“We’re just trying to help you out,” said Arnold.
“I think you might be a little drunk there, sweetheart,” said Pete.
“I am not,” I mumbled, though I knew I was.
Pete and Arnold rested me against the door. They both moved in closer toward me.
“I just don’t know,” said Pete. “You look like you need a hand to me. Don’t you think, Dad?”
“Where’s your key?” said Arnold. “We’ll get you into bed.”
“I am fine,” I said.
“Just give us the key,” said Arnold.
“I am fine,” I said louder.
“There ain’t no need to yell,” said Arnold. “There’s people sleeping.”
“I am fine,” I yelled.
Pete lifted his hand, and it seemed like he was going to clamp it across my mouth. But he just scratched his head with it instead. Next door a light went on. We all turned. A hand pulled the curtain to the side, and two sets of eyes peered at us. Pete and Arnold took a step back.
“Everything’s fine,” said Arnold.
I pulled out my key and it dropped to the ground and Pete leaned forward to help but Arnold put a hand on him and pulled him back. I picked it up off the snow. My hand burned with the chill of it. I let myself into my room, and when I looked back, Arnold and Pete were just standing there. Arnold’s hand was still on Pete, holding him back.
“You sure you’re okay?” said Pete. It was a desperate whine, like a stray dog looking for food or the touch of a hand.
“I am fine,” I said, and I closed the door. I locked it. I did not take my clothes off or anything. Tomorrow I will be a new me, I thought. I need to figure out how to be a new me. I got under the covers, and when my heart stopped racing through my chest, then, at last, I could sleep.
2.
My cell phone woke me up early, not even 6 A.M. I was miserable, my head swollen with alcohol, the spot behind my eyes tender and on fire. I checked the phone. It was a video from my sister, Jenny. She was standing sideways in front of a mirror, her stomach puffed out, completely pregnant. My heart stopped right there in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Then she pulled out a pillow, showing me the little bump left behind, and started laughing.
Hilarious, I texted her. She should take that act on the road. She would make millions.
She texted back: When are you coming home?
I did not reply because I did not have an answer. If I was coming home at all. My phone buzzed again. Jenny had sent me a picture of our garbage can, a mountain of empty beer cans sprouting out of the top of it. Oh Lord, I thought. Our mother’s been drinking more than ever. Still it was not enough for me to turn around home. I could not say one way or the other what I was going to do next, except keep on driving.
Outside the roads were still silent, and the sun rimmed the curtains of the motel room shyly. For a minute I could have been back on the farm, waiting for the rooster to let us know it was time to get up and shake off the night. Some mornings, I would rise before the rooster. But I would let him go first into the day. I did not want to hurt his feelings. There was no one around in the mornings, except me and my husband and the rooster and all his chicken wives. All of us kept close together on that farm. We were not going anywhere.
Then I remembered: my husband had cast me out. No crow to cradle me now. There was a roof over my head, but still I was homeless. The last nine months I had lived in that house it had been a construction zone. Thomas could not wait to spend his daddy’s money on renovations once he died. It was the first thing he did after we moved in, call up his high school buddies and put them to work. Work, if you want to call it that. They were sucking Thomas dry just like they sucked those cans of Budweiser all day long, making noises every hour or so like they were lifting something heavy. Tall, strong men strutting and braying like that cock in the morning, Thomas letting them because they were big men now. They had always been bigger than Thomas. It was not hard.
But it was the place I called home. My marital home. And every bed I had slept in since I would wake up in the night and feel like I was sliding off. I held on to the bed in the motel room in Cheyenne. I grabbed the sheets and pinched the end of the mattress. I was homeless and loveless and all alone in the world.