Pigs in Heaven Page 10

  Angie owns not only the diner, it turns out, but also the adjacent Casa Suerte motor inn, which Taylor understood as "Casa Sweater" over the phone. According to Angie, suerte means "good luck" she bought it ten years ago when the state finally persuaded Lucky's father to catch up on his child support. The idea of this place as someone's good fortune depresses Taylor. The low brick units of the motor inn surround a doubtful patch of grass, an empty swimming pool, and one palm tree that escaped the short, trashy stage only to find itself leggy and ridiculous above the telephone wires. Each unit has a single metal chair outside its door, suggesting a concept of neighborliness, but the place seems short on neighbors. Taylor has seen only one other person around, an old woman with frightened-looking hair. She is grateful to have somewhere to hide out while she considers their next move, but being here is only slightly better than being nowhere.

  "So what do you want to do now?" she asks Turtle.

  "Go home."

  "I know. But we can't. We're on vacation for a while."

  Turtle bites her lips between her teeth, then releases them. She picks up her fork and idly begins poking things with it: her plate, the tablecloth, her hair. The bulldog watches with mild interest. Taylor frowns unconsciously, fearing slightly for Turtle's eyes, but she bites down on the impulse to tell her to put the fork down. Turtle will only go so far, she's found. Not to the point of self-damage.

  From their table Taylor can see the glossy slabs of laminated newspaper hanging in the entrance to the diner: articles from the Phoenix Republic, the San Francisco Chronicle, even the Washington Post, all concerning the great adventure of Lucky and Turtle. It's no comfort to Taylor that people in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., are aware of Angie's diner.

  "Let's watch TV," Turtle suggests.

  "Sure, we can go watch TV. Pinky will cook and wait tables if the starving Armenians come in. Right, Pink?"

  The dog wags its rear end with its ghost of bobbed tail, and Turtle smiles, her first all day. Taylor feels relieved for that, at least, as they shove the door open and run across the wet courtyard.

  Sideways rain stings Turtle's eyes and arms. She tried to see in the pool as they hurried by but there is no blue in there, only a big mud-color shape of a thumbprint growing on the bottom. Lucky Buster said he could swim, before, and now Lucky Buster is gone. Her mother is trying to fit the key in the door of their room. The scaredy white-hair woman comes toward them holding a little roof of newspaper over her head.

  "Have you seen the horses?" she wants to know.

  "No," Taylor says. The key is on a wood card like Popsicle sticks. When it slips out of Taylor's hand it goes away on the water down the sidewalk.

  "Well, they were here," the woman says. "Can you give me a present?"

  Turtle catches the float-away key and gives it back. "What kind of present?" Taylor asks. She tries to make the lock open, but her hands are shaky like they were the day Turtle and Jax and Dwayne Ray came home from the rhinoceros zoo and they had to put everything in a suitcase.

  "The horses! Didn't you see them?"

  "I'm sorry," Taylor says.

  Turtle doesn't want to see a horse's clomping feet. Everyone here is afraid. Turtle feels the old place coming, with him and no light and you can't get air.

  "Oh, you're sorry. I'm sure you are." The woman runs away with her feet in flip-flops splatting the ground with little steps. The door gives in and they fall inside, where the room smells safe and nose-stinging like clean bathrooms. She finds Taylor's cold hand and knows they will stay right here.

  Turtle clicks on the television and stands a few inches from the screen, punching the channel button, sorting through the brazen images. She settles on a documentary about repairing a cathedral, and climbs onto the bed. Taylor isn't sure what the appeal is, but she accepts Turtle's choice. The narrator is describing the chemicals they have to use on the ancient walls; meanwhile, a man in a little wooden swing moves up and down the high steeple in his system of ropes, like a spider, but not so graceful. A male spider with a bucket seat and chemicals.

  "Where do you think Lucky Buster is now?" Turtle asks.

  Taylor has stripped down to her bra and begins pulling off Turtle's wet clothes. "Oh, I think he's at a friend's house chewing banana bubble gum and eating all kinds of junk Angie won't let him have."

  "Like me and Jax do when you're at work?"

  "Ha, ha." Gently she pushes a dry shirt over Turtle's damp head, which smells like baby shampoo, and pulls her arms through the holes.

  The cooler unit in the window thumps doggedly, overworked but useless in the damp heat. Taylor is suddenly irritated with the prickly weight of her hair; it reminds her of Jax breathing on her neck. She yanks it over her shoulder and begins corralling it into a braid.

  "Why do we have to have this vacation?" Turtle asks.

  Taylor feels gooseflesh rise on the skin of her bare arms. "Well, because we can't be hanging around at home right now."

  "Why?"

  Taylor examines the end of her rope of hair, trying to look unconcerned. It would be so simple to lie: Jax decided to paint the whole house purple. "Do you remember when I took you to Oklahoma that time to get your adoption papers?"

  Turtle nods, and Taylor doesn't doubt that she remembers. Sometimes she will mention events from years ago. Taylor finds it miraculous and disturbing that Turtle can find words for things she witnessed before she could talk.

  "We had to go on that trip because the social workers said we needed those papers so you could stay with me. And this is something like that. We need to go on another trip, to make sure we can stay together."

  "A trip to where?"

  "Well, that's the part I don't know yet. Someplace lucky. Where do you think we should go?"

  "Sesame Street."

  "Good idea," Taylor says.

  Now the television is showing the paintings inside the church. There is a sad, long-faced Jesus made up of small squares and triangles, as if he were glass, and had been smashed and reassembled. Taylor rolls over on her stomach and nuzzles Turtle's neck. Her spirit is revived by the exact unchanging smell of Turtle: shampoo, sweat, and something nutty and sweet, like peanut butter. She blows against her brown cheek, making a loud noise, then gives her a kiss. "This church is getting depressing," she says. "Could we watch something with a little more story line?"

  Turtle gets up and changes the station to a movie.

  "Thanks, pal."

  The movie is about a big, tough, angry wife who is trying to ruin the life of her rabbity husband, who ran off with a rich romance writer. Nothing about the movie seems realistic to Taylor, but Turtle asks her not to talk to the TV, so she tries. They both like the mean wife the best. She does spectacularly horrible things, and they laugh. Taylor also likes the Indian actor who plays the rich lady's smug, smart-alecky butler. The lady keeps snapping, "Garcia, take care of it this instant!" and Garcia keeps rolling his eyes and walking away.

  In the last few days Taylor has been noticing images of Indians everywhere: the Indian-chief profile on a Pontiac. The innocent-looking girl on the corn-oil margarine. The hook-nosed cartoon mascot of the Cleveland Indians, who played in Tucson. Taylor wonders what Annawake meant when she said Turtle should be in touch with her Indian side. Maybe that doesn't mean feathers, but if not, then what? Taylor is supposedly part Indian herself; Alice used to talk about some Cherokee great-grandmother way in the back of the closet, but everybody and his brother has one of those, even Elvis Presley did. Where do you draw the line? Maybe being an Indian isn't any one thing, any more than being white is one thing. What mascot would they use for a team called the Cleveland White People?

  The movie has become a commercial without Taylor's notice: she realizes now that the dancing women lifting drinks from a tray have nothing to do with Garcia the Indian butler. Taylor doesn't care for her own train of thought. She could end up like the woman outside, running around in the rain, asking people, "Have you seen the Indians?"


  Just as Angie's bones predicted, Lucky returned with the end of the rainstorm. He was at his friend Otis's, working on model trains. "Next time use your brain and call me, will you, Otis?" she scolds when he drops Lucky off at the diner.

  "My phone went out," Otis says.

  "My butt," Angie replies.

  Otis is very old and bald, with bad posture and big splay feet in white sneakers. She orders him inside for a piece of pie, and he obeys. Like everyone else around, he seems to turn into a child in the presence of Angie. Taylor marvels at this talent of hers, like one of the superpowers a cartoon character could possess: the hypersonic mother-ray.

  Taylor is helping Angie put away the soggy yellow bows from the Virgin of Guadalupe. The storm has left them floating in a puddle around her feet like bedraggled water lilies. "Do you put these up every time he disappears?"

  "Well, it's kind of a signal to the town, to be on the lookout," Angie says. "So if anybody sees him wandering they'll send him on home."

  Angie pronounces "wandering" like "wondering," and before her meaning dawns on Taylor, she is stumped on what it is that Lucky would be wondering about. He seems to have little room for doubt in his life. She can see him inside now, talking excitedly to Turtle. Turtle looks rapt. Taylor envies Lucky's assurance, and Turtle's state of grace: to be able to see neither forward nor backward right now, to see Lucky as a friend, just that. Not an instrument of fate.

  The phone rings and Angie goes in to get it, but returns immediately. "It's for you."

  Taylor's heart thumps hard when she picks up the receiver; she can't think what news there might be that isn't bad.

  "Are we not the species of critical thinkers?" the telephone inquires.

  "Jax!"

  "Oh, big surprise. Nobody else on Planet Earth knows where you are."

  "I hope. Have you heard from her? Did she come back?"

  "She walks in beauty like the night." He pauses. "Are you jealous?"

  "No. What did she say?"

  "That the Seven Sisters are actually the Six Pigs in Heaven."

  "The what?"

  "Seven Sisters, the constellation. They're actually six juvenile males who got turned into pigs because of being selfish and not community-minded."

  "I swear I never can follow you, Jax. What did she say really?"

  "That she's really on your side."

  "Right. What else?"

  "She says she's on the warpath. Can you picture that woman galloping over the hill on an Appaloosa? Too divine."

  Taylor can picture it. She looks out the window and sees Otis filling up his car at the minimart across the street. "Does she know I've left town?"

  "Yes. And her aim is true. She can hit a cardboard owl between the eyes at fifty paces."

  "Meaning what, Jax?"

  "This woman is smarter than your average box of rocks. Before she came here she'd already talked to people down at Mattie's, and she'd figured out everything about the fake adoption. She might figure out where you are--returned to the scene. First she'll try Oprah, then Lucky Buster."

  "You really think that? Is she still in Arizona?"

  "No. She flew back to Oklahoma this morning."

  "How can you be sure?"

  "I can't, as a matter of fact. She could be over eating kugel with Mr. Gundelsberger at this moment."

  "Shoot, Jax, I'm scared. We've got to get out of here. But I don't know where. I can't even go home, Mama's moving out on Harland. Turtle wants to go to Sesame Street."

  Jax laughs. "Good idea."

  "I think we've had enough of TV land." Taylor rolls her head from side to side, relaxing her neck, trying to stave off panic. Turtle is watching from the corner of the diner. "How's everything back at the ranch? How's Lou Ann? And Mr. G.?"

  "Lou Ann is Lou Ann. Mr. G. is a troubled individual. He has to leave his shades down at all hours so he won't see his voluptuous daughter exploring the desert in her natural state."

  "Gundi's started her nature walks again? She's amazing. I'd be scared of getting snakebit in a personal area."

  "Gundi has no personal areas. She's painting a series of nude self-portraits with different cactus configurations."

  "Well, be nice to her anyway. She's your landlady."

  "Landperson, please. Don't worry, she's not going to kick me out. I'm one of her favorite boys this week. This morning she was taking a very special interest in the cactus configurations outside my studio window. Turtle would have gotten an education."

  "Well, pay the rent anyway, it's due this week, okay? Being handsome will only carry you so far in life."

  "Would you say that I'm actually handsome? I mean, in those words?"

  "Listen Jax, do you feed Turtle junk food when I'm at work?"

  "We experiment. Peanut butter and green bean sandwiches. Nothing hard core."

  "She misses you."

  "I miss you both. I'm radioactive with despair."

  Taylor knows he wants her to say she loves him, but she can't. Not under pressure. It feels a little empty and desperate to her, like when husbands send wives into the store to pick out their own birthday gifts.

  "Well, look," he says finally. "Don't even tell me where you're going next, because maybe Miss Jaxkiller will come back and seduce me, and I'll tell all."

  "I'm thinking we'll head north," Taylor says. "I'm so nervous right now I can't think right. I'll call you from somewhere outside the state."

  "Have you slept with another man yet?"

  "Jax! Good Lord, it's only been forty-eight hours."

  "So you're saying you need more time."

  "Thanks for calling. You're really making my day here."

  "I'm sorry. It's just, this is harder than it looks. You pack up your unripe fruit and drive out of here and you're gone."

  "We didn't leave you, Jax."

  "I know."

  "We'll be back. This will be all right."

  "Make me believe."

  "You'll see." Taylor hangs up, wishing she had Angie's power to make the entire world sit down for milk and cookies.

  "For an adventure you have to have rations," Taylor insists. She's in the grocery, trying to get Turtle interested in food. She made the mistake of panicking, hurrying Turtle away from Lucky and into the car after Jax's phone call, and now Turtle has gone deep inside herself. In situations where other children have tantrums, Turtle does some strange opposite of tantrum.

  "Look, these pears are three pounds for a dollar. You can tell they're ripe because they smell like pear. We'll eat these until the apricots turn ripe."

  Turtle sits backward in the shopping basket with her eyes fixed on Taylor's shirt buttons. This is the Turtle of years ago; for months after Taylor found her, Turtle gazed out at the world from what seemed like an empty house. But all through those mute seasons Taylor talked and talked to Turtle, and she does it again now, to keep her fear at bay. People in the store look at her and then look closely, for ten seconds too long, at this child too big to be sitting in a shopping basket. Taylor doesn't care.

  "Okay, listen up because I'm going to give you a valuable lesson on how to pick the best checkout clerk when you're in a hurry. Okay? As a general rule I say go for the oldest. Somebody that went to school in the days when you still learned arithmetic."

  "I know arithmetic," Turtle points out quietly, without expression. "I know how to add."

  "That's true," Taylor says, trying not to leap at this. "But that's because you come from a privileged home. I taught you how to add when you were four years old. Right? What's three plus seven?"

  Turtle recedes again, giving no hint that she has heard. Exactly as in the old days before she spoke, Turtle seems to be concentrating hard on some taste at the back of her mouth. Or a secret sound, a tuning fork struck inside her head.

  Taylor considers the checkout options: three female teenagers with identical sticky-looking hairdos, and a middle-aged Hispanic man with a huge mustache. Taylor heads her cart toward the mustache. While they wait she
scans the tabloids by the register, half expecting to see news of herself and Turtle on the run. She was right about the cashier: their line moves twice as fast as the others and promptly the store has expelled them into the parking lot. When she loads in the groceries and slams the trunk, apricots go flying.

  "Those damn things!" she says, and Turtle's mouth hints at a smile. Taylor lifts her with some effort out of the basket and sets her down beside the car. She stands motionless, a stuffed child skin, while Taylor returns the cart. Taylor has been swearing at the apricots since they left Tucson, and Turtle has found it funny: the fruits roll around noisily on the shelf behind the backseat and bobble forward like a gang of little ducks at every hard stop. There are green apricots in the ashtray, on the seat, on the floor. Taylor is pretty sure they were a bad idea. Instead of turning yellow, most of them seem to be hardening and shrinking like little mummy heads.

  She lifts Turtle into the front seat and she scoots across and buckles up mechanically, letting Taylor in after her. "Will you look at this?" Taylor reaches down and fishes an apricot from under the clutch. Pretending to be furious, she throws it hard out the window, then ducks her head when it hits another car. Turtle giggles, and Taylor sees then that she is back, there is someone home behind her eyes. "So what we're going to do now," she says calmly, touching the tears out of her own eyes, "is we have to look for a sign. Something to tell us where to go."

  "There," Turtle says, pointing at a billboard.

  "That says to go buy snakeskin boots at Robby's Western Wear Outlet. You think we should buy snakeskin boots?"

  "No!" Turtle says, pulling her head back hard against the seat, tucking her chin down and shaking her whole body with the negative.

  "Okay, look for something else."

  "There," Turtle says after a minute, pointing at an envelope stuck under the windshield wiper.

  "Shoot, how can they give you a ticket in the parking lot of a damn grocery store?" Taylor opens the door at a stop sign and reaches around to grab it. "I'm sorry to set a bad moral example for you, Turtle, but if this is a ticket I'm throwing it away. I didn't do anything wrong, plus they'll never find us anyway." She hands it to Turtle and accelerates.