All the Rage

“Yes.”


Turner squints at the farmhouse in the distance. “So he reported it stolen for kicks?” I turn to ice. I can’t even swallow, I’m so frozen. Turner nods to the house. “We got a call from Mr. Conway. Told us a suspicious-looking car come tearing down this road almost a dozen times.” Conway. Christ. He’s probably watching this from his window, binoculars pressed against his eyes to better the view. “Been drinking?”

It’s as good as a slap in the face. “No, sir.”

“So if we did a roadside sobriety test, you’d pass, that what you’re telling me?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you.”

“But you’ve already lied to me once. Today.” He runs his hand over his mouth, like he’s considering it, letting me go, because he’s trying to make a fool out of me, thinks he can put hope in me that I’ll walk away from this with no trouble at all. I’m not a fool. He lowers his hand and points to the space of road in front of him. “Okay, Romy. I need you to stand right there. Feet together, hands at your sides.”

“What?”

“Feet together, hands at your sides.”

My eyes drift to his holster, that’s how much I hate him. I’m boiling with it. I press my lips together and at first I want to fight this but I know I can’t win because that’s not what I was put on this earth to do. I drop my hands to my sides, feet together. He holds his hand up, raises his index finger, tells me to focus on the tip of it and then leads my eyes side to side, up and down and that is not even the end of it. He makes me walk a straight line, heel to toe, turn and walk it back. He makes me stand on one leg and count and when I pass all these tests with flying colors, he tells me he’s calling my mother. I can’t get any more dead while I listen to him say he’s recovered the car and oh, guess who was driving it. His voice is getting to me, turns this open space into a coffin. I start scratching at my arms again.

He hangs up and shoves his phone in his pocket.

“There’s a lot of ways I could make this go,” he tells me. “You were speeding, driving erratically. That’s not your car and I’m guessing your license isn’t on you. So that little sobriety test would be the least of your worries. But know what? I’m going to give you a break and hope you learn something from it. Now get in Todd’s car. I’m following you in.”

I take the drive in to Grebe at a crawl, wasting his time and delaying the inevitable. When we finally get back to the house, Mom and Todd are waiting on the porch. She’s upset, that’s plain across her face and in the way she’s holding herself, arms wrapped tight around her middle. Todd looks too serious, doesn’t look right too serious. He grimaces when he sees the dirt on the car and I wish that I could take this whole thing back. The screen door whines as she pushes it open. They meet us halfway up the walkway.

“You all right?” she asks. I nod. She holds out her hands. “Good. Keys. Now.” I hand them over, my eyes everywhere but hers. “Are you kidding me with this? What were you thinking, Romy?”

Todd clears his throat. “AJ, I think we can figure this out inside.” Mom flushes when she finally realizes who she’s embarrassing me in front of. Todd reaches out, shakes hands with the sheriff. “Levi, we appreciate your help today.”

“It’s my job. I’ve got to do it for everybody.” He turns to me. “And you. You learn something?”

“Every single time,” I tell him.

After I’ve been banned from driving the New Yorker until we all forget about the time I took it without asking and the sheriff brought me home, I have to ask my mother to drive me to Swan’s. It’s a quiet ride out. She keeps clenching her jaw. It’s not until we reach the town sign, she asks, “What happened today?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t just get in a car and go for nothing.” She pauses. “If something happened and I can do something about it, you should tell me.”

“Nothing happened.”

She sighs and turns the radio on. Cattle graze in fields off the road and they look sleepy with the heat. When I was nine, my mom got hired to clean a hall out in the country after it got rented for a wedding. Dad had been at the bottle all day and she didn’t want me to stay with him, so I went with her. I filled my pockets with diamond confetti that got all over the floors while she swept, vacuumed, scrubbed, and wiped down surfaces.

Behind the building was a field and when the potpourri scent of her cleaner made me sneeze, I went outside. There were calves there, these sweet things that watched me with less interest than I watched them. There was this raggedy one, sitting in the middle of the field, its mother nearby. I didn’t realize it was sick until it tried to get up and it couldn’t. It kept trying and it couldn’t and then, eventually—it didn’t. After a while, a truck drove in. A man and a boy got out, looked it over while its mother stood close. It was dead, the calf. Dead and too heavy to load into the truck bed, so they tied a rope around its neck, tied the other end to the truck and dragged it off the field like that. Its mother watched until it disappeared and when it was out of view, she called for it. Just kept calling for it so long after it was gone. Sometimes I feel something like that, between my mom and me. That I’m the daughter she keeps calling for so long after she’s been gone.