By nine o’clock, it’s clear that I’m going to have to stop for the night. I had wanted to make the trip in a single go, but I don’t think I can. My head is only just starting to clear, and for the first time today, I feel hungry rather than sick.
I check into a Red Roof Inn near Akron, and immediately collapse on the bed. In the old days, I would have peeled the bedspread off first, because I’ve always suspected they don’t get cleaned between guests. But that was the old Annemarie, the Annemarie who used to cover her hand with her sleeve before touching public doorknobs. The new Annemarie doesn’t care about such things. She flops right down on the bedspread, shoes and all.
I stare at the crack in the ceiling, savoring the silence. My ears still ring from the vibrations of the road.
I sit upright and stare at the telephone. I should call Mutti and find out when the funeral is. In this, at least, I can’t let him down. I consider my words and chew my lips. Then I go into the bathroom to freshen up for dinner.
The restaurant is drab, and full of round tables and knobby chairs that could most kindly be described as captain style. The carpet is short pile and green. There is a dark pattern on it, which is barely discernible in the dimmed light.
There is no one at any of the tables, although there are a half dozen men at the bar. They sit facing a wall-mounted television, a row of backs lined up in front of a baseball game. Occasionally they explode with manly noises, but mostly they sit silently, puffing their individual contributions to the smoky haze that fills the top third of the room.
“I’ll have the French onion soup,” I say when the waitress appears. My stomach is clamoring for more, but I’m afraid to push it.
“Would you like a salad with that? Maybe a sandwich?”
“No, thanks. Crackers would be nice, though.”
“Do you want something to drink while you wait?”
I shudder violently.
“I’ll take that as a no,” says the waitress, stuffing her pad back into her waistband.
After dinner, I return to my room. When the door shuts, an unexpected feeling of peace washes over me. Within the room’s impersonal confines, the world is a million miles away. Roger, Eva, Mutti—even Ian McCullough and his hateful attempted murder—are merely specks on the horizon. I turn on the television and kick off my shoes, perching on the edge of the bed while I cycle through the channels.
Before long, my eyes drift back to the telephone, and then, with a mixture of shame and relief, to the clock. It’s too late to call. I’ll have to do it in the morning.
I wander into the bathroom, dropping clothes behind me like Gretel’s crumbs. Minutes later, I’m luxuriating in a hot, steaming shower. The water pressure is excellent, and the supply of hot water outlasts me. I come out feeling cleansed—if not in spirit, then at least of my hangover. Perhaps I could have handled a sandwich after all.
I shut the bedside lamp off, and am plunged into blackness. When I turn my head, I see the red glow of the clock, but it does almost nothing to penetrate the darkness of the room. I settle in with a sense of satisfaction. It’s been almost a week since I’ve slept properly.
Two and a half hours later, it becomes clear that tonight is going to be no different.
I don’t know what time I finally fell asleep. I do know that it was after four, because that’s the last time I looked at the clock. That’s not when I fell asleep. It’s just when I stopped looking.
When I finally open my eyes, it’s still dark. I’d like to make an early start, but there’s no point in being fanatical about it. The next time I surface, it’s still dark. Suspicious now, I roll over to look at the clock.
It’s nearly ten o’clock. I leap up, cursing the curtains. How was I supposed to know they were completely opaque? I’ve got a good twelve or thirteen hours of driving in front of me.
I shove myself into jeans and a tee-shirt, and cram the rest of my stuff into my suitcase. A quick look around, and I’m out of there.
A few minutes later, I’m on the I-90, staring at the back of a truck. Actually, I’m staring at a poster that’s stuck to it.
It’s a picture of a girl. Stephanie Simmons, it says. Missing since May 1997. To the right of the picture is a description.
She was fourteen when she dropped off the face of the earth, a runaway. It doesn’t actually say so, but I can tell from the look of her—from the heavy makeup and dangly earrings, all carefully applied to make her heartbreakingly fresh face look older. She probably fought with her parents about her curfew, her clothes, and her boyfriend—maybe even more serious things too, like smoking up or getting drunk—and in a moment of rash teenage bravado, decided that anything was better than living under their tyranny.
Four years later, what hope is there? If she’s even alive, she’s probably a prostitute, some street hooker who got caught up and can’t get out. Needle marks in her arms, bruises from bad “dates.” Teeth missing at the back, which her pimp won’t pay to replace because the gaps don’t show when she smiles. And her smile, flashed at an endless parade of potential johns, exposing the pain of the world.
Stephanie Simmons, born January 14, 1983. Lost to the world before she ever really joined it.
Her picture blurs as tears well up in my eyes. My God, child—why didn’t you just call your mother? How could you possibly imagine that she wouldn’t drop everything immediately to come and get you? How could you possibly think that she would be so mad about where you were and what you were doing that she wouldn’t have done anything—anything, including killing someone with her bare hands—to get you back?
Stephanie Simmons, Stephanie Simmons, Stephanie Simmons. I repeat her name, committing it to memory.
Tears are rolling down my face now. When Eva ran away, if she hadn’t decided to go to her father’s…I can’t even finish the thought.
Eva is the only worthwhile thing I’ve done in twenty years, and that’s largely in spite of myself. That changes right here, right now. I think of Stephanie’s mother, never knowing the truth and always suspecting the worst. What would she have done differently had she known where it would lead? If she’d realized that what was happening in her house was not just garden-variety teenage strife? That it would actually cause her to lose her daughter forever?
I sniff, and staunch my runny nose with the back of my wrist. I may look soft and leaky, but I’ve just hardened with immeasurable resolve.
There’s nothing in this world I won’t do to prevent Eva from ending up on the back of a truck.
The decision itself is easy. But figuring out how to effect it is not.
The first thing, obviously, is to get her home, and then to make sure she wants to stay. But how? How can I get her home when she can’t stand the sight of me? And once I get her there, how can we avoid fighting like cats and dogs?
It’s just like Mutti and me, and look at us—two adults, one of us heading into old age, and still unable to get along. But at least I never ran away.
I have this eerie sense of puzzle pieces floating around my head, threatening to come together. I’m not sure if I should just let them or bat them away, but it’s too late.
Of course I ran away. I left my parents and avoided them for years. We spoke occasionally by telephone, but I never visited them—I couldn’t stand to be anywhere near Harry’s empty stall. But it wasn’t just the absence of Harry that kept me away. I didn’t want to see my parents. It’s hard to look someone in the face when you’ve single-handedly destroyed their dream.
When I had all the trouble with Eva’s birth, Mutti flew to Minneapolis to help. She stayed for six weeks, and I don’t know what I would have done without her. She took over in typical Mutti fashion: the house was spotless, our meals served at seven, twelve, and six on the nose, the baby delivered to me for nursing every three hours, freshly changed and swaddled.
It was an uneasy peace, but peace nonetheless. We never discussed my previous life, nor the tension that had grown between us. We went on like this for some years—ten, in fact—until the scene five years ago.
I had finally gotten to the point where I could face the farm again. Eva and I were there alone because Roger was at a conference. Mutti said something about Roger that I took as derogatory, so I flew into a fury and left. It was a fake fury, a fury I had to work hard to stir up. I can’t even remember what Mutti said—that’s how important it was—but he was my husband. To not stick up for him would be to admit that there was something wrong, and to admit there was something wrong would mean I had to at least consider doing something about it. So I took the easy route and left in a snit.
So I guess it boils down to this: I threw over my mother to preserve my self-delusion. And now she seems to view going to prison and continuing to live with me as equally desirable.
I’m still thinking about this as I roll up to a toll plaza. I head for the manual lane even though I have the exact change because the line is shorter, and I’m in a hurry to get home.
The attendant is fiddling with the coins in her drawer. She continues to do so, ignoring my outstretched hand.
“Excuse me!” I say loudly.
She looks over at me, eyes glazed and belligerent, and then returns to her drawer. After a few more seconds, she holds her hand out the window, still not looking. I drop the coins into her palm. One of them falls to the ground. She pulls her hand back into the window, and then extends it again.
I open my door and pick up the coin. Again I place it on her hand, and again it falls off. She’s still looking into her drawer, clinking coins with her right hand. The guy behind me starts to honk. The guy behind him starts in, too. Before I know it, three or four car horns are blaring at me.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I explode. I open my car door and swipe the quarter from the concrete, breaking a nail in the process. “Would it kill you to look at me?”
I drop back into my seat and slam the door. Then I turn. The attendant is staring at me.
“Here,” I say pressing the quarter into her hand. This time, her fingers close around it. I glare back, and then speed off, my squealing tires voicing my frustration.
Is this the end of the line? Is this the famous rock bottom that people hit before they straighten out? And how does it work, anyway? Is recognizing you’re at rock bottom enough, or do you have to have a moment of epiphany and total surrender, like people who give themselves over to Jesus and believe they’ve been born again?
I envy those people. They know how to have a meltdown, or at least how to come out of it on the other side. I’m stuck flailing, facedown at the bottom of the pool.
The next six hours pass in a blur. My hands grow numb from grasping the steering wheel, and my eyes sting from the effort of keeping them open. I feel almost comatose, and at one point actually slap myself in the face to make sure I stay awake.
I’m standing in line at the service center waiting to pay for my coffee when a man approaches me. He’s grizzled, with a hefty paunch and a thin dirty tee-shirt. His jeans hang low because the waist is too small and his belly has slid over top. His front teeth are missing, his fingernails dirty, his hair sticks up in odd directions. He comes to a stop in front of me. I stiffen.
“You okay?” he says.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Are you okay?”
I stare suspiciously. “I’m fine. Why?”
“You just look…I dunno, like maybe you’ve been crying. Just making sure you’re okay.”
I’m so shocked I can’t reply right away. It’s as though I’ve suddenly forgotten English.
“Yeah,” I say finally. “Yeah, I am. Thanks, though.”
“Sure,” he says, and wanders off.
Back on the road, heading into darkness. I switch on my headlights and search fruitlessly for a radio station I can stand. Finally, I switch it off.
How the hell am I going to get Eva back, and what am I going to do with her when I get her?
When it comes to me, I slap the steering wheel with the heel of my right hand. Flicka! I’ll adopt Flicka! I know Eva won’t come back for me—there’s no point in kidding myself on that score—but Flicka?
So what if it’s bribery? So what, if it gets her home and gives us a chance to start again? In this case, the ends absolutely justify the means.
I form the conversation in my head, figuring out how to word it most enticingly. I’ll help Eva train her. We’ll arrange it so that Eva is the only person who ever gets on her back. It will bring her home, and give us something we can do together.
My heart leaps for joy, and the warm glow of victory floods me. It may be only one thing to tick off my list of worries, but still, it’s a start.
Unless I really have caused Mutti to lose the farm. Up to now, I’ve been thinking about how it would affect Mutti, and how devastated Pappa would have been if he’d known. But suddenly, for the first time, I see what it means for the rest of us. If Mutti loses the farm, where will Eva and I go?
I press my foot closer to the floor. The engine roars as it picks up speed.
I will get Flicka. I will get a job. I will call Dan and apologize, and if he doesn’t want to listen, I’ll tell him that I know what I’ve been—I finally, really know what I’ve been—and beg him to give me another chance. I will give up on this ridiculous notion of hiding Hurrah, and simply talk to the insurance company. Surely there’s a way I can keep him—they can’t just turn him back over to Ian. They also can’t possibly expect to get the amount he was insured for, not with his joint problems and missing eye. But even if they do, I can pay by installment. I’ll get a job.
My stable management days are clearly over, but it’s not as though I don’t have other choices. Even if Kilkenny doesn’t have a software industry, I can contract from home. There’s no reason in the world an editor can’t telecommute. Not that I particularly want to be an editor again—in fact, it’s more than that, I really, really, really don’t want to be an editor again—but desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ll put money into the stable, help Mutti keep the farm. I’ll pay for Hurrah. I’ll tell Eva after we get Flicka that she can only keep her if she stays in school.
Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
At midnight, I pull through the gates of our farm. I pause at the crest of the hill, just inside the gates, and survey the scene before me. It looks so peaceful. The house, nestled quietly at the top of a hill’s gentle swell, the fences shining white in the moonlight. The stable, looming large and sleepy in the distance. The scene is so familiar it breaks my heart.
I’m already halfway out of the car by the time I notice that the floodlights over the stable’s parking lot are off. There’s a bulky shadow at the end of the drive. I stare, squinting, until I see its outline.
I drop back into the car and dump the contents of my purse on the passenger’s seat, scrabbling through it until I find my cell phone.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
“This is Annemarie Zimmer from Maple Brook Farm, off Forty-one, just south of Ninety-seven. I’m calling to report a horse theft in progress.”
“Okay, Annemarie. Help is on its way. Stay on the line and tell me what’s going on.”
“There’s a truck and trailer in front of the entrance of the stable. And someone’s turned off the floods.”
The car is in neutral, the motor off, and I’m coasting silently down the drive toward the stable.
“Do you see anyone?” asks the dispatcher.
“No.”
“Is it possible someone just parked there?”
“No. All the boarders park their trailers in the back. And besides, this one is backed up to the door. No, there’s someone in there. I’m pulling up now.”
I coast to a stop in front of the truck and put the car in park. I squint through the side window.
“The license plate is ess three oh five oh two,” I tell the dispatcher. “I don’t think it’s from New Hampshire but I can’t quite…Oh Jesus, I just saw flashlights,” I say. “I’m going to see what the hell is going on.”
“Annemarie, stay where you are. Help is about three minutes away. Stay where you are and don’t hang up.”
I obey, inasmuch as I don’t hang up. I toss the phone onto the passenger seat and move to the dark shadows beside the entrance of the stable, hoping that whoever’s inside won’t hear the gravel crunching under my feet.
Two flashlights are moving like searchlights, from one stall to the next. I hear the sound of bolts being thrown, and doors sliding partway open.
“Where the hell is he?” says a hushed male voice.
“I don’t fucking know,” says another in frustration. “Are you sure this is the place?”
“Maybe it’s this one.”
“Maybe nothing. He’s fucking striped.”
I reach inside and throw on the light. The two men in the aisle are holding flashlights and lead ropes. Most of the stall doors are partially open and the horses are moving nervously. “Jean-Claude!” I scream. “Jean-Claude!”
The men bolt. The first knocks me backward into the doorway, but the second is not so lucky. As he passes, I tackle him, throwing him out the door onto the gravel. He grunts and swears, a rumble I hear through his rib cage because my face is pressed against his shirt. My arms are wrapped around him, my hands locked in a death grip on the loose cloth at his shoulder blades. In the distance, I hear sirens wailing.
“Fuck, lady! Are you crazy? Let me go!”
We roll around in our absurd embrace. I am alternately beneath him, with gravel poking through my shirt and into the back of my head, and on top, with my knuckles bearing our combined weight. Finally, he starts swinging. Both my arms are still wrapped around him, so I cannot deflect. His fist makes contact first with my ear, and then with my chin, driving my teeth into my tongue. My mouth fills with blood.
“Jean-Claude!” I scream again, and a moment later the man’s bulk is lifted off me. I roll onto my back and scootch backward with my feet, instinctively wiping the blood from my face with the back of my hand.
Behind me, the truck’s engine has started and a voice shouts, “Paco, Paco! Vamanos!”
But Paco is not going anywhere. Paco is up against the doorframe of the stable, held there by Jean-Claude, who has one hand around his throat and is pressing the tines of a pitchfork to his chest with the other.
The man in the truck revs the engine until it’s roaring.
“Paco!” he shouts one last time. Then he dumps the clutch and rams into the passenger door of my car. The two vehicles meet with a screeching moan, almost like whale-song, and then my car is moving in front of the truck, pushed along by its nose. After nearly twenty feet, it drops by the wayside and sits rocking on its shocks. I see a light come on in the house and then the flashing lights of one, two, three police cars wailing down the drive.
The man in the truck throws his door open and bails. He hits the ground hard, taking his weight on his shoulder. When he regains his feet he staggers a few strides before rolling over the fence and lurching toward the forest.
The cruisers slide to a stop in front of the truck. Behind them, I see Mutti’s tiny form running down the drive.
And then I know it’s all over. Really all over, and I’ve been hoisted on my own petard.
It takes the police an hour and a half to take everyone’s statements, not to mention collecting the second man with the help of their canine unit. After they leave, I sit at the kitchen table dabbing my chin with a cloth napkin. My ear is ringing like hell.
“I assume Eva is still in Minneapolis?” Mutti says, handing me a bag of frozen peas.
“Yes,” I say, pressing the peas to my jaw. I pull the bag back and look at it, and then wrap it in the napkin.
“When is she coming back?”
“I’m not sure that she is.”
“What?” Mutti’s face blackens. “She’s going to miss her Opa’s funeral?”
“It’s me. She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
Mutti flashes me a look. Finally she says, “It’s because of that boy, isn’t it?”
I glare at my coffee.
“He’s a good boy, you know. A nice boy.”
“Yes, Mutti. I know that now, don’t I? I messed everything up. It’s all my fault. I know that. I admit it. And now I’m trying to fix it.”
I cross the kitchen and put the peas back in the freezer. Mutti follows me with her eyes. I pause to rinse my hands, and then turn to face her.
“When is the funeral?” I ask.
“Monday.”
“Monday!” I look up sharply. “But that’s so…Isn’t that late?”
“It was delayed by the autopsy.”
A silence, in which we both think the same terrible thing. It reminds me of right after I learned that Harry was dead, when all I could think about was what was happening to his body.
“Monday,” I repeat gloomily. I don’t even have a black dress.
I look at Mutti, who is tapping one bony finger on the table.
“I’m going to try to get her back in time for Pappa’s funeral. For now, that’s the best I can do. Believe it or not, it means as much to me as it does to you.”
My eyes fill with tears, but hers are as clear as the arctic sky. I cross the kitchen again, under her scrutiny, and am about to exit to the hallway when she calls to me.
“Annemarie, I have something to ask you.”
I stop, still facing the hallway. “What is it?”
“Did you have anything to do with what happened tonight?”
“What? No, of course not. I’m the one who called the cops. You heard my statement. Why would you say something like that?”
“You know exactly why.”
“No, I don’t,” I sputter indignantly.
“You thought I wouldn’t notice that he’s not striped anymore? You’re up to something Annemarie, and I want to know what it is.”
In fact, it never crossed my mind that she’d notice the dye job. That’s how rational I’ve been. I have no answer for her.
“It’s time for you to start telling the truth,” she says, her voice rising headlong into anger.
And so I do. At the end of it, she drops her head into her hands.
“Mutti?” I take a tentative step forward.
“Just go,” she says without looking up. “Go to bed, Annemarie. It’s late, and I need some time to think.”
Sleep is, of course, completely out of the question. At some point I give up and creep down to the living room to watch Peter Sellers movies and Gilligan’s Island reruns.
Shortly after sunrise, I hear the dining-room door open, and then, a few minutes later, the gurgling of coffee. I wait until Mutti has gone back into the dining room before getting a cup. Then I take it up to my room.
I have no idea what I’m going to do today, but I’m too anxious to be still. I’m almost certainly not wanted at the stable—presumably Mutti has taken over as manager again, and I can see from the cars in the lot that she’s persuaded the stable hands to come back. There’s nothing else to do around here, and as for going into town—I don’t even know if my car still runs.
By late morning, the place is crawling with cops. There’s one car stationed at the end of our drive, by the road, and two more at the stable. From my bedroom window, I can see them putting up yellow tape, blocking the entrances. I run down the stairs and press my face to the kitchen window. Jean-Claude is stalking up the drive, his face like thunder.
He climbs up the porch and throws the door open, hard.
“What is it? What’s going on?” I demand, searching his face.
He turns to look at me. His right eye is purple. “An ‘investigation,’” he says with disgust. “They are insisting that we cancel all the lessons.”
“What? For how long?” I ask, but he just grabs a file from the bookshelf and leaves, slamming the door behind him.
I slide on the gardening clogs by the back door and jog to the stable. Mutti must have seen me coming, because she exits the stable just as I arrive. She walks toward me with both hands extended, preventing my progress.
“Go back to the house,” she says quickly.
“What’s going on? What do they want?” I crane my neck, trying to see around her.
Mutti grabs my face in both her hands and forces me to look into her eyes. “Annemarie,” she says, each word a sentence. “Go home.”
I spend the day going from one window to another, watching the goings-on at the stable and the entrance to our farm. The police stationed at the entrance turn away about a half dozen cars, presumably students that Jean-Claude didn’t reach in time. In the early afternoon, a white Dodge Neon turns into the drive, and after a short window-to-window conference with the police car, makes its way to the stable. Two men and a woman emerge. The woman stretches her arms over her head and then turns to study first my sorry car, then the outdoor arenas, the house, and the trailers behind the parking lot. After she drops her arms, she leans through the open passenger window and retrieves a binder. A uniformed officer meets them and leads them into the stable.
After forty minutes, they leave again. Shortly thereafter, the hands start turning out the horses. All except Hurrah.
Just before we would normally have dinner, a cop walks up the drive toward the house.
I let the lace curtain fall, and then go to the living room to wait for his knock. Then I let a few seconds pass before I open the door.
“Annemarie Zimmer?” he says.
“Yes,” I say, sticking my face in the crack of the door.
“Detective Samosa of Kilkenny PD,” he says, flashing a badge. “I need you to come to the station to answer some questions.”
“But I gave a statement last night.”
“Yes you did. But you neglected to mention that you’re housing a horse on which an insurance company has paid out a one-and-a-quarter-million-dollar mortality policy. A horse that appears to have been disguised.”
I stare into his square-jawed face.
After a few seconds, he adds, “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.”
“What’s the difference?” I ask.
“The easy way is you cooperate and get to drive your own car.” He pauses. “The hard way is that I arrest you and you ride in the back of the cruiser.”
I feel my lips tighten into a straight line.
He crosses his arms. “Well?”
“Can you wait and see if my car runs?” I ask.