By March, Lucy’s cabin fever was more like a never-ending flu. All that winter, the snow had been so heavy she sometimes couldn’t open the front door. William would have to heat up water and splash it out the window, gradually making a path. Everything seemed eerily quiet, as if the world had been erased, turned white, brown, and the washed-out blue of the sky. The insects and the birds were gone. Just making her way to check on the chickens took her an hour, the air so frigid it made her gasp, the high snow soaking her jeans, getting into her boots. But she didn’t mind so much, because at least it ate up part of her day.
The first day that the snow really cleared, she grabbed the house keys and set out on a walk down the road.
The world was desolate. The only sound was the skip of her breathing. She suddenly thought, what if something happened to William? What if he crashed the car and died and she was left here all alone?
She began to run, her legs pumping through the melting slush. She was coming alive with speed. She thought of all the stories Iris had told her when she first found out that Lucy hitched everywhere. Men carried shears and they would cut off your nipples and keep them in a jam jar like a souvenir. Iris told stories about girls who were captured and put into white slavery. There had been rapes, broken bodies left by the side of the road. Lucy had laughed back then, but she didn’t feel like laughing now.
Lucy heard a car coming and felt a pull of fear, but the car whizzed past her.
She kept walking. Soon, she told herself, there’d be a house or at least a store, but all that happened was the road curved.
She had been walking for an hour and had nearly given up. The weather wasn’t as warm as she thought it would be, and she was shivering a little. This had been a mistake. She was tired and she felt like crying, because now she had to get it together to make the long walk back. She’d have to figure out something in time for dinner. And what if William came home and she wasn’t there? He’d be so worried. And then he’d be mad because they had agreed that she’d stay home during the day.
She swallowed. She was just walking. She had a right to do that, didn’t she? No one knew who she was. There was no danger. And she’d make it home before William, the way she always did.
She made another turn, and there were more cars on the road, and a gas station.
And a pay phone.
She hadn’t called home yet. William had told her to wait and certainly not to call home on their phone because even though it was unlisted, it could be traced. But the other night she had woken up to hear him on the phone, and when she got up and padded to the door, she heard him talking. “It’s wonderful out here, Mom,” he said, which confused her. Why could he call his mother if she couldn’t call Iris? Weren’t they supposed to be invisible for a while? She walked out into the living room, and William, lean and handsome in just his pajama bottoms, beckoned her over. He wrapped an arm around her. “Me, too,” William said, and he hung up the phone. “She won’t tell anyone where we are.”
“Does she know I’m here?”
William kissed the top of her head, then her forehead, then her mouth. “Of course she doesn’t.”
Lucy knew that William was the child of a broken home. Diana had divorced when William was ten, and William’s father cut all contact, barely paying child support. “You have no idea how much she loved me and needed me,” he told Lucy. Lucy remembered seeing Diana once. Lucy had snuck out to surprise William, but Diana was outside his building, talking to him, her voice like water pouring. “You don’t think, William,” Diana had said, but then she had given him a hug.
“If you can call your mom, why can’t I call Iris and Charlotte?”
“I’m not a minor like you are, Lucy. We could get into big trouble here.”
“But you told your mother where you are. What if she just shows up?”
“Do we have to talk about my mother?” William switched on the radio. Gary Puckett was singing “Young Girl,” a song Lucy always liked, but William was frowning. “Jesus.” He turned the radio off.
“What? I like that song,” she said.
“Are you hearing the words? Do you realize what it’s about? He’s telling this young girl that his love for her is way out of line, that she’s a baby under her makeup. Then he tells her she’d better run because he can’t control himself.”
“It’s just about desire,” she said. She leaned against William, tracing a hand along his back, but he pushed her away.
“No, no, it’s not.” His mouth tightened.
Another evening, William had asked her to iron a shirt for him because the next day the parents were coming to watch the kids at school. He looked so distraught that she didn’t want to tell him she had never ironed before. She got the board out and the iron and did the best she could, but then she smelled something burning, and when she looked down, there was a scorch mark on the sleeve. Horrified, she touched it. “William!”
He walked over. “Lucy!” He looked at the shirt, dismayed. “How did this happen?”
She hung her head. “I’ve never ironed before.”
“What?”
“Charlotte or Iris always did it.”
She waited for the flicker in his cheek that signaled he was mad, but instead he was just deflated. “Of course you don’t know how to iron. How could I expect you to?” he said, but he wasn’t looking at her. “I’ll wear another shirt.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and was quiet for the rest of the evening.
Now, she hesitated in front of the pay phone, remembering William’s words: Minor. That meant big trouble with a capital T. No, she couldn’t call her family. Not now. Not yet. She turned and then began the long walk home.
AS THE DAYS dragged on, Lucy began to take longer and longer walks. She would leave earlier in the day, right after breakfast, so she would be back before William would get home. “What did you do today?” he asked, and when she said she took a walk, he frowned.
“You did what?” He wanted to know where she walked, who she saw, and who saw her. “Lucy,” he said, “when you’re eighteen, you can walk the world.”
“OK, I’ll stay put.”
But the next day, after reading a bit, writing, and trying to figure out how to make a buckwheat burger, she felt stir-crazy again. She didn’t want to lie to William—they never lied to each other—but she would just not mention it. She would tell him everything else. She grabbed her jacket and headed outside.
She began taking walks more and more. She felt her legs growing stronger. She saw a slight muscle building in her calves, hard under her touch. She loved seeing the stark trees taking on green leaves and filling up the sky, the shy poke of a wildflower along the road. Even the cars that passed her seemed more cheerful, and sometimes a window was even opened, and she could hear a smear of music. When she got home, she fed the chickens, and even they seemed livelier, happier to see her. “It’s a great day, isn’t it?” she said to Dorothy, who pecked at her feet.
IT WAS THE beginning of May, and Lucy picked up the newspaper William had brought home the night before. There was a big photo, a girl with a bandanna tied around her neck, screaming over a dead body. Lucy held the paper closer to her face. Kent State. Four killed, nine injured, in a riot over Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia. The National Guard was shooting kids. Lucy dropped the paper, her hands flying to her mouth. Kids at New York University hung out a banner proclaiming, THEY CAN’T KILL US ALL. Lucy started to cry. She grabbed at her arms, her legs, making sure she was all there. She had to get out of the house.
She did what she always did: she walked, only this time she half ran, trying to chase the fear and tension out of her legs. The greenery was sprouting everywhere. Tiger lilies and Queen Anne’s lace dotted the road.
She tried a new route today, heading down a road budding with crops. Eventually she saw a sign for a farm stand, which meant people. She quickened her pace. The stand blazed with color; indoors, it seemed filled with fruits and vegetables. Behind it stretched a long greenhouse. Even from here she could see how huge and lush the tulips were, how flashy the pansies. She could hear the chatter of the people, the laughter. There were a few men, but older men, probably retired, trailing after women who must be their wives. The only man under fifty was at the register. He had long hair and dark sunglasses and wore a black T-shirt with black jeans. Who did he think he was, Johnny Cash? He was ringing up jars of some kind of jam, talking with customers. He squinted at Lucy as if he were sizing her up, and she looked away. She strolled down the aisles of produce and let one hand drift along a row of fiddlehead ferns, parsnips, and pea greens. Then she felt a grip handcuffing her wrist. It was the man from the cash register, his eyes on her like a laser.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he said.
“Nothing. I’m just looking.”
He let go of her wrist. She stepped back from him, her breath narrowing.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“Why do you want to know that?”
“I was just trying to figure out what you’re doing here, touching all my fruits and vegetables.”
“I won’t do it again. They were just so pretty—”
“How old are you?” he asked.
She chewed her lip. “Twenty.”
“Right. More like sixteen.”
“I just turned eighteen. I look young. How old are you, thirty?”
“Twenty-nine, though what difference does that make?”
She looked around the farm stand, seeing the people. “You could make your displays prettier,” she said.
“Oh, I could, could I?”
“And those plants over there are drooping. They need water. People notice things like that.”
“I was just about to do it.”
“If you hired me, part-time, I could do it.” She felt her body shaking. What was she thinking? William would be so pissed. But she couldn’t stop herself from imagining what it might be like to actually be around people and activity again. To have money of her own. And William didn’t have to know. “I’m a really good worker. And spring is just starting up. I bet you’re going to need help. Why not try me out?”
“I already have a crew.”
“But you might need more.”
“I don’t know—”
“How about just for today? Then you can decide.”
She gave him her best smile, saw him loosen.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Lucy,” she said, and she knew she was hired.
HE WOULDN’T LET her work the cash register, but she could stock the shelves and arrange displays. She could go in the greenhouse, which was so warm she shucked her jacket off. She watered the cold-hardy geraniums and the leeks, chard, and spinach, the year-round crops, and harvested some to sell. Out at the stand, she sorted through the fruit and vegetable bins, taking out the produce that was going bad and restocking it from the root cellar.
While Patrick showed her what to do, Lucy gave him bits and pieces of information about herself, but not necessarily the truth. She told him she lived by herself in Ryserstone, where there was nothing all around her, just a small house and some chickens that had taken forever to like her.
“Rysterstone? I don’t believe I know where that is,” Patrick said.
“It’s a nice walk from here to there.”
“It’s not so safe out there. You don’t know what’s on those roads.”
“Sure, I do.” She rearranged an errant carrot. “I’m on leave from college.”
“What college?”
“Brandeis.” She looked away from him. “I’m going to be a vet.”
“Pretty far from school, aren’t you?”
“I told you. Leave of absence. I’ll go back.”
She kept working the rest of the day, loving the way it felt to be busy and full of purpose. Sometimes customers asked her things, and she was happy when she could answer them. At the end of the day, she walked over to Patrick. “So, can I come back?” she said.
He was quiet for a minute, making her a little scared. And then he smiled. “Sure. Come back tomorrow around nine.”