Bonnie Nadzam - Lions

They waited at a red light and Leigh watched a pack of students dressed in green and gold gear for a football game crossing the street before them, headed toward the shuttle that would take them to the stadium. All her life she was outside a window watching the rest of the world, for a few weeks it had seemed otherwise, and now she was back to where she’d always been. Outside trying to get in, and now dragged backward, back to Lions again. All of that again.

“I just want to make sure I have this timeline straight,” May said, both hands on the wheel as she accelerated on the city street widening into highway. Her gaze was straight ahead, her brow furrowed. The truck was smooth and quiet compared with Gordon’s. “He left two weeks ago?”

“It was like two or three weeks.”

“What day?”

“I don’t know.” She studied the line of cheap motels and derelict mom and pop gas stations. “Middle of the month.”

“Of September.”

“September, yes.”

“A month ago Leigh?”

“Look, mom. He’s the one who left. He didn’t even say goodbye, or tell me he was going. As usual. The Walker MO. Don’t pretend to be surprised.”

“Were you arguing?”

The cars thinned out and the motels gave way to isolated farmsteads and corn stubble. A cheerful man in a denim cap was selling cherry cider and pumpkins and waved at them.

“I’m not interrogating you, Leigh. What are you going to tell Georgie and Dock? Or Chuck?”

“Chuck?”

“We didn’t wait to call him. Do you understand Gordon’s been missing almost a month?”

“He was gone almost that long a couple times this summer. Chuck didn’t want to talk to me then.”

“He was in his truck this summer.”

“And you’re sure it was his truck they found.”

“Leigh.”

“Because John took good care of that truck. It wouldn’t have just died. And Gordon wouldn’t have just left it.”

“It was his truck, it did break down, and Gordon did leave it.”

“You’re saying he just left the truck on the side of the road and disappeared into the wide open prairie.”

“It looks like he must have unloaded everything first. Georgianna must have been asleep. She doesn’t even seem to know he came and left again. It’s a wonder none of us saw him. It must have been the middle of the night.”

Leigh thought she knew which night. “The chair,” she said, and could see the whole living room turned into dorm room restored to living room. She never wanted to see it again. “Well, I don’t know where he is. I don’t see why I need to come home.”

“You didn’t tell anyone.”

“It wasn’t my job.”

“Don’t you care about him?”

“He left. Again. His choice. How was I supposed to know his truck broke down?”

“OK,” May said, nodding, “I’ll give you that.”

“He is not my responsibility.”

May’s eyes filled with tears. She wiped them from the corner of her eye with one middle finger, then again on the other side. Leigh turned away and looked out the window.

The sky clouded over behind them and by the time they crossed the county line the clouds had caught up overhead. It was late afternoon on a Saturday and the street downtown was empty, a few scraggly native corn decorations hung on a front door. A lopsided pumpkin on the stoop of the diner, a plastic scarecrow in front of the bar. The diner was empty except for Georgianna, who they could see from the street was refilling the glass sugar canisters at a table by the window.

“What am I supposed to tell her?” May asked her daughter. Something about seeing her old friend there, bent over in the lamplight, quickened her pulse. “That Gordon’s been missing a month and no one cared enough to tell her? That now her son is gone, too, and no one knows where? That you never even called?”

“Mom.”

“What were you doing all this time?”

“I was in school.”

“Where you were entitled to a little fun, to a normal experience.”

“Exactly.”

“You act like everything happening in the world is happening in the story of your life. Leigh Ransom’s precious life.”

Leigh looked at her mother, uncomprehending. “If it’s not my life, whose is it?”

May turned the engine off and climbed out of the truck. Boyd came out of the bar and waved at her. They met briefly in the street and May went into the diner. Leigh sat in the passenger seat with her hands in her lap. Her mother’s words hung in the air beside her, but she would not look at them.

Inside Leigh carried two cups of coffee to the table where Georgianna sat. “Can I join you?”

“Leigh,” Georgianna stood and spilled a good half cup of sugar down her dress and onto the floor. “It’s so nice to have you back.” Leigh hugged her, and held her breath in her nose. It smelled like the woman hadn’t showered in weeks.

“Hi, Georgie,” Leigh said.

She smiled and sat down. “Place isn’t the same.”

“Pretty quiet.” Leigh sat.

“Your mother’s still getting customers from the highway.”

“I heard they’re going to widen it.”

“That’s what they say.”

“Are you going to stay here?”

“Me?” Georgianna looked out the window, then turned back to Leigh and stroked the back of her hand. “Sweetheart, there’s nowhere to go.”

“There’s a whole world out there, Georgie. You’re only in your fifties.”

“Leigh thinks the world owes her something,” May said. Leigh was about to fire something back when Georgianna laughed softly.

“Yes, well. She’ll get over that,” Georgianna said.

May went behind the counter and washed her hands. She took four heads of cabbage from the walk-in and started chopping.

“Georgie,” Leigh said. Georgianna set the sugar funnel on the table. “I don’t think Gordon liked school much.”

Georgianna waved a hand. “I didn’t think he would.”

Behind them, the chopping stopped.

“Did you know he left? A few weeks ago? Left school?”

More chopping.

“Of course he did.”

“Do you know where he is, though? They found his truck.”

May stopped chopping.

“Oh, he’s around,” Georgianna said.

“Around?”

She nodded, “Course he is.”

Leigh had the same sense she had on the morning of John’s death. Then again on her birthday. For Georgianna, talking about her son was talking about her husband. And talking about either one of them was like talking about the quality of the air.

“Georgie,” Leigh said, and caught her mother’s eye. Georgianna looked up again, and waited, her gaze fixed on Leigh’s. “I was just wondering if you might like a piece of pie?”

“If there’s a lemon cream I’d love that.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I made it myself, and I know it’s good.” She winked.

May whispered at Leigh behind the counter as she took down the lemon cream pie and cut into it. “How could you turn your back on him? Gordon was grieving.” The floor behind the counter was shining. May must have been scrubbing the place raw. The stainless steel, the floors, the stove, the grill.

“I know that.”

“Like hell you did. You and Boyd and Dock making up some dead man on the mesa. So full of bullshit you can’t smell it on your own nose.”

“I didn’t believe any of that,” Leigh muttered. She bit the ragged cuticle on her forefinger with her teeth.

“You what?”

“I said I didn’t really believe any of that. Come on.” She shut her eyes. She could see the narrow house on the mesa lit up inside her eyelids like a film negative.

“Keep your voice down. I have never seen such impatience. He lost his father, Leigh.”

“You don’t know how hard he made it. He didn’t want me anymore.”