Cujo Page 16

  "Come on, then."

  She had her bag over her shoulder and she was wearing jeans and a faded blue shirt. Tad thought she was looking very pretty. He was relieved to see there was no sign of her tears, because when she cried, he cried. He knew it was a baby thing to do, but he couldn't help it.

  He was halfway to the car and she was slipping behind the wheel when he remembered that her Pinto was all screwed up.

  "Mommy?"

  "What? Get in."

  But he hung back a little, afraid. "What if the car goes kerflooey?"

  "Ker--?" She was looking at him, puzzled, and then he saw by her exasperated expression that she had forgotten all about the car being screwed up. He had reminded her, and now she was unhappy again. Was it the Pinto's fault, or was it his? He didn't know, but the guilty feeling inside said it was his. Then her face smoothed out and she gave him a crooked little smile that he knew well enough to feel it was his special smile, the one she saved just for him. He felt better.

  "We're just going into town, Tadder. If Mom's old blue Pinto packs it in, we'll just have to blow two bucks on Castle Rock's one and only taxi getting back home. Right?"

  "Oh. Okay." He got in and managed to pull the door shut. She watched him closely, ready to move at an instant, and Tad supposed she was thinking about last Christmas, when he had shut the door on his foot and had to wear an Ace bandage for about a month. But he had been just a baby then, and now he was four years old. Now he was a big boy. He knew that was true because his dad had told him. He smiled at his mother to show her the door had been no problem, and she smiled back.

  "Did it latch tight?"

  "Tight," Tad agreed, so she opened it and slammed it again, because moms didn't believe you unless you told them something bad, like you spilled the bag of sugar reaching for the peanut butter or broke a window while trying to throw a rock all the way over the garage roof.

  "Hook your belt," she said, getting in herself again. "When that needle valve or whatever it is messes up, the car jerks a lot."

  A little apprehensively, Tad buckled his seat belt and harness. He sure hoped they weren't going to have an accident, like in Ten-Truck Wipe-Out. Even more than that, he hoped Mom wouldn't cry.

  "Flaps down?" she asked, adjusting invisible goggles.

  "Flaps down," he agreed, grinning. It was just a game they played.

  "Runway clear?"

  "Clear."

  "Then here we go." She keyed the ignition and backed down the driveway. A moment later they were headed for town.

  After about a mile they both relaxed. Up to that point Donna had been sitting bolt upright behind the wheel and Tad had been doing the same in the passenger bucket. But the Pinto ran so smoothly that it might have popped off the assembly line only yesterday.

  They went to the Agway Market and Donna bought forty dollars' worth of groceries, enough to keep them the ten days that Vie would be gone. Tad insisted on a fresh box of Twinkles, and would have added Cocoa Bears if Donna had let him. They got shipments of the Sharp cereals regularly, but they were currently out. It was a busy trip, but she still had time for bitter reflection as she waited in the checkout lane (Tad sat in the cart's child seat, swinging his legs nonchalantly) on how much three lousy bags of groceries went for these days. It wasn't just depressing; it was scary. That thought led her to the frightening possibility--probability, her mind whispered--that Vie and Roger might actually lose the Sharp account and, as a result of that, the agency itself. What price groceries then?

  She watched a fat woman with a lumpy behind packed into avocado-colored slacks pull a food-stamp booklet out of her purse, saw the checkout girl roll her eyes at the girl running the next register, and felt the sharp rat-teeth of panic gnawing at her belly. It couldn't come to that, could it? Could it? No, of course not. Of course not. They would go back to New York first, they would--

  She didn't like the way her thoughts were speeding up, and she pushed the whole mess resolutely away before it could grow to avalanche size and bury her in another deep depression. Next time she wouldn't have to buy coffee, and that would knock three bucks off the bill.

  She trundled Tad and the groceries out to the Pinto and put the bags into the hatchback and Tad into the passenger bucket, standing there and listening to make sure the door latched, wanting to close the door herself but understanding it was something he felt he had to do. It was a big-boy thing. She had almost had a heart attack last December when Tad shut his foot in the door. How he had screamed! She had nearly fainted . . . and then Vic had been there, charging out of the house in his bathrobe, splashing out fans of driveway slush with his bare feet. And she had let him take over and be competent, which she hardly ever was in emergencies; she usually just turned to mush. He had checked to make sure the foot wasn't broken, then had changed quickly and driven them to the emergency room at the Bridgton hospital.

  Groceries stowed, likewise Tad, she got behind the wheel and started the Pinto. Now it'll fuck up, she thought, but the Pinto took them docilely up the street to Mario's, which purveyed delicious pizza stuffed with enough calories to put a spare tire on a lumberjack. She did a passable job of parallel parking, ending up only eighteen inches or so from the curb, and took Tad in, feeling better than she had all day. Maybe Vie had been wrong; maybe it had been bad gas or dirt in the fuel line and it had finally worked its way out of the car's system. She hadn't looked forward to going out to Joe Camber's Garage. It was too far out in the boonies (what Vic ways referred to with high good humor as East Galoshes Corners--but of course he could afford high good humor, he was a man), and she had been a little scared of Camber the one time she had met him. He was the quintessential backcountry Yankee, grunting instead of talking, sullen-faced. And the dog . . . what was his name? Something that sounded Spanish. Cujo, that was it. The same name William Wolfe of the SLA had taken, although Donna found it impossible to believe that Joe Camber had named his Saint Bernard after a radical robber of banks and kidnapper of rich young heiresses. She doubted if Joe Camber had ever heard of the Symbionese Liberation, Army. The dog had seemed friendly enough, but it had made her nervous to see Tad patting that monster--the way it made her nervous to stand by and watch him close the car door himself. Cujo looked big enough to swallow the likes of Tad in two bites.

  She ordered Tad a hot pastrami sandwich because he didn't care much for pizza--kid sure didn't get that from my side of the family, she thought--and a pepperoni and onion pizza with double cheese for herself. They ate at one of the tables overlooking the road. My breath will be fit to knock over a horse, she thought, and then realized it didn't matter. She had managed to alienate both her husband and the guy who came to visit in the course of the last six weeks or so.

  That brought depression cruising her way again, and once again she forced it back . . . but her arms were getting a little tired.

  They were almost home and Springsteen was on the radio when the Pinto started doing it again.

  At first there was a small jerk. That was followed by a bigger one. She began to pump the accelerator gently; sometimes that helped.

  "Mommy?" Tad asked, alarmed.

  "It's all right. Tad." she said, but it wasn't. The Pinto began to jerk hard, throwing them both against their seatbelts with enough force to lock the harness clasps. The engine chopped and roared. A bag fell over in the hatchback compartment, spilling cans and bottles. She heard something break.

  "You goddamned shitting thing!" she cried in an exasperated fury. She could see their house just below the brow of the hill, mockingly close, but she didn't think the Pinto was going to get them there.

  Frightened as much by her shout as by the car's spasms, Tad began to cry, adding to her confusion and upset and anger.

  "Shut up!" she yelled at him. "Oh Christ, just shut up, Tad!"

  He began to cry harder, and his hand went to the bulge in his back pocket, where the Monster Words, folded up to packet size, were stowed away. Touching them made him feel a little bit bett
er. Not much, but a little.

  Donna decided she was going to have to pull over and stop; there was nothing else for it. She began to steer toward the shoulder, using the last of her forward motion to get there. They could use Tad's wagon to pull the groceries up to the house and then decide what to do about the Pinto. Maybe--

  Just as the Pinto's offside wheels crunched over the sandy gravel at the edge of the road, the engine backfired twice and then the jerks smoothed out as they had done on previous occasions. A moment later she was scooting up to the driveway of the house and turning in. She drove uphill, shifted to park, pulled the emergency brake, turned off the motor, leaned over the wheel, and cried.

  "Mommy?" Tad said miserably. Don't cry no more, he tried to add, but he had no voice and he could only mouth the words soundlessly, as if struck dumb by laryngitis. He looked at her only, wanting to comfort, not knowing just how it was done. Comforting her was daddy's job, not his, and suddenly he hated his father for being somewhere else. The depth of this emotion both shocked and frightened him, and for no reason at all he suddenly saw his closet door coming open and spilling out a darkness that stank of something low and bitter.

  At last she looked up, her face puffy. She found a handkerchief in her purse and wiped her eyes. "I'm sorry, honey. I wasn't really shouting at you. I was shouting at this . . . this thing." She struck the steering wheel with her hand, hard. "Ow!" She put the edge of her hand in her mouth and then laughed a little. It wasn't a happy laugh.

  "Guess it's still kerflooey," Tad said glumly.

  "I guess it is," she agreed, almost unbearably lonesome for Vie. "Well, let's get the things in. We got the supplies anyway, Cisco."

  "Right, Pancho," he said. "I'll get my wagon."

  He brought his Redball Flyer down and Donna loaded the three bags into it, after repacking the bag that had fallen over. It had been a ketchup bottle that had shattered. You'd figure it, wouldn't you? Half a bottle of Heinz had puddled out on the powder-blue pile carpeting of the hatchback. It looked as if someone had committed hara-kiri back there. She supposed she could sop up the worst of it with a sponge, but the stain would still show. Even if she used a rug shampoo she was afraid it would show.

  She tugged the wagon up to the kitchen door at the side of the house while Tad pushed. She lugged the groceries in and was debating whether to put them away or clean up the ketchup before it could set when the phone rang. Tad was off for it like a sprinter at the sound of a gun. He had gotten very good at answering the phone.

  "Yes, who is it, please?"

  He listened, grinned, then held out the phone to her.

  Figures, she thought. Someone who'll want to talk for two hours about nothing. To Tad she said, "Do you know who it is, hon?"

  "Sure," he said. "It's Dad."

  Her heart began to beat more rapidly. She took the phone from Tad and said, "Hello? Vic?"

  "Hi, Donna." It was his voice all right, but so reserved . . . so careful. It gave her a deep sinking feeling that she didn't need on top of everything else.

  "Are you all right?" she asked.

  "Sure."

  "I just thought you'd call later. If at all."

  "Well, we went right over to Image-Eye. They did all the Sharp Cereal Professor spots, and what do you think? They can't find the frigging kinescopes. Roger's ripping his hair out by the roots."

  "Yes," she said, nodding. "He hates to be off schedule, doesn't he?"

  "That's an understatement." He sighed deeply. "So I just thought, while they were looking . . . "

  He trailed off vaguely, and her feelings of desperation--her feelings of sinking--feelings that were so unpleasant and yet so childishly passive, turned to a more active sense of fear. Vie never trailed off like that, not even if he was being distracted by stuff going on at his end of the wire. She thought of the way he had looked on Thursday night, so ragged and close to the edge.

  "Vic, are you all right?" She could hear the alarm in her voice and knew he must hear it too; even Tad looked up from the coloring book with which he had sprawled out on the hall floor, his eyes bright, a tight little frown on his small forehead.

  "Yeah," he said. "I just started to say that I thought I'd call now, while they're rummaging around. Won't have a chance later tonight, I guess. How's Tad?"

  "Tad's fine."

  She smiled at Tad and then tipped him a wink. Tad smiled back, the lines on his forehead smoothed out, and he went back to his coloring. He sounds tired and I'm not going to lay all that shit about the car on him, she thought, and then found herself going right ahead and doing it anyway.

  She heard the familiar whine of self-pity creeping into her voice and struggled to keep it out. Why was she even telling him all of this, for heaven's sake? He sounded like he was falling apart, and she was prattling on about her Pinto's carburetor and a spilled bottle of ketchup.

  "Yeah, it sounds like that needle valve, okay," Vie said. He actually sounded a little better now. A little less down. Maybe because it was a problem which mattered so little in the greater perspective of things which they had now been forced to deal with. "Couldn't Joe Camber get you in today?"

  "I tried him but he wasn't home."

  "He probably was, though," Vie said. "There's no phone in his garage. Usually his wife or his kid runs his messages out to him. Probably they were out someplace."

  "Well, he still might be gone--"

  "Sure," Vic said. "But I really doubt it, babe. If a human being could actually put down roots, Joe Camber's the guy that would do it."

  "Should I just take a chance and drive out there?" Donna asked doubtfully. She was thinking of the empty miles along 117 and the Maple Sugar Road . . . and all that was before you got to Camber's road, which was so far out it didn't even have a name. And if that needle valve chose a stretch of that desolation in which to pack up for good, it would just make another hassle.

  "No, I guess you better not," Vie said. "He's probably there . . . unless you really need him. In which case he'd be gone. Catch-22." He sounded depressed.

  "Then what should I do?"

  "Call the Ford dealership and tell them you want a tow."

  "But--"

  "No, you have to. If you try to drive twenty-two miles over to South Paris, it'll pack up on you for sure. And if you explain the situation in advance, they might be able to get you a loaner. Barring that, they'll lease you a car."

  "Lease . . . Vic, isn't that expensive?"

  "Yeah," he said.

  She thought again that it was wrong of her to be dumping all this on him. He was probably thinking that she wasn't capable of anything . . . except maybe screwing the local furniture refinisher. She was fine at that. Hot salt tears, partly anger, partly self-pity, stung her eyes again. "I'll take care of it," she said, striving desperately to keep her voice normal, light. Her elbow was propped on the wall and one hand was over her eyes. "Not to worry."

  "Well, I--oh, shit, there's Roger. He's dust up to his neck, but they got the kinescopes. Put Tad on for a second, would you?"

  Frantic questions backed up in her throat. Was it all right? Did he think it could be all right? Could they get back to go and start again? Too late. No time. She had spent the time gabbing about the car. Dumb broad, stupid quiff.

  "Sure," she said. "He'll say good-bye for both of us. And . . . Vic?"

  "What?" He sounded impatient now, pressed for time.

  "I love you," she said, and then before he could reply, she added: "Here's Tad." She gave the phone to Tad quickly, almost conking him on the head with it, and went through the house to the front porch, stumbling over a hassock and sending it spinning, seeing everything through a prism of tears.

  She stood on the porch looking out at 117, clutching her elbows, struggling to get herself under control--control, dammit, control--and it was amazing, wasn't it, how bad you could hurt when there was nothing physically wrong.

  Behind her she could hear the soft murmur of Tad's voice, telling Vie they had eaten at Mar
io's, that Mommy had her favorite Fat Pizza and the Pinto had been okay until they were almost home. Then he was telling Vic that he loved him. Then there was the soft sound of the phone being hung up. Contact broken.

  Control.

  At last she felt as if she had some. She went back into the kitchen and began putting away the groceries.

  Charity Camber stepped down from the Greyhound bus at quarter past three that afternoon. Brett was right at her heels. She was clutching the strap of her purse spasmodically. She was suddenly, irrationally afraid that she would not recognize Holly. Her sister's face, held in her mind like a photograph all these years (The Younger Sister Who Had Married Well), had gone suddenly and mysteriously out of her mind, leaving only a fogged blank where the picture should have been.

  "You see her?" Brett asked as they alighted. He looked around at the Stratford bus depot with bright interest and no more. There was certainly no fear in his face.

  "Give me a chance to look around!" Charity said sharply. "Probably she's in the coffee shop or--"

  "Charity?"

  She turned and there was Holly. The picture held in her memory came flooding back, but it was now a transparency overlying the real face of the woman standing by the Space Invaders game. Charity's first thought was that Holly was wearing glasses--how funny! Her second, shocked, was that Holly had wrinkles--not many, but there could be no question about what they were. Her third thought was not precisely a thought at all. It was an image, as clear, true, and heartbreaking as a sepia-toned photograph: Holly leaping into old man Seltzer's cowpond in her underpants, pigtails standing up against the sky, thumb and forefinger of her left hand pinching her nostrils closed for comic effect. No glasses then, Charity thought, and pain came to her then, and it squeezed her heart.

  Standing at Holly's sides, looking shyly at her and Brett, were a boy of about five and a girl who was perhaps two and a half. The little girl's bulgy pants spoke of diapers beneath. Her stroller stood off to one side.

  "Hi, Holly," Charity said, and her voice was so thin she could hardly hear it.

  The wrinkles were small. They turned upward, the way their mother had always said the good ones did. Her dress was dark blue, moderately expensive. The pendant she wore was either a very good piece of costume jewelry or a very small emerald.