Everybody Knows Your Name (24 page)

I thought
I
was bad at putting on a public face, but this girl at the police desk is impressive. When I walk up to her and ask, “How can I talk to Ford Buckley?” she reads another page of her novel before slowly, slooooooowly, putting it down on top of her printer and looking up at me.

Then she doesn't say anything.

So I give her the same eyeballs back. I'm no amateur when it comes to bitchface. I'm free to be me.

“Ford Buckley,” I repeat.

She tips her head forward like my voice is making her skull go heavy. “That kid on the TV?” she says. I don't think her ponytail is supposed to be a side one, but the rubber band is so loose that it's migrating to the far left.

“You guys have him in custody. And I think you should know that one of your officers pepper sprayed him, which was truly excessive force.” She looks unmoved. “Can I talk to Ford for just a second? Even through glass? Is that how it's done? I've never had a conversation in jail, so I have no idea how this works.”

The receptionist suddenly looks 1 percent more interested in me. “Oh, right, you're that girl from TV too. I didn't recognize you because your hair's that dirty brown now. Looked better pink. More special.”

“Thank you.”

“You should change it back.”

“I'm good, thanks.”

She looks me up and down. “Some people don't know how to help themselves.”

I stare at her. “But you could help me.”

It's hard to tell if she's more annoyed with her job or with me, but she shoves her rolling chair back from the desk. “One sec,” she says, and goes through a door.

I look out the front window of the lobby. I've got this weird, displaced feeling of being on vacation (even the night air outside somehow looks strange and new and different from what I'm used to) except I'm at a jail. And jail is pretty much the opposite of vacation.

“Well, here's Arkansas,” I think, admiring a couple of full trees outside because if I dwell on what's really happened, I'm going to panic.

When Ford got thrown in the back of the cruiser, his eyes all swollen shut, I yelled to the officer, “But where are you taking him?”

The officer said, “To go get triple scoops in a waffle cone at Baskin Robbins.”

And I said, “Yes, thank you for the sarcasm, but I meant—” and this probably wasn't the best thing to say to this cop because he just got in his car and started to drive away. Calling him an asshole before that probably wasn't the best move either.

I climbed back in my car to follow them, and I swear this officer was trying to lose me because he took off faster than the speed limit. I got paranoid that if I matched him, he'd call me in for speeding because he was obviously that kind of guy. So I just tried to keep the cruiser's lights in my sight line as it headed through Ford's town.

I'd pictured that when we got to Calumet, Ford and I would be sightseeing together, and he'd be telling me stories about what happened where, and who Bruce of Bruce's Country Mart and Gas is. But I was just whipping by shingled houses with lit porches and then what looked like a small diner on a corner. A sign above it read, RON AND JUDY'S, except the RON had been struck through with a line of paint, so I figured that their relationship hadn't ended very amicably.

I lost the cruiser shortly after Judy's. So I parked at the nearest grocery store I could find, and I ran in to get some directions. The woman at the register said, “Hi, hon,” and that calmed me down a little. It's honestly pretty nice to get called hon when someone doesn't mean it condescendingly.

I asked, “Do you know how to get to the nearest jail?”

She pulled off some receipt paper and started to draw a map.

On the way out of the store, I spotted a pay phone, an actual living pay phone, which was exciting because my cell had lost its charge on our trip. I wanted to call Catherine, who seemed like the person who would definitely know how to get Ford out of jail. But I didn't have her number.

I thought about calling Lucien, whose number I do know by heart now. But it was also the middle of the night on the West Coast, and I know how important sleep is to him with the baby.

So I called my mom.

She picked up on the first ring. “Mag?” I was calling from an unknown number, so I knew she just was hoping it would be me.

“Mom. I'm so sorry.” And I meant it both for leaving without telling her and for making her feel so badly about the wall she'd put up around herself when it came to my dad. I started to feel so emotional, standing with that strange, cold receiver to my ear. I thought about how I had no idea what it was like to be her.

“Tell me you're okay.”

“I'm okay.”

I could hear her breathe out. “Oh my God, I was so worried. Mag, I almost sent the police after you when I found your note! And there's a motorcycle just sitting in my driveway.”

“I know, I know, I should have told you before I left town, but there was just this moment, you know? A true moment where everything felt like it made sense.” It was weird to remember that feeling while talking on a pay phone in the parking lot of a regional grocery store after seeing my boyfriend get pepper sprayed and carted off to jail.
I'm in Arkansas
. “And now Ford's in trouble, and I really need you to do something for me, if we can just put all our other stuff behind us for tonight.”

I could hear my mom's rings clicking against each other. She must have been running her fingers through her hair. “Sure, we can do that. You're my kid,” she said. “You're all that matters. I'm here for you.”

I was stopped for a second to hear her say that. I felt taken care of. I felt like we were in our right places: me, the kid; her, the mom.

Then I explained to her as quickly as I could about my brake light and the bad cop and the pepper spray and how much Ford really didn't deserve to miss his chance at winning
Spotlight
—no one ever really deserves anything like that. Because it's partly about talent, but it's mostly about something you can only describe as luck.

In the background I heard Jazz say, “So true. It is a lot of luck.” My mom had me on speaker with her. But I didn't feel put out about it.

I pictured the two of them sitting up together in Jazz's huge condominium (I'd seen pictures in my mom's celebrity magazines before), and it struck me that they must need each other a lot. I realized that my mom's job in regard to Jazz was to keep her from getting too lonely. And that Jazz was doing something back for my mom, who has always just wanted to feel like she's in the middle of things.

My mom wasn't going to change her longing to be noticed. But Jazz could help provide that for her. I thought she could slow the accumulation of my mom's regrets. And for that, the part of me that still can't avoid mothering my mom was glad.

“Jazz, thank you,” I said. And then, “Mom, will you please call Catherine for me and tell her everything so she can do something to get Ford out?”

And my mom agreed to help because you can count on her to come through like that, when you really need her to.

“Mag? Before you go—I'm sorry. I'm sorry for pushing you like that.”

I felt the same. “Let's really talk when I get back. I'll be me, and you be you, and we'll just try our hardest to respect that.”

She sang a couple bars of Aretha Franklin's “Respect” to me before I heard her send a kiss and hang up the phone.

There are ways in which my mom and I will always misunderstand each other. No matter what we go through together. No matter how many times I disappoint her or she disappoints me. And that awareness is actually comforting because it means that I can't mess up some perfect bond by being myself.

So as my mom was presumably getting ahold of Catherine, I followed the grocery store woman's extremely clear directions to the jail, where I am now standing, waiting for the receptionist to come back through the door.

Fifteen minutes go by, and I start to wonder if she just up and went home out the back. I've read the poster on the wall warning about the dangers of being irresponsible with firecrackers thirty times, and I don't think there's anything more I can learn from it. A twentysomething guy comes in and asks if they arrested Bill again tonight. I say, honestly, “I don't know.”

“She been gone for long?” he asks, nodding toward the desk.

“Really long. What should I do?”

“Make the phone ring. She'll want to get it in case it's her boyfriend, Tyler.”

The guy has a cell on him, so I find the station number on the front desk and call it. The girl literally comes running out from the back. She doesn't even glance at us before she answers the phone.

“Hello?” she says breathlessly.

“Hi. I was wondering if you found out anything about Ford Buckley,” I say, and once she hears that my voice is coming to her in stereo, she makes eye contact. She puts down the phone.

“He's being held, but you can't talk to him because he hasn't been booked.”

“When will he be booked?”

“They've got to come up from Ouida first and get him to take him to their county. That's where his old warrant's from.”

“Bill in here tonight?” asks the twentysomething guy.

The girl tightens her ponytail. “Does a frog bump its ass when it hops?”

The guy takes that as his answer. He waves and walks out the front door.

“Hold on,” I say to her, “how long is that going to take?”

She shrugs and picks up her novel again. “Depends when they can get one of their guys to come up here. Sometimes it's fast, like a couple of hours. And sometimes it's a day.”

“But it can't be a day! He's got his finale performance tomorrow!” I'm wishing that I'd paid better attention during political science because I have no clue what the law actually says about holding someone for a whole day without booking him. I'm feeling very helpless.

“Well, I'm not in charge of anything here but this phone. But you can wait if you want,” the girl says, and I think this is her actually trying to be nice.

I look at the chairs in the lobby, which all have armrests so you can't lie down across them. I'm just realizing how tired I am. There's nothing to do but wait until either Catherine shows up or some guy from Ouida comes to take Ford.

“Listen, from what Bill's friend said, it sounds like you have very strong feelings for Tyler.” The receptionist doesn't disagree with me. “And I have very strong feelings for Ford, so I think you might understand this kind of thing. I plan to stay here until I know what's happening with him. But I'm also completely exhausted, so I'm going to go lie down in my car out front.” I point to it through the glass front door so she can see which one it is. “And the only favor I'm asking of you is that if the officer comes from Ouida to take Ford to the other station, will you come knock on the window?”

Her love for Tyler is strong. She shrugs, meaning,
What the hell
.

“Thank you,” I say. “And I didn't ask before because I thought we were just going to take turns being bitches to each other, but what's your name?”

The girl considers me. Then she answers, “Portia.”

“Thanks, Portia,” I say, and then I head outside. Luckily, the weather is still pretty fall-like, and it's not going to be too bad. After I grab a sweatshirt from the trunk, I settle into the backseat with my head on Ford's balled-up shirts and my feet on the inside of the other door. I tell myself that someday, this will be good material for a script I'm going to write. Someday. Then I hit the lock button with my shoe and try to relax.

The night is so still except for the crickets. I say, “Ford” out loud like he can hear me from the inside of the station.

I'm a bad sleeper in even the nicest bed, so I wake up only a handful of hours later. Out the back window I can see the sky is lighter now, but the sun's not exactly rising yet. My right hip feels bruised because I fell asleep with it pressed against the seat belt latch.

My hair's all teased from the upholstery, so I twist it into a sloppy, high bun. I figure I might as well go into the station and see if Portia has heard anything from Ouida. I get out of the car and stretch, then walk toward the reception door.

Through the glass, I see Catherine working the Calumet station like she's been there before. I open the door and she turns toward me, mid-speech, as she's saying, “We don't have time for games, Portia! I just got off the world's worst flight in the
history of flight
, and I don't have the stomach for any additional stress!”

I can tell Catherine left in a hurry because she's wearing a velour tracksuit with just the word
DON'T
embroidered across the chest. She's also not wearing makeup.

“Catherine!” I say. I couldn't be happier to see her.

She gives me a look. She still thinks I'm a brat. “Your mom got me the message.”

“Porsh—Porsh,” she says, turning to Portia. “Let's get whatever paperwork going, and I'll send Magnolia over to the bail bondsman so we can get this wrapped up before I lose my mind.”

“The problem is, we can't bail him out because there's no bail,” I tell her.

“What do you mean, ‘there's no bail'?”

“He's not processed,” says Portia.

We explain the whole trouble to Catherine, about how we need a guy to come up from Ouida, and after she's heard the problem, Catherine shuts her eyes for a couple of seconds.

When she opens them, she says, “Magnolia, you're coming with me to Ouida, but only because you're young and you're cute, and God knows what will win them over.”