Tallahassee Higgins (14 page)

"I'm just like her, aren't I? You've said it often enough!" My voice was rising, but I didn't care now.

"You think it's all my fault Liz ran away, don't you?" Aunt Thelma turned to me. "I tried my best to be nice to your mother, to understand, even to take the place of her mother, but nothing did any good. She was determined to go her own way, and she didn't care who she hurt. She never thought of anybody but herself!"

Aunt Thelma gripped the steering wheel and breathed deeply. "She took Johnny Russell away from Linda, then dropped him when somebody more interesting came along. What did she care about the people she left behind? She never gave any of them a second thought,
not her best friend, not her boyfriend, not even her own brother."

I stared at my aunt, but she wasn't looking at me. She was scowling straight ahead at the parking lot.

"For eight months after Liz left, we had no idea where she was," Aunt Thelma went on. "Not a phone call, not a letter, not even a postcard. Dan thought she must be dead. Then she calls up and tells us she's had a baby and could he send her money to pay the hospital bills!"

Aunt Thelma shook her head. "And, of course, Dan did. He's been sending her money for years. I just hope she used it to take care of you."

I slid down in my seat to avoid looking at my aunt. "Of course she did, Liz always took care of me. I'm her daughter, aren't I?"

"Yes, and look at the way she's treated you. She's doing the same thing to you she did to Dan. Isn't that proof of what a selfish, irresponsible person she is?"

"She's my mother! I love her no matter what! And she loves me!" I shoved the door open and jumped out of the car. Without knowing where I was going, I started running across the parking lot.

"Come back here, Tallahassee!" Aunt Thelma yelled.

"Just leave me alone!" I cried. "I never want to see you again! Never!"

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Aunt Thelma following me across the asphalt, running clumsily in her high-heeled sandals. Her face was red and angry, and her shoulder bag whacked against her hip.

"You stop right this minute," she shouted.

But I kept going. Like the gingerbread boy, I knew I could run faster than my aunt. When I reached the road, though, I looked back again. Aunt Thelma was still coming, her face redder than ever. Suddenly, her ankle turned under her, and she fell heavily to the ground. Her purse flew through the air, scattering its contents across the parking lot, but Aunt Thelma just knelt there on the asphalt, her head lowered. She didn't even try to stand up.

I watched her, waiting for her to do something. I wanted to run down the road toward the mountains and never look back, but I couldn't leave her all alone in the parking lot. Suppose she was about to have a heart attack or a stroke?

Reluctantly, I walked toward her, my feet dragging. By the time I reached her, she was sitting up, her face hidden in her hands. Her slacks were torn at the knee, and her arm was gashed above her elbow. Worst of all, she was crying.

Silently, I picked up her things—keys, makeup, pennies, breath mints, dog biscuits, a ballpoint pen from Suburban Bank, a couple of sticks of gum, some tissues—and put them back in her purse. "Here's your stuff," I mumbled. "Are you okay?"

She nodded and fumbled for a tissue to blow her nose, but she didn't get up. She just sat there and cried while I stood beside her, feeling the sun beating down on my head.

"I'm sorry, Tallahassee," Aunt Thelma finally said. "I shouldn't have said those things about Liz. I was just so worried about you, so scared, thinking I'd made you run off."

She squinted up at me. Her tears had streaked her cheeks with mascara, making her look like a sad clown.

If she had been Liz, I would have pulled my magic wand out of my backpack or told some corny jokes or done a little dance. Silly things always made Liz laugh. But Aunt Thelma and I didn't have any routines to help us when things went wrong. So I just stared across the parking lot at the mountains shimmering through a haze of heat and waited for Aunt Thelma to do something.

When she made an effort to get to her feet, I took her arm and helped her hobble back to the car. Without looking at me, she settled herself behind the wheel, started the engine, and drove slowly out of the parking lot.

I
N SILENCE WE
drove down a highway lined with gas stations, shopping centers, and fast-food places. As we passed a McDonald's, Aunt Thelma made a sudden left turn into the parking lot. "Let's stop here for a minute," she said.

Inside, the cool air made me shiver after the heat of the car. Aunt Thelma got in line behind a couple of teenage girls. "It's dinnertime," she said to me. "Are you hungry?"

"Not very." Trying to work up an appetite, I read the familiar names on the big, yellow menu over the counter. Quarter Pounders, Big Macs, Chicken McNuggets, hamburgers, cheeseburgers—you could eat the same things in Florida, Maryland, California, and everywhere in between. At this very minute, for instance, Liz could be ordering a Big Mac and fries in Hollywood, and they would look, smell, and taste exactly the same as the ones I could order here. The only difference was that Liz would be eating them for lunch instead of dinner.

"How about a cheeseburger?" Aunt Thelma's voice cut into my daydream. "I bet you haven't had anything to eat since breakfast."

The girl behind the cash register looked at us. "Can I help you?"

After ordering cheeseburgers, fries, and sodas, Aunt Thelma carried our tray to a shiny plastic booth by a window.

"Nice view," she said, pointing across the parking lot and highway to the mountains. "Some summers, Dan and I rent a cottage at Deep Creek Lake. It's a long way from here, but maybe this July we could drive up there. I'll bet you've never been to the mountains."

She sat down heavily and took a big sip of soda. The gash on her arm had stopped bleeding, but grits of dirt from the parking lot clung to it. "Here, Tallahassee." She shoved my cheeseburger toward me. "Eat up."

To avoid looking at the cut on Aunt Thelma's arm, I watched the people lined up at the counter and remembered the fun Liz and I used to have guessing what each person would order. "Here comes a Big Mac and a large fries," she would say when a fat lady approached the cashier. "And a small diet coke," I would add. Then we'd both laugh, especially if the lady really ordered what we predicted. It was funny how often we'd be right.

Stirring the ice in my cup with my straw, I wondered if Liz and I would ever sit around and laugh like that again.

"Tallahassee," Aunt Thelma said, "I think we need to talk about a few things."

I glanced at her nervously, then looked out the window, not sure what she was going to say next. Right under my nose, a car was backing out of a parking space. A man and woman were in the front seat, and three kids and a dog were in the back. They reminded me of the happy families you see in commercials. Blond, suntanned, laughing. Nobody sad or mad. Nobody fighting. They were probably going home to a nice little house with green shutters and a picket fence around it.

As they pulled out onto the highway, I wished all kids had the chance to live like that. No divorces, no fathers killed in Vietnam, no mothers running off to Hollywood. Couldn't the government pass some kind of a law to protect kids from bad things?

When the car was out of sight, I looked at Aunt Thelma. She was staring at me, waiting for me to speak. Had she said something I hadn't heard?

"Did you really think Dan and I didn't want you?" she asked.

"You said last night that the sooner I went to California, the happier you'd be." I poked at my cheeseburger, removing the pickle slice they always hid under the bun, but I still didn't feel like eating anything.

"I didn't mean that, Tallahassee," Aunt Thelma said. "I was so upset about Fritzi, I didn't know what I was saying."

"I didn't want him to get hurt, Aunt Thelma, really I didn't." Tears welled up in my eyes. "I'm so sorry, and I wish I'd never put him in that dumb doll carriage."

"I know, Tallahassee, I know," Aunt Thelma said softly. "I had a lot of time to think about it while I was driving up here, and I realize you and Jane didn't mean to harm him. It's just that he's an old dog, and I guess I expected you to treat him a little more kindly."

Her voice quavered a little, and I remembered what Uncle Dan had said about Fritzi being like a child to her. "I love animals," I told her, "especially dogs. And they usually love me, too. Mrs. Russell's dog is crazy about me, and so was Roger's dog. But Fritzi and me, we must have a personality clash or something."

Aunt Thelma sighed. "Well, he is a little grouchy sometimes. But he's not a bad dog, Tallahassee."

I wasn't sure that she was right about that, but I didn't feel like arguing with her. Instead I said, "I'm really sorry Fritzi got hurt, and I'll try to be nicer to him."

Slowly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aunt Thelma's hand advance across the table toward mine. When it was almost touching my fingers, it stopped. "Tallahassee, I know I haven't done all I could to make you feel welcome," she said. "I'm just not used to children. I don't know how to talk to them. And you and Dan seemed to be getting along so well, I thought I could just leave you to him."

"Uncle Dan is wonderful, and I didn't mean to hurt his feelings by running away," I said. "I love him. It's just that I love Liz more."

Aunt Thelma nodded. "Well, she
is
your mother." She touched my wrist lightly with one finger, then withdrew it to her side of the table with the speed of a sand crab darting back into its hole.

"I know you think I've been mean," Aunt Thelma went on. "But I didn't want you running wild the way Liz did." She paused and added softly, "Maybe I was too hard on you."

She gazed across the table at me. Her brow was wrinkled, and her hair was frizzy from the heat. Traces of mascara still clung to her cheeks. "I wish your mother and I had gotten along better," she said.

"If you'd just stop saying awful things about Liz—" I leaned toward her, wishing I could make her understand. "She's not like Mrs. DeFlores, but she's still a good mother. And she hasn't run off and left me, I know she hasn't! She loves me too much to do something like that to me."

"I'm sorry I said that," Aunt Thelma said. "I had no business talking that way."

She poked the last bite of her cheeseburger into her mouth and chewed it slowly. "Aren't you going to eat your sandwich?" she asked.

I looked at it and shook my head. "I can't."

For a minute I thought Aunt Thelma was going to get mad at me. She hates to see anything wasted, especially if she paid for it. But, instead, she turned her attention to the gash on her arm. "My goodness," she said, as if she was noticing it for the first time. "I'd better clean this up."

"Do you want me to help you?" I slid out of my seat as she headed for the ladies' room.

"You get the tray, Tallahassee. I can take care of myself."

I dumped our trash in the waste can. Then I grabbed a handful of paper napkins from a dispenser and followed my aunt to the rest room. I found her trying to clean her arm with wet toilet paper. "Here," I said, "I can reach that cut easier than you can."

I soaked the napkins, and she let me dab her arm gently, cleaning off the dirt and the blood. After rummaging about in her purse, she found a Band-Aid and let me stick it on.

As we left the ladies' room, Aunt Thelma looked at her watch. "It's after seven," she said. "We'd better go home. Dan must be worried to death."

***

That evening Uncle Dan and I sat down in a couple of metal lawn chairs on the front porch. All that was left of the day was a little band of pink just above the housetops, and the air was cool on my bare arms. Aunt Thelma was puttering around in the kitchen, listening to her favorite golden oldies radio station. We could hear her singing along with Julie Andrews. "The hills are alive," she warbled, "with the sound of music," and a mockingbird, hidden in the dark foliage of the cherry tree, joined her.

"Well, Tallahassee," Uncle Dan said finally, "your aunt tells me you had a good talk in Hagerstown. She's hoping things will be better now. What do you think?"

"She was nice," I said, "but I still kind of wish I could have gotten to California. I really miss Liz."

He coughed and took a drag on his cigarette. "It's not all that bad here, is it?"

I shifted in my chair, trying to find a more comfortable position, but the cold metal was unyielding. "Liz needs me," I told him. "I know she does."

"And you need her," he said softly.

"Officer Milbourne thought maybe you'd let me call her."

Uncle Dan coughed again and took a long drag on his cigarette before tossing it out across the yard. We both watched it sail into the darkness like a tiny shooting star.

"Well?" I leaned toward him. "Can I?"

When Uncle Dan busied himself lighting another cigarette, I felt my throat tighten up. "Is something wrong?" I clung to the armrests of the chair and tilted forward, staring at him.

"Tallahassee, honey, I tried to call her this afternoon. I thought she'd want to know you'd run away, especially if you were heading out to California."

"So what did she say? Is she mad at me?"

He shook his head. "She wasn't there, Talley. The girl on the phone said Liz left the Big Carrot a couple of days ago. She didn't tell anybody where she was going. She just didn't show up for work."

I stared at him, feeling my whole insides turn over. "They don't know where she is?"

"No."

"But suppose something happened to her?" I thought of the missing-kids poster. Did they have one for grown-ups too?

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," he said. "Believe it or not, Talley, Liz can take care of herself. I expect she found a better job. We'll probably hear from her as soon as she gets settled."

He covered my hand with his. Like Officer Milbourne's, it was big and warm. "I didn't want to tell you," he said. "I knew you'd be upset."

Out in the kitchen Aunt Thelma was singing, "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie," and I sat there, listening to her, trying to make sense out of what Uncle Dan had just said. If Liz didn't call me or write to me, how would I ever find her? Without wanting to, I remembered Roger taking Liz and me to the beach in his old truck. I always rode in the back with Sandy, and Liz and Roger sat up front, singing old Bob Dylan songs and laughing. Little did Roger know then that Liz would just pack up and move someday without even telling him good-bye. Had she done the same thing to me that she'd done to Roger and Johnny and Uncle Dan?