Dark Places(26)
There was no medicine cabinet in the cramped bathroom (what would she do when the girls hit high school, one bathroom for four women, and where would Ben be? She had a quick, miserable image of him in some motel room, all by himself in a boy-mess of stained towels and spoiled milk), so she kept a small cluster of toiletries stacked along the sink. Ben had shoved all the containers into one corner—aerosol deodorant and hairspray, a midget can of baby powder she didn’t remember buying. They were now splattered with the same violet stain that dirtied her sink. She wiped them down like they were china. Patty wasn’t ready for another trip to the department store. She’d driven to Salina a month ago in a positive, bright mood to pick up some prettifying items: cream rinse, face lotion, lipstick. She had folded a $20 bill in her front pocket just for the trip. A splurge. But the sheer amount of options in face cream alone— hydrating, wrinkle-fighting, sun-thwarting—had overwhelmed her. You could buy one moisturizer, but then you had to get a matching cleanser, too, and something called toner, and before you were even ready for the night cream, you’d have blown fifty bucks. She’d left the store with nothing, feeling chastened and foolish.
“You’ve got four kids—no one expects you to look like a daisy,” was Diane’s response.
But she wanted to look like a daisy every now and then. Months back, Runner had returned, just dropped out of the sky with a tan face and blue eyes and stories of fishing boats in Alaska and the race circuit in Florida. He’d stood on her doorstep, lanky in dirty jeans, with not even a wink about the fact they hadn’t heard from him in three years, hadn’t gotten any money from him. He asked if he could board with them til he got settled—naturally he was broke, although he handed Debby half a warm Coke he’d been drinking as if it were a wonderful gift. Runner swore he’d fix things up around the farm and keep it all platonic, if she wanted. It was summer then, and she let him sleep on the couch, where the girls would run to him in the morning as he lay sprawled and stinky in torn boxers, his balls half out.
He charmed the girls—he called them Baby Doll, Angelface— and even Ben watched him attentively, swooping in and out of interactions like a shark. Runner didn’t exactly engage Ben, but he tried to joke with him a little, be friendly. He’d include Ben as a male, which was good, he’d say things like, “That’s a man’s job,” and give Ben a wink. After the third week, Runner rolled up in his truck with an old fold-out sofa he’d found and suggested he camp out in the garage. It seemed OK. He helped her with dishes and he opened doors for her. He’d let Patty catch him looking at her butt, and then pretend to be embarrassed. They exchanged a smoky kiss one night as she was handing him clean bedsheets, and he’d immediately been on her— hands up her shirt, pressing her against the wall, pulling her head back by her hair. She pushed him off, told him she wasn’t ready, tried to smile. He sulked and shook his head, looking her up and down with pursed lips. When she undressed for bed, she could smell the nicotine from where he’d grabbed her just below the breasts.
He’d stayed another month, leering around, starting jobs and leaving them half done. When she asked him to leave during breakfast one morning, he called her a bitch, threw a glass at her, left juice stains on the ceiling. After he was gone, she discovered he’d stolen sixty bucks, two bottles of booze, and a jewelry box that he’d soon discover had nothing in it. He moved to a decrepit cabin a mile away—smoke came from the chimney at all times, the only form of heat. Sometimes she could hear gunfire in the distance, the sounds of bullets shot straight up in the air.
That would be her last romance with the man who fathered her children. And now, it was time for more reality. Patty tucked her hair, dry and unwieldy, behind her ears and opened the door. Michelle sat on the floor right in front of her, pretending to study the floorboard. She assessed Patty from behind gray-tinted glasses.
“’s Ben in trouble?” she asked. “Why’d he do that? With his hair?”
“Growing pains, I think,” Patty said, and just as Michelle took a deep breath—she always gulped air before she said something, her sentences were tight, fast links of words that just kept coming til she had to breathe again—they heard a car coming up the driveway. The driveway was long, someone would pull onto it and they wouldn’t arrive for another minute. Somehow Patty knew it wasn’t her sister, even though the girls were shrieking Diane! Diane! already, running toward the window to look out. There’d be sad little sighs when it wasn’t Diane after all. Somehow she knew it was Len, her loan officer. Even his driving had a possessive sound to it. Len the Letchy Lender. She’d been wrangling with him since 1981. Runner had left by then, announcing this kind of life wasn’t for him, looking around like it was his place instead of hers, her parents’, her grandparents’.