Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [71]
“Warren,” I said. “My name’s Warren. What’s yours?”
“I’m Jaynee. What do you do, Warren? You must do something. You look like someone who does something.”
I explained to her about governmental funding for social work and therapy, but her eyes glazed and she cut me off.
“Oh yeah,” she said, chewing her french fries with her mouth open so that you could see inside if you wanted to. “One of those professional friends. I’ve seen people like you.”
I drove her home. She admired the tape machine in the car and the carpeting on the floor. She gave me directions on how to get to her house in Westland, one of the suburbs. Detroit has four shopping centers at its cardinal points: Westland, Eastland, Southland, and Northland. A town grew up around Westland, a blue-collar area, and now Westland is the name of both the shopping center and the town.
She took me down fast-food alley and then through a series of right and left ninety-degree turns on streets with bungalows covered by aluminum siding. Few trees, not much green except the lawns, and the half-sun dropped onto those perpendicular lines with nothing to stop it or get in its way. The girl, Jaynee, picked at her knees and nodded, as if any one of the houses would do. The houses all looked exposed to me, with a straight shot at the elements out there on that flat grid.
I was going to drop her off at what she said was her driveway, but there was an old chrome-loaded Pontiac in the way, one of those vintage 1950s cars, its front end up on a hoist and some man working on his back on a rolling dolly underneath it. “That’s him,” the girl said. “You want to meet him?”
I parked the car and got out. The man pulled himself away from underneath the car and looked over at us. He stood up, wiping his hands on a rag, and scowled at his daughter. He wasn’t going to look at me right away. I think he was checking Jaynee for signs of damage.
“What’s this?” he asked. “What’s this about, Jaynee?”
“This is about nothing,” she said. “I spent the night in the zoo and this person found me and brought me home.”
“At the zoo. Jesus Christ. At the zoo. Is that what happened?” He was asking me.
“That’s where I saw her,” I told him. “She looked pretty cold.”
He dropped a screwdriver I hadn’t noticed he was holding. He was standing there in his driveway next to the Pontiac, looking at his daughter and me and then at the sky. I’d had those moments, too, when nothing made any sense and I didn’t know where my responsibilities lay. “Go inside,” he told his daughter. “Take a shower. I’m not talking to you here on the driveway. I know that.”
We both watched her go into the house. She looked like an overcoat with legs. I felt ashamed of myself for thinking of her that way, but there are some ideas you can’t prevent.
We were both watching her, and the man said, “You can’t go to the public library and find out how to raise a girl like that.” He said something else, but an airplane passed so low above us that I couldn’t hear him. We were about three miles from the airport. He ended his speech by saying, “I don’t know who’s right.”
“I don’t, either.”
“Earl Lampson.” He held out his hand. I shook it and took away a feel of bone and grease and flesh. I could see a fading tattoo on his forearm of a rose run through with a sword.
“Warren Banks,” I said. “I guess I’ll have to be going.”
“Wait a minute, Warren. Let me do two things. First, let me thank you for bringing my daughter home. Unhurt.” I nodded to show I understood. “Second. A question. You got any kids?”
“Two,” I said. “Both boys.”
“Then you know about it. You know what a child can do to you. I was awake last night. I didn’t know what had happened to her. I didn’t know if she had planned it. That was the worst. She makes plans. Jesus Christ. The zoo. The lions?”
I nodded.
“She’ll do anything. And it isn’t an act with her.” He looked up and down the street, as if he were waiting for something to appear, and I had the wild idea that