Earthly Possessions - Anne Tyler [50]
When we got back to the street, we were blinded for a moment. Everything was so hot and bright, and a herd of strange, long-legged motorcycles built like praying mantises was glittering past. Jake wiped his face on his sleeve. “Next time, remind me to get a air-conditioned car,” he told me. “This one here will be a hundred and fifty degrees inside.”
As if he had sounded some alarm, Mindy cried, “Oh, no!” and started running.
“What’d I say?” Jake asked me.
I shrugged.
Mindy was tugging at the car doors—first the chained ones, then the others. She fell down out of sight. When we came around to the driver’s side she was on the floor in back, reaching under both seats, patting the dusty carpeting. “Plymouth? Plymouth?”
“We left the windows open,” I told Jake.
“You left yours open,” she said, straightening up. A smudge of dirt crossed the bridge of her nose, and her hair was fraying out of its ponytails. “I closed mine up tight as a bubble, do you think I’d forget a thing like that?”
“Oh, Mindy, I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’m certain we can—”
“Shoot, he’d have died of heat anyway if we’d have shut all the windows,” Jake said. “You can’t blame Charlotte here.”
“I blame you both. I blame the two of you. You didn’t neither one of you want him along anyhow. Plymouth? Oh, what’ll he do now? In this town he’s never laid eyes on before? Why, he might not even have caught on he was going anyplace, buried beneath the seat like he was. What must he be thinking now, coming out the window to find everything’s different?”
“Why, Mindy,” Jake said, “I just know he’ll be all—”
“You don’t know a blasted thing,” she told him. “Now I want you and her to go hunt that cat and be quick about it, you hear?”
She slapped the pavement with her sandal. A pale blue vein stood out along her neck. Jake’s mouth dropped. “Mindy?” he said. “What’s got into you?”
But she wouldn’t answer.
“You’ve changed, Mindy. You’ve turned real mean and hard, seems like.”
“Yes, maybe I have,” she said, “But it’s you that helped cause it, Jake Simms. I didn’t go and do it all alone.”
They looked at each other. They were so still I could hear them breathing.
Then Jake said, “Well, the … cat, I guess I better hunt the cat. You coming, Charlotte?”
“All right,” I said.
We started up the sidewalk, leaving Mindy behind in case the cat returned on his own. We stooped to peer under each parked car for Plymouth’s lantern eyes. “Does he know his name, do you think?” I asked Jake.
“Everything’s gathering in on me,” he said.
I took his arm. We passed a few more cars, but didn’t glance under them. We came to the end of the block and stood still, gazing into a travel agent’s window to our left. “Now there is a sport I just never have tried,” he said finally. He was looking at a skiing poster. “You ever skied?”
“Not even once,” I said. “I always wanted to, though.”
“You reckon it’s dangerous?”
“Well, a little, maybe.”
“I got a feeling I’d be good at it,” he told me. “I know that sounds conceited.”
“Maybe we should have gone north instead of south,” I said.
“Someplace cold.”
“Someplace with clear, cold air.”
“Well,” Jake said, sighing.
“Well.”
Then I had a thought. “Listen,” I said. “What if someone’s picked Plymouth up?”
“Picked him up?”
“I mean, he could be miles away from here by now. He could be half a county over.”
“That’s so,” Jake said. “Why, sure. He could be anywhere! And glad to get there, too. It’s no use hunting further.”
We separated and walked back to the car. Mindy was leaning against the door. At this distance she seemed older, less hopeful. She was staring at her feet, and from the way she slumped I guessed she had one of those late-pregnancy backaches. I don’t think she had really expected that we would find her cat. She barely raised her eyes when we came up. “Now, Mindy—” Jake began, but she shooed his words away wearily and straightened, hoisting her belly with both hands. “We might as well get going,” she said.
We settled in our familiar places. Mine seemed worn to the shape of my body by