The Jodi Picoult Collection Read online

  “Not here it isn’t,” he says, and he walks back to the MG. “This car here I’ll give you for one thousand.”

  Rebecca turns to me with incredibly sad eyes, meant for Tall Neck to see. “It’s too much money, isn’t it, Mama?”

  “It’s okay, honey. We can go somewhere else. There’s lots of places to stop on the way to Hollywood.”

  “Five hundred,” Tall Neck says, “and that is my last offer.”

  A woman drives into the station in a lemon-colored van and pulls in front of the gas pump. Tall Neck excuses himself to fill the tank. Rebecca beckons me closer to the car, and I climb over the door less agilely than she did, and sit in the driver’s seat. “Where did you learn to tap dance?” I asked.

  “School. Gym class. I had a choice of tetherball or tap.” She leans against my shoulder. “So you think I’ll make it on Broadway?”

  “I don’t know if you’d make it in Poplar, to tell you the truth. But you did a nice job of snowing this guy.” I begin to fiddle with the radio dial (broken) and the shift (sticks on reverse). Rebecca opens up the glove compartment, which is empty, and reaches under the seat to find a lever for moving it back. She pulls out a manila envelope, dusty, which has been wedged into the springs underneath.

  “What’s this,” she says, opening the clasp. She pulls out bills—twenties, all of them, and as her eyes grow wide I grab the envelope from her.

  I start to count quickly, before Tall Neck finishes his transaction. “There’s over six hundred here,” I tell Rebecca. “That’s what I call cash back financing.” Rebecca, who sees the van pull away, stuffs the envelope back into the springs below the seat. “Is this really the one you want?” I say loudly, as Tall Neck approaches. Rebecca nods. “Well, Happy Birthday then.”

  “Oh Mama!” Rebecca squeals, and she throws her arms around me. She breaks away from my embrace to pump Tall Neck’s hand up and down. “Thank you, oh, thank you so much!”

  “I’ll get the title,” Tall Neck says, and he limps towards the concrete block building that must serve as an office.

  Rebecca smiles until he closes the door behind him and then she turns to me. “Let’s get out of this dump.” She leans her head back against the seat and holds her hand to her throat. “Does anybody tap dance anymore?”

  Tall Neck reappears with a manila envelope that looks much like the treasure under the seat, which makes me wonder if this isn’t some stash of his he has forgotten about. I rifle through the cash. “You should really keep your money in a bank,” I tell him. “You never know if you’re going to get held up.”

  He laughs, showing spaces where he has no teeth. “Not out here. Tourists don’t come to Poplar. And,” he points to a shotgun propped next to the gas pump, “robbers know better.”

  I smile weakly. “Well,” I say, wondering if he’ll shoot at us as we leave, realizing he’s left money in our car, “thanks for your help.”

  Rebecca has been moving all our possessions from the back of the station wagon. She takes the duffel bag out of the back seat and the maps from the glove compartment and tosses them in the tiny trunk of the new car. “Look for me in the movies!” Rebecca calls to the man. We pull alongside the station wagon, expecting to feel some sort of remorse, the way you feel like you are leaving a piece of yourself behind whenever you trade in an old car. But this one reminds me of Oliver, and of leaving, and I don’t think I will miss it much at all.

  “Mom,” Rebecca urges, “we’re going to miss the audition.” She reaches her arms over her head as we plow back through the field, which is easier this time because we have cleared a path. The weeds climb right inside the car, since we have the top down, and Rebecca picks them as they whip her across the chest and the face, creating a bouquet in shades of purple. “This is some car,” she screams, her words lost in the rush of the wind.

  It is a lot of fun. It’s less clunky than the station wagon, that’s for sure—I keep looking in the rearview mirror and expecting to see another half-length of car. There is just enough room for me and Rebecca. “So whose money do you think that is?”

  “I think it’s ours now,” Rebecca says. “Some mother you are. Turning me into a liar and a thief.”

  “You turned yourself into a liar; I didn’t command you to do a tap recital. And as for being a thief, well, technically we bought the car, including anything that happened to be inside it.” Rebecca looks at me and laughs. “Okay, so it’s a little dishonest.” A runaway reed scratches against my cheek, leaving a raised mark. “I think the money belonged to an heiress who had fallen in love with her groundskeeper.”

  Rebecca laughs. “You must write plots for All My Children in your spare time.”

  “So the groundskeeper sees the baron approaching with the body of the woman he loves and has to decide whether to take off with the car or to grieve over the woman. And of course he stays—”

  “Of course.”

  “—and is shot by the baron, who then drives the car to a deserted town in Montana where it is not likely to be found, and moves his estate to Estonia under an assumed identity.” I take a deep breath, proud of my story. “What do you think?”

  “Number one, how did the money get into the car, then, if the woman never had a chance to get it before she was knocked off? Number two, no idiot in his right mind would take a bullet just because his girlfriend has been killed too. If he really loved her he’d go off and live the life they’d planned together.” Rebecca shifts in her seat and inadvertently knocks the rearview mirror. “You’re a hopeless romantic, Mom.”

  “Well, whose money do you think it is?”

  Rebecca starts to throw the flowers from the bouquet she’s collected in the air, one by one. They seem to fly away as if they have lives of their own. “I think that Indian guy put his savings account in the car a long time ago, so long that he’s completely forgotten. He’s probably after us in the blue Jeep right now.”

  “That’s lousy,” I tell her. “That’s hardly a good story at all.”

  “If you want to spice it up, then maybe he got the money from robbing a bank. Which would explain why he doesn’t keep his cash there in the first place.” Rebecca cocks her head to one side. “Now that we’re rich, what are we going to do to celebrate?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Take a shower. Get another pair of underwear. And other luxuries like that.”

  “We should buy some clothes,” I agree. “Not that the selection around here is going to match our style.” Some style. I’ve been wearing the same dirty shirt of Oliver’s for four days, and Rebecca has been sleeping in the bathing suit she wears all day.

  “So we’ll go shopping the next town we find.”

  “The next town that looks like a town,” I clarify.

  “The next town that has a store.” Rebecca pushes her hands against her stomach. “When did we have breakfast?”

  “Two hours ago,” I say. “Why?”

  Rebecca curls into a ball, her head on the armrest beside the stick shift. Here she doesn’t have the room for movement the station wagon allowed her. “My stomach hurts. Maybe I’m not hungry. Maybe I ate a bad egg or something.”

  “Do you want to stop?” I turn to look at her; she’s a little green.

  “No, just keep driving.” Rebecca closes her eyes. “It’s not so bad. It comes and goes.” She kneads her hands in a knot, and presses it against her stomach.

  For about half an hour, Rebecca falls asleep, which makes me feel better because I know she is no longer in pain. This is the mark of a mother; I am able to feel what she feels, to hurt when she hurts. Sometimes I believe that in spite of the traditional birth, Rebecca and I were never disconnected.

  She has not missed much, being asleep. We have passed the border into North Dakota, and we seem to be leaving the great purple swells of mountains behind us.

  “Are we there yet?” Rebecca rolls into a sitting position, pushing her hair away from her face where it has unraveled into thin str