Truth or Dare (12 page)

She reached out toward Pamela as if she wanted to touch her, and Pamela drew back.  “You’re Pamela, aren’t you?“

“Get away from me,” Pamela screamed, and the other people in the park turned in her direction.

“I won’t hurt you,” the woman said in a soothing voice.  “You’re beautiful.  You have Mishka's blond hair,” she stepped closer, and Pamela could see the madness reflected in her eyes.  “You’re eighteen—a grown-up.”

“I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what you want, but if you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to call the police.”  Pamela pulled her cell phone from her purse and flipped it open.

The woman held out a hand.  “Okay.  It’s okay.  Another time.  When you’re ready.”  She backed away slowly, her hands in front of her.  Her foot caught on a tree root, and her ankle twisted.  She stumbled but kept retreating, never taking her eyes from Pamela, murmuring soothing noises, like a cooing pigeon.

“Go on.  Get out of here,” Pamela made a shooing motion at the woman.

Mary put her hand on Pamela’s arm.  “It’s okay. She’s leaving.  She’s just some crazy person.”

Pamela shook off Mary’s hand. She felt dizzy and sick to her stomach, and she could hear the blood pounding in her head.  She wanted to run and run and run until she couldn’t run anymore, until she couldn’t breathe or think or feel.  It was some crazy woman, she told herself.

But she knew better. 

Her life was unraveling, and there seemed to be nothing she could do to stop it.

     “Come on,” Pamela grabbed Mary’s arm and reached for Deirdre with her other hand.  “Let’s get out of here.  I need a new charger for my iPod.  Let’s go to Eric’s and see what he has.”

     They trooped back across the park, down one block and into Eric’s Electronics.  The clerk was standing with his elbows on the counter, flipping through a copy of Mac Magazine.  He had heavy black-rimmed glasses and dark hair gelled into random spikes on the top of his head.  He put the magazine down and rushed over, his eyes on Pamela.

     “Can I help you?” 

     Pamela brushed past him.  “I need a new charger.”  She headed toward a display at the back of the store. 

     “Can I see this?”  Mary grabbed his arm and pointed at an icy blue iPod shimmering on the third shelf of a locked carousel.  She wasn’t sure why she’d asked.  There was no way she could afford it in a million years.

     The clerk looked from Pamela to Mary and then back again.  Finally he waved a hand at Pamela. “I’ll be right there.  Let me get her,” he motioned at Mary, “the iPod and then I’ll be right over.” 

     He unlocked the glass cabinet with a key he wore on a plastic bracelet around his skinny wrist.  “Here you go.”  He put the iPod on the counter.  It was obvious he couldn’t wait to get back to Pamela.  Mary shrugged.  It was always that way.

“Why don’t you take a look at it, and I’ll be right back.”  He tapped the package with his index finger and trotted over toward where Pamela was waiting impatiently.

     Mary pretended to look at the package.  She turned it over and pretended to read the information on the back.  She glanced over her shoulder.  The clerk was busy with Pamela, ogling her while he showed her several different chargers.  Mary could have told him he was wasting his time.

     Something happened.  She wasn’t sure what it was.  Annoyance that Pamela always got what she wanted?  Anger that she had to work so hard to get anything at all?

Maybe she didn’t have an excuse.  Maybe she was nothing more than a common thief.  But she slipped the iPod into her purse and headed toward the door.

     The alarm went off before she hit the sidewalk.

Chapter 13

           
Afterwards, that one moment in time became frozen in Mary's memory forever.   Even ten years later she could see the way the sun slanted through the trees and bounced off the roof of a passing car creating a blur of hazy light.  She could hear the pounding heartbeat of the alarm behind her and feel her own heartbeat immediately ratchet up to warp speed. 

     Her first reaction was to freeze although her mind was screaming "run, run" in a shrill, insistent voice.

     “I’ll call my father. He’s a lawyer.”  Deirdre burst through the door behind her, breathless, her cell phone already out.  Her hands shook as she punched in the familiar numbers.

     Mary was too stunned to say anything.  The theft had been impulsive. Crazy.  She wanted to rewind the tape like they did on television, only this time she would put the iPod back in the case and walk out empty-handed.

     The store manager rushed out.  He must have been in the break room having his dinner because he still had a napkin tucked into the open neck of his sport shirt.  He stood between Mary and the curb with his arms held out in front of him and his upper lip curled like a guard dog keeping a thief at bay.  Mary wouldn't have been remotely surprised if he had started to growl.

     A police car came around to the back of the store.  Mary was grateful they didn’t use the sirens.  The two policemen who rushed into the back room of Eric’s Electronics were enormous.  Their presence sucked all the air out of the tiny, cramped space.  Mary smelled sweat and cheap aftershave on one of them, and it made her feel like puking.

     Deirdre was still pale and shaking, and Pamela was watching the whole thing as if she were curled up at home and this was the Lifetime movie of the week.  She had taken an emery board from her purse and was filing her nails.

     They stood around waiting for Deirdre's father.  Mary heard each minute tick by on the time clock by the back door.  The two policemen shifted back and forth from one leg to the other.  They wouldn't sit down.  Mary wondered if they were afraid she would try to escape?

     Deirdre's father finally burst through the door, bringing a blast of warm, humid air with him.  Mary had never met him although she’d seen him outside plenty of times cutting the grass or getting the mail.  He looked younger than her father and more successful.  His charcoal gray, pin-striped jacket buttoned smoothly over his stomach, and his dark hair was long enough to curl over the tops of his ears and the back of his shirt collar.

     “Daddy, you came.”  Deirdre threw herself into his arms.

     He pushed Deirdre aside and turned toward Mary, holding out his hand.  “Mike Ruffelo.”

     Mary took his hand.  She had to fight the urge to cling to it.  Everything had suddenly become very real. And very scary.

     “Would you mind if I have a word?”  Mike looked at the two policemen who had finally perched on the edge of the manager's battered metal desk.

     They nodded.

     Mike put his hand on Mary’s back and steered her toward a corner that was as far away from the two policemen as they could get.

     His hand lingered on the small of her back like a caress. When it suddenly slipped lower, Mary twisted around until he was forced to drop his arm to his side.

     "Quickly.  Tell me what happened."  His voice was low, his breath whispering across her ear.  He smelled like beer and breath mints.

     Mary told him about the impulse that had led her to taking the iPod.  She thought of the cash she'd slipped from Mr. Sobeleski's cash drawer, and she knew her face was getting red.

     "Leave things to me.  Don't answer any more questions unless I tell you to."

     Mike put his arm on her back again and led her over toward the policemen.

     "We need to take you down to the station."  The larger of the two said to Mary.

     Mary glanced at Mike in panic. 

He nodded and tightened his arm around her waist.  "Any objections to my riding along?"

     The two policemen glanced at each other and shrugged. 

     They got into the backseat of the patrol car, Mary sliding all the way across the worn vinyl seat so that Mike could slip in beside her.  The space felt smaller than usual, the windows clouded over with splattered mud and grime.  Mary's panic rose.  This was real.  She was going to the police station in a police car.

     She looked out the back window as they pulled out of the parking lot. She could see Deirdre behind the wheel of her father's BMW, jerking away from the curb with an audible grinding of gears. 

Deirdre wanted to hang out at the police station and wait for her father and Mary.  It would be nice if they could ride home together, but her father told her not to wait, he’d catch a cab later.  All of his attention had been on Mary.  They’d disappeared through some door behind the front desk of the police station while Deirdre waited in the lobby.

     Her hands were still shaking as she pulled out of the parking lot behind the police station.  She had no idea what was going to happen to Mary.  The whole thing was terrible.  It wasn’t like Mary to do something like that.  If she’d known Mary wanted an iPod so badly, she would have given her the one Maureen and Ed had bought for her.

She pulled into her driveway and sat there, leaning on the wheel.  She’d been so distracted that she went through the stop sign at the intersection of Maple and Elm even though she’d known her whole life that there was one there.  It was luck that no one had been coming the other way.

     She put the keys to her father’s car in the bowl on the table in the foyer.  Voices were coming from the living room which was strange.

     “Oh, Deirdre, is that you?”  Her mother came into the foyer carrying a tumbler of clear white liquid that Deirdre knew wasn’t water.  “I thought I saw Mike’s car…”

     “Daddy’s coming later.  In a cab.”

     Deirdre’s mother raised her eyebrows.  “A cab?  Well, never mind that, there are these people here to see you.”  She gestured toward the living room, and the ice cubes clinked against the side of her glass.

     The way she said “these people” made Deirdre half expect to find a room full of aliens. She peered cautiously around the corner into the living room.

     It was the Bergmans—the couple planning to adopt her baby.  Deirdre had a moment of panic.  She hoped there wasn’t anything wrong.

     “Ah, Deirdre!”  Ed got to his feet and stood rubbing his hands together as if he were cold.

     Maureen perched on the very edge of the all-white sofa.  “We thought we’d drop by, and say hello and see how you’re doing.”  She sounded nervous and unsure of herself.

     Deidre glanced at her mother, who hadn’t sat down, but was leaning against the wall by the door.  She was wearing a pair of off-white linen trousers and a thin, black cashmere sweater with the sleeves pushed up.  Maureen, in contrast, had on navy polyester slacks and a white blouse with eyelet trim. Ed was wearing his shorts with the cargo pockets again.  Deirdre could imagine what her mother thought of them.

     “Sit.”  Ed pointed at the sofa and fluffed one of the back cushions for Deirdre.

     Her mother made a snorting noise in the back of her throat.  “If you need me for anything, I’ll be upstairs.”

     They were quiet as they listened to her footsteps receding up the stairs.

     “Well.”  Ed rubbed his hands together again.   

     “Maybe we should have called.”  Maureen patted Deirdre’s hand.  "But we were so anxious to hear how you're doing.  Everything is okay, isn't it?"

     “Yes.  I’m fine.  You can come by anytime.”  Deirdre looked from one to the other of them as they smiled hesitantly at her.  She really was glad to see them.  She leaned back against the cushion Ed had fluffed for her, and relaxed slightly.  

     The Bergmans looked at each other. 

     "You look tense, dear."  Maureen took Deirdre's hand.  "That's not good for the baby, you know."

     Deirdre nodded.  Tears pressed against her closed lids.  Their care and fussing made her feel vulnerable.

     Just then the front door flew open, and Deirdre’s father rushed in. He nodded at the Bergmans and headed straight toward the bar.  They heard the clink of several ice cubes and then the hiss of a seltzer bottle being opened.

     He walked back into the living room taking a long, deep swallow of his drink.  He raised his glass toward the Bergmans, “nice to see you.”  He mouthed at Deirdre, “friends of your mother’s?”

     Deirdre shook her head and was about to explain, but her father was already walking from the room.

     “Wait.”  She called after him.  “What happened with Mary?”

     He waved a hand at her.  “Later.”

     “Maybe we should go.”  This time Maureen got to her feet, and Ed followed suit.  Maureen smiled apologetically. “I think we're in the way.  Next time we’ll call.”

     Deirdre protested, but they insisted.  She walked them to the door. She didn’t want them to go.  She wanted to capture that feeling she’d had last time when they met at Starbucks and they’d asked her all about the baby and how she felt and had given her a present.

     They seemed in a hurry to leave this time and almost ran down the front steps towards the dusty white Taurus they’d left parked in the street.

     “Are they gone?”  Deirdre’s mother came down the stairs a minute later and stood by the open front door. “Who are those dreadful people?”

     “I told you.  They’re adopting my baby.  And they aren’t awful.  They’re kind, and they care about me.”  Deirdre sniffled.