Keeping Lucy Read online

  Lucy looked at her, confused.

  “Like this,” she said and took a bite from the peach. It was sweet and soft.

  She held it out to Lucy again, who leaned forward and took a hesitant bite. She shivered a little, delight in her eyes. She took another bite and then another, the sweet peach juice dripping down her chin and onto her last clean shirt, a ring of the syrupy juice around her mouth.

  Ginny looked up again and saw that there were several peaches ripe on the branches, so she gathered a half dozen, tossing them into the beach towel and making a makeshift basket.

  She carried Lucy in one arm and held the peaches in her other hand. They walked out of the grove of trees and back up the embankment, where she saw a pickup truck parked behind Marsha’s car. Crap.

  Ginny pressed the baby close to her as she tentatively walked toward the vehicles, noting that the truck was empty. The hood of Marsha’s car was still popped, Peyton was still in the backseat, but peering at the engine was a man in faded Levi’s and a blue flannel shirt. Marsha was leaning against the car, her hands covered with grease, ponytail loose, and cheeks flushed.

  “I think you’ve got a pinhole puncture in your radiator … must have happened when you hit the deer. It’s been leaking, and now you’re overheating. You’re gonna need to get this into a shop.” The man stood up and started to say something to Marsha when he startled at the sight of Ginny and Lucy.

  “Oh, hi!” he said, smiling. He jutted his hand out toward her in greeting and, seeing the greasy mess, wiped it on his pant leg.

  “This is Jesse,” Marsha said, unfazed.

  “Hi,” Ginny said.

  Jesse looked to be about their age. His eyes were bright blue against suntanned skin. He was lean but muscular, with long dark hair and a beard.

  Ginny felt Lucy stiffen in her arms, then she buried her head in Ginny’s chest, hard. She could feel her skull pressing against her sternum.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she cooed. “You want another peach?” When Lucy buried her head deeper, Ginny looked up at the man again.

  “This is gonna sound like a weird question, but any chance you have an egg or some pepper with you in the car?” Jesse asked.

  He wanted lunch?

  “I’ve got peaches,” Ginny said, handing one out to him.

  He laughed. “No, not to eat. A raw egg or some pepper will seal the hole in the radiator long enough to get it to a shop,” he said.

  “Hold on,” Marsha said. She leaned into the car again, and for a moment, Ginny wondered if she might be reaching in for the gun. But instead, she came out with a couple of little salt and pepper packets. “Look what I found!”

  “Perfect,” he said and winked, and when he leaned back under the hood, Marsha looked at Ginny and gestured to his rear end, mouthing, “Nice butt.”

  The man stood up and released the hood prop, lowered the hood shut, and brushed his hands together. “This should get y’all to the nearest service station. You wanna follow me?”

  Marsha nodded and moved around to the driver’s side, allowing him to open the door for her, as if they were about to go out on a date. But when he moved around the car and opened the passenger door for Ginny, offering to take the peaches so she could get Lucy into the backseat, Lucy wrapped her legs tightly around Ginny’s waist. She could have completely let go of her and she would have continued to cling to her trunk like a monkey. And she made the same low growl she’d made at the restaurant.

  “Hey,” Ginny cooed, trying to soothe her.

  “It’s right down here,” the man said, gesturing to a dirt road to the right. “I’ll pull ahead so you can follow me.”

  She could not pry Lucy off her, so she pulled her into the front seat, holding her on her lap. Lucy’s body was trembling.

  “Is she okay?” Marsha asked, starting the engine.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong,” Ginny said. “She did this at that diner, too. There was a man there with a beard. Maybe she’s afraid of men with beards?”

  Jesse pulled his truck up onto the road next to the driver’s side and leaned across the seat. “It’s about three miles, just follow me!”

  Lucy’s body trembled, as though she were sitting on the Magic Fingers mattress.

  They drove down the dirt road, surrounded on both sides by peach trees making intricate shadows in the waning light. Ginny checked her watch; it was nearly six o’clock already.

  “Nothing’s gonna be open this late,” Ginny said.

  Marsha nodded. “But maybe we can at least get the car into a shop, then find someplace to stay for the night? If there’s a town?”

  It didn’t look to Ginny like there was any semblance of civilization, and her skin began to prickle.

  “How far did he say it was?” Ginny asked.

  “Three miles?” Marsha said, but she looked concerned as well, leaning toward the dash, squinting her eyes.

  The truck bounced along in front of them, and when they came to an intersection, the man’s arm extended out the window, motioning for them to turn right.

  “I don’t know,” Ginny said. “Maybe we should just turn around. Get back on the highway?”

  Marsha’s mouth twitched. “What’s the worst that could happen?” she said.

  Ginny felt her body tense. “Um, the car could break down, and we’d be stuck in the middle of nowhere with some guy we don’t know from Adam?”

  Marsha gripped the steering wheel and took a deep breath. “Or, we turn around to go back and the car gets so hot it kills the engine and we’re stuck in Buttfuck, Georgia, without a vehicle, with a stolen kid and nothing but a bunch of peaches.” Marsha looked at her, almost angry.

  Ginny winced, her eyes prickling with tears.

  “I’m sorry,” Ginny said. “I didn’t mean to get you into this mess.”

  Marsha’s jaw clenched, which meant she was biting her words.

  “Well, look at that,” Marsha said suddenly as a small town came into view. Jesse’s truck pulled into the lot of a small service station on a street with a motel on either side, a BBQ joint, and a bar, the neon sign flashing a giant peach.

  The service station was, indeed, about to close. But the owner, who seemed to know Jesse, assured her that the Dart would be the first job on the docket in the morning, and that it likely wouldn’t require replacing the whole radiator. “Leave the car here, and go get a room over at the Island Grove,” he said, gesturing with his fat chin to the motel right next to the shop. “They got a pool for the kids. But you’re gonna want to get where you’re going before the weekend. Storm’s coming up through the Gulf, and it’s gonna make driving down there pretty dangerous.”

  “Why don’t we all get some supper,” Jesse suggested. “They’ve got a pretty decent pulled pork sandwich over at Ruby’s.”

  Ginny couldn’t imagine trying to get Lucy to eat anything with this guy and his ominous beard sitting at the same table. She’d calmed a bit, but was still clinging fiercely to her, her tiny fingers digging divots into Ginny’s neck.

  “I actually really just want to give both kids a soak in the tub. Looks like the motel has a café attached,” Ginny said. Marsha’s eyes implored her.

  She felt anger welling up in her. Really, was now the time to start taking up with a total stranger they met on the highway? What about Gabe? From what Pepper said, he was really in love with Marsha. Never mind the small issue of her being pregnant.

  “We’ve got to get on the road early—as soon as the car’s fixed,” Ginny added hopefully. “Probably should get some sleep?”

  “It’s just some sandwiches,” Jesse said. “Maybe a beer.”

  Marsha looked at Ginny, eyes pleading. There was nothing she could say or do that would change her mind.

  “You two go on,” Ginny said. Resigned.

  Marsha leaned into Ginny and kissed her on her cheek. “Go get our room. I won’t be late,” she said. “Hang something on the door so I know which is ours.” With that, she locked arms with Jesse and
waggled her fingers at Ginny. Ginny clutched Peyton’s hand, hoisted Lucy higher onto her hip, and started walking to the Island Grove’s registration office.

  * * *

  The moment she opened the motel room door, she began to regret letting Marsha go. The room was filthy, a spilled soda cup stuck to the floor. The ceilings and walls were stained. There were cigarette burns on the yellowed bathroom counter and matching burn holes in the suspect striped bedspreads. Ginny made Peyton and Lucy sit on top of two towels, which were, thankfully, clean and smelling of bleach, as she plunked down into a chair by the door. The chain lock was broken, she noted, and what she initially assumed was a peephole appeared, instead, to have been made by a bullet.

  She peered out the window at the so-called pool: the water murky green, poisonous looking, and the level too low for swimming. A couple of men who looked like they just got off a construction site sat in the plastic chaise lounges at the pool’s edge, drinking cans of Old Milwaukee from a cardboard case at their feet and smoking cigarettes. Their gruff laughter put her further on edge.

  There were only a few cars parked in the spaces in front of the rooms, most of them banged-up trucks laden with equipment. A rusty Volkswagen Bug and a green Plymouth Duster, its dashboard littered with fast-food wrappers.

  “It smells like yucky eggs,” Peyton said.

  She’d noticed the pervasive scent of sulfur ever since they got off the main highway. She assumed the culprit was a nearby paper mill, as the mills in Holyoke offered that same rotten egg smell, but for as far as the eye could see there was nothing but peach trees.

  As she was peering out the window, a man walked past the room, a toothpick working furiously up and down in his mouth, staring back at her as if she were a fish in an aquarium. Ginny gasped a little and drew the drapes shut tightly, the room becoming dark.

  She turned on the TV for Peyton, who was restless and hungry. She started thinking maybe she should have just gone with Jesse and Marsha to the BBQ joint. She could have kept an eye on Marsha and actually fed her kids.

  “Here,” she said, handing Peyton a peach from her stash.

  “I don’t want it,” he said, angrily crossing his arms against his chest. “I want to go home.”

  Startled, Ginny said, “Oh?”

  “I miss my room and my toys,” he said. “I miss Arthur. I miss Daddy.”

  Ginny’s heart heaved.

  “I don’t like it here. I miss Christopher. I want to go to school. Why can’t I go to school?”

  Lucy was mesmerized by the TV; The Mod Squad was on. The lights from the screen flickered across her face.

  “When are we going home?” Peyton asked.

  “Well,” Ginny tried, brightly. “We can’t go home until we go to Disney World and see Mickey Mouse.”

  Peyton was immovable.

  “But first,” she said, desperate for anything that might sway him, “we’re going to see some mermaids.”

  Peyton’s eyes lit up a little.

  “Remember, like in Peter Pan?” He’d loved that movie, and for a while he was convinced that if he wished hard enough he could fly. She’d caught him about to leap from the top of the stairwell just in time one morning.

  Peyton, still skeptical, nodded. “Will there be crocodiles?”

  “Maybe,” she said, feeling like she might slowly be winning him over.

  “When do we bring her back?” he said, gesturing at Lucy, who was munching happily on a peach, her hands clumsily grasping the piece of fruit, the juice running down her naked torso, her distended belly.

  Ginny felt his words like a tiny fist to her chest.

  “Back where?” she managed.

  “Back to her school. I don’t want a sister anymore. She can’t even walk or talk, and she smells bad.”

  She felt consumed with anger, all the injustices accumulating in a giant pool somewhere at the center of her chest, in the place where her heart lived.

  “You don’t get to decide,” she said angrily, scooping Lucy up into her arms, as if Peyton had threatened her physically. She pressed Lucy against her chest, covering her ear with the soft cup of her palm so she wouldn’t hear what she was about to say. “You don’t get to choose. She’s your sister. She will always be your sister.” Her voice broke as the anger spilled forth.

  “She’s weird,” he insisted. “And stupid. Her eyes look like a Chinaman and her tongue is always sticking out.”

  Before Ginny could stop herself, she had used her free hand to push Peyton backward onto the bed and taken a swat at his bottom. “Shut up!” Ginny yelled.

  The moment her hand contacted Peyton’s skin there was a stunned silence. Then Lucy began to wail, Peyton cried out in alarm, and Ginny felt that swell of anger and sadness and disbelief overwhelm her. Tears ran down her cheeks as she shook her head. She had never spanked Peyton before. Never once laid a hand on him in anger, despite her mother-in-law’s insistence that all bad behavior could be halted with a swift slap to the bottom. Ab had been the disciplinarian, though he needed to do little more than raise his voice to nudge Peyton back into line. Ginny had never so much as threatened a spanking before.

  Her own capacity for violence terrified her. The fact that she’d wanted to hurt her son felt unbelievable. Incomprehensible. It was as though every instinct she had to protect Lucy made her capable of trespassing into a place she’d never thought she’d go.

  She set Lucy down on the next bed and went to Peyton, but he shrank away from her, still crying.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, the words catching in her throat like spiny burs. “Pey, I didn’t mean to hurt you. But your words hurt me. They hurt Lucy. Still, I shouldn’t have hit you.”

  Her heart was beating hard and fast in her chest.

  “Pey?” she said.

  He slowly reached for her, and she scooped him up into her arms. Cradled him. He was so big now, but still just a baby, too. His body fit neatly against hers, and she stroked his hair, wiped his tears with the edge of her T-shirt.

  “Goodnight stars?” she offered, her throat feeling thick.

  “Goodnight air,” he said and hiccupped.

  “Goodnight noises everywhere.”

  His willingness to accept her apology was so easy. That sort of power, the power of being a parent whose children’s love is unconditional, felt dangerous. Ginny worried that this sort of easy forgiveness could make one reckless, and she vowed that she would never take advantage of this. Not again.

  She searched the room for something to tie to the doorknob so Marsha could find them, eventually settling on one of Peyton’s grubby socks. She peeked her head out the window, and when the walkway was vacant, she quickly affixed it to the door and slammed it shut again, securing the dead bolt. She gathered both children into the bed, though she was too afraid to pull back the comforter, and she lay between them as they each drifted off to sleep in her arms. She stared at the ceiling, hoping that Marsha would be back soon, that they could get to where they were going. That they could stop running.

  * * *

  The banging came just as Ginny was drifting off into a troubled sort of sleep, the kind that feels restless, just skimming the surface of consciousness. She shot up, gripping both children, terrified that the man who had been peering into the room earlier was now trying to get in.

  “It’s me!” Marsha said, and Ginny scrambled out of bed to let her in.

  Marsha slammed the door shut behind her, breathless. Ginny could only see the silhouette of her now.

  “What’s going on?” Ginny asked.

  Marsha shook her head and started grabbing her things. She clicked on the lamp on the battered table by the door, illuminating the room in a sickly yellow glow. Her hair was a mess, and she had mascara smudged under each eye; in the strange jaundiced motel light, she looked somehow bruised. Ginny felt her stomach turn. Her heart sank.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Let’s go,” Marsha said. “Please don’t ask any questions.
”

  Ginny got out of bed and started to gather her things into her bag. She felt dizzy, unsteady on her feet, as though still moving through a dream.

  “The keys should still be in the car, over at the shop. We’re only about ninety miles from Savannah.” Marsha was suddenly clearheaded and purposeful. “We’ll get the car fixed there.”

  Ginny silently followed Marsha’s lead, figuring she’d get answers to her questions when they were finally on the road again.

  “The room’s paid for, right?” Marsha asked.

  “Yeah,” Ginny said. She’d used the credit card again. It was only ten dollars for the night, but she figured she’d better use the card whenever she was able, to save her precious cash.

  “I’ll carry Peyton,” Marsha said. “You get Lucy.”

  Laden with their bags and the kids, they quickly exited the motel, circumventing the quiet pool area and the nearly empty parking lot. The main street through the town was empty as well, no cars at all except for an idling semi. The air was thick with humidity, a hazy mist hanging low. Mosquitoes buzzed and bit.

  They quickly made their way across the street to the service station, where the Dart sat waiting like a patient in an emergency room.

  “Stay here,” Marsha said, setting a waking Peyton down. He rubbed his eyes and leaned into Ginny’s legs for support.

  Marsha hopped into the car and, as hoped, found the keys still in the ignition. She started the engine, and, thankfully, there was no smoke. No flames. No sign of trouble, for now anyway.

  “Buckle yourself in,” Ginny said, gently nudging Peyton into the backseat and loading her bag into the trunk. She put Lucy in the backseat as well, and she didn’t stir as Ginny strapped the safety belt across her. Ginny climbed into the passenger seat, and Marsha peeled out of the garage lot and onto the road.

  In the dim light of the dashboard, Ginny could see the black trails like watercolors running down Marsha’s cheeks.

  “Hey,” she said, reaching for Marsha’s arm.

  Marsha was trembling, her foot shaking so badly that it came off the clutch and the car stalled out.