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All through the summer I continue to work at Billups Hardware, riding my bike out to Summer Grove in the afternoons or on my days off. I tell Jay and Tommy all about Warren, who is spending most of his weekends in St. Louis playing with Elliot’s Child. The band is making a name for itself all around the Midwest—they may actually have what it takes to get noticed by whoever notices new bands and makes them famous. Warren is always going on about when they hit the “big time”. The first step, he says, is the St. Louis gig, playing as the house band every Friday and Saturday night at a club called The Mixer. Supposedly, Jimmy Hendrix and Sammy Hagar once played there, so it’s a big deal. I talk about Warren to Jay and Tommy almost as much as Warren talks about the band to me. When their eyes begin to glaze over every time I mention his name, I recognize the look and know that I'm boring them, just like Warren bores me when he goes on and on and on about the band.
They don’t offer advice. I know they don’t like it, don’t like him, even though they’ve never met. They’re jealous. I know enough about that to understand. They are jealous because Warren is living a life, and Jay and Tommy are still waiting for life to begin. They may even be jealous because I’m in love with him. When I stop taking about him all the time, we sort of get back to normal, talking about whatever is going on in their lives and mine, as long as it doesn’t touch on Warren.
It’s a good life, this summer, with a good rhythm of work and friends, and the weeks just slip past, each one more quickly than the last. Warren comes home every Sunday to run his rounds at the Vendor Tender. He’s given up his Thursday run in order to be in St. Louis to prepare for the weekend. We see each other every day he is in town, and I go with him on his Vendor Tender runs on Sundays and Tuesdays. It still isn’t enough time together. My GED classes take up my evenings and most of my days are spent at Billups. I’m trying to save enough to get an apartment, on my own. I know Mr. Billups would work out a really good deal for me, but I don’t think I can live there, even if it isn’t the same apartment. It would feel like going backwards, like the year I repeated the sixth grade.
August rolls into East Central Illinois with record-breaking heat; we top one hundred degrees two days in a row. According to the weatherman, there is more of the same on the horizon and not a drop of rain in sight. The crops that grew so well earlier in the summer are suffering now. I see it on the TV, but not in my day-to-day life. I don’t drive past any fields like that anymore.
I am busy studying, and I’m surprised to find that the studying part isn’t bad. I don’t mind reading and taking notes and putting lists together. It seems odd that I was such an utter failure at school because I really like to learn.
I passed the test for my GED on the eighth of August, and the judge signed the Order of Emancipation of a Minor on the tenth. It was a stellar week, even if it was hot. Warren and I made love in the Vendor Tender van for the first time the night the Order of Emancipation came down, and I teased him that he was just waiting for me to be legal. He didn’t deny it; he just smiled a small smile, kissed my nose, and pulled me closer. Afterward, we shared a Twix bar before finishing the rounds. I feel powerful with Warren. When he touches me, my body glows.
Having sex is different than I thought it would be. I didn’t think I would like it, because I’m so weird about being touched. The truth is I can’t get enough of him touching me. I want his hands on my skin and I don’t even think about the way Ed had touched me or made me touch him, I had felt dirty and ashamed then. Shameful. It was something entirely different from this love with Warren. When the “something” that happened last Christmas turned out to be Cal, I had felt all that same shame again. I don’t remember what exactly happened with Cal except in little snippets here and there, and for that I am grateful. Sometimes a sense of familiarity washes over me from the strangest things—like seeing the shape of my hand when I reach to pay for a candy bar and see, almost superimposed, the hand, wrapped in its tattooed snake, holding mine with force, his voice cutting through my consciousness, “Whore, whore, whore,” the ghost of a night I lost. Sometimes it is when the full moon rises from behind a tree and I look around, thinking I’ve smelled him. Of course, these moments always happen when I least expect them, when Cal is the last thing on my mind. They leave me shattered and breathless.
Everything with Warren is different than I expected—the loving, the sex. We are a team. We take care of each other. He makes me feel almost whole and unbroken.
***
We are on our way to Mattoon, where one of Warren’s cousins works in a car dealership. Warren thinks it is time for me to get a car, and I can’t disagree. I almost never disagree with him. I have nearly two thousand dollars saved from working at Billups. He floats his car into the lot, and we climb out. We take our time, walking through the used car section, holding hands, bumping into each other.
“Warren.” A voice calls out from across the lot, and a man, very clearly from Warren’s gene pool, wends his way toward us, through the cars, smiling, his arm raised in greeting.
“Hey, Sheldon,” Warren says, his pronunciation precise and exaggerated. Sheldon is a softer version of Warren, not as tall, not as angled, not as good looking.
“Don,” he says, extending his hand to me. “Call me Don.” Warren’s family has the strangest affection for old-fashioned names. I smile and let him take my hand in his, thinking that maybe Don is not so much better than Sheldon.
“Hi.” I laugh because the two men are waggling eyebrows at each other and Don is still cupping my hand in his. “I’m—”
“You’re stunning,” Don says, drawing his eyes back to me, lifting my hand to his lips in a very smarmy pantomime of kissing the ring. His hair is thinning on top, I notice as he tilts his head toward me, and he’s trying to cover it by keeping it short and spiked.
“I’m Alison,” I say, drawing my hand back, his sleaze factor making my skin crawl and prickle.
“Yes, you are.” He lets my hand go and turns his attention out to the lot. I wipe my offended hand on my jeans, trying to be free of the squishy feel of his flesh. “So what are we looking for?”
Warren takes control. “Something reasonable. And something reliable. It can’t leave her stranded.”
“We don’t sell cars that leave you stranded, Cousin,” he says, affronted. “What’s your budget, Alison?”
I start to tell him, but Warren speaks before I can. “Twelve hundred. Maybe fifteen.”
Don takes us away from the front line of shiny, newer-model cars and toward the back of the lot, moving down in price as we go. We look at several. A gold Pinto with wood paneling down the sides, which I can’t like because it looks so much like a bubble. It doesn’t even look like a car. A pale blue Aries, which is okay, but the inside is so badly stained that I wonder where the body was dumped. When we come to a Volkswagen Beetle, I find myself pulling Warren to a stop, almost like the car spoke to me. It is red and has personality, and even before I’ve climbed inside, I’m thinking of it as Little Red. I’m thinking of it as mine. It’s definitely the oldest car we’ve looked at, but the inside is simple and clean, and it’s even less than the twelve hundred dollars that Warren had suggested.
The big drawback? It’s a manual transmission, and I have never driven a manual before. We take it out for a test drive, with Warren driving and his squishy cousin smashed into the back seat. Don sits in the center of the back seat, his elbows propped on our seat backs, leaning forward, looking from Warren to me like a Cheshire cat, grinning and talking about how economical the car is and how it’s a classic with only a little body work needed on it. I wish he would shut up or fall out. The car purrs right along, and it makes me happy, even with Don breathing on me, which is a crazy thing for a car to do.
Less than an hour later I have the title in my hand, signed over on the back, ready to be filed with the government to make the car officially mine.
Warren drives Little Red back to Charleston, and I follow in his car. I wanted to drive the Volkswagen, but it’s going to take some time to learn how to handle the gears. Warren was wary about letting me drive his car, because he doesn’t let anybody drive his car, his “baby.”
My very own car, I think. I have a car. I have a driver’s license, and now I have a car, and nobody can tell me that I have to stay in Charleston for a single minute longer than I want to. I am a real person, and this is the beginning of my life. I park Warren’s car in a parking lot downtown near Billups Hardware and climb into the passenger’s side of Little Red.
Warren drives out toward the country roads, where we won't have much traffic to contend with, and then turns the car over to me. He takes his time showing me how to let out the clutch and engage the engine. He explains how the engine disengages when the clutch is depressed and how it engages when the clutch is released in time with the gas pedal being depressed. He is a good teacher. He explains how to shift the gears in a standard H and how to slow down without stalling the car. His explanations are simple and easy for me to understand, but it is not an easy lesson. I am frustrated and angry when I stall it yet again, trying to get from stop to go.
“Stop.” Warren says, and I do . . . because I’ve killed it, clearly, and it is shuddering to a stop on its own.
“I can’t do this,” I shout, frustrated and embarrassed that I can’t get it. How stupid can I be? Why would I buy a stick shift anyway? Great. I just bought a car I’m too stupid to drive.
“Stop,” he says again, his voice low and calm. “Come on, Al. You’re making this too hard.”
That’s easy for you to say, and I cut my eyes to him, warning him not to say anything else.
I blow out some air and look out the window, into the fields, and suddenly realize where we are. We are on 14th street. Just another two miles ahead, and then a right and around a curve, just past the little green sign that reads “BUSHTON,” and there I would be, staring at the place that used to be my home. Where our trailer stood, where we were going to build a house. Where I tried to kill my mother and burnt our trailer down in the process.
A flash of memory, a flash of her from a long time ago, sitting with me on the floor playing Go Fish . . .
“Go fishy, Little Fish,” she says, her voice sing-song, laughing.
“I can’t.” I am frustrated, because we play Go Fish as a memory game, and I have to go fish into the sea and try to find a match for the three cards in my hand. I am not very good at remembering where I last saw the matching card.
“Go fishy, Little Fish,” she says again, her green eyes sparkling and amused. I put my head down on my crossed arms and feel defeated. Her hand falls into my hair, cupping the back of my head, the other hand sliding along my jaw to lift my chin.
“Alison, you are a smart and amazing girl. You can do anything you want, you just have to decide to.”
I gasp, drawing my hand over my mouth, suddenly back in the Volkswagen with Warren. Tears spring forth and track down my cheeks before I can wipe them away. I haven’t let myself think of her much since she died. I made myself forget that she was once a different woman who called me “Little Fish.” I lost her a long time ago, and I’d never cried for that loss. Never grieved. I’d always been too angry because she couldn’t be the mother I wanted her to be.
“Hey,” Warren says, and I put my hand up to stop him. All of my nerves are inside out, and I’m afraid that if he touches me, I will explode. He stops, doesn’t touch me, and I try to rein in my tears. I have the most horrible empty hole inside of me, and I just want to see her face, to hear her voice, with that little piece of laughter that would sometimes bubble to the surface.
When I can talk again, and when the tears have stopped and all that is left are the smudges of my mascara under my eyes, I get out of the car and go around to Warren’s side, opening his door. He steps out. “Take me out to the trailer,” I say.