While I'm Falling (11 page)

I
T COST FOUR MORE QUARTERS
to leave a message on my father’s voice mail. I used my remaining forty-three cents on a small cup of coffee. I managed to do that without crying, my lower lip trembling like a child’s, my “thank you” barely audible. I sat in a booth by the window and turned my face to the glass. I wasn’t really stranded, of course. I could have tried to call my father’s office—even if he was in court, the secretary could have sent someone out to get me. I could have asked the man drinking coffee in the corner for a couple of quarters. I could have asked the woman at the register behind the counter. But the longer I sat there, the more I felt incapable of asking anyone for anything. I could still hear the dial tone, like a ringing in my ears.

At half past ten, I took my physiology book out of my backpack. But I didn’t open it. I just didn’t want to. I could not remember the last time I had let myself just sit, and not get anything done.

When Elise and I were small, my mother kissed our scraped knees and shins. She did not air kiss—she put her lips right up to the wound because that was what made us feel better. My father, always a little squeamish, had pointed out that an air kiss would probably spread fewer germs, and my mother said she didn’t care, our germs were her germs. If Elise and I had a germ, she wanted it, too. “No,” he finally said. “I mean your germs, Natalie. You’re giving your mouth germs to them.” It was only then that she’d stopped.

At quarter till eleven, an older woman with bleached hair pulled back beneath her visor came out to sweep the floors around the booths. I could hear her whistling as she moved the broom close to my booth, and twice, when I looked up, I caught her watching me. A Greyhound bus rolled into the parking lot, and someone from behind the counter called for the sweeping woman to hurry back to the grill. But she lingered for a moment, still sweeping.

“You’re bleeding,” she said. She clicked her tongue.

“I wrecked a car.” I pressed my napkin harder against my lip. “Someone dropped me off here. I don’t have any money to call anyone.”

“Donna!” The person behind the counter was snapping repeatedly. “We’ve got a bus! Let’s go!”

She glanced at the counter and then looked back at me. One of the side doors to the parking lot opened, and a long line of yawning and stretching bus passengers with muddy shoes made their way up to the counter.

“DONNA.”

She held up her finger, still looking down at me. “I’ll call Highway Patrol after this rush,” she said. She leaned down to pat my arm, giving me an apologetic smile to show she wished there were more she could do.

Two hours later, an officer arrived. He had a South Kansas twang and a gray mustache that looked combed. We sat in the front of his patrol car while he filled out his report. He was surprisingly sympathetic, even after learning I had no proof of insurance and, really, no idea whether the car I had left by the side of the road was insured or not. He admonished me for not calling right away about the truck driver, though he agreed that it wasn’t clear whether any law had been broken. He would have liked to have been able to talk with the guy, he said, and run a background check. But he didn’t keep bugging me about it. He turned his heater on high and offered to turn it down if I got too warm.

I nodded. I couldn’t think of what to say. I was hungry. My lip hurt. “That’s terrible,” I said finally, holding my hands against the heater. “You must be exhausted.” I was trying to stay on his good side.

“I’m actually fine.” He slid the report into a folder. “A storm like this gets my adrenaline going. I feel bad telling you this, but I kind of like it.”

He did seem energized as he drove me back to Lawrence, his posture straight, his hands at ten and two on the wheel except when he answered the radio. After the third call came in, he apologized again and told me he didn’t have time to drive me all the way back to my dorm. He said he could take me to my car and that a tow truck was on its way. I could get a ride home with the driver.

This seemed like a reasonable plan. But as it turned out, the tow truck driver—who did not seem at all energized by his long and busy morning—insisted on taking me to my dorm before dropping off the car at a garage. He wanted me to get my checkbook before he took the car anywhere. That seemed reasonable as well. The end result, however, was that I arrived in front of the dorm in a tow truck pulling Jimmy Liff’s famous—and now severely rumpled—MINI Cooper, “FASCIST PRICK” still faintly visible on the door. When we rolled up, thirty or forty people—many of whom only knew me through noise complaints—stood under the dorm’s front portico, waiting for the bus.

I opened the door and slid out of the tow truck. The crowd was silent for several seconds, then someone said “Ooooooooooo,” in a way that sounded pleased.

My cell phone was on my desk, next to my watch. There were four messages from my father. On the first, he sounded worried. On the second, he sounded worried and a little irritated. From then on, he was just yelling. My sister had left a message as well.

I sat on my bed, took off my hat, and dialed his number. When he heard my voice, he was quiet for almost five full seconds before he started in.

“Do you know where I am, Veronica? Do you know where I am right at this moment?”

“I don’t.” I sat on my bed. “Where are you?”

“I’m in the parking lot of the Hardee’s on the turnpike in Topeka, where they apparently only let robots answer the goddamn phone.”

“You drove out to find me?” I rested my head against the cool, cinder-block wall by my window. Outside, the sun was still shining, and I could hear the soft fall of melting ice.

“No, honey. No. I just drove thirty-five miles into the prairie because I wanted those little cinnamon rolls they make, and I couldn’t find a Hardee’s in Kansas City. Yes, I goddamn drove out here to find you! I was in court when you called. Why didn’t you have your phone with you?”

“I forgot it.”

He sighed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I was suddenly warm. The dorm’s heating system, when it decided to work, forced dry, hot air through the vents, and the knob for my vent had fallen off. I stood up and shook off my coat.

“You’re sorry.” He groaned. “You left that message, scared me out of my mind. They told me you’d gotten a ride home with a cop. You’re okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Why were you in Topeka?”

“It’s a long story. I’m fine now.”

There was a beat of silence. “What are you mixed up in?”

“Nothing. I’m just tired. Can we talk about it later?” I stood up and opened my desk drawer. I was dizzy with hunger, but in no mood to go downstairs and across the parking lot for lunch. I had a jar of peanut butter stashed away for emergencies. I got it out, along with a spoon from the dining hall.

“Does this have to do with that Tom guy? Were you with him? You got in a fight, right? And he left you there. Give me his number. We’ll have a little talk.”

“Tim.”

“Who? Who’s Tim?”

“Tim is my boyfriend. Not Tom. I’ve never dated anyone named Tom.”

“So he left you there?”

“
No.
He’s in Chicago. He had nothing to do with this.”

“Chicago? So nobody goes to class anymore? It’s a Friday, right? But he’s in Chicago, you’re in Topeka. So it’s not really college, right? It’s sort of a voluntary attendance kind of thing. I pay tuition, while you travel the world and scare the shit out of me.”

“Dad.” I could feel my voice start to break. I hated it when he yelled. I worked to keep my voice low, steady. I tried to channel Elise. “A Hardee’s outside Topeka is hardly traveling the world. I’m sorry I scared you. But I would really like it if I could explain all this later. I am having a very bad day.”

“I walked out on a client, you know. Walked right out on him. Honey, I pay for your phone because I want you to have it for precisely this kind of situation. It doesn’t do any good if you don’t carry it.”

“I’m sorry.” This would be good practice, I thought, for talking to Jimmy Liff. I opened the jar of peanut butter, but the spoon slipped from my hands and fell into the crack between my desk and the foot of my bed. I looked back into the jar.

“You could have left a more detailed message. It was cryptic, what you said.”

I got down on my hands and knees to retrieve the spoon. To my dismay, I saw it had fallen in a small pile of general dorm floor detritus—dust, an apple core, the chemistry study guide I had searched for in vain the previous month. I frowned, disgusted with myself. Brooms, mops, and vacuums were available for checkout at the front desk, but I had yet to bother.

“Hello? Veronica?”

Someone was knocking at my door.

“What is that?” my father asked. “What’s that racket? Where are you now?”

I opened my door to find Marley Gould, one hand raised, ready to knock again, her other hand holding her French horn case. She was still wearing her long, puffy coat and matching hat, and she looked even younger than usual, her cheeks rosy, her eyes bright from the cold.

“I heard you were in a car accident!” She pointed at me. “You hurt your lip?”

“Yes, but I’m okay. I’m on the phone, though. Do you…do you need anything?”

“Veronica? Hello?” The phone had slipped to my shoulder, but my father’s voice was still easy to hear. “Are you talking to someone else? Could you give me your full attention for just a moment? Would that be too much to ask, considering I just drove forty-five miles to come find you?”

“Sorry. I’m here.” I smiled at Marley and mouthed an apology to her as well, easing the door closed between us. “Sorry,” I said again. “That was one of my residents.”

“Tell me what happened.”

I ate a fingerful of peanut butter and swallowed. “Right now?”

“Yes.”

I sat back down on my bed. I was going to have to tell him sooner or later. And I needed to ask him about insurance, and what he thought I should do.

“I was dropping friends off at the airport.”

“What? Then why did you call from Topeka?” His voice sounded different, quieter. He’d switched to his headset. “That’s the opposite direction from the airport.”

I took in another fingerful of peanut butter, trying to think. My sister and I had learned early on that lying to my father required extremely quick thinking and steely nerves. Elise had pulled it off a few times—when she was a teenager, she would go round and round with him about whether traffic really could have been bad enough to make her miss her curfew, or whether there was any way to prove that she’d known someone in the backseat of her car had been drinking a beer. Even with her speed and bravado, he usually found the hole in her story. I myself had long ago decided that lying to him wasn’t worth the trouble. I hadn’t tried it since I was a child.

“How did I get to Topeka?”

He inhaled slowly, exhaled quickly. “Yes, Veronica. I’m asking how you got to Topeka.”

I gave him an abbreviated version.

“You hitchhiked?” He was suddenly much louder. “You did the exact thing I told you to never do?”

“But it worked out,” I said cheerily. “He just took me to, you know…”

“The Hardee’s on the turnpike.”

“Right!” I swallowed more peanut butter.

“In Topeka?”

“Mm-hmm.”

There was no reply. I thought I’d lost the connection.

“Dad?”

“Why take you so far away? Why didn’t he just take you to Lawrence?”

“He missed the exit.”

There was a long, long pause.

“Dad. I am exhausted. I just want to take a shower. And since you’re driving, and I’m home safe, maybe we can talk lat—”

“Aren’t there two or three exits to Lawrence?”

I nodded. It would communicate nothing on the phone, but it was all I could manage.

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Oh my God. OH MY GOD.” The phone seemed to shake in my hand.

“Dad. Please calm down. I’m fine.”

I heard a dull thud, a gloved hand hitting a steering wheel, perhaps.

“DID THIS PERSON TOUCH YOU?”

“No.”

“DID HE HURT YOU IN ANY WAY?”

“No, Dad, no. I’m fine.”

“Because if he did…If he did, I will find him and KILL HIM. Or I will…I will find him and PAY SOMEONE to KILL HIM. You are…You have to promise me not to do something so stupid again.”

“I won’t.” I held my head in my hands, wishing I could have lied. “Sorry.”

“Okay. I’m driving to Lawrence tomorrow. I have some time. We can have lunch. I’ll pick you up at eleven. And don’t worry. You’re on my insurance. I’m not an idiot.”

“Okay,” I said. I would have to pay dearly for this assistance—there would be more lectures, and probably jokes about my driving for years to come—still, I felt comforted, and cared for. He was a yeller, but at least he cared.

I had almost hung up when he said my name. I brought the phone back up to my ear. “Yes?”

“So…” He suddenly sounded awkward. “I’m just wondering,” he said. “Where was your mother in all this?” He cleared his throat. “I assume you tried to call her.”

I moved my finger up to my lips. I could feel the raised line of clotted blood.

“Veronica? Did you call your mother?”

I looked down at my boots, still damp with melted sleet. “I tried,” I said. “She wasn’t home.”