For a moment she felt a totally insane urge to tear the sweat-stained, creased sheet of yellow legal paper to bits and toss them out of her window, so much fluttering confetti. Then she handed the paper back to Tad and ran both hands through her hair, ashamed and scared. What was happening to her, for Christ's sake?
A sadistic thought like that. Why would she want to make it worse for him? Was it Vic? Herself? What?
It was so hot - too hot to think. Sweat was streaming down her face and she could see it trickling down Tad's cheeks as well. His hair was plastered against his skull in unlovely chunks, and it looked two shades darker than its usual medium-blond. He needs his hair washed, she thought randomly, and that made her think of the bottle of Johnson's No More Tears again, sitting safely and sanely on the bathroom shelf, waiting for someone to take it down and pour a capful or two into one cupped palm.
(don't lose control of yourself)
No, of course not. She had no reason to lose control of herself.
Everything was going to be all right, wasn't it? Of course it was.
The dog wasn't even in sight, hadn't been for more than an hour.
And the mailman. It was almost ten o'clock now. The mailman would be along soon, and then it wouldn't matter that it was so hot in the car. 'The greenhouse effect', they called it. She had seen that on an SPCA handout somewhere, explaining why you shouldn't shut your dog up in your car for any length of time when it was hot like this. The greenhouse effect. The pamphlet had said that the temperature in a car that was parked in the sun could go as high as
140 degrees Fahrenheit if the windows were rolled up, so it was cruel and dangerous to lock up a pet while you did your shopping or went to see a movie. Donna uttered a short, cracked-sounding chuckle. The shoe certainly was on the other foot here, wasn't it? it was the dog that had the people locked up.
Well, the mailman was coming. The mailman was coming and that would end it. It wouldn't matter that they had only a quarter of a Thermos of milk left, or that early this morning she had to go to the bathroom and she had used Tad's smaller Thermos - or had tried to - and it had overflowed and now the Pinto smelled of urine, an unpleasant smell that only seemed to grow stronger with the heat. She had capped the Thermos and thrown it out the window.
She had heard it shatter as it hit the gravel. Then she had cried.
But none of it mattered. It was humiliating and demeaning to have to try and pee into a Thermos bottle, sure it was, but it didn't matter because the mailman was coming - even now he would be loading his small blue-and-white truck at the ivy-covered brick post office on Carbine Street ... or maybe he had already begun his route, working his way out Route 117 toward the Maple Sugar Road.
Soon it would end. She would take Tad home, and they would go upstairs. They would strip and shower together, but before she got into the tub with him and under the shower, she would take the bottle of shampoo from the shelf and put the cap neatly on the edge of the sink, and she would wash first Tad's hair and then her own.
Tad was reading the yellow paper again, his lips moving soundlessly. Not real reading, not the way he would be reading in a couple of years (if we get out of this, her traitorous mind insisted on adding senselessly but instantly), but the kind that came from rote memorization. The way driving schools prepared functional illiterates for the written part of the driver's exam. She had read that somewhere too, or maybe seen it on a TV news story, and wasn't it amazing, the amount of crud the human mind was capable of storing up? And wasn't it amazing how easily it all came
spewing out when there was nothing else to engage it? Like a subconscious garbage disposal running in reverse.
That made her think of something that had happened in her parents'
house, back when it had still been her house too. Less than two hours before one of her mother's Famous Cocktail Parties (that was how ' Donna's father always referred to them, with a satirical tone that automatically conferred the capital letters - the same satirical tone that could sometimes drive Samantha into a frenzy), the disposal in the kitchen sink had somehow backed up into the bar sink, and when her mother turned the gadget on again in an effort to get rid of everything, green goo had exploded all over the ceiling. Donna had been about fourteen at the time, and she remembered that her mother's utter, hysterical rage had both frighened and sickened her. She had been sickened because her mother was throwing a tantrum in front of the people who loved and needed her most over the opinion of a group of casual acquaintances who were coming over to drink free booze and munch up a lot of free canapes. She had been frightened because she could see no logic in her mother's tantrum ... and because of the expression she had seen in her father's eyes. It had been a kind of resigned disgust. That had been the first time she had really believed - believed in her gut - that she was going to grow up and become a woman, a woman with at least a fighting chance to be a better woman than her own mother, who could get into such a frightening state over what was really such a little thing....
She dosed her eyes and tried to dismiss the whole train of thought, uneasy at the vivid emotions that memory called up. SPCA, greenhouse effect, garbage disposals, what next? How I Lost My Virginity? Six Well-Loved Vacations? The mailman, that was the thing to think about, the goddam mailman.
'Mommy, maybe the car will start now.'
'Honey, I'm scared to try it because the battery is so low.'
'But we're just sitting here,' he said, sounding petulant and tired and cross. 'What does it matter if the battery's low or not if we're just sitting here? Try it!'
'Don't you go giving me Orders, kiddo, or I'll. whack your ass for you!'
He cringed away from her hoarse, angry voice and she cursed herself again. He was scratchy ... so, who could blame him?
Besides, he was right. That was what had really made her angry.
But Tad didn't understand, the real reason she didn't want to try the engine again was because she was afraid it would bring the dog.
She was afraid it would bring Cujo, and more than anything else she didn't want that.
Grimly, she turned the key in the ignition. The Pinto's engine cranked very slowly now, with a draggy, protesting sound. h coughed twice but did not fire. She turned the key off and tapped the horn. It gave a foggy, low honk that probably didn't carry fifty yards, let alone to that house at the bottom of the hill.
'Mere,' she said briskly and cruelly. 'Are you happy? Good.'
Tad began to cry. He began the way she always remembered it beginning when he was a baby: his mouth drawing into a trembling bow, the tears spilling down his cheeks even before the first sobs came. She pulled him to her then, saying she was sorry, saying she didn't mean to be mean, it was just that she was upset too, telling him that it would be over as soon as the madman got there, that she would take him home and wash his hair. And thought: A fighting chance to be a better woman than your mother. Sure. Sure, kid.
You're just like her. That's just the kind of thing she would havesaid in a situation like this. When you're feeling bad, what you dois spread the misery, share the wealth. Well, like mother likedaughter, right? And maybe when Tad grows up, he'll feel thesame way about you as you feel about
'Why is it so hot, Mommy?' Tad asked dully.
'The greenhouse effect,' she answered, without even thinking about it. She wasn't up to this, and she knew it now. If this was, in any sense, a final examination on motherhood - or on adulthood itself -
then she was flagging the test. How long had they been stuck in this driveway? Fifteen hours at the very most. And she was cracking up, falling apart.
'Can I have a Dr Pepper when we get home, Mommy?' The Monster Words, sweaty and wrinkled, lay limply on his lap.
'All you can drink,' she said, and hugged him tight. But the feel of his body was frighteningly wooden. I shouldn't have shouted at him, she thought distractedly. If only I hadn't shouted.
But she would do better, she promised herself. Because the madman would be along soon.
'I think the muh - I think the doggy's going to eat us,' Tad said.
She started to reply and then didn't. Cujo still wasn't around. The sound of the Pinto's engine turning over hadn't brought him.
Maybe he was asleep. Maybe he had had a convulsion and died.
That would be wonderful ... especially if it had been a slow convulsion. A painful one. She looked at the back door again. It was so temptingly near. It was locked. She was sure of that now.
