by Lea Geller
I shoved that memory where it belonged, in the back of my mind, with all the things I didn’t want to think about. Instead, I focused on the road.
When Grace was awake, in the moments between her naps and cries for food and a clean diaper, I played her songs on my phone and sang along with them. By day three, I had memorized all the words to every Sesame Street song ever written. It was just as well. The radio stations continued to shift as the car drove through the states in the middle of the country and only served as a reminder of what was happening to me.
Jack and I spoke on the day I left, and he told me that from now on, at least for a while, Don would be my contact. Jack was going to be incommunicado.
“It has to be this way,” he said to me as I drove through many miles of desert.
“Does it?” I spoke calmly but loudly so the speaker on my phone would pick up my voice. The Honda predated Bluetooth.
“You have every right to be angry,” he said.
“Oh, really?” I snapped, no longer making any attempt to mask my feelings. I didn’t have to worry about angering Jack or incurring his silent treatment, because I was about to receive the mother of all silent treatments. “That’s good to know.”
He didn’t take my bait; he left it dangling on the line.
“I love you, Agnes, and I need your help,” he said.
“About that . . . ,” I began. “If Ruth Moore has pulled her money out, why is she hiring me?”
“Because she’s an old friend and I asked her to.”
“And it’s not weird?” I desperately needed fresh air and thought about rolling down the window, but I wasn’t sure he’d be able to hear me with the windows open on the freeway.
“Hardly. Business relationships are deep and complicated, and one thing has nothing to do with the other.”
I loved that Jack wanted my help. He never wanted my help. I just wished he’d wanted my help locally. He must have read my mind, because he said, “I am not sending you away. I love you, and it’s my job to keep you safe. I promise you that this will all work out. I will get all the money back, and you will come home.”
“You can’t get a new phone or some prepaid burner phone?” I asked. I honestly had no idea what a burner phone was, but I’d heard the term tossed around casually on procedural crime shows. Besides, just saying “burner phone” made me feel a little tougher, and I needed all the help I could get.
“The less you hear from me, the safer we will all be. I promise—I’ll be in touch when I can. For now, we’ll communicate through Don.”
That was just what I wanted to hear. That from now on, my in-hiding, money-stealing husband and I would communicate with his emotionally challenged business associate slash only friend. This was getting better and better. Luckily for me, I wasn’t thinking too much about any of this. Thinking was too hard. I just kept moving forward, one mile at a time.
Somewhere in Nevada, or possibly Utah, Grace and I pulled into a motel to spend the night. The night air was dry and crisp, all its moisture having been sucked out. I felt tired, as though I’d run all the way here rather than having spent hours sitting and staring ahead.
I carried Grace and a few of our bags into our room. I immediately closed the blinds and got us both ready for bed. Without Jack, if I was able to fall asleep with Grace, I often did. Now that the bed was mine alone, I brought her into it. Jack had believed that the bed was just for the two of us. This wasn’t an easy position to maintain in Santa Monica. At the Sunday-morning farmers’ market, both moms and dads wore their babies in carriers and slings. According to some of the baby-group moms, the market parents went home and napped with their children in one giant bed, or even on a series of mattresses on the floor so that they could all climb in and out with ease. But to Jack, a marital bed was just that—marital. Family snuggles were for the morning, or better yet, for the couch.
Now I didn’t even bother to bring a portable crib for Grace, nor did I request one from the motel. Now I kept her close. It felt better to have someone else in the bed, even if that someone else was six months old and weighed little more than a backpack. When I woke in the middle of the night, gasping for air, desperately trying to remember my dream, sure that it would give me some clue as to where Jack was, I reached out and Grace was there. Sometimes I’d swear I heard a sniffle or a whimper from her, and I would pull her close and sleep with her in the nook of my arm or on my chest. I was never able to nurse Grace (practically grounds for capital punishment in Santa Monica), and she certainly took no bottle at night (our baby nurse had set all that up for us before she left), but in those days on the road, I prayed she’d cry out for a nighttime feeding.
As I lay with Grace snuggled perfectly into my side, the crown of her head just under my chin, I thought about the farmers’-market parents. Maybe they were onto something. There really was something about a baby in your bed—a warmth, a smell, a security, all of which would be gone in a matter of months. I had been so sure of myself when I sat in that baby-group circle and announced that our nurse had trained Grace to sleep through the night in a room that was not ours. I had been so sure and so proud of the husband whose territory I worked so hard to preserve. All the younger wives had. We were so damn sure. But my husband and his territory were miles away, and now all I had was his baby. Those other moms in their drawstring pants and nursing bras, did they know something I didn’t? Did they know that the reason younger wives of older men keep their babies out of their beds is because they’re desperate to keep their husbands’ attention? As I lay with Grace on that lumpy motel mattress, I wondered—had I been desperate, or now, abandoned and unmoored, had I not been desperate enough?
-10-
I was hungry. In preparation for the trip, I’d emptied out the contents of the fridge into a cooler. This did not get me far; our fridge was never very full. I wasn’t planning on packing Jack’s store of probiotic morning drinks or the thirty-six glass bottles of mineral water that occupied the bottom shelf. I took whatever fruit and cheese I could find, noting that this might be the last organic fruit and cheese I’d be eating for a while. I asked Alma to use some of the fruit to make little baggies of fresh puree for Grace. I ran to the store and bought several boxes of Grace’s organic rice cereal as well as her organic formula—that much I could do. I also bought a loaf of bread. I didn’t remember the last time I had brought bread, but I assumed I’d be eating sandwiches on the road, because Sondra and her quinoa bowls weren’t coming along for the ride.
After the first couple of days’ driving, I had run through most of my food. Grace still had some baggies left, and I wondered if I’d take the plunge at some point and buy baby food. I swung into a gas station to refill the car and took Grace inside the minimart for food. Just getting Grace in and out of the car was a challenge. I remembered some of the baby-group moms talking about how long it took them to leave the house (or in their cases, the apartment) with the baby and how hard it was carting a crying baby around in a car. These poor moms looked completely bedraggled, overwhelmed by the thought of leaving their homes with their babies. When they started down this discussion, one that could go on for a good thirty minutes, their words turned to white noise. I only ever took Grace in the car to go to the pediatrician, and even when I did, Alma came with me. I sometimes took her out on short walks, but never long enough for her to get hungry, lose her mind, and start howling like a car alarm, as these other babies seemed to. I wished all these moms had an Alma, even if it only meant they could go to the supermarket alone. Truth be told, I didn’t go to the supermarket much, either, but when I did, I certainly didn’t have Grace in tow.
Now I had to make sure she was full, burped, and in a clean diaper before I put her in the car. I’d learned my lesson on day one when I drove for too long and couldn’t find a rest stop when she started to moan. By the time I pulled over, somewhere in the California desert, she had drenched herself in tears, sweat, and possibly the biggest poop I’d ever seen. Lesson learned
.
My search for food led me to a minimart somewhere in the middle of Nebraska. I hadn’t realized how little geography I knew until I had to keep googling maps of the country to figure out where I was. The woman behind the counter was large, so large that I was sure someone was standing behind her, pressing herself close, but in fact it was all one deep woman.
She smiled at me. “Can I help you?”
“Do you have food here?” I asked.
“All here on the right.” She waved an arm in the direction of some graying hot dogs, deli sandwiches, and a pot of what I assumed was soup.
“Do you have fresh food?” I asked.
“This is all fresh.” She continued to smile. “Made it myself this morning or late last night.”
“Oh,” I said. “I guess I’m wondering if you have salads.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I heard how ridiculous I sounded. Who did I think I was? Not so long ago, I would have known that you can never get a salad at a highway rest stop. I began to bounce Grace on my hip as she, too, moaned in hunger.
“Nope, darlin’,” said the woman, suppressing a laugh. “There’s a Taco Bell in about fifty miles, and they have a pretty good salad bar.” She paused. “I think we have some tuna salad in the fridge,” she said. “It has celery in it.”
By now a line had formed behind me, and the woman was no longer smiling. I shuffled toward the fridge. I could not bring myself to buy the tuna. It was grayer than the hot dogs, and I saw none of the promised celery. Then I turned around and found myself face-to-face with something called a baby puff. It seemed that in the middle of the country, babies, even babies as young as Grace, liked to snack. I had been warned about such snacking from Deirdre, the woman who ran our baby group. She said we might encounter these snacks, snacks that were no more than processed wheat, sugar, and air. We were to avoid these snacks at all costs. But these snacks didn’t look so evil. There was a smiling baby on them, and they even came in vegetable flavors. There was also a banner across the front of the can that screamed “All-Natural Ingredients.” How bad could they really be? Grace was starting to pull at my hair, which had fallen out of the messy bun in which it now lived.
I grabbed a can of sweet potato puffs and ripped off the top, shoving a puff into Grace’s mouth. She immediately stopped braying, grinned, and reached for more. The kid was just learning to reach for me, and now she was reaching for these poison puffs? I gave her one and stuck one in my own mouth so I could see what all the fuss was about. A burst of sweet potato melted onto my tongue. It was sweet and satisfying, and I wasn’t sure how I’d live without another. I jammed a fistful into my mouth, gave one to Grace, and grabbed a bunch of cans—including one promising mixed veggies. Carrot sticks and salads would have to wait.
-11-
The next day, in another state, I fell upon a bag of yogurt chewies, which were apparently designed for older babies and their hungry and cash-strapped mothers. I took it upon myself to test the entire genre of baby and toddler snack food and choose the winners for when Grace was ready to eat them. I found some snacks in the shape of wagon wheels. I wasn’t so excited about the cheesy corn wheels, but the rice wheels with cinnamon were heavenly. These snacks sustained me as I drove east, and with each purchase of a yogurt chewy or a cinnamon rice wheel, I told myself that by the time Jack found us, I would have gotten rid of all the evidence.
I realized that I was also running into something of an underwear problem. While I was packing my clothes, I’d made a separate pile of underwear, intending to put it all in a small bag I’d be able to access easily. I had stood in front of the dresser inside my walk-in closet and held up some of my lacy thongs, all gifts from Jack. There’s something wonderful about being married to a man who loves you so much that he wants to buy your underwear. Each pair was expensive, beautiful, and if it was not comfortable, it was not so uncomfortable that I spent the day counting the moments until I would be able to tear it off. I had never worn thongs much before Jack, but a month or so after we began dating, he presented me with one. It was the color of my skin, he said. I imagined this well-dressed, established man walking into a lingerie department and buying a thong for a twentysomething preschool teacher who bought her underwear in packs of six or eight. I was flattered. That’s how Jack made me feel so much of the time: honored to be the recipient of so much attention and time, warmed by his appreciation and involvement in the details of my life. I loved the attention. I was happy for it.
Perhaps I’d been caught up in the underwear moment when I was packing, because once I got on the road, I realized that I didn’t have any of it with me. I just had the one thong I’d put on the morning I left California, and I’d been washing it out at night in the sink of whatever motel we were staying in. It wasn’t until I reached the halfway point that I finally grew tired of the lonely, overwashed thong and found a Super Walmart right off the highway. I stocked up on snacks and bought two eight-packs of women’s briefs. I took Grace into the Walmart bathroom and checked the stalls to see if anyone was around. The bathroom was empty. I strapped Grace onto the changing table. I’d long since abandoned Jack’s advice (OK, instructions) to swab down the changing table with baby wipes before she went near it. I quickly unpeeled my jeans and removed the thong, replacing it with a roomy, cottony pair of briefs.
The briefs were like an old, comfortable T-shirt, wrapping around me and my midsection. They rose up high, almost to my belly button. I looked at the pack and realized I’d just bought sixteen pairs of grandma underwear, underwear that had enough fabric to actually be one of my T-shirts. I shrugged. I hadn’t been this comfortable in a long time. I stashed the thong in my diaper bag for when Jack returned, and took Grace off the table.
I sat down in the car and felt a noticeable difference. It was like sitting on a pile of fresh laundry. I was shifting around in my seat, marveling at the wedgie-proof underwear (no matter how I sat, it always stayed in place!) when Beeks called.
“How are you?” she asked.
“I’m better now,” I said. “Did you know that when you wear granny panties you never get a wedgie?”
“I know that all too well,” she said. “My underwear are so big I could hide a turkey in them. I never understood your thongs.” There was so much Beeks never understood. My thongs were just the tip of the iceberg.
“How’s the road trip?” she asked.
“Lonely,” I said. I had been driving for five days and still had about five to go.
“Isn’t it a little bit romantic? You and your daughter, out on the open American road?”
“I’m pretty sure Jack Kerouac didn’t travel with burp cloths and wipes,” I said, eyeing the floor of the car.
“Fair enough.” She paused. “Have you heard from Jack?” Beeks’s tone changed when she asked questions she didn’t want to ask but had to.
“No. He’s gone underground,” I said. “I won’t be hearing from him for a while.”
“WHAT?”
“Beeks . . .”
“Underground? What is this, a mob movie? How are you not furious?”
“Because if I’m going to be furious, I wouldn’t know where to start. Am I furious at Jack for putting me in this position, or furious at myself for letting him do it?”
“Aggie . . .”
“Don’t. If you’re going to make me talk about how I feel, then we’re done talking. As soon as I start to think too much about this, it all falls apart.” I paused. “I fall apart. And if that happens, I could just end up losing my shit and camping out somewhere in the middle of the country, and New York won’t happen.”
“Fine,” she relented. “Message received. Loud and clear. From now on, we will only discuss your new underwear.”
“You mean my fabulous new underwear?”
“Exactly.”
Although Jack had said he needed to disappear, even from me, he never told me not to call him, so I continued to leave him voice mails from the road. I was trying not to think too m
uch about New York and just concentrating on getting there. Every time I thought about the job, I started to sweat and the metallic, bilious taste returned to my mouth. I quickly learned to keep an empty plastic cup in the car just in case my mind started to wander. But with the new job days away, I needed information. I had no choice—I called Don. Grace had fallen asleep in the car, so I left the engine running (I learned that lesson pretty quickly) and stretched out on the hood, soaking in some non-Californian sunshine. I had to take what I could get.
“I need to know more about this school, Don. Tell me what you know.” I slid off the hood of the car and stretched my legs.
“I just know that it’s a boarding school for boys. That means it’s not just a job, but it’s also a place to live.”
“I would have somewhere for us to live if we end up in a halfway house. Surely you can tell me more.”
“Fine,” he replied. “It’s a middle school and a high school, both on the same campus.”
“I know that already,” I said, brimming with impatience. “Anything else?”
“What else do you need to know?” he demanded. “Honestly, Agnes. There’s not much more to it.” For the first time he was beginning to sound irritated, almost angry. He just wanted me to follow his directions and go. He hadn’t planned on more questions.
“Just tell me something, Don, anything.”
But Don had either lost signal or hung up on me, because my questions were met with nothing but silence.
“It’s a private school,” Beeks said when I called her later. Don seemed prepared to give me no more information and was now forwarding all my calls to voice mail. “That’s all you need to know,” she said. “More specifically, St. Norbert’s is a private school for rich kids who have been thrown out of other private schools. It’s a last-ditch effort for rich parents to keep their kids out of public school. And if you’re in the middle school, you’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel. That would explain why they hired a woman who has only taught preschool, who hasn’t done any creative writing since high school, and whose résumé was likely written by her husband’s shady lawyer.”
