The Lost & Found (12 page)

T
he first day we'd made it to just outside of Tucson, Arizona, and the second day we took the ten through the city. It felt weird being on the same highway for so many miles and hours. In Tucson, Willa insisted we stop at an auto repair shop. She got out of the car and asked one of the mechanics how much they charged for a shot of Freon. He gave it to us for free.

“CB,” I said when she got back into the car.

“And how sweet it is,” she replied, turning the air vents toward her face.

We'd gotten a late start. Things were quiet and funny between us. Willa was obviously upset with me for waiting
to tell her about the scholarship, even though she'd waited almost a year before telling me about Benson. Willa was funny like that. It probably made perfect sense to her. And I could tell there was something else; she wasn't just mad at me. I thought she was probably upset that Benson hadn't been at the diner, that she hadn't been able to say good-bye to him. She overcompensated for her silence by being, when she did speak, exceedingly polite. She paid for our lunch and apologized for not being able to take a turn behind the wheel.

I'd never been to Tucson before but we left it behind us like we'd left Los Angeles behind us, with the strange resolve that we might never see it again. Willa played with the radio until she found something acceptable, and then she turned the volume so low we could barely hear it anyway.

We'd been in the car for two hours before she turned to me and said, “Isn't this better?”

“Huh?”

“The Freon.”

“Oh, sure. Yeah. It's great.”

“It's like, one hundred and ten degrees outside.”

“No humidity, at least.”

“When it's one hundred and ten degrees outside, you're kind of past the point where humidity matters.”

We were driving through the desert. Endless stretches of sand and cacti and tumbleweeds. Literal tumbleweeds. Like in the movies.

“There are probably a lot of bodies buried out here,” Willa said thoughtfully.

“Come again?”

“You know, like gangsters and stuff. They brought bodies to the middle of nowhere. Who's going to come look for a body out here? It's too hot for digging.”

“Gangsters?”

“In the forties and fifties. I mean, we still have them now, we just call them other things.”

“You know they finally busted Al Capone for tax evasion.”

“I was on the same tour as you,” she said.

Alcatraz. San Francisco family trip, three years ago.

“Remember that kid?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

He couldn't have been more than six years old. He'd been wearing a bright-red Windbreaker, and he'd walked up to Willa and said, “Those are not real legs.”

She'd worn a skirt that fell to her mid-calves and a thick sweater. She had looked around for his parents but hadn't seen them anywhere.

“You are most correct,” she'd said. “These are replacement legs.”

“How come you have replacement legs?”

“My original legs took a long vacation, but I still wanted to be able to walk and stuff. So I bought these.”

“What are they made out of?”

“A bunch of stuff. Like silicone and metal.”

“Can I touch them?”

“Sure.”

“You won't feel it, though?”

“Nope.”

The little boy had put his hands on my sister's fake legs. The kid squeezed his hand around her shin.

“Weird,” he said.

“Very weird,” she agreed.

“Was it an accident?”

“Michael!” It was the kid's mom. She had burst through a crowd of tourists and grabbed on to Michael's arm, yanking him upright. “I am so, so sorry,” she had said to Willa. “Whatever he said . . . He's just a boy. I'm so embarrassed.”

“He was just asking questions,” Willa had said. “He was very polite.”

“They're made out of silicone,” Michael had told his mother.

“We'll leave you alone. I'm so sorry. This is mortifying.”

“What's mortifying about it?” Willa had said, but the mother had already turned around.

In the car, Willa turned to me and said, “I was going to tell him I was born this way.”

“What?”

“If his mother hadn't pulled him away. He asked if it was an accident.”

“Why would you lie?”

“You don't want to have to tell kids that shit like this can happen to them. You don't want to make them scared.”

“But you don't want to lie to them either. Right? I mean, you've made your thoughts on lying pretty clear.”

She laughed. My sister had two laughs. One was a sarcastic, dry bark. The other was nice and light and infrequent. This was the latter, and it shocked me so much that I pulled over to the side of the road and shifted the engine into park.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I need to stretch my legs for a minute. I'll keep the air on.”

I got out of the car and walked around to the back. We were in the middle of nowhere, and the sun was at the highest point in the sky. It reflected on all the sand and the brightness came from every angle. I started sweating immediately. But it felt good. I didn't like breathing so much chemically altered air. I needed to be outside.

Willa joined me after a few minutes. I watched her struggle to get her feet over the doorframe. I watched her brace herself and pull her body up. I watched her double-check to make sure she wasn't locking us out of the car. She shut her door and walked around to meet me.

“I wish people would realize there's nothing wrong with asking questions,” she said thoughtfully, like our conversation hadn't been interrupted. “The problem lies in declaring something is mortifying and then dragging yourself away without further explanation.”

“That woman? She was an idiot. She wasn't thinking.”

“I disagree. The woman at the diner yesterday—
she
wasn't thinking. Michael wasn't thinking. They were purely instinctual. The host wanted to stare, so she stared. Michael wanted to know what my legs were made of, so he asked. But his mother . . . that requires thinking. She had a conscious thought:
I should be embarrassed. I am embarrassed. I must vocalize my embarrassment
. But the thing that bothers me, you know, is that she wasn't embarrassed by her son. He was just a kid. She must have known he hadn't really done anything wrong. She was embarrassed by
me
. She was embarrassed that I chose to wear clothing that did not cover my prostheses.”

Willa paused and gathered her hair up into a ponytail. She was sweating already, beads of water gathering at her temples. She shook her head and said, “Do you know I was spoken to about it? Do you know I had to fight the school for attempting to enforce a separate dress code on me?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I was told that it wasn't appropriate for me to wear shorts.”

“Everybody wears shorts to school.”

“No shit, because it's a hundred degrees every day.”

“And they actually told you—”

“‘The administration believes it is in your best interest to wear pants or long skirts, so as to avoid providing a possible distraction—'”

“Shut up.”

“I'm serious, Louis. We live in this really weird world where female celebrities can be photographed without underwear on and instead of making it illegal to publish explicit photographs of a person without their express permission or, you know, shaming the person who's shoving a camera up their skirt, we call them sluts for accidentally spreading their legs when they get out of their car.”

“Willa—”

“And instead of teaching boys to respect girls, we tell girls not to wear tank tops or low-cut shirts. And instead of disciplining the shitheads who called me
stumpy
, we ask handicapped people to cover up their handicap. To pretend they aren't handicapped. To pretend they're whole.”

Willa was not crying but her face was red—from the heat or from the anger that was boiling under her skin, I couldn't tell. I put my hand on her hand, and she twitched instinctively underneath my fingers.

“You know why I wear skirts, right?” she asked after a minute.

“Because it's easier for you to walk.”

“Yeah. It's easier for me to walk. Pants are too hard to get on. And it's always hot in LA, obviously. And also, there's this part of me . . . Well, I just think it's nice to think that maybe sometime in the past nine years, I passed someone who needed a boost. Like maybe another kid who had an accident or who was born with a handicap or who just
felt different for whatever reason, right? And then they pass me and they're like—oh. Look at her. She's not ashamed to show off her fake legs. So I shouldn't be ashamed either. Because there's nothing to be ashamed about. We're all just bodies, right? We're all just fucking bodies trying to move around and work stuff out on our own.”

“Jesus, Willa. I just wanted some air.”

She took her hand out from under mine and did a slow spin away from me. Then she stopped and looked at me. She raised her arms like she was carrying something. She was smiling, but she also looked like she was Atlas. Borrowing the world for a few minutes so he could have a rest.

“I'm trying to understand,” she said.

“Understand what?”

“All that stuff I just said. I really, really believe it.”

“Okay.”

“But I can't reconcile it with how scared I am to let anyone see me naked.”

It was a startling moment of honesty, and I saw my sister blush and turn her head away from me, which made me blush and turn my head away from her, and then a few seconds later we both looked at each other again to see if the other one was looking and we both were, so we laughed.

“Willa,” I said. I stepped away from the car. “Go stand in the middle of the road.”

“What?” she said, still laughing.

“Trust me. It will look cool.”

“It won't look cool,” she said, not moving.

“I bet you twenty dollars it will look cool.” I took out my phone and opened the camera.

“Okay, but you have to give me twenty dollars.”

“I will. I promise.”

I directed her over to the middle of the road. She stood in the direct center, on the yellow line. The sun lit her features up in bright orange. My sister got all of the good looks in the womb. She soaked up the beauty and left me awkward and good at tennis.

“Go like this again,” I said, and raised my arms. Like Atlas.

She copied me. I took a picture and then brought the phone over to her.

“Damn,” she said.

“You owe me twenty bucks.”

“That looks really cool.”

“I know.”

“Uh, fine,” she said. She walked back to the car and dug around in her purse and presented me with a twenty-dollar bill. I took it, because a bet is a bet.

“Why are you smiling like that?” she asked.

“Because you're not special,” I said. “Because everyone is scared to be naked in front of other people. Not everything has to do with your legs.”

The car was still running. It was nice and cool when we got back inside.

A
rrow made us spend the night in Little Rock, Arkansas. We could have driven farther, but Arrow had a peculiar obsession with Reba McEntire and she put the appropriately titled song on repeat as we drove around looking for somewhere to sleep.

“You know she's not talking about the town, right? She's talking about a wedding ring,” I said. “She wants to get a divorce.”

“There's a double meaning,” Arrow insisted, turning up the stereo.

She sang enthusiastically while directing me down various side streets. She claimed the power of country music
would lead us to our destined motel, and she was kind of right because even though it took quite a few detours, we eventually passed the Little Rock, Big Motel.

“This is perfect,” Arrow said, gesturing frantically and rolling the windows down. Incidentally she was wearing neon-yellow shorts and a gray T-shirt that said
Let's do this
on the front. She didn't look very country.

“This is where you want to stay?” I asked.

The Little Rock, Big Motel had an enormous, crooked cowboy hat on its roof. The doors were old-fashioned saloon doors. The bike rack had a horse tied to it.

Literally. A horse. Arrow squealed, jumped out of the car, and made a break for it.

“Arrow, don't touch the horse! You don't know where that horse has been!” I yelled, turning off the engine and running after her. The irony didn't escape me that Arrow slept on a sleeping bag and brought her own towels to motels, but she didn't mind running her hands down the side of a strange horse.

“He's so sweet,” she said, staring up at the horse.

“How do you know it's a he?” I asked.

“Because he is incredibly well-endowed. What? I didn't go looking for it. It's very prominent.”

“Well, thank you,” someone said behind us—someone with a lilting, soft voice.

Arrow and I turned around at the same time. The girl was a few years older than us and she wore ripped jeans and
a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Her hair was twisted into a bun on the top of her head. She was smiling without showing teeth. She had two round dimples.

“Is this your horse?” Arrow asked.

“Sure is. This is Vulcan. He's a sweetie.” The girl patted the horse firmly on its side. I'd seen people do that in movies but never really understood why. Did horses like that?

“Vulcan? Like
Star Wars
?” Arrow asked.

“
Star Trek
,” the girl said, laughing. “But no, actually. He's named after the Roman god of metalworking. His Greek equivalent is—”

“Hephaestus,” I finished.

“You really know your mythology,” the girl said.

“Hephaestus?” Arrow repeated. “No way.”

“My middle name is Hephaestus,” I explained. I held my hand out. “Frances. This is Arrow.”

“Imelda,” she said, shaking our hands one after the other. “Are you on a road trip?” She gestured back to Kathy, stuffed full of enough baggage (and linen, thanks to Arrow) to make it look like we were driving to Oregon.

“We're headed to Austin,” I said.

“We're trying to find Wallace Green. Have you heard of him?”

“Of course,” Imelda said. “Why are you trying to find Wallace Green?”

“He might be my father,” I said, shrugging. “It's kind of a long story.”

Imelda's smile faded away for just a second, and then she shook her head and laughed again. “Well, I wish you luck then, Frances Hephaestus. Those movie stars can be tricky to track down.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Is this a nice place to stay?” Arrow asked.

“Sure is. My dad owns it. Tell him I sent you and he'll give you a good deal.”

Imelda undid Vulcan's ropes and mounted the horse with ease. She smiled at us before the two of them trotted away.

“Imelda is a weird name for a cowgirl,” Arrow mused.

“Arrow is a weird name in general,” I said.

“Touché. Let's get our stuff!”

We got our suitcases from the car and headed into the motel. The inside looked exactly like walking into a classic Western film, down to the knots of rope decorating the walls and the swinging doors leading to the bar. A little sign above them said
Little Rock, Big Saloon
. The man behind the reception desk was a male, older version of Imelda. He wore a plaid shirt, jeans, and a dirty brown cowboy hat. He wore a name tag in the shape of two cowboy boots. It said his name was Al.

“Hi, there!” he said when he spotted us.

“Hi,” I said. “We're looking for a room for the night. Imelda sent us in.”

“Good old Imelda!” he said, turning his attention to
a pristine new laptop, the only visible technology in the room. He tapped some words on the keyboard and said, “I'll put you in one of our suites. It has a Jacuzzi!”

“Perfect,” Arrow said.

“Dinner is served in the saloon until ten. Will you be needing stables?”

“Oh, we don't have horses,” I said. “Just a car.”

“No to stables,” Al said, tapping on the keyboard again. “Did you see Vulcan, though? Beauty, isn't he?”

“He's really nice,” Arrow said. “I've never seen a horse that close before.”

“He's a sweetheart. Best horse you could hope to meet. And to think—he was born wild!” he said. “You never know what you're going to get with a wild yearling, but he's been nothing but a gem for the past sixteen years.” Al opened a cabinet on the wall; it was filled with tiny gold hooks. Most of the hooks had keys on them. Al removed one and handed it over to me. “Room twelve, darlin',” he said. “Right down that way.”

“Thanks,” I said. Arrow and I gathered our suitcases and wheeled them down the hallway Al had gestured to. There were doors on either side of us. The room numbers were wrapped in a rope lasso. When we found our room, I slid the key into the knob and twisted it open. We pushed into the room and I flicked the light switch; we were instantly bathed in blinding orange light.

“No
way
,” Arrow said, pushing past me. She did two full spins in the center of the room, trying to take everything in. It looked like we'd walked into the set of
Oklahoma!
, the musical. The bed was wood carved to look like a hay bale and the Jacuzzi was placed in the middle of the room. It looked like a wooden barrel.

“What,” I said.

“I like this place,” Arrow decided, touching a finger to the wallpaper (a field of corn).

“My mother got lost in a cornfield once,” I said, rolling my suitcase to the end of the king-size bed.

“Really?”

“With your mom. She never told you about it?”

“I don't think so. But my mom tells really boring stories, so I've gotten pretty good at tuning her out. Sometimes when she's talking, I honestly can't even hear her. Like I can see her lips moving, but . . . silence.” Arrow shrugged.

“They were eight or nine,” I said. “They were in there for hours.”

“Like a corn maze?”

“No, a cornfield. An actual cornfield. Where they grow corn.”

“Do you know most of the corn grown in the northeast is actually for cows? It's inedible.”

“Humans aren't really supposed to eat corn, anyway. It has no nutritional value.”

“Just a place to put butter,” Arrow said. “What happened to them?”

“Well, they found their way out. After a while.”

“Obviously.”

“Grandma had called the police.”

“Obviously.”

“The end.”

“I'll have to ask Mom about it when we get home,” Arrow said. She went into the bathroom and shut the door. I heard the fan click on with a deep, alarming rattle.

She hadn't meant anything by it. And I hadn't talked to my mom in years, so it shouldn't bother me so much. But still. I wished I could ask her about it when I got home too. I wished I still had the option of asking my mother about things. I had Arrow and Aunt Florence and Grandma Doris, but I wanted my mom. I didn't have my mom. And I didn't have my dad (either of them). I was alone in Arkansas in a motel room decorated like a cornfield. I felt as lost as my mother felt when she had realized she couldn't see the street anymore.

“That fan is loud,” Arrow said, emerging from the bathroom, “but I'm happy to report the bathroom is spotless.”

“Does this mean we don't have to sleep in a sleeping bag tonight?”

“Don't be absurd. Let's go get it now and then we can see what the Big Saloon is all about.”

I put our room key in my pocket and we headed back to the car. I almost missed the tiny scrap of paper, but the hatchback sometimes stuck so I went around to the driver's side to crawl through from the front and push it open, and there it was. Stuck in the door handle. I unfolded it and read the messy handwriting.

Apart from acting, Wallace Green likes two things: metalworking and horses. He's the guy who sold me my horse years ago. He's a good friend of my dad's. They went to school together. I don't know what it means that I met you tonight, but I don't ignore coincidences. His address in Austin is 3458 Chestnut Hill Drive. I hope you find what you're looking for.

“What's that?” Arrow asked, walking around the side of the car.

“An address,” I said.

“Whose address?”

“Wallace Green's address.”

Arrow took the note from me and read it to herself, her lips moving slightly. “Huh,” she said, handing it back to me when she'd finished. “Isn't that something.”

“Isn't that something?”

“Well, isn't it?”

“That girl just handed me Wallace Green's address, and you think it's
something
?”

“I guess he's friends with her dad. Are you gonna help me get this hatchback open or what?”

Arrow walked back to the rear bumper. I put the note into my pocket and opened up the driver's side door. I climbed through the car, putting my knee into one of Grandma's bread loaves. I pushed against the hatchback while Arrow pulled. It came open with a worrying crunch. I half fell onto the gravel driveway and grabbed Arrow by her shoulders.

“What if he's not even my dad? I thought I was doing this for my mom, to prove she was right about him, but if he isn't my dad then isn't this all for nothing? What am I even doing here?”

“You're getting a sleeping bag out of your car,” Arrow said calmly, reaching behind me and yanking the sleeping bag out of Kathy.

“You know what I mean,” I said.

“Well, nothing is for nothing,” Arrow replied, hefting the sleeping bag onto her shoulder.

“That doesn't even mean anything. That doesn't comfort me.”

“Well it should,” Arrow said. “It's not about the destination, and it's not worth overthinking things. Just accept the address into your life.”

“Like you're not overthinking the germs in our motel room?”

“That's different,” she said seriously. “Germs can kill you, Frannie.”

She air-kissed me. I followed her back into the cornfield and helped her smooth out the sleeping bag on our bed.