Hailey's War

to her. She hid it so well that I was into adulthood before I realized how much she liked it that I wasn’t as good- looking as she was.

She was subtle. She was careful to reassure me that my port-wine birthmark wasn’t “disfiguring” and gave my face “character.” I never noticed how often she brought the subject up even when I wasn’t worrying about it. She sighed, too, about the shallow “California ideal” of the blue-eyed blonde. “It’s too bad you didn’t inherit my eyes instead of your father’s,” she’d say. “Californians are so hung up on that.”

I was mostly okay with not being as beautiful as my mother because I’d long ago realized that it was the reason we got along even as well as we did. If I had been better-looking, our relationship would have been a lot nastier. And had I been beautiful and my father still alive for Julianne and me to compete over-I didn’t even like to think about that.

As it was, I spent my youth being her foil: poor, sweet Hailey, who’d inherited her father’s plain brown eyes and his ass-aching sincerity and went east to play soldier girl in a touching attempt to emulate him. If Julianne “despaired” of me, she privately enjoyed doing so.

I’d called her from the road, told her I was coming up to her little trailer on a half-acre of land outside Truckee. I hadn’t told her that I was coming up with a ganged-up entourage. All in due time.

I’d explained the logic to Serena and Payaso: “It’s not traceable to her, and thus not to me. The land and the trailer both belong to this guy she nearly married. When their relationship fell apart, she started paying rent, but everything’s in his name.”

Now it was about ten in the morning, and we were ascending her driveway. We’d driven all night, taking turns behind the wheel, Nidia sleeping on Payaso’s shoulder. Awake now, Nidia was looking out the window. She didn’t look too happy to see more forested land outside, just like Gualala. I suspected she was probably more homesick for city light and fast food than Payaso and Serena and I were. She’d been without those things a lot longer.

Julianne came out onto her front steps, cigarette and lighter in hand. She lifted the cigarette to her mouth, then stopped when she saw that there were four people, not one, in the car.

Payaso killed the ignition. I said, “You’d better let me talk to her first.”

Serena said, “She doesn’t know who we are?”

“I’m easing her into this,” I said.

I got out of the car. My legs felt shaky, and not just because I’d been riding for so long. My mother hated being told what to do, and I’d never had to try before.

I walked up to the front steps.

“Well,” she said. “Hello, darling.”

“Hey,” I said. “You’re looking good.”

“Thank you,” she said. It was true.

“You didn’t say you were coming with friends,” she said.

“No,” I said. “Sorry, I didn’t.”

She lit the cigarette, the better to give me a narrow-lashed look through the cloud of start-up smoke. “So who are they?”

“The woman in the backseat is Serena, an old friend of mine from L.A.,” I said. “The guy behind the wheel is Payaso. And the girl in the passenger seat is Nidia. She’s six months’ pregnant and needs a place to hide until her baby is born. That’s why we’re all here.”

Julianne said, “Where, exactly, do you mean by ‘here’?” It was clear from the pointedness of the question that she already understood.

I pointed to the ground. “Right here.”

“Is this a joke, Hailey?”

“I think we should go inside to talk,” I said.

She opened the door and I followed her into her low-ceilinged living room. I said, “This girl, Nidia-it’s hard to explain, but it’s my responsibility to take care of her. I don’t have a home of my own to take her to. This is the only place I have.”

Julianne said, “They can’t stay here, Hailey. It’s out of the question.”

I’d anticipated that answer, and pulled out a roll of ten fifty-dollar bills. It was part one of two tactics I thought would persuade her.

“I think you should go to Nevada and stay with Angeline and Porter until we’re gone,” I told her. “This is for gas money and expenses. You could stay here, but I think you’d be more comfortable at your sister’s. Plus, I’d feel better about it. There are men looking for Nidia. I came here because this is someplace they can’t trace us to, but if somehow they did, there’s going to be a firefight, and I’d want you safely away from here.”

Her eyes narrowed. “A ‘firefight’?” she echoed. “I don’t know what you’re up to, Hailey, but maybe you should get some kind of therapy. I don’t think it’s healthy for you to be getting involved with criminals and playing soldier to assuage your feelings over West Point not working out. I-”

Part two: I crossed my arms, pulled my sweatshirt over my head, and stood in front of her in just my bra. As Julianne stared, confused by my behavior, I touched the corrugated, dark-pink scars from where I’d been shot. “Do you know what these are?” I asked.

She knew, I thought, but just couldn’t process the information.

“I got shot,” I told her. “Twice.”

“Jesus Christ,” she said.

I pulled the shirt back on. “I know this is hard to take, but I was never ‘playing’ soldier, not back east and not now,” I said. “When I do something, I’m serious about it. Nidia is my responsibility because I’ve made her my responsibility. And it’s also my responsibility to protect you. Take the money and go to your sister’s.”

She was still staring at me. I wondered if my father had ever talked to her that way.

Then she took the money from my hand. “Is it too much to ask,” she said, “for you to ask your friends to go into town for an hour until I’m packed and out?”

forty

Julienne’s trailer was pretty nice: double-wide, two bedrooms, a little porch in back. There wasn’t much food in the refrigerator; my mother apparently shopped day by day. Naturally, there was a whole carton of cigarettes in the cupboard above the refrigerator. I could imagine Payaso’s happiness at seeing them, but they’d probably be going with her.

I’d sent Serena and the rest into town, as Julianne had asked, and since they left, I’d been avoiding her. Now I went into her bedroom. Nothing I was going to say was likely to help, but I couldn’t help myself; I needed to smooth things over.

The bedroom decor was clearly picked out by Julianne’s ex, still the nominative owner of the whole place, because it was dominated by masculine hues: hunter-green and rust red, with inexpensive pine furniture.

Julianne was in the little bathroom. I watched through the open door as she threw things into a makeup kit: eyelash curler, tweezers, nail clippers, lipstick. She glanced at me in the mirror.

I sat down on the bed. “I’m sorry about this.”

“No, you’re not. If you’re going to be a bitch, Hailey, don’t be a half-assed bitch. It undermines the whole point.” She fished a deep-red lipstick back out of her makeup kit and rolled it gently onto her lower lip, then her upper.

She came to stand in the bathroom doorway, studying me. “There’s something you don’t know, Hailey. When you were fourteen and I’d gotten back on my feet after your father’s death, I wanted to move to Santa Barbara or Ojai right away, someplace nearer the ocean, with more culture and more people.” She paused. “But you told me you wanted to go to West Point, and I stayed because of that. A metro area would have had a larger student body, more standout athletes and kids with 4.0’s. You would have been a smaller fish in a bigger pond. I never told you, never made a big deal of it, but I stayed in Lompoc for four years so you’d have your best shot at getting in.”

I looked away, repressing an irritated comment, which would have been this: If she’d tried to stir up any interest in my potential Army career, she’d have known that such a sacrifice wasn’t necessary-as the child of a dead