FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010
There’s the exit,” Dori says, pointing to a giant sign welcoming us to the future home of Heritage Acres. Miles of subdivided lots stretch into the distance, prime lunch-wagon territory, since the construction workers would have to drive so far just to get out of the place. We follow the trail of newly framed houses and the sound of air hammers firing nails.
The one other time I ever drove out here was a month ago, the middle of July, when, for the third time in a row, Aubrey had stood me up for a date to go shopping for the stuff she needed to take to college, and I was determined that, by God, we would buy a dust ruffle together. So, righteously pissed off, I’d made my way to the lunch wagon, then taken a place in line hidden behind a couple of construction workers. Weather-beaten men with hands rough as tree bark, they’d joked with Aubrey as she took their orders. They made her laugh. I tried to recall the last time she’d laughed in my presence. Filling the orders, pushing food wrapped in white paper out the window, she was engaged, expressive. She was a person I didn’t recognize.
She’s happy. This is where she’s happy.
That thought was immediately eradicated by the memory of an old black-and-white photo I’d seen once of Chinese coolies racked out on planks as they took their leisure at an opium den. They had looked happy too.
When the guys in front of me had stepped aside, and the smell of frying onions, bad coffee, and fermenting ketchup wafted out of the order window on a blast of oven-hot air. Aubrey pivoted, saw me, and her happiness curdled. She leaned down and hissed, “What are you doing here?”
Tyler, his back to us at the grill, had yelled, “A to the J, was that hold the jalapeños? Or extra jalapeños on the Mexi-burger?”
The steam and heat had twisted his dark hair into heavy curls that flopped across his forehead. Without the ball cap, wearing a white apron streaked with orange chili grease, he was harder to hate. Aubrey whispered in his ear. He jerked his head up, smiled, and pivoted, sticking his large, scarred hand out the order window. His class ring caught the sunlight. The only people I ever knew who wore high school rings were proud that they’d graduated from high school; they never went on to collect college rings. That made me remember that Tyler Moldenhauer was the opium trapping my daughter in this hellish den.
Before I could shake his hand, Aubrey leaned in and told me that she couldn’t leave and I could buy whatever I wanted without her; she, they, had customers. And they did. Half a dozen hungry men jostled behind me. That day, for Aubrey’s sake, I didn’t make a scene. Today I am going to make a scene.
“There it is.” Dori spots the catering truck before I do, a dingy rolling metal box with PETE’S EATS written above the order windows and a line of workers waiting outside. “Pete’s Eats? Who’s Pete?”
“I’m not sure that there is a Pete. It’s sort of a franchise. Tyler rents the truck. Something like that. Aubrey hasn’t exactly shared all the details with me.”
“Probably because ‘Pete’ is exploiting them.”
“That is a distinct possibility.” I park behind a flatbed truck loaded with planks of engineered wood flooring. The planks are the same blond-colored woodlike product that’s in my house. I know how light and airy and elegant the floors will be after the installers have finished and tiptoed out in their stocking feet. I know how scratched up and cheap and shoddy those floors will look after a few weeks. Even when you go crazy and insist that everyone who enters the house put on slippers like the Japanese do. I know how the floors will delaminate around the doors and windows and anyplace where even a drop of water hits them. I know that, unlike real wood that can be walked on for centuries, then sanded back to newness, once this stuff gets scratched, it can only be ripped out and replaced. And if you can’t afford to do that, you just have to live with it.
I start to get out and Dori opens her door as well. I tell her that it might be better if I go alone.
“Good point. Don’t want to look like we’re ganging up on her. I’ll be in the car. Just wave if you need backup.”
“Thanks, Dori. Really. Thanks.”
She waves my gratitude aside. “Eh, you’d do the same for me.”
As I approach the wagon from the side, I plan out what I am going to say. Mentally, I dial in a calm yet forceful tone as I rehearse how I will tell Aubrey that there is a problem at the bank and we have to go. Right this very second.
Aubrey will, of course, be embarrassed by my very presence. She’ll lean down and hiss through the window, “I’m working. We have customers.”
Tyler will pause in his microwaving activities and ask her what the problem is. Then he’ll stand beside her, maybe wrap his arm protectively around her, a united front against the threat that is me.
I don’t care how big a scene I have to make to get her to come with me. I don’t care if I make her so mad that she seethes like a bad nuclear reactor rod. As long as I can get her into the car and to the bank, she can melt right through the burgundy plush upholstery. If a little China Syndrome is the price I have to pay to collect what Martin owes us, and get her the hell away from Tyler Moldenhauer and out of Parkhaven, then I will gladly pay it. Martin owes us both so much more, but if college tuition is all we’ll ever get, I’m going to make damn sure we collect every cent we have coming.
At the lunch wagon, I duck behind a guy I assume is a carpet layer from the knee pads he has strapped on over a pair of jeans flocked with fuzzy beige carpet fibers. I don’t want to lose the advantage of surprise. Through the order window, I catch glimpses of Aubrey’s slender torso. Everything from the shoulders up and midthighs down is obscured. I always hated that, the way her crotch was practically at eye level with every goon who ordered a burrito. It gave me the creeps, like seeing her in one of those places in Amsterdam where the girls waited behind picture windows.
Girding for battle, I pump both my fear for Aubrey’s future and the adrenaline overload released when I was ambushed by Martin’s voice into the edgy pugnacity this showdown will require. By the time the carpet layer steps out of the way, I am ready to dive through the window and drag Aubrey out by the throat.
Except that it’s not my daughter’s face that leans down into the order window and asks, “Know what you want, hon?” Though she has the body of a teenager, the woman asking for my order has to be forty at least. A hard forty. A forty who could be selling corn dogs in a carnival midway.
“Is Aubrey here?” I stand on my tiptoes and crane into the order window to see if Aubrey or Tyler is hiding inside. The only other person, though, is another carny-looking individual, a younger woman in a tank top that shows off ropy muscles bright with gaudy tattoos, stretching up to pull a tower of Styrofoam cups off a high shelf.
The young woman turns, catches my frantic investigation, and regards me with a hostile gaze that I classify as lesbian hatred for a straight suburban breeder. A crown-of-thorns tattoo encircles her neck. “Something we can help you with?” she asks suspiciously, as if I might be about to whip out a subpoena.
“I’m looking for Aubrey Lightsey. Or Tyler? Tyler Moldenhauer?”
The two women exchange looks. Crown of Thorns answers, “You mean that chick and her boyfriend used to have this wagon?”
“Used to?”
The older woman speaks up. “Oh, yeah, they gave notice to Pete. What? Week ago? Ten days? They’re gone.”