Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee (16 page)

It's not fair of her to say this. I sit perfectly still. I stare ahead out the windshield. We are getting closer.

“Amy, this isn't about you.” Lee's voice is hard now. “If you cared about your mom and your dad, you would stay.”

I care about them,
I think. But I don't say it. I'm not capable of speaking. It's like I'm not even in the car. I left a note for them. They will know I'm alive. But they won't know if I die.

“Never come back here!”

The door slams.

There is blood in Stacie's hair.

Barbie is crying.

“Dee would want to be free,” Lee says. “She would want you to be free, too. You were her best friend, Amy. She loved you. You were more her sister than I was. She would want you to stay.”

She wouldn't want anything for me. She would barely even know me. But the old Dee. The old Dee. She would have loved them. She would have wanted me to go back for them.
Lee doesn't know. She doesn't know.

Stacie grabs Barbie by the hair.

“We could call the police,” Lee says. “We could have him arrested, and he would never hurt you again.”

I can't take a full breath. Air is rushing by us. Vinnie's car is old, and the wheels rattle against the highway. He speeds around a curve. The window next to me is open a crack. I put my hands over my ears and close my eyes. I squeeze them shut. But I can hear my breathing.

“Amy, let me do this,” Lee says.

“Let her be,” Vinnie says. “Lee, don't.”

“We can't just let her go back,” Lee says. “She needs help.”

“Lee!” Vinnie yells.

The car careens around another turn.

“Vinnie, can't you see how wrong this is?” Lee asks. “I'm doing it.” She's holding her phone. I can't see it, but I know it. She's about to call the cops. She's about to kill them.

I click open my seat belt and lean the seat back as far as it will go.

“Ow! Amy!” Lee screams.

I slide between the seats and fall on top of her. I can't even see her. I grab blindly for the phone. My hand hits her face, her arm, her chest. My legs are kicking behind me. I'm trying to press against anything, anything to keep me on top of Lee, to stop her from calling.

She turns her face away and holds her hands up.

The phone tumbles away from her. I collapse on top of her and try to push myself up, try to see where it landed. But I can't see anything. Everything is a blur. I think I'm crying. Or maybe we're underwater. Maybe Vinnie has crashed the car into a lake and we're going to drown. Maybe that's why I still can't breathe. But we're weaving back and forth. We're still on the road. I'm on top of Lee. Her hands are touching me. She's pushing against my chest. She's trying to lift me off of her, but she's not strong enough.

“Amy. Amy,” Lee says. “Get off me!”

She was going to call the cops. She was going to kill them. I push away from her, and I punch her in the side of the face. She was going to kill them. She was going to kill my kids. The car jerks, and I roll away, still half on top of Lee. I fish under the seat for the phone, but I can't find it. And I realize the car has stopped, and outside the window there is a silent,
unmoving tree, and there is no wind, and the door opens next to my head, and I look up and see Vinnie. His blue eyes stare down at me out of his normal, round face. Three large zits sit in a row across his chin.

Vinnie grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me from the car. I let him pull me. The blur in my eyes has cleared. There are tears on my cheeks, but none in my eyes anymore. I set my feet on the ground and lean against him.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Don't let her call,” I say. My voice is small, almost nothing. But it took breath to say it. I am breathing. My eyes search for the phone.

Lee is still in the backseat. She's sitting up now, and she has it. I try to leap forward, but Vinnie holds me.

“Lee, let's talk about this,” Vinnie says.

The face of the phone is smashed up. Lee tries to do something with it, but it doesn't work. The phone is broken. She can't call. I lean into Vinnie.

I watch Lee. She throws the phone into the backseat window. “I'm trying to help you,” she says. She turns to look at me. The left side of her face is turning purple. I must have done that. But I'm still not sorry. I don't care if she is their aunt. If she does anything to bring the cops, I'll kill her.

“Let's just chill out for a minute,” Vinnie says.

“You were never going to help me,” I say. I point at Lee. “You just wanted to stop me. You think I'm crazy. But I'm not crazy.”

“Yes, you are,” Lee says.

“She doesn't really think that,” Vinnie says. “She just wants to make sure nobody hurts you again. His arm squeezes me. “I don't want him to hurt you.” His voice is quiet and earnest. He says it slowly, not like when he makes a joke. He means it. And that means he'll never let me go.

Lee slowly steps out of the car. “I'm sorry,” she says. “Vinnie is right. I didn't mean it.” Her face really looks terrible where I punched her. But she's still beautiful. She's still a sharper version of Dee. “Let's stay here for a while and calm down. Think about what to do.”

I can't look at her. I hurt her, and it wasn't fair of me. She doesn't know that helping me means hurting them. She would love them if she knew. I'm a bad person. But I'm not only bad. I love my children. No matter what else I do, there's that. I look past Lee, and I see that Vinnie's keys are hanging from the ignition. The car is parked crookedly on the shoulder of the country highway, a two-lane road lined with trees. We are standing in a shallow lane of gravel.

The driver's side door is even open.

I take a step away from Vinnie, act like I just need some space. I walk slowly around the car and put one hand on my face. I don't cover my eyes, though.

“We have all night,” Vinnie says. “We can stay here for a while.”

“There has to be another way,” Lee says. “You deserve your life. You deserve to do everything—everything Dee would have wanted to do. We can help you have that.”

She's trying to manipulate me again because Dee is dead.
I remember a time when I was at Dee's house. There was a little boy who lived next door to them. His name was Josiah. Dee would play tag with him in the backyard, and she would laugh. I can see Dee laughing. I can see Josiah running away on his stubby little legs. If Dee had had Lola and Barbie in her old life, that's how it would have been. I'm standing next to the driver's side door now.

I slide in, slam the door shut, and turn the key.

“Amy!” Lee calls.

I floor it. I swerve out on the highway. The back door is still open. They both must be yelling now, but I can't hear them. I keep my foot on the gas pedal. I am speeding away from them. All I can hear is the noise of the wind.

•   •   •

When she was still at least partly Dee, we were driving up this very highway. And the wind rushed past us, and the wheels rattled against the road. And the trees seemed to be running by.

Dee and I held hands. She reached back from the front seat, and I leaned forward. Her hand was cold but sweaty. She sat perfectly still. I squirmed, trying not to move.

Kyle was humming. Mmm hmm hmm. Mmm hmm hmm.

I wondered what would happen if I got the door open. Could I jump out, or would I die? Could I get Dee to do it with me? You are not supposed to get in the car. Once you get in the car, you're dead.

For a while, I thought that was a lie. I thought that even though we had to be with Kyle, we were alive.

I am humming as I drive Vinnie's car. Mmm hmm hmm.
Mmm hmm hmm. The song had no words. He loved to hum it when he was playing with his dolls. A long amount of time passes, and this highway winds around and around and every exit looks the same. I was looking for the road signs six years ago, hoping to see something that would help us. I thought I would remember forever, but now . . .

I have no idea where to go from here. As this realization hits me, I let up on the gas. I could have already passed the turn.

I try not to imagine what Vinnie and Lee are doing. They will need someone to pick them up. What will they say? They both want to protect me, and they think that means dragging me home. Lee wants to call the police. She might have used Vinnie's phone to call them already. Why didn't I take it from him? Why didn't I think of that? I panicked. I saw the keys in the ignition and the open door, and I just went for it. Now I have hardly any time. I have to find them, and find them fast. I have to get them away from here, somewhere no one will ever find us. I have to make Kyle understand.

I shouldn't have stolen Vinnie's car. Vinnie was the only one who knew, and he kept my secret. He taught me to drive. I hope that after we leave, he finds the car. Maybe I can apologize someday. Kyle is a lot older than me, and someday he will die. And then we can come home again, and I'll apologize to Vinnie. Maybe I'll buy him a new car.

But Kyle isn't that old. I think he's probably about thirty. It will be a long time before he dies.

Unless.

They can't know I killed their daddy. They don't understand how things are. I can't kill their daddy.

I drive on. I see an exit toward the town where I got on the bus, and I take it. I'm driving below the speed limit now, looking for another turn. When the lady drove me to the bus stop that night, I didn't pay close enough attention. Why didn't I pay attention?

My hands slip on the steering wheel. Sweat is pouring out of my palms. It's like how when we turned a corner, my hand slipped out of Dee's hand. I have to keep my hand on the wheel. I turn a corner now, a soft corner, and there's a sign with a picture of a stoplight. And there, far down the road, is the stoplight itself, and something clicks together in my brain. My heart beats faster. When we reached this point before, Kyle began to slow down. He changed the way he was humming.

“We're almost home, ladies,” he said. “Aren't you excited to see your new home?”

That's when my hand slipped.

Dee grabbed for it again, and again it slipped. Our hands slid past each other.

There's a break in the trees before the intersection. There's an old gas station that is closed and falling apart, and there's a sign that says gas is $1.56 a gallon on a pump that isn't connected to anything. This is where I take the left turn.

I ran down this hill.

I was carrying my Safeway bag with the Stacie doll, and my jacket was only half zipped, and I didn't know where I was going. And I stopped next to that disconnected pump, and it
was dark, and a woman stopped for me. A white woman wearing business clothes with an empty car seat in the back.

“Are you okay?” she asked me.

“I need to get to a bus station,” I said.

“Can I call your mom for you?” she asked. She looked me up and down as she said it, and she hesitated, as if she wasn't sure I was as young as I looked, or maybe like she thought I was going to rob her.

Now I turn the car left across the main road. I drive slowly up the long hill. There are two more turns, one onto a steep paved road and another that's gravel. And then off the gravel road is a road that's just dirt. I wipe my hands on my jeans, one after the other, and I grip the wheel. Each time I have been on this road, there was no going back.

I PULL OFF THE ROAD
before the second turn. I can't drive all the way up, or Kyle will know I'm coming. If he knows I'm coming, he will hide, or he will do something. I need to be able to tell him that it's just me, and convince him to take me back.

I wouldn't take me back.

I would want to kill me.

Sometimes I want to kill me.

I pull in as far as I can, but that isn't very far. There are too many trees. The car isn't hidden at all. It's just a little ways off the road. Anybody who was looking would find it. That means I can't leave it here for long, not with Vinnie and Lee down there, not with Vinnie still having his phone. I have to get them and then . . . I don't know where we'll go, but we'll go somewhere. Another cabin, another river. Anywhere they won't find us.

I run up the hill. My feet pound on pavement. I'm carrying my bag over one shoulder, and it's slamming against me. I hold
on to the straps and keep running. Up up up. I am leading them up this hill. If I don't get myself up and then all of us down again, we'll be found. Maybe they're better off without me. If I take the car back down the hill now and drive away, if I drive away east and end up in Idaho, maybe the cops won't find me, and if they don't find me, I can never tell anyone that they exist or where they are.

But Vinnie might tell Lee now. He might already have told her. Lee won't stop until she finds them. She'll tell Aunt Hannah, and Aunt Hannah will not stop.

I don't want to be a mother.

But I am.

I am.

I make it to the next turn, and up I go, on gravel now. This road has dirt, too, and weeds growing up in the road. No car but Kyle's goes up this far anymore. There are no neighbors. There was a fire, Kyle told us. A fire in the nearest house, and the family ran out in the night, and later they came back for their chickens and cows, and now it's just us, he said. Us and the river and the dolls and the night.

I can't go back now. It would make sense to go back, to the car, to Idaho, to Wyoming, to Canada. I don't even know what those places look like; I just know they're not here. But it's not possible. I slow down as I reach the dirt road, the one with hardly any gravel at all. It's dark. By rights I shouldn't be able to see anything, but my eyes have gotten used to it since I left the car. There are stars and the moon out. Maybe they will all be asleep, and I can walk in, and . . .

Maybe I can take them.

The thought strikes me. I fall back a step and then two. If I could get inside without waking Kyle, if I could get them to be quiet, if I could walk them out into the night. If I could get them back to the car, all without Kyle ever waking up. That is the solution to all my problems. I'll tell them that they can see their daddy later. I'll say that we're just going on a little trip for fun. They'll be all right. They'll miss him, but it won't be like I killed him.

It won't be like . . .

I shiver. I'm frozen in the middle of the dirt road, halfway up the last hill. There will be a little curve in the road, and then the cabin will come into view. I have to be quiet if I'm going to do this. Now that I've thought of it, I can't think of anything else. I can't imagine going back and staying with Kyle, not trying to take them away with me. I don't know how I even thought I could do that, when this plan is obvious, when this has to be the only way.

I begin to walk again. I can see only the road in front of me now, as I place one foot in front of the other. I know there are trees on either side of me. I pass the spot beyond which I never went, the cluster of four trees together that marked the boundaries of our lives. I pass it and I don't falter in my steps. It's not a real boundary; I know that now. I ran down this road and past it once, and now I know that I can again.

But I'm home now. I'm walking through my backyard. I lived here six years, and I know every tree and every bush and every pit in this road. I know all the squirrels and the snails and
the grass. I know the stars, each one by names Lola and I made up. I knew enough about constellations to know there were some, but the only one I could remember was the Big Dipper. So we made up the rest, sitting there in the place where the trees parted to leave room for the cabin, but as far from the cabin as you could go without entering the forest. That was two years ago, when Lola was three and Barbie was one, but when Barbie was old enough, we showed her. And she wanted to play with the pinecones. She didn't care about the stars at all.

The cabin sits dark and small in its clearing. Kyle's Subaru is parked crookedly to the side. It has seen better days. It's old and dirty now, with two windows taped over with duct tape. I used to think driving was so hard, so impossibly out of reach, but I just did it. I drove all the way here on the highway. Now I have two things I can do. I can walk past the line, and I can drive.

I slow my steps, making sure not to make a sound. One step after another, and I'm in front of the three stairs that lead up to the tiny wooden porch in front of the door. One stair, two, three. I reach for the doorknob. I'm ready to scream, to tell Kyle it's just me, no cops. But not yet. Not until I at least try. The doorknob doesn't turn. It rattles the tiniest bit, and I pull my hand back. I wait. Two seconds, three. There is no sound from inside. I peer in the little square window. There is no curtain and never was one. I can see to where the cots were . . . I strain my eyes. They must be there. My heart beats and my head pulses and my eyes blur. They must be there. And then I see her. Lola is sitting up on the cot where I used to sleep. She is staring right at me.

We stare at each other.

I put my finger to my lips.

She stares.

I wave her toward me. My hand shakes. She's wearing a frilly pink nightgown. It's frayed at the edges and, I know, faded from bright pink to dull. Her blond hair is messy around the edges of her face. She slides off the cot and takes a glance behind her. I can't see what she's looking at; it's either Kyle or Barbie, or maybe both.

I beckon her. I don't know if she can see my eyes. They are saying,
Now. Please. Quiet. Please, Lola, please.

She takes a step forward, then another, then another. She disappears from view under the window, and there is the faint click of the lock, and then the doorknob turns, slowly, and the door moves inward. Lola pulls it with care, making no noise.

I kneel on the porch, my face pressed into the crack.

She opens it wider. “Chel,” she whispers. Her blue eyes stare into mine. She's frightened; it's as if she thinks I'm a ghost.

I hold my hand steady in midair. I might reach out to grab her any second. I might pull her in close, and I might burst into tears, and she might burst into tears, or she might scream.

“I've come back for you,” I whisper. “And Barbie. I would never leave you. You know that.”

“Daddy said you can't,” Lola whispers. She learned how to whisper from me, thank God. Together we learned how to have our time, how to not set Stacie or him off.

“Daddy is sometimes wrong,” I say.

She stares at me. Maybe I went too far with that. She'll
never believe it. I struggle to find something else to say, some way to convince her. She needs to be quiet. She needs to come out, and let me come in and get Barbie.

I hold out a hand.

Lola slides through the door.

I pull her into my arms. The tears fall. I can't hold them back, but I'm quiet. Her arms circle around my neck. She's crying, too, but miraculously, she's just as quiet.

“He said you meant to, but you didn't,” she says.

“I didn't mean to,” I say. “I didn't mean to.”

“Daddy says she's up there.” Lola looks up at the stars.

I wipe the tears off her face. “Yes, she is,” I say. “She's up there, and we need to go that way.” I point at the road.

Lola begins to shake.

I pull her in. “It's okay, baby. I've been down there, and it's good. There are a lot of people who love you. You'll be happy.” That's not what I planned to say. Everything I planned is forgotten.

She is still shaking. I can't wait any longer. Kyle could wake up at any second.

“You need to stay here,” I say. “I'm going to get Barbie, and then we'll go. Okay?”

“Okay,” Lola whispers.

I almost gasp with relief. “Okay. I'll be back in one minute, baby. One minute.” I carefully set her aside, and she stands on the porch in her nightgown. She's only wearing socks on her feet, and her face is wet with tears, and she's shaking, but she
stays quiet. She is so strong. She is the strongest little girl ever. So I can do this. I can be the strongest mom.

I rise to my feet, and I push the door open a little more. The hinge creaks. I step in on my tiptoes. It's darker inside, and it takes my eyes a second to adjust. Kyle is lying on the bed. Barbie is behind him, on the side of the bed next to the wall. I can't get to her without reaching over him, and I can't carry her away without her agreeing, without convincing her to be quiet. But she's only three. She can't understand the way Lola can.

There must be a way past him. This can't end here, with Lola outside and Barbie inside. I can't leave without Barbie. I step forward, one step, two, three. I am standing over Kyle. He is lying on his right side, one giant ear facing up, mouth slack. He's snoring gently. Breathing. Fast asleep, but how fast? My vision blurs, and I rock on my toes. This is the same as when I tried to get Dee, when I tried to run. I cut the rope and got the key, but when I woke Stacie up, I woke Kyle, too.

Barbie is smaller,
I tell myself.
I couldn't carry Dee, but I can carry her.

My vision clears, and I see Barbie. She stirs in her sleep.

I reach over Kyle with one hand and tap her cheek.

She opens her eyes and stares at me.

I smile and pray she can see me, pray she recognizes me, pray she doesn't wake Kyle up. I reach out both hands. I am leaning dangerously far. I hope I can lift her from this angle.

“Chel?” she says sleepily.

I get my hands on either side of her, and I lift. I lift her up off the bed and my arms are straining and she goes over Kyle's head, and I pull her close to me, and I step back. I take another step back, and another.

Kyle is still sleeping.

Another step. I turn slowly. I step out through the door.

“Chel?”

I pull the door shut behind me, as quietly as I can. “Yes, it's me, baby. It's me and we're leaving. Lola?” She is still on the porch, still waiting, still shaking. “Lola, you'll have to walk. Can you do that?”

Lola doesn't walk. She takes off down the steps at a run. She races out across the dirt of the driveway and heads down the road. Her lack of shoes doesn't slow her down at all.

I burst into tears, and this time they're not quiet. I run after her, carrying Barbie, and Barbie begins to cry, and we make a great noise as we all run, down the hill and down and, finally, we run past the imaginary line, the one that used to form the border of our whole world. Lola doesn't stop but begins to walk, and I catch up to her, and we don't look behind us. I take her hand, and we keep walking. I look up at the stars and I think,
If you're up there, Dee, if you're watching over them, thank you.

•   •   •

I was down by the river, carrying Barbie in a sling across my belly that I made myself out of a sheet. Kyle had bought that sewing machine at the flea market, and I made all the girls' clothes now, and I repaired all of Stacie's and my clothes.

Barbie was only five days old, and I was thirteen. She was so tiny that carrying her was almost nothing at all. She'd come earlier than we expected, but then, we didn't really know the date she was conceived. It could have been any one of a million nights. Each one of them, Stacie was so quiet that it seemed like she wasn't even there. I would take Lola into the bathroom, and through the door all I heard was the sound of Kyle breathing, heavy and strong. I tried to pretend I didn't know what he was doing to her, that it was really just Lola and me. Kyle would pretend, too, after.

Why are you in the bathroom?
he'd say. As if what he did to her was nothing.

Now Barbie seemed too small and fragile, and I held her close and listened, making sure I could feel her and hear her, every second. It would be time to feed her soon, and I couldn't do it. I would have to take her back inside to Stacie and wake her. But I didn't know how she'd react. Barbie's birth was worse than Lola's—more painful, longer, awful.

Kyle came through the bushes. His large feet crunched on the rocks; his shadow cast itself over me.

“Where's Lola?” I asked.

“Stacie's awake,” he said. “She's with her.” He sat down next to me, on the small rocks where the grass peeked through. The river flowed in front of us, foaming and loud. But Kyle's voice carried easily.