Sassafras, Part 82

Joan


It was absolutely freezing in that house. I found a stained pair of sweat pants in a closet and slid them on under my dress. There weren't any covers. The closest thing I found was an old curtain, so I sat on the couch and covered up as much as I could with my coat. Billy snooped around in all the closets and cabinets, then went downstairs. He came back up with an armload of games and jigsaw puzzles. There was a Monopoly game without any money and about half of the cards, an Operation game without any of the pieces and no battery, and a chessboard with about half the pieces. He sat on the floor looking over the games, and then went in the kitchen and started putting one of the puzzles together on the floor.

The later it got the harder it snowed and the colder it got. A couple of times I thought I heard sirens and worried about the police were searching for us. We should stay away from the windows, just in case. Or even better go upstairs. Eventually it got so cold Billy got tired of the puzzle he was putting together. I decided to have him help move the couch against the front wall, so if anybody looked in the window they wouldn’t see us. I found out why whoever lived there left the couch. It must have been a sleeper sofa because it weighed about as much as I imagined Jenny’s car did. When we finished moving the couch we both huddled together under the curtain. He wanted to know when we were going to be able to leave, and I didn't know what to tell him.

"I don't know, Bill," I said, looking at my watch. "I don't think we'll have to stay here very long. Rick should have called by now. He’ll be worried.”

"I don't care about Rick. If he’s working with Stapleton and Sneider why are you listening to him anyway?"

"I don’t know," I said. "I trust him. I don’t know why, but I do. I wish you would, too." Even while I told Billy I trusted Rick, doubts zipped through my mind like bees on a rosebush. Could I really trust him? What was he hiding?

"Well, I don't trust him. I don't know why you do. I think you just want to get laid."

"Billy! You don't know him."

"You don't know him either. Admit it, Aunt Jo. You don't know him. All you know is what he told you. You don't know if he's telling you the truth or not."

I had to laugh. "You sound just like Rick, Bill."

There was no way we could spend the night in that house with nothing for a cover except a curtain. I was going to have to do something, but I didn’t know what. We couldn’t go home. Not if Rick was right. That was the last place we should go. I tried to come up with a plan, but everything I thought of ended with ‘and then Rick shows up.’ It was almost 2:30 and I didn’t know what to do.

"Well, there's a payphone down at the gas station on Jackson,” Billy suggested. “We can call Rick from there."

I walked over and looked out the window. The snow was still coming down, blowing swiftly to the east now. The thought of walking all the way to Jackson Street wasn’t very appealing, but neither was staying there and freezing to death. The clouds were getting darker, promising even more snow. “I’ll go once it gets dark outside.” He opened his mouth but I didn’t give him a chance to argue. “You’ll stay here. There’s no sense both of us going.”

“But Aunt Jo,” he started.

“No. I’m going. You’re staying. That’s final.” He looked like he wanted to argue some more, but he just snorted. We sat in silence for a while, and then Billy got up and started snooping around the house some more. I just sat there thinking about what he said. Did I really know Rick? I thought about all the time we spent together. I remembered the first time I met him at Tanner's. I remembered how good it felt when he kissed me. That was the first time since I got to Sassafras that I forgot about Jenny. I had been able to forget about Jenny and Billy and everything that was wrong when I was with him. All I could think about when I was with Rick was him, but what did I really know about him. Maybe Billy was right. I knew he hadn’t been telling me everything. He admitted he hadn’t. How did I know if what he had been telling me was the truth or not? I was sitting there freezing and I didn't even know if I could trust him or not. But I did trust him. I couldn't explain why, but I did.