by Rea Frey
“Well, we’re not really hitting the road. It’s just something that people say when they go somewhere new.”
She stood and tipped her bucket over, the heavy gray pebbles spraying near her bare feet. “Like, we’re hitting the banana peels.”
I laughed, a genuine one, as she told each and every one of her rocks goodbye.
She pinched one between two fingers and raised it high, wagging it back and forth. “Can I keep this one? I want to name it Chalky.”
“Sure you can. Why Chalky?”
“Because when you press it to the ground, it writes like chalk!”
“That’s a good reason, then.”
I linked my arm around her sun-kissed shoulders, that ginger smattering of freckles reminding me of my own summers as a kid.
“Ugh, I’m so tired,” she said as she trudged up the hill toward the house, her empty bucket swinging from one arm, Chalky gripped tight in her other.
I rubbed her head, her roots wet, and reminded her to get changed before we loaded everything in the car. We’d pack everything today, make dinner, and start driving before the sun came up.
It felt like mourning something, leaving all this. How easy it would be to set up a life here—to carve ourselves into this small community, with groceries, an eventual garden, homeschool, and endless travel.
I could still do that, I thought, though not here. It would never work anywhere near here, even though we were far from Portland. Though I’d managed to keep up with work, fielding calls, pushing orders through, and answering emails, my team was growing antsy. I couldn’t just stay gone forever. They deserved more than that.
I wasn’t sure what came after this: after Ethan, after his threats, after abandoning work, after seeing what I was capable of, even in the face of sane reasoning.
“Sarah? Come on!”
Emma struggled to keep the sliding door open, and I smiled and jogged to her, one sandal coming dangerously close to toppling back down the hill. I followed her inside and let the belongings tumble to the floor. I turned, closed the sliding glass door, and locked it. This would be the last time for this. No more afternoon naps. No more adventures had by the lake after dark. A knot of something rose and twisted. I blinked, breathed, and shut it down. Not here. Not now.
* * *
In the afternoon, we made a stop at Sally’s Beauty Supply for blond hair dye, scissors, and rubber gloves. I left Emma in the car, air running, doors locked, windows tinted, and made it in and out in two minutes. I lightened my hair in the basement bathroom sink, and Emma was fascinated and a little frightened at how completely it changed my face. She yelled something over the hair dryer. I clicked it off.
“What did you say?”
“Do you just love it?”
I looked in the mirror. I’d never been a blonde, and I couldn’t help but think of Ethan’s new girlfriend. “It’s … different.” I fingered my freshly chopped bangs. “Do you like it?”
“I love it.”
I grabbed the scissors. “Want to look like twins?”
She nodded and bounced up and down as I snipped the ends of my hair just above my shoulders, working my way around my head. I collected the hair in a garbage bag. “Want to look exactly alike?”
“Yes!”
I opened the second box of hair color. “We are going to lighten your hair even more to look like mine. I want you to tell me if this burns at all, okay?”
“Burns?”
“Well, sometimes it can just tickle your skin a little, but it shouldn’t.” I painted her hair with the ammonia-free blond dye.
She sat on the edge of the sink. “Why is it purple? Ow, ow, it’s burning my ear!” I swiped her ear with a towel and blew around her hairline.
“Just a few more minutes, okay?”
I washed it out before time was up, and put her in the shower, making sure it was completely rinsed. She was now a true blonde. We looked at ourselves in the mirror. We could have passed for mother and daughter.
“I like it. I look like you,” she said.
“And I look like you.”
We spent the rest of the day cleaning the cabin. I had our breakfast, lunch, and snacks loaded in the refrigerator in a small cooler.
“Are you sad to leave?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“What will you miss the most?”
She thought about this, her lips scrunched, finger tapping her chin. “I’ll miss the stars and Fairy Lake.”
“Really? That’s what I’ll miss the most too.”
After an early dinner, Emma convinced me to take one last canoe ride. We floated in the water, her feet dangling over the edge of the boat, as I guided us against the current. Emma helped me drag the canoe back toward the shed once we were on shore, our final duty before we left in the morning. The big silver boat bumped over sticks and rocks. Emma struggled to push her slight weight against it, letting out a toot with the force.
“Was that what I think it was?”
She collapsed in a fit of giggles against the canoe, her fingers gripping her belly. Her blond hair swished across her cheeks.
“Don’t make me laugh! I can’t pull it…” I trailed off as she let out another fart and then another, a small butt trumpet propelling us toward the shed. After I caught my breath from laughter, I used my legs to drag the canoe all the way into the open wooden doors, my forearms burning with effort.
“There. Now watch out, okay?” I flipped the boat over, banging a pointed edge against my shin. Intense pain cracked across the front of my leg. I squatted down to inspect my shin. A hard knot bloomed under the thin skin.
Emma crouched beside me and blew on the wound. “Does that hurt? Do you need a Band-Aid?”
“It does hurt,” I said. My eyes watered. I ran my fingers over the lump. “It’s not bleeding though, so that’s good.” I shook my leg and finished propping up the canoe so the water could drain. “Hitting your shin is the absolute worst.”
“Mama hit me with a stick one time on my shin, and I cried.”
I was startled by the admission and stopped rubbing my shin. “Oh, Em, I’m very sorry that happened to you. How did that make you feel?”
“Sad. And mad. I threw the stick back at her, though.” She looked around the dusty shed, packed with two more canoes, life jackets, paddles, and various tools. “Once we leave, are we never coming back again?” Her voice trembled.
“Probably not.”
“Aw, but maybe we can someday?”
“We’ll see.” I placed the oars in their hooks. I guided Emma back outside, shut the shed, and wiped the dust from my hands. I hooked an arm around her as the last bit of light drained from the sky. There was a final burst of color—Emma called it her afternoon rainbow—and then day slipped into dusk. I guided her to the base of the stairs, my shin throbbing, when I saw blue lights ricocheting off the cabin.
“What’s that light up there?”
Instinctively, I pulled Emma back to the edge of the shed. My heart ratcheted in my chest.
They’ve found us.
A thousand scenarios danced in front of my eyes, but I only had one decision to make. I dropped down to Emma’s level and clutched her shoulders.
“Em, I need you to listen to me, okay?”
“Why are you whispering?”
I reopened the shed as soundlessly as I could. We shuffled against the sandy floor and fumbled in the dark. “I’m going to ask you to do something. It’s your bravery test for the day, okay? Kind of like hide-and-seek, except you do not come out until I find you.”
“I don’t want to. It’s dark in here.”
“I know, but…” I peeked outside and saw a flashlight bounce through the front of the cabin windows straight through to the back. “Listen, there are some people at the cabin I need to talk to. But I have to do it alone, okay? It won’t take long. And I really, really need you to stay here.” I moved her deeper into the shed so she was hidden under the canoe. “And think about all the fu
n places we’re going to go after we leave. I want you to think about those places and count as high as you can. Can you do that for me?”
“I can’t count that high!”
“Okay, how about you count to one hundred, but really, really slowly?” I whispered. “And if you get to one hundred, start over.”
“But it’s too dark in here! I’m scared.”
I fished my phone from my back pocket and flipped the flashlight on. “Here, but don’t shine this around too much, okay? Just keep it close so you can see. Now Emma,” I gazed into her trusting, gray eyes and kissed the top of her head. “Promise me you will stay here. You have to promise me.”
She nodded. “I promise.”
“Good girl. You’re safe in here, okay? I’ll be right back. Start counting.”
I shut the shed and slipped the large bolt through the lock. I prayed with every fiber of my being that she would not get scared and pound on the door to be let out.
I tiptoed to the back of the cabin, hugging the rear of the house, and let myself in. I crawled to the front and fingered the curtains apart to peek out the dining room window. There was a lone officer, radioing in something as he rattled my car doors. Locked, thank God. He moved around to the front of the house and knocked.
I had only one shot at this, and I couldn’t screw it up. I stood, took the shakiest breath of my life, counted to three, and opened the door.
before
I kept up with the seasons from the car.
Summer was spent with my feet on the dash, the hot glass of the windshield warming my callouses. My father and I would stop to pick flowers or purchase overripe melons at fruit stands. My heels became tough during those unforgiving months, as I waded through waist-high weeds, crossed sizzling pavement, ran over pebbly shores, and plucked splinters from the tough, dirty flesh, while my father negotiated over heirloom tomatoes or farm-fresh corn.
Fall was coffee collars littering the backseat, muffin wrappers caught around seatbelts, thick scarves my father bought at secondhand shops, a litany of pumpkin patches and raked leaves, and boots marred by mud that I’d scrape off with dirty fingernails.
Winter, we would sludge through slushy highways, gray snow spitting onto worn tires. We’d often get caught behind massive semis that skittered left and right on the road, on the verge of toppling. Once, I’d watched a batch of sweaty pigs push against each other, squealing, shitting, and trampling pink heads and thick spines, all of them, as my father explained, trying to save themselves before slaughter.
Spring was bouquets of flowers pressed into back windows, petals crisped, browned, and forgotten by the sun. I begged my father to buy flowers everywhere we went, even though we didn’t have a vase. I loved fresh flowers because they were the only good reminder of my mother. She’d had a small flower garden that she’d tended to, and when she was feeling generous, she’d let me water them from her bright pink watering can. She always filled our house with the fruits of her labor, arranging batches of colorful breeds in antique vases.
In the car, once the flowers died, I pressed the dried petals inside my favorite books, sometimes forgetting and opening a novel to have dehydrated petals disintegrate across my thighs.
I learned to sleep better in a car than on a mattress. I concocted stories as families traveled beside us on highways in their cars, vans, and Winnebagos. I wanted to argue with a brother in the backseat, sing songs with a sister, or even comb my fingers through my mother’s hair from the back, playing beauty shop and smelling the distinct sweetness of her shampoo on my palms.
These were the staples of childhood. I had lived in a car with my father, listening to old jazz, reading books, and eating out of rumpled fast food bags. I’d spent months wondering if we’d ever find a place that felt like home, brushing my teeth in gas station stalls or at the nicer rest stops. I washed my underwear in bathroom sinks and let them dry on the roof of our car when we parked in the hot sun. I collected workbooks to keep up with schoolwork as we transferred from school to school, with no real attachment to anyone or anything.
Sometimes, I would expect to see my mother—at a gas pump, local market, or random store. Would she still recognize me and realize what she’d done? I wondered if she’d want us back … because how could a mother not want her family?
I’d figured out that familial love—something I thought to be unbreakable—was still conditional. Mothers still left. Fathers shut down. Marriages broke apart. Kids suffered. My own mother had walked away. What was more conditional than that?
I’d spent a lot of time on the question of forgiveness. I heard someone say that when it was the right person, forgiveness came easy. But why should I forgive my mother for what she’d done?
These were questions I could never ask my father, as he dripped his sadness all over the road, our car, our crappy rentals, and finally, into the city in Washington he would call home. As we set up our small, modest house with flea market finds and bulky items on lease, I would bring up my mother in conversation, because I was beginning to forget her.
I’d been a bit brash when she left, celebrating like that, making grass angels on our lawn, but she made me so self-conscious and angry. Everything was always about her, when I wanted, needed, it to be all about me. I was the child! It was my only shot at attention.
Now that she was gone, I was free, but my dad wasn’t, so I still couldn’t express myself. I was in a box, chained to my mother’s memory. Because of that, I was learning things about love: its conditions, its fragility. No one ever taught me that there could be a different kind of love, but that’s what I was looking for. I wanted to love someone, and I wanted that person to love me back. Not based on how I behaved, what I looked like, or what I had to offer, but because they saw the real me: the girl in the car, the girl who didn’t have a mother, the girl who took care of her father when he couldn’t take care of himself.
* * *
“Hey, Dad! Dad? You home?”
I pushed the door back on its hinges. Every Friday, I drove down from Seattle for the weekend. I brought pepperoni pizza, a six-pack of beer, and an obscure science-fiction movie. When I banged through the screen door, still with a patch of mesh missing in the lower left corner, I was eight again, then ten, then twelve. My teenage years had been a flurry of hormones and disappointment, and I couldn’t wait to get away from this small, brown box and out into a world I’d never seen.
“Is that you, sweetheart?”
“No, it’s your other daughter.”
He emerged from the back in a pressed shirt and slacks. He’d dressed up for me, which tugged at my heart. “Is it Friday already?”
“Can you believe it?” I knew he lived for Fridays. He planned his week around these visits, hiring a housekeeper who lived in the neighborhood, Mrs. Fletcher, to destroy all the evidence of his bachelorhood. I’d seen the trash can full of empty bottles, and the mold she hadn’t been able to completely scrub away along the rim of the bathroom sink. She had a crush on my father and cut him a massive discount—she cleaned his entire house every week for only thirty dollars—but he was too aloof to notice. He just thought that’s how much it cost to clean houses.
We ate our pizza and drank beer in front of the television. We rarely said much beyond what was happening at school, what friends I’d made, if I’d met a nice boy, what I wanted to do with my life. He took no interest in his own, and when I asked questions about work or his personal life, he always answered with some variation of the same thing.
I was majoring in business, and I couldn’t wait to make enough money to support both of us. Being around all that failure, giving up, and giving in as a kid had instilled in me the kind of drive you just couldn’t teach.
After our pizza, I peeled the label on my beer. “So, I had a dream last night.”
“Oh?” He ripped through another beer, set the bottle with the glass collection at his feet, and burped. “Excuse me. About what?”
“About Elaine.”
&n
bsp; He turned to me on the sofa, his eyes slightly unfocused. He pressed pause on the remote. “What was it about?”
“It was weird. I was watching her sleep. I kept petting her hair and rearranging her covers, like I was the mother. She was young, as young as when she left, and I felt … I don’t know. I felt calm or something. Maternal. It was like closure.”
My father’s fingers twitched on the remote. I knew, just when I said it, that I shouldn’t have. He’d take the next two weeks to work this dream over in his mind, partly jealous that I’d had it, the rest of him wondering if it meant she was dead because she was now showing up in my dreams.
“Do you ever dream about her?”
He hesitated. “No. I don’t.”
I knew he wanted to. I knew he slept for almost twelve hours a night so that he could hopefully see his beloved in his dreams.
“Yeah, me either. It was surprising. I just thought I should tell you.” I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell him how it felt like I’d watched her sleep for hours, the curve of her body telling its own story with its tiny jerks and rapid-eye movement. I had stared at her and wondered: Did her mother ever do this? Had she ever done this with me? And when had I started to grate on her nerves, like a puppy, enough for her to leave?
“Want to watch the rest of the movie?”
He nodded, but neither of us was paying close attention. The lone thought that tumbled over and over in my head that I could never say out loud and never extinguish, even as a senior in college, was this: Why wasn’t I enough to make her stay?
after
“Good evening, ma’am. I’m sorry to disturb you, but is this your property?”
“No, sir. It’s my ex-boyfriend’s property. Is everything okay?”
The officer shifted in his boots and leaned around me. His neck, doused in freckles, angled into the living room. “Are you here alone, ma’am?”
“Yes, I am.” The words shook as they left my mouth, and I worked overtime to steady my voice.
He straightened and hooked his thumbs into his belt. “Well, we’ve gotten two separate calls about a missing child: one spotted at a grocery store in the area, and the other from a man saying he owns this cabin and there was a woman here with a little girl.”
