The Red One

 

IT WAS NEARLY eleven p.m. by the time Mom pulled the Coach into a small campsite just past Bakersfield, in a town called Buttonwillow. First, of course, Odette had to take the dog out to pee, and as she waited in the cool, breezy night, she wondered sleepily if that might make a decent name for a dog—Buttonwillow. Or maybe just Button, or Willow.

It didn’t really matter. She could name the dog nothing, or anything at all. It wouldn’t change a thing.

Back in the Coach, Odette found her parents tucking Rex into his bed, which was where they’d been sitting—the bench seats and table collapsed together and folded into a bed. With the table converted into a bed, there was even less space for maneuvering around.

At the back of the Coach was her parents’ bed. It was a queen, the same size they’d had at home, so they’d kept their old bedding. It looked strange here, on this lower mattress, in this smaller space, the quilt reaching all the way to the floor, pooling on the brownish carpet. On either side of the bed, a little lamp jutted out from the back wall, just at the right height for reading. Under the mattress, Odette knew, were some pull-out plastic boxes filled with books and a second set of sheets.

There was a curtain—a privacy screen, Mom had called it—that separated the big bed from the rest of the Coach. Then there was the door to the tiny bathroom, and a little closet across from it. After that was the kitchen, with a miniature fridge, a metal sink, a stove with two burners, and an oven that looked big enough to cook a frozen dinner but not much else.

The table/bed where Rex was falling asleep was just across from the door. At the very front were the “captain’s chair,” as Mom called the driver’s seat, and the “navigator’s nook,” as she called the spot where Dad had sat.

Mom loved to name things.

And up above the front two seats was Odette’s “room.” While Odette was outside with the dog, her parents had pulled out the ladder from the closet and leaned it so she could get up to her bed, and Odette saw that one of them—probably Mom—had turned on the light up there and folded back the blanket in an attempt to make it look homier.

Odette had already used the bathroom, and she figured it would be easier to sleep in her T-shirt and jeans than to bother changing, so she dumped the dog on Rex’s feet and climbed the ladder. She switched off the light and turned her back on her parents, closing her eyes against tears.

A minute later she felt Mom’s cool touch on her forehead, followed by a kiss. “We love you, Detters,” Mom said.

Then she felt Dad pat her leg through the blankets. “You forgot someone,” he said, and deposited the dog by the crook of her knee. “Sweet dreams.”

The dog circled and snuffed around, and finally flopped down. Her little body felt warm to Odette, even through the blanket.

She lay there and listened to her parents open a bottle of wine, listened to them whisper as they took it outside. She listened to the deep, nasally breathing of her little brother, and the softer, more shallow breaths of the dog behind her knees. She listened to the hum of the highway not far away, and she listened to her own pitiful sobs against her pillow—the one throw pillow she had chosen. The red one.

Number five, she added to her list, wiping her eyes against the pillow. The throw pillows I had to leave behind.