In the Desert

Six months after his discharge from the army and three months after he stopped drinking, Frank Elroy got his first full night’s sleep. He celebrated with breakfast in bed—a big bowl of Apple Jacks eaten slowly, every bite savored, his ears full of crunches that drowned out the birds. He was looking at the dirty dishes in the kitchen when he heard Rhonda McCarthy and her boys packing their car next door, and he thought that sometime in the night a corner had been turned, because what seemed so complicated was simple now. People should be happy. He and Rhonda, they should be in love. What was he waiting for? So he stuck his head out the window of his trailer and said, “Going to Indianapolis, huh? Sounds cool.”

Rhonda froze in the driveway, holding a laundry basket filled with clothes and topped with little bags of Cheez-Its. Frank tried not to openly admire her legs in those shorts, or the way her brown eyes looked when she was upset. Like now. Because she hadn’t confided her plans to Frank, and she was probably remembering that you could hear everything through the thin walls of these trailers. Which meant people knew she was going away, and she’d get robbed. Because she thought the mobile home park was full of lowlifes. Which, other than the snowbirds, it kind of was.

“Don’t worry! I won’t say anything!” Frank made the “zipping my mouth” gesture. He felt bashful as he pictured himself, shaved head against the blue aluminum of the trailer, purple smudges under his eyes. Dangerous in a conspiracy-theory, halitosis kind of way. But he wouldn’t give in to bad feelings, not today. “I could look after the place while you’re gone. Take care of the cats. If you want.”

The youngest boy, Louie, had been watching all this, eyes shaded against the blazing June sun. He cheered, pumping his fist. “Yay, Frank!”

Rhonda sighed. “Fine. That would actually be helpful. I really didn’t want to leave them alone for a week.”

There were two cats—a tuxedo named Mrs. Pumpernickel and a tiger, Mr. Mumbles. Frank texted pictures of the clean litter box and of them arching under his hand to be petted. Rhonda only responded with a “thanks” except once when she said, “Mumbles is nervous and doesn’t like his tail pulled. Please stop.”

Frank wanted to say he wasn’t pulling Mumbles’s tail, just draping his hand along it, but he didn’t defend himself. She had a right to be mad. They had been an item for a week or so, he and Rhonda, until he hit a bad patch, hid in his room, yelled at her when she came over. You couldn’t do that. But he was on the mend now. He’d show her his good side. Get her back. So he didn’t snoop in her bedroom or eat any of her food, not even the watermelon on her kitchen table, which would go bad in this strangely cloudless Michigan summer that was heating up the trailers like a stove, fruit flies already swerving down to park in a gooey spot on the rind and then take off in delirious orbit.

He did check out the boys’ bedroom—Louie, the nine-year-old, was into model planes. The ceiling over the top bunk was hung with f-14s, b-52s, stealth bombers, and drones. The older boy, Jack, had posters of Peyton Manning and Russell Wilson on the wall by the lower bunk. There was a picture of the boys on top of a battered dresser. Frank had found himself watching a lot of 1970s shows lately, and Louie’s blond shag made him look like a Bad News Bear. Jack looked like Ponch, the Mexican cop from CHiPs.

Rhonda? She could be Mary Tyler Moore. Except, instead of a reporter in some big city, she was a waitress in Saginaw fucking Michigan. Frank wanted to text these thoughts to Rhonda. He wanted to start over. He kept typing, “sorry I...