I'd Know You Anywhere: A Novel by Laura Lippman Page B

simple. What people call retarded, sometimes, although my parents don’t like that word.”
    â€œIt’s just a word.”
    She shot him a look, as if on the verge of contradicting him, then changed her mind. “That’s true. It’s just a word.” He liked that, the way she repeated after him. “He couldn’t understand the things he did. He never meant to harm anyone or anything. Once, he petted a puppy to death.”
    â€œPeople who hurt dogs are the lowest of the low.”
    â€œBut he wasn’t trying to hurt the dog. He was just petting it. He didn’t know how strong he was. That was his problem.”
    â€œWhat happened to him?”
    He could see her considering a lie, then rejecting it. “His friend killed him. He was too pure for this world. That’s what my teacher said. He was forever a child, but in a man’s body, and he couldn’t live in this world.”
    He was taken with that phrase. Forever a child, in a man’s body. It touched on something he felt about himself. Not being a child, of course. He was the opposite of simple. He was complicated. That was his problem, most likely. He was too complicated, too thoughtful, too full of ideas to have the life that people expected him to have. He should have been born somewhere intense, interesting, not in a little town where people didn’t have get-up-and-get. Dallas, for example, which struck him as a place that rewarded ambition and masculinity. All the men on that television show, even the wimpy ones, were men’s men, big and strong. Maybe they should go to Dallas.
    And it would have to be “they,” at least for a while. He couldn’t let her go, but he also couldn’t do anything more definitive, not yet. That was the downside of spending too much time with someone,especially someone whose fears and dreams swam across her face. It was like naming the Thanksgiving turkey. Not that a name had ever kept him from petitioning for the drumstick, come the day.
    â€œDo you know more stories?” he asked her. “Like the one you just told, only maybe happier?”
    â€œWell, the same guy who wrote that, he drove around the country with his poodle, Charley. I mean, for real.”
    â€œAnd what happened?”
    â€œLots of things.”
    â€œYou can tell me while I’m driving.”
    He let her use the bathroom, having checked ahead of time that it was a one-seater without a window to the outside, and there was a cigarette machine in the hallway, so he didn’t look odd, waiting there, pulling on the various handles, fishing for change. Once, when he was thirteen, he had found seventy-five cents in the pay phone at his father’s gas station, and that had seemed miraculous to him. A waitress—not the redhead, but an older woman—glanced back at him, curious, and he said, just thought of it out of the blue: “Her first, um, time, you know? With her ladies’ issues? And our mama’s dead and she’s freaking out.”
    â€œPoor thing. Should I ask her if she needs help?”
    â€œOh, no, ma’am. She’s shy. That would just make it worse.” The woman smiled, pleased with him. Maybe having a little sister would make him seem less threatening to women. Of course, this waitress was old, dried up, but maybe other women, women his age, would be charmed by a man taking care of his sister.
    The pay phone gave him an idea, and he asked the waitress if she could change five dollars for him. He called his father’s shop and spoke to C.J., the woman who kept the books and answered the phones. He had joined the Marines, he told her. Sold the truck to a friend, cashed out his bank account, what little there was of it. (Later that day, he would hit an ATM—take whatever it would give him—or find a branch that might cash his check.) No, pleasedon’t call his father to the phone. He would only yell. About his truck, not about