The place was at a new midrange hotel out on the strip outside Pitlorsville, the kind that was supposed to appeal to business travelers, a step above the hot-breakfast-buffet sort of deal in that it had an actual restaurant with an actual bar. Caro didn’t think the food was anything special. All the sandwiches came with sauces that were basically mayonnaise with stuff mixed in—Parmesan or garlic or pesto or whatever—and the French fries and bread all came frozen off the Sysco truck. Caro mostly worked the dinner shift, which was normally dead. She usually had one table going at any given time. Two was rare. Three tables left the kitchen in the weeds, even though everything was basically reheated. Her paychecks were minuscule. Her tips were nothing. But after a few weeks, Freddy started giving her bartending shifts, and that was experience she might be able to turn into a real job somewhere else.
The humid air of September gave way to the brisk mulchy wind of October, and still the car sat. Waiting, she thought—for a thousand dollars to fall out of the sky at her feet, for whatever cosmic forces controlled the world to decide she’d been taunted enough, for someone luckier to drive it away. Halloween was coming. November and December were right around the corner. Winter would bring snowstorms and icicles and long hours in the dark predawn, numb hands stuffed into Margot’s old mittens, scraping ice off the front steps of the rickety little duplex where they lived, clearing the driveway. (Caro had negotiated that last winter, shoveling the snow in exchange for an embarrassingly small break on the rent.) Winter would bring school closings. Caro didn’t like school but it was better than home, better than hours spent curled up under a blanket in the barely heated duplex hiding a book from Margot and forcing herself through it one sentence at a time. Yanking herself, by sheer force of will, into any world other than this one, any room other than one of the three tiny ones she shared with Margot.
The guidance counselor, who thought he knew things, passed her in the hallway one day and said, “Hey, Carolyn! How’s your mother?”
She forced a smile and said, “Good.” As soon as he was around the corner, one of the other girls said, “God, she even fucks the guidance counselors.” Caro stared at her until she looked uncomfortable and walked away. The girls at school thought they knew things too.
She took the school bus home with all the other kids who didn’t have cars, staring fixedly out the window and ignoring the cacophony around her. At home she found Margot nestled inside a fort she’d made out of the kitchen table by turning it on its side and surrounding it with the chairs, similarly upended. An old afghan was draped across the top, letting light in through its crocheted holes.
Caro wondered if any of the other girls at school had mothers who made blanket forts. She crouched down so she could see Margot sitting inside, cross-legged like a child, her wide eyes staring out of the dappled darkness. She was wearing sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt—no zippers—and her arms were pulled in close, as if they were cold. “That kind of day?” Caro said.
“Yes,” Margot said in her weird, affectless way.
Caro looked around for a plate or a paper towel or some crumbs. “Eat anything?”
“Nothing was out,” Margot said.
Caro sighed. “Want me to make you a peanut butter sandwich?”
Margot nodded.
“Okay,” Caro said, and stood up. “Cover your ears. I have to open things.”
She heard a soft whimper from inside the fort, and then her mother said, “Okay,” in a tense, muffled way that Caro knew meant that Margot had clapped both hands over her ears and was curled in a tight defensive ball. “Hands, Carrie?”
Automatically, Caro pulled her sleeves down over her hands. There was an empty pitcher on the counter; with her hands still inside her sleeves, so she didn’t touch the metal faucet, she put it in the sink and let the cold water trickle into it. As quickly and quietly as she could, she opened the drawer and took out a knife, opened the cupboard and took out the peanut butter. She had to open another drawer to get the bread and that was the worst one because sometimes it squeaked. Margot squeaked too when she heard it. There was a half a loaf of bread left: seven slices. The peanut butter in the jar was enough for two reasonable sandwiches and one scanty one. Caro made the sandwiches, put all three of them on a plate—she heard Margot yelp with fear as the cabinet door slammed shut—and slid them into Margot’s den. Then she took the full pitcher of water from the sink, got a glass down from the cupboard, and crouched down next to the tent again.
Margot still had her ears covered. Her eyes were squeezed shut too. Caro reached in and tapped her knee. “Margot,” she said, and her mother opened her eyes. Caro showed her the pitcher and the glass. “Water’s right here, okay?”
“Are you leaving?”
“My shift starts at four.”
With one hand, pale and slightly swollen from her meds, Margot pulled the plate in close to her. No other part of her moved. “You have homework?” she said.
“Taking it with me.”