But it was too late to turn back. Was it wrong to make up a person when they’re gone? We do it when they’re dead, so why not when they’re missing? Not dead, neatly buried in the ground, but missing. Teresa was my accomplice. I had let her in on my scheme. To a certain degree, Teresa depended on Lish, too. This was the plan: when we got to the Badlands we’d call to ask about the mail and Teresa would tell Lish that another postcard had arrived. One from a friend of Gotcha’s, saying he’d been killed in a drive-by shooting coming out of a movie theatre in downtown Denver. Just like John Dillinger.
I used to think my mom had staged her death. She must have been burnt out from the stress of counselling people and had plotted her death (hell, if I could fake a death, why not her?) and had taken off to South America. Speeding through banana plantations in a Land Rover, doing crossword puzzles in Spanish, laughing at the world and her great escape as she whizzed along patting the top of the Land Rover with her hand. You know how all mothers are nervous about getting their baby mixed up in the hospital. Well, how do I know it was really my mother in that coffin? Well. I do. I know it was her, because if she was still alive she’d know about Dill and the three of us would have lunch more often. I was a fool, a major league fool. My dad at least figured it out that mom was gone for good and maybe he was a lonely recluse because of it. But he knew the truth. And let it be.
“Lish?”
“Yeah?”
“Good night.”
“Yeah, okay, good night. The kids were pretty good, weren’t they?”
“Yeah Lish, they were. They were very good.”
“Sweet dreams, Lucy.”
“You too.”
Frankly, I was tired of dreaming. And I was feeling wide awake. More awake than I had felt in months. I needed to convince myself of only one more thing. That what I was doing was right. That my life was funny, and Dill was a lucky boy, father or no father. I would go through with this whole Gotcha business and hope that later on sometime I could tell Lish the truth and we could laugh. If I never told her the truth, I hoped that we could laugh, too. At the age of eighteen I told myself I would be happy. And if I could do that, I could finally embrace the sadness and the truth of my mother’s death and remember her for who she was.
thirteen
That night it rained. When it rains so much it feels like cotton in your ears, like big woollen socks brushing up against the nerve endings in your brain, rubbing and rubbing. A constant background noise. That night it rained like every other night so far that spring. Our fleabag motel was only about twenty feet from the highway and every car and truck that whizzed past on the wet road sounded like fabric ripping. Not only that, but Lish was snoring like some kind of wild animal. Her kids were used to it and Dill was so tired he slept through it. But geez, it was loud. I called her name loud and then louder. “Lish you’re snoring.” “Thank you,” she’d say extremely cheerfully. Then she’d stop for a few minutes. Then she’d start up again even louder. With the ripping fabric sound of the cars on the wet road right outside our window and her snoring, it was like being in the middle of some ferocious jungle kill. I told myself to remember to mention it to her. She definitely had some kind of nasal problem. But soon I was screaming, “LISH YOU ARE SNORING!!!”
Nothing.
“LISH ROLL OVER YOU ARE SNORING LIKE A WILD PIG AND I CAN’T SLEEP!!!”
Grunt. Snort. “Again? Look at that. Gotta turn on to my side. Gotta turn onto my side. Thank you … zzzz.” More grunting.
Lish’s snoring didn’t bother her kids, but my yelling did, and Alba woke up and said, “Mommy? Lucy’s mad at you. She’s screaming.”
“No, Alba, I am not mad at your mother. I’m trying to get her to stop snoring because I can’t sleep.”
“Ha ha ha. My mom doesn’t snore. Ha ha ha.”
“Yeah, Alba, she snores like a wildebeest. You’re just used to it.”
Then Letitia woke up. “Used to what? What’s Alba used to?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s Alba used to? Tell me what Alba’s used to?
Hope said, “Shut up.”
Maya said, “You shut up.”
Then Dill woke up and started to cry and I had to get up to nurse him and I stepped on Hope and she started to cry and said she wanted to go home.
“So go,” said Maya. “Hitchhike.”
“Shut up,” said Hope.
“How many seconds do you think I can hold my breath for, Lucy?”
“I don’t know, I don’t care. Go to sleep.”
“I could hold my breath and pass out.”
“Kay.”
“I’m telling my mom you said that.”
“Good. Tell her to roll over, too.”
“Why?”
“Look. Everybody just shut the fuck up and go to sleep.”
“That’s twenty-five cents in the swear jar.”
“Hope, we don’t even have one of those any more. Not since the twins. After they were born Mom said we could all just start swearing a lot as long as we didn’t hit anybody,” said Maya.
“Oh right,” said Hope.
“Well, that’s no fair that you had a swear jar and we didn’t, is it Letish,” said Alba.
“Kay, so just get one. You don’t even know what a swear word is. Sucks,” said Hope.
“Fucks,” said Alba. “Ha ha. Did you hear what I said, Letitia? I said—”
“SHUT UP!”
Then Lish said, “Okay, thank you. Gotta turn onto my side. Gotta turn onto my side.”
In the morning we were getting along a lot better. Somehow we had managed to fall back asleep and wake up in time to get free coffee and doughnuts before they were taken away for the day. Our battery was dead in the van because we had forgotten to switch the lights off and the teenager who had been working behind the front desk the night before now had a chance to do something real. He looked happy when we told him we needed a boost. His neck was covered in huge hickeys that he must have got after we took the room. He pulled his car up to our van and blasted music out of speakers in his trunk. He had those silver sticky letters on the back of his car and they spelled “Dream Weaver.” His back tires were jacked up and the interior of his car was black. He had a garter belt hanging from his rearview mirror. He said to us, “I’ll jump youse no problem. Hey, cool bumper sticker, hallucinations, yup, I’ve had a few of those too. Hello trouble. But what the hell, you gotta live from time to time. Whadya got under the hood? Holy shit this thing’s ancient. Yeah I wanted to get ‘Red Phantom’ put on my car it’s more you know of a guy thing? But my girlfriend said Dream Weaver was hot and actually she paid for it so … it’s kind of gay but fuck can this baby move when she has to I’m telling you. Ohhhhh yeah.”