Lost (23 page)

Unsteadily, he stood. Turning the dead kitchen light switch to off, he went down the basement stairs and fixed the fuses. In the living room, he told the Chinaman to get up on the couch and made him lie down. The dog lowered his head on his paws and groaned. Sherman picked the dirtied tape-flap loose and unwound the bandage on his hand.

Under the bathroom lights the sight of his ruined hand sickened him. Inflamed and swollen, the skin was cracked like old parchment. It was almost unrecognizable as a hand; it gave off a nauseating stench. As gently as he could, hardly touching it, he washed it. Braced against the cold rim of the sink, grinding his teeth, he dabbed peroxide on the infected parts and dabbed it off, yellow and singeing. Then he took a bath, letting the water saturate and warm him, the delicate odor of the soap lingering. The night's ugliness seeped from his pores. When he had dried himself, he brushed his wet hair straight back with the silver-plated brush from her boudoir set and found the torn photograph edged among the perfume bottles. He dressed his hand and wrapped it in bandages from the medicine cabinet.

He cleaned his clothes as well as he could, but the sweatshirt and the corduroy pants couldn't be saved. Stolen, they never did fit right anyway; tomorrow he would have to bury them. His other pair of pants, the jeans he wore under the corduroys, weren't stained so badly that he couldn't wear them. In her bureau, he found clean underwear and a white sweatshirt stained with yellow paint, all too big—her husband's, he guessed—but he had no choice: he had to take them. He found the woman's car keys in her purse and took them. At the first light of dawn, he and the Chinaman went outside.

Graying with light, the air was chill and wet. The freezing rain had again turned to snow. From the back of the house, he took the stone walk past the side of the garage to the alleyway. Around him, the dark windows reflected black tree shadows. He walked slowly, his hands limp at his sides. This morning he was acutely conscious of his hands.

Other than the twittering of a robin or wren, all was quiet. Among the trees a few shriveled patches of frost striped the ground; leaves scuttled. And the snow was falling. Sherman turned to listen for any odd sound. Listened. Nothing. He opened the wide garage door on its creaking pulleys and tried the key in the car trunk, where he stashed the bundle of bloody clothes and bandages. He shoved the trunk shut and tried the other keys until one of them fit the ignition. He called the Chinaman into the car.

He sat behind the steering wheel, studying the unfamiliar panel of instruments and dials. He shifted the lever into neutral. With his foot on the clutch, he turned the key in the ignition. The motor whined and throbbed. Slowly he eased the gear shift down to reverse. As he let out the clutch and touched the gas pedal, the car slipped back, caught the edge of the garage door, scraping red paint, and rolled into the dim morning. He practiced driving back and forth on side streets before he headed out of town.

On River Road Drive, the scant morning traffic came off the curved ramps and whisked by, the headlights hurtling and flickering like meteors. In no time, he passed between the statues, like bookends, on either side of Hoover Drive, the brass Indians on horseback, ancient hosts of the city of Coolidge, Pennsylvania. He could smell the age of the city. Old bricks crumbling to atoms of red dust; soot and smoke and mustiness. He crossed the metal drawbridge, and the façade of the city shimmered in the snowy morning light, while all around the red Ford coupe the occasional throb and whoosh of traffic created a beautiful pandemonium in the early dawn.

11

“
Maamie … ohhh, Maamie, time to come to supper
.”

“
Comin'! … Now, you girls be good and when I get back we'll
—
Uh-oh, Elsie, your dress fell off again. Shame on you. Naughty. Naughty girl
…”

“
Maamie! Put those paper dolls up. Come on, now
.”

“
Okay, Mama! I'm comin'!
”

“
La-di-dah,” Toddy said. “Look at you. Where'd you get so dressed up?
”

“
These're all my favorite clothes. Mama said I could wear 'em. Race ya.
”

“
Okay. Ready, get set, go.
”

“
Wheeeee!
”

“
Hey, bannisters is no fair
.”

“
Look who's here
,”
Sherman said. “It's Loretta Young
.”

“
Hi, Daddy.
”

“
Hi, Loretta.
”

“
It's the Queen of Sheba
,”
Toddy said, “and she cheats
.”

“
Pkpkppkppkppk!
”

“
Loretta, don't stick your tongue out. Not very ladylike
.”

“
Tell him not to make fun of me, then. Tell him, Daddy.
”

“
I think we oughta tickle her
,”
Sherman said
.

“
Oh, no! Yiiiieeee! Hahahahaha haha hahahahaha
.”

“
Sherman, Toddy,” her mother said. “Stop your foolishness now and come to supper. Ray, bring Mamie
.”

“
Daddy, ride me piggyback. Please, please, pretty please, Daddy, let me ride.
”

“
Up we go, then. Up high. Now, hold on tight
.”

“
Hey, what's that? Daddy? Mama, is that my birthday cake? But how'd you make it so big? And look at that! Little birds flying round … Daddy … Daddy, look at the bluebirds with ribbons in their teeth. It's just like Cinderella. Oh, Mama! Where'd you get the little birds?
”

“
Now, who's the one I love? Whose little girl are you?
”

“
Oh, Mama!” she cried. “I'm your girl. I'm your very best girl, Mama … I'm your girl.…

“Mamie? Mamie, wake up. You're twitching all over.” The woman gently shook her shoulder. “Are you having a bad dream?”

Mamie awoke startled, her hands reaching for the bluebirds, the words of her dream still warm in her mouth. She had to withdraw suddenly inside herself to keep from crying out. She caught her breath, then let it go all at once. Closing her eyes, she tried to reclaim her dream but it was gone for now.

To Mamie, only the dream seemed real: her family gathering at the supper table, nobody sick or hurt, no scabs on her, Sherman skinned up like he always was, but not bad—everything the way it should be. That was real. It didn't seem real to be riding in this lady's car and not going home. She thought she should be going home now, even though she knew her home was no longer there. Someone had carried her away and she had seen it burning, but knowing that did not slacken her longing for it.

Every time she slept and opened her eyes, she expected to wake up in her own bed, with the sun shining through the window, kids playing in the yards below, and the Chinaman dragging his chain, barking. She wanted to feel the cool planks under her feet as she went to the bathroom half asleep and washed her face with cold water and soap and a washcloth. Sometimes, when she opened her eyes, she could almost smell the soap she had once used. Instead she awoke with empty hands and the countryside rolling by outside and the monotonous rumbling of the car. All she wanted was to leave her eyes shut and live in the place she had just left, in her dreamland. She slept more than she should—too many hours, the woman said, for a girl her age.

In the beginning, she kept telling herself there'd been a mistake, an awful mistake, and that sooner or later the woman would realize what she'd done and take her back. Sometimes she stood in the back seat staring at the woman's head and just purely hated her for what she had done. She wanted to cry out, This is wrong, all wrong! She wanted to tell her what was wrong, but the woman was no one to talk to. She was a stranger. And besides the nurse had told her not to talk, because people would think she was crazy.

She knew what happened to crazy people. They put them with a crowd of other crazy people and never let anybody out. That's what it was like to be crazy and she didn't want to be like that. Mamie believed there had been some kind of crazy mistake, though, until the woman picked up the other little kids, and then she knew it wasn't a mistake any more. She had done it on purpose, and now they had Patsy and Walter with them all the time. At first she'd thought Walter was like Toddy. But he wasn't Toddy. It was all wrong somehow. It scared her when she thought about it, and she was afraid most of the time. She didn't want to be put away in a crowd of crazy people.

She saw the names of towns fly by her window, and they were like names in a book with the pages turned too fast. For a while, she tried to remember the names in a string, but there were too many of them and she couldn't. She tried to keep track of the days, but the days all ran together. And she never knew where they were or where they were going. It upset her beyond her ability to comprehend it.

Again and again, she thought she saw Sherman. A boy walked by a store window, turned to look down at a display of model airplanes, and she thought it was him. Her heart quickened. She trailed toward the glass. Then he glanced up and moved away, and she was left trembling with disappointment.

The last time she had seen Sherman, he was bending over her at the hospital. He still carried that strange look in his eyes and his mouth was like a cut in his face. “Come on,” he said. “Let's get you dressed and get outa this dump.” He was struggling with her, trying to get her to pull on some jeans he'd brought for her, and she wanted to help, wanted to go with him in the night the way she used to, but it must've been the medicine that made her so sleepy. Even so, she was surprised and glad to see him at last. “I've got the Chinaman,” he told her, “and I've got a place for us to hide.” Then they heard hurrying footsteps in the hall. If he hadn't told her about the Chinaman, she might not have been led astray so often, but the sight of a boy and a dog anywhere made her heart leap. She always thought it was Sherman and the Chinaman come to take her away. Her deepest feelings rushed out to meet them, only to be hit by a numbing backwash when the truth struck her. It wasn't them.

The hospital bracelet hadn't worked.

She thought if she could leave some kind of trail behind like the movie star captured by Indians who left scraps of her clothes on bushes—if she could only think of something like that while the other kids were asleep! Keeping most of her body on the seat, she leaned down to the floor of the car and opened the Little Lulu funny book to the second page. With a blue crayon she wrote across the top margin:
SHE TOOK US
, turned the book and wrote down the side:
MAMIE
. She closed the book. The next time they stopped to buy gas, she dropped the funny book and watched the wind blow it across the street. Another time, she wrote
HELP SHERMAN FINE ME
on the inside of a chewing-gum wrapper, and signed it, her printing jiggled by the bumping of the snowy road. She folded the wrapper in a small, tight square, and while the woman and the kids were busy buying candy, she slipped it inside the end of an opened cigarette pack lying on the counter. Then she quickly replaced the chrome lighter on top of the cigarette pack and turned away. Again and again in their passage along the road, she scribbled her little notes and dropped or hid them. And she waited for Sherman to come. She waited until she thought she could wait no longer. She would have to try to talk to somebody.

Then three nights after they had taken Walter and Patsy, very late in the night, the woman said quietly, mostly to herself, “Either my eyes are deceiving me or our lights are going out.” Slumped in the corner of the back seat, Mamie heard her. The other kids had appeared to be asleep, but at the sound of her voice the two rose and stared through the windshield. “They are,” Walter said finally, his voice croupy. “Didja see that flicker?” And Patsy said, “
There
. It just did it again.” Mamie heard them, listened to their small voices piping back from the front seat, waiting as she had been waiting all day.

“We're having a wreck,” Walter said, glancing at her, big-eyed. “You want to see it?”

“You two certainly have vivid imaginations,” the woman said. “We're not having a wreck and we're not going to have one, much as I'd enjoy hearing you describe it. There must be something wrong with the battery, that's all.”

They drove in silence, the road slicking away beneath them. If something's wrong with the car, Mamie thought, maybe I can get away or get somebody to help me. She stood on the floorboard next to Walter.

Snow splattered the windshield and the wipers carved it away with unremitting regularity. They passed a glowing white sign:
BURDETTE
,
POP
. 903. At a slower speed, the car stalled and sputtered and rocked forward. They entered a small downtown area, four blocks of tall ornate stores, all of them closed and dark, the shape of the Buick wriggling along the plate-glass windows like a lurking shadow. The headlight beams thinned to darkness, blazed, and went out. A half mile beyond the edge of town, a lighted sign revolved in the air.
HORSESHOE COURT
, it said;
TOURIST COTTAGES
.

The Buick coasted into the exit end of the horseshoe drive, cracked through frozen puddles, and rolled to a stop. The woman turned everything off in the car, the wipers, the heater, the radio, before she turned the key in the ignition once again and the motor gave a guttering moan. “Well,” Patsy said, “what're we gonna do now? Camp out?”

The woman said, “That was close.” She undid her scarf from her neck and tied it around her head. “At least we can get a room.” She told them to stay in the car and leave all the knobs alone, and they watched her disappear toward the blinking vacancy sign. Not yet, Mamie thought.

After Leona had brought in the few things they would need from the car—one of the suitcases, her shopping bag, and the briefcase—she locked the cottage door. Like most of the other places she had rented, Cottage 12 was outdated and meagerly furnished, but with the storm blowing up outside, it seemed warm, almost cozy. Once they were all safe inside, she went to the window, spread the venetian blinds with both hands, and peered across the bleak peninsula of horseshoe drive. Taking a last look out had become part of her nightly ritual; somehow it answered a deep abiding need to believe that all was well. There was nothing to see—her stalled car, the falling snow. She let the slats go shut momentarily and stepped back. Silent, except for the soft bleating of its exhaust, a car moved round the horseshoe drive, passed her window, and proceeded on its way. This time when she parted the blinds, she let her eyes stray beyond the vacancy sign to the long curve of road leading to the Monongahela River and eventually to Hastings, West Virginia, the road that would take them away.