UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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17

For lunch Charlotte and the girls had Vienna sausages and crackers. Dessert: the remaining doughnuts Frank had delivered to their door that morning. Afterward they walked into town again. It was another gorgeous day, almost springlike. Charlotte wondered how winter in California would be. Sunshine, warm ocean breezes, emerald landscapes. Back in Woodrow, when December rolled around, the cold sucked the color from the sky, the wind stripped the trees bare.

A note taped to the door of the garage said “Back in 5 min,” so Charlotte told the girls to go play in the park across the street. She used the pay phone on the corner to try Aunt Marguerite’s number again.

“Fifty cents, please,” the operator said.

Charlotte inserted the coins. She began to count the rings, but a woman answered almost immediately.

“Hello?”

“Marguerite?” Charlotte said.

“Speaking. Who is this?”

“Aunt Marguerite, it’s Charlotte.”

“Charlotte.”

“Your niece, Charlotte. From Oklahoma.”

“Yes, of course,” Marguerite said. “I know who you are. Charlotte. This is unexpected.”

Marguerite’s voice had a clipped, metallic ring to it, like a hammer striking the head of a chisel—Charlotte remembered that now. And she remembered now, too, what her mother had said once: that if you needed ice for your drink, you could just chip a piece or two off Marguerite.

“It’s so nice to speak with you, Aunt Marguerite,” Charlotte said, “after such a long time.”

“Yes.”

And then silence. Charlotte had hoped to ease into the conversation, to sidle up to the main point and wring every last penny’s worth from her fifty cents. No such luck, apparently.

“Aunt Marguerite, I’m calling because the girls and I might be coming to California soon. My daughters and I, to Los Angeles. And I thought, if it’s not too much of an imposition, I thought we might pay you a visit.”

“Stay with me, you mean?” Marguerite said.

“If it’s not too much of an imposition,” Charlotte said.

“It’s not a good idea. My house is small, and I work at home, you understand. I can’t have noisy children all about and underfoot.”

Charlotte had prepared for the possibility that Marguerite might say no, but the swiftness of it , the decisiveness of the ruling—like the limb of a tree snapped cleanly in half—took her by surprise.

“Hello?” Marguerite said. “Are you still there?”

“Yes, I’m sorry,” Charlotte said. “I understand, of course.”

“I can recommend a good hotel. How long will you be in Los Angeles?”

“How long? Actually, I .  .  . My husband and I, Dooley, we’re .  .  . We might be getting a divorce.”

“A divorce. I see.”

“And I thought .  .  . California. I’ve always wanted to live there. What I want, what I think the girls and I need, is a fresh start, a blank page. I know that must sound silly.”

Marguerite did not rush to disagree. Instead she sighed. “Los Angeles is a difficult city,” she said. “It’s not remotely what people imagine, all golden beaches and orange groves and movie studios.”

“No, of course not.” Though that was, when Charlotte stopped to consider, not very far from what she had imagined.

“Well then,” Marguerite said. “As I’ve explained, I can recommend a good hotel when you’re ready. Though if you want my advice, I’d encourage you to arrange for an apartment before you arrive. Hotels here can be quite expensive.”

It took Charlotte a moment to realize that the conversation—another limb of a tree snapped cleanly in half—had ended.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Good luck, Charlotte,” Marguerite said.

Charlotte replaced the receiver. Staying with Aunt Marguerite had always been an uncertain prospect, she reminded herself. She’d recognized that from the beginning. So. Well. There were other possibilities, if she decided to continue on to California. There would be other possibilities.

She returned to the garage and rang the bell. She rang it again. Finally the mechanic emerged, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. Tobacco juice seeping from the corner of his mouth.

“Hello,” Charlotte said. “I’m here about my car.”

“Yep,” he said.

“Will you be able to have it repaired today? How much will it cost?”

He shifted the lump of tobacco from one cheek to the other. He wouldn’t look her in the eye. She prepared herself for the bad news. Fifty dollars? Seventy-five? Surely not a hundred.

“Front axle’s broke plumb in two, the subframe all beat to hell,” the mechanic said. “Worse’n that, the transmission got beat to hell, too. You must have hit that ditch like a bomb. It’s a goner.”

“The transmission is a goner?” Charlotte said.

“Car is. Car’s a goner.” The mechanic shifted the lump of tobacco to the opposite cheek. “Fixing it’d cost you more than what the whole car’s worth. I won’t lie to you.”

Charlotte felt her fingertips tingle. A flush of heat spread across her collarbone, and the mix of smells in the cramped little office—tobacco and grease and sweat, the mechanic’s sweat and her own—made her dizzy.

“Do you .  .  . Can I sit for a moment?” she said.

He moved a stack of parts catalogs and girlie magazines off a folding chair. He brought her a paper cup full of water and found a book of matches so that she could light her cigarette.

He still refused to look her in the eye. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said.

When Charlotte stepped back outside, the girls were trying to coax the dog onto the teeter-totter across the street. She stood and watched them. She felt numb, brittle, the hollow husk of a cicada crunched beneath a shoe.

She rummaged in her purse for another cigarette. A teardrop rolled off her chin and smeared the ink on the cover of her address book. She hadn’t realized that she was crying. She didn’t know when she’d started.

How stupid she’d been, to think that she might actually have the nerve to see this through, that she might actually leave Oklahoma for good and leave Dooley for good and start fresh on her own. Nerve, after all, was not her strong suit. Her talent was for surrender. When Mr. Hotchkiss refused to let her take photos for the newspaper, she gave up. When Dooley refused to concede that he had a drinking problem, she gave in. When the service-station attendant back in Texas leered at her, she’d stared down at her hands and said, “Thank you.”

She remembered the story about the three pigs that the girls had loved when they were younger. In the story of her life, Charlotte wasn’t brick and she wasn’t even sticks—she was made of straw, the house that the wolf needed but a single good breath to blow down.

Dooley knew her better than she knew herself, didn’t he? So just come on home, Charlie, he’d said at the end of their conversation on Monday. You know you will.

She watched the girls. Would Rosemary and Joan remember any of this years from now? How would they remember it? How would they remember her?

The dog leaped off the seat of the teeter-totter, and the girls scrambled, laughing, to catch him. He wriggled on his back and bit happily at the dead grass.

He’d not had a seizure, Charlotte realized, since they’d left Woodrow. The new medicine was working. She could see that he felt better and livelier and more like himself than he had in a long time.

Was it a permanent state? No. The vet had cautioned her that even under the best of circumstances it was likely the dog would still experience an occasional seizure. These setbacks would be milder, though, and less frequent. The dog would be more resilient, able to more quickly bounce back up each time life knocked him down.

And just like that, Charlotte’s mind was made up. She wasn’t going back to Oklahoma. She wasn’t going back to Dooley. Come what may. The car was a blow. Other blows were sure to follow. But she needn’t let that deter her. She would just choose, each time, to bounce back up.

She wasn’t sure how they’d make it to California, but Charlotte would find a way. And once they arrived? How would they manage to get by? Charlotte would find a way. And maybe Frank was right. Maybe the universe did owe her a favor.

A moment later here he came, Frank, strolling up the street as if she’d conjured him out of thin air. When he got closer, his smile disappeared and his face creased with concern. She knew that she must have looked like a mess, her mascara running.

“What’s the trouble?” he said. “And how can I help?”