Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee

by Mary G. Thompson

  Lola and Barbie were hiding behind me but saying, Mommy? Mommy? and peering around me while my hands instinctively went out to hold them back, because in the movies they jump up again, the monsters.

  But Stacie didn’t jump up. She was no longer a monster. She was a body with Stacie’s face, which I could not see yet was Dee’s face. All I saw was the screaming, the hands on Barbie, Lola flying, and more screams, and the face distorted, and the lamp sitting on the little end table, and the crying, and Kyle, Baby doll, wake up. Baby, wake up.

  But I’ll never tell them that I saw Stacie as a monster. She wasn’t, not until he made her that way. I’ll tell them I didn’t mean to, that I only wanted to calm Mommy down. I only wanted her to stop. That’s the truth. I wanted to take them away from there while Kyle took Dee on their “honeymoon,” and I would have come back for Dee with the police. That’s what I would have done, if she had made it through that day. I wanted all of us to be together.

  • • •

  “Chel. Chel.”

  Whose voice is it?

  I can’t see anything, but I’m sure my eyes are open.

  “Chel.” It’s another voice, a smaller one. Barbie.

  I shake my head. It rubs against something. Slowly, I sit up. I’m looking through the windshield of the car, and there is a gas pump. $1.56. I am at the gas station. We are at the gas station. The airbag is open. My chest aches.

  “Barbie? Lola?” I turn around in my seat, awkwardly; the airbag is too big to let me do much.

  “Chel!” Lola squeezes into the front seat and wraps her arms around me. Barbie hangs onto Lola.

  “What happened?” I ask. It’s coming back to me, though. I was there. I was back there in the cabin on that day, with the lamp, and the screaming, and Kyle’s face, and I was outside with them inside, and it was Dee’s face after all lying there. That’s where I was, on the drive back down the hill.

  I rub my eyes. Yes, we are at the gas station. We have not gotten far enough. How much time has passed? Only a few minutes, surely. But I can’t drive with this airbag out. And I don’t have a phone. I should have insisted that Mom buy me a phone.

  “Chel, you wouldn’t answer,” Lola says.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” I say. “I got lost in my head. I’m sorry.”

  “Where’s Daddy?” Barbie asks.

  “Daddy’s sleeping,” I say. “We didn’t want to wake Daddy.” But he’s probably awake now. He’s probably noticed that they’re gone.

  “Where are we?” Barbie is crying.

  “We’re not very far from home,” I say. “We’re not far at all.” This is meant to reassure her, but Lola knows it doesn’t reassure me. She leans into my face.

  “You didn’t want to crash,” she says.

  “No, baby, I didn’t.” We can’t walk down the street, not with Lola still in socks and Barbie barefoot. Lola has walked as far as she can already. Her little feet must be killing her, but she doesn’t complain.

  “We put Mommy by the river,” she says. She plops down in the passenger seat.

  I could have killed them. I never thought about that. I knew I had these blackouts, these times when I went elsewhere. I never thought it would happen now. I should have thought about it. What if . . . I gasp for breath. I have to remain calm. They are all right, I tell myself. I just have to think of a way out.

  “Daddy was sad.” Lola rubs her left foot.

  Barbie climbs on top of her.

  “I was sad, too,” I say. But the truth is, I wasn’t sad enough. Every time I started to think about what I did, I pushed it away. I buried and buried and buried and acted like it didn’t happen, like she had died and there was no context, like she was just gone. But you can’t make something nothing just by closing yourself off. Because someday your mind will break, and you will be driving down a steep hill with two precious babies in the backseat, and you will almost kill them. That’s what happens when you bury things.

  I close my eyes. If I can just go away again, this will not have happened. I just want to go away again.

  “Chel! Chel!” Lola pulls on my sleeve.

  I open my eyes. There is another car in the lot. Its lights are on. My lights are on, too, I realize, spilling all over the pump.

  People are getting out of the other car.

  My driver’s side door opens. Hands grab me and pull me out of the car. I am on the ground now, facing up to the stars. Lola and Barbie are both crying, but Lola is talking, too.

  “Who are you?” she’s asking.

  “I’m Lee,” Lee says. “I’m your auntie.”

  “Chel’s my auntie,” Lola says. “You’re a stranger.”

  “We’re both your aunties,” Lee says.

  “I can’t talk to strangers.”

  “Chel.” Barbie is tugging on my sleeve.

  “Hi, baby,” I say. “I’m okay, baby.”

  “Well, hello there,” Vinnie says. “Amy’s going to be all right. She just needs a little rest.”

  “Her name is Barbie,” I say. “Like the doll. And that’s Lola. Girls, this is Vinnie and your Auntie Lee. It’s okay to talk to them. They’re not strangers.”

  “Nice to meet you, Barbie and Lola,” Vinnie says. His face appears over mine. “Did you hit your head?” he asks.

  “I don’t think so. The airbag came out.”

  “Okay,” he says. But he looks worried. His eyebrows squeeze together.

  “I’m sorry I stole your car,” I say. “And crashed it.” We need to get out of here. I need to tell him. “Vinnie—” But I just want to close my eyes again.

  “What do you see?” he asks. “Do you see stars?”

  I do see stars. Lots and lots of them. But those are real stars, not the kind of stars he means. “No,” I say. “I’m okay.” I sit up. Lee is sitting on the ground with Lola, who is standing very still, watching me.

  Barbie grabs me as I sit up.

  I put my arm around her. I’m supposed to be holding her, but it feels like she’s holding me.

  “I set up my car so I can find it by GPS,” he says. “Lost it twice in the mall parking lot already.”

  “Oh my god.” I’m so stupid that I didn’t think of that, that I thought I could get anywhere without them finding me.

  “Lee and I rented a car from some guy at a mechanic’s shop,” he says.

  “I’ll pay you back,” I say.

  “I think the car might be stolen,” Vinnie goes on. “That guy was sketch.”

  “We’re three felons now,” Lee says. “Grand Theft Auto, Oregon edition.”

  “We have to go now,” I say.

  “Is he close?” Lee asks. “Vinnie, he must be close.”

  “Yes,” I say. “He’s very close.”

  Lee takes out a phone—it must be Vinnie’s. The phone that caught me with its GPS, that I stupidly forgot to break. “There’s no reason not to call now, is there?” she asks.

  “Other than us being felons,” Vinnie says.

  I look around. I feel my arm around Barbie. I guess there isn’t any reason. I guess the cops could come and take Kyle away now. But the thought doesn’t make me feel good. It doesn’t make me feel anything, really. I know I don’t want Lola and Barbie to be anywhere near him, but at the same time, he’s the only daddy they know.

  “No, there’s no reason,” I say. I hold out my free arm for Lola.

  She walks over to me and lets me put my arm around her, too.

  Lee dials the phone, just three numbers. There is a pause that seems to take a million years.

  “I have information about the kidnapper of Amy MacArthur,” she says. “Yes, I know where he is.” She tells them what road we’re on, and she looks up at the street sign and names the cross street. She tells them about the old gas station. Then she looks at me.

  “Up t
he hill,” I say. “Take a left and then a right. And then there’s a dirt road, and there’s a cabin.”

  “Who is the auntie talking to?” Lola asks. She stares at Lee. I realize she has never even seen another adult woman before. Dee and Kyle and me were the only adults in her whole world. She’ll think everybody is a stranger.

  “She’s talking to someone who’s going to help us,” I say. But I don’t know if that’s true. What Kyle has done has already happened. If the police catch him and put him in jail, it won’t do us any good. The girls won’t understand why their daddy is in jail. Dee won’t be alive again. If the police catch Kyle, then I’ll have to see him. If he slips away and escapes, then maybe I’ll never see him again.

  But he won’t do that. He won’t really care about getting caught now. He’s lost Stacie, the girl he was obsessed with since he first saw her walking to school, more than six years ago. He’s lost me, who he owned, too. He hit me over and over again, and he didn’t want me the way he wanted her, but I was his. Until I took Stacie away from him, he wanted to keep me. And now he’s lost the girls, who were the last things he had.

  “Does anyone else live up there?” Vinnie asks.

  “No,” I say. “There’s just a burned-out farmhouse.”

  “Well, somebody’s coming down the road,” he says.

  I look up. There are headlights coming toward us. I can’t see the driver in their brightness, but there’s only one person it could be.

  “Daddy!” Barbie pipes into the silence.

  • • •

  “Why doesn’t she get up?” Kyle asked me. We were outside on the porch this time, us and the girls, while Stacie lay inside on the bed, face to wall. It was getting cold, and we were all bundled up, me in an old thrift-store coat two sizes too big and the girls wrapped in blankets. I was fourteen, and Barbie had just turned one year old then. Actually, she was thirteen months. I had this idea in my head that until a baby turned a certain age, you were supposed to count the months. I didn’t know when months stopped and years began, but I knew she was thirteen months then. I held her on my lap while Lola sat with a magnetic tray of letters, another thrift-store purchase, or maybe theft. Kyle didn’t take us into town with him, so I could never be sure. I had no way of knowing how much he’d inherited from his dead parents or what he had left.

  Lola moved the letters around sort of haphazardly. It was time to get some more books, I thought. She might already be behind, without having any preschool or anything. I had to make sure she learned something, even if she was going to live up here with just us for her whole life.

  “I don’t touch her,” Kyle said. “She was supposed to change back.” He was crying, tears rolling down his big face.

  I tried not to let it show, that he gave me goosebumps, that my whole body stiffened. That I was thinking, You raped her you raped her you raped her.

  “We need to give her more time,” I said.

  He turned to me. He was wearing an old thrift-store coat, too, but his was too small on him. The hood didn’t fit over his head and hung half way back, and the sleeves were too short. He reached out a large hand, thick with long but stubby fingers, and he touched my face. He ran one finger across my chin.

  I sat so still, I was almost frozen into stone.

  “You haven’t changed, have you?” he said. He was looking me right in the eyes. I noticed that his deer-brown eyes weren’t ugly. They weren’t all that different from my eyes. I must have noticed that before, but he had never looked at me, not this way.

  I had changed a lot. But I didn’t want him to notice that.

  “Chelsea, you’re beautiful, too,” he said. “You’re really the mother of these children. Our children.”

  I took this chance to look at Lola, to watch her moving the letters around into shapes rather than words.

  “We’d all be lost without you,” he said. He pulled his hand back, and I was still, hoping, praying he would look away. And he did.

  “I’m doing my best,” I said.

  “I want to marry Stacie,” he said. “When she’s eighteen, we’ll go into town and do it. We’ll get the certificate. Rings and everything.”

  He was going to take her into town? What about us? I thought. What if we all went into town together, and what if I could get the girls away? Would Stacie come? Would she understand the chance we had?

  “You can take care of the girls, when we go,” he said. “You’ll do that, won’t you? Let us have our little honeymoon?” There were still tears in his eyes, the tears over how Stacie wouldn’t get out of bed, wouldn’t look at him, didn’t want him. But he believed he would marry her, and the truth was, he would, because she would have no choice. Unless she was beyond caring what threats he used. Unless she didn’t care about me anymore, or the kids. But even though she kept her face to the wall and cried and screamed, I thought there was still a part of her that cared. I couldn’t believe that she was one hundred percent gone. He would threaten us, and she would go.

  What if we left while they were gone? What if we left Stacie with him? Would he kill her? Maybe he wouldn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. Maybe we could get the cops here before they got back, and we could save her.

  “I can watch the kids,” I said.

  • • •

  For the next two years, I waited for Stacie to turn eighteen. I thought about Kyle’s plan. I realized that Stacie’s name wasn’t Stacie, and she couldn’t prove who she was or that she was eighteen at all. Kyle celebrated Stacie’s birthday every year as the day he took us, June 13. He didn’t even know her real birthday. The judge in town probably wouldn’t marry them. But Kyle didn’t seem to think of that. He didn’t tell Stacie what he was planning. But he would talk to me about it, any chance he got.

  “You can fix this dress, can’t you?” he said to me. Stacie was down by the river this time, and we were inside. Lola and Barbie were playing on the floor. Lola was using building blocks, and Barbie was basically just knocking down what Lola did. But Lola didn’t get mad; instead, she would rebuild her block tower. Lola was a patient little girl, even-tempered, strong. If she could be that way, then so could I.

  The dress was pink, of course. It was big enough for Stacie, but it belonged on someone Lola’s age. It had frills and puff sleeves. Possibly it had once been a princess costume, before it ended up at a thrift store. He still saw her as a doll, even though she was a mother, and even though as soon as they got married, he was going to start raping her again. Did he think she would suddenly want him if he gave her a ring?

  “Of course,” I said. “It will look good as new.” I took the dress from him and looked it over. I would make it the most beautiful dress in the world, if it made him think his plan would work.

  He bent over and kissed me on the cheek. It was over before I even realized what happened. He was up and out the door, whistling a little. Going down to the river to see the girl he claimed to love.

  “Is that for me?” Lola asked.

  “Silly,” I said. “Would this fit you?” I held it up in front of her.

  “Make it fit me!” she said.

  “This one is for Mommy,” I said.

  “Me! Me!” Barbie added.

  “Maybe we can find one for you and you,” I said, pointing at each of them. “But not this one.”

  “When can Mommy wear it?” Lola asked.

  “As soon as I can get it done,” I said. I imagined how Stacie would react. She would either put it on in silence and brood, or she would scream and cry and throw things, and then she would put it on. She would sometimes fight, but she would always lose. Over and over, she had retreated from screams into silence. But this time, it would be different. This time, she would think she had lost, but she would win. I couldn’t tell her, risk her freaking out, risk her giving us away. She couldn’t handle it, but that was okay. I could handle it for
both of us, and this time, we were all going to be free.

  Thank God he thinks he loves her, I thought. Now we have a real chance.

  • • •

  And then he told her.

  And she hurt them.

  And I was able to grab the lamp.

  “HOLY SHIT!” Vinnie cries. “Everyone into the car.” He grabs my arm and pulls me up.

  I stand, but I’m a little dizzy. Maybe I’m not as okay as I thought.

  Vinnie reaches down for Barbie.

  “No! Chel!” Barbie cries.

  “I’m okay,” I say. I lift her, and I’m not used to it. I’ve gotten weaker this past month. But I carry her to the backseat of the car and put her in. I’m aware that little kids are supposed to have car seats; I used to see that on TV. But we don’t have any. She’ll be all right in there for this one trip, won’t she? I don’t really know. I don’t know anything about taking care of them outside our tiny little world.

  Lee is holding Lola’s hand, rushing her over to the car.

  “Come on, Amy, get in,” Vinnie says. “You can hold the kid on your lap.”

  I’m watching Kyle’s car come across the intersection. He’s going to get here before we can leave. And there are no cops in sight. After all this talk of calling them, they aren’t here.

  “Amy, come on,” Lee says. She’s putting Lola in the backseat on the other side of the car.

  “We can’t run away from him,” I say.

  “Fuck yes, we can,” Vinnie says. “Get in.”

  “No, he’s already here.”

  “Get in,” Vinnie says.

  Kyle is in the parking lot now. We don’t have car seats. We can’t race him. We can’t get away.

  “Shit. Does he have a gun?” Vinnie asks.

  Kyle steps out of the car. He flows out of it, his big body seeming to materialize out of the metal. He stands with his head lowered, so his crazy self-cut hair falls over his face.

  “No,” I say. He doesn’t have a gun. He never had more than a pocketknife. He had his hands and his fists and his size and his threats. How did he do this to us, with nothing but himself? When he lowers his head like that, it means he’s sad. It means that he’s realized for a few minutes that Stacie doesn’t love him back, before he returns to his delusion. It means that he wants something that he doesn’t think he can have.