The Words Between Us, page 21
“United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute, how may I direct your call?”
“I need to talk to someone about visiting an inmate.”
28
Then
I sat in the idling car at the end of Peter’s street. I hadn’t planned on coming here when I turned the key in the ignition. But then a reporter had shown up—one who knew my name. My real name. I stared at the blank page I’d torn from the back of the library copy of the 1972 Kennedy High School yearbook. I hadn’t known what to say to my mother in a letter. Now I didn’t know what to say to Peter.
No, it wasn’t that. I knew what I wanted to say. That he’d betrayed me. That exposing me to the press was unforgivable. That I had warned him if he told anyone it would be over between us. That he could take back his mom’s stupid books and go on believing whatever he wanted about her. I didn’t want them anyway.
That he had crushed me.
But when you wrote something, it was forever. Sharp words spoken in anger might dull over time as memory twisted and things of the past faded and blurred. A letter never softened, never changed. It was always there to remind you, to keep the wound ragged and raw. Which was what I wanted.
Right?
The garage door opened. I ducked low in my seat as Jack Flynt slowly backed out and turned down the street. His taillights disappeared around a corner. I sat up straight and scribbled out my note. I inched the car up to the house and found the button to pop the trunk. As quickly as possible, I piled the tattered boxes and pillowcases and the Rubbermaid container on the porch. On top I placed the yearbooks we had taken from the school library, along with the note, tucked partway into the one from 1972.
My hand hovered at the doorbell, finger extended. Then it dropped. Better not to chance him actually opening the door before I could get away. I got back into the car and drove off in fits and starts.
I didn’t know where to go except away from town. I filled the tank at a gas station, then loaded the counter with snack foods and drinks. When I handed the clerk a hundred-dollar bill he pointed wordlessly at a sign that said “No 50’s or 100’s.”
“But I already pumped the gas, and when you add all this stuff up, you’re not going to have to give me much change.”
“Where you going, miss?”
I tried to look taller. “Excuse me?”
“Where are you running off to?”
“Nowhere. I’m stocking up for my grandmother. She loves Hostess Cupcakes.”
“Where’d you get that money?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I got it from her. Now are you going to sell me this stuff or not?”
The man sighed but took the money. I left the store with two plastic grocery bags full of junk food for me, crackers and nuts for The Professor, and a full tank of gas. I wanted to start off right then, but I hadn’t slept all night. I drove toward the Saginaw Bay, to an empty roadside park, and covered The Professor’s travel cage with my coat. Then I slipped into unconsciousness.
When I woke, the sun was hanging in the western sky. Beside me on the passenger seat, the doll’s face glowed red in the evening light. Her dusty little patent leather shoes rested on The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. The one book I had wanted to keep. The one book to which I had no rightful claim. I had never paid for it.
I should have left that one on Peter’s porch too. I couldn’t start fresh with that book hanging around my neck like an albatross. Even if I didn’t know what my ultimate destination was, I knew I had to do one more thing before I left Sussex for good.
But I’d have to wait for the cover of darkness.
The police cruiser didn’t have its flashers on, but I could tell someone was in the trailer when I was still far down the road because all the lights were on inside. I fumbled for the switch to turn off the headlights and slowed to a crawl as I pulled into the cemetery lot. Peter’s reporter was nowhere to be seen.
I slipped out of the car and wove through the gravestones by memory until I came to Emily Flynt’s, then knelt in the dead grass that had been so recently blanketed in snow. I placed The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson in front of the headstone where I had found it seven months before and stood up feeling a little lighter.
The trailer door opened, and I ducked back down behind the stone. The house was now dark and the cops were shutting their car doors. I prayed that the sound would not set off a round of squawking that might alert them to the car that was shrouded in darkness in the gravel lot. But The Professor stayed silent as they drove off into the night.
The missing bird didn’t necessarily mean anything. A parrot left to his own devices could escape, after all. But the missing car must have been noticed, must have attested to the fact that the girl who had been living there had run off. Probably the reporter had tipped them off.
Maybe they wouldn’t be back. Or maybe they would track me, trace every step I had made. Maybe they’d question the cheerless gas station attendant. Maybe there would be cops on every highway leading out of town.
I needed to get out while the getting was good.
I drove in no particular direction but away. Away from the dead house, away from the graves, away from Peter. If the police had issued an alert for a runaway or a missing person or a car thief, I couldn’t stop anywhere near here to figure out which way I was going. And it didn’t matter anyway. I had no plan.
Stopping at intersections, turning, correcting the car’s natural drift toward the ditches that lurked invisible along the side of the dark road—all terrifying at first—got easier as I went along. I was afraid to go any faster than about thirty miles per hour, which felt like hurtling down the steep first hill of a roller coaster.
When the sky began to purple in the east so that I could tell what direction I was going, I stopped and pulled a map from Grandma’s glove box. I traced thick yellow lines of highway to where they ended near the enormous blue blobs of the Great Lakes I had just seen. I was surrounded by water. South seemed the only way out.
But for some reason, my eyes kept drifting north, to that big lake—deep, cold, ruthless. I thought of the cliffs and the dunes and the trails. And I thought of the little visitor station we had passed.
Perfect.
29
Now
I roll back into River City as the sun is setting. The streetlights are blinking on, and kids riding bikes push the limits of what it means to be in by dark. With my windows down I hear voices on porches, dogs barking, a lawn mower choking into silence. I cruise down Midway with my foot off the pedal. I brake lightly as I near the store, then change my mind and keep driving to the riverwalk. At the sprawling playground at Columbus Park, one last dad drags reluctant children from the swings and piles them into a Subaru. A couple teenagers rollerblade past my parked car. Then I’m alone.
The long drive back to Michigan has given me plenty of time to think, and my mother has given me plenty to think about. By the time I crossed the Pennsylvania-Ohio border, I had managed to forgive my mom for being taken in by Billy Ackerman’s lies. It was so easy to allow another person to derail you. So easy to go on blaming the winds of chance for one’s misfortunes. Hadn’t I done that for most of my life?
What I couldn’t forgive her for was not standing by my dad. The irony is not lost on me. I’ve spent half my life believing her loyalty to him had meant disloyalty to me. Now I know the truth to be the exact opposite. She had stood by me to the extreme. So why am I not happy? Why am I never really happy?
I get out of the car and place my hands on the rail at the water’s edge. The river slips silently by at August’s unhurried pace. On the other side, the last gasp of the setting sun reflects off the windows of the new loft housing where the gravel quarry used to be. Funny. Last time I looked at that building, there had been no glass.
In a town where nothing much had changed for decades, a sudden spate of new construction and renovation seems to promise better times ahead. Ugly facades that had been erected in the 1970s are being removed to uncover the beautiful stonework of River City’s lumber boom years. Abandoned factories are being turned into luxury condos. Spruce up the old, and when it can’t be saved, raze it to the ground and build something new. The question is, what is worth saving? And what must be destroyed to make room for something better?
I turn away from the river and lean back on the railing. On the darkening park lawn, a robin yanks a worm from the ground and flies away. He and his mate are likely on their second or third brood of chicks. He’ll work hard to provide for them until fall, when they’ll all fly away from here to someplace where the worms and insects they feed on are plentiful. No one will tell him when it’s time to move on. He’ll just know.
The next morning, I open the store as usual, pleased to read notes from Dawt Pi and Ryan about how smoothly the weekend ran. A few customers trickle in and out, including old Mr. Sutton looking for more westerns. Everything is, by all accounts, normal.
Yet something feels off, skewed somehow. It must be the shelves behind the counter, empty since I boxed up Peter’s books. I hate empty shelves. In fact, as I look around the store, many of the shelves feel a bit on the scanty side, so many books have been lugged down to the marina. It looks like I’m already having a going-out-of-business sale.
It’s not until evening when I flip the Open sign to Closed and start up to my apartment that I notice that the boxes of books I stacked by the stairs before leaving for Connecticut are missing. I glance around the back room, but they’re nowhere to be seen. I don’t find them back in the store either.
I pull the notes from Dawt Pi and Ryan out of the trash and reread them, searching for clues about what they may have done with Peter’s books. Dawt Pi’s note is simple, short, and to the point: Thank you for $. 12 custumers. Talk soon! Ryan’s is longer, explaining how far along they have gotten on the Dreadnoughtus. On the last line, my breath catches: The legs are all covered and they look awesome!
I rush down the sidewalk to the marina and through the unlocked door. The dinosaur skeleton is complete. The legs are indeed covered with books that look like colorful scales. In the southeast corner of the cavernous room are stacks and stacks of boxes, each one filled with books gleaned from all over River City and beyond.
“Didn’t expect to see you here tonight,” comes Ryan’s voice. “How did it go with your mom?”
“Where are the books from the back room?”
“What?”
“I stacked six boxes of books in my back room and put a sign on them that said Not for Sale. Where are they?”
Ryan glances nervously at the Dreadnoughtus. “Um . . .”
“Please tell me you didn’t—” I race to the trunk-like legs of the sculpture, my eyes darting like hummingbirds over the book covers.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Ryan says as he follows right behind. “I did bring those boxes down Saturday. But that doesn’t mean they’ve been opened.”
“Why would you take those? Didn’t you see the sign?”
“It said they weren’t for sale. We’ve been bringing boxes of books from the store for weeks. I thought they were for the Dreadnoughtus.”
I circle each leg. They are not here. I try to force my racing heart to slow. “Okay, where would you have put them?”
He indicates the mountain of boxes. “All the books are in there. But it shouldn’t take long to find them.”
Silently we open box after box. The first three boxes of Peter’s books are fairly easy to find. The next two are more challenging. The last one seems to have disappeared altogether, but Ryan eventually locates it on the worktable by the Dreadnoughtus. Beside it is a nearly empty box. It’s obvious that the books in this box were going to be used next. I nearly faint when I open it. The Catcher in the Rye sits right on top.
Silently we lug the boxes back up to the store, then up the stairs to my apartment.
“I can bring them in for you,” he says on the landing.
“No thanks. I can manage.”
He looks reluctant to leave. “Look, Robin, I’m so sorry about this. I didn’t realize they were your personal books.”
“It’s fine. It was a misunderstanding. That’s all. Nothing happened.”
But we both know what could have happened.
When Ryan is gone, I drag the boxes into my apartment one by one and realize that, despite my best efforts, Peter has finally made it through the door.
30
Then
Though it may have been quicker to follow one of those thick yellow lines of expressway north, I wove my way through forests and fields on the thin gray lines—county highways and country roads that seemed less attractive to law enforcement and generally less terrifying to a brand-new driver. I drove all night, pulling over every so often to recheck the map or pee at the side of the road. Things were going smoothly.
Until I reached the big bridge.
I filled up at a gas station just off the highway, then sat in the car, sipping on a coffee that was really half creamer with four sugars.
“You can do this. You can do this. You can do this.”
“You can do this,” said The Professor.
“No, I can’t.”
I waited for another avian affirmation, but none was forthcoming.
I pulled back out onto the nearly empty highway and started forward at five miles under the speed limit. On the bridge I moved to the left lane, away from the rails, and fixed my eyes on the space twenty feet in front of me. If I could just reach that spot and the next spot and the one after that, eventually I would get across.
The woman who took my toll money on the other side didn’t even look at me.
After two more hours and fourteen deer sightings, the little visitor station I remembered from just a couple nights earlier came into view. The sun was rising, and I had no further elements to my plan. I’d had a lot of time to think on the drive. How to ditch the car. How to keep The Professor warm enough. How to stay under the radar for three years until I was a legal adult. But solutions to these problems were slow in presenting themselves.
I could lie about my name, lie about my age, lie about where I came from. I was already in good practice for all of that. I could cut and dye my hair, start wearing glasses, wear mom jeans and thrift store sweatshirts with patchwork pumpkins and embroidered butterflies on them. But where could I live? What would I do with my time? Could I get a job? Or would they need my social security number? Could I apply to get my driver’s license in a year? Or would that give me away?
I couldn’t just check into a motel and live there quietly, left alone as long as I paid the bill each week. I was too young to rent a room. The trip with Peter had taught me that.
What I needed was an older partner of some sort. Someone with a lot of empathy but not a lot of questions. Maybe someone who was a little slow, a little crazy. Someone with a protective streak who didn’t trust the authorities. Someone who liked spastic, ornery parrots.
It was a lot to ask.
I parked in the back corner of the lot, license plate facing the forest rather than the road, and felt a jolt of fear in my chest when I saw that I wasn’t alone. Behind the little brick building was a rusty old green pickup truck. Was this the truck of someone who helped people in need? Or the truck of someone who would say, “Sorry, sweetheart, but my hands are tied, and anyway, it’s for your own good”?
Even with the sun coming up, it was too cold this far north to even think about sleeping in the car. Maybe if I had left The Professor behind. But I hadn’t. I had to take a chance.
With the blanket-wrapped travel cage in my arms, I headed for the back door. I knocked lightly. Then harder. Then I pounded. I was looking for a rock I could bash against the metal lock when the door opened a crack and an ancient man about my height sporting a grizzled, scraggly beard peered out.
“Well, hello there.” He glanced at the bundle in my arms. “Whatcha got there? Raccoon? Bad time of year for ’em. Just getting up and hungry and sluggish and not looking where they’re going.”
He opened the door wide and motioned me in but didn’t stop talking. “Hit it with the car? I see a lot of ’em starting round about this time. I know you’re probably upset about it, but most of the time they’re not worth saving. Too many of ’em around anyway. Too much trouble to nurse ’em back when you know once they’re healthy they’re just going to turn around and make more work for you, digging through trash cans.”
He set the cage on a messy desk in a cramped back office and pulled the blanket away, still talking. “Now if it were an eaglet fallen out of the nest, that would be worth saving. But let’s take a look at him anyway and see what’s what.”
The bent old man opened the cage door and peered in. “Now what the heck is that? I’m gonna need my specs.” He patted the pocket of his khaki shirt and pulled out a pair of glasses. “Well, missy, that ain’t no raccoon and it sure ain’t no eaglet. What is it?”
“What does our survey say?” said The Professor.
The old man cackled. “Well, I’ll be. You got yourself a parrot here! You didn’t find this thing out in the woods, did you? Poor thing’s missing half his feathers! Well, come on out, little guy. I ain’t gonna hurt you. What are you doing out here? You should be in a cage with a bunch of toys. You escape? I hate it when people don’t take care of their pets. Don’t you worry. Someone’s not a good enough owner to keep you safe, I won’t go looking for him and send you back there to him. You’re safe here for the time being.”
The man finally turned and looked directly at me for the first time. “What’s the story, morning glory? Where’d you find this bird?”
My mind raced for a plausible answer. I couldn’t say I’d found him, because then I’d have no more claim over him than this old man. What if he took The Professor away because he didn’t think I could care for him? What if he changed his mind and put a notice in the paper about a missing African Grey parrot, and some police officer had just read a notice at the station about a girl who stole a car and a parrot and ran away?
