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“I thought so,” Cat said as she sat down, picked up her fork, and began calmly to eat. “She has that same belligerent attitude I used to have in my first marriage. I couldn’t stand up to him, but I sure as hell stood up to everybody else.”
“Fuck you,” Margaret repeated, only it came out a shaky, little-girl whisper. Not very sincere.
Bitsey caught her by the hand. “Margaret, honey. Sit down. Are you all right? Let me see—”
“Mom, no!” Margaret shrugged her off. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to talk about it. It was just once and I’m okay. I can handle it. I did handle it. He said he was sorry, and I know he is. So just…just eat your breakfast and…and have a good trip.”
She scooped her glasses off the table and put them on.
“Wait,” Bitsey pleaded.
“No, Mom. I have to go. Tell Grandpy hello when you see him.” Then she walked away and left us, three women sitting in a Shoney’s booth with a brand-new trouble on the table to worry about.
She walked across the parking lot and headed down the street. She was so thin, but it wasn’t that strong willowy thinness. She looked skinny and brittle, ready to break. Though it was only eight or ten blocks to her house, the choice she’d made, to leave the security of our love and reenter the danger zone of that apartment, made the distance seem enormous, a chasm impossible for us to cross.
Only when she turned a corner past a dry cleaner’s shop did any of us speak. “We can’t let her go back,” Cat said. She’d acted so blasé before, but now her jaw was clenched and it jutted forward like a bulldog’s. Belligerent and determined. Tenacious.
We both looked at Bitsey. Her face was almost as pale as Margaret’s, but she wasn’t crying. She looked at each of us. “You’re right. We have to get her out of there, even if at first she refuses to come. If she won’t protect herself, then we have to protect her. I have to protect her,” she said.
I leaned forward on the table. “Maybe we should call Jack.”
Bitsey shook her head. “Jack doesn’t need to know how his little girl is living, or with whom. First of all, it would kill him. And second of all, we can handle this.” She grabbed each of our hands. “We can. We have to.”
We. My first instinct was to save Margaret. My second was to avoid any kind of ugly scene with her or the creep she was living with. But Bitsey’s quiet conviction and Cat’s unmistakable fury gave me courage.
“So, how are we supposed to do this?” I asked. “I mean, it sounds like you want to kidnap her or something.”
“If I have to, I will,” Bitsey responded.
“You can’t be serious.”
“She was right about stripping your house of all the valuables, wasn’t she?” Cat pointed out.
“Well, yes. But her first suggestion was to burn it down. And don’t forget, she wanted to drown the Jag.”
But Cat didn’t back down. “This is different. Those were things. This is Margaret. Little Magpie.”
So we made a plan. First we staked out her place. Cat and I took turns strolling by, disguised by big straw hats and white plastic sunglasses. It was about quarter after two when some lanky, shaved-head guy with sideburns and a goatee sauntered out of Margaret’s place. He stood on the front steps scratching his belly and lit a cigarette. Then he crossed to a beat-up blue van, climbed in, and with a smoky roar, drove off.
We called Bitsey. “He’s skinny, almost six feet tall. No hair, blue jeans and a black T-shirt. With a hole in it.”
“You just described every other musician on MTV. So he’s gone and she’s inside?”
“It seems that way.”
“I’ll be right there with the car.”
The three of us knocked and knocked, but there was no answer. “Maybe she’s pulling an M.J.,” Cat said.
“Excuse me,” I said. “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s been juice, tea and water for me for over a week.”
“Ignore her,” Bitsey told me. “Cat is just being her smart-alecky self.”
“What? Me, smart-alecky?”
“Y’all! Focus!” Bitsey ordered. “What do we do now?”
Cat and I shared a look. “She’s probably loaded. That’s why she won’t wake up,” Cat said. “I say we break in, get her in the car and go.”
So we did. I was scared to death, so my job was to back the car into the driveway, move everything off the backseat and keep a lookout for the creep in the blue van.
Displaying a talent she had up to now kept hidden from us, Cat pried open a screen, lifted herself up and shimmied through the bathroom window, then came around and opened the door for Bitsey.
When a woman peered out at us through a window in the house next door, my adrenaline, which was already pumping, started speeding. But she must not have called the cops, because it took nearly fifteen minutes to get Margaret out, and no police cars ever showed up to investigate. I watched fearfully as they walked Margaret out the side door, hefting her between them like a limp doll. “Good grief. What’s she on?”
“Probably Vicodin,” Cat said. “We found a half-empty bottle.”
Bitsey looked as if she’d aged fifteen years in the last fifteen minutes. But she had this superhuman strength, because she maneuvered Margaret as if she were still a little kid, heaving her into the backseat and folding her legs carefully inside.
“Get the bags,” she told Cat, who was already on her way back into the apartment.
Just then a van slowed in front of the house. That van with that man. Seeing his parking spot taken, he passed the house.
“Get in. Get in!” I yelled to Bitsey. “Cat! He’s back. Hurry up!”
The woman next door was watching us again, but I didn’t care. I was scared and I wanted us out of there. Bitsey pushed me into the driver’s seat. Not that I needed much pushing. “Drive!” she ordered, climbing in beside Margaret.
“What about Cat?”
“Just get this car out of here! I’ll…I’ll go back to get Cat.”
So I pulled out, laying rubber like a sixteen-year-old the first time out on his own with his mother’s car. A half block down the creep was climbing out of his van, and for a moment I considered running him over. It was only for a very brief moment. But if I hit him the police would definitely come. So we whizzed past him, just a little too close for his comfort. He jumped back, screamed something ugly and shot me the bird. Then he headed for his place.
I stopped two blocks down and around the corner. “Wait here,” Bitsey said. Then she got out and ran back down the street.
I made a mental note not to make her exercise anymore today. If her adrenaline was running as high as mine, she was burning calories at triple speed.
Unfortunately, waiting only seemed to increase my anxiety. I leaned over my comatose passenger. “Margaret? Margaret!” I shook her knee but she was a gone pecan. Her soft snores were even and deep, though. Thank goodness.
When another couple of minutes went by and neither Bitsey nor Cat showed up, I got out and ran to the corner. What I saw might have been a scene out of a Woody Allen movie. Bitsey was leaning against a fence as if she was poking a pebble out of her shoe.
Farther down the street the creep was talking to the lady from the window. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but she seemed pretty agitated. Her hands were flapping and she was pointing back at his house. Was she telling him what we’d done? Did she know Cat was still inside his house? Did he?
Then I saw Cat. She came out of a driveway two doors down from where Margaret had lived, and turned abruptly toward us. She was loaded down with a suitcase, some sort of gym bag and a couple of big plastic bags. So much stuff she was staggering. But she never stopped moving.
When Bitsey spied Cat, she turned back toward me and started walking, too. Meanwhile the lady from the window, who must have seen them both, just kept on talking and flapping her hands.
Bitsey reached me just as the creep broke away from his neighbor and headed for his place. The woman planted her fists on her hips and watched him go. Then she turned back toward us and waved. As realization dawned on me, I waved back.
“She helped us,” Bitsey said, waving, too. “She distracted him so Cat could get away.”
We took the bags from Cat, and she gave us each a hurried hug. “She told me to go through her backyard and into the next yard, too. That she’d keep him busy.” Cat turned for one last wave to our unexpected savior. “She said he was a fucking dickhead with a bad attitude. And that he couldn’t play the guitar for crap.”
I grinned. “Come on, let’s go.” And we ran for the car.
We couldn’t get out of Arizona fast enough. This was the day I deserved a ticket. Flying ninety miles per hour down I-10, I was ready to skip New Mexico altogether and go straight to west Texas. But there’s that little girls’ room thing, so late in the afternoon we pulled over at a speck on the map called Shuttlesworth. Margaret had hardly moved all afternoon, but we made her get up anyway.
“Come on, sweetheart,” Bitsey coaxed, wiping Margaret’s face with a napkin dipped in the chilly water in the ice chest.
Margaret flinched away. “Stop it,” she mumbled.
“Do it again,” Cat said. “I’m too old to be hauling people around. If she needs to pee she’ll have to get to the bathroom on her own.”
“Margaret, please, sweetie. Wake up.” Bitsey begged. This time she wiped Margaret’s wrists and arms with the cool cloth before moving to her neck and cheeks.
Margaret shifted, trying to get comfortable on the seat. “Leave me alone,” she muttered.
“Too bad y’all can’t put her in a cold shower like you did to me,” I said.
Cat slammed her car door.
Margaret jerked and opened her eyes. “What the fuck?” she mumbled, trying awkwardly to sit up.
“Margaret Anne!” Bitsey exclaimed. “Don’t you dare talk like that around your mother!”
“Mom?” The poor girl blinked and stared around her in confusion. “Mom? Where are we?”
“New Mexico,” Cat said, leaning in at the window. “But just for a bathroom break. Let’s go.”
“Go ahead,” I told Bitsey. “I’ll help Margaret.”
The girl was still woozy but she was able to get out of the car, and once pointed in the right direction, she managed to walk. “So,” I said. “What’re you on? Besides the Vicodin.”
“What do you mean?” She tried to look affronted and self-righteous, but she failed. With a shrug she conceded the truth. “What difference does it make?”
“You’re right,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. Alcohol, pills, weed. I’ve heard heroin’s a real trip. Ever tried it?”
“No.” She gave me a shocked look, this time sincere. “Geez, M.J., what do you think I am? Have you ever tried it?”
“No.”
Thank goodness that was the end of the drug talk. I mean, I know there are times when I drink too much. But after all, I’m a recent widow. That has to count for something. Besides, I’ve never used any illegal drugs. At least not in almost twenty years.
So we took care of business in the little girls’ room and headed back to the car. Bitsey was already sitting in the back seat. Cat had finished filling the tank. The question remained, would Margaret get back in?
She stared at the open door, then peered in at her mother. “Where are we?” she asked again.
“New Mexico,” Bitsey said.
“New Mexico!” Margaret straightened, then turned to stare back at the lowering sun. “But… But I’ve got to work tonight.”
“Not tonight, hon,” I said. “Come on. Let’s go.”
She shook her head. “No. No, no, no. What’s going on? No way did I agree to this. What did you do, Mom? Kidnap me or something?”
When none of us said a thing her face got this stunned kind of scared look on it. She slammed the door shut. “Son of a bitch! You did kidnap me. Jesus!” She raked her hands through her hair and turned in an uneven circle.
Bitsey slid across the back seat and got out. “Now Margaret, listen to me.”
“No! What do you think I am, ten? Twelve? You can’t run my life anymore, Mom. I won’t let you.”
“And I won’t let some worthless excuse for a man beat you up!” Bitsey might have started off trying to be calm, but she had just lost it big-time.
“I explained about that. And anyway, he didn’t beat me up.”
“You’re lying, Margaret. If not to me, then to yourself. He’s not going to stop, so I’m going to stop him.”
The two guys who worked at the service station watched Margaret and Bitsey squaring off as if they didn’t know whether to enjoy the spectacle or break it up. Cat wasn’t nearly so hesitant. She hopped out of the car like a firecracker about to explode and thrust her cell phone at Margaret.
“Here. Call the creep. Tell him to come and get you.”
When Margaret just glared at her, she went on. “What’s the matter? Don’t you think he’ll come? Isn’t he your white knight, willing to come to your rescue no matter the odds? Surely he’ll battle three middle-aged busybodies to get you back.”
The girl’s face was as pale as ever, but two spots of color burned in her cheeks, nearly as red as the red streak of hair over her left eye. I held my breath waiting for Margaret to snap back with something too ugly for Cat to back down from.
Instead Margaret turned away, bent over and puked into the dirt.
All in all, it was the best thing that could have happened. While Bitsey helped Margaret, I dragged Cat away from them to cool down.
“That ungrateful little bitch,” Cat fumed.
“Come on, give her a break. She discovered she’s in New Mexico. How did you expect her to act?”
“Better than that.”
I tucked my arm in hers. “I wonder how you would’ve behaved at that age if your mother had done that to you.”
She shrugged me off. “Just shut up, M.J.” But there was no venom in her words. I had scored my point and, as usual, once she’d spouted off, Cat was cooling down.
Under the watchful eyes of the gas station guys we made our way back through the dusty heat to the waiting car. Bitsey raised her brows at us but said nothing.
“You okay?” I asked Margaret. She nodded and gave Cat a sidelong look. I nudged Cat.
“Sorry I went off on you,” she said to Margaret. “But I get a little crazy over the men-slapping-women-around thing.”
“But he doesn’t—”
“Save it, Margaret. I’ve been there and I’ve done that, and I can’t stand to see anybody else go through it.”
