Ruth Galm - Into the Valley

“I thought about it the whole drive out here. What I think we should do. That would really set us up, fix us both. By the time we’re done we’ll have enough to get to Mexico, and I think we should get married down there.” He paused here but still did not look down from the trees. “You told me yourself the college guy hurt you, and so that kind of guy isn’t the answer for you. You need someone like me. You’re too soft for things, is what I’ve figured out. Too thin-skinned. I’m the kind of guy who can look out for you.” His voice gathered strength as he spoke. “So after this run, we won’t have to do anything else. I can get a boat down there and take care of us. You’re different and I’m different and maybe we fit together.”

He paused and there was a hot breeze rustling the cottonwood leaves, then silence.

“You can say right now if you don’t want to marry me and I’ll leave you alone.” He looked at her now. “I’ll leave you alone, but you’ll be on your own getting the money. That’s my offer to you.”

She had watched his mouth moving, his tobacco-stained teeth and his pointed tongue flashing periodically over his dry lips. The words “marriage” and “Mexico” floated over her. She understood in them only her hands at the counters again, sliding the checks forward and collecting back the crisp bills, returning to the delineations, the cool expansive feeling. She would tell him whatever he needed to hear.

“I can’t cook,” she answered finally.

A crooked smile bloomed in his face. “I’ll handle it, baby. I’ll do the fishing and the cooking and you just stay pretty and get a tan.” He grabbed her and pressed her head into the damp of his chest, lips to her dirty hair. “It’ll be the best living. You’ll see.”

She waited in the odor of his undershirt and their sweat for him to release her. The dappling of light through the cottonwoods made parts of them golden, his bicep, her white wrist, and in this light his proposal and her acceptance of it were remote and enchanted, a story she could listen to and admire.

Back at the motel, he threw an envelope onto the bed. The blonde woman in the new driver’s license had not dissimilar features — an oval face, the aquiline nose. But the woman’s eyes were younger, fresh and open. B. memorized the freshness before putting the ID into the ostrich-skin purse, as if she could inhabit that too.

Daughtry made love to her in the motel bed. He did not comment on her rankness, the rat’s nest French twist; it seemed to make him that much more devouring. She tried to lose herself in the sensations of skin on skin, the friction and release. But in reality she was walking across the linoleum, taking up the chained ballpoint pen, watching the clock above the vault. He fell asleep afterward, his hot thick body clamped over hers, but she went on, tracing the lines of the teller windows, running her fingers along the velvet ropes.

In the morning, he made her shower and wash her hair. “We gotta get you dolled up the way I first saw you,” he said. She shrunk under the water as if the drops burned her skin. She made no move to lather or scrub. But Daughtry was waiting. She knew he would make her do it again. She forced herself to soap a washcloth and pass it over her body once, to pour out shampoo and rub it through her hair.

Daughtry appraised her in the mirror as she applied her makeup. He got out the diamond brooch from her bag (she did not ask how he’d known it was there). She did not want to alarm him by telling him about the flyer. “I think that’s too formal for day, don’t you?” she said. He shrugged. The green poplin dress was laid out on the bed. “But I want to wear the ivory,” she said. “Baby, that’s a godawful mess, no offense. You look rundown in that.” He held out the green and when she did not immediately take it, he did not lower his arm. When she finally took it, she knew already it was wrong: the color too bright, the poplin too flimsy, the girlish belling of the skirt. Pulling her back somewhere she did not want to go. He brushed his fingers across her forehead and she forced herself not to flinch.

“We’ll get you new dresses, baby. All brand new.”

They went back to the lobby of the Motel 6 and a short wiry man with a blond goatee was waiting, wearing in the heat a buttoned-up dark denim jacket like Daughtry wore his leather blazer. Daughtry had B. stay outside on the hot asphalt where she shifted in the green dress, feeling conspicuous, watching the goateed man and Daughtry enact the mime of exchanging an envelope and shaking hands under the orbed hanging lamps of the lobby. The smell of hot tar from the parking lot sharpened the carsickness.

They took the Mustang. Daughtry sat in the driver’s seat without asking.

“Can I see the checks?” she asked.

He laughed. “When we get there, doll. Just hold your horses.”

She distracted herself by counting the rows of crops and fruit trees. But they went too quickly and the telephone poles too slowly and she could not block out Daughtry rambling on about the fishing “down South.” The only thing she could do to escape the growing of ill portent (not holding the checks, the green poplin dress) was to close her eyes and pretend to sleep. But she felt the dread still behind her eyelids. Before she knew it they were parked in front of a cinder-block building hedged by pruned oleanders, the sun glaring off its silver-coated doors. She had a moment’s hesitation that she’d already been to this bank. She decided she had not.

“Can I see them now?” B. asked.

“Sure, baby.” Daughtry handed over the vinyl book but watched her with it as if she were a small child handling a delicate ornament. She ran her fingers over the paper, studying the lines, the block address and cool blue pattern, the name to match the fake license.

“You know what to do?” he asked.

This struck her as funny and she laughed the first genuine laugh she could remember in months, until she saw his injured expression. She patted his hand and told him she knew and got out.

The entire length of her rushed with blood. She felt as she walked toward the entrance that her skin needed only to be brushed up against for her to explode. But the bad signal came immediately in her reflection in the glass door. The light green and belling skirt. When she swung open the door the air inside was too cold. The ivory on the walls not soothing but dull, the line of teller windows a row of draining rectangles and the empty desks pointless.

She made her way to the middle island. She jerkily filled out a withdrawal form; she crumpled it and started over. She absentmindedly put her hand to her heart but the diamond brooch was not there. In the corners of the ceiling she noticed the security cameras for the first time.

The teller’s perfume had hints of gardenia, bringing the Brylcreemed boy and the graduation luncheon briefly into her head. She made her way past the stiff bow tie and the white linens in her mind, concentrating to speak each word.

“I’d like to make this out to cash.”

“You’re from the city,” the teller said (except it sounded like “thity” because of the girl’s lisp).

“How did you know?” B. whispered.

“It says so on your check.” Her lisp had disappeared. “And you don’t look like you’re from here,” the girl said without a shadow of malice. Then the lisp returned: “Now just a minute, Miss Lawthon, I’ll thee if we can accommodate this request.”

The girl walked over to a manager at one of the empty desks. B. waited for her palms to dampen or her heart to race but no fear or anxiety was in her. Her body seemed to slacken, as if it were ready to be led away. But when the manager glanced over, his easy nod and smile showed that he had no qualms about her, the pretty patron with her clean dress and washed hair. The cool expansive feeling did come then. She thanked the teller and gathered the cash and walked out.