Empire Falls

show. Which she’d been meaning to visit so she could see this snake picture she kept hearing about, but which her daughter hadn’t ever even mentioned. True, Janine had been preoccupied with the wedding, but that wasn’t much of an excuse. On the other hand, it wasn’t much of a reason to imagine Tick hauling her carcass to the dump, either. Still, it was time to start making some of this shit between the two of them right.
    But as Janine began to formulate a question that would broach the subject of the Voss boy, she heard herself ask something easier. “So how come you never tell me any of those funny things you see on signs like you do with your father?”
    Apparently the answer was easy, too. “You never think they’re funny.”
    “Try me.”
    “Nooooo,” her daughter said, making it a multisyllable, singsong word.
    And just that quickly Janine was pissed off again. “I’m not smart enough to see what’s so damn funny, is that it?”
    The little shit actually considered this question seriously before answering. “You always get them. You just never think they’re funny.”
    “Maybe they aren’t.”
    “Then why do you want me to tell you one?”
    “Maybe I don’t. Maybe I’d just like us to be friends, okay? Maybe I might like to take you to Boston for an art show sometime, if you’d ask me instead of your father. Maybe it would cheer me up to know my own daughter liked me.”
    “Walt isn’t cheering you up?”
    Janine pulled over, three blocks short of her mother’s tavern. “Out.”
    “What?”
    Well, at least that got the kid’s attention. She was looking at Janine, scared now, aware she’d gone too far. “Out,” Janine repeated, not wanting to follow through, but feeling she had to. “You want to treat me like shit, you can damn well walk.”
    What she was hoping was that her daughter would not do as she was told—not a lot to hope for, since she almost never did. But of course this time she would. Tick opened the door and got out, leaving Janine fresh out of options, trapped as usual. Rather than watch, she looked away, as if she couldn’t care less, and when she heard the door slam she glanced quickly over her left shoulder to make sure no traffic was coming down Empire Avenue, then jerked the wheel and stepped on the gas, hearing at the same instant her daughter yell, “Stop!”
    Her first thought was that her bluff had worked, that Tick wanted to apologize, but it was a more urgent scream than that, and when she looked back over her right shoulder she took in what had happened in an instant. At the same time Tick had closed the front door, she’d opened the rear one to retrieve her backpack, hooking one of its straps in the crook of her elbow, all of this just as Janine had pulled out—and somehow the pack had gotten wedged between the seat and the floor, yanking Tick off her feet. Only the back of her daughter’s head was visible through the open door, but when Janine got around to the other side of the Jeep, she could see that Tick hadn’t been seriously injured. In fact, thanks to the height of the vehicle, her daughter’s behind was suspended an inch or two above the pavement. To Janine, she looked like a cartoon character whose parachute had failed to open. Nothing about her daughter’s expression was comic, though. Her face had fragmented, then come together again in a mask of pain and fear and struggling rage. “Get away from me!” she screamed when Janine stooped to help unhook the backpack. “Don’t touch me!”
    “Stop this right now, Tick!” Janine snapped, frightened herself. “You’re all right. I’m just trying to help.”
    Then, somehow, her daughter was free and on her feet and walking away, rubbing her shoulder, sobbing as she went.
    “Tick,” Janine called, trying to sound stern, her voice cracking in betrayal. “Come back here. Please, sweetie.”
    Nothing. She just kept on walking. There were maybe half a dozen people on the street, no more, but Janine was sure they’d all witnessed what had happened and now were watching the scene play itself out.
    “Tick!”
    Her daughter whirled then. “Leave … me … alone!” she screamed, loud enough to be heard the length of Empire Avenue.
    The Jeep was still running, of course, her daughter’s backpack still wedged between the seats, and when Janine tried to close the door, it wouldn’t, and then, after she’d given the backpack a swift kick it still wouldn’t, and then Janine