So that’s why she mostly listened, Aimee, because when something was as overwhelming as the little guy’s life had been—
Sometimes the desk clerk made the long and taxing trip up the stairs and knocked with a single knuckle and said, “You okay in there, hon?”
And Aimee would say, “We’re fine, we’re fine,” not knowing exactly who “you” meant.
And then the desk clerk would go away and Aimee would start rocking Linnette again and listening to her and wanting to tell Linnette that she felt terrible about the little guy’s death.
And then it occurred to Aimee that maybe by sitting here like this and listening to Linnette and rocking her, maybe she was in some way making up for playing a small part in the little guy’s suicide.
“Sometimes I just get so scared,” Linnette said just as dawn was breaking coral-colored across the sky.
And Aimee knew just what Linnette was talking about because Aimee got scared like that, too, sometimes.
The Greyhound arrived twenty-three minutes late that afternoon.
Aimee and Linnette stood in the depot entrance with a group of other people. There was a farm girl who kept saying how excited she was to be going to Fresno and a marine who kept saying it was going to be good to see Iowa again and an old woman who kept saying she hoped they kept the windows closed because even on a ninety-two-degree day like this one she’d get a chill.
“You ever get up to Sacramento?” Linnette asked.
“Sometimes.”
“You could always call me at the library and we could have lunch.”
“That sounds like fun, Linnette. It really does.”
Linnette took Aimee’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “You really helped me last night. I’ll never forget it, Aimee. I really won’t.”
Just then the bus pulled in with a whoosh of air brakes and a puff of black diesel smoke.
In one of the front windows a five-year-old boy was looking out and when he saw Linnette, he started jumping up and down and pointing, and then a couple of moments later another five-year-old face appeared in the same window and now there were two boys looking and pointing and laughing at Linnette.
Maybe the worst part of it all, Aimee thought, was that they didn’t even really mean to be cruel.
And then the bus door was flung open and a Greyhound driver looking dapper in a newly starched uniform stepped down and helped several old ladies off the bus.
“I wish he could have known you, Aimee,” Linnette said. “He sure would have liked you. He sure would’ve.”
And then, for once, it was Aimee who started the crying and she wasn’t even sure why. It just seemed right somehow, she thought, as she helped the little woman take the first big step up into the bus.
A minute later, Linnette was sitting in the middle of the bus, next to a window seat. Her eyes barely reached the window ledge.
Behind Aimee, the door burst open and the two five-year-olds came running out of the depot, carrying cups of Pepsi.
They looked up and saw Linnette in the window. They started pointing and giggling immediately.
Aimee grabbed the closest one by the ear, giving it enough of a twist to inflict some real pain.
“That’s one fine lady aboard that bus there, you hear me? And you treat her like a fine lady, too, or you’re going to get your butts spanked! Do you understand me?” Aimee said.
Then she let go of the boy’s ear.
“You understand me?” she repeated.
The boys looked at each other and then back to Aimee. They seemed scared of her, which was what she wanted them to be.
“Yes, ma’am,” both boys said in unison. “We understand.”
“Good. Now you get up there on that bus and behave yourselves.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the boys said again, and climbed aboard the bus, not looking back at her even once.
Aimee waited till the Greyhound pulled out with a roar of engine and a poof of sooty smoke.
She waved at Linnette and Linnette waved back. “Good-bye,” Aimee said, and was afraid she was going to start crying.
When the bus was gone, Aimee walked over to the taxi stand. A young man who looked like a child was driving.
Aimee told him to take her to the carnival and then she settled back in the seat and looked out the window.
After a time, it began to rain, a hot summer rain, and the rest of the day and all the next long night, Aimee tried to keep herself from thinking about certain things. She tried so very hard.
Prisoners
For Gail Cross
I am in my sister’s small room with its posters of Madonna and Tiffany. Sis is fourteen. Already tall, already pretty. Dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt. Boys call and come over constantly. She wants nothing to do with boys.
Her back is to me. She will not turn around. I sit on the edge of her bed, touching my hand to her shoulder. She smells warm, of sleep. I say, “Sis listen to me.”
She says nothing. She almost always says nothing.
“He wants to see you Sis.”
Nothing.
“When he called last weekend — you were all he talked about. He even started crying when you wouldn’t come to the phone Sis. He really did.”
Nothing.
“Please, Sis. Please put on some good clothes and get ready ’cause we’ve got to leave in ten minutes. We’ve got to get there on time and you know it.” I lean over so I can see her face.
She tucks her face into her pillow.
She doesn’t want me to see that she is crying.
“Now you go and get ready Sis. You go and get ready, all right?”
“I don’t know who she thinks she is,” Ma says when I go downstairs. “Too good to go and see her own father.”
As she talks Ma is packing a big brown grocery sack. Into it go a cornucopia of goodies — three cartons of Lucky Strike filters, three packages of Hershey bars, two bottles of Ban roll-on deodorant, three Louis L’Amour paperbacks as well as all the stuff that’s there already.
Ma looks up at me. I’ve seen pictures of her when she was a young woman. She was a beauty. But that was before she started putting on weight and her hair started thinning and she stopped caring about how she dressed and all. “She going to go with us?”
“She says not.”
“Just who does she think she is?”
“Calm down Ma. If she doesn’t want to go, we’ll just go ahead without her.”
“What do we tell your dad?”
“Tell him she’s got the flu?”
“The way she had the flu the last six times?”
“She’s gone a few times.”
“Yeah twice out of the whole year he’s been there.”
“Well.”
“How do you think he feels? He gets all excited thinking he’s going to see her and then she doesn’t show up. How do you think he feels? She’s his own flesh and blood.”
I sigh. Ma’s none too healthy and getting worked up this way doesn’t do her any good. “I better go and call Riley.”
“That’s it. Go call Riley. Leave me here alone to worry about what we’re going to tell your dad.”
“You know how Riley is. He appreciates a call.”
“You don’t care about me no more than your selfish sister does.”
I go out to the living room where the phone sits on the end table I picked up at Goodwill last Christmastime. A lot of people don’t like to shop at Goodwill, embarrassed about going in there and all. The only thing I don’t like is the smell. All those old clothes hanging. Sometimes I wonder if you opened up a grave if it wouldn’t smell like Goodwill.
I call Kmart, which is where I work as a manager trainee while I’m finishing off my retail degree at the junior college. My girlfriend Karen works at Kmart too. “Riley?”