“No, I don’t. I remember sun.”
“Remember Tucson?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you remember best?”
Turtle closes her eyes for a long time. “There isn’t any best,” she says, finally. “I liked it all.”
“But we didn’t have much money then, either. I think you only had one or two pairs of pants even in Tucson.”
“We had Jax, though. And Lou Ann and Dwayne Ray, and Mattie, down at your store.”
“That’s true. We had them.”
“Will they let us come back?”
“We don’t have enough money for gas. And we can’t tell anybody where we are.”
“But if we did have gas, I mean. Does Jax and everybody still want us to live there?”
“I think he does.”
“He’s not mad because we went away from home?”
Taylor rolls down the window and closes her eyes and lets the hissing night lick her face like a cat. “That’s what home means, Turtle,” she says. “Even if they get mad, they always have to take you back.”
Alice answers the phone at last.
“Mama, I’ve been trying to call you all different times today. Where were you?”
“Law, Taylor, I couldn’t even tell you. Someplace called Lip Flint Crick, or Flint Chip Lick, something. On a picnic.”
“A picnic? I thought you were supposed to be arguing with the Fourkiller woman.”
“I did. But then we went on a picnic.”
“You argued, and then you went on a picnic?”
“No, not with her. I’ve got me a boyfriend.”
“Mama, I swear, I can’t turn my back on you for one minute!” Taylor hears a bitterness in her voice like green potato skins, but she can’t stop up the place it’s growing from.
Alice is quiet.
“I’m happy for you, Mama. Really. What’s his name?”
A flat answer: “Cash.”
“Oh, that sounds good. Is he rich?”
Alice laughs, finally. “Believe me, Taylor, this is not the place to come if you’re looking to find you a millionaire typhoon.”
“Tycoon, Mama. A typhoon is a hurricane, I think. Or maybe it’s that kind of snake that strangles you.”
“Well, they got more snakes here than you can shake your tail at, but no millionaire typhoons. The man-about-town is a fellow wears a horsehide suit. He’s a sight. It looks like he got up too early and put on the bath rug.” She pauses. “How are you all doing? I been hoping you’d call.”
“Not hoping bad enough to sit around by the phone, I notice.”
Alice’s voice changes. “Taylor, you got a bee in your bon-net. I don’t know what you’re mad at me for.”
“I’m not mad at you. Turtle said that just a minute ago.
She said I’m mad all the time. But I’m not. I’ve just fallen on some bad luck and landed jelly side down.” Taylor digs in all of her jeans pockets for a handkerchief, but doesn’t find one. She rips a yellow page from the damp directory underneath the pay phone. “I think I’m getting a cold.”
“You still got that job?”
“Yeah, but they won’t let Turtle hang around in Ladies’
Wear anymore. She has to go out in the parking lot and sit in the Dodge for a couple hours, till I get off.”
“In the car? Goodness, aren’t you afraid she’ll get lone-some and drive herself to Mexico Or something? Remember when we read that in the paper when we was driving across Nevada? That six-year-old that drove the family car to Mexico?”
“That wasn’t a newspaper, Mama, that was one of those supermarket things with Liz Taylor on the front. They make all those stories up.”
“Well, stranger things have happened.”
“I know. But I don’t think Turtle’s thinking in terms of Mexico.”
“Well, good. But you might ought to leave her some stuff in there to play with, just in case.”
“I do. I gave her some packing boxes and stuff from the store. She doesn’t complain, you know how she is. But I feel like a murderer. Everything I’ve been doing, for this whole crazy summer, was just so I could keep Turtle. I thought that was the only thing that mattered, keeping the two of us together. But now I feel like that might not be true. I love her all right, but just her and me isn’t enough. We’re not a whole family.”
“I don’t know. Seems like half the families you see nowdays is just a mama and kids.”