Kerry was kind of happy that her old high school friends had stopped writing her. It meant more time for lounging around and thinking about finding a better job. This trip she was taking to Little Rock was sort of a business trip, in that sense. It gave her a little more confidence, thinking of it in that light. She stepped onto the Greyhound and took a window seat towards the back. It was only when she realize the fat little kid across the aisle smelling like a garbage dump flushed down a toilet clogged in a septic tank did Kerry remember that she had left home with no change of clothes, no toothbrush or pajamas. It was against every idea of the business trip as a planned, sanctioned event. Kerry started to laugh at her own stupidity and stopped because the intake of air required for mirth provided too much exposure to the rank air making its dimensions known in the cabin of the bus. She sat, and looked out the window. Her stubborn head was keeping her in the seat. That, and the fact that there wasn't much left for her in Marion. Kerry's father sold peat moss to Home Depots. That's all he did. He had a doctorate degree in agronomy and had gotten into retail on a whim, twenty years ago. Once the peat moss industry took off and fewer people were hiring lab technicians to look at dirt, he quit his college job and started selling for Fafard Fertilizer. He was a funny man, who gave Kerry's mother flour for Valentine's Day and taught the family dog to play dead at the command "get in the oven." When his wife left him and Nero began playing dead more realistically, Kerry's father began to go on longer business trips. He was the only one left in town who Kerry liked to talk to. She found a natural progression for eventual departure in this abandonment, and it didn't bother her.
A young man shuffled sideways through the aisle. Kerry caught the girls at the front of the bus pointing and whispering as he passed, and found herself taking a special interest in him. He had slicked back hair and a soft looking brown suede jacket. He apologized to the lady in the fifth row when his bags slammed into her knee. She started wailing about Jesus and the death of ministry. He looked up and over the rows and Kerry saw him gasping a little for breath. He wasn't used to this, either. She took her bags out of the aisle seat.
"You can sit here," she said.
"Ah, thanks."
There was a great shuffling of bag and jacket as he positioned himself in the seat.
"Twenty hours," he said. He looked kind. The suede jacket was stowed above them, revealing a trim black polo shirt.
"I'm Kerry," she said.
"Vino," he said. He looked up and tapped his fingers along the seat divide between them. "Well, my friends call me Vino. You can call me Vincent."
"I'm not your friend?"
"It's a dumb nickname, that's all."
"How did you get it?"
Vincent looked at her, and his fingers drumming at the seat. He laughed and Kerry thought she saw a hint of redness spread suddenly over his cheeks. It was cute. He drew his face back, scrunching his neck down. "You're a disgrace to the family," he said in a heavy Italian accent.
"What does that mean?"
"You come to me with this favor," he said.
"You look ridiculous."
He stretched his neck back out. "Never mind."
The bus began to roll. The lady in the fifth row was making soft moaning noises, like a long-caged animal.
"I've never been to Little Rock," Kerry said, looking out the window. She never offered unsolicited information to people she didn't know and it was odd that she felt like talking to the stranger next to her. She suspected it was something about the fact that he wasn't trying to read or even look away. Vincent regarded her casually, easily, as though he had been sitting next to her in a Greyhound all of his life. That would be kind of weird, Kerry thought. And smelly.
"I go all the time," he said.
Kerry detected an amount of cynicism in his voice, and appreciated it. She had been solicited once by FirstMatch, a phone-based dating service. They were doing a survey at the time and the nice woman on the phone wanted to know how Kerry met men, how that was working out for her and what she liked in her dates.
"I don't know," Kerry had said. She knew exactly what she liked but didn't want to start a conversation with the woman on the other end of the line. "A sense of humor, general sense of kindness, stuff like that."
"He has to have a good job too, of course," the woman said.
"Oh," Kerry had said, blinking. "Yes, of course."
But now that she was looking easily back at Vincent, she found herself considering what she liked in a man. Heavy cynicism was near the top. A predilection towards angry outbursts? No, that wasn't quite right. Passion.
"Will you get married someday," the woman had said, "if you find the right one?"
Vincent was talking about his mother. She always had some trouble, real or imagined, and was pulling him out of jobs and school three or four times a semester to take a bus or a train or car to come and care for her, to say good bye and to accept the bounteous casseroles of the funeral processional. It never happened, of course, and though he had been full of stress and heartache at first he began to buy fewer flowers for the woman's hospital room, take less time off of work to say good-bye for another three months.
Kerry hadn't been away from home much at all, in the past. When she graduated high school with the rest of her friends, she was half-expecting for everyone to stick around, get jobs at record stores and burger joints. Even though everyone had nice scholarships and an overpowering urge to leave the state as quickly as possible, Kerry harbored a hope in her mind that something would happen to keep everyone in town. It didn't happen, of course, and Kerry spent the next six months feeling miffed. She got a job at a record store and ate her lunches at the burger joint next door.
Nothing interesting happened in Marion. Tornadoes, every now and then. A murder or two. Nothing that affected Kerry directly. The biggest event of the year was when a man had walked into the record store wearing a vinyl suit. It wasn't made out of plastic, though. The guy walked in wearing old records, melted or sewn together to form a painful looking little suit that bent a little at the hips and knees, just enough for him to walk. People in the record store stared. Someone bolted out the back door.
"I hear you buy old records," he said. He was maybe forty years old, and incredibly skinny. Tall, with a wild and dangerous sort of look in his eyes. His hair was black and slicked down over his forehead and behind his ears.
"Yes," Kerry said.
The man gestured down at himself and smiled up at her. His eyebrows joined in the center of his face to form one long line of hair, slick and furry.
"No," Kerry said. She had already seen more than she ever would have wanted to in the pinhole center of The Who's "Happy Jack."
But the job was downhill from there, along with everything else in that town. She had quit the week after the vinyl suit incident and took up the occupation of being a shiftless loser. Her father paid for her classes at Marion Community College and didn't charge her to live in his house. Kerry speculated that he needed the company. She needed the company, too. Neither of them were around much anyway.
Kerry and Vincent had been making out for three hours. She had found a hair in her burger from McDonalds and he let her have his. When Vincent leaned over and kissed her, his tongue tasted like ketchup and she thought briefly of the hair in the sandwich.
The thin seating divide had been retracted and she was twisted around awkwardly. The smelly kid from across the aisle was pulling her hair. Kerry hadn't been kissed like this since middle school, in the back of the field trip bus on its way to a memorable Discovery Center lecture on puberty and childbirth.
This was very similar in the fuzziness, the general feeling of warmth without the clarity that she hadn't felt since the eighth grade. It was nice, like the rest of Kerry's day had been nice. It was a nonsensical kind of nice. She would lean back, and then he would.
"My mother was expecting me later tonight," Vincent said.
Kerry sat up. "She'll be surprised."
Vincent was silent. They were going over a bridge and Kerry leaned towards the window to see the brown-gray water underneath, speckled with beer cans and fishermen.
"They're fishing for cans," she said.
"You should come with me."
Kerry leaned back, and looked at him. "To see your mother?"
"You don't have anything better to do," he said. He was right. She shouldn't have talked so much about how scared she was to be alone. "And anyway, my mother will love you."
Kerry turned again to the window. She had been planning to take another bus once she got to Little Rock, a bus going West with a capital W. She regretted the trip enough already and had decided in that vein to keep on with the trip until it paid off or killed her. She hoped the stubborn cloud would rise. Until then, she would travel and a straight transfer would be more time in an uncomfortable seat. She could use a night away from it. And anyway, she liked Vincent.
When the bus pulled into the terminal, they stepped off sideways, holding hands. He bought her a Snapple from the vending machine. The hospital was just down the street and they were tired of taking busses so they started walking.
They found Linda reclining in a chair next to her hospital bed. She stood, weakly, when Vincent entered.
"My lungs," she said. "Vincent."
"I thought it was your feet." He rushed over, arms out and held her without speaking. There was tenderness in that simplicity, even though when Vincent eventually turned to introduce Kerry, he rolled his eyes.
"Kerry," he gestured, then sweepingly so to his mother. "My mother, Linda."
"Good to meet you," the older woman whispered sweetly. "I've heard so much."
Kerry pursed her lips to keep from laughing at the face Vincent was making, turned away from his mother. "So nice to finally meet you," Kerry said.
Have you two eaten?"
Kerry was starved. "We came straight from the.."
"The restaurant," Vincent said, finishing for her. "We had pancakes."
"Oh." Linda placed her hands on her belly, wavering a little. Vincent took her by the elbow. "I wish I could have pancakes," she said.
Me too, thought Kerry. Vincent was making a waggling gesture with his hands behind his back and she realized that was her cue to exit. "I'm not feeling so well," Kerry said. "I'll be back."
Halfway to the bathroom, she stopped and sat against a window stretching from the linoleum to the ceiling panels. It was a strange moment, looking out over downtown Little Rock. Following Vincent to the hospital seemed suddenly like a bad idea to her, and she briefly considered running downstairs and back to the bus terminal. She stayed where she was, though. She made this decision and would stick with it. And anyway, Vincent would know where she went and would follow her back. She didn't know if he would be upset about that. Kerry felt another pang of what she was realizing was fear. She didn't know this boy at all. He could have been lying to her completely about being in school. Maybe the woman in the waiting room wasn't even his mother. He had lied flawlessly about their imaginary lunch, why had he done that? Kerry hugged her knees, nearly paralyzed with fear. When Vincent walked out of the hospital room and crouched next to her on the floor, Kerry had been unwilling and now felt unable to move.
"I'm not sure," he said, holding the railing in the center of the window. "I'm not sure if she's faking it."
"Didn't she get her own symptoms wrong?"
"She came in for her feet," he said. "But the doctors were running some tests and they found some nodes in her lungs."
"Oh, no," said Kerry. She was trying to think of something comforting to say, to prevent a scene, but Vincent was already crying. She was still rooted to the floor and could only watch him shudder at the intake of breath, sob on the release. He sank down next to her.
"I feel like an idiot," he said.
"Don't," she said. She was stroking his hair. She pulled at him, trying to get him to her lap, but he wasn't easily moved. She gave up and went back to stroking his hair.
"I've only known you for a day," he said.
"It's okay." When her grandmother had died, Kerry lay in the arms of a nurse, sprawled on the floor of another hospital, for hours.
She shushed into his hair, and found that she was rocking back and forth gently. He looked up after a while. "I can't ask you to stay," he said.
"I want to," she said. "Do you want to get some lunch?" The cynic in Kerry was hoping for a free sandwich, at least.
Vincent closed his eyes and sighed. He opened his eyes. "She wants to see you."
"What?"
"She wants to see you. You know, talk a little."
"Me?" Kerry sat back on her heels. Vincent propped himself up on the floor, splaying his fingers and watching her. He looked like he was making himself ready to tackle her, if she tried to run away.
"She's confused," he said. "She thinks that you and I have been dating for years. She is putting together histories."
"And you can't tell her the truth?"
"She's sick." He stood up, and braced his hands against the window. The glass was dark and clean on both sides. Kerry speculated that it was washed maybe three times a week. "She hasn't heard much from me anyway," he said. "So anything you say, she'll buy."
Kerry turned around and found Vincent looking at her with every ounce of sincerity in his eyes. "Please," he said. It was kind of disgusting. She wanted to sit down and kiss him some more. He wouldn't be in the mood for any of that unless he had some comfort in his mother's condition.
"You owe me lunch," she said.
The room was clinically bright, save for the curtained bed in the center. Linda had moved from the window to the bed, and stuck out a feeble hand to beckon Kerry over. Kerry pushed aside the curtain only slightly, to whisper a greeting.
Linda was not such an old woman, that was the first thing Kerry noticed with closer inspection. She would have guessed with Vincent's age that his mother would be forty or maybe fifty. Still, sickness was drawing life out of her. She was the veritable shadow of the fat, happy Italian ladies in Olive Garden commercials. Her black and gray hair was thin. She was wearing an oxygen mask now, and snapped it off of her face with difficulty when Kerry pushed aside the curtain.
"Tell me about yourself," she whispered with an intense effort, drawing the words out as though the difficulty of the words allowed for less casual speech. "I cannot talk much, as you can see."
This was a woman who, according to Vincent, would never shut up. Kerry pulled a chair over to the bed and sat.
"I'm twenty," she started, fingering the corner of the homemade quilt covering the bed. "I go to school with your son. I'm majoring in English and I met him at a conference for journalists." She looked up. The old woman was nodding slightly behind the oxygen mask. "Vincent wanted me to meet you, so we took the time off of work to come down. We were ready for a vacation anyway."
Linda tugged at the corner of the mask. It made a hissing sound. "Young people work too hard," she whispered, throaty.
Kerry laughed a little, but it was drowned out by the oxygen. "We do. Well, Vincent does. He's always doing schoolwork and studying for exams. I study too, but he's always working for the best grade in the class."
Linda was nodding again, and Kerry found herself to be nodding with her. After some of this nodding, Kerry realized the silent prompt to continue. "Oh," she said. "He's a kind young man, and so courteous. On our first date, he opened the doors for me and pulled out my chair at the table. He was a perfect gentleman. He asked me what I liked to do in school and by the second date, he was completely familiar with my mode of study. He brought books about Rodin and Pizzaro and we looked through them, together on the bank of a beautiful river." The old woman had closed her eyes, still smiling to what Kerry could only assume was some distant promise of grandchildren. She looked around the room outside the curtain. Very clinical, one small vase of flowers. Probably from Vincent. Kerry imagined him clicking through a website, choosing his mother's favorites.
"He didn't kiss me at the river," she said softly, leaning in towards Linda's harmless old face. "He brought daises with him and we took a train to Ellis Island. We saw the Statue and poked around the old Immigration house and he looked at the lists of immigrants with tears in his eyes." Kerry feared that she had gone too far, and gulped in a mouthful of hospital air before gaining the courage to look over at Linda. Much to her surprise, the old woman had a tear running down the side of her face. It had been a very big risk but Kerry had won. She pulled her chair next to the headboard of the bed and leaned in, for the coup de grace. "He kissed me then," she whispered.
Kerry had no reason to promote herself, as she had nothing to gain from this woman's approval. Without that, she only had Linda's son to sell. And sell him she did, until the sun grew orange and then purpled crimson beyond the window and a nurse poked her head into the room to announce that visiting hours were over. Kerry felt brave enough to take the old woman's hand as she stood, and Linda clasped her own hand around hers.
"You are a good girl," she whispered, opening her eyes for the first time in an hour. They were red and spotted, like the rest of her complexion, and she was slow to close them again as Kerry slid the curtain shut.
Vincent was waiting outside the door. Kerry noticed how tired he looked, both sets of their baggage around them on the ground. He was wearing a brown coat and blue jeans and both colors were starting to melt into each other. He looked at Kerry like a cow set out to pasture.
"I'm hungry," he said in the elevator. "Is she all right?"
"She's asleep," Kerry said. "I want grilled cheese."
"Good," said Vincent, standing. "Let's get a cab."
Kerry felt strange now, sitting next to this boy. She wondered if he had ever been to Ellis Island, or wanted to be a journalist, or opened the door for girls on first dates. She wondered if he dated much. She wondered these things and felt the new and old electricity of her hand in his.
They were waiting for the taxi to come and Vincent was reading a city bus map on the placard next to his seat. The orange and yellow lines connected to make a baby blue line.
"She'd always faked it, that's all." He looked a little upset still and Kerry moved to put her arm around him. He edged away. "It's ok," he said. "She was just always weird like that, I never thought she'd actually get sick."
Kerry thought of something to say to provide a little empathy. She couldn't think of anything. She watched the cars go by. Everything was gray and their engines sounded louder than usual. Her own mother had gotten her stomach stapled when Kerry was in the tenth grade. She would make the family meals as usual but then eat a few spoonfuls of it and be full. There were leftovers all over the house. When Kerry's mother divorced her father, she left behind the trays of eggplant parmesan and eggs benedict and poached salmon, in trays covered in foil and cracking Tupperware boxes. Things started to go sour a month into the divorce paperwork but Kerry's father refused to open the refrigerator to clean it out. Half of the furniture left, all of the cats and the television gone, the heater broke and the floors starting to get dirty but the refrigerator door stayed closed. It was the woman's last refuge, and he left it there as an homage and as a defiant little stab towards her. Kerry didn't realize all of this until later. It takes a separation of a few years to realize that your parents have hearts and souls and make mistakes and leave lasagna glued to a pan until it grows black mold, because they cannot bear to face it.
The cab was drawing up and Kerry realized it was raining. She used one of her duffel bags as an umbrella. They were headed towards University, which one of the nurses had recommended for quick lunches away from the hospital.
The cab windows were scratched from the inside, and reminded Kerry of triple-paned glass in airplanes. When fearful flyers ask about the windows breaking in an airline cabin, causing the air and passengers to fly into the engine, safety officials always mention the triple-pained glass. Some glass on airplanes had a very thin layer of gold in between, making it stronger and more scratch resistant. This kind of material was too expensive for commercial flights, however, and passengers tended to make do with thick plastic and glass casings. It all managed to hold most of the time, except when the plane was already crashing for other reasons and then it didn't really matter anymore.
"What did you say to her?" Vincent said, to the window.
"I can't remember."
"Was it bad?"
She thought about it. The bus was rocking side to side like a ship on content water. "No, it was very good. I think she likes me."
He squeezed her hand. "I knew she would."
"I said we went to Ellis Island and saw the immigrant names."
"Did you really?" He laughed a little, and started to drum on his knee with the fingers not holding her hand. "That's brilliant. She's been trying to get me to go there."
"Why don't you? It's kind of interesting." She had been to Ellis Island on an extended school trip in the sixth grade. Her father said that sixth graders had no business in New York on their own but he let her go anyway. They spent the entire time trying to not look like tourists. All of Kerry's pictures from the trip looked like they had been taken around corners or from under jackets, surveillance style.
He waved his hand, dismissive. "No time. You don't do tourist things when you live in a tourist town." Kerry noticed how long his hand was against her stubby pale fingers. She felt awkward and clumsy next to the graceful sinewy connections of muscle and bone sitting next to her and yammering on about where he had been. "The museums in New York are nice," he said.
"Not touristy?"
"Not the little ones."
Kerry shuddered a little. She hoped Vincent wasn't secretly one of those art house boys, tapping away at a laptop in a coffee shop with his double espresso. Always cozy, never Starbucks. She imagined him strolling through trendy backyard art museums featuring cats nailed to posts and speed pills painted red.
"How lovely," he would say, "how very meaningful and significant." Sipping cocktails, she dared think, with skinny straight-haired girls wearing little black dresses and impossibly thin fur-lined jackets. Nodding with him, touching the folds of his hair with sculpted nails. Pink nails with white tips matching pink lips, white teeth.
"What's wrong?" Vincent was nudging her.
"Where's the restaurant?" Kerry said.
"I don't know. Along this road."
They sat in silence and when the cab stopped, Kerry found that she didn't want to move at all. Unwilling, unable.
