Into the Valley Read Free Page B

her hair had half slipped out of its pins. She stopped at a restaurant on an exit. She brought her large makeup case into the bathroom and powdered and fixed her hair and unzipped her dress to spray perfume underneath.
    She ordered an iced tea from the waiter. The young man stared at her so intensely she wondered for a moment if she knew him from somewhere. She asked if he lived nearby, and he nodded without speaking. She remarked on the heat and he continued to stare until finally he said, “Ma’am, your zipper’s undone.”
    She reached her hand to her back; her dress was flared open. “Oh. Thank you.” She flushed to her neck. Her bra strap had fallen down her shoulder and she smelled her own odor still pungent under the perfume. She gripped the zipper awkwardly and pulled it up as far as she could. “Thank you,” she mumbled. After he left, she pretended to study the menu with great absorption.
    A woman with three small children was the only other customer in the place. She sat two tables over but kept staring at B. and the sky-blue makeup case. The woman looked old and childlike at the same time, small-boned, a high forehead with deep lines. She was wearing a sundress with a stain at the breast. In one arm she held a baby, while two young children ran back and forth from the window to the table, eating half a French fry and dropping it on the floor, sucking the juice off a pickle and putting it back. The woman sat like a statue in the midst of it.
    â€œDo you live around here?” B. asked.
    The woman’s expression signaled the ridiculousness of the question. The baby squirmed. She hitched it higher and tighter on her lap without once glancing at it.
    â€œI was just wondering if there was anything of interest to visit. For someone passing through.”
    The woman looked at B. as if she had asked for directions to China. A strand of thin hair fell across the lined forehead.
    â€œThere’s Old Town, I guess,” the woman said finally. “If you like the gold rush stuff. They have a railroad museum there, I think.” One of the children ran by and shoved the baby. The baby smiled wildly as if it was a game and not an aggression.
    â€œOh, I won’t be going to Sacramento, actually.”
    The woman seemed to accept this as understandable. “There’s the buttes,” she went on. “On the way to Chico. Those are sort of strange. Just strange to look at, out there all alone. But they don’t let you drive in them. It’s private land, I guess.” She paused. “There’s not much to see before Tahoe really.”
    â€œThey sound lovely. Thank you.”
    B. absently fingered the handle of the makeup case.
    â€œI’m from the city,” B. added.
    The mother nodded curtly as if to put a stop to this need to state the obvious. The baby was kicking its legs and whining. It tried again to scootch off her lap but the woman’s grip seemed an insensate vice. The baby gave up and sank back into watching the children, trapped, mesmerized.
    â€œYou travelin’ alone?” the woman asked.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou lost or something?”
    â€œNo. Just driving. Just taking in the sights.”
    The mother picked up a French fry and swirled it in ketchup without eating it. “Well, I’d go directly on to Reno if I was you. There’s nothing to see before Reno. A lot of driving gets me irritated.”
    The baby finally let out its wail then, sharp and steady. The mother hauled it to her shoulder and slapped it on the cheek, which only made the baby cry louder. Just then an adolescent boy opened the door of the restaurant and yelled, “We’re parked in the back, he’s waiting, come on!” The woman scooped up her purse and the baby and barked at the children to follow.
    â€œWell, good luck with your trip,” she said over the baby’s shrieks. “The buttes, I guess, but I don’t know if