IT HAD BEEN FOURTEEN MINUTES SINCE HE’D LEFT THE house. he remembered checking the display as he started the car. Maybe it was sixteen. Maybe he was misremembering. Maybe it was fewer! Then he’d stopped to smoke that cigarette, which he usually said took seven minutes but actually took closer to four. So Clay had been driving for ten minutes, which was not really so long, and meant he couldn’t truly be lost. He told himself to calm down, then pulled the car into the McKinnon Farms driveway to smoke a cigarette. He could, of course, continue down the drive, to the farmhouse or some other building where people would be, but that would mean he was truly panicked, which he was not. So he smoked and tried to find the relaxation inherent in the act, then stubbed the thing out before it was truly done, impatient. He couldn’t remember, when they’d driven to the house that first day, if theirs had been the only car. That first day seemed weeks in the past.
He closed the door harder than he meant to, though it was not exactly a slam. It was loud enough to underscore the general quiet. He told himself that this was normal, and it was. It would have seemed peaceful had he been prepared to find peace. It seemed irritating at best and menacing at worst. Symbols don’t mean anything; you invest them with meaning, depending on what you most need. Clay chewed a piece of gum and started the car. He turned left out of the farm’s access road and drove slowly, noting every possible turn on the right. There was one, then another, then, finally, another, but none looked familiar, and none were adjacent to a stand selling eggs. There was a sign that read only “Corn,” but this didn’t seem to indicate anything at all, and must have been old.
He thought of the mental and actual preparation they’d put in to prepare Archie to ride the subway alone. The way they’d insisted the boy memorize their phone numbers, in case his telephone was lost or broken, the plan they’d agreed upon should he find himself on a rerouted train bound for some part of the city where he’d never been. Now he rode the subway all the time. Clay rarely thought about it. That was how it worked, maybe. You prepared your child to sleep through the night or wield a fork or piss in the toilet or say please or eat broccoli or be respectful to adults, and then the child was prepared. That was the end of it. He didn’t know why he was thinking about Archie, and he shook his head as though to clear it. He would have to turn around and take one of the three, four, five turnoffs he’d passed, determine where they led, see if they were the right way. One of them had to be. He needed only to be methodical. He’d trace the route back to the house, then begin again, more cautious, more attentive, and work his way to town, where he had intended all along to end up. He really wanted that Coke now. His head hurt from lack of caffeine.
Their vacation was ruined. The spell had been broken. Truly, what he should do was drive back to the house and have the kids pack their things. They’d be back in the city before dinner. They could splurge at that French place on Atlantic, order the fried anchovy, the steak, a martini. Clay was only decisive after the fact. And now he was—well, he would say turned around, not lost. He felt a strangely powerful desire to see his children.
He took the first left, and drove only a few yards before understanding that this was not the route; it pitched uphill, and he knew the road had been level. He turned the car around and turned back onto the main road, barely slowing, knowing there was no traffic coming in either direction. He took the second left, and this seemed like it might be the way. He drove on, then turned right, because he could. Perhaps that was it, and the painted egg shack was just up that road. Everything looked familiar because trees and grass only ever looked precisely as you’d expect them to.
He turned the car around again, went back to the road onto which he’d turned from the main road, and there, across that main road, he saw a woman. She was wearing a white polo shirt and khaki pants. On some women it would have looked like leisure wear, but on this woman, her face a broad, indigenous shape (ancient blood, timeless dignity), it looked like a uniform. The woman saw him, raised a hand, waved at him, gestured at him, beckoned him. Clay pulled into the road, more slowly now, and glided to a stop. He lowered the passenger window and smiled out at the woman, the way you’re taught to smile at dogs so you don’t betray your fear of them.
“Hello, there!” He wasn’t sure what he’d say. Would he admit to being lost?
“Hello.” She looked at him and then began speaking, very quickly, in Spanish.
“I’m sorry.” He shrugged. It sounded, he hated to admit even in his private thoughts, like gibberish. He didn’t speak any other languages. Clay didn’t even like to attempt it. It made him feel like a fool, or a child.
The woman continued. The words poured out of her. She barely took a breath. She had something urgent to say, and had maybe forgotten what English she possessed—hello and thank you and it’s ok and Windex and telephone and text and Venmo and the days of the week. She talked. She kept talking.
“I’m sorry.” He shrugged again. He did not understand, of course. But maybe he comprehended. Oh, that was a word: comprende. They said it in movies. You couldn’t live in this country and not know some Spanish. If he’d had time to think about it, if he’d forced himself to calm down, he could have communicated with this woman. But she was panicked, and she was panicking him. He was lost and wanted his family. He wanted a steak at that restaurant on Atlantic Avenue. “No Spanish.”
She said more. Something something. He heard beer but she said deer; they sound alike in both tongues. She said more. She said telephone, but he didn’t understand. She said electric, but he didn’t hear. Tears welled at the corners of her small eyes. She was short, freckled, broad. She could have been fourteen or forty. Her nose was running. She was weeping. She spoke louder, hurried, was imprecise, maybe lapsing out of Spanish altogether into some dialect, something still more ancient, the argot of civilizations long dead, piles of rubble in jungles. Her people discovered corn, tobacco, chocolate. Her people invented astronomy, language, trade. Then they’d ceased to be. Now their descendants shucked the corn they’d been the first to know about, and vacuumed rugs and watered decorative beds of lavender planted poolside at mansions in the Hamptons that sat unused most of the year. She forgot herself, even, put her hands on his car, which they both knew was a violation. She held on to the two-inch lip of window that was sticking up out of the door. Her hands were small and brown. She was still talking through the tears; she was asking him a question, a question he could not understand and anyway would not have been able to answer.
“I’m sorry.” He shook his head. If his phone had worked, he might have tried Google Translate. He could have urged her to get into the car, but how would he have made her understand that he was lost, not driving in circles because he meant to kill her or lull her to sleep, as suburban parents did with their infants? A different man would respond differently, but Clay was the man he was, one unable to provide what this woman needed, one afraid of her urgency, her fear, which did not need translation. She was afraid. He should be afraid. He was afraid. “I’m sorry.” He said it to himself, more than to her. She released the window as he started to roll it up. He drove farther down the road, quickly, though he’d intended to investigate all those driveways. He needed to be away from her more even than he needed to be with his family.