“I didn’t trust you then, and I don’t trust you now. I’ve waited a long time for justice, and it just seems terribly coincidental that you’re talking to Walter now, when he’s scheduled for execution.”
“What would be justice in your eyes?”
She steeled herself to hear: For you to die and for my daughter to come back to life. But Trudy Tackett was not that cruel.
“This. The execution. This is what Terry and I get. It’s not enough, but it’s all we get. Please don’t interfere.”
“I assure you-”
“Your assurances don’t carry much weight with me. I’m sorry if that sounds rude, but it’s true. You’ve never been completely truthful about what happened. No one’s ever called you on that. But now I have.”
“And do you feel better?”
Trudy Tackett had to think about this. “Never.”
LYING IN BED WITH PETER, who had fallen asleep even as his hands worked her shoulders and stroked her hair, Eliza wondered if Mrs. Tackett-she could never call her Trudy, nor had she been asked to, she realized-was replaying the conversation in her head, in her bed. Was Dr. Tackett with her? Was he still alive? Yes, she had spoken of him in the present tense. Did he know what his wife had done today, what she had been doing? She had been to their house at least once before, delivering the note that Eliza had mistakenly ignored, and Eliza supposed she was the source of the off-hour calls on the Walter phone, as she thought of it.
The thing was, Mrs. Tackett wasn’t wrong. Eliza had never told everything. The part about McDonald’s-Eliza had been forced to testify about that in open court, the prosecutor reasoning that it would seem far more damaging if the defense introduced it. Not that Walter’s overmatched attorney knew what to do with the information. His only objective seemed to be to get Eliza off the stand as quickly as possible. But the fact was, after she had seen the prosecutor’s reaction, not to mention her own parents’ momentary dismay, Eliza had stopped being completely forthright about what had happened during her last forty-eight hours with Walter. She didn’t lie. Even she knew she was no good at it. But, like the daughter she would one day have, she was exceptional at keeping secrets, and that was the path she had chosen. Certain things would remain unsaid. No one was ever going to look at her that way again.
After their McDonald’s supper, their unhappy meals, they had driven up a switchback in the mountains, near the national park, but not a part of it. Walter hadn’t wanted to pay to enter the park, much less interact with the ranger at the gate. It was dark, and they had to move slowly, the headlights catching deer, who looked malevolent to Eliza. Holly was weeping openly, constantly by then. Eliza yearned to comfort her but didn’t know how. She tried, at one point, to pat her shoulder, only to have Holly recoil as if Eliza intended harm.
Once he found a place to camp, Walter set up the tent he had bought at a Sunny’s Surplus and unzipped one of the sleeping bags, telling the two girls to lie on it. The night was chilly, but Eliza understood that Holly wanted no contact with her. “I’d give you both sleeping bags,” Walter said, “but I need something to pad the bed of the truck, if I’m going to sleep there and give you your privacy.” Eliza curled up into a ball, shocked by the cold, wondering how much longer they could sleep outside at this rate. The tent was another one of Walter’s big ideas. It had been expensive, but he had argued it would pay for itself quickly. Only, it hadn’t, not by a long shot. He hadn’t realized, when he bought the tent, that most camping sites, the ones with showers and restrooms, had charges, too. It had been days since he had landed any work. Holly’s money was the first real cash they had known in a while. She wondered how much there was, if they might check into a motor court the next night-
“Elizabeth?” Walter had entered the tent and was standing over them.
“Yes?”
“Go sit in the truck for a bit. I want to talk to our new friend here.”
She did. She always did whatever Walter told her to do. She went and sat in the truck. Not in the bed, as Walter had probably intended, but in the cab, in her usual seat, the windows tightly rolled up. Still, she couldn’t help hearing what happened next. Screams, sobs, a terrible bellow, like a lion’s roar, then a streak of white, which must have been Holly’s hair flying behind her as she ran, Walter not far behind her. She studied the keys in the ignition, which hung from a chunk of turquoise. Even if she could figure out the clutch, she could never drive back down that switchback. Still, she reached for it, flicked it, hoping to turn on the heater. No, you had to press the clutch in to turn the engine on, and Walter would be mad if she used just battery power. She slid behind the wheel, managed to turn it over after a few tries, then returned to her seat. Warm air filled the car, along with the sounds of a country song, “Have I Got a Deal for You.” She and Walter had worked out a compromise on the radio. He controlled it for forty-five minutes and then she got fifteen. He said that was fair because he was older and it was his truck. He said he really didn’t have to let her listen to those pop stations at all, that he was a good guy. He told her they were bad girls, Madonna and Whitney Houston and the Mary Jane Girls and Annie Lennox, and even Aimee Mann, although all she did was let the world know that her boyfriend was hitting her. He didn’t like any of the songs that Eliza liked except for one, “Every-y body Wants to Rule the World.” When that one came on, he would nod in agreement, say it was very true. He also liked-
“Why’d you turn the engine on?” Walter asked. His face was scratched, and he was breathing hard. “You know better than that. You’re wasting gas.”
“I was cold.”
“Then why are you still shivering?”
She hadn’t even noticed. But she was shivering, and her teeth were chattering so loudly it was amazing she could hear the music at all.
Part VII.EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD
Released 1985
Reached no. 11 on Billboard Hot lid on June 8,. 1985
Spent 24 weeks on Billboard Hot 100
41
“DO YOU WANT TO STOP?” Vonnie asked. “There are a bunch of places at the next exit, and we’re making good time.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“There’s a Dairy Queen.” She drew out the syllables, knowing what tempted Eliza. “And a Cracker Barrel.”
“That’s okay.”
“Who knows? Maybe we’ll find a Stuckey’s.”
Eliza began to laugh, almost in spite of herself. “The infamous peanut log, which you insisted on having-”
“We both wanted it.”
“And it was awful and Daddy copped one of those attitudes he had every now and then, said we had to eat it, because we had been adamant about wanting it, that it would be our treat every day of the vacation until it was gone-”
Vonnie put on their mother’s voice. “Oh, Manny, I’m sure the girls have learned their lesson.” She switched to a lower octave. “They must learn proportion in some things, to stop being so wasteful. Children are starving.”
“So, on the second night at the-what was it called?”
“The Martha Washington Inn. In Abingdon.” Vonnie’s memory always amazed Eliza, but maybe it was just another facet of Vonnie’s certainty about everything. She believed she was right, and no one called her on it. “They took us there because it had a good theater and they were going through one of those phases where they thought we were philistines.”
“Not you, never you.”
“Yes, me too. Daddy thought I had atrocious taste in my recreational reading, and you didn’t read at all when you were young. So they took us to Abingdon to see Of Mice and Men. Which was pretty good, but what we all remember is what happened when you and I tried to flush that Stuckey’s peanut log down the toilet in the Martha Washington Inn’s quaint antique bathroom. If only we had used the ceramic bedpan that was provided for purely decorative reasons!”