Page 6 of What Happened to Lucy Vale
Four
Rachel
Lucy made a playlist for the drive, an eclectic mix of artists that Rachel had never heard of and old favorites that Lucy had absorbed from her, a kind of musical transfusion. They drove mostly without speaking. Every so often Lucy’s left hand went to her eyelashes and Rachel said, “Chicken tenders,” which was a code word the therapist had recommended. Lucy’s eyelashes were light brown, feathered white in the sun. But they’d grown in again, thank God. Last year she’d had none. Without them she looked sick, almost reptilian. But recently Rachel had found little bunches of them on Lucy’s pillow again, and piled next to her laptop. They’d returned to their ritual of reminders. Whenever Rachel observed Lucy plucking, she said, “Chicken tenders,” and Lucy would stop.
She hoped moving was the right decision.
Lucy sat with the stray, Maybe, balanced in a cardboard box on her knees, periodically peering in and whispering words of comfort that Rachel couldn’t make out. She supposed that the undersized tabby was, officially, no longer a stray. Before they left Lansing, Lucy had insisted that Maybe—who for months had been showing up outside their apartment, rubbing provocatively against the front door and mewling for food and attention—be given the chance to opt in to or out of themove. It was no use trying to persuade her that the cat might not have the cognitive sophistication to forecast its happiness. Recently Lucy had been obsessed by new research into animal cognition, consumed with ideas of self-determination and the agency of all living beings. She hadn’t yet announced her vegetarianism, but Rachel suspected it wouldn’t be long.
That was Lucy. She always seemed to have a cause, to hand her heart away to an idea, a principle, a way of sectioning the world into right or wrong. When Lucy was eight or nine, she announced a hunger strike after seeing gruesome images of the food crisis in South Sudan. Rachel expected her to cave after a few hours. Instead, two days later, they were engaged in a blow-out fight over a slab of lasagna. The beginnings of an eating disorder, Rachel was sure. On day three, Lucy fainted in the halls of her elementary school, and Rachel threatened her with hospitalization unless she abandoned her campaign.
The next month, it was something about dolphins. As smart as humans, Lucy said.They can even beat us at video games.
Lucy was like that. Protean and obsessive. Fitful and intense. Like she was always stretching, reaching for something, desperate to hold on to a scaffold that would give the world its shape.
“I think Maybe might throw up,” Lucy said. They were the first words she’d spoken since Grand Rapids. Mostly she’d sat with her head tilted toward the window, face invisible while the sun played on her hair. Thankfully the purple streaks had faded almost to invisibility. To Rachel, Lucy’s hair color was a metaphor. She was finally getting her daughter back.
“Why do you think she’s going to throw up?” Rachel asked. Her impulse, what she might once have said, was: Maybe is fine. She’s a cat. But their family therapist had encouraged Rachel to respond with patience and curiosity, help Lucy explore her perceptions, and witness her point of view.
“She looks anxious to me,” Lucy said. She had developed a tendency to project complex mental and emotional states onto the cat. Inthe lead-up to the move, Lucy had mostly been concerned about the quality of Maybe’s mental health and whether she’d be able to adapt. But when Rachel asked Lucy whether she was worried about adapting, she’d only shrugged.
“And she’s drooling.”
“Would you like me to pull over?”
Lucy squinted out across the slur of flat scrub grass pinioned between I-69 and the sky. “She might run away.”
“She might,” Rachel agreed.
Lucy readjusted the box on her knees and said nothing. So much for self-determination.
They’d made it to Indiana. So far the landscape looked universal to this portion of the Midwest: broad highways, flat as a shovel end, and billboards that pointed to tobacco superstores, rest areas, sex shops, and Jesus. Rachel remembered that on her childhood drives to Indiana, every Bible verse provoked some explosive reaction from her mother.Opiates for the masses,she would say, drumming the wheel with her palm, and Rachel would drop her eyes as if she might be lulled to sleep by mere exposure.
It was only noon, but Rachel was already exhausted. The moving truck had arrived at 6:00 a.m., and there was a last-minute scramble to load the rest of Lucy’s books, still towering in her bedroom, organized meticulously by color. Then Lucy had spent an hour outside, monitoring Maybe’s behavior, trying to determine her ultimate desire to accompany them to Indiana. For weeks she’d been trying to prepare the cat for the relocation: leaving her open suitcase on the porch for Maybe to explore, rubbing catnip on the cardboard box that would serve as a makeshift carrying case, then slowly moving it by increments closer to the car. The day before the move, she at last moved the box into the back seat and sat for hours on the front porch, watching Maybe sniff around the vehicle, raise herself on her back legs, and peer into the interior before ultimately walking away, tail high. Lucy had reported all of this in great detail.Maybe’s undecided.
That’s very on-brand,Rachel responded. She was just happy that Lucy wasn’t on her phone. The year before ...
Well, the less she thought about the year before, the better.
They stopped at a gas station somewhere between Fort Wayne and Indianapolis to use the bathroom and buy some cold water for Maybe. Lucy went in first while Rachel waited in the idling car, watching the sun beam off her windshield, turning the little lot the color of chalk. Minutes later, Lucy reemerged with the water, a bag of Sour Patch Kids, and a new hat—an over-the-top display of rainbow stripes with sequined stars glittering against a brim of purple. As Lucy crossed the parking lot to Rachel’s waiting car, two men unloading a pickup truck glanced at her. It made the breath tighten in Rachel’s chest. Lucy was now at that age; she seemed to shift seamlessly between child and adult. One second, Rachel saw in the slope of her nose and the fullness of her cheeks the baby she’d been fifteen years ago, her face turned into the warmth of Rachel’s breast. The next second, Lucy might toss her hair, and Rachel would get quick flashes of a stranger with long legs and a stubborn mouth, eyes that darkened into anger.
“Check it out. Only six ninety-nine,” Lucy said, presumably meaning the hat, as she opened the door.
Rachel adjusted the rearview mirror. One of the men was watching again, lingering at the gas pump, gazing at Lucy as she bent over to pour water into Maybe’s travel cup. She resisted the urge to shout at him, to tell him to fuck off, to peel his eyes away from her daughter’s legs, freckled from the sun.
“I think you should have saved your money,” Rachel said, and Lucy grinned. Rachel was encouraged. Lucy’s mood was changing, lightening, as they got farther south.
Maybe the problem was Michigan. Rachel should never have sent Lucy to that private school. Too much wealth. Not enough parental supervision. And Rachel had been working too hard—consumed with her career, consumed with the slow deterioration of her relationship with Alan. That had been hard on Lucy too. Alan was the onlyfather she’d ever known. She’d been eighteen months old when Rachel and Alan had begun dating midway through graduate school. By the time she celebrated her second birthday, Alan and Rachel were living together.
“This will be an adventure, you know,” Rachel said. “A real mystery.”
Lucy said nothing. She maneuvered the box back onto her lap. Maybe rustled in her box, gave a plaintive cry, and then settled down again.
“We should go,” Lucy said. “Maybe wants to get there.”
They backtracked to State Road 37 and continued south, and then west.
It was another sixty miles before they started seeing sharks.
