She sat with her backpack on her lap. I had the sudden urge to yank it away from her and go through it. I had t? &my nose in everybody’s business. I didn’t want to steal anything, I just wanted to pry and sate my curiosity.
She said, “I told you last night, Terry, I don’t like you following me.”
“Jesus Christ, I’m not following you, Dale. But I didn’t think I’d need to make an appointment with your social secretary either.”
“I have a life, you know.”
“I know. I have no idea what it includes, but I know you have one.”
“If you’re interested, I’ll tell you all about it.”
I cracked my window and tapped cigarette ash outside. The smoke made JFK sneeze so hard he nearly rolled off the backseat. “I am interested. Of course I am.”
“Stop playing coy, Terry. You’re not here to take me out to the malt shop for a sundae. And you didn’t come just to chat or to ask me how much homework I have.”
She was laying it on the line. I had to do the same.
“Tell me more about Butch.”
“You don’t like him.”
“I didn’t say that.”
An angry grin crimped her mouth. It was so abhorrent that I wanted to slap it off her face. “You didn’t have to. You don’t like him and Mom and Dad don’t like him and the three of you are just buzzing around like wasps, aren’t you?”
“No, I don’t think that’s what we’re doing.”
“He’s my boyfriend. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“No,” I said. I tried to remember the days when I’d drive her to the ice cream parlor and everything made her eyes brighten. “Where’d you two meet?”
“At the lake.”
I waited for more. There wasn’t any.
“You know he’s too old for you.”
“Your opinion, Terry.”
“And the law’s. He could go up for seven on statutory-rape charges.”
She tossed the backpack on the floor, put her feet on the dashboard, and crossed her ankles. “You worried about the law all of a sudden?”
“Not really. Are you being contrary for a reason?”
She turned her face away, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. We Rands, we could work one another’s nerves without even making an effort. “What did you do for those five years you were gone?”
“Worked on ranches, mostly.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why?”
“Yes, why? Did you like it? Is it something you always wanted to do?”
We were getting to places I didn’t want to be. “I didn’t mind it. And yeah, I thought about doing it before I wound up broke with a busted-down car on a road where the exits were thirty miles apart. But I didn’t know what it would really be like.”
She sounded genuinely interested. I wondered if she was just trying to find a way to hurt me. “So why didn’t you get another job?”
“Because I was only killing time. I knew the call would come one day, I guess. I didn’t know you’d be making it, but I knew it would come. And I knew I’d have to sit across from Collie and finally ask him the questions I wanted to know the answers to.”
“Did you get them?”
“No. He’s contrary too.”
“I’m not being contrary. I just don’t know what to tell you.” She swung her legs down and planted her feet on the car mat again. “Start the car, let’s go already.”
I checked the rearview and spotted the security guy coming over to brace me and get me off school property. I threw the car in gear and headed back toward Old Autauk Road.
Dale was smart and mature and was running at least a small game on me, but I just couldn’t manage to come out and ask her if she knew Butch was planning a heist. Or if she was involved in any way. I felt sick with myself for even thinking such a thing, but that didn’t mean I was wrong.
“Why didn’t you give Blanche a southern accent?”
“And be like everyone else? I was trying something new.”
“It worked. You nailed it.”
“Thank you. So you’ve complimented me, now comes the changeup when you ask me something you really want to know. So go on.”
I wanted to know it all but I would never be able to convince her of that. Again that cruel smile played on her lips.
“Have you ever tried to visit Collie?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Why would I want to? You didn’t see him until I called you.”
I didn’t want to dig too deeply, but I thought the only way I’d ever learn anything about her, really understand her once again, was to discuss Collie. It tied us together and touched us in a way that it wouldn’t touch anyone else. Collie was our older brother, and there was something exclusive in that.
“I don’t feel the same way you do,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She used an index finger to draw a smiley face in the condensation of the passenger window. When she was done she wiped it away with her palm. “I didn’t know him as well as you did. He wasn’t… He didn’t treat me like you did. He didn’t read to me. He wasn’t interested in me. He was out doing whatever he was doing. We had no real relationship.”
“Dale, I know he was a prick, but still, he-”
“If you say that he loved me, I’m going to yank the wheel and crash us.”
Maybe that was what I was going to say. Maybe Collie had loved her and simply hadn’t known how to show it. Maybe he hadn’t given a damn. He could’ve started slipping into the underneath years before he went mad dog. I seemed to remember him being around, taking her out for ice cream, buying her presents, hugging her and teasing her the way older brothers do. Maybe she just didn’t remember, or maybe I was making too much of it.
“I wasn’t going to say that,” I said.
“Ask me what you really want to know.”
“I’m not sure what I want to know.”
“Yes, you are. You want to know if he replaced you at all. If in the last five years I visited him, wrote to him, phoned him. If I cared about him more than I cared about you.” From second to second, emotions played havoc inside her, maybe the way they did inside all of us Rands. She moved from anger and insecurity to a need for proving herself self-reliant. “The answer is no, Terry. You were both gone. I felt the same way about you both. I didn’t think about either of you much. I couldn’t. You each deserted the family. I cared more about Gramp, right? At least he was there.”
It hurt hearing the truth. This was why Rands didn’t talk. Despite our stoniness, we were a sensitive, fickle bunch. I kept glancing at her. I kept wondering if there was any way to fix our relationship and if I even had the mettle to make the effort.
I said, “Dale, if you’re ever in trouble, you don’t have to face it alone.”
She frowned at me, cocked her head like she hadn’t heard right. “What?”
“You can talk to me. Really. I want you to.”
It was the same offer that Mal had made to me.
“Terry, since you’ve been back we’ve hardly had what you might call a deep conversation.”
“I’m trying to fix that right now. You can still talk to me. You’re not alone. I’ll help you. Whatever it is, I’ll help you, if you’re ever in trouble.”
Her expression shifted a few more times, from perplexity to annoyance to something else I couldn’t place. “Are you talking about… pregnancy?”
“Ah, no, not specifically, I mean-”
“Oh, God.” She threw up her hands. Her nails snapped against the dome light, and JFK perked up like he’d heard a gunshot. “Is this your way of saying that you’ll, what, help me get an abortion?”
“No, no, not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
I couldn’t find the right words. I couldn’t hold on to any particular thread of discussion. A pulse beat painfully in my belly. “I just mean… well, anything. Any problems. Anything you need help with. Ever. Whether it’s with Butch or anyone else.”