It was the little girl that got me, or maybe the extenuating or the circumspect, or maybe just him implying that I was being stupid, or maybe all of it, the whole day.
“Del,” I said through clenched teeth, putting a little emphasis on his name, too. “I’ve always said that I love you. But sometimes, Del, sometimes, I could just kill you.”
He nodded. “Well,” he said, slow and even as always, but still with that edge of warning to it, “I guess you’d go to jail for that too.” He handed the room key across to where I sat. “You go on in. I got a couple of things to rearrange in the trunk.”
“Fine,” I said, toughening the word up so he could hear how I felt. He stared at me for a second, then went back to get our bags. In the rearview, I watched the lid of the trunk lift up, but still I just sat there.
I don’t know how to describe what I was feeling. Anger? Sadness? I don’t know what was running through my head, either. What to do next, I guess. Whether to go up to the room and carry on like we’d planned, like he seemed to expect I’d do, or to step out of all this, literally just step out of the car and start walking in another direction.
But then I knew if I really did leave, he’d come after me. Not dramatic, not begging, but I knew he wouldn’t let me go. Can’t live without you, that’s what he’d said, and like Mama said, sometimes that kind of love could turn ugly fast. I’d seen it before.
“You just gonna sit there?” Del called out, just a voice behind the trunk lid. Still rearranging, I guess.
“No. I’m going up,” I called back, calling to the reflection of the trunk lid, I realized. Then, just before I stepped out of the car, I opened up the glove compartment and slipped the gun into my purse.
In the motel room, I locked the door to the bathroom, set down my purse, and then turned the water on real hot before climbing in. I stood there in the steam and rubbed that little-bitty bar of soap over me, washing like I had layers of dust from those two-lane roads and that truck we’d followed for so long.
I thought about what would happen after I got out. “Sometimes people are just too far apart in their wants,” I could say. “I do love you, Del, but sometimes people just need to move on.” It was just a matter of saying it. It would be easy to do, I knew. With or without the gun. But the gun showed I was serious. The gun was protection. “I’m not taking all the money, Del,” I might say. “That’s not what’s going on here. That’s not the point.” As if he had ever got the point.
I took both towels when I got out of the shower. The steam swirled around me while I stood there toweling myself off — one towel wrapped around me and one towel for my hair, leaving him none.
Would he try to talk me out of it? Would he try to take the gun away? Would I have to tie him up and leave him there the way he’d left that gallery owner back in Taos? Just thinking about it left me sad.
He was sitting there when I came out of the bathroom, sitting on the one chair in the room, staring at the blank television. I hadn’t taken the gun out, just held my purse in my hand, feeling the weight of it in there. Thinking that I might have to use it, I suddenly wished I’d gotten dressed first. I mean, picture it: me wrapped in two towels and holding a gun? Hardly a smooth getaway.
Del’s face was... well, pensive was the word that came to mind. He taught me that word, I thought, even then. I wouldn’t have known it without him. And that kept me from saying immediately what I needed to say. So I just stood there, feeling little bits of water still dripping out of my hair and onto my shoulders and then down my back.
“You never talked much about your daddy,” he said, breaking the silence. “He really leave you when you were six?”
“Yes,” I said, and I realized then that I felt like I was owed something for that.
Del nodded, stared at the blank television. I looked there too, at the gray curve of the screen. I could see his face there, reflected toward me, kind of distorted, distant.
“He really give you a sock monkey when he left?”
I thought about that, too, but I was thinking now about what I owed Del.
“No,” I told him, and I could hear the steel in my own voice. “But what my mama said, she did say that.”
I stared hard at the dusty TV screen, at his reflection there. I saw then that his fists were clenched, and that he clenched them a little tighter at my answer, and I could feel myself tighten too. I knew then that he knew the pistol was gone. I didn’t take my eyes off that reflection as I pulled up the strap of my pocketbook, just in case he stood up quick and rushed me. But he dropped his head down a little, and then I saw his profile in the reflection, which meant he’d turned to see me straight on.
“So you lied to me, then?” He was clenching his hand hard, so much that if I’d been closer, I might have backed away. But there was a bed between us. And the pocketbook was open in my hand.
“If that’s what you want to take from it.”
His eyes watched me hard. Those green eyes. First thing I’d really noticed about him up close.
“Do you believe your mama was right?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
Those eyes narrowed. Thinking again. And it struck me that I could just about list every little thing he did when he was pondering over something: how he sometimes stared hard at something or other times stared off into space with this faraway gaze, running his fingers through his hair or through the tip of his beard, shifting his jaw one way or the other. Usually left, I corrected myself. Always to the left. And sure enough, just as I thought it, he shifted his jaw just that way, setting it in place.
I almost laughed despite myself. Men always let you down, Mama had said, but Del had come through with his little jaw jut exactly like expected. At least you could count on him for that. And all of a sudden, I felt embarrassed for having taken that gun from the glove compartment, just wanted to run out in my towel and put it back.
“Do you want a surprise?” he asked, and I almost laughed again.
“It’s a long drive back to Our Place.”
“A new surprise.”
“Sure,” I said.
“The story we told back at the trailer park, about me having a sister out in Victorville,” he said then. “I really do. Haven’t talked to her in a while. We were estranged.” He stretched out the word. “But I told her I wanted to go straight — was going straight. She’s in real estate. Got us a deal she worked out on a foreclosure. A little house. Said she’d let me do some work for her, at her company, now that I have a degree. It’s all worked out. I just needed to get the down-payment on it, so I figured, well, one more job. One big one and that’d be it.” He tapped his hand on the side of the chair, like you would tap your fingers, but his whole hand because it was still clenched. I think it was the most words he’d ever said in one breath. “That’s my surprise.”
Part of me wanted to go over to him, but I didn’t. Don’t you ever fool yourself into forgetting, I heard Mama saying. I stood right in the doorway, dripping all over the floor, all over myself.
“I stole that painting you wanted, too,” he said, as if he was embarrassed to admit it. “We can’t hang it in the house, at least not the living room, not where anyone might see, but you can take it out and look at it sometimes, maybe, if you want. It’s out in the trunk now if you want me to get it.” He gave a big sigh, the kind he might give late at night when he was done talking, as if he might just pretend to be asleep. But something else in his face this time, some kind of struggle, like he wanted to go quiet, but wanted to say something too. “But I was serious about that being the last one,” he said finally. “This is a new day and I want to do it right. So I paid for this.”