Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver [131]
“Well, they got more snakes here than you can shake your tail at, but no millionaire typhoons. The man-about-town is a fellow wears a horsehide suit. He’s a sight. It looks like he got up too early and put on the bath rug.” She pauses. “How are you all doing? I been hoping you’d call.”
“Not hoping bad enough to sit around by the phone, I notice.”
Alice’s voice changes. “Taylor, you got a bee in your bonnet. I don’t know what you’re mad at me for.”
“I’m not mad at you. Turtle said that just a minute ago. She said I’m mad all the time. But I’m not. I’ve just fallen on some bad luck and landed jelly side down.” Taylor digs in all of her jeans pockets for a handkerchief, but doesn’t find one. She rips a yellow page from the damp directory underneath the pay phone. “I think I’m getting a cold.”
“You still got that job?”
“Yeah, but they won’t let Turtle hang around in Ladies’ Wear anymore. She has to go out in the parking lot and sit in the Dodge for a couple hours, till I get off.”
“In the car? Goodness, aren’t you afraid she’ll get lonesome and drive herself to Mexico or something? Remember when we read that in the paper when we was driving across Nevada? That six-year-old that drove the family car to Mexico?”
“That wasn’t a newspaper, Mama, that was one of those supermarket things with Liz Taylor on the front. They make all those stories up.”
“Well, stranger things have happened.”
“I know. But I don’t think Turtle’s thinking in terms of Mexico.”
“Well, good. But you might ought to leave her some stuff in there to play with, just in case.”
“I do. I gave her some packing boxes and stuff from the store. She doesn’t complain, you know how she is. But I feel like a murderer. Everything I’ve been doing, for this whole crazy summer, was just so I could keep Turtle. I thought that was the only thing that mattered, keeping the two of us together. But now I feel like that might not be true. I love her all right, but just her and me isn’t enough. We’re not a whole family.”
“I don’t know. Seems like half the families you see nowadays is just a mama and kids.”
“Well, that’s our tough luck. It doesn’t give you anything to fall back on.”
“What’s that noise?”
“Oh, nothing. The Yellow Pages. I just blew my nose on half the landscape contractors in the city.”
“Oh, well. I reckon you showed them.”
“Mama, I’m thinking about going home.”
“Don’t hang up yet!”
“No, I mean back to Tucson. I’m at the end of the line here. Jax offered to send me money for gas. If my tires will just hold out. I’m worried about my tires.”
“Oh, law, Taylor.”
“What?”
“I’ve got some bad news.”
Taylor feels numb. “What is it?”
“I talked to Annawake Fourkiller. She says there’s somebody, relatives of a missing girl they think is Turtle, and they want to see her. Annawake said she was going to send you a, what was it? Something Italian sounding. A semolina? Papers, anyway. Saying you have to show up here in court.”
“A subpoena?”
“That was it.”
“Oh, God. Then I can’t go home.” Taylor feels blood rushing too fast out of her heart toward her limbs, a tidal wave. She stares at the symmetrical rows of holes in the metal back of the telephone hutch. Her life feels exactly that meaningless.
Alice’s voice comes through the line, coaxing and maternal. “Taylor, don’t get mad at me for something I’m fixing to say.”
“Why does everybody think I’m mad? I’m not going to get mad. Tell me.”
“I think you and Turtle ought to go on and come down here.”
Taylor doesn’t respond to this. She turns her back on the wall of holes and looks out through the rain at her car. She knows Turtle is in there but the blank, dark windows are glossed over like loveless eyes, revealing nothing.
“Go ahead and borry the gas money and come on. There isn’t nothing to finding us here. Take the interstate to Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and ask around for Heaven. Everybody knows the way.”
Taylor still doesn’t speak.
“It would just be to talk things over.”
“Mama, there’s nothing to talk over with Annawake Fourkiller. I have no bargaining chips: there’s just Turtle, and me. That’s all.