Bonnie Nadzam - Lamb

“No. You’re not. She is probably worried, but we’ll send a postcard, and she’ll get it tomorrow, or maybe the next day, and that will make her feel a lot better.” He held her face close and spoke nearly into her mouth. “And by the time she gets worried again, you’ll be knocking at the door. A little more mature, a little wiser. Your beautiful long hair kissed with October sun from being so high up in the mountains. And she’ll be able to see all this, won’t she?”

“Yes.”

“And it will be such a relief to her, that you’re growing up wise and straight and tall.” His voice a soft and easy rush against her face.

“Yes.”

“And she’ll love you more than ever. And you’ll love her more than ever.”

“Yes.”

“There is room enough in your heart, Tom, for more love than you know, okay?” He looked directly into her eyes. She glanced up, and down again to the thin yellow stripe across the chest of his shirt, and back up again.

“Okay.”

“That probably doesn’t mean much to you now, but I want you to remember that I said it. I want you to remember that your heart includes everything. It is very, very big. No matter what gets in there—bad feelings, sorry feelings, ashamed feelings—you don’t have to cast it out. You just let your heart contain it all.”

“Okay.”

“I sound a little funny, don’t I?” He backed up, releasing his hands from her face. She smiled and nodded. “How are we doing now? Should we go back to our facts?”

She nodded.

“I’ll start. Here’s a fact: you blow your nose like a honking loon.”

She laughed. “You make me laugh.”

“Oh, sweetheart. That’s my favorite fact of the day.” He smiled broadly and took her face in his hands again and kissed her forehead. “Is that okay? If I do that?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” he said, sitting up straight. “I think that made me blush a little. Did that make you blush?”

“A little.”

He smiled. “How about this one: we’re almost there.”

“We are?”

“Another fact: this is the only time you and I will ever be in his truck together, in the middle of the day, at the skirt of the mountains.”

“We could go west or east.”

“Eventually, come hell or high water, Tom, you’re going back east.”

“I think we should go on to the Old El Rancho Road.”

He raised a hand. “Now don’t be so hasty, Tommie. If you change your moods so fast, I’ll feel like you don’t really know what you want. Like you’re too young for this. I’ll get to thinking you’re just saying what I want to hear.”

“Oh.”

“Listen, dear. It is of the utmost importance to our friendship—to me—that I not feel like a bully here. Okay?”

“But I really do think we should go.”

“Let’s do this. Let’s park this truck across the street—see that place over there?” It was an empty boarded-up restaurant made of dark slabs of wood and fashioned with a porch to resemble a general store. “Then we’ll take a walk. Just to clear the air a little, right? And when we get back to the truck, we’ll make a decision.”

Outside the air was cool and bright yellow. Lawns around the houses were deep and soft, the air fragrant with sweet and rotting cow manure. A metal sprinkler ticked and a few kids in dirty T-shirts were circling each other on their bikes in the middle of the wide street. Crickets and frogs in the muck-filled retention ponds were in full chorus, the faces of the tiny houses blinking blue and gold-lit windows.

“Pretty little town.”

“Yeah.”

“I wish I could buy your mother a house like that. In a town like this. Or like one of those, with a glassed-in porch. With a bedroom from where you can hear the train whistle in your sleep. And a little breakfast nook downstairs for hot rolls and coffee in the morning.”

“That’d be the day.”

“Tell me,” he said and held up his face to her. “Is it a good face?”

The girl shrugged. “Sometimes I think maybe this is just a movie we’re in.”

“No, Tommie, this is real. Real arms. Real legs. Real trees.”

“Okay.”

“None of this will matter to you the way it should if you start thinking it’s just some movie. You’re not pretending, are you?”

“No.”

“Promise?”

She laughed. “Swear.”

“What I was going to ask you,” he said, “was if your mother would like my face. Because wouldn’t that be the perfect solution,” he said, “to our little problem?”

The girl tipped her head at him. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Maybe when we get back, when I take you back, we could rig things so I meet your mother. What do you say to that?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe—and I don’t want to get ahead of myself here, because you’d have to say yes first—but maybe we could have a small, private wedding. On a green green lawn. Or no. In a house with big windows, and all snowy outside. And beautiful fine china, and roasted duck. Right? And your mother in a beautiful white cape. And you in red velvet. Or blue. What do you think? Blue or red?”

“Red.”

“And I’ll buy her a big beautiful house and get her three maids just to help her dress in the morning, and she’ll never have to work another day in her life. How about that?”

“Oh, my God, she’d love you.”

“And we’ll have horses.”

“But maybe you wouldn’t like her face.”

“I think I’ve already seen it.”

“You have?”

“Does she have short dark hair?” He made a motion with his hands, cutting the hair at chin length.

“Yes.”

“I have to make a confession, Tommie. Don’t be mad. I went over there the night you were waiting for me at the hotel.”

“To ask if I could go with you?”

“What? No. No, not like that. I just wanted to think about whether it was a bad idea, what we were about to do. I wanted to put my face right up to the facts: that you’re eleven, and your parents—your mom—would be waiting for you in the apartment. I wanted to make myself really think about that. You understand?” He turned to face her.

“Yes.”

“It’s the only way to do this. We have to be honest about these things.”

“I know.”

“I saw a young woman and man there. I thought maybe it was your mom and Jessie.”

“Probably it was.”

“And Tom, here’s my real confession, okay?” She watched him. “Ever since that moment?” He paused and looked up.

“What?”

He looked at her. “Ever since that moment, Tom, I’ve been haunted by her beauty.”

“My mom?”

“Your mother, yes. Don’t you think she’s beautiful?”

“I guess.”

“You guess. Let me tell you something. She is. And I’m an expert on such matters.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“You already told me that one.”

He put his thumb and forefinger beneath her chin and lifted her face. “Look at me. We know the facts, right?” She nodded. “And we’re proceeding with due caution, right?”

“Yes.”

“Because we love this world. And everybody in it.”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He let go her head, put his hand on top of her hair. “So we’re all saddled up pushing on. Because it’s what people like you and me do.”

He drove into the night, along a cursive pass etched in granite, above the stands of green-fingered oaks and red-beaded hawthorns and all the aspen, above the trees that listed to the southeast, needled black along one side, twisted and deformed by forbidding glacial wind, and between great planed walls of rock dressed in little aprons of snow and shattered stone sliding down onto the road.