Things I Want to Say (12 page)

But to be thought special by a man, one with whom I’d felt a connection from our first meeting, was a gift I’d treasure
no matter what the future held. “Thank you for saying that,” I said.

“I mean it. Good night, Ellen. I hope you have sweet dreams.”

“Good night.” My dreams would be sweet if they featured Martin.

I cradled the phone to my chest and stared off into the darkness, a goofy grin stretching the corners of my mouth. Was this what falling in love felt like—this giddy rush down a raging waterfall, bobbing and bouncing and not caring at all if you drowned, only reveling in the excitement of the ride?

All I knew about love was contained in novels and acted out in television and movies. My limited dating experience had involved a few fumbling lust-filled exchanges in the backseats of cars or bachelor apartments, all of which ended after a few weeks when one of us—usually the man—lost interest. Even during sex I’d felt no real closeness to the men—certainly not the connection I’d experienced with Martin.

Knowing this didn’t give me a clue as to what I was going to
do
about him, however. He was firmly planted in a small town in Kansas and I was headed back to my life in Bakersfield. As wild as my imagination could be at times, even I was sensible enough to know that a person didn’t leave behind an established business and the only family she had on the basis of a few brief conversations.

I sighed and leaned over and replaced the phone in my purse. Frannie would have a conniption if she knew the direction my thoughts had taken, so I resolved not to tell her. I needed to think this through without my sister telling me what to do.

The other bed creaked as Alice shifted and mumbled in her sleep. Alice would tell me to “go with the flow” and see what happened next. I slid farther under the covers, my
head on the pillow, trying out the idea. I’d spent my life looking ahead, anticipating, dreaming. My dreams were a way to escape the present and head off any problems in the future. After all, if I’d already imagined the worst, I could avoid doing anything to make that bad reality come true. If those fears kept me from trying very many new things at least they helped me avoid a lot of hurt, too.

But what if I did—just this once—avoid thinking about the future altogether? Would it be so wrong to enjoy the moment? I didn’t
have
to do anything right this minute but enjoy this feeling of being appreciated by a handsome man. I’d wait for the next phone call and see what developed. One conversation at a time.

I was still feeling good the next morning and volunteered to drive first. We were a few miles outside of Colby, Kansas, when I heard what sounded like a gunshot. The truck lurched to one side and I fought to keep it in the lane, heart pounding.

“Blowout,” Alice said, steadying herself with one hand on the dash. “Just ease it over to the shoulder.”

Once we were safely stopped, we both piled out to survey the damage. “Bad news,” Alice said as we contemplated the shredded rubber that barely clung to the wheel rim.

“Can we change it?” I asked, meaning
can you change it?
because I’ve never changed a tire in my life. That’s why I have AAA. “Are
you
going to jack up a vehicle that size?” she asked. “I don’t think so.” She pulled out her cell phone. “The moving company has an emergency service. We’ll let them take care of it.”

After a cryptic conversation, Alice reported the moving company had promised to send someone “in about an hour.”

We climbed back into the cab of the truck and Alice
fanned herself. “Put the key in and crank the air back on,” she said. “It’s like an oven out there.”

I obliged and for a moment we basked in the full force of the air-conditioning. “I’ll sure as hell be glad when we get out of Kansas,” Alice said after a moment. “It’s been one thing after another in this state.”

I nodded. Except for Martin, Kansas had had more than its share of adventures. I stared out at the mostly empty highway, heat lakes shimmering on the pavement. “If Frannie were here, she’d be having a fit,” I said. “She hates anything that doesn’t go according to schedule.”

Alice snorted. “How did she get this far in life and not figure out things almost never go according to plan?”

“I guess she’s not very patient.”

“I’m not so much patient as resigned,” she said. She looked at me. “And I’m used to this kind of thing. I’ve never had great luck with cars. Or trucks.” She chuckled. “Do you remember that green Ford Maverick I had?”

“The one you got right after your sixteenth birthday?” I had a vague memory of the car Alice acquired the month before I left town.

“That’s the one. My older brother sold it to me for six hundred dollars—money I’d saved from my job as a car hop at the drive-in. God, I loved that car.”

“Whatever happened to it?” I asked, more to keep the conversation going than anything else. I liked it when Alice remembered happier times.

“Larry Westover talked me into trading it for a Camaro his cousin had.” She shook her head. “Biggest piece-of-shit car I ever owned. Damn thing left me stranded more times than I can count.”

“You should have made the cousin buy it back,” I said.

“Ah, but then I would have to admit I’d made a bad choice,” she said. “What seventeen-year-old wants to do that?”

I laughed. “So you drove the lemon?”

She nodded. “Until I traded it for a used Chevy pickup. It was a good truck. That was right after Bobby and I got married. We thought the truck would be more practical for our back-to-the-land adventure, but after a year or two, I wanted something flashier, so I got a Dodge Dart.” She smiled. “That’s the story of my life—always looking for something better. Cars. Jobs. Men. They all look dull to me after a while.”

“I’m just the opposite,” I said. “At least when it comes to cars.”

Alice turned toward me, one leg tucked under her. “What was your first car?”

“A 1987 Toyota Camry. I got it right after I graduated.” I could still remember the new-car aroma of that Camry. It smelled like money and success to me. “I drove it ten years, until Frannie threatened to have it towed when I wasn’t looking.”

“What was your next car?”

“Another Camry.” I laughed at her look of disbelief. “Hey, when I find something that works for me, I stick with it.”

Alice threw her head back and howled. “God, we are a pair!”

We were still laughing when a tapping on the window startled us. I turned to see a black-haired man with a beard and a faded camouflage T-shirt. “You ladies need some help?” he asked.

I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a battered LTD parked a few hundred yards behind us.

“No, thanks,” Alice said. “Someone’s on the way.”

The man’s smile dimmed a little before brightening again. “No need to wait for them when I’m right here.”

“No, thank you.” Alice’s expression was stony. She reached over me to depress the lock but Black Beard was faster. He yanked open the driver’s door and grabbed my arm.

I screamed and tried to pull away, but he dragged me to the ground. I fell hard on my knees in the gravel at the side of the highway.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Alice shouted. She lunged for him and tried to rake the side of his face with her nails, but he batted her away as if she were a gnat.

“I’m taking this truck, lady,” he said as he climbed into the driver’s seat. “You can come with me or not. Your choice.”

I struggled to my feet and stared into the cab of the truck, a sick feeling of helplessness churning my stomach. My purse with my cell phone inside was still in there with Alice and this wacko. “Get out of the truck, Alice!” I shouted. “Don’t go with him.”

Alice ignored me. “You idiot! We’re stuck here in the first place because we had a tire blow out.”

“Who are you calling an idiot?” he demanded.

“Only an
idiot
would try to steal a truck with a flat tire,” she said.

“I figure I can go pretty far on the rim.”

As if to prove his point, Black Beard put the truck in gear. It started rolling forward. I screamed and trotted alongside. “Alice, get out!” I shouted. “Let him have the damn truck!”

“Everything I own is in this truck!” she shouted back. “I’m not about to let some
idiot
take it from me.” Moving faster than I would have thought possible, she reached behind the seat and grabbed the little cooler where we kept our snacks and drinks. She dumped the entire thing—ice, bottles and all—into Black Beard’s lap. Then she reached down and took off one of her shoes and started beating him with it.

Black Beard roared and the truck lurched to a stop. I stared, openmouthed, as he bailed out of the driver’s seat. Alice came after him, flailing away with her shoe—a pink kitten-heeled sandal I’d privately thought was impractical for travel.

That heel was making its mark now, literally. The would-be thief had a dozen round bruises on his face and arms, and blood ran from the corner or one eye. “Think…you can…take advantage…of a couple…of women…do you…
idiot?
” Each word was emphasized with another blow from the shoe.

Black Beard stopped trying to fight. He curled into a ball and lay in the gravel at the edge of the highway, his arms cradling his head. “Stop it, lady!” he begged. “Are you trying to kill me?”

“It’s no better than you deserve!”

I had never seen Alice so angry. She continued to whale on the now-helpless man, until the shoe broke and half of it went flying off into the weeds.

Flashing lights appeared on the horizon and I steeled myself for another encounter with the police. Surely I could hold myself together a little better this time.

But the lights turned out to belong to a wrecker. The driver pulled in front of the truck and a burly older man with a long gray ponytail climbed out. He looked at Black Beard, who still lay curled on the ground. “What’s this?” he asked.

“This is the piece of shit who tried to steal our truck.” Alice aimed a halfhearted kick at the man on the ground, then turned to face the wrecker driver. “I hope you’re here to fix our tire, because I am in no mood to deal with another man who’s out to cause trouble.”

The wrecker driver looked as if he was biting back a grin. “Yes, ma’am, I’m here to fix your tire. But even if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t give you any trouble.” He looked at the man on the ground. “What do you want to do about him?”

“He can lie there and rot for all I care.” With more dignity than I would have thought possible for a woman wearing only one shoe, she turned and limped away.

Alice and I waited in the cab of the wrecker while the
driver changed our tire. Alice stared straight ahead, not saying anything. Her cheeks were flushed and she was still breathing hard.

Movement in the rearview mirror caught my attention. “The idiot is getting up,” I said. I watched as he heaved himself to his feet and began hobbling toward his car. “He’s leaving.”

“Let him go,” she said, not even glancing in the mirror. “He’ll think twice about messing with a ‘helpless’ woman again.”

“I’ve never seen you so angry,” I said. “I was a little afraid.”

Her expression softened and she turned to me. “You didn’t have anything to be afraid of,” she said. “I would never hurt you.”

“I was afraid you were going to kill him,” I said.

She nodded. “I might have, if the shoe hadn’t broken. Or that other guy hadn’t shown up when he did.”

“Alice! You don’t mean that.”

“I was that angry.” She looked out the front window again. “Haven’t you felt like that before? Just…enraged at everything that was wrong with your life?”

I shook my head. Anger was an unpleasant emotion I shied away from like a skater avoiding thin ice. I secretly feared that once unleashed, I might rage out of control…as Alice had done.

“I’m angry at the cancer, at getting old and at being alone. At the way my life has turned out.” She sighed. “He was just the spark that set me off.”

“I’m glad you didn’t kill him.” I shuddered. “You wouldn’t want that on your conscience.”

“Don’t you think you could kill someone if you had to?”

I felt weak, my skin clammy. “No,” I whispered.

“I could. To protect myself or someone I love, I could.”

I shook my head. “No. Don’t even think it.” I struggled to get a grip on my emotions. All this talk of death, on top of the scare we’d just had, was too much. My knees hurt from where I’d fallen in the gravel and my heart hurt from the words my friend was saying.

“All set, ladies.” The wrecker driver returned and handed Alice a clipboard. “Sign at the bottom and you’re good to go.” He glanced down the road. “I see your friend left.”

“Good riddance.” Alice returned the clipboard. “Thanks.”

Together, we limped back to the truck and climbed in. “Okay if we make it another early night?” I said.

“Best idea I’ve heard all day.” Alice leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “I need a drink.”

“Me, too.” A Valium and a boatload of chocolate would be welcome, too, but I’d take whatever I could to numb my emotions for a little while. I knew it would be a long time before the memory of Alice beating the man who lay helpless on the side of the road left me, or the cold sound of her voice talking about killing him stopped echoing in my ears.

The next morning I discovered our encounter with Black Beard had shaken Alice more than she’d let on. “Two women traveling alone are a target for every lowlife out there,” she said. “We need to take steps to protect ourselves.”

I looked up from folding my nightgown. “Steps?” This sounded ominous. “What kind of steps?”

“We should buy a gun.” She nodded. “Two guns. One for each of us.”

“A gun?” The idea knocked all the wind out of me. I sagged onto the bed. “I don’t want anything to do with guns.”

“Don’t be such a ninny,” she said. “Every woman should know how to handle a weapon.”

“You were doing pretty well yesterday with nothing more than a kitten heel.”

“Only because that guy was stupid. If he’d been after more than the truck, or if he’d had a knife or a gun himself, the two of us might not be sitting here right now.”

The thought made me queasy. I hugged my arms across my stomach. “If you’d had a gun yesterday, you probably would have killed the guy. We could both be in jail right now.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t have gone that far.”

In my mind, that was a big “maybe.” “Don’t you have to have a license to buy a gun?”

She looked smug. “Not in Kansas. We should buy a couple before we go any farther.”

“How do you know these things?” I asked.

“Stan bought guns in Kansas.” She dragged the open telephone directory closer to her. “I found a gun shop just a couple blocks from here. We should check them out.”

“I am not buying a gun,” I said.

“Fine. But I want one.” She stood and picked up her purse. “Come on. It won’t hurt you to learn a little about guns. You might even change your mind.”

I doubted it. Guns frightened me and I wasn’t afraid to admit it. Anything that could blow a person away with a twitch of the finger was something I wanted to stay far away from.

Alice had no such qualms. Twenty minutes later, she waltzed into the gun shop as if it were a fancy clothing boutique. I followed more slowly, warily eyeing the thick iron bars on the windows and the NRA stickers on the display counter. The glass cases and bright lighting were reminiscent of a jewelry store, but that’s where the similarity ended.

A barrel-chested man with a shaved head and a Fu Manchu mustache greeted us with a booming voice. “How can I help you ladies?” he asked.

“I’d like to buy a handgun.” Alice plopped her purse onto the counter. “Something easy to carry.”

“I’d recommend an intermediate caliber semiautomatic.” Mustache Man led us to another glass case. “This Beretta here is a nice ladies’ pistol.”

My attention drifted as they discussed the merits of various grip styles, finishes and calibers. I wandered over to a third case and studied a collection of brass knuckles, handcuffs and other things I couldn’t identify.

“Can I help you, pretty lady?”

I looked up to see a tall man with a blond pompadour grinning at me. He had big white teeth and long sideburns.
If he’d been wearing a powder-blue suit he could have passed for a televangelist.

“Um, no thanks,” I said, backing away. “I’m here with my friend.” I turned toward Alice in time to see her and Mustache Man disappearing behind a closed door. I frowned.

“Don’t worry about her.” Blondie came up behind me. “Jake’s taking her to the shooting range to try out the piece she picked out.”

Right. And left me here with a man who kept leering at me as if he was the Big Bad Wolf and I was Little Red Riding Hood. “Do you like guns?” he asked.

“No.” I backed away from him again, but he followed right along. “My friend just wanted one for, um, self-defense,” I said.

“We have a lot of great choices for self-defense.” He reached up on a shelf and pulled down what looked like a bottle of breath-freshener spray. Maybe this one gave you instant garlic breath for defense against vampires and people you didn’t want to kiss.

“This pepper spray can stop an assailant in his tracks from ten feet away,” Blondie said. His grin widened. “It works good on bears, too.”

“Do you have a problem with bears here in Kansas?” I asked, retreating farther.

He threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Damn, I like a woman with a sense of humor. You’re cute.”

I’d been called a lot of things in my day, but I hadn’t heard the word
cute
applied to me since fifth grade. “Thanks. I think I’ll just wait for my friend in the truck.”

I darted toward the door, but Blondie intercepted me. “Wait a minute. You haven’t seen our other self-defense choices. We’ve got a nice line of stun guns over here.”

He dragged me over to a display on the back wall and took down a wicked-looking black plastic baton. “This baby is small enough to fit in your purse and can send three
hundred thousand volts through anybody who tries to mess with you.”

“Sounds dangerous.” I eyed the weapon.

“Oh, it won’t kill anybody.” He stuck the gun in my hand. “It’ll just make ’em wish they were dead for a while.” He roared again. Gun shop humor.

“I’m not interested.” I tried to hand it back to him, but he put his hands behind his back. “Aww, come on,” he said. “I’d think a cute gal like you would need protection. You probably have men hitting on you all day.”

“Only when I visit gun shops.”

“There you go again. You are just too funny!”

I glanced toward the door Alice had disappeared through. When was she going to return and rescue me from the Blond Bomber?

I was annoyed at myself for even thinking this. Why should I need someone else to rescue me from an annoying man? It had been bad enough standing by watching yesterday while Alice worked Black Beard over. At least then there really hadn’t been anything I could do. Now I was merely acting helpless, when I knew I wasn’t.

I turned to Blondie. “Look, I’m not interested.”

“In the stun gun or in me?” He leered and leaned closer.

“Both.” I laid the weapon on the counter and looked him in the eye. “Leave me alone.”

“Aww, don’t be like that, darlin’. I can be real nice once you get to know me. Maybe the two of us could go out later and I can prove it to you.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

He took my hand in his. “Then think again. You and I could have a great time together, I just know it.”

“Are you deaf?” I pulled my hand away and glared at him. “I said I wasn’t interested.”

“I just want the chance to change your mind.” He reached for my hand again and something in me snapped.

When Alice and Mustache Man returned a few minutes later, Blondie was rolling around in the middle of the floor, groaning. “What happened to him?” Alice asked.

“He got fresh and I kneed him in the nuts.” I hitched my purse higher on my shoulder. “Are you about ready to leave?”

“Sure. Just let me pay for this.”

I waited by the door while Alice completed her transaction. Blondie still lay on the floor, hands between his legs. He’d stopped moaning, but he didn’t look inclined to get up anytime soon. At last Alice joined me. “All set?” I asked.

“All set.” She glanced back at Blondie. “I guess you don’t need a weapon to defend yourself,” she said.

“He was annoying me.” I shoved away the guilt that tried to creep in. Yes, I’d hurt the man, but he’d deserved it.

“Good for you.” Alice grinned at me. “You should get that angry more often.”

“What makes you say that?” I climbed up in the cab of the truck and waited while she stowed her purse, the gun inside, on the floorboard next to me.

“Women don’t get angry enough,” she said. “We’re taught to hold everything inside. We let people get away with mistreating us because we want to be thought of as ‘nice.’ Then one day, Boom! We explode.”

I remembered her explosion yesterday and nodded. “All the more reason not to carry a weapon. I’d like to limit the damage.”

“I don’t intend to hurt anyone.” Alice started the truck. “But I’m not going to let them hurt me, either.”

“If only there was a weapon that could truly protect us from all hurts,” I said. After all, the worst wounds I’d suffered hadn’t been from physical blows. Words could cause more
pain than fists, and as far as I knew, there was no foolproof protection against the things people could say to you.

The rest of Kansas passed by in a blur of fast-food restaurants, dusty small towns and cheap motels. The only highlights were my conversations with Martin. We’d been talking a couple of times every day. He’d call to ask if I thought he should use alstroemeria or dianthus in a bridal shower arrangement, or if I thought Mylar balloons at sixty cents each wholesale was a good price.

I chose alstroemeria, since it lasts longer, and said I thought that was a good price for the balloons.

We talked about more serious things, too, things that made me nervous, though I tried not to let my uneasiness show in my voice.

“I was married before,” he said once, causing me to almost drop the phone. Not that this should have been such a surprise. He was forty-one—a lot of forty-one-year-old men had been married before—but just as I’d avoided dwelling on the future, I hadn’t given any thought to his past.

“What was she like?” I asked.
Was she anything like me?

“She was a good woman, but we weren’t right for each other,” he said. “We parted amicably.”

I thought that said a lot for a man, that he got along even with his ex. “I’ve never been married,” I said. Would he think I was some kind of freak for saying that?

“It can be hard to find the right person,” he said.

I wanted to kiss him just for saying those words. All right, I wanted to kiss him anyway. I had since the moment we met. His acceptance was making me braver. “I used to be fat,” I said. I held my breath, waiting for his answer.

I don’t know what I expected—that he’d gasp in horror or be disgusted by the idea. “You’re not fat now,” he said.

“I was really fat,” I said. “I weighed a hundred pounds more than I do now.”

“That’s amazing,” he said. “Congratulations. It must have taken a lot of hard work to lose that weight.”

“It was tough,” I admitted.

“If you can do that, you can do anything.”

“That’s me.” I laughed. “Superwoman. This mild-mannered persona costume is just a disguise.”

“You have a sense of humor, too. I like that.”

The same thing Blondie in the gun shop had used, but coming from Martin, it sounded much nicer. “You’re good for my ego,” I said. “I’m not used to all these compliments.”

“Stick with me and I promise you’ll get used to them.”

The idea made me uneasy. Not that I didn’t want to see him again, but I didn’t trust my own feelings when it came to men. “How can you say that when we’ve never even had a real date?” I asked.

“I feel as if I’ve known you for years,” he said. “And I want the chance to get to know you so much better.”

I swallowed hard, fighting a fear I couldn’t begin to explain. “You might not like me so much if you learned all my secrets,” I said, trying for a teasing tone, though it was hard to talk around the tightness in my throat.

“None of us are perfect,” he said. “I’ll forgive your flaws if you forgive mine.”

“You have flaws?” Probably nothing I’d count a real flaw. Martin seemed perfect, out of reach even.

After the fiasco with Marc, I’d imagined myself working my way up to serious dating in baby steps. Maybe coffee with someone I met online, then a blind date arranged by friends. The guys would be completely average. Nothing threatening.

Instead, I’d skipped way over average to superior. It felt exhilarating and magical.

And more than a little scary.

We left Kansas and entered eastern Colorado, but we were still a long way from California, a fact Frannie complained about whenever I called to check in.

“Are you angry with me about something?” she asked one morning two days after our encounter with Black Beard. “If you are, you should just say so instead of trying to punish me by staying away like this.”

“I’m not trying to punish you,” I said. “That’s ridiculous.”

Frannie refused to let go of the idea. “Are you upset because I objected to your going to the reunion in the first place?”

“You didn’t stop me from going, so why should it matter?” Was I angry with Frannie? Maybe a little. Her desire to control every aspect of my life grated more than I cared to admit.

“I wish I
had
stopped you,” she said. “Then you wouldn’t be off on this crazy trip instead of home where you belong.”

“Why do you say I belong there? It’s not as if I have a husband or children waiting for me.”

“You have me. I’m your family. Isn’t that enough?”

No, it wasn’t enough. It hadn’t been enough for a long time. I’d tried to fill the void with food, but now even that crutch was gone. Still, I didn’t know how to confess this to Frannie.

“Isn’t that enough?” she repeated. Her voice shook, and I realized with a start that she sounded afraid. Frannie, who was always so sure of herself, so decisive and strong. What did she have to be afraid of? That something bad might happen to me?

Or that she might lose her hold on me?

“I’ll always be your sister,” I said. “Whether I’m right next door to you or all the way across the country doesn’t change that.”

“As long as you remember that.” She sniffed. “You
will
be home soon, won’t you?”

“Soon,” I promised.

When I hung up the phone, Alice, who was driving today, gave me a sympathetic look. “Big sis misses you,” she said.

“It’s more than that.” I shook my head. “I don’t think I realized before how much Frannie needs me. I always thought of her as the strong one.

“She always made a point of telling me how much I needed
her,
” I said. “Reminding me of how she looked after me when we were little and after we came to California. But maybe it’s been the other way around all along.” The idea made me uncomfortable, like too-tight shoes.

“Maybe it started when you lost all that weight,” Alice said. “I mean, that was something you did on your own, without her help. Maybe that was the first time she realized that she wasn’t indispensable.”