Into Thin Air (2 page)

She quickly pushed some crumpled dollars toward the waitress, and while Adele's back was turned, she stuffed the newspaper deep within her jacket. She wondered who here might already have seen her picture and made connections. Someone could be casually wandering over to a pay phone right that minute and dialing the police. Lee hadn't been able to read the article; she didn't know if there was any reward out on her. That would be like Jim to do. There were people in Baltimore who did nothing but stare at the Wanted photos in the post office. There was one woman who actually made sketches of the faces, who kept a notebook on possible suspects. There were people who had whole dreams constructed on reward money, on recognizing faces no matter how changed they might be. Lifting herself up from her stool, Lee twisted toward the phone. A woman, her hair in pink sponge rollers, was crying into the phone. “How many times can I say I'm sorry?” she wept.

Adele put a hand on Lee's arm.

“Change,” Adele said, She held out a fist full of money, but Lee was already at the door, jerking it open, stepping out into a smothering noose of heat.

She ate hot dusty gulps of air; she was still moving too slowly. Her body felt rusty, but her mind was racing, skimming on the surface of every possible danger, and tormenting her. She had planned on one more night in Richmond, just to get a little stronger, but now she was taking the next train out of here, no matter where it was going.

The bus stop was just another block, an open green wood shelter with a splintered bench inside, and she could already see from here how deserted it was. As soon as she got to the bench, her legs collapsed beneath her. Lee peered down the ribbon of road, bracing her hand against the bench, and then abruptly she pulled the paper out of her jacket and riffled it open to her picture again.

They got most of the details right. Except it wasn't such a mystery. Not to her.

She had planned carefully, packing her hospital suitcase, tucking in a brand-new outfit Jim didn't even know she owned, a sleeveless blue jersey dress she could slide into, a pair of black shoes that wouldn't show the dirt, and an Orioles baseball cap she had bought on the street for just two dollars, There was money, too. Five thousand dollars of Jim's, from a joint savings account. She would have cleaned out the entire account if she hadn't needed Jim's signature in order to do it or if she'd had the slightest talent in forging his name. Instead she'd depleted the account of everything but twenty dollars. The statement wouldn't come for a month, and what money Jim needed, he took from a separate checking account. Lee had kept the money thickly folded up in an envelope, layered under a bag of old clothes in the closet. Every time he even went near the closet, she found some reason to bring him away.

In the hospital she had insisted on a private room, on a door she could keep closed. “Why, there's another mother named Lee, too!” the admitting nurse had gushed, as if Lee might become friends with this other Lee for life. “This is her third, and already she's making plans for a fourth,” the nurse had said, patting Lee's arm. “You have any questions, she's the expert.” But Lee had no intention of talking to her or to any of the other mothers. She was afraid of all that camaraderie. She didn't want to hear one word about miracles and magic and bonding. She didn't want to know one single thing about what she might end up missing. And most of all she didn't want to see the baby because, then, she might never leave at all. The baby. Oh, God.

She had never intended marrying Jim, never intended winding up terrified and trapped in a suburb, where she had more in common with the kids than with their strongly settled young mothers, She was waitressing, saving money for a train ticket out, edging toward eighteen and freedom. How had escape backfired into prison?

She had had no signs, No clutch of nausea in the morning. No cravings, She didn't feel one thing different until she missed her second period, and then she began waking in the middle of the night, slick with sweat, in a dizzying panic,

“What's wrong?” Jim said. She brushed the air away from her. “My period,” she said. “I'm getting it.”

She lay spooned beside him. He flung one leg over her hip, pinning her down. Wriggling, she freed herself. “Where you going?” he said. “Drink of water,” she told him. Padding in the dark, she went to the kitchen and rummaged for her mother's silver fork; she wished so hard on it, the edges dug into her fingers,

The next morning she went out and bought herself a box of tampons, leaving it on the dresser where Jim would see it, and then, terrified, she called a doctor.

She kept telling herself that the baby was nothing, not big enough to be real. She had even thought of getting rid of it. She had put on a new rose-colored dress, She brushed her hair down her back and had gone all the way into the clinic, giving her name, sitting down on one of the brightly colored plastic chairs. She had one friend who had had an abortion. Her mother had paid for it, had sat outside in the waiting room, crying into a handkerchief. There was nothing wrong with it, she gave her change for the cause, she signed petitions and argued for the rights of women, but when she heard her own name called, something seemed to breathe inside of her. Her bones suddenly filled with fluid. “I—I'll be right back,” she stammered. “I forgot something.” She cocked her head toward the door and then walked out again, past the protesters who swarmed paper leaflets toward her.

She had tried again, a different clinic this time. Cleaner, more expensive, with a different class of protesters, more tired looking, less vociferous, women in faded fur coats who just looked at Lee sadly. And when she left this clinic, too, she told herself she still had time, that women got abortions later on, it was just more difficult. Her buttery heart was not going to ruin her.

She hated herself for feeling anything toward the baby, for being so weak. If she concentrated, she could get through a whole day sometimes without thinking about the baby at all. But then, there she would be, dipping to fetch a can of corn, turning in bed, and she'd somehow sense the baby inside of her. She swore she felt a presence, and she felt sorry for it, “Oh, now,” she'd whisper. “Now, now.” She'd put a hand on her stomach, soothing, murmuring, not seeing Jim waking up beside her, lifting himself up on one elbow to listen, his face baffled. “I'm whispering to you,” she said, moving her hand from her stomach to his.

“Are you saying ‘I love you'?” he said hopefully. “You never say ‘I love you' to me.”

She gave him a wan smile.

“I know you do,” he told her. “I love you. Forever.”

She did this dance. She tried pretending she wasn't pregnant at all, but her body kept betraying her. Mornings, she stumbled to the bathroom, flooding the tub with water so Jim wouldn't hear her throwing up. She couldn't keep breakfast down, so she stopped eating it, complaining to Jim that she was trying to starve off the few extra pounds that even he could see.

She took days off her waitressing job at the Silver Spoon and watched whole lazy afternoons unwind, sitting at one of the local coffee shops sipping a malted and laughing and talking to whoever would come and sit down beside her. And there was always someone, always another pair of eyes in which she might see a future different from her own.

“Sweetie,” Jim said one morning, watching her rising carefully from the bed, “maybe we ought to cut out all that ice cream at night.” He nodded toward the slope of her belly, and she suddenly sat back down on the bed. “It's just a few pounds,” Jim said encouragingly.

“I'm pregnant,” Lee said. She was suddenly furious with him. He looked at her, stunned.

“I didn't want to tell you,” she said.

Astonished, he blinked at her. “A baby? We're having a family?” Laughing, tumbling, and springing, he flopped on the bed. He pulled her toward him, burying his face in her hair. “But, why wouldn't you want to tell me?” He hoisted himself up on one elbow, studying her. “Why are you looking like that? What's wrong?”

She sank under the covers. He tugged them from her and rested his face on her belly.

“Stop,” she said, pushing him out of the way. He looked up at her. “I don't want it,” she said.

He sat up, frowning. “You're just scared,” he told her finally. He tried to brush back her hair, but she moved away from him.

“It's natural to be scared,” he said.

“I'm
nineteen
.”

“My mother had me when she was eighteen. Lots of people have babies young. We may have to prune our expenses a little. Maybe not go out as much.”

“When do we go out now?” she said.

“You don't want to go out with a baby anyway,” he said. He looked at her solemnly for a moment; his fingers found her mouth. “Don't say you don't want it. You don't mean it. I know you don't.” He kissed her still frozen face. “Can you imagine? A little one with
your
face?”

Lee, though, didn't want to imagine anything. She insisted on working longer shifts, telling Jim they would need the money she could earn now. But, really, all she was doing was filling her restless mind with specials and sauces, with anything that might crowd out the idea of a baby. She wore a baggy sweater over her white uniform so no one would notice she was pregnant; she bought crepe sole shoes, and although she knew she should sit as much as possible, she was always the first one up for a new table, always the first one to offer to relieve another girl's shift. It made her popular at the Silver Spoon, it landed her better and better tips because she was always refilling water glasses before they were even half-empty, always putting sauces and condiments on tables before the customers had even thought to ask for them. She came home so tired, she sometimes fell into a deep dreamless sleep right on the couch, waking only when Jim reached up to put her to bed. As soon as she woke up, she made sure there were things she had to rush to do, laundry. Paying bills. Going to a movie. Anything that would keep her from herself.

Jim, though, kept reminding her. When he looked at her, he saw the baby. She could be wearing a brand-new dress, something loose and silky that made her feel pretty and alive and as soon as he came into the house, he would rest his hand along her swollen belly, pulling the fabric tight. He asked her eighteen million times a day how she felt, had the baby kicked, when could he feel it himself? He called her from pay phones after every class just to see how “they” were doing. “I'm doing fine,” she told him. When he came home from school, he was always loaded down with presents. He had baby care books and brightly hued plush toys, a thousand and one things he put into the den he now called the baby's room, a room Lee never went near if she could help it.

She began to get bigger. The women in the neighborhood began to reach out and pat her belly, not noticing when Lee pulled back, stunned by her own size. “They're nice people,” Jim told Lee. “They just want to get to know you.” She saw him talking to some of the families, chatting nights with Maureen, their next-door neighbor, and when he came home with Maureen's old baby books, Lee just hid them in a closet.

She watched Jim change. He began suddenly dressing older, wearing a jacket and tie sometimes, shining his shoes. He came home one day with his hair cut so short that she felt as if she had been dealt a blow. And he began frantically studying the house, readying it for a baby, making a list of the things he thought they needed, things they'd owe money on for years, things with so much weight and substance you might never remove them. A decent couch, A good set of pots and pans. A crib and changing table. “What else?” he said, his face flushed with excitement. “Should we get a new stove in one of those fancy colors?”

She saw him sometimes talking to the men in the neighborhood, but more often he talked to the boys, his voice low and fatherly. “Just practicing,” he told her, grinning, but when he saw her jumping rope with the young girls, playing freeze tag on the lawn, he stared at her dumbfounded.

The larger she became, the more she panicked. She began staying away from Jim as much as she could, staying away from the entire neighborhood. She frequented the cafes where you could sit for hours, reading, forgetting, talking to people who actually had lives you might want to lead.

Instead, though, the wrong people always seemed to wander in. She watched two girls, not much older than she was, amble into the cafe. “I'm in love,” one girl said. She was thin, with a soft dark fringe of hair. “Again?” said her friend.

Beside Lee, an older man was toasting a young woman in a pastel dress. “To the best daughter a father could ever hope to have,” he said,

The only people who sat at her table were women who wanted to tell her about their own pregnancies. “Lord, you can't believe how tired you get,” one woman told her. “I'm telling you, you'd better get your lovin' in with your husband now, because as tired as you are now, forget it when the baby comes. And forget going out. You think you can do it all, but I'm telling you, you can't. Only reason I'm out here today is my mother-in-law agreed to sit.” She sighed at Lee. “She snoops through the whole house. She hides the outfits she doesn't like, or I'll find them with these sudden mysterious stains and rips on them on places you can't hide. Mustard on white pants. That sort of thing. But you know what, I don't even care. It's worth it just to get out.” She had bags under her eyes and her hair was poorly cut, and the next time Lee saw her coming into the cafe, she left.

Lee was nineteen and terrified. She couldn't waitress much longer because the smell of the grill made her sick, the very sight of mayonnaise clouded over tuna would send her reeling to the employees' john, gripping the soap-scummy edge of the sink. Sometimes just the sound of a customer's order would make her stomach clench. “What's in this white sauce here?” a woman asked Lee. “Is it cream or egg yolk or what?” The very thought made Lee so ill that she had to excuse herself and ask Reena, another waitress, to take over. She cut back on her work hours only when the boss told her it was that or get fired. “Customers get queasy with a pregnant waitress,” he told Lee. “You come back after the baby's born.”