The Speed Queen by Stewart O’Nan Read Free Book Online Page B

about how terrible it is being a woman. I don't pay that stuff much attention. What's my other choice, being a man? I like men, but I wouldn't trade in a million years. There's a reason they die first.

15
    The media doesn't have to satisfy me. They don't even have to tell the truth. All I want from them is equal time.
    When Natalie was going to be on "Oprah," I asked Mr. Jefferies if we could do a remote hookup or just something by phone, but Mr. Lonergan said no. I couldn't watch it. Darcy said they played up the same things as always —the fingers, the cop in the desert, Shiprock. They take the weird parts and make them the most important thing, like Natalie's toys.
    And they don't even get things right. They called our Road-runner a Dodge and said that I was a convicted felon. In the Oklahoman there was a map of our route west that showed us going through Amarillo instead of around it. Compared to the big things, I guess it's nitpicky of me, but why write it if you're going to get it wrong?
    And I'm tired of that picture of me eating the onionburger with the gun in my other hand. I swear it's the only one they use. Someone must think it's funny.
    All of that would be fine as long as they didn't drag Gainey into it. They always have to say he was in the car. No matter how small the article is, they get that in.

    The whole idea is to make me look stranger so people can pretend they're normal. It's not just me, they do that with everybody. That's their job. No one's interested in how people really are. I mean, it's not interesting that I brought Gainey with us because I couldn't get anyone to sit him and I didn't want to leave him home by himself. It's not interesting that I kept looking out the window to make sure he was okay. They never mention that, they just say he was in the car like I'd forgotten he was there, like the woman who drove away with the baby on the roof.
    I never planned on getting out of the Roadrunner. I wasn't supposed to turn it oft. I was supposed to wait in the stall until Lamont called me on the intercom, then I'd roll around to the drive-thru and pick up the money. The way it was planned, I would have been with Gainey the whole time. We'd even stopped at the Dairy Kurl up the street and gotten him a junior hot fudge sundae. I was twisted around feeding him when I heard the shots. When we got back to the car, his lace was a mess, and I gave Natalie a wet wipe. The whole thing took ten minutes, and except for maybe two minutes in the walk-in fridge, I could see him the whole time. But in the paper they make it sound like I just left him there. I don't care what they say —a mother worries.
    I was on TV once when I was a kid. My whole class was. This was right when Skylab was going to crash. Mrs. Milliken, our ail teacher, had us make fake space parts out of papier-mache and put them all over this burnt field behind the school. She called the TV stations and they came out and pretended it had really hit there. My piece was supposed to be the radio, and the I people asked me if they could take my picture with it. The camera had a light on top of it that blinded me.

    "Did you receive any last messages from Skylab before it hit the ground?" the guy with the microphone asked.
    "Just one," I said, and screamed as loud as I could.

16
    Living on Death Row is like living in a small town. It's slow and everyone knows everyone's business. The population's stable, not like in general, where you have people coming through all the time. There are four of us —me and Darcy on one side, Etta Mae Gaskins and Lucinda Williams on the other.
    Etta Mae's next in line after me. She beat an old man in her apartment building to death for his social security check. She was just trying to get him to sign it, she says, but things got out of hand. She hit him with the bar from a towel rack, one of those clear ones. She's a whistler. Any time of day she'll just break into song. You don't notice it after a while and then