love to be in your shoes. If you don’t patch things up pretty soon, you’re going to lose him one way or another.”
“If I told you what the problem is, you wouldn’t believe it.”
“I don’t want to know. I just want you to do something fast before you ruin a good man. He’s up for major, you know. And if he keeps on like this … well.…”
“Thanks for telling me, Myra.”
“It wasn’t easy. But look at you. What I’ve just told you … and there you sit in that cold, detached world of yours. Don’t you care?”
“Yes, I care. I don’t want to ruin Michael. Tell Pat I’ll try to think of something.”
“I’m going to say one more thing and get out of here as fast as I can.” Myra leaned against the glass door, her hand on the handle. “You’re a looker, Laurel. A gal like you ought to be able to get around a man. If you’d just warm up a little.”
That night Laurel fixed tacos for dinner. She always made enough dinner for Michael, too, and she and Jimmy often ate his portion for lunch the next day. But Michael ate his own tacos that night.
He came home with a paper sack full of liquor bottles, mixed them each a drink and then went in to watch television with Jimmy. He looked exhausted.
It wasn’t until they sat down to dinner that she spoke to him. “Myra came over today for a heart-to-heart. She thinks I’m ruining you.”
“A man doesn’t get credit for doing anything for himself anymore.”
“She says you’ve been seeing other women.”
“Other women?”
“Michael, I want to explain about Harley.”
“Let’s just eat. At least, you haven’t forgotten how to make tacos.”
“Just listen to me.” And she told him everything from waking up in the desert to ending up in Raymond’s motel. And then she told him of her attempt to run away, of Harley’s coming to get her, their following Jimmy and Consuela to the Wishing Shrine, her decision to stay. She didn’t tell Michael that Harley had kissed her.
“… and that’s the last I’ve seen of him. He thought … I was crazy. I don’t think so; I just seem to stop thinking when things get painful. I avoid things.” She listened to her own monotone. It did sound cold, detached.
“Since then I’ve tried off and on to remember. I’ve come up with … almost nothing. I’ve written to my mother, hoping she can tell me something that will jar things loose, but I’ve had no answer.”
He scooped chorizo into the curved tortilla and looked at her for the first time. “What do you want of me?”
“I want help. I want you to help me remember.”
“Do you want a doctor?” His impersonal tone matched hers.
“No. I want to go back to this place on the desert.”
“What makes you think you can find it?”
“It’s on the road to Florence. Off on a side road that leads to the ranch where Harley’s father committed suicide.”
“The Milner homestead, Paul’s mother’s old place. That’s where my father got his start.”
“Will you take me there?”
He met her plea with a cold stare. “Why not ask your friend Harley or Evan Boucher?”
Either he didn’t believe her or he was inhuman.
Laurel felt something inside her click off. It didn’t click on again until September 12, the day her probation ended, the day of the plane crash.
15
Friday, September 12, dawned hot, the two-month record-breaking heat wave still unbroken. Laurel fixed breakfast as if this were any other day, and Michael said nothing about the end of her probation before he left for the base.
She’d spent the last two weeks in a slow dream, living from moment to moment, enjoying her son. She’d taken the time to notice the gleam of sunlight on his pale yellow hair next to the golden brown of his skin, the way he wrinkled his baby nose when he looked up at the sun—one eye screwed tight shut. The exciting rhythm of morning coffee hitting the glass dome of the percolator. Her own image in Michael’s sunglasses when she could imagine his expression was not the one she knew was there. She’d lived the last two weeks as if this day would be her last on earth.
Laurel had no plans for the days to follow. Once it had occurred to her to take Jimmy and run off, but that was just a fleeting thought. She hadn’t tried to remember anything. It no longer seemed important. She sensed that the danger she feared still lurked somewhere waiting for her. Let it wait. Life would be over for her when she lost Jimmy anyway.
She left the breakfast dishes half done and stepped out into the backyard. Funny how the coarse, stubby grass remained brown no matter how much water Myra put on it. Funny how this could be doomsday and she should feel so little. Just mildly lazy and peaceful under a sun so hot that her hair felt fiery to her fingertips when she brushed back a stray strand.
A roaring across the road told her that all the planes hadn’t left yet. Even planes overhead hadn’t panicked her these last weeks, and she shielded her eyes to watch the long gleaming jet thunder above her, its wings swept back like a dog’s ears in a race. Still-spinning wheels retracted behind silver doors, a white star on a circle of blue with red and white bars on either side, and deadly slender tubes were visible on the underside of each wing. The pointed nose seemed to head straight up and then the jet circled back over the base toward the mountain range on the skyline.
“Boy, that one was loaded. Must be headed for Gila Bend.” Colleen walked across the yard toward her.
“That’s not a town, I hope.”
“Well, I’m talking about a target range out in the desert where the boys pulverize everything in sight. Doesn’t Mike tell you anything?”
But Laurel didn’t answer. The jet seemed to be losing altitude, its nose heading downward. No, it must be the distance. But she found herself pointing it out to Colleen.
“Oh-oh!” was all Colleen had time to say before the distant rumble.
Smoke billowed into the sky just this side of the mountains. There must have been a lot of fire, but she couldn’t see it … only the smoke … dirty black smoke that trailed away at the edges only to be replaced by more and more … and two figures struggled on the packed desert floor, rolling over and over, jabbing each other anywhere they could …
one reached for the other’s throat and.…
“Laurel! I’m going to throw water on her if she doesn’t come out of it pretty soon.”
“No, Myra, her eyes are open and she’s sitting up. She’s not unconscious.”
“Mommy?”
“What do you suggest then?”
“I don’t know, maybe she’s in shock. She hasn’t blinked for ten minutes.”
“Mommy!”
“Think I should call a doctor?”
“She didn’t pass out or anything. Could she be in some kind of trance? She doesn’t take drugs, does she?”
Jimmy’s red shorts and plump legs wavered in front of her … many feet and legs … her eyes stinging. She closed them.
“Hey, I think she’s back with us. Laurel, you all right?” Myra looked silly on her hands and knees.
Laurel giggled. “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to see if you’ve come back to the world. Where’ve you been?”
“The plane.”
“Take it easy. See if you can stand up. Poor little Jimmy’s been scared to death.”
“The plane?” She stood up with Myra’s help, feeling nauseated.
“It crashed. Look, Laurel, with all the jets in the air around here and student pilots, that’s going to happen.”
“Who was in it?”
“We don’t know yet.” Myra sounded angry, or was it worried? “It could have been any one of hundreds of men or a couple of them and they might have ejected anyway. You don’t know that it was Mike—odds are it wasn’t. Now, let’s get you out of the sun.”
It was a student pilot who went down. They heard it on the radio about half an hour later. He hadn’t ejected.
It couldn’t have been ten minutes after Myra and Colleen left her that a knock brought her to the door to find Evan Boucher blushing on the step.
He took one look at Laurel and opened the door for himself. “What’s happened? You look awful.”
Laurel explained about the plane crash. “… And, Evan, I just … just blanked out … and my probation is up today.” She shuddered and turned to the wall next to the door of Michael’s bedroom, leaning her forehead against it.
“Has he told you to get out?”
“No, but I expect he will.”
“Well, if that’s all he does.…”
“If that’s all! Evan, I can’t live without Jimmy.”
“Don’t cry. I didn’t mean it that way.” He turned her gently to face him, and then he just looked into her eyes, willing her to truly see him. She’d always dismissed Evan as ineffectual, but there was a sensitivity and strength in his face she’d never noticed before. “If he kicks you out, call me and I’ll help you find a place to stay near Jimmy and he’ll have to let you see him some, even if he gets custody. Just promise you’ll call me.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“I always jump headfirst into a fight where the little guy’s getting stepped on.” Those two vertical furrows formed on his forehead and then relaxed as he grinned. “But I’m warning you, I often get massacred.”
“Is that why you went to work in a mental institution?” Laurel studied him; he couldn’t be much over twenty.
“Yeah, I was really going to help those poor people and I didn’t last six months. Hey, you’re still shaking.” And he drew her close, letting her relax against him. She’d known so little kindness, so little sympathy.…
“Sometimes I wish I’d never met you. I wake up at night and see those big troubled eyes of yours and wonder if he’s hurting you.”
But Laurel had stopped listening to him. They stood near the front door. With one side of her head resting against Evan, she looked through the screen directly into Michael’s eyes. He stood frozen on the step, his hand on the door latch. His lips were white. He turned suddenly and walked to his car.
Michael didn’t come home for three days.
Laurel’s lazy peacefulness was gone and she dragged through the endless routine. Even the extension on her probation brought little comfort as her nervousness grew. When it became too much, she’d probably blank out.
It frightened her not to know when it would happen.
On Monday, the third day of Michael’s absence, the cooler broke down. By that evening she’d opened the windows and sliding doors to entice some of the evening air into the house. But the air lay still inside and out. Jimmy slept in nothing but night diapers and rubber pants. Laurel lay across her bed, trying to will herself into the hot kitchen and the eternal dishes. What did they matter anyway?… Two men rolled over and over on the desert floor, jabbing each other.…
She soon stood over the sink, the steamy heat of the dishwater floating up to her face, sweat trickling into her eyebrows, her own bedraggled image staring back from the window in front of her.
Without the racket of the cooler the house lay silent; even the old refrigerator was still for once. The only sound the buzzing and thumping of bugs as they dashed themselves against the screens.
Laurel paused as a car pulled in. A door slammed. She rinsed a glass with trembling hands. The front screen door opened and closed.
The empty quiet had fled.
When she looked up, Michael stood in front of the patio doors, gazing out at a night he couldn’t see, filling the room as he always did. She’s expected him to be different—unshaven, tousled, perhaps drunk. But he looked much the same.
“Jimmy’s been asking for you.” She could smell whiskey in the close room now. The stoop in his shoulders seemed slightly exaggerated.
“The cooler broke down.”
Michael turned to face her and she could see the darkness around his eyes, the deepened lines running from the edges of his nostrils to the corners of his mouth.
He moved abruptly to the refrigerator, took out a tray of ice and mixed two drinks in plastic juice glasses.
His silence made her uneasy and she moved away from him. “Say something.”
“You’re a mess.” He leaned against the counter, cocking his head to one side, looking arrogant, dangerous.
“It’s been hot in here.”
“Homemaking is hard work, isn’t it, little Mother?” Tonight his eyes were almost colorless, seeming larger because of the shadows that surrounded them.
“It’s not the work. It’s the tension.”
“Your probation is up.”
“Are you going to kick me out?”
“I thought you’d have run by now. Back to your friends in the mountains … when life didn’t turn out as luxurious as you’d expected.”
“That was just a story I made up for the hearing. I got it from Janet.”
“I even thought you might try to take Jimmy.”
“I thought of it.”
“You’d have been very sorry,” he whispered.
The way he watched her, with his eyelids half-lowered … something in his stance—a relaxed readiness … the twitching just above his jawline. The time for a showdown had come. She drained her glass, hoping for courage, but the sting in her throat just brought tears to her eyes.
“Tell me something, Laurel. Is there anything behind that blank stare of yours?”
He was baiting her now. She must stay calm. But it was then that she started backing away from him.
“Who was the man, Laurel?” The silken warning in his voice. “Was it Evan Boucher or this Harley?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know where I was.” Her back came up against the refrigerator.
“Who was the man?” Michael repeated, closing in on her so that she had to look up at him.
“How do you know there was a man?” Sound filled the room now—the rumbling of the refrigerator, their breathing, the roaring in her ears. “Damn you. You could try to help me remember if you’re so curious. But you don’t want to help, you want to drive me crazy, drive me away.…”
Trapped between the refrigerator and Michael, Laurel darted sideways, but he grabbed her wrist and jerked her back, hard
.
“You’re afraid of me.”
“Yes, I’m afraid of you. All you’ve done is threaten me. I don’t know you … what you might do. Don’t you see? I don’t remember you at all.”
He reached above her to set his glass on the refrigerator, bringing his hand down across her cheek, her throat. It was not a caress. “You don’t remember anything.”
“No.”
“Are you still here because Jimmy is going to inherit money?”
“No. I want Jimmy. He’s mine, too.”
“You want Jimmy. Is that all you want, Laurel?”
She wanted to beat on his chest with her fists, to force him to really listen to her, to make him understand that he was a stranger, to make him feel her terror of mind and memory slipping away with no warning, to convince him of her desperate fear that time was closing in on her.
But it was like judgment day after a life of guilt and from which there is no appeal. Whatever was coming to her she’d brought upon herself. Part of Laurel wanted to make a plea on her behalf; the other told her it was too late—would be glad to have it over at last.
Just when she thought she’d be crushed between the hardness of his body and that of the refrigerator he released her arms and grabbed a handful of hair, propelling her toward his room.
“Let’s see if we can help you remember.”
Laurel yielded to him one moment and struggled against him the next. His smothering weight brought a silent screamng to her mind, an answering desire to her body.
There was no romance, no magic, no barriers between them. Just a silent, sweaty struggle in a hot darkened room on a bed meant for one. When his knee forced her knees to part she bit him. Michael slapped her.
Now, now I’ll blank out. But her arms curled around his neck and the back of his head pulling his face down to hers, her lips finding his and holding them. Her body pulling him inside her and holding him.
It wasn’t until she’d released him that she felt the various aches, the soreness brought on by the struggle. Even then she lay calmly by his side until his comment brought an angry flush to her face.
“If you think that I waited three years for you, you’re a damn fool.”