Hot Springs (3 page)

They checked into the Hot Springs motel, two blocks down the street, and took naps. When they awoke, they went to the Fiesta Cafe for dinner. After their orders arrived, Emily leaned her head forward and clasped her hands together. Bernice rolled her eyes and batted at the flies hovering over her chicken. “Thank you, Lord,” Emily said in a quiet voice, “for the bounty we are about to receive.”

“Bounty,” said Landis. “That’s one way of looking at it.”

“There used to be a candy bar called Bounty,” said Bernice. “I can’t tell you what was in it, though. Probably coconut. Do you like coconut?”

Emily didn’t answer.

“This town was named after a television show,” Landis said.

“I’m not allowed to watch television,” said Emily.

“Yes, you are,” said Bernice.

“No, just videos.”

“There’s a town in Montana that changed its name to Joe.” It occurred to Landis that trying to explain this further would be more trouble than it was worth.

“They should have called it Hollywood Squares,” Bernice said. “Or Star Trek.”

They turned their attention to the food. Emily had a bowl of macaroni with butter on it. She ate half, then pushed it aside and drew quietly on her place mat with a Bic pen. Landis tried to get her interested in the mini-jukebox that hung over the table, but with no success. Bernice took the pen and did Emily’s portrait on a napkin. After coffee and pie and milk, the three of them walked through the still, hot air back to the motel.

The mirror over the dresser was missing about two inches of the upper left corner. The dresser itself was covered in cigarette burns. “Look,” said Bernice, “a rotary phone. You don’t see that every day.” She
turned the television on to the cartoon channel. Emily, clutching the plush penguin they’d bought her at a rest stop outside of Albuquerque, climbed up on the bed to watch. Bernice stared hard at her.

“What?” said Landis. “Something wrong?”

Bernice turned to him and squinted. “You’re kidding, right?” She went over and touched Emily’s face with the back of her hand and held it there. “She’s burning up. I knew she was hot, but I thought it was just the weather. I thought she’d cool off once we got her into better air-conditioning. Come on over here and feel her.”

Landis touched her forehead. “Maybe she should take something?” he suggested.

Bernice brought over a glass of water, but Emily wouldn’t drink. Her cheeks were red blossoms against her white face, as if she’d been slapped.

“Please, honey? I think you have a touch of the flu. We have to put out the fire.”

Emily shook her head.

“Hey, little girl,” said Landis, “listen up. Drink that water.”

Bernice set the glass on the night table. “Never mind. Go on and watch the show.” She motioned to Landis to join her outside, and the two of them stepped out the door.

“We need another car,” he said.

“I know you think this is my fault, but it’s not.” She lit a cigarette. “You drive too rough.”

He watched a bug bang itself against the floodlight attached to the side of the building. Getting into a big fight with Bernice wasn’t worth it. He had suggested using his truck, but she’d insisted on her Hyundai, because it was a family car, and because it was illegal to drive a kid around in a truck. He’d distrusted the thing, but conceded her point.

Bernice sucked deeply on her cigarette, then tossed it. “I’m going to go sit with her. It’s no fun being sick.”

The door clicked shut. He stared for a moment at a dark cloud shaped like a hand floating in the purple sky. Bernice had a friend in Tucson. She and Emily were going to stay with her at first. Landis would ride the bus back to Colorado Springs, take care of details—finish cleaning out her apartment and his trailer—then drive down in the truck in a few days. After that, they would start their new life together.

He’d met her six months ago at Midnight, the club downtown where he was substitute soundman. Their first date was the movies, followed by cheap Mexican food and not a lot of talking. That was OK with Landis, as talking made him uneasy. It had been his experience that people gave him more credit the less he said. They agreed to see another movie the following night—the latest Bond—and afterward went back to his trailer with a bottle of Hornitos. There she told him her story about how she’d been living in Atlanta and gotten pregnant. She’d answered an ad from a childless couple, come out to the Springs, and stayed with them.

“They prayed for me and the baby every night—I could hear them up in the living room, just kind of murmuring. After I gave birth, I got out as fast as I could, to Florida, where I beach-bummed, waitressed, took some classes. But I always knew I’d come back. I kept a key.”

All fall, she explained, she’d been going to the house. She’d park a block away, sneak in, eat leftovers from the fridge, watch a little TV, look at the pictures of Emily. She’d even managed to get hired at the Coffee Connection across the street from where Emily was in day care. She could step outside and watch the children playing in the
yard. “It’s Christian day care, of course,” she told him. “Whatever that means. They both work in town, but Tessa isn’t full-time. She drops her off Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.” Emily liked to sit by herself, Bernice told him. The child was leading the wrong life, and even if she didn’t understand that, exactly, she
sensed
it, and it was making her unhappy.

It was nearly 4:00 AM, and they both still had on all their clothes. This was not what Landis had envisioned, but he was coming to the conclusion that Bernice wasn’t much like other girls he’d known.

“They are brainwashing her. It isn’t right. They bought my daughter from me because they couldn’t have one of their own, and now they are killing her mind, one day at a time. If there is a God, I think it’s pretty clear he did
not
mean for these people to have children.”

“What are you going to do about it?” he asked.

“Take her back.”

“Excellent idea.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t believe me?” She lifted her hand to her mouth and bit into the fleshy part at the base of her thumb.

“Hey,” said Landis. “What are you doing?”

She didn’t answer, just looked out at him over her hand, which she continued to bite. After a few seconds, when blood appeared, she stopped. “Most people couldn’t do that to themselves,” she said.

“Most people wouldn’t want to.”

“You’re looking at a woman with a purpose.” She grinned, the traces of red on her mouth like smeared lipstick. Then she took off her T-shirt and wrapped it around her wrist. Landis tried not to appear to be staring at her breasts. “Will you help?” she asked.

“No way in hell,” he told her.

Bernice was on the motel bed now, next to Emily, watching
Scooby-Doo
. “Remember Lucky Charms?” she said. “Those marshmallow pieces made your teeth hurt.”

Landis saw that she’d wrapped Emily in a blanket. “If she’s cold, we don’t need this.” He went over to the air conditioner and switched it off. It shuddered, did a miniature version of the noise the Hyundai had made, then fell silent.

“She was shivering, and her fever seems worse. I don’t like this at all.”

Emily poked at a cigarette hole in the blanket and said, “I can do the minor prophets.”

“This ought to be good,” said Landis, sitting on the edge of the bed to listen. “I’m a sucker for the minor prophets.”

She closed her eyes. “Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum . . .”

“Bert, Ernie, and Kermit.” Bernice stood up. “I’m getting you an aspirin.”

She went into the bathroom and fumbled through her bag. From where he was, Landis could see her reflection in the mirror, her smooth strong arms tanned and pretty against the white of her T-shirt. She came back in with a half tablet in her hand.

“Don’t you give kids Tylenol?” asked Landis. “I think aspirin might be bad for them.”

“Ever hear of baby aspirin?” she said.

“Seems like they just give that to old people.”

Bernice held the pill in front of Emily’s flushed face. “Anyway,” she said, “this
is
Tylenol. I just said aspirin.”

Emily turned her head and looked at Landis for a moment, then brought her attention back to Bernice. She swallowed the half pill, washing it down with water Bernice gave her in a plastic cup.

“The water tastes bad,” she said.

Landis got up and peered out the side of the blinds. He could see across the parking lot to the lobby, where a fluorescent light illuminated the Vacancy sign. There were two other cars in the lot, both of which had been there when they’d arrived. He wondered if they belonged to guests, or if they were always there. He tried to put himself in the Hardings’ position. They would have called the police pretty early this morning—Bernice said they got up around eight. The police would have asked who they thought might have taken the child. Would they think of Bernice? It hardly mattered. Even if Landis and Bernice could somehow manage to return Emily without getting caught, the child could identify them.

“I can get us a Nova, I’m pretty sure,” Landis said. “Then I think maybe we should turn around and take her straight back. Drop her off on the corner, give her a push in the right direction, and run.”

Bernice stood silently in the middle of the room, her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. “Are you backing out on me?”

“No, of course I’m not.”

“Do you think I’m crazy?” she asked.

“I don’t know. No.”

“But you think it’s possible, right?” She came over and leaned against the wall beside him. With the air-conditioning off, the room had quickly grown stuffy. The walls were permeated with old cigarette smell. “I need to hear from you that except for the engine blowing up in my car, and for Emily getting sick, this was an OK plan.” She pushed up against him and touched his arm with her hand. “Please? Can you just say that?”

In the various conversations they’d had about this through the spring and early summer, he’d tried to talk to her about alternatives. The courts, for instance, regardless of the papers she’d signed. But she wouldn’t listen, claimed he didn’t know what he was talking about. “You think knowing how to run a PA system qualifies you to give legal advice?” she’d said.
And then they’d stopped talking about it, except that it was always there, an underlying hum in the system that would not go away. She was the strangest girl he’d ever known, and time and again, he’d thought that if he were smart, he’d have nothing more to do with her. But then he’d see her, with that infectious smile, that look in her eyes that suggested imminent sex, an electric surge that seemed to radiate from her and make everything in her vicinity vibrate. Some days they made love four, five, six times, doing it in her unmade bed and on the floor and just about anyplace, until both of them had reached a point of exhaustion, until Landis was so sore it hurt to button his jeans. But then she’d disappear for a day or two, and he wouldn’t know what to think. He’d feel her absence in his whole body, like a fever. As long as her plans about Emily had remained hypothetical, he hadn’t figured there was much to worry about. People lived with all sorts of stories they told themselves.

“I know what I’m doing,” she’d promised him last week. They were at his trailer, in bed, listening to the coyotes. “It’s all going to work out fine. You have to trust me.” She had leaned over the wall of Little Angels to talk to Emily. “I just said, ‘Hi.’ Know what she said? ‘It’s you.’ I asked her, ‘You, who?’ And she said, ‘My real mommy.’”

“And what did you say?” Landis asked.

“I didn’t say anything.” Bernice was beaming. “I put out my finger and she gave it a squeeze.” She held up the finger to show him.

“Don’t you think she might say something about this to the people?”

“No, no, she won’t. She knows it’s a secret.”

“Kids aren’t great with secrets.”

She’d wrapped herself around him and hugged him hard, and he realized with some surprise that by not ever consciously making a decision, he had in fact made one.