Baby, You're Gonna Be Mine Read online

  After she changed into her pajamas, she grabbed another bottle of beer and then when she went to lock all the doors, she noticed Donnie’s truck in the driveway. She opened the door and found Donnie sitting on the steps, smoking a cigarette. She almost cried out when she saw him, shocked to find him. How long had he been there? What was he doing?

  He jumped up and immediately apologized.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said, his huge body unaccustomed to sudden movements. He stubbed out the cigarette.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Donnie?” she asked. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admitted. “I just feel so awful about what happened to your mom. And then I felt bad that you had to come back here to take care of her. I thought, I don’t know, you might want to talk or something.”

  “I don’t,” Missy said.

  “That’s fine,” Donnie said. “Leland’s wife is still at my house, and I don’t really feel like being there. I’ve just been driving around, and I saw the lights on here and thought I’d drop in. I’m sorry, though. I’ll leave.”

  Missy thought about the rest of the night, the boredom of being alone, and she walked outside and handed Donnie the bottle of Michelob Light. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and she went back to the fridge for another beer.

  They sat in Donnie’s truck for privacy, and they drank their beers in silence, still getting used to the weirdness of the situation. The truck was an absolute disaster, the upholstery ripped up and leaking foam. The floorboards were littered with dozens of Trivial Pursuit cards, and Missy finally picked one up and read the first question aloud: “What does it say on the bottom of New Jersey license plates?”

  “Garden State,” Donnie answered, his voice robotic and emotionless. Missy looked over at him, and he shrugged. “I read the questions when I’m driving,” he said. “I just toss the cards after I answer them. I’ve gone through boxes of them.”

  “You were always a scholar,” Missy said. Donnie had been salutatorian at their high school but hadn’t even entertained the idea of college, going straight into the lumber business with his father.

  Donnie blushed, but his beard covered up most of his embarrassment.

  “Do you wanna smoke some pot?” he asked suddenly.

  “Sure,” Missy answered just as suddenly.

  Donnie produced a joint from the front pocket of his work shirt and lit it up, taking a deep hit. He passed it to Missy, who did the same. She smoked pot if someone at a party had it, did coke or pills on rare occasions when her husband was too drunk to notice. This strain was weak enough that it merely rounded off her anxiety and let her settle down. They passed the joint back and forth until it crumbled into ashes. Missy leaned out the open window of the truck and looked up at the clear sky.

  “How are things in Atlanta?” Donnie asked her.

  “Fine, I guess,” she replied, not sure she really wanted to get into it. She was just high enough to be happy, and she didn’t want to ruin it.

  “Don’t you miss Slidell?” he asked, and she shook her head.

  “No offense,” she said, quickly realizing this was Donnie’s life.

  “I hate it here, too,” he admitted. “I figure I’ll stay here until Mom and Dad pass and then I’ll sell the business and move to Florida and just become a beach bum. Or I’ll finally meet somebody and get married, and I’ll be here forever.”

  “That sounds depressing, Donnie,” she said.

  “Most things are.” He shook the empty beer bottle as if the action could refill it.

  They talked about high school and caught up on people Missy only faintly remembered. Most of them were still in Slidell, and Missy felt the slightest sense of pride that she had made it to Atlanta, even though she barely made more than minimum wage and lived in a run-down apartment, even though her husband had become little more than a buzzing irritation and her daughter was just getting old enough to put distance between her and Missy. She imagined a life in Slidell, where very little was different except the fact that they could afford a house. She thought about her mom’s offer of the house when she died, and it didn’t seem like the worst outcome, all of a sudden.

  “I had such a huge crush on you,” Donnie admitted, which Missy knew. It had been obvious all through high school, and Missy had always appreciated that Donnie was smart enough to not push her on it, since she didn’t feel the same for him.

  “Ancient history,” Missy said, wondering if there was more pot around.

  “Still do,” Donnie said.

  Missy knew the polite thing would be to smile and nod in a knowing way to Donnie and then talk for a little longer and then go back inside and go to bed. But she was so tired from the events of the past day and she was at least somewhat high and she was on her own and sitting in the truck of a man who was in love with her, which was, despite his overall bearishness, the most flattering thing she’d experienced in at least several years. And so she made the bad decision because it was easy and there was no one to stop her. She leaned into Donnie and started kissing him. His beard did not tickle; it fucking scratched her face like crazy. But she kept at it because she had initiated this bad idea and she had to stick with it. Donnie, for his part, seemed fairly shocked and very grateful for the way things had played out. She kissed him and kissed him and started to press her body against his. Fucking up, she now remembered, was so easy and so comforting; she had spent a good portion of her adult life trying not to fuck everything up, every ounce of herself put toward the effort, and all it had gotten her was a life just slightly below happiness. Donnie wanted her, had wanted her for years, and it had taken the assault of Missy’s mother by Donnie’s brother to facilitate it. It wasn’t fate; she understood this, but it would do for the moment.

  “Are you sure about this?” Donnie said, and Missy didn’t even try to respond to this stupid-ass question. She just kept kissing him and then, without looking, did her best with her hands to unbuckle his belt and get his pants off. His body was so huge, took up so much space in the truck that it was nearly impossible to get his pants down, but she managed it without the slightest amount of grace or sexiness. It was pure doggedness in the pursuit of a shitty idea. He pushed the seat back as far as it would go, and she went down on him, which she hated doing under the best of situations. A few minutes later, it was over. She pressed herself as far from him as possible, her back flat against the passenger-side door, as if she could distance herself from what she’d just done.

  “Can I do something for you?” he asked, and even if he had not had that beard, she would have said no. She shook her head and then Donnie said, “I love you, Missy.”

  “I better get back inside,” she replied. “If my mom wakes up, she’ll wonder where I am.”

  “What are we gonna do?” Donnie asked, pulling his pants back on and buckling up.

  “I can’t think about any of that right now. I’m sorry, Donnie, I just can’t talk about it now.”

  “I understand,” Donnie said. “I’ll come by tomorrow night, same time, and we can talk about it.”

  “Fine,” Missy said. “I have to go now.”

  She stumbled out of the car and went back inside the house, not bothering to turn around or acknowledge Donnie. She stood in the hallway, the lights off, until she heard his truck pull out of the driveway and head down the street. She crouched on the floor, her face touching the linoleum, as if praying, and did her best to accept what had just happened.

  Two years ago, her husband had slept with the mom of one of Kayla’s friends, and he had immediately told Missy about it and how much he regretted it. At the time, Missy had wondered why he hadn’t just kept his mouth shut and what he’d gained by telling her. Now, having done the same thing, she knew for certain that it was best to never tell anyone when you fucked around.

  She was beginning to feel delirious from the events of the night, coupled with an intense realization of how little sleep she’d had in th
e last day, but her body’s engine would not slow down. She paced the hallway, then wandered around the kitchen, hoping that motion would lead her to some kind of answer on how to proceed. She could not see Donnie tomorrow night; that much was certain. You could live with a mistake only if you made it once. But he would be back the next night, waiting for her. Her one option, she determined, would be to leave, to pretend this entire trip was a dream, and get back to Atlanta.

  She crept into her mother’s bedroom and clicked on the bedside lamp. Her mother opened her eyes and seemed unsurprised to find Missy hovering over her. “What’s wrong, honey?” she asked.

  “Mom, I just got an e-mail from my boss. She says I need to get back to work because the other secretary is going to be out sick and they really need me. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Well, you need to get back there. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

  “I am worried, though, Mom. I hate leaving you so soon after I got here, but I have to get back to Atlanta.”

  “Are you okay to drive, honey?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “You were so sweet to come to me. It means so much.”

  Missy was so close to crying that, in order to prevent it, she grabbed her mother and hugged her tightly.

  “Watch my stitches now, honey,” her mother said.

  “I want you to come live with us in Atlanta, Mom,” Missy said.

  “I can’t do that. I’m fine here, really.”

  “I wish you were closer to me,” Missy said, meaning it.

  “I do, too,” her mother said, squeezing Missy one last time before they released each other.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow morning to check on you,” Missy said, already moving out of the room.

  “Be careful, honey,” her mother replied, now sitting up in bed, wide awake.

  Missy packed up what little she had brought with her and then, on her way out, took two of the beers from the fridge and carried them into her car, pulling out onto the empty street. When she passed Donnie’s house, his lights were still on, but she just kept driving, setting her life back in motion.

  Two hours into her drive, replaying the night’s events over and over in her head, she understood that she would not be going home. The thought of returning to the apartment, to her job, to her family was suddenly impossible to imagine. Again, she felt the ease of further ruining her life, of sliding down the slope without resistance. She pulled off at the next exit and drove to the closest motel, a Super 8, and pulled into the parking lot. A gang of men with the builds and uniforms of construction workers were standing around a truck drinking beer, and they watched her in silence until she walked inside and approached the front desk. She got a room and used her emergency credit card; she paid all the bills in the house, so she knew her husband wouldn’t see the charge. She walked out of the office, key in hand, bag over her shoulder, the two beers clinking together inside the duffel bag, and again passed the men.

  “Care to join us?” one of the men said, which made a couple of the other men laugh quietly.

  “No, thanks,” Missy said, wondering if she should have said anything.

  “We’ll be here most of the night,” he said, and Missy realized how strange it was that these men were in the parking lot at nearly one in the morning, as if they were some sort of club that held monthly meetings. She was proud of herself for resisting their offer to join them, having at least enough sense to keep herself safe while she was making bad decisions.

  The room was terrifying in its level of upkeep. The carpet crackled like cellophane when she walked on it, and the bedsheets, when she turned them down, had the texture of flypaper. She wanted to get ice from the machine outside, to cool down the two beers, but she didn’t want to risk seeing the men again. So she sat on the only chair in the room, as uncomfortable as it was rickety, and drank both beers as quickly as possible, trying to gain back some of the low-key buzz from earlier in the night. She closed her eyes, imagined her mother alone in her house, her family waiting for her in the apartment in Atlanta. Here she was, somewhere between these two places, her whereabouts unknown by everyone but her. With the slightest bit of luck, there would be no ramifications for her actions over the past day. Her mother would be fine; Donnie would get the message; and her husband would never know anything. Missy could drop herself back into her regular life and, if she proceeded with caution, everything would be okay.

  Even considering the state of the motel room, Missy felt its pull on her, the desire to live here forever, the crowd of men both protecting and menacing her. She closed her eyes and felt the ease of how quickly she separated herself from the waking world.

  She thought of Kayla, who was so complicated and yet inherently good, a kind person. How had that happened? Suddenly, she remembered a moment from her own childhood. A new grocery store had opened in Custer, and her mother had taken her for the grand opening. When they walked in, an employee handed Missy a balloon and even though she was too old for it, she held it as she and her mother wandered around the store. “We’re not buying anything,” her mother had told her in the car. “I cannot imagine the prices at a store like that. But we can look.”

  To avoid being conspicuous, her mother had taken a shopping cart and they looked at the brightly lit aisles, everything looking so new and clean. Everything at the Shop-Rite in Slidell had dust on it, be it can or box or fruit. “It’s nice, I’ll say that much,” her mother said.

  At the end of one aisle, a woman in an apron was handing out samples of some kind of cracker with a cream cheese spread. People were lined up, a few people actually pushing to move the line forward. “Stay here,” her mother told Missy. “I’ll get us one cracker to share.” Missy watched as her mother walked toward the line and then froze. Her mother gestured for a young man to go ahead and get in line and she stepped back a few paces. And as the line moved and more people joined the line, Missy’s mother simply stood there, holding her purse close to her chest. After a few seconds, she walked back to the empty cart, her shoulders slumped. “We don’t need that cracker,” she told Missy, and they pushed the cart out of the store, where they left it on the sidewalk. On the drive back to Slidell, Missy held on to that image of her mother. There was a tinge of pity, but she mostly felt an intense love for this woman, her mother, who had made her. She resolved, in that exact moment, to always love her mother, to always be kind to her.

  Missy stood up and paced around the hotel room. She thought about going back to Slidell, making breakfast for her mother, spending the rest of the week there. But she could not make herself do it. She could not go back. Instead, she thought of Kayla. She wondered if there had been a moment yet where Missy had revealed her own vulnerability to Kayla; how could she have not noticed it?

  She gathered up her belongings, throwing them together. She left the key on the table and stepped out into the night. The men were still there. “Leaving so soon?” one of the men said. Missy opened her car and, just before she closed the door, she said, “Go fuck yourself.” As she started the car and quickly pulled out, she could hear the other men hooting. She got back on the interstate, following the lights of the trucks rumbling ahead of her. If she drove fast enough, she’d be there as Kayla woke. She would slip into her daughter’s twin bed, wrap her arms around her, and she would hold on to her just long enough to convince herself that nothing would ever change.

  A Signal to the Faithful

  The first time Edwin passed out during Mass, he could not determine whether the act made him more or less holy. An altar boy, he was kneeling at the side of the altar, his hand resting on the bells, as Father Naylon began the consecration of the bread and wine. Edwin felt something electric run up his arms, his head swimming with the sound of the bells that were not yet ringing. He could not hear Father Naylon speak the words Do this in memory of me, though he saw his mouth shape those sounds. Edwin could hear nothing and he thought that perhaps no one in the congregation could hear anything, either,
and it was his job, as the priest raised the host aloft, to ring the altar bells so they would know that a miracle was occurring. Something that was once one thing was becoming another, better thing. He tried to grip the handle of the bells and felt the world go dark.

  When he came to, Father Naylon was cradling him, the service halted, Edwin slowly realizing that he was responsible for something. For Edwin, being responsible for anything, good or bad, was a source of terror. His goal in life, clearly defined at ten years old, was to pass through this world into heaven without leaving any trace of his presence. And, now, here he was, none of the parishioners having partaken of the host, deprived of the miraculous, and Father Naylon was lightly slapping his cheek until the feeling returned to his body. He had not left his body. He had receded deeper into it.

  “I’m sorry,” was all Edwin could offer to the priest.

  “The spirit moved you,” Father Naylon replied, a sheepish smile, his nicotine-brown teeth barely exposed. “At an inconvenient time, unfortunately.”

  Edwin’s mother was now at his side, helping him to his feet. Edwin felt his body sway, his mother and the priest holding on to him, and he looked down at his waist, where the ends of the white rope that served to cinch his gown moved back and forth like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. The priest, apparently assured that Edwin was recovered, returned to the altar and Edwin followed his mother to a pew, where he rested his head on her lap. He closed his eyes, his face heating up as he realized the extent to which he had embarrassed himself. He scrunched his face as tightly as he could, trying to erase the still-forming memory of his accident, when he heard the sound of the altar bells ringing, alerting him to the fact that something important was happening just a few feet from him. He felt the urge to weep but resisted.