She raised her eyes to mine. A scary sob escaped her. Something that just took over her whole body.
“But it is my fault,” she said.
Then she set her face down on her forearm and cried it out.
“It’s not your fault, Mom. It’s not your fault that criminals take nice cars right out from under you and sell them to illegal chop shops. It’s only the fault of the guy who took it.”
She waved me away without raising her head.
“You sure you want me to go?”
She waved me away again.
I took her at her word. She needed to get it all out of her system. She neither needed nor wanted me to sit there with her while she did. We didn’t have that kind of relationship. And who was I to tell her she wasn’t letting it out correctly? I certainly wouldn’t have wanted anyone doing that to me at such a time.
Besides, I could barely keep my own head above water. How could I help my mother when I couldn’t even help myself?
Grace Beatty took one look at me and I could tell she was shocked.
Maybe I should have glanced at myself in a mirror before driving over. Instead I looked into the mirror of her face and I was shocked, too. It hit me in a new and different way that I was in bad shape.
She rose and walked over to meet me. As she did, her face morphed into a mask of pity. Or it might have been empathy, and I was just primed to see everything the worst possible way.
“Brooke,” she said. “You don’t look so good. Did you get any sleep at all?”
“Not so you’d notice, no.”
“Have you eaten?”
“No.”
“That’s not the plan, Brooke.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stomach anything.”
I was seized with a feeling. Or maybe I should even call it an insight. I was punishing myself. Making myself feel as bad as I possibly could. Not because I really blamed myself, although I could have buckled my damn seat belt. More because it seemed like my job to feel terrible. The idea that I could offer myself any form of comfort seemed downright treasonous. Etta was gone. I belonged at the bottom of the emotional well until I got her back again. Nothing got to be good in the meantime. Not even the tiniest bit good.
She lifted a light jacket off a row of hooks by the door.
“Walker,” she said, and a male cop’s head shot up. “I’m gone, okay? We’re going to go get some breakfast.”
I followed her out the door like a faithful dog.
I opened my mouth to speak as we walked down the concrete steps of the station together.
She cut me off.
“No arguments, Brooke. I get it. You don’t have to tell me how hard it is to stomach anything. I know. All you have to do is pick the food that sounds least impossible to stomach and put away as much of it as you can bear.”
“Try to stay away from sugar,” she said as we picked up our menus. “I’ve seen people really go off the rails at a time like this if they eat sweets on an empty stomach. I know it’s kind of the opposite of what I said on the walk over here, but protein is your friend right now. Get eggs if you can manage it.”
She was raising the bar for me. In increments. I wondered if she was doing it consciously and on purpose.
We were sitting in a booth on benches covered with bright red vinyl. I stared out the window at the neighborhood waking up. People drove by in their cars on their way to work. Bustled by on foot with their shoulders hunched forward as if to keep the world away. Waited at bus stops, seemingly trying to ignore the other riders.
Once again I felt shocked and insulted that life was daring to go on while my Etta was gone.
“That menu’s not going to read itself,” Grace Beatty said, her voice matter-of-fact and even.
“Right,” I said. “Sorry.”
I guess I’d fallen into a pattern of seeing her as my authority figure. As if I were a little girl. I felt I needed to answer to her. Maybe I needed her to be the big, strong authority. Because I needed to believe she was big enough and strong enough to find my little girl and bring her home.
I trained my eyes to the menu, absorbing nothing.
“So it’ll take a couple of days to get the car back,” she said. “There’s an evidence procedure we need to go through. Then if you want it as soon as possible, you’ll have to go down to San Diego to pick it up. Lots of red tape involved in getting it brought back up here. The good news is, I’m told the chop shop had already replaced the broken window. Thing is, though, you’ll need to take it to a paint shop pretty much first thing. They were halfway through repainting it in what I’m told is a pretty ridiculous shade of yellow. You won’t want to drive it much until that gets sorted out. You’ll probably want to call your mother’s insurance company and see if they’ll cover that. They’ll try not to. They’ll say paint jobs aren’t covered, but this is a specific damage as a result of it being stolen. If I can help with—”
I shot her a desperate look. She stopped talking immediately.
We held our menus awkwardly for a moment. In silence.
“But why are we talking about the car?” she asked, her voice quiet. Almost reverent. Just at the edge of shame.
“Right,” I said, grateful that she had read my look correctly. “Why are we talking about the car?”
The waitress came, and Grace ordered coffee only. The waitress had a pot in her hand and poured us each a cup as I ordered. It dawned on me in that moment that Grace had already had breakfast. She worked the night shift. This coffee shop excursion was only for me.
I ordered two eggs, scrambled, with rye toast. At the edge of my vision I saw Grace nod at me. As if I had just made her very proud.
“When do you get off shift?” I asked when the waitress had left.
I was counting the hours since I’d first walked into that police station. It seemed like a lot of hours in a row for her to have to work.
“About an hour and a half ago.”
“Then why were you still there when I got there?”
“I didn’t want to stop looking for your little girl.”
That just sat on the table for a minute. This amazing, shiny thing that I could only stare at in awe. I opened my mouth to express gratitude, but she beat me to speaking.
“Tell me more about her. About what she means to you.”
“Etta.”
“Yes.”
“Does that help?”
“It doesn’t help us find her, no. But sometimes it helps the grieving parent. And I really do want to know.”
I took a big, deep breath and started to cry again.
“You have four of your own,” I said. “Don’t you need to get home to them?”
“Oh, honey. They are so grown and gone it’s not even funny.”
Part of me had been genuinely concerned for her. And them. I think. Another big part of me was just avoiding steering the conversation to my own truths.
Then I went there anyway.
“She means everything to me. She’s all I have.”
“You have your mother.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes. “That’s a net minus.”
“Got it.”
I pulled another deep breath. It shook going in. Wavered.