The Middle Ground Read online

  “I got laid off.” It surprised me to say it.

  “Oh man, that sucks.” This was Christina’s answer to most things. She used to be a beautiful girl until she started reading vampire novels. Now she has black hair with a blue streak. She dresses like Dracula and saves all her tips, intending to move to the city to find her vampire prince.

  I scanned the classifieds. There were two notices. One for a forklift operator, another to be in medical studies. I turned back to the front page. The cover story was about the upcoming summer fair. Nothing ever happened in our town. It was a wonder we even had a newspaper.

  “The trouble is, I don’t know anything else I’d like to do.”

  I took two coffees to go, thinking Dale would want one before he went to bed around eleven. He was one of those people who could drink six cups a day and still sleep like a baby. Perhaps, I thought, I could turn the day around with morning sex and a little afternoon gardening. After all, there was no risk of Mike coming home.

  Sounded blissful, actually. Perhaps we could have another kid, and I could be a stay-at-home mom for a few years. Or I could start my own business—catering, or a line of natural soaps. The possibilities are really endless. Maybe Jackie is right, and I just have to calm down a bit to realize it. By the time I pulled into the driveway, my brain was positively on fire with the possibilities of my new life. I wanted to run through the front door and grab Dale, energize him with all the ideas I had for us.

  But when I turned my key in the door, my gut sensed something was off. Things in the house didn’t look the same. I could hear voices in the kitchen. I thought perhaps it was the oddity of being home on a weekday or the lack of Mike’s presence. But when I walked into the kitchen from the living room, holding my tray of coffees, I couldn’t have been more surprised if I’d found a family of aliens sitting at the table.

  I dropped the coffees on the floor.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I don’t really remember driving back into town. About twenty minutes later, I found myself back in the parking lot behind Callie’s Café. Mouth dry and heart still up-tempo. My right shoe soaking with hot creamy coffee. I suppose I’d wanted to go back in time and just not know. Just stay at the café instead of leaving. I placed my forehead on the wheel and sobbed.

  Eventually, I stopped crying and managed to get my breathing back close to normal. I wiped my nose on a napkin from the glove compartment stash. The sun was shining brightly, just a hint of cloud on the horizon. I watched people walking about, doing their errands, walking into the post office across the street from the parking lot. Everyone had somewhere to be at this time of day.

  I felt like I was watching a movie. People all looked strange to me. Though, of course, I recognized almost everyone. I got out of the car. I walked around to the front door and went back inside to sit at the counter. There were no other customers. I tried to pretend everything was normal.

  The room looked too bright and seemed blurred at the edges. Christina raised her eyebrows at me. I noticed her brow piercing was scabbed and gross. “Back so soon?”

  “Hungry,” I muttered. “And I dropped my coffee.”

  “You look wrecked. I guess you’re really taking this job thing hard, eh?”

  “I suppose.”

  “It’s just a job, right? You’ll get another one.” Christina bit her nails and shrugged. Oh, how I longed to be Christina’s age. When jobs were things that came and went. And boyfriends weren’t husbands. I remember her toddling down the aisle at our wedding, the meandering little flower girl.

  “How are you doing, Christina?”

  “Cook keeps calling in sick. I gotta make the food too, so I’m pretty bummed.”

  I ordered one of the pre-made egg-salad sandwiches they kept in a case beside the donuts and another coffee. I pretended to read so I could shield my tears behind the thin inky newspaper. The sandwich looked as appetizing as a pile of dirt. I peeled the crust off of one side. Christina settled into her book on the stool beside the counter. I thought about calling my mother, but I didn’t want to upset her. I was still too mad at Jackie to try her. I just wanted to crawl into a hole, figure things out on my own.

  When I heard the door open and the bell’s chime, I expected to see one of the seniors hobbling in for coffee. Instead, it was a tall man in a red plaid hunting jacket, a cap pulled over his eyes. He had broad shoulders and looked a bit like Jude Law. A man’s body, his face unshaven for a day or two, but still boyish.

  He walked up to Christina at the counter, her face buried behind a hardcover library book called Vanity’s Angels. He coughed. She looked up.

  “Uh, coffee to go. Black.”

  “Can you believe her?” I ask him, pointing at the latest celebrity teen dream photographed with a baby on one knee, driving recklessly through LA. My hand shook against the newspaper. I probably looked crazy. I certainly felt crazy. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the scene that had just unfolded in my kitchen. My own freaking kitchen.

  “Yeah, she’s crazy,” he said, smiling sideways at me, then looked down. He tapped his fingers on the counter. “My kid loves her music though.”

  Christina fussed with the coffee pot and turned back. “Sorry, I have to make a fresh pot. I forgot to turn the warming burner on and this one isn’t hot anymore. Sorry.” She didn’t really look sorry at all.

  She turned and wandered over to the cupboards behind the counter, fussing with a shiny gold bag of coffee grounds. She emptied them into the machine and pressed the start button. Then she sat back on her tall stool and picked up her book again.

  The man smelled so good, like wood-chips and some kind of sweet soap. He tapped his foot anxiously. A drop of sweat from his brow fell onto the white countertop. I was staring. God, stop that, I told myself.

  I turned back to the paper. I was trying to figure out what to do. Should I go home? All I wanted to do was punch something. Or scream. Feel anything but the rotating bursts of shock.

  Another drop of sweat dripped onto the counter.

  “Oh my god!” yelped Christina.

  I looked up. The man was leaning over the counter, one hand grasping the oversized rosary Christina wore around her neck. The other held a gun to her chest.

  “Empty the register and I won’t shoot, please, miss. I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he said very clearly, using the same tone of voice you might use to say, I’d also like a piece of pie.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Instead of quietly backing toward the door or trying to dial 9-1-1 on my cell phone—I kept it turned off and buried under all my purse crap—I walked around the counter and stood beside Christina. Maybe it was the look of complete terror on her face. Or the fact that I had held her as a squirming pink newborn. Or the whimper she made as she dropped the book and fumbled with the cash register.

  He let go of her necklace and placed both hands on the small pistol.

  “Don’t hurt her,” I heard myself saying. “She’s just a girl. Whole life ahead of her.”

  “Shut up, lady, and get back around to this side of the counter, all right? Don’t push any buttons. Just give me the money, and I’ll be on my way.” He tapped his foot, like he was impatiently waiting at the bank on any non-felony errand.

  The scene was nothing like on TV, where the music starts, cueing your heart to speed up. It felt slow, like molasses pouring from a cup. Christina handed him a handful of bills. He stuffed them into a yellow bag advertising the new superstore on the outskirts of town. It couldn’t have been more than a hundred bucks.

  What you should know about our town is that we never usually see the cops. Our firemen are volunteers. It’s faster to drive yourself to the hospital than wait for an ambulance to arrive from almost an hour away. The local police station was on the edge of town near the mall. Sometimes the state police stopped speeders on the highway, but generally we didn’t have much need for cops. Nothing ever happened. People were mostly nice and looked out for each other. The worst we got were teena
gers joyriding or an occasional fistfight after the one bar closed. But even these were rare.

  But for some reason, that day—and just at that moment—Jerry Ronson parked the precinct’s lone cruiser in front of Callie’s. Jerry used to beat the crap out of my older brother in high school. He’d parlayed his schoolyard bullying into a job with the local force. I don’t hate a lot of people, but I pretty much hate Jerry. Besides bullying my brother, he also tried to date-rape my sister at the prom. He still has a scar on the side of his face from a bottle she’d smashed into it. She never called the cops. They just avoided each other for a few weeks until my sister left town for college. When she came back, they continued to avoid each other as adults. Even his uniform bugged me. That and the fact he was now respected just because he could complete six weeks of boot camp and a few community college courses.

  Through the giant window that read Callie’s Coffee & Pie!, we watched as he opened the door to his cruiser. Old Mrs. Jackson walked up to him, and they began to chat.

  When I saw Jerry, I didn’t think, Thank god, we’re saved. I knew in my gut that Jerry versus this guy was going to mean bad things. Confrontation. Christina whimpered again.

  “Fucking cop,” the man swore. “Jesus Christ! No one say anything, I mean it!”

  There were just us three in the whole café.

  He started mumbling, “What am I going to do? This was supposed to be easier. I swear, if that cop comes in, I will shoot everyone. I swear! My car is out front. What the fuck am I going to do? I didn’t think this through.”

  I looked at Christina, her eyes were pleading. “Christina, go outside and tell Jerry you need to ask him a question about something for school. Tell him you want to be a cop. Keep him occupied. Then”—I turned to the robber and looked him in the eye—“you can go out the back door.”

  I motioned toward the door I’d come through earlier that morning. It had a faded Live Bait Out Back sign on it. A drawing of a smiling worm on a hook. They hadn’t sold bait in years. The pulp and paper mill ten miles upstream made sure the fish weren’t very appetizing. No one moved.

  I used a voice I normally reserved for toddlers. “Put the gun on me. Let Christina go outside. She won’t tell him. Right, Christina? Or He. Will. Hurt. Me.” I looked at her, trying my best to convince her I was actually being serious.

  Christina nodded. “Yes, okay.”

  “He’ll let me go, and I’ll come outside and we’ll all pretend that nothing happened. Okay? It’s just money, not worth getting killed over.”

  The robber pulled the gun away from Christina and pointed it toward me.

  “After all, if justice doesn’t find you now, it will catch up with you later.”

  He ignored my conjecture.

  “Come around here,” he ordered. I raised my hands in the air.

  “Why? Just run. Go. I won’t say anything. I promise.”

  “I’m the one with the gun, missy.”

  I laughed. I laugh when I’m nervous. I got the giggles at my grandfather’s funeral.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. My name is Missy, is all. What’s yours?”

  “This isn’t a party, lady. Come around the counter. NOW.”

  I walked around the counter, worried that at any moment I might stream pee onto the tiled floor. He put one arm around my shoulder and the gun to my neck.

  “Go, Christina,” I said, as sternly as I could under the circumstances.

  Christina toddled toward the door in her pointy heels.

  He watched her through the window. Then he backed away and pulled me with him. “Turn around.”

  I did as he said, and he put the gun at my back. We walked out the back door. This wasn’t in my plan.

  “Just run!” I said. “You don’t have to take me with you. I won’t say anything.”

  “You’ll run right out there to the cop,” he said, “and that can’t happen.”

  “No, I won’t. I hate that cop. I won’t help make him a hero, that’s for sure.”

  We stood next to the dumpsters in the parking lot where I’d parked my car. He took in what I said. “Yeah, I hate cops too.” As if we were just swapping opinions.

  “I didn’t say I hate cops; I said I hate that cop.”

  He put his arm around my neck again, gun at my side. Like we were slow dancing and had stopped moving in the middle of a turn. He seemed confused.

  “Now is your chance to escape,” I said. I thought he’d blindly follow orders.

  But he kept the gun on me, his sweaty arm chafing my neck. I started to feel like I might be breathing my last breath. This could be it—this terrible, fucking horrifying day. Mike won’t even know, out in the woods for six weeks. Dale will find this guy and shoot him and spend the rest of his life in jail. Mike will be orphaned. My mother crying on the evening news, holding up a photo of me from our wedding.

  “What do you want? Run! Get away! Leave me alone. I won’t say anything.” He turned me around, gently pushing me back against the ice machine. Face to face, I considered my options. Could I kick him? Thirty-three, I thought. I’m only thirty-three. Earlier I’d felt too old to start over. Now I suddenly felt so young. So inexperienced.

  “My car,” he stuttered. “I need to drive! I can’t go out front and just waltz by the cop into my car.” He put the gun at his side and stepped back. “And I don’t want to go to jail,” he whimpered. “You need to help me. I have kids!”

  I looked up at him. He looked like a scared kid himself. “You don’t understand,” he muttered. “I had no choice. Everyone keeps fucking with me. I have the worst luck.”

  In that moment, I probably could have turned around and run back into the café and yelled for help. It was something about the way he looked at me. That and the fact that everything that had once mattered in my life had disappeared in the last four hours or so.

  Instead I reached into my pocket and handed him my car keys.

  “What the hell…white KIA, over there.”

  “You’re giving me your car?” He said this the same way he might have asked, Is that really a giant pink elephant?

  “Yes, just fucking take it!”

  “Okay, okay, thanks. I owe you something big.” He looked at me, and his features softened. He was really handsome. I blushed.

  I nodded, my hands still up in the air defensively. “Yes, you do. So don’t fuck with that. You owe me.”

  He threw me his keys. “It’s the red four-door out in front of the hardware store. Leave it in the Walmart parking lot at Sunnytown Mall tonight around eight. I’ll leave yours by the McDonald’s entrance. If you tell the cops, I will find you and hurt you and your family. Mark my words.”

  “That’s a nice way to pay back a favor.”

  “I’m sorry, but I have to. I can’t get caught.”

  “I promise. I won’t say a word.”

  He backed away, his eyes on mine. “Is your name really Missy?”

  “Yup.”

  “You’re beautiful, Missy.”

  He ran to my car and got in awkwardly. The seat was too far forward for his long limbs. I watched him drive off, turning left away from downtown and peeling away. I leaned against the ice machine. I looked at his keys. They were on a square metal keychain that said Death Before Dishonor. I buried them in my skirt pocket.

  I turned and tried to go back inside the café. My hands were shaking so much that at first I couldn’t turn the doorknob. When the door finally opened, Christina and Jerry were rushing in through the front door, weaving through the tables toward me.

  “Where is he?” Christina asked, her voice trembling with emotion. “I finally told him, Missy. I had to. When you didn’t come outside right away, I was so scared! I thought he’d kidnapped you! I thought maybe the cops could save you.”

  “You did the right thing,” Jerry said. He then spoke briefly into the two-way radio he pulled off his belt. He looked excited, like he was almost happy something like this had happened.

&n
bsp; “I need you to tell me everything,” he said. It was then that I made a decision that surprised me most of all.

  “He ran off on foot,” I said, “down Mercer Street.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When they turned the TV cameras on, I lost the ability to speak. This is funny, because I can talk to anyone, anytime. I am the furthest thing from shy.

  It’s like my teeth turned to sand, and I couldn’t say a thing. The light blinded me and I squinted. The girl from the TV news looked aggravated but smiled with all her teeth. “Just relax. Just tell us what happened.” Her perfume was overpowering. It made my stomach turn.

  Christina, who was all jumpy beside me, dropped her smoke on the sidewalk and squished it with her heel.

  “It was crazy!” she said. “He was real mean. He pointed the gun right at me. And my cousin here, Missy, she’s a real hero. She got him to calm down, right? She’s the reason we’re not all dead right now. True story.”

  “What did the assailant look like?”

  “He was huge,” Christina said, “like a logger. Big arms. I bet he’s already been to prison ’cause he had tattoos on his hands.”

  It was at that moment that I realized the robber would probably see this footage, possibly in some terrible highway-side motel. And he’d come after me for telling.

  “How does it feel to be a hero, Mrs. Turner?”

  “Oh, well, I’d only be a hero if I’d have caught him, right?”

  “But you may have saved the day, anyhow?”

  “I suppose.”

  She turned back to the camera. “A quiet, peaceful town rocked today by a brazen midmorning holdup, and”—she paused dramatically—“the gunman is still at large. He fled on foot and may not have had a getaway car. Drivers in the area are advised not to pick up hitchhikers and to take special care of their children walking home from school. He is described as white, mid-thirties, with tattooed hands. More details at six o’clock. Back to you, James.” She stood still a few moments longer, until the camera shut off.

  “That it?” she asked a man with a cell phone.