They ate lunch at the Saratoga, just like they used to when she was a kid. Easing open the front door, Bob Lindstrom nodded at a few of the businessmen at the tables, and the men nodded back, staring curiously at Faye. Some of them, he assumed, had already heard the news—it was impossible, in a town like Terre Haute, to keep something like that secret—and were probably wondering if this was, indeed, the prodigal daughter. Fortunately the men were acquaintances or business associates, not close friends. And even if tonight they would no doubt say to their wives, So guess who I saw at the Saratoga today? and the wives would reply, How did she look? or My God, can you imagine? they were too polite and respectful not to honor the privacy of a family that had already suffered more than its share of grief. And yet despite the patrons’ admirable refusal to approach them, Bob couldn’t help but notice his daughter’s anxiety, the way her eyes darted back and forth across the restaurant before settling, uneasily, on the menu. Abruptly, she slid out of the booth.
Order for us, will ya Dad? I gotta go to the ladies.
But I don’t know what you want.
Anything, she said. Whatever you’re having’s fine.
She wished she didn’t have to cross that room—it was like running a gauntlet—but she had no choice; her bladder remained unpredictable these days, another manifestation, she supposed, of her emotional distress. And even though she was clean now, her body was also still rebelling against withdrawal: aching muscles, hypertension, fatigue. On the other hand, except for a mild case of oral herpes, she had been pleasantly surprised, pleasantly shocked, when the doctor at the clinic, flipping through his chart, informed her that she didn’t have any of the dire sexual diseases she had feared the most. Not syphilis, not gonorrhea, not chlamydia. A relatively clean bill of health in the wake of what Mestival had forced her to go through—in the glare of klieg lights, with multiple partners—didn’t seem possible, but the doctor was quick to assure her that the test results were accurate. Because of Faye’s special circumstances, he murmured, averting his eyes, they had run the tests twice. Apparently until something else killed her, she was going to live.
She picked at her pork tenderloin sandwich and too-salty fries, nodding emphatically when her father asked her if she remembered coming here as a child. Of course, she answered, her voice too quick, too bright, too cheerful; ironically, she sounded like her mom. She lowered her eyes, trying to remain calm by concentrating on the sandwich, on the disks of red onion and beefsteak tomato perched, precariously, on that slice of breaded pork. But it was no use, she was fooling herself. The other diners might pretend that she was just another daughter out having lunch with dear old Dad, but she wasn’t. She was a circus act, a freak show. Everywhere she went, people gawked.
All she wanted to do today was assure her father that the reason she was leaving Terre Haute again had nothing to do with him and Blanche. That she was fleeing not her parents but her past. To restart their conversation, which had skidded to a stop, she mentioned some of the other restaurants he used to take her to when she was a child. Ambrosini’s. The Horseshoe Club. And the A&W on Wabash, she added. You know, the one with the metal bear?
What metal bear?
The one you shot with the plastic rifle. The one Hannah used to get so mad at when it hid behind the bush.
He grinned, remembering. A nickel for three shots, right?
She bit into her sandwich and swirled a french fry in a pool of ketchup, suddenly ravenous. Her appetite had been erratic at best since she came back home but now that she had announced to her startled parents that she would be leaving again in a couple of days, for Florida this time, she was feeling a little less anxious. At least for a few months she wouldn’t have to go to places like this, places where, at any minute, an old friend like Cathy Mapes at Baesler’s Market the other day might saunter through the door.
Her father looked around the room at the other diners bent like penitents over their plates. Locals. Natives. The same people who had been coming to this restaurant for years. Growing up in Terre Haute he was accustomed to seeing familiar faces in familiar places, but the lack of privacy in a small town, which he once considered a blessing, now seemed like a curse. He tossed his napkin down on the plate. Like Faye, he felt the eyes of the other diners covertly watching him.
I’ve got an idea, he said.
What’s that?
Deming Park. Let’s drive out to Deming Park.
When the day was bright and breezy and the joy of spring lingered in the air, when the red-winged blackbird’s deet deedle weet carried with it the yearly promise of a second chance, when you caught a glimpse of children playing on the swing-sets or a father swatting lazy fly balls to his son, you could hop on one of the miniature train cars and ride the Spirit of Terre Haute alongside your father through Deming Park. And afterwards, you could hike up and down the low hills, eventually circling back to the pond where two boys fished for bluegills, their fiberglass poles clinched in the forks of a pair of stubby tree limbs stabbed into the ground, their empty stringers dangling in the muddy shallows. You could walk in the patchy sun through the shadows of beech and maple watching mallards paddle, in no particular hurry, across the windblown waves. And for a while you could pretend that none of it ever happened, that you had never ventured down to Mexico in the first place. But then insistently, inevitably, the ache of melancholy would return, the sadness of spring deep in your bones now, and you would lapse into silence once again.
Fuck it, her father said (and Faye was too startled to respond, too bewildered to reply, because she had never heard him use that word before and never imagined she ever would). The boys lassoed their lines into the waves. Like small green sailboats the mallards turned their backs to the wind and let the momentum of the gusts ruffle their feathers and push them toward the middle of the pond. Daddy?
Fuck it, he repeated. Let’s go have a drink.
He chose a dark, cramped lounge on Wabash. A drinker’s tavern. An alcoholic’s refuge. Blinds closed tight against the daylight. A bartender with a heavy hand. Indicating a booth along the far wall—somewhere they could talk, he said—Bob asked her what she would like.
A beer, she answered. How about a glass of beer.
Apparently it was going to be a day of firsts. She had never heard her father use profane language and she had never seen him touch a drink—he ordered a scotch and soda—before five. But that was okay, because unlike the Saratoga she felt comfortable there. Scanning the sports page, the bartender ignored them while the only other customer, an elderly gentleman sitting alone at the counter gazing down at his glass of whiskey, barely glanced up when they came through the door. Like the bartender, the old man had no idea who Faye was, and she took solace in his vast indifference to anything but his next sip of rye.
Then her father, after a bracing taste of scotch, set his drink down and focused on his troubled daughter, and whatever comfort that dark, anonymous tavern had initially provided was abruptly snatched away.
I want you to tell me about it, he said.
It was as if he had punched her in the gut, blowing the breath out of her lungs. She hung her head in fear, in shame. There was no way she could do this, absolutely no way. If she described the worst of it—the men in masks doing unspeakable things to her—he would likely recoil in horror, blanch with anger, or start to cry. Her voice was tiny, a frightened squeak.
Please, Dad.
About Florida, he said. I want you to tell me about Florida.
Overcome with relief, and deeply grateful to her father for honoring their unspoken agreement not to talk about Mexico—at least not now, maybe later but not now—she described her phone call with Dieter.
He’s a writer.
Right. A writer.
And he has a house in Florida.
In the panhandle, she replied. A town called Crooked River. He spends his winters there.
And his summers?
In Bloomington.
Indiana?
Yeah. That’s where he’s from.
For a split second her father’s stern expression, those knitted brows, relaxed.
A Hoosier, huh.
Born and bred, she answered with a touch of pride.
And he’s married?
Married, with a boy, a stepson. His first wife—we were good friends in Mexico—his first wife . . . She took a moment to gather herself. Jen’s death was still hard to fathom, much less accept. His first wife, she finally admitted, died.
Good lord. Bob shook his head in sorrow, staring at a row of bottles on a shelf behind the bar.
Down there?
No, here. Outside Bloomington. A drunk driver.
Unwilling to dote on the tragedy, Faye took a sip of her beer. Life goes on, she thought. What a silly, hackneyed phrase. And yet technically, of course, it was true.
So this Dieter, you knew him . . . Bob kept his eyes on his drink, trying to figure out how to formulate his next question . . . You knew him from before.
He was in the village, Dad. Those first couple years. We were friends, close friends.
And he wants you to watch his house. To house-sit.
Dog-sit too. They have a Lab, a yellow Lab.
For three months.
Actually, closer to four.
Bob twirled his drink, clinking the cubes against the glass.
It’ll be hot you know.
One day, she thought, I’ll explain to him how happy I was in that village. How content to work as a waitress in the hotel cantina serving breakfast to the divers who came down for the reef. One day I’ll describe the bonfires on the beach, the fishing boats drifting back to the docks, filets of fresh pompano grilled over a bed of native wood. Before Pablo Mestival showed up. Before everything went wrong. She smiled, ruefully.
I guess I’ve gotten used to that, she said. To the heat.
Well I suppose you can get used to anything. Practically anything.
I suppose you can, she agreed, and when her father nodded, trying without much success to return her smile, she knew in that somber moment that even though he didn’t like her leaving, didn’t like it one bit, he wouldn’t stand in her way.
Okay then, he announced as firmly as he could. That’s it then.
But Faye wasn’t ready to leave just yet. The glass of beer had emboldened her.
Look, Dad, I know how hard this is for you, and how worried you are. But I’ll be all right. I’ll be fine.
I know you will.
I really will.
I know it.
The thing is, being back here, back in Terre Haute? It’s, it’s like . . . She hated her impotence, her helplessness, but how could she possibly make him understand? Because home is still home, Parrish muttered, but you are no longer you.
As he watched his daughter struggle to find the right words, Bob reached across the table and softly patted her arm, a gesture so tender, so fatherly she almost burst into tears. How brave he is, she thought. She had never considered him, this State Farm insurance man, particularly courageous, but all of a sudden she realized how much strength it must have taken for him to cope with a missing daughter, to remain steadfast in the face of such an unthinkable tragedy not for himself but for Blanche, for Hannah, for all of them. She lifted her glass for a toast.
Here’s to us, Daddy. Here’s to you and me.
Yes, to us, he responded, clicking his glass against hers. To you and me.