The Railroad (12 page)

“You keep looking up in the air. You look like Mommy does when she has an allergy attack.”

I smiled despite myself. “I’m just tired Megan. I’m not used to getting up so early.”

She gave me a look. Then she turned to her mother. “Should I feel his head, Mommy?”

Eileen smirked. “I think he’s okay, honey.”

“I think he looks funny.”

“That’s been said before,” I joked lamely.

*

The night before Eileen had to make her next call to
The
Railroad
things went pretty much as they had for the past few days. We’d gotten to be a little more of a family again but certain things were omitted from our conversation, such as things we’d like to do in the future. There was no talk of Disney World or how someday we’d like to see the Grand Canyon. Hot air ballooning, which had come up repeatedly in those first few days of family-hood wasn’t mentioned.

And then Megan came out and asked if I’d read her a bed time story.

I felt my throat fill with something unnamable and I jerked a look at Eileen. Somehow I didn’t think that Megan was subtle enough for the classic good-bye gesture so it had to mean something more, something that was potentially dangerous.

She held us with her eyes, seemingly like a challenge. Had she decided that I was her best bet and she was trying to force her mother’s hand?

“I can read you a story,” Eileen said, saving the day.

“I want Mike to do it.”

“Megan…”

“I want Mike to do it!” Her face was all little girl mad and I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach.

“I can read to you, Megan,” I told her. “But don’t you want your Mommy to read to you?”

“I want to hear
The Red Balloon
.

I almost gasped. That had been one of my favorite movies as a child; I supposed someone had made it into a book. But what was worse was the subject matter, a little boy who’s persecuted by children and adults alike, who is finally taken away into the sky by balloons, escaping his torturers. It sounded ominous and yet I knew that Megan couldn’t have consciously chosen it just to make a point.

“Eileen?” I asked, deferring the question to her.

“You always have me read to you,” she told her daughter.

“I want Mike to read to me.”

Mommy and I exchanged glances. Did this little girl sense something that we didn’t or was she simply afraid of going out on another dark journey. Was I a port in a storm?

“I’ll read to you if you want,” I told her. How could I say no?

Something made me turn to look at Eileen. As I’d expected her face betrayed her emotion; she was angry and I’d have to say scared. She must have realized that I’d been watching her because she suddenly put on a neutral face. “I think I’d like a glass of wine, Mike. Do you think you can get me one?”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. If you could get me a glass of wine, I’d appreciate it.” It was said with a mother’s voice. This wasn’t about me, it was about Megan. I gave in to the maternal authority and headed to the kitchen.

We’d been drinking less wine in the last few days and no bottle was open. The kitchen was still an obstacle course with all the activity it had seen and it took me a few minutes to find the corkscrew. As I mused on the advantages of screw top bottles I heard the muffled sound of raised voices; Megan was arguing with her mother. I waited a while until I went back in, hoping the argument would burn itself out. I poured myself a stiff Laphroaig and drank it. When the argument showed no sign of letting up, I finally got tired of waiting and took the glass of wine into their bedroom.

Eileen was crying and Megan was staring somewhat angrily out the window. I put the glass of wine on the night table by the bed and stood uncertainly, wondering whether I should leave.

“I’m sorry, Mike,” Eileen said. “Megan is being bratty. But she knows what’s right and how she should act.” She seemed to be talking more to Megan than to me.

“I’m sorry, guys, but I don’t know what this is about?”

“Nothing. It really isn’t your problem. I thought you might have heard.”

“I didn’t. Do you want to tell me?”

“No. Let’s forget it.”

Megan jumped up. “Tell him, Mommy.”

Mommy winced. “Megan, you can’t just decide to ask for things like that. We’re here because Mike is helping us.” She threw up her hands. “This is not your decision to make. I want you to go to sleep and forget about this.”

“No!”

“Megan! Who do you think you’re talking to? I have enough on my mind without you throwing a tantrum.”

“I don’t care. You don’t have any good ideas. You don’t even know where we’ll stay. Those people could hurt us. You don’t know!”

“Megan, this is really getting on my nerves.”

“I don’t care.” The child turned to me. “Mike, I want to stay here with you. Now I said it. Big deal.”

I let it hit my mind and, to my surprise, it didn’t shock me. I guess I’d been playing with the idea, on and off, for days. In my more frightened moments it had seemed awful; taking two fugitives into the disaster of my own life. Or, worse yet, keeping them within miles of the place they were running from. It seemed a bad trade-off on all sides. And yet, though I had never fully admitted it to myself, I was considering it.

I studied Eileen’s face, wondering if the idea had crossed her mind or if she’d dismissed it out of hand, not wanting or needing me enough to consider it. Our kiss? That was all it was; things like that happened between people all the time. Her face gave away nothing and I felt like a fool.

Megan’s eyes bored through me. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Megan. I don’t know if that’s what your mother wants. I’m not sure if it would work.”

She turned to her mother. “Tell him you want to stay, Mommy.”

“Megan…” her mother said, a hint of warning in her voice.

Megan sat down and stared out the window. “I don’t care anymore.” And with that she began to sing a song I’d never heard. All I knew was that it was loud and raucous and it was designed to drown out anything we said.

Eileen’s face fell. Though she looked at me, I couldn’t read her eyes, so I went into my bedroom.

*

Later on I came out of my bedroom to find the living room empty, though the sounds of argument drifted through the walls. I sat down, turning on the television. I had resigned myself to the fact that they were leaving, wishing it would happen and dreading it at the same time. In a sense, they were already gone; there was a wall between us and they already seemed like strangers in my house. They were just an alien noise beyond the wall to my right, people who would be gone sometime tomorrow. I did my best to concentrate on the Marx Brothers movie I was watching but I found that my attention was fading in and out.

It was a time for whiskey, or so I told myself angrily. I’d killed perhaps a third of a bottle in my room, realizing it was the first time in days that I’d consumed that much. Though the expected numbness came, there was an undertone of discomfort that kept gnawing at me. I put the bottle down, realizing that I could get seriously shit-faced in the name of my anger and disappointment and that wasn’t what I was looking for. Eileen and Megan would be leaving whether I drank or not; I had to get used to that and drinking wouldn’t help.

But it wasn’t going to be that simple. About an hour into the movie Eileen came out of the bedroom. Her look was tentative as though she’d committed some kind of ugly sin that she was ashamed of. “More wine?” I asked her.

She nodded sadly and I got up and poured her a glass of the stuff we’d been drinking all week. She took a couple of good pulls at it before she spoke. “What can I say? I think we should go.”

“I understand that,” I told her, trying to be earnest.

She paused and seemed to gather herself. “But I don’t really want to.” She waved off whatever words I was prepared to say. “Let me just say this. I’ve had more of a family in the last week or so than I ever had with my husband or, to be honest, with my parents. I know Megan and she loves you. I know that may be a bit much to dump on you all at once but it’s true. If I thought that the best future we had was out there then I’d go. But I’m not sure it is anymore. I know I’ve only been around you for a little while but…”

She didn’t sob this time. She just squeezed her eyes shut in a feeble attempt to fight off the tears. They squeezed out of her eyes and made it to her jaw before I was up with a box of tissues, dabbing at her face.

“You don’t have to go,” I heard myself saying over the little voice that screamed,
You fucking idiot! Send her away!

She only looked at me with unreadable eyes and took my hand.

*

For a short time it all seemed to make sense. Looking back it made no sense and only could have been acceptable in the face of an odd sort of insanity that I’d come to adopt as my normal state. Eileen and her daughter were fugitives from justice, very badly damaged and unstable with basically no future in or around New York. I was a full-fledged alcoholic, depressive with no way of fixing myself. But I suppose that Eileen and I, and maybe Megan, looked into the pit of despair that comprised our respective futures and grabbed for the only shelter we could find.

The next day dawned with Megan watching television like everything was normal. She gave me a little smile which convinced me that Mom had already told her there would be no underground railroad; that this was her home for quite a while. I’d downed enough whiskey the night before that I wasn’t feeling very sociable but some of my discomfort lifted when I smelled the breakfast that Eileen was cooking. She smiled at me as well and I found myself smiling back.

“Bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee,” she told me, gesturing to the table where a plate waited for me.
Just like a wife
, I thought, with a sinking feeling. As I sat down to eat I realized I was glad that she was there and that I wasn’t grabbing some shit out of the refrigerator in a vain attempt to settle my hung-over stomach.

“This is good,” I mumbled around the food, echoing what Eileen had said days before over her cocoa. “I guess you told Megan what we decided.”

“Did you want to tell her?” She looked stricken.

“No. I just wondered. She’s pretty stoic when she wants to be.”

“I haven’t heard that word in a while.”

“You pick words like that up from going to good schools and going to the right parties.”

“I never finished college. Bob saw to that. I didn’t need school, or at least he told me that.”

“You do and you don’t. I have a lot of friends who ended up with jobs that had nothing to do with what they studied in college. But he should have let you try.”

She nodded, clearly not interested in pursuing the subject; something else was on her mind. “We can’t stay inside this house forever you know.” It was said with a trace of bitterness and I started to wonder if she was regretting her decision.

“I don’t want to keep you here if you think it’s a bad idea.”

“No. That’s not what I mean. I mean that maybe you’ll get sick of having us here and having to pick things up for us. We can’t even go to the store.”

“I think we’ll have to see how that goes. But, honestly, I’m not in love with this house. I can sell it. I don’t really even like it here.”

Her eyes were full of something intense when she turned to me. “You’re throwing your life away.”

“Do you want me to do something different?”

She just shook her head and started in on cleaning the dishes from the night before.

Chapter Seven

Petra Johnson drives an SUV through the dark of Westchester County .The road she is on is deserted, paralleling a swampy body of water. Her neck muscles clench as she does her best to ignore the swamp. Water in the dark has always held a morbid fascination for her. As the moonlight catches and highlights the water, she feels as though she is being drawn to it, as though it will swallow her. Although she’s experienced these fears for years, she still finds that it takes her breath away.

Through the trees she can see the flicker of distant lights, the lights of houses. This is a road no one has bothered to develop; the swamp is large and would undermine any building foundations. Her daughter, Karen, sleeps on the seat beside her. As she comes around a bend she sees a vehicle pull onto the road. Breathing raggedly, she slows her SUV and comes to rest eight feet from the vehicle. Her daughter jerks awake at the sudden lurch.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?”

“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

“But-” It’s all the little girl can get out before her mother raises her hand, motioning her to silence.

A few seconds later a shape detaches itself from the shadow of the vehicle in front of her. A man walks quickly toward them. As he comes abreast of the car he raises a crowbar. “Get out of the car,” he tells them.

The child shrieks as her mother grabs her and, unlocking the door, pulls her out. The woman stares questioningly at the man who leans forward and whispers something in her ear. A tear makes its way down her face.