The Railroad (2 page)

I stared. “Oh shit.”

“I didn’t think you were going to like it. I have to go away. Otherwise things will get worse. I hate to ask you but you’re the only one I can think of.” Then she shut down again.

“Elena! Come on!”

“Okay. I need two thousand dollars. I have to go. Get away. You’re the only chance I have.” She read my eyes and got the wrong message. “Forget it! I dumped you fifteen years ago. This is silly. I don’t even know you anymore! Why the fuck did I even bother to come here?”

I watched passively as she began to gather her things. I could go back to the office and call another meeting and save some face. My reputation was good enough that I could still salvage something from the day.

I caught Maria staring at me, clearly wondering what I would do. Annoyance battled with guilt. After a bit of struggling, guilt won.
What the hell
, I thought.
I’ve blown off this day anyway.

As I put my hand on Elena’s arm to stop her from leaving she turned to me, something unreadable in her eyes. “I’m not angry about you asking for the money,” I told her. “I have no problem giving it to you. You just have to give me a chance to catch up with things.”

I gave her a moment to let that sink in. She shook her head and sat back down. “Are you going to your parents?” I asked her.

She snorted. “My dad passed away a few years ago. My mother…well you remember her?”

I did. I had always wondered how Elena and her mother could have shared the same bloodline. “She won’t help you, I assume.”

“She told me I married him and that was it. That’s what she did when she married my father. For life, that’s how she sees it. I finally told her about what Bob was doing and she told me she didn’t believe me. She decided that I’d just made it up so I could justify leaving him. She saw Maria, Mike! She saw her eyes and the look on her face. And she didn’t care.”

“What about your sister?”

“She’s divorced and she’s not in good shape right now. And besides, they’d find us there. Gary has good lawyers and he has a lot of money. Too much money. He already had a detective on me when he decided I was having an affair.”

I found myself becoming strangely jealous; if she was going to have an affair why not me? And of course that was silly. “You had an affair?”

“No. I didn’t. You don’t know my husband. He drinks hard, he plays hard. I’m sure that he’s had affairs but I don’t think he could stand it if I had one. So he decided I must be unfaithful. It’s what he was doing. He thinks everyone is like him.”

“So where are you going to go?”

“Anywhere. I’m not going to let this happen again. I have to protect my child.”

I stared into my drink; here was a situation needing a solution and I couldn’t think of one and that bothered me. “Can’t you get a lawyer?”

“Of course I can get one. And Gary can get a better one. He has more money and he can hire a piranha. They can make me look like I’m crazy. He even accused me of molesting Maria. He can tie the system in knots.”

“Don’t you have medical records of…what he’s done to her?”

“I tried that. Maria’s pediatrician told me the same thing over and over. There’s some evidence of abnormality but it’s not conclusive. And he’s not going to risk a suit from Gary. Or worse yet, losing all his patients when they find out that he turned him in to the police.”

“But they have their own kids! Are you telling me they wouldn’t care if they knew?”

She began wringing her hands. I looked over at Maria who seemed oblivious to all of it. We were whispering as best as we could, but I had the feeling she’d heard all this and no longer felt she could do anything about it.

“Do you want another coke, Maria?” I asked.

She looked toward her mother for approval. Elena nodded and I ordered another coke, along with bourbon for myself; it promised to be a bad afternoon.

Elena drummed the table with her fingers, something I’d found endearing years ago. “No one cares because no one wants to know. They have their own little orbit in the suburbs. If they admitted that Gary was…what he is, they’d have to admit it happens and then they’d have to decide what to do with Gary. That would be…difficult. They’d have to ignore him or, worse yet, take a stand. This is easier.”

“So they wouldn’t care if it were their kids?”

“It’s not their kids. That’s the point. No one wants to believe this. And so I become insane.”

I was reaching, trying to find an answer. “What if you subpoenaed that doctor’s records?”

“A good lawyer could argue that whatever was found was due to another cause. Without the doctor’s testimony on the specifics….” She let the thought hang. We both sat in miserable silence.

“Do you have somewhere to go,” I asked finally. “You don’t have to tell me where it is. Just that you have somewhere to go.”

“There’re a network of people who can help. I’m trying to get in touch with them.”

“Are they a government agency?”

She smiled, sadly. “No. They’re a group. An illegal group. They call it
The Railroad
. They move you from place to place until they can find you a permanent home.”

I’d heard of it, but it was always third hand references and the occasional news story.

 “And you’re sure they can help you?”

“No, I’m not. I’m taking a chance. It’s the only way I can protect Maria. I have a way to get in touch with them, but I need to go now, so I can get away from Gary. That’s why I need the money. I wouldn’t have called you otherwise. I know I was a bitch years ago, and that I don’t deserve anything.”

“Stop. Okay, you were a bitch but you were young and full of yourself. And I was a sensitive boy. I probably enjoyed the tragedy of your dumping me. That has nothing to do with this.”

“You know it’s odd. I’d rather think that you still had some feelings for me. That giving me money won’t be just charity. I know that’s silly.”

I smiled. “I’ve never forgotten you. And I’ve always wondered what would have happened if I’d chased you west when you went with that guy.”

I immediately regretted what I’d just said. I’d spent a year feeling vulnerable and stripped bare when it came to Elena. My heart had been broken and she hadn’t given a shit. After all those years I was surprised to find that it still hurt.

I pushed the thoughts away. There were parts of my past that were better left where they were.

“I guess it was for the best,” I said, a smirk covering my true feelings. “You wanted to leave and you’d moved on to someone else.”

“The painter? Oh god. What a mistake that was. He was a big pothead and a waste of time. So were the next couple of guys. It seems like I don’t have such a wonderful track record since I left you. I guess I didn’t know when I had a good thing.

“We weren’t ready.”

“Maybe.”

*

She hefted the envelope, hours later, beside her minivan. I’d had her wait in the bank lobby while I got the money, not wanting her to see what I was doing. “This is what $2000 feels like?” she said when she took the envelope from me. “It seems a little heavier.” She eyed me suspiciously.

“Try ten.”

“I knew it. Shit, Mike. I can’t take this!”

“You can. You need it.”

“Mike, No.”

“Take the money. You might be on the road for a while.”

“No…I can’t.”

“I won’t feel right if you don’t take it. It could take you a while to get in touch with those people.” Those people. It didn’t sound very reassuring. I wished I could help her, but I had nowhere I could send her.

She began crying again and, this time, so did her daughter. I hugged them both, urging them toward the van, just to get it over with. To my surprise, Maria returned the hug and I think I saw something like hope in her eyes.

Elena looked back once as she started to drive off. I read a thousand things in her face, wistful thoughts of what might have been. But mostly I saw fear.

*

It's so easy to fall back into a meaningless existence, even when a train wreck like Elena's life touches you. For a moment you see a larger measure of reality, but then it's gone.                                                                          I suppose that moment of reality just made me want to go back into my safe world all the more. Unlike Elena, I didn’t have to wonder what would happen to me; I had all my bases covered. I had earned my place in the sun and didn’t have to dwell on what had happened to an old girlfriend.

It was three months after I watched Elena drive away that things went off the tracks. I was feeling special then, having just finished one of the biggest software conversions ever to grace Crabtree and Dain. The new software was already beginning to pay off in the form of greater speed and better reporting. We were finding holes in our operation that could conceivably save us millions. I was feeling my oats.

I’d gone out the night before to celebrate with some people at the office. I’d gotten drunk and acted silly and even shared a kiss with Debbie Baum, the director of HR. She’d been an object of serious lust for a couple of years and now I knew that she, at least, shared my feelings. What would happen in the light of day was a different matter entirely.

As I sat there in Michael’s, I basked in the glory of my new status. I’d just finished my fifth martini when my boss pulled me aside and hinted at my being rewarded for what I’d done. It was thinly veiled code, telling me that I’d get a raise and probably a promotion to an officer spot. While he spoke, some of the other techs at my level were looking at me strangely, like I’d become another person. The entire world seemed open to me.

As I walked back to our long table, people began clapping me on the back, saying things like, “I hope you’ll still be talking to me in a couple of weeks”. I smiled, trying to be gracious, but feeling superior against my better judgment. Like most brokerage firms, Crabtree and Dain was mindlessly competitive. Not only did you have to come up with decent ideas, but you had to traverse the shark infested waters of corporate business, fighting detractors and getting buy-in on your ideas from frightened upper level management. After years of stress and anxiety, I felt like I wanted someone to be eating my dust, especially those who’d been clawing their way up the ladder with me, waiting to see if I’d fall off.

One of them sat diagonally across from me. Bill Halleran and I had both been fighting for the same breadcrumbs for the past three years. We had both tried to launch similar operations simplification plans at the same time. While he actually hadn’t tried to directly torpedo my ideas, he had done his best to play up the costs and to make me look foolish. In the end I’d proved that the initial investments my plan required led to major savings in the long run. I’d managed to automate document imaging, saving several hundred thousand a year on an outside imaging service. And that was only one of the ideas I’d come up with.

I’ll give him this: if Bill was a sore loser, he didn’t show it. He was a bit sullen but actually graceful in his defeat, clapping approval along with everyone else as my boss extolled the virtues of my five year plan. He even smiled at me occasionally despite the fact that I knew that his career was a big question mark now that his boss knew that he’d lost the fight; managers want to expand their domains and Bill’s boss was seeing his shrink.

I suppose it was the booze and a little bit of arrogance at the knowledge that the beautiful Debbie Baum might be available that made me follow the scent of blood like some alpha male in a tribe of baboons. Bill had his wife there and I could sense her discomfort. That seemed to send me over the edge.

“So, Bill,” I prodded. “How is your reconciliation system going?” I knew that it was going nowhere and that he would have to scramble to attach himself to other people’s projects now that he knew he wasn’t going to be in charge of much of anything.

He turned a little red. “They’re still reviewing it, I guess,” he answered lamely. His wife fidgeted in her seat.

I smiled and scanned the room to see that just about everyone else was watching me and Bill. “I had gotten the impression that it would be indispensable for Susan’s group.”

It must have hit him that I was going to be nasty; I suppose I hadn’t shown that side of myself before. He gave me a sour-lemon look. “Susan isn’t going to use my system. I guess she’s going to use yours.”

“Ah,” I said, pretending to be profound.

Bill and his wife shared glances and I smiled.

“So what will you be doing for the next few months?”

“That’s going to be reviewed, Mike.”

“Well, if you want to do some programming on the reconciliation part of our groups system, let me know. We could use a good coder.”

He blanched and turned his head away. I had asked him to be a lowly programmer, someone who took orders and didn’t direct anything. It was nasty, but somehow, I felt good about it figuring he had risked playing his hand and had lost. He’d caused me some tense moments in the past few years and I guess I was getting mine back.

I saw his wife whispering into his ear. There were heated words between the two of them and I knew that she was telling him she wanted to leave. I smiled again.