My duplex is in east Price, on a narrow street with a few anemic trees and a broken sidewalk and older, small houses with dirt yards. The neighbors didn’t like it when I parked my big rig on the street. I understood, though a lot of them parked their vehicles in their front yards, which also served as open-air storage units for used appliances, yard furniture, gas barbeques, and swing sets. The fact that I kept my weedy, mostly dirt yard free of cars and junk made me the uppity one in the neighborhood.
I knew my neighbors’ vehicles, running or not, and there was a late-model Cadillac Escalade pickup with Nevada plates parked in front of my duplex. Seeing those useless pieces of machinery always made me laugh, because their beds were too small to carry anything of real importance and their gear ratio didn’t allow for a decent towing capacity. They were a joke to any real workingman, which is why I often heard them referred to as cowboy limos, and the disdain extended to those who drove them. Of course, if I had the money to afford one I probably would have been less critical. Maybe not. Either way, that particular vehicle was out of place on my street. People on my street worked, or were trying to find work, and their vehicles had a job to do, even if that job was serving as a semi-mobile storage unit.
I passed by the Cadillac pickup and parked on the next block. Ginny was sitting on the steps of our shared front porch wrapped in a quilt. My attention was on the vehicle or I would have seen her when I drove by. She watched me as I walked up the sidewalk. Even from a distance I could tell she had been crying. Ginny was not prone to crying. I’d only seen her cry once before.
She waited to speak until I was right in front of her. Returning home without her baby, however justified, filled me with guilt.
She opened her mouth and I beat her to it. “I had no choice, Ginny!” As much as I hated hearing that bullshit excuse from others, I hated it even more when it came from me.
Ginny buried her red face in the frayed edges of the quilt and began to sob in heaves. I kept my mouth shut and waited for the courage to comfort her without making excuses. The courage deserted me and I went straight to the apology and excuses.
“I’m sorry, Ginny,” I said. “The weather was terrible. I didn’t know how long it would take me—117 was an ice rink, zero visibility, wind—” After a quick breath, I finished up. “I just couldn’t take Annabelle. It would have been too dangerous. Forgive me?”
Ginny stood up on the step and threw her quilted head into my shoulder and went on crying for a minute before answering. “I gave my baby to you!” she wailed. “What kind of mother am I?” She composed herself and without lifting her head from my shoulder, she said: “I can’t do this anymore, Ben. I just can’t. I had to. I had to.”
I rested my hand on her shoulder. “I know,” I said. “You had work and college and no sitter. You made the only choice you could. Phyllis is taking good care of her, I promise. She’s safe and warm and I’ll have her back to you as soon as I can.”
Ginny raised her head. “No,” she said. “That’s not what I meant.”
The front door to Ginny’s side of the duplex opened behind her and I saw what she felt she had to do. I hadn’t seen Nadine, her mother, since we dated ten or more years earlier. Even then I hadn’t really seen her. What I saw was her backside riding a married UPS driver down the home stretch in the cab of my truck while it was parked overnight in the terminal lot. I saw them and they knew and the silence that passed between us was the only goodbye. Ginny was a little girl at the time and already wise in the ways of the world, especially the part of her world that had to do with her mother—a lot wiser than I was. Even as a child, Ginny was the adult in the family.
I’d lost track of them until I stumbled across Ginny, seventeen, homeless and pregnant, while shopping for cello CDs after midnight in the Price Walmart. That had only been five months ago, though it seemed like years. Ginny had been seduced by her mother’s current boyfriend and her mother sided with the boyfriend, who denied everything, and abandoned Ginny, still in high school and three months pregnant, to move to Salt Lake City to “start over” with the boyfriend.
Everything Ginny had done since—getting her GED, having and raising the baby, working two jobs and going to night school—she had done on her own, including saving my little trucking company with her grit and quick wits. Without exaggeration, what she’d actually done was save my life. In the final month of her pregnancy a girlfriend from high school, without Ginny’s knowledge, had contacted Nadine for help. Nadine hung up on her.
The full extent of how overwhelmed Ginny was with life had come down to this—her mother, who had never really been a mother except in name only. For my two cents, and mostly what she’d done to Ginny, a number of words came to mind, and none of them were “mother,” though one of them started with it. Maybe the biggest surprise was that Nadine had come at all. I suspected there had to be a reason, and that reason had little to do with caring about Ginny and Annabelle.
Nadine was a couple years older than I was, which put her at about fortysomething or so. She knew her best qualities, and where and when to apply them, and her trim, coiffed, high-heeled, short-dressed self was on full display—though not for me. At her shoulder was the shadow of a white Stetson tipped low over a pink brow.
“Where’s my grandchild!”
It was a perfect opportunity for me to count ten before I spoke, think about the situation and the emotions and the people involved—take the high road. “Shit!” I said, though discreetly. No one on the next street overheard me—probably.
Ginny kept her head against my shoulder. “They just got here a few minutes ago. I haven’t had a chance to really talk to my mom yet.”
“Here’s your chance.”
Ginny lifted her head and looked at me. A dribble of snot ran from her nose onto the tip of her silver nose ring. Oddly, it reminded me of her as a little girl, a bit of a tomboy, a sharp tongue and a tough sense of humor. At eighteen she still had those qualities, along with a strength that I had come to take for granted. That call—asking her mother for help—must have taken more courage than I could imagine.
With a strained calm, she turned to face her mother. “Let’s talk inside, okay?”
I got a better look at Nadine and the new boyfriend once we were inside. Nadine stood with her hands on her hips champing at the bit to get started on me. She was the well-known piece of work. She had her strengths though. Not many women can manage to be both overdressed and underdressed at the same time. The boyfriend, who introduced himself to me as Rod, a “rancher,” no handshake offered, perfectly fit the role of a Cadillac cowboy—middle-aged and pink, huge biceps available for viewing—and wearing enough cologne to get the attention of the EPA. If Rod was a rancher, and I knew a bunch of real ones, it involved wrangling cats and little dogs and a spread that was fenced by sidewalks and required a lawn mower.
Ginny took a shallow breath and steeled herself. She quickly explained about her sitter being sick, the tests, work, and how I offered to take Annabelle for the day. Doing her a favor.
I was amazed Nadine held her tongue as long as she had. She cut Ginny off with “I bet he does lots of favors for you—and himself.”
Ginny ignored her and continued through Nadine’s interruption. The weather. The smart decision to leave the baby in Rockmuse with a friend.
Nadine huffed. “So he left my grandbaby with a friend? A friend? I can only imagine what his friend is.” She let her words burn in the air a minute. “Oh God!”
I was clenching my jaw so tightly I could feel my teeth cracking. If only to relieve the pressure and make a contribution to the conversation, I said, “That grandchild you’re so concerned about has a name. It’s Annabelle.”
“I know her name!”
Nadine teetered on her heels for a second and I could see her tightening her right hand into a fist. Rod put a beefy arm around her shoulder. “Settle down, honey.” He let us all see a big white-capped grin. “My little filly does have a short fuse.”
“Just when,” demanded Nadine, “are you planning to get—” She took a breath she didn’t need to cover not remembering her beloved granddaughter’s name. “Annabelle back?”
“Tonight,” I said.
“You mean right this damn minute, don’t you?”
“Sure,” I said. “Right after I take a shower. I’ll be back with her this evening, depending on weather.”
Ginny lowered her head. “Thanks, Ben.”
Rod said, “I think that’s the smart thing to do, pardner.”
There was the color of both reproof and intimidation in what he said and how he said it. Rod wanted to let me know he was a tough guy. More than that, he wanted his “filly” to see him being a tough guy. I looked him over and let him see me look him over. Who calls a woman a filly? Pardner?
“Careful,” he warned. “Womenfolk are present.”
He was right, of course, and I counted to ten at least five times in the few seconds it took me to back out of the door.
Ginny followed me out on the porch and closed the door behind her. “I’m sorry, Ben. The important thing is she came when I called her. They’re getting married. I’ve asked to live with them for a while in Reno. Just until I get on my feet.”
“I understand,” I said.
“Do you?” She started to cry again. “I hope so. You’ve been my best friend. Annabelle and I couldn’t have made it through the past few months without you.”
“I didn’t know you were staying in touch with your mother.”
“She phoned me a couple months ago.”
“Well, she’s trying,” I said, not believing a word.
As it turned out, I was wasting my time.
Ginny let out a sour laugh. “She called me to borrow money.”
I pulled her close to me and hugged her. “I’m still your best friend.” I kissed the top of her purple-and-red spiked head. “Five hundred miles doesn’t change that.” It was not my place, nor was I inclined to try to talk her out of her decision. “You’ve thought this through? Quitting college. Everything?”
Ginny nodded.
“When are you leaving?”
“Probably tomorrow. They’re staying at the Holiday Inn while I pack and tie up some loose ends at work and school.”
“I’ll miss you,” I said, and went inside my side of the duplex.