Rebecea Anne Dalton
“Hi,” I say sleepily, opening one eye to Danny. “What’s up, Doc?”
He’s kneeling on the bed next to me, bouncing. My bones ache. What day of the week is it?
Friday.
“It ’nowing,” Danny says.
“Snowing?” I correct.
“Uh-huh.”
Shit. We’ve been lucky with the weather so far. It’s been plenty cold, but the roads have stayed clear.
I’ve made it a rule, ever since Christmas, that we move every day. All part of the quest, I tell Danny when he bitches. But snow is something else, and I feel like garbage. Plus we don’t have the right clothes, which means spending money, and what are we going to do about food if we get snowed in?
I get up reluctantly and realize my period has started.
“Stay where you are,” I tell him, “I’ll be right back.”
In the tiny bathroom, I discover I only have two Tampax. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I’m not pregnant after all.
Thank God for small favors.
Back in the bedroom, I peer out through the venetian blinds. Thin icy flakes are slanting in descending sheets, and the trunk and rear window of the Tempo are already covered. I can barely make out the far side of the parking lot. For the minute, we’re stuck.
The motel, I noticed yesterday, has a state package store attached to it plus some kind of café. At least we won’t starve. The posted check-out time is twelve noon, but maybe I can talk them into letting us stay free, at least until the snow stops.
Danny’s nose is running, and he starts whining even before his morning cartoons are over. I make us cheese and white bread sandwiches with the crusts trimmed off, but he refuses his. I think maybe he’s coming down with something—we’ve been lucky on that score too—but when I feel his forehead, he doesn’t seem to have a fever.
All he wants, it turns out, is to go outside and play in the snow.
“We can’t,” I say. “It’s much too cold, too wet. Plus we don’t have the right boots. We don’t even have waterproof gloves.”
“Me don’t care,” he wails back. “Me don’t need boots. Don’t need gubbies.”
“Oh no? Your hands would be frozen stiff inside of five minutes.”
“No, they won’t!”
“Oh yes they would!”
“No, they won’t!”
“Take a chill, Phil!”
But his whining gives way, all of a sudden, to real tears. I try teasing him out of it, but he tugs at my sweatpants, screaming now, jabbing at the front door. I push him away angrily. He slams back into me, flailing with his little fists.
“Look,” I say, holding his forearms firmly, “I’m not feeling so hot today. I feel lousy, if you want to know the truth. I don’t want to go outside.”
“Me don’t care.” Twisting and kicking out. “Me go by my ’elp.”
“My-self,” I say. “You know you can’t do that. We’ve got to stick together. Suppose you ran into a witch? What would happen then?”
“Me don’t want a ’itch! Me don’t want a quest!”
At least that’s what I think he said, because suddenly he isn’t just protesting. It’s escalated into something else, a total tantrum. I’ve never had that with him before. He lashes out at me, his face an ugly beet-red, and he scratches, hits, yanks, stomps his feet in frustration, and it takes all my strength to grab him and hold on.
“Danny! Danny Dalton, stop it for God’s sake! Stop it now!”
I lift him off the ground. I pin his arms, clutch him to my shoulder. That does no good. I start to sing to him. No good either. He’s beyond consoling. I hold him away from me, shake him. I sit in the one stuffed chair, pull him into me, rock back and forth, rock hard.
“For God’s sakes, sweetie! It’s me, Becca! Please stop it!”
But he can’t.
“Take deep breaths,” I tell him. “Slow, deep breaths.”
Finally he tries. Then he hyperventilates some more, short staccato pants, and squinches his eyes against a new rush of stingers. He coughs, hiccups. He sneezes all over us. I don’t have a tissue. I wipe his nose with my sleeve.
“Danny,” I say. “Just calm down now. Please. Tell me what’s wrong. It’s me, Becca, remember?”
And then it all comes out. In a jumble, in sobs.
He hates the quest. Nothing good happens, all we do is go from motel to motel. Every day is the same. The food is bad. He’s TV’d out. He hates making poopies in the potties. He misses his own potty at home. He misses his one-eyed bear. He misses the third floor. He doesn’t like the coloring books I’ve gotten him, or the stamp set. We haven’t seen any witches. We haven’t seen any warlocks except the one. We still don’t have a rocket car.
I try to reason with him. I never said the quest wouldn’t be boring lots of the time. Quests almost always are.
No good.
This isn’t just boredom, I think. And he isn’t coming down with something either.
Was it nothing that he called for Georgia in the middle of the night?
“Do you want to go home?” I ask him. “Is that it?” I’ve got him perched on my knees, facing me, supporting him under the arms. “Look at me, Danny. Is that what you want? Do you want to go home?”
“No,” he says, averting his eyes.
“Would you rather be with your mommy and daddy in your own house?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
But he can’t answer. He turns his head away, and I can see his little face squinch up again.
“Look at me, Danny,” I insist. “This is important. You have to tell me. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be with your mommy and daddy? And your new sister? At home in your own house?”
His face dissolves into new tears. He shakes his head, chin tucked in as though he’s trying to control himself. Then I hear, in his small, stammering voice: “Wanna … wanna stay … stay with … ’arrit.”
’arrit. Loud and clear.
It shocks me. I want to say: But that can’t be, sweetheart, it’s not my name. Instead I pull him back into my shoulder, push his head into the crook of my neck, rock. I pat him on the back, tousle his hair. I understand what he wants. It’s things the way they were before, on the third floor, Harriet and Justin. The quest—and Becca, Danny, the cars, the motels—is like a game that’s over.
He wants it the way it was before.
It makes me cry too, soundlessly, makes me hug all the tighter, until I realize that that’s not doing either of us any good.
“Would you feel better,” I say, holding him still, “if you could call me Harriet some of the time?”
“Uh-huh,” comes his muffled reply.
“And I called you Justin?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, I don’t see why we can’t do that, at least on special occasions. But only when we’re alone together, never when there are other people around. Do you understand?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Who are we when other people are around?”
“Becca.”
“Becca and …?”
“Danny.”
“Right. Well, here’s an idea,” my voice lightening, “why don’t we make today a special day? Like, why don’t we go out for lunch for a change? In a real restaurant. Would you like that?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You could order whatever you liked. No more of Becca’s crummy sandwiches. You could even have scrambled eggs and bacon, french fries, would you like that?”
“Ketchup.”
“Ketchup too. Then, if it stops snowing and the roads are okay, we could find a store and buy real snow boots. Waterproof mittens. Then we could play in the snow if you still wanted to.”
“Build a ’nowman?”
“Build a snowman, what a great idea! Do you know how?”
“Uh-huh.”
“No kidding. You really do?”
“Uh-huh.” Nodding.
“That’s great! Totally. Well, we’ve got a lot to do then. We’d better get organized, beginning with your teeth, young man. Now go get me your toothbrush, and let’s get cracking!”
He disentangles himself from my lap. I watch him head off toward the bathroom as though nothing at all has happened. Leaving me alone with my cramps, and my deflated enthusiasm, and the idea that maybe all I’ve just done is postpone the inevitable.
We play in the room the rest of the morning. That is, he colors, I color. I’ve bought him a pack of Old Maid cards, but he’s still too young for it. I end up trying to build a castle out of the cards, but he knocks it down before I can finish the third level.
We’re at the motel café early. I figure that will minimize the risk of anybody recognizing us.
I needn’t have worried. Except for a couple of men in work clothes drinking coffee at the counter, the place is empty.
“Of course that’s the weather,” I explain to Danny. “Otherwise, we’d never have gotten a table without waiting. You may not know it, but this place is historic. I even saw it listed in the guidebooks: ‘one of the last old-style diners in Ohio.’ Who knows? By the time you grow up, it might not even be around anymore.”
Well, you do what you have to do.
The waitress who serves us catches on. She recommends, for Danny, their “historic” quarter-pounder, which comes on a sesame roll with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle and, of course, french fries, and “from the bar,” a shake special, which combines three flavors of ice cream with a syrup of his choice and milk straight from the cow.
He takes chocolate syrup in his shake and tops it all off with a piece of apple pie à la mode. I haven’t seen him eat like this since … well, I guess I’ve never seen him eat like this. We sit in a booth, side by side, from which I can watch the front door, also the cars coming into the general store and the motel entrance. I see a couple of Jeeps, pickups with snowplows attached, and out on the main road a big snow remover with a long line of cars inching behind it.
I ask the waitress where we can buy some “heavy-duty” snow gear. She said there’s a shopping center a couple of miles away, with a sporting goods store and a discount chain. But will we be able to get through?
“You talking about the snow, honey?” she says. “This is nothing. Around here, we call this a dusting.”
Some dusting. At the same time, I have a choice to make. Earlier, the man in the motel office refused to let us stay the afternoon. Check-out time is twelve noon, he said. If we stayed beyond that, I’d have to pay for another day.
But the motel is half-empty, I pointed out to him (a generous estimate), did he really expect to fill it up in the middle of a snowstorm?
Finally, he agreed to let us stay till two. But no later.
Go then? Or stay?
After lunch, Danny votes to stay. We should buy boots and build a snowman. Why do we have to move all the time? He likes it here, and if we stay, we can eat dinner in the café too, can’t we?
“Please, Becca, please?”
The truth is, I don’t feel like driving around either, looking for another motel, even though the snow has mostly stopped.
We find the mall. The giant discount store has everything we need. Danny runs around like a wild man, up and down the aisles. In the toy department, we have a short war over a plastic Colt .45. (I win, with the help of a bo from Ninja Turtles.) Along the way, I manage to get him into a pair of boots that fit, and Thinsulate mittens, and even a red-and-blue hooded snowsuit on a fifty-off sale. The snowsuit is a size too big—he’ll be able to wear it next year, I joke with myself—but with the pants and sleeves rolled up, it fits him well enough, and he insists on wearing it out of the store.
The joke about next year makes me weepy. I chalk it up to my period. I buy buttons for the snowman, and a pail-and-shovel set designed for sandbox use but why not snow, and, for myself, boots, gloves, a new sweats outfit, underpants, tights, Tampax, lipstick, shampoo, and, on a whim, a tin drum of popcorn that’s been marked down from Christmas.
Not a spree exactly, but still.
Nobody looks at us strangely. As nearly as I can tell, nobody looks at us at all.
I pay by MasterCard—it’s the first time I’ve used it except for cars—and to top it off, I buy Danny three rides, a quarter apiece, on a bucking locomotive near the main entrance.
Back at the motel, we build our snowman. I can’t remember ever having done one before, only ice sculpture, once, back in Minnesota. It ends up bottom-heavy no matter what we do, a little like an old woman with full skirts, but thin-torsoed. A noticeable curve to the spine, I see when we step back, flushed and sweaty, to inspect our craftsmanship. Also, the button eyes are slightly crossed.
I fix the eyes, adjust the orange-rind mouth.
“Well, what do you think?” I ask.
“No scarf,” he says seriously. “No ’at.”
I can do something about the scarf—a pair of pantyhose I was going to chuck anyway—but the hat confounds me, except for his own Pirates cap, which I’m not about to sacrifice.
“Well, maybe it’s a woman,” I say. “A snowwoman.”
“No ’air,” he says.
“Well, I don’t know, maybe it’s a bald snowwoman.”
The idea tickles him. He starts to giggle, then laughs contagiously, and I catch it from him, pick him up, toss him hilariously into a snowbank. Then we start a snowball fight, first with balls but then great armfuls of loose snow that, whooping and giggling, we heap on each other from close range. Finally, our faces deliciously wet and cold, we collapse back into the snowbank.
I get his wet clothes off in the motel, pop him in and out of a tub, then make a quick detour to the state liquor store. I ask for Dewar’s, a pint bottle. Medicinal, I tell myself with an inner giggle. On account of my cramps. Then I think better of it and buy a fifth.
The woman at the counter doesn’t even ask me for proof of age.
I collect a bucket of ice on the way back to the room, fill a plastic glass to the brim with ice and Scotch, and humming, sipping—ahhh, God, when that warmth hits my stomach!—tell Danny to get ready for the big makeover. Then I set him up with TV, pry the lid off the popcorn drum for him, and, with a fresh Scotch within reach, set to work in the shower.
If I shampoo my hair once, I do it six times. I soap, squeeze, twist, rinse, shampoo again. I’m under the steaming water so long that my fingers turn to prunes, my toes too, probably my knees and elbows.
After a bout with the hair dryer, I still haven’t gotten rid of all the dye. My hair is now a darkish blond, but still with tints and glints of the unnatural color. It looks a wreck frankly, the worst of both worlds, but it will have to do. Tomorrow, when I make up my mind what we’re going to do next, I’ll either redye it or shampoo some more. For tonight, I don’t give a damn. I’m Harriet Major, and I have a dinner date with a young man named Justin Coffey.
I dress in the new sweats and, still barefoot, go into the room, glass in hand, for fresh ice and another—
The TV is still going.
Danny is sitting on the floor on the far side of the room, his back propped against the wall. The popcorn tin next to him.
Not where I left him.
The man is sitting in the comfortable chair between Danny and the door, filling it to overflowing. Still in his overcoat.
Goddamn, why did we stay over? Why did we build the snowman? Why why why why why why why?
We’re caught! We lasted all of two weeks!
“No problem,” the man says with a half-wave when he sees me. “Take your time. We won’t have any trouble.”
He’s holding a plastic glass in one hand. My Scotch!
“Who are you?” I shout at him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
He grins at me. Big, jowly, florid face.
“Oh, you can call me Harry,” he says with a laugh. “Or Tom or Dick, no problem. Harry and Harriet. Or would you like Rebecca better, maybe?”
I stare at him. He’s big, bulky, about ten times my size. I glance at the door, the phone. He’s closer to both. A lot closer to Danny.
Danny is looking up at me.
Scared? Looking for some signal? I can’t tell.
“Come on, just cool it,” the man says, following my eyes. “The kid’s fine. Why don’t you pour yourself another drink anyway? We’re going to have to wait awhile.”
“Wait for what?”
“A call-back.”
“What do you mean, a call-back?”
“A telephone call.” He gestures at the phone. “We’re not going anywhere till it comes.”
I start to lose it inside. My stomach has just shriveled up, as though a big fist is grabbing at it.
“Oh?” I get out. “And then where are we going?” No answer. “Who are we waiting for? Who’s supposed to call back?”
I’m trying to keep my voice from trembling. He only shrugs and grins at me. Says I led him a merry chase, that I must be some smart cookie. He suggests again that I pour myself a drink.
I don’t think he’s a cop, although he looks like one.
Somebody’s hired hand.
Guess who.
But I can’t let myself think about that.
I glance around the room for possible weapons. The Scotch bottle, the ice bucket, a lamp. Danny’s plastic bo? Our Gap bags, half-filled with stuff?
Or should I fake outrage, start screaming for help?
Or offer him money? How much would it take? I still have over two thousand bucks in cash, my savings left over from working for Georgia, would that do the trick? After all, how much can a guy like him make, overweight and thinning hair, crummy clothes?
But suppose I offered him the money, what would prevent him from simply pocketing it and keeping us there anyway?
And even if he didn’t, how could he let us go? If he’s waiting for a call-back, doesn’t that mean he’s already made a call? To announce that he’s found us? So how could he let us go?
I can’t concentrate on it. Why did we stay? Why didn’t we just leave? If only we’d left at noon! If only I wasn’t saddled with Justin! But if I wasn’t saddled with Justin, I wouldn’t be here myself, would I? And if I hadn’t run away with Robert A. Smith, I wouldn’t be here either, would I? And if I hadn’t done this, hadn’t done that, or gone or been or done or did, if I myself had never … happened!
It’s over, I think. It’s going to go fast now. By tomorrow, when I wake up, they’ll have given me another shot, a big dosage to welcome me back, and I’ll be all groggy, punchy, dry in the mouth, and everything in between will have been like a dream I dreamt to keep myself from going stark, raving mad.
I won’t! I can’t!
I need a drink. I pour myself a Scotch, hold tight to the bottle, sit on the edge of the bed.
The bastards! The goddamn bastards!
The man—Harry—tells me to put the bottle back. Or better yet, give it to him. Carefully, he says.
I do. He tops off his glass.
“Do you have a gun?”
This is Danny, from the floor. For a second, I’d forgotten all about him.
The man laughs.
“Never mind, Danny,” I tell him.
“Is he a oarlock?” Danny asks me back, from the floor.
I shake my head, willing him to shut up.
“A what?” the man interrupts.
“Never mind,” I answer. Then, thinking better of it, “A warlock.”
“What’s a warlock?”
“I think you’d better ask my brother,” I say.
“Your brother?” The man laughs.
“A man ’itch,” Danny answers.
“A what?”
“A male witch,” I explain. “A warlock is a male witch.”
The man—Harry, if that’s his name—thinks that’s funny too. He says he’s been called a lot of things in his time, but never a male witch.
“Harry the witch,” he says. “What is it again? War …?”
“Oarlock,” Danny answers.
“Well, what do you know? How come you know so much about things like that?”
Danny holds forth about ’itches, oarlocks, and how they have all kinds of special powers, you have to be very careful how you act around them.
The man listens.
“The reason he knows so much about it,” I say, willing Danny into silence, “is that I’m something of one myself.”
“Something of what?”
“A witch.”
“Oh?” He seems uncertain as to whether I’m fooling around with him or not.
“That’s right,” I go on. “Actually my mother really is one. You don’t know her, do you?”
“Your mother? How would I know your mother?”
“No reason you should,” I answer carefully. At least he’s answered one of my questions. “She’s devoted a lifetime to it. I mean, most people laugh at it, but witchcraft’s really a very serious field. I’ve only picked up a few of the spells, here and there.”
“I bet you have,” he says, intrigued.
But the phone interrupts us. Goddamn! He lets it ring a second time, and I start forward, but, shaking his head, he waves me off, picks up the receiver.
He listens.
“Yeah, that’s right, the both of them,” he says. “Yeah, no problem, everything’s quiet and peaceful, we’re just having a little conversation. … Yeah, I won’t, no problem.”
I hear him give the motel’s name and address, followed by road instructions.
Then: “Oh?… Yeah, sure, no problem, hold on.” Then, smiling at me: “He wants to talk to you.”
My body goes stiff.
“Who wants to talk to me?”
“It’s Mr. Smith,” he answers with a grin. “Be nice now,” and he pushes his chair back toward the door, making a passage for me and at the same time blocking my escape.
I take the receiver from him. Goddamn, I’ve gone stiff all over, stiff like a board, hard as rock. I toss my hair back with a jerk.
“Hello?” I say.
“You’ve led us some chase, darling.” His familiar voice. “But now it’s over, thank God. I’m so glad. I hope you are too. I’ve missed you terribly.”
“Where are you, Robert?”
“At the airport.”
“The airport? What airport?”
“Columbus, darling. The minute I heard you’d been found, of course I was on the next plane. I’ll be with you shortly.”
“What do you want?”
“I still need the boy, darling.”
“Why? What are you going to do with him?”
“Nothing. No harm will come to him. I need him, that’s all.” He pauses, just long enough for me to know he’s lying. “But I’ve had a long time to think about us too, dear Becca. I’ve missed you terribly, even more than I imagined I would.”
And even now, I think blindly, you can’t resist playing with me.
“In spite of everything,” he says, “I don’t think it’s too late for us. Once this is over, we can pick up where we left off. We might even go away together, let me show you something of the world.”
He made the same promise the first day, I remember. Together, we were going to wipe out my past and see the world.
“Why don’t you let him go then?” I hear myself ask. “You can have me instead.”
“Oh? And how do you propose we go about that? We can’t just leave him here, can we? In the middle of Ohio?”
“Let me take him home first.”
“Home? Oh no, I’m afraid I couldn’t let you do that, darling. But seriously, I’ve a better idea. Why don’t you let Harry take the boy away right now? You wait for me there alone. I won’t be long. There’ll be just time enough for you to get yourself ready. What do you think? Well?”
But I can’t answer. It’s not in me to say anything.
“Of course, if you tried to leave yourself, I’d have to hunt you down again. But you already know that, so why bother?”
He’s playing with me now, the way he always did, and I’m like a fly struggling feebly in his web. My mouth is clotted, my throat, my brain.
“Well, you decide, darling,” he says. “Either you can all wait for me together, or you send them off and wait alone. Either way, I won’t be long. Now why don’t you put Harry on again, let me explain it to him?”
I hand over the phone obediently. It’s over, I think. There’s nothing I can say or do or think that will make any difference. Distantly it comes to me: Hasn’t he just offered me a last chance? Freedom for Becca? Couldn’t I just let them go and then walk out the door myself, get in the car, drive off?
Except I can’t. Couldn’t.
He knows that too.
I glance at Justin. He hasn’t moved. His back is to the wall, his dark eyes focused intensely on me. We’re in it together, sweets, I try to tell him. I got you into this, somehow I’ll get you out. There’s no way I’m going to bug out on you.
The man—Harry—hangs up. He squeezes his bulk out of the chair, stands, stretches. Standing, he seems enormous to me, and his overcoat too small.
“I’m supposed to tell you what he said.”
“Yes?”
“Same as he told you. If I take the kid away, though, I better have your car keys. I guess he doesn’t want his little birdie flying the coop.”
“Did he say that?”
“About your car keys? Yep. That’s what the man said.” He grins at me. “Also said if you give me any trouble, I can do whatever I want to with you.”
The goddamn bastard. He couldn’t resist.
I look at Harry, at Justin on the floor, and then, from somewhere deep inside, I feel the anger flowing. I think: No, it’s not over. I’m not going to let it be over. It’s not over!
I study Harry.
“Would you like that?” I ask him, gazing levelly at him.
“Like what?”
“For me to try something? Give you trouble? So that you can do whatever you want to with me?”
He laughs. He even blushes a little. Says nothing.
“Look,” I say, dropping the challenge from my voice, “why don’t you at least let me make us another drink. How much time do we have till he gets here?”
“I don’t know exactly,” he says. “Three-quarters of an hour, maybe an hour. Depends on the traffic.”
“Plenty of time,” I say, smiling at him.
I watch him hesitate, watch him think on the one hand that he has a job to do, but, on the other …?
Light bulbs in his head.
He stays standing. I walk in front of him, inches away, take the bottle, his glass, cross the room, busy myself with the ice bucket.
I know he’s watching me every step. I let him. Not for nothing am I an evil promiscuous bitch. I work him mercilessly. I work him with my eyes, my hands, the swirl of my hair, the twist of my body. My words, my Scotch. He lets on that he’s been tracking us since the beginning, and, sitting on the edge of the bed, smoothing the bedspread with my palm, I tell him he had no idea how lonely it got for me, night after night after night. I tell him it’s pretty hard to get it off on a three-and-a-half-year-old. He laughs at that. I tell him we have just enough time, that no one need know, Mr. Smith least of all, and what kind of trouble does he want me to make for him?
“What about the kid?” he says hoarsely.
“Don’t worry about him,” I answer, my eyes on Harry. “He’s seen a little bit of everything.” Justin is watching me too, and I will him with my mind: Don’t! It’s only a game, but I don’t want you to look.
“Come on,” I say to Harry finally, “a little witchcraft,” and crisscrossing my arms so that when I lift my sweatshirt over my head, my T-shirt with it, my breasts come up before his eyes.
He takes off his overcoat, takes off his jacket. There’s a small holster underneath, with a gun in it, and a sweater. He takes them off too. A little unsteady. I will Justin not to look. I have a last-minute panic—God help me if I fail!—and I want to shout at Justin to run for it, just get out the door and take off. But Harry is already on me, so fast I’m unprepared, arms reaching, grabbing, so close I can smell his boozy breath. At the last second, I duck his grasp, let fly with my knee. All my force. I feel the give, hear the crack, his humongous gasp.
He falls into me, grabs at me, misses, grabs bedspread instead. But he doesn’t go down. He’s reaching, stumbling, bellowing, and I realize Justin has tackled him around the leg and that he’s trying to kick Justin free. He loses his balance, though. Down he goes. I’m free. I grab the Dewar’s bottle, crack him hard in the face. And again, again when he tries to turn away, a fourth time.
My way! my mind is shouting. I’m ending it my way!
Or maybe I’m shouting it out loud. I have this sense of tremendous noise. Justin is screaming too.
I can’t shut him up. He doesn’t understand. He’s Justin again. Danny is dead.
I take the gun from the holster. Then I grab my clothes, my purse, Justin and his snowsuit, and we’re out of there.
This time we won’t stop for anything. We’re both screaming as I drive into the darkness, skidding and swerving on the slick side roads. Blinding headlights coming the other way.
I blew it, that’s all I can think. I should have waited in the motel with Harry’s gun till he walked in the door. I should have shot him in the stomach in cold blood.
I didn’t. I ran like a scared rabbit. That’s my instinct: when in doubt, run, run away, goddamn. With a head start of what? Fifteen, twenty minutes? I picture him finding Harry, reviving him, questioning him.
I see the Jaguar in my mind.
He may even have planned it, figuring I’d find a way to beat Harry, saving the pleasure of hunting us down himself.
It makes no difference which way we go, north, south, west. I failed. If I let him find us once, he’ll find again. In my panic, I think my only hope is east. There’s an outside chance he won’t expect me to quit.
I can hardly see to drive. We’re going much too fast for the roads, the headlights, and cars keep splattering wet stuff onto the windshield that freezes on contact. Justin is screaming his head off in the backseat, and no matter how fast I drive, he’ll be driving faster.
“Shut up!” I roar over my shoulder. “For Christ’s sakes, Justin, take a chill!”
It only makes him scream louder. I can feel him fighting the car seat, struggling to get free.
I turn on the radio—music, volume up to the top. I roll down the window and sing at the frigid night. I careen off the approach road—finally—and onto the interstate, the white arrow crooking “east,” and roar the skidding Tempo into the darkness.
Still I can’t drown Justin out. He’s totally freaked. I worry that somehow he’ll break loose, fly headfirst into the back of the passenger seat. I slow a little, down to seventy, sixty-five, turn off the radio, try to talk to him.
He won’t listen.
For the first time, I resent him totally, violently. I don’t care if he’s only a child, doesn’t he realize we’re in danger? For God’s sake, can’t he understand we have to keep going?
No, he can’t. Won’t.
A few exits down the interstate, I get off. No headlights behind us. We come onto some dark and winding highway where slicks of icy snow stretch across the surface. Few street lights, no traffic. I drive about a mile, then turn off onto another road and stop alongside a snowbank, switch off the headlights.
At least, I think, it’s scared my cramps away. The old shock treatment. All I feel now are intermittent dull echoes. But the blackness, stopping in the middle of nowhere, hasn’t stopped Justin. I click on the interior light, try to talk to him, but he slams back against his car seat, wrenches at the confining harness. I get out of the car, stumble around through the snow, and pull him free.
I envelop him in my parka for warmth. I squeeze him—no love squeeze. I feel like I have to squeeze some sense into him. Finally, fighting to calm my voice, I subdue him. He sobs and sniffles, and at last I feel his fingers reach into my hair, twisting, pulling, and I hear him sniffing my hair.
Was it the bad man at the motel? I ask him.
He nods against my neck.
Did the man hurt him?
Shakes his head.
Did he think I was going to leave him there?
Nods again.
“But I didn’t, did I? Thanks to you, Justin, we made it. All we’ve got to do now is keep going.”
Apparently, though, there’s something else. What I expect is: Me had enough, me want to go home, but when he manages to get it out, and when I finally understand him, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
He’s hungry. In fact he’s “darving.”
And I’d promised him we’d have dinner at the café.
And didn’t I teach him that, once you make promises, it’s for keeps?
I take a deep breath. I have two choices. Either I can stuff him back in his car seat and he can scream his head off while I think through our next move, or I can try to accommodate him.
Another deep breath.
“Yes, sweetie,” I tell him, “promises are for keeps. You’re absolutely right. But sometimes, in very special circumstances, you have to break promises, even though you don’t want to.”
“Why?”
“Because that was a bad man, at the motel. I think he’s probably still there, waiting in case we come back. So we can’t go to the café.”
“Too dangerous?”
“Too dangerous.”
“But you took his gun, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Was he really a oarlock?”
“No.”
“And the one on the telephone?”
I hesitate. Then, holding him tight, I say, “There are no warlocks, sweetie. Not really. That’s just pretend. All there are is bad people.”
He seems to take it all right, although when I stuff him back into the car seat, he clutches hard at me, and I have to pull myself free. Then we drive off, back onto the interstate, and I promise him we’ll find a great place down the road for dinner, at least as good as the café, while all along, inside, I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to tell him what’s going to happen next when I don’t know myself.
Except I do know, I think. That’s the trouble.
A few exits farther, when I spot the crossed fork and spoon on the sign, I get us off again.
“Here it is!” I call out over my shoulder.
“It” turns out to be an IHOP, a brightly lit square in the darkness, free-standing next to two gas stations and a small shopping center. As we drive in and park, I do my “famous restaurant” number again. I tell him how their pancakes are the best anywhere, and how it’s called International House of Pancakes because the pancake batter is flown in daily, fresh, from many different parts of the world, places like Poland, India, France, even China. The Chinese, I say, are famous for their pancakes. Inside, we sit across from each other in a booth. I can see the entrance, and I keep my purse, with Harry’s little gun in it, on the banquette next to me. I let Justin order all by himself. He chooses pancakes à la mode, with french fries and ketchup, milk—I still insist on milk—and he digs into the food again as though I really have been starving him. I hardly touch mine. Instead, getting it together for what I’m about to say, I drink mug after mug of black coffee.
And now it’s time.
“It was very dangerous,” he says.
“Well, yes, I guess it was.”
“’arrit very brave.”
“Thank you. You were too.”
“Y’welcome.” Then: “Are you really a ’itch?”
“Me? No, of course not.”
“You told him you was.”
“I know. The witch’s daughter. Well, I had to tell him something, didn’t I?”
He grins back at me. Then: “Is your momma a ’itch?”
I hesitate. “No, not really,” I say. “She’s just a bad person.”
“Me thought her is dead.”
I shake my head, flustered. This was just something I told him and Georgia. “No,” I say, “she’s alive.” I watch him take in the information. It’s the first time, I think, that he’s caught me in a lie. “I don’t mean bad in every way,” I add hurriedly. “Not necessarily. It’s just that she did bad things to me.”
“To ’arrit?”
“Yes,” I nod.
“When?”
“We just never got along. Sometimes that happens. I guess I did bad things to her too.”
He struggles with this. Or maybe I’m the one who’s struggling. He’s too young to understand about bad mommies. I look away, unable to deal with his disapproval.
“Was him a oarlock?” he says.
“Was who a warlock?”
“The man at the motel.”
“I told you, Justin. That’s just pretend stuff. But he was a bad man.”
“Him chase us?”
“Yes, maybe. Or the one on the telephone.”
“Him catch’d us?”
“No, we’re not going to let anyone catch us.”
“You got his gun.”
“Yes, I took his gun. But I’m not going to use it.”
“Can I see it?”
“No. You know how I feel about guns.”
Almost immediately I see his lower lip quiver and I guess what he’s thinking about—not Harry’s gun, but the plastic Colt .45 he wanted at the discount store. But then he says, “Me brave too.”
“I know that, Justin. You’re one brave dude. I’m very proud of you.”
But now’s the time, Becca, like it or not, and like it or not, I know I’m going to hurt him.
“There’s something I’ve got to tell you, sweets,” I say, gazing across at him. “I think maybe you know it already. It’s over. The quest, the whole thing. All over.”
He doesn’t react. I repeat it.
“Over, done, finished.”
He hears me, but if he understands, he doesn’t seem that devastated.
I want to tell him these are genuinely bad people, that it is dangerous, that we can’t go on in the middle of it. At least not the two of us. I want to tell him that it was all craziness on my part, a bad idea. Instead I say, “Quests are just pretend anyway. Maybe a long time ago people did real quests—knights—but they don’t anymore.”
“Do too,” he says.
“No, Justin. All that was a very long time ago. Knights and ladies and dragons, witches, warlocks, all that stuff, we don’t have them anymore.”
“Do too,” he insists stubbornly.
For God’s sake, can’t he understand that I’m trying to find an easy way? For both of us?
No, I guess he can’t.
“Okay,” I say. “But I’ve made up my mind. We’re going home, Justin. That’s where we’re going tonight.”
No response. I can’t read his reaction at all.
“Yes, home,” I say. “To your mommy and daddy. I’m going to take you there. We’ve been away a very long time. I think they must miss you very much by now. I think you must miss them too.”
He turns his face away, but I see in profile that particular pinched look he gets when he’s distressed or in trouble.
“’arrit come too?” he asks.
“Of course, silly,” I say. “Who else do you think is going to take you home?”
“But after?” he asks.
“After what?”
“Will it be just like …? Just like …?”
I take a deep breath. Leave it to him to find the loophole.
“Just like before, you mean?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well,” I say, “sometime or other I’m going to have to decide what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. Like going back to college? And do it. We’ve talked about that before.” But I can see it doesn’t help him, and I rush on, lie a little more. “Of course, it wouldn’t be forever,” I say. “For one thing, college isn’t all year. Maybe next summer’s not such a bad idea, what do you think? Once you’re finished with Group, you’ll have plenty of time for adventures. Maybe we could go off together next summer? Just the two of us?”
But he doesn’t believe me, I can tell.
“Well?” I plunge on. “What do you think?”
“’arrit don’t love me anymore,” he says.
It stuns me.
“But that’s ridiculous, Justin! I … I adore you! You’re my best friend!”
“Me don’t want to go home yet,” comes his answer.
“Look, sweets,” I say, reaching across and holding his chin, “let me tell you something about Justin Coffey. Maybe you won’t even understand it, but the other night, when you woke up—I think you’d been having a bad dream—you called out, ‘Mommy, Mommy.’ Remember? You didn’t call out ‘Becca’ or ‘Harriet.’ You said, ‘Mommy.’ I think you miss your mommy a lot. And what about your little sister, Zoe? For God’s sake, you haven’t even seen her yet. If you don’t get a move on, she’ll be all grown up and you won’t even have seen her as a little baby!”
It makes no difference though. Nothing I can do or say will make him believe me. Instead I see the betrayal in his dark eyes. I want to tell him: Please, Justin, I’ve got us in a terrible spot, the least I can do is try to get you out of it, please don’t do this to me.
“I do too love you, Justin Coffey,” I say. “I swear to God I do.”
I let go of his chin. I want to hold him, hug him, but he’s turned his head away. He listens in silence while I talk on, making promises I know I’ll never keep.
Not another word out of him.
I pay the bill. Cash, MasterCard, what the fuck difference does it make anymore? I take him to the john, then I bundle him back into the car seat. Within fifteen minutes—I can tell by his breathing—he is asleep. I wait a few more minutes, then stop on the shoulder of the interstate and turn off the headlights.
This stop is for me. I’ve never had an easy time crying. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to—just now, at the Pancake House—but usually the tears won’t come at all and what I get instead is a dry, burning sensation. Now they well out of my eyes, and I let them flow, feel them rolling down my cheeks, taste their salt. I take deep breaths, swivel and arch my neck. After a while, I climb into the backseat, rummage for Justin’s snowsuit, manage to get the pants half on him, the jacket draped and wedged around him like a blanket. Then I drive off again. A half hour later, I get off the interstate one last time, to top off the gas tank and buy NoDoz and two Styrofoam containers of black coffee.
I expect to have to fight to stay awake, but it’s not a problem. Maybe I’m too strung out. Every pair of headlights in the rearview, every red taillight up ahead, could be him. Only the trucks, all lights blazing, are my friends. The land grows hillier as I go, and the winding strip of road cuts through dark rock and snowdrifts that loom down suddenly out of the shadows, and I know he could be anywhere, behind or out in front of me, even sitting quietly around the next bend in a dark car parked on the shoulder.
I see no dark cars parked on the shoulders.
I have to plan carefully, down to the last detail, but my mind keeps drifting off, to the familiar rhythm of the “if onlys,” starting with if only I hadn’t let myself get talked into the snowman, and once started—it’s an old habit—I can’t stop. They mark my life backwards like telephone poles on a train ride. If only I hadn’t answered Georgia’s ad. If only, that last day at Looney Tunes, when I came downstairs and there was this distinguished-looking man rising out of the couch in the parlor—really very elegant—I’d had the guts to say, “But I have no Cousin Robert. I’ve never seen this man before in my life.” And if I hadn’t slept with too many men, including Uncle Mark, which is what really freaked the Witch out; or if I hadn’t gone to St. Jude’s Obscure College for Women in frozen Minnesota, or if—this is where it always starts—my father hadn’t died.
In fact, as the “care-givers” at Looney Tunes liked to point out, it didn’t start there. But I remember the funeral in Bernardsville, the rain, black umbrellas, Uncle Mark holding her elbow. My own dull dread. And thinking: tough shit, Becca, the wrong parent died.
The Witch wore black, with a veil. I wore my high school coat.
And then we were stuck. Beefeater’s by the case and the closet for me.
People—the care-givers included—have always thought I exaggerate how bad she was. They can’t believe the closet story, that a fifteen-year-old girl would, from time to time, “let” herself be locked in a closet stuffed with old clothes, a steamer trunk that had once belonged to her grandmother, boxes jammed below the shelves as well as on top, or that every time I tried to hide a light bulb there, so much as a flashlight, a box of goddamn Fig Newtons, she found me out. They can’t or won’t believe that it had been going on for as long as I can remember. You fat little pig I can’t stand to look at you anymore. Or that I learned, early, not to scream, or fight, certainly not to cry, just to sit, squeezed in the dark, knowing that sooner or later I’d hear her footsteps outside, curses sometimes, knocking into stuff, her clunky key in the keyhole.
I got out as fast as I could. Not the closet, I mean, but Bernardsville. In frozen Minnesota, where the sky gets dark in October, I fell in love. Once I met my Johnny Oakley, I spent more time at the university than at St. Jude’s, and I was going to transfer there my sophomore year, until the Witch found out about it. The next thing I knew, if I wanted to go to college at all, it would have to be in New Jersey. Johnny sent me a letter, which I read once and threw out, and a dozen farewell roses, which I buried. Then I went to see Uncle Mark, in the city. I knew they were sleeping together by then, but he was also my father’s lawyer, and if he wasn’t my real uncle, at least I’d known him since childhood. I called him. He said, “Come on in, Becca,” and in I went, to these sensational offices downtown, with the views of the harbor and his name on the door, Lambert Laughin Spain. I showed him the papers I’d stolen from her. Legally, he said, I didn’t have a leg to stand on. Yes, the education trust was for my benefit, but didn’t I see, it named my mother sole trustee? Empowered to act in her sole discretion?
I took off. Minneapolis by thumb, three days. I guess I wanted to hear it firsthand from Johnny, and I did. Just like his letter said, he couldn’t deal with me anymore. We were too young; there was my mother; it was all too complicated. I refused to leave, though. I was abject, I begged, I prostrated myself. I even got a job, waitressing, for two days. But when I found out the real reason—that his new girlfriend was already living on the top floor of the house that had been intended for us—I drew blood. Johnny threatened to call the police, but he must have called the Witch instead. The next thing I knew, I was on a plane home, accompanied by good old Uncle Mark, whom she’d sent out to get me.
Maybe you could say we deserved each other, the Witch and I. As for Mark, afterward he liked to say I seduced him. Maybe I did. I know that plane ride started in tears and ended up with him undressing me, button by button, at the Marriott Hotel at Newark Airport, which led in turn to other venues, including the Witch’s bed, where she discovered us one memorable afternoon, Mark with his hands raised in self-defense, I convulsed in giggles. And other vices, other men, the year I finally went crazy and ran away twice, twice retrieved, and became, at home and away, the evil promiscuous bitch of her prediction, which led, eventually, to Looney Tunes, last known address of the congenitally antisocial and mentally unstable, and, last spring, to “Cousin Robert” steering me by the arm out to the gleaming black Jaguar in the driveway.
I never found out how he found me. He wouldn’t tell me. I never found out who he really was either. Not a damn thing. I tried for a while, but he was far too careful, too clever. And too charming too, in the beginning. He said, that first day, “The truth would only disappoint you, my dear. It is much too banal. Think of it that I fell out of the sky, an accident of nature. Take advantage of it. Let me invent us.”
Harriet Major. Robert A. Smith.
By the time I understood what he wanted of me, it was too late.
I guess with me it always is.
I run out of if onlys around four in the morning. I’m blinking my eyes against the uniform darkness, and the beams of my headlights, the blink-blink-blink of the white dashes marking the lanes. I straddle the dashes but even the sounds work against me, the regular seams in the road underneath, the drone of the engine, the steady breathing, when I listen hard for it, of Justin in the backseat. And the soft bluish lights from the dashboard. And the lulling warmth of the heater …
I just jerked awake again.
If I try to keep going, I’m going to kill us both.
I pull off at the next exit. I park next to a closed gas station. There’s a phone booth outside. I undo my seat belt, lock the doors, check Justin, then stretch sideways in the front seat, pulling my knees up under my parka.
“I do too love you, Justin Coffey,” I say.
A little after seven, I wake up and call Georgia.