Earthly Possessions - Anne Tyler [46]
“I’m Charlotte Emory.”
“Pee-ew! Where’d this old car come from? Smells like a dustbin.”
Maybe it did, but all I could smell was her perfume: Sugared strawberries. As soon as Jake had settled in the driver’s seat, he rolled down the window a crack. “Won’t you be cold?” I asked Mindy.
“Oh no, I’ve got the hot flashes.”
“The what?”
“Been hot as Hades the whole seven months. Can’t stand a blanket, won’t wear sweaters. It only happens with some rare few women.” She cast a sudden look at Jake, who didn’t say anything. He started the car and set off down the road. “What’s that funny noise?” Mindy asked him.
“What noise?”
“Jake, I just don’t know about this car. Where’d you say you got it?”
“Off a friend,” Jake said. “Some friend.”
She settled back, hugging the cat. This cat was a marbled brown color, with glaring yellow eyes and chipped ears. It was plain he didn’t like to be held. First he tried to struggle free and then he gave up, but not really: his eyes were squared, the tip of his tail twitched, and every time Mindy patted him he would shrug her off. “I believe that Plymouth would rather he hadn’t come,” said Mindy.
Jake said, “Who?”
“Plymouth. My cat.”
“Well, I go along with Plymouth,” said Jake. “What you want a cat for? You never used to like them.”
“At the Home there’s a pet for everyone,” Mindy told him. “They say it’s therapeutic.”
“Therapeutic.”
“Some of the girls have dogs. Some have birds.”
“Well, I don’t hold with having birds,” said Jake. “We make things, too; that’s therapeutic. And we have a lot of activities, speeches and lessons and things. Last night we had Child Care; that’s why I couldn’t meet you. We were going to give a bath to a rubber doll and I didn’t want to miss it.”
Jake slammed on the brakes, though the highway was deserted. He turned and stared at Mindy. “Watch the road, Jake,” Mindy said.
“Now, let me get this straight,” said Jake. “You couldn’t meet us last evening because you had to give a doll a bath.”
“Well, there was a lot of other stuff too,” Mindy said.
“Mindy Callender, do you know where we spent last night? Sleeping out. Shut in a car in the middle of the woods, and with no hot flashes to warm us, neither.”
“Well, who is ‘us’?” Mindy asked.
“Me and Charlotte, who’d you think?”
She gave me a closer look. Deep down, her eyes were speckled. “I didn’t quite catch it,” she said. “Where is it you come from?”
“Clarion,” said Jake.
“She been riding all this way with you?”
“She’s, ah, going as far as Florida,” Jake told her. “Then she’ll be saying goodbye.”
“Florida! Oh, Jake, is that where we’re headed?” And she rose up to hug him, covering my lap with a billow of skirts, pulling Jake sideways. The car swerved. The cat made a leap and landed in the back seat, shaking various parts of himself and looking insulted.
“Watch it, will you,” Jake said. “Well, I figure we might as well be warm the next two months, no harm in that. Besides, Oliver’s in Florida.”
“Oh, Oliver, Oliver, always Oliver,” said Mindy, picking brown hairs off her dress. Now that the cat was gone I could see that she also had a purse: shiny white vinyl, heart-shaped, like something a child would carry to Sunday School. She caught me looking at it and spun it by its strap. “Like it?” she asked me. “It’s new.”
“It’s very nice,” I said.
“I thought it would match my other stuff.”
She raised a thin, knobby wrist, with a bracelet dangling heart-shaped charms in all different colors and sizes. The pink stone in her ring was heart-shaped too, and so was the print of her dress. “Hearts are my sign,” Mindy said. “What’s yours?”
“Well, I don’t really have a sign,” I told her.
“You married, Charlotte?”
“Of course she’s married, leave off of her,” Jake said.
“I was just asking.”
“She don’t want all your busybody questions.”
“Look here, Jake, we were just having this ordinary conversation about my purse and all, and the only thing I asked her was—”
“You got any money in that purse?” Jake said.
“Huh? I don’t know. A little, I guess.”
“How much?”