The car flew noiselessly along the highway – a sleek steel capsule with a console that she thought would have looked appropriate on a space ship. So many panels and controls: mobile luxury. There had been a time when a car like this would have seemed perfectly ordinary; a time when life had been so filled with promise that nothing had seemed impossible. And then, everything changed irrevocably. The suddenness of those past events still shocked her; the way the world could tilt without warning and send things sideways. The details would probably always sit in her head, like exposed wiring, capable of shocking her. Nothing else would, though. All these years later, she’d been disabused of the old notion of women as the gentler of the species, of the belief in family as an indissoluble unit, and of personal safety as something ordained. She had, in fact, lost her faith in pretty much everything. Thirty-seven years old and she felt at least twice that, like someone edging toward the end of her life, not someone moving back out into what was, purportedly, the middle.
The middle of nowhere. That’s where they were. And in the middle of this nowhere was an unlikely oasis, complete with neon sign (D-I-N-E-R, ALWAYS OPEN) and half-a-dozen cars, including a state police cruiser, in the parking lot.
‘I saw this place on my way to get you and thought it looked decent enough,’ Warren said. ‘But if you’d rather go somewhere else . . .’
‘No, this is fine,’ she said, looking for the door handle, briefly wondering if the door would actually open. It did. And heat gushed into the car’s cool interior with the heft of a gigantic hand that wanted to hold her in place on the leather seat. She fought past it and climbed out of the car to stand looking down at her feet, at the black leather high-heeled pumps she’d worn at her sentencing. Long-accustomed to sneakers, the shoes struck her as ridiculous. She’d once been someone who actually paid hundreds of dollars for footwear that made her feet feel as if they were being crushed.
Mental note: buy some sane shoes.
Another mental note: buy some clothes that fit and dump the Chanel suit.
Everyone looked up when they walked through the door. The two state troopers at the counter stared at her as Warren took her arm and led her to a booth at the far end.
As she sat down she could still feel the troopers’ eyes, and wondered if they knew she’d just been released. The out-of-date clothes were probably a giveaway. But it didn’t matter. She’d served the full sentence. She was free. She did not have to return after this outing, did not have to report to a parole officer. Free of all obligations.
Warren had brought his attaché case in with him and laid it with care on the seat beside him, saying, ‘I’m actually hungry. I drove up last night and’ – he looked at his wristwatch – ‘my flight home is in a couple of hours. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind dropping me at the airport.’
Frowning, she tried to make sense of what he was saying.
‘The car’s yours,’ he explained, ‘but for a technicality. I’ve got a folder of documents that need to be signed.’
‘Mine? Did they imagine I’d want a car like that, Warren?’
‘I guess they did. Your mother’s instructions were explicit. I was to deliver the car to you here, along with . . .’ He stopped and reached for the menu. ‘I really have to eat. My blood sugar’s plummeting. The last thing I need is a hypoglycemic attack. I won’t be able to get on the plane and I’ve got meetings all day tomorrow.’
‘Of course,’ she said, and out of curiosity reached for the other menu, thinking this was alarmingly typical, familiar in a hateful, well-remembered way. The family lawyer sent to deal with the malfeasant child. ‘I don’t have a valid driver’s license,’ she said, thinking about the car outside, now hers.
‘Yes, you do,’ he told her. ‘You’ve got a temporary that’s good for sixty days. Plenty of time for you to settle somewhere and get a permanent license.’
‘How do you do things like that?’ she asked wonderingly.
Warren smiled at her over the top of his menu. ‘Magic,’ he said, eliciting a small smile from her.
The waitress was high school age, slim and pretty, and smiled when she came over, pencil poised above her order pad.
Warren asked for coffee and a BLT with crisp bacon.
Tally ordered the first thing that came to mind: a grilled cheese and coffee. It was an extraordinary luxury to be able to eat whatever she wanted, even something so mundane.
The young waitress smiled again and went off.
‘So,’ Warren said, flipping open the catches on his attaché case, ‘let’s get this out of the way while we wait. Then we can talk.’
‘Of course,’ Tally said again.
Warren brought out a good-sized manila folder and placed it on the tabletop, then momentously opened it. He withdrew a legal-size brown envelope and slid it over to her, saying, ‘Your temporary license, the title to the Benz, and the insurance policy. The registration is in the glove compartment.’ Next came a larger clasp envelope. ‘Check book, cash, credit card, and the current bank and trust statements. Look everything over. If you have questions, you can call me any time.’ He looked up at her. ‘You do know that, don’t you, Tally? Any time.’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay. Now for the signatures.’ He took a fountain pen from his inside jacket pocket and placed it carefully on the tabletop before picking up several documents. ‘This top one acknowledges that you’ve received the items.’ He handed her the pen and indicated the line at the bottom. ‘If you’ll just sign there, and the copies as well.’
The pen was a black Mont Blanc with a gold nib, and it sailed smoothly across the pages.
Mental note: buy a Mont Blanc fountain pen.
‘Good, thank you.’ He returned those documents to their folder and picked up the next. ‘This is the letter of agreement we discussed last time I came up to see you.’
‘I remember.’
‘Once you sign this, Tally, any connection with the family is officially severed.’
As she signed, she said, ‘I can’t help wondering why they waited until now for this. They severed me long ago.’
‘It makes no more sense to me than it does to you, dear,’ he admitted. ‘This is all your mother’s doing, of course. She is a cold woman.’ He seemed to shiver without any physical movement, and she was reminded of how much she liked his honesty. Always had.
‘A couple more to sign and we’re done. One is for the trust, stipulating that you are assuming control of the funds, and the other is for the bank account and the credit card. The last one is my surrender of your power of attorney.’
She signed everything, in triplicate. Warren placed copies in an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven envelope and passed it to her. ‘Your copies,’ he said. ‘Once you’re settled, stow them in a safe deposit box.’
‘I will do that,’ she assured him, trying to show some warmth. She knew her manner was distant; it was hard to switch from cool self-preserving to engaged and friendly. Fifteen years made for an ingrained habit that might never get broken.
‘And that is that!’ he declared, snapping closed the latches on the case and gazing at her. ‘Now! Tell me. Have you some idea of what you’re going to do?’
She shook her head. ‘All I know is that I’m going to get as far away from here as I can.’
‘Like where?’ he asked with interest.
‘I’m going east. When I find a place I like, I’ll stop.’
He smiled, and she thought, not for the first time, of what a very kind man he was. And handsome, still. He had to be in his late fifties but didn’t look it. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, fair-skinned with a smile that dimpled his cheeks; a good height, trim and well dressed. He’d been coming to see her two or three times a year for the past fifteen years – not on family business, but because he’d known her most of her life and cared about her. He’d been in the courtroom, her only outside support. And when the judge had pronounced sentence on her, Warren had covered his eyes with his hand and wept soundlessly. She’d bee
n so completely dazed at that point that she’d studied him with something akin to fascination. The family lawyer who cared more about her than her own family – a fact to ponder for five thousand three hundred and seventy-two days.
‘Will you let me know where you are when you stop?’ he asked.
‘I will,’ she said. ‘I definitely will.’
‘This is my last . . . act, I guess, for the family.’
‘Oh?’
‘I’ve turned them over to one of the junior partners. I’m retiring.’
‘Oh! Won’t you be bored?’
‘Tally, the last thing I will be is bored with three kids who view Alexis and me as unpaid babysitters. Four grandkids all under five keep us very not-bored. Luckily, we rarely have all of them at the same time. Ah, great! Here’s our food.’
‘I can’t picture you as a grandfather.’
‘I’ll see that you get some snapshots to help you with that.’ He smiled again as he lifted the top of his sandwich, making sure the bacon was well done.
Amazing, she thought, the things you don’t forget – like driving a car. When they left the diner, Warren handed her the keys, then went to the passenger side. She got behind the wheel and studied the instrument panel while the air conditioner worked to dispel the accumulated heat inside the car.
The car was a big beast, yet responsive and quick. In seconds, she’d accelerated up to sixty miles an hour and her chest was a cage filled with fluttering birds. Her foot shook and she had to focus furiously to keep it firmly on the accelerator. God! She was out!
At the airport, she stood outside the terminal to say goodbye to Warren. He hugged her – a truly startling physical contact, the first she’d had with another person in thousands of days – then stood with his hands on her shoulders and said, ‘If you need anything, call me. Alexis and I care about you, dear. Please remember that.’
‘I will.’
‘Try to find your life,’ he said. ‘It’s still out there somewhere.’
‘That was a long time ago, Warren. I have to find something else now.’
‘You always did love to haggle over semantics,’ he said with another smile, withdrawing his hands from her shoulders. ‘Just, please, stay in touch. Otherwise, I’ll worry.’
‘I will. Thank you so much – for everything.’
‘You’re a good woman, Tally. Someday you’ll be vindicated.’
‘I never will be,’ she said softly, ‘but it doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters,’ he insisted. ‘Take good care. Okay?’
‘I will. And I’ll be in touch.’
He hugged her, kissed her cheek – leaving behind the scent of citrus cologne – then released her.
She watched him go into the terminal, then stood for a moment looking around at the people coming and going, porters and cab drivers; varicolored motion, tidal and dizzying.
‘You’ll have to move your car, Miss,’ someone said, and she turned to see a police officer smiling at her across the roof of the Mercedes.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘sorry,’ and hurried through the sickening heat back to the driver’s side of the car.
She followed every sign that said ‘Eastbound,’ until she connected up with Interstate 80, a highway that she knew went all the way to the east coast. She was amazed at the volume of traffic and the size of the cars – smaller than they’d been in the sixties. And the truck drivers, those fellows who used to be referred to as ‘the knights of the road,’ now seemed remarkably aggressive, even hostile, getting almost on top of her rear bumper before swinging out to pass. Their intent seemed to be to instill fear. They didn’t frighten her; they merely made her wonder what had transpired that had so enraged the truckers during the fifteen years she’d been locked away. She’d entered prison only months after the famous ‘Summer of Love.’ Her happiness had crescendoed that summer. Peace, love, and rock ’n’ roll. And then came the fall.
Her foot still unsteady on the accelerator and the grilled cheese sandwich sitting in the pit of her stomach like a golf ball, she kept driving – awed by the depth of the sky, the lack of enclosing walls, the endlessly unfurling road that arrowed toward a horizon that kept receding, until the daylight was fading and she was suddenly very tired. She’d been behind the wheel for hours, only stopping once to refuel the car.
She took the Elko exit, pulled into the parking lot of a new-looking motel with an attached restaurant, paid cash, and let herself into a very clean, over-chilled room. After locking the door, she turned up the thermostat, then stood marveling at the size of the room – at least fifteen by twenty – and the luxury of her own TV set, a double bed, and a private bathroom. She would get something to eat, she decided, then come back and sit on the bed and watch TV. And in the morning, she’d buy some clothes.
She felt horribly conspicuous in the restaurant. Her hands shook as she read the menu. There were too many choices and the waitress, this one middle-aged, hefty and impatient, stood tap-tapping her pencil on the edge of her order pad. ‘What’s good?’ Tally finally asked her.
For some reason, the question generated a conspiratorial smile. ‘The restaurant a mile down the road,’ the woman said in an undertone.
Tally laughed, then marveled at the sound of it. She couldn’t remember when she’d last found anything funny. ‘Okay, I’ll rephrase the question. What is acceptable?’
Grinning now, the woman said, ‘You can’t go wrong with a cheeseburger. And the fries are fresh-cut, not frozen.’
‘Then that’s what I’ll have.’
‘How d’you want your burger done?
‘Well done, please.’
‘Good call. Something to drink?’
‘A Coke, no ice, please.’
‘You got it, hon.’
‘Thank you.’
Tally wished she had a book to read while she waited, but she’d left her books behind. They were all bestsellers in paperback, none especially good, but she’d read them several times each.
Mental note: buy books.
Unaccustomed to the relative silence of the place, she went to the cash register for some change and then fed a couple of quarters into the jukebox, pushing in random selections and hoping for the best.
A moment or two after returning to her seat, a voice started growling about being born in the USA.
Mental note: buy some music to play in the car.
She sat on the bed in her slip and aimed the remote control at the TV set, changing channels until she found a PBS station. Then she tried to watch but her eyes kept sliding to the corners of the room. A car door slammed outside and she jumped, looking over at the tightly drawn curtains, then at the locked door, the security chain in place. As her heart settled into a more temperate rhythm, she looked back at the TV screen, turning and turning the wedding ring on her finger.
EIGHT
Tally slept badly, waking every half hour or so with a start, to look wildly at the shadowy corners of the room, then over at the reassuring spill of light from the bathroom. Perhaps it was the absence of the night sounds that had grown too familiar over the years – the weeping, the whispered prayers, the moans of illicit sexual activity, even, occasionally, a brief scream – that kept her on the rim of sleep. Listening hard, all she could hear was the rushing sound of traffic on the interstate a mile or so away. And listening to that muted rush lulled her back to sleep each time. Then, as dawn approached, she slipped at last below the surface, and slept for just over two hours.
Unaccustomed to being enclosed while she bathed, she kept the shower curtain halfway open while she stood under the weak spray of hot water. Her fingers, as always, briefly touched the raised scar from the knife wound just below her left shoulder, then the slightly puckered scar near her right hip and the third, a long but less prominent one on the outside of her right forearm. The scars were flesh memories, encoded with detail.
Just the two of them: herself and a small enraged woman in the shower room. Brandishing a teaspoon, its hand
le honed to razor sharpness, the small woman sidled near, whispering, ‘La-di-da-ing your way around here, but you’re no better than nobody else. I know all about you from the TV, Miss Murdering High-Society Bitch.’
When Tally said softly, ‘If you want to kill me, go ahead,’ the ratty-haired, shriveled little woman, who could’ve been any age between thirty and sixty, was thrown, a furrow forming between her brows. Tally turned, presenting her naked back. Several weighted moments of silence followed, when Tally could almost hear the woman thinking. Then the stabbing began. Half-hearted, it seemed. Tally didn’t move, made no sound. Then, in moments, it was over. The woman was gone, leaving the spoon embedded in Tally’s hip.
Punishment, but not death. She was disappointed. Permission had defused the woman’s rage, but prison form mandated that some injury be inflicted. Tally understood. Form dictated behavior, no matter where you were. If there were a next time, she’d vowed, she’d simply offer herself in silence. Go quietly.
Some weeks later in the food line, the woman had murmured, ‘Why’d you do that: tell me to go ahead? And how come you didn’t say it was me that did it?’
Turning to look at the woman, seeing the confusion in her faded eyes, Tally said in a very low voice, ‘You can’t kill someone who’s already dead.’
Taking the remark almost literally, the woman was so frightened that she dropped her tray and fled. At the noise, everyone looked up to watch her go, then turned with speculative interest to look at Tally, who’d already moved along in the line and was paying no attention. But she could feel the eyes on her; they had weight, as if the combined gazes had actual density.
Where is the Baby? Page 8
