“Del!” I called. “It’s me.”
A dog began barking next door. I heard someone scream, “Be quiet!”
Disappointed, I turned away and started back to the car, but just before I reached it, a taxicab pulled up behind it and Del stepped out of the rear, holding Patty Girl in his arms. Shawn got out after him and immediately took hold of his jacket.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, the moment he saw me.
“I called the pizza parlor and some man told me you had family problems.”
“You could say that,” he remarked, and paid the taxi driver.
“Hi, Shawn,” I said. “Can I take your hand?”
He looked at Del, and then he offered his hand to me.
“What’s happening? What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you all about it after we get them to bed,” Del told me.
They were both so exhausted, it didn’t take long. The expressions on their little faces told me the exhaustion wasn’t only physical. They were overwhelmed with fear and emotional trauma as well. As soon as we closed the door on their room, Del lowered his head.
“She overdosed,” he muttered.
“What?”
“She’s in the hospital, still in a coma. I stayed as long as I could with the kids.” He shook his head. “I’m disgusted with her. I don’t even feel sorry for her. She went off with that LaShay after work and she mixed a few things, including a lot of cocaine. I got the call just before I was supposed to leave for work myself and she was supposed to be home to watch the kids.”
“Oh, Del, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. It’s just a matter of time now before the social service worker will be back at that door, this time to tell me they’re going to foster homes,” he said sadly, and flopped onto the chair at the kitchen table.
“You want me to make you something to eat?”
“No. I had a cheese sandwich at the hospital, and my stomach regrets even that,” he replied. He stared so coldly at the wall, I felt my heart ache for him. “I don’t know why I let myself believe her.”
“Because you wanted it to be true so much, Del. Don’t blame yourself for trying to be hopeful.”
He nodded.
“You’re right. I guess when you’re desperate, you’re most vulnerable to fairy tales,” he said, and then widened his eyes with curiosity. “How did you get out to come here? What’s happening with you now?”
“It’s terrible,” I said, flopping in the seat across from him. “I bet people in prison have more freedom than I have.”
“But you’re here,” he noted.
“I snuck out, stole the keys, and came when I heard you were having troubles.”
“Oh, no, not that again. The police will be at my door and that will bring the social workers here faster,” he complained. “You had better get back.”
“I don’t want to go home again, Del.”
“What are you talking about? Where are you going to go? What would you do?”
“What we decided. This is the best time to do it,” I told him, my excitement returning.
“Oh. And how are we supposed to do that, Teal? You and I haven’t enough money to travel and settle in somewhere else with two young children.”
I stared at him and then smiled.
“What?” he said, his lips softening.
“I can get us thousands of dollars,” I said. “And tonight, right now.”
“Thousands? How?”
“I just know where there is a lot of money, and the beauty of it is, no one wants anyone else to know about it.”
He shook his head.
“You’re not making any sense, Teal.”
“Never mind. If I return with ten thousand dollars, will you leave with me now? Will you, Del?”
The reality of what I was saying sank slowly but firmly into his consciousness. I could see his eyes changing, hope replacing defeat and sadness, as what we thought of as dreams and illusion suddenly began to slide into possibility.
“But where would we go?”
“There’s that cousin of yours you mentioned in California, the one you’ve spoken with about your going out there.”
“Yeah, but that was to be by myself, not with two little kids.”
“It won’t matter. He’ll help you, help us. You’ll get work right away and I’ll look after Shawn and Patty Girl until we get them into a school.”
“You just don’t enroll kids in a school, Teal. There are legal papers, guardianships, all that.”
“We’ll figure all that out when we get there, Del. The main thing is, we don’t want to stay here. For you it means losing them anyway, and for me it means walking about in shackles soon.”
He smiled, and then he shook his head.
“It sounds great, but I don’t know.”
“Money will make the difference, Del. It always does,” I said firmly. “The only thing is, we have to decide immediately. I have to do all this now, before they realize I’ve taken it and the car and I’m gone. We need the head start,” I urged.
“I don’t know,” he said, but I could see his resistance weakening.
“It’s a fresh start for both of us, for all of us, Del. We can make it work. Together, we can.”
He looked at me.
“I don’t understand about the money. Why do you say no one wants anyone to know about it?” he asked, and I told him what I had heard Carson and Daddy discuss.
“So they won’t be so quick to report it missing,” I emphasized.
He was thoughtful again.
“We’re not incapable of doing this, Del. We’ll get to California. We’ll do it,” I urged.
He lifted his eyes to me. I could see it was on the tip of his tongue. He was going to do it. My heart was pounding so hard, I thought that was what was making the noise, until we both realized, someone was at his front door. The pounding grew louder. For a moment neither of us could move, and then he rose and looked through the front windows.
“It’s the police!” he said.
“Oh, no. My father.”
“Oh, great,” Del said. “I knew it. I just knew it, Teal. You weren’t thinking.”
“I’m sorry, Del,” I moaned.
“Right, you’re sorry,” he said angrily, and went to the door.
A patrolman stood there gazing in at us. The thought of my being arrested again sickened me. I felt like I would actually faint.
“Del Grant?”
“Yes?”
“The hospital has been trying to reach you. No phone?”
“No, we lost service and I haven’t restored it yet. What is it?”
“Your mother,” he said, and shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
It felt like a bullet had passed through Del into me. Cold and then numbed, I moved up beside him. He was just standing there, nodding.
“You’ll have to contact the hospital as soon as possible,” the policeman said.
Del continued to nod.
“Is there anything we can do for you, get in touch with anyone else?”
“No,” Del said. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry,” the policeman muttered. It was easy to see he hated the assignment and wanted to get it over with as quickly as he could. He turned and walked back to the patrol car. Del stood there looking out at the street, unmoving.
Despite how angry he is at his mother almost all the time, she is still his mother, I thought, and she’s gone. Surely, he was also thinking about the impact it would all have on Shawn and Patty Girl. I felt so bad for all of them. Any thoughts about my own misery were forgotten.
“Del,” I said gently, touching his arm.
When he turned to me, I was expecting to see tears, but instead I saw a face so stone cold, it chilled my heart.
“Go get the money,” he said.
“Del?”
“Go on. We’ll leave tonight. I’ll start packing what I want to take.”
He turned away. I stood there
for a moment and then hurried out to the SUV.
All the way back to the house, I thought about Del’s reaction to hearing his mother had died. How would I have reacted to such news? What did running away like this mean anyway, if not a total break with my family? What did I expect them to do once they had discovered what I had done? Forgive me? Wish me luck? Tell me they understood? Once I left the house with Daddy’s money, it would be the same as hearing they had died. I’m sure it will be similar for them in relation to me, I thought.
I had been dreaming and fantasizing about this for so long that now that the reality of our actually going ahead and doing it was here, it still seemed like an illusion. It wasn’t until I pulled into our driveway and confronted our big home that I began to feel afraid. Could I pull this off? Could I really do this? Was I a terrible person for giving Del such assurances, such hope?
I sat for a moment in the SUV with the engine off and the lights off, my body trembling. I almost wished I would be discovered, but no lights went on in the house and no one came to the front door.
Back in his house, Del was packing, getting ready to start a new life with me. His grief was being smothered with the fresh new prospects I had given him. I had to succeed now. I had to do what I had promised. I got out quietly and scurried around the house to the window of Daddy’s den. There, I took a deep breath and then climbed back through it into his office. For a long moment I stood listening, half expecting to hear the sound of footsteps on the stairs, but I heard nothing. The maids were in their rooms. It was eerily quiet.
I went to Daddy’s desk drawer and felt for the safe key. When I had it, I paused again to listen. There was just the sound of something creaking in the walls, a pipe or maybe just the house itself settling into a cozy rest for the evening. My heart started to thump so hard, I could actually feel the blood being rushed through my body when I opened the safe and felt inside for the cash box.
If there was any chance of Daddy forgiving me for my past actions, it was soon to end, I thought, but I had long gone past that moment. I had to harden myself against him, Mommy, and Carson in order to continue. I thought about the way Daddy looked at me now. I thought about Carson’s washing his hands of me, and I thought about Mommy telling me I was too far gone for her to interfere. As far as they’re concerned, I rationalized, I’m no longer part of the family anyway. What am I risking?
I opened the cash box, took out the money, and stuffed it into a manila envelope on Daddy’s desk. Then I closed the box and put it back in the safe. I locked the safe and replaced the key in the top drawer. Once again, I paused to listen and heard nothing.
Good-bye Daddy, I thought as I stepped up to the window. Good-bye to seeing all the disappointment in your face, to hearing your voice harden with threats and the imposition of new punishments. In the end you will be happy I’m doing this. Think of all the relief I will bring you.
And good-bye to you, Mommy. I’m sure you’ll be upset for a while, but some new social event will come up, and then you will have all the pressure of Carson’s wedding. That will take your mind off me, won’t it? It seems to do it for you now, to the extent that I’d just as well not be here.
And Carson, my reluctant brother, how happy you will be. Just think, you no longer will have to make up any excuses for me or try to avoid me. You can go on and believe you were an only child after all. Your sister was a fiction. What sister? Never heard of her.
You’re all going to be happier, and there is no question in my mind that I will be, so good-bye, good-bye, good-bye, I thought, and went out through the window. I closed it behind me and walked slowly around the house and back to the SUV. For a moment I stood by it, looking up at the darkened windows and thinking about Mommy dreaming her happy dreams and Daddy feeling safe and contented beside her. I wondered just how long it would take them to realize I was gone.
I even imagined the scene at breakfast.
“Henderson,” Mommy would say after sitting awhile and discovering I hadn’t come down to breakfast. I hadn’t even made a sound: no shower going, nothing.
Daddy would lower his Wall Street Journal.
“What?”
“Teal hasn’t come to breakfast, and she has to get to school.”
Daddy would sigh in annoyance and call to the maid to tell her to knock on my bedroom door. She would, and then she would return to tell them there was no response. Now, infuriated, Daddy would get up and pound up the stairs to my bedroom. He would thrust open the door and stare with confusion at my still-made bed.
“Teal?”
He would look into the bathroom and see I wasn’t there. Confused, but more angry than worried, surely, he would come flying down the stairs and announce I wasn’t in my bedroom. The bed, in fact, looked unused.
“What?” Mommy would say. “That’s impossible. She didn’t leave the house, and she certainly wouldn’t make her bed.”
Daddy would stand there a moment thinking, and then he would turn and march out to look for the SUV. When he saw it was gone, he would come stomping in, screaming about me. He would go to the phone, vowing to have me arrested again and this time, put into jail for years if he could.
Mommy would try to calm him, but soon she would feel she was getting too stressed over it and retreat. After all, she had to be ready for some luncheon or another and she couldn’t very well go looking like a ragtag woman.
Daddy would call Carson and they would console each other and repeat to each other how terrible I was, how utterly hopeless I was.
“Don’t get sick over her,” Carson would advise.
“I won’t do that,” Daddy would vow, and he would gather his wits, call the police, and then go to work.
I played this whole scenario in my mind as I drove back to Del’s house. In a way it made me feel good about what I was doing, and in a way, it made me feel even sadder.
Whatever, I told myself. It doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t matter anymore.
It’s too late to turn back, and it’s too late for regrets.
When I arrived at Del’s house, I saw the lights were on and at the door, I saw two old suitcases. It wasn’t until then that I realized I had nothing but what I was wearing and the money in the manila envelope.
He stepped out and looked at me.
“Get what you need?” he asked.
“I just got the money,” I said.
“Wasn’t there something important to you, something you had to have?” he asked. “Pictures, dolls, anything you wanted to take with you?”
I thought for a moment and shook my head.
“No,” I said.
And finally, I had a reason to cry.
10
Following the Sun
Fortunately, Shawn and Patty Girl were so exhausted and groggy, they didn’t realize we were putting them into the rear of the SUV along with some of their things. We set up pillows and blankets for them and finally started out. Once we left the city streets and got onto highway I-90 toward Buffalo, I remarked how asleep the world looked this late at night. My excitement had kept the adrenaline flowing, but now that we were gassed up, packed, and on our way, my body began to soften.
Del said very little besides dictating the directions. The route west was something he had long ago committed to memory. I remember someone in history class in my public school asking our teacher why it was that people always seemed to head west to start new lives, explore, and make discoveries. He thought for a moment, nodding and smiling at the question, which was apparently a good question to him, something that gave him a chance to leave the prescribed curriculum for a moment, to be philosophical and original.
“I don’t know exactly,” he replied, “but if you think about it, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Maybe we all just follow the sun. Maybe we all believe it knows where it’s going,” he added with an impish smile. It was one of those rare moments when something was said or done in a classroom that stuck with me.
Do we really know whe
re we’re going? I wondered.
As we drove into the night, the darkness, interrupted now with only oncoming or passing vehicles, grew thicker. I know it was just my imagination, but it seemed as if the SUV was battling harder to move forward. I felt like we were inside a balloon, pressing harder and harder against the unexpectedly thick walls, stretching them and waiting to finally pop out and be free.
“How are you doing?” Del asked.
“Okay,” I said in a voice smaller than I wanted it to sound.
I wanted him to be assured of my confidence and my determination. I wanted to fill him with courage and resolve, to believe that we could overcome whatever obstacles awaited us and solve any problem simply because we were young and free and bold. We could shut the door on our pasts firmly and finally. We could forget everything and live only in the present.
I remembered another thing from a classroom discussion, this one in science class. My teacher was telling us that one thing that distinguished man from the lower forms of life was his ability to draw upon memory and to foresee. And I remember thinking, but what if your memories were full of pain and what if you saw only danger and trouble in the future? What was the benefit of that? I almost asked him, but I anticipated some scientific, textbook answer that wouldn’t really address my thoughts, so I didn’t. I simply left class thinking the stupid ant or worm was better off. At least, better off than I was.
“We can’t drive all night, although it’s probably better. Less chance of being tracked and spotted,” Del said. “I’ll take over when you feel you’re too tired, okay?”
“Yes, fine. I can drive a little more,” I assured him.
He turned the radio on but kept it very low so as not to disturb Shawn and Patty Girl. In the rearview mirror, I saw how they were sleeping in a sweet embrace, safely surrounded by their childhood dreams. I envied them.
Del didn’t look tired, but he was quiet.
“We’re doing the best thing,” I said. “You’re probably right in thinking the social services people would be at the house in the morning.”
“I know,” he said.
“Count the money,” I told him to help build his confidence. I pushed the manila envelope over, and he opened it and took out the bills.