Alice leaned back into her seat, her hand still throbbing from breaking the man’s nose.
She didn’t look up as the girl sat down in the seat across the aisle. She felt the girl’s eyes on her but wanted—needed—separation. It was only a matter of time until someone stumbled upon the guy. Who knew what he would do once he was unstrapped and released from the bathroom. Hopefully, he’d be too embarrassed by the fact that he got his ass kicked by a girl that he outweighed by at least fifty pounds. Hopefully, he’d lick his wounds, nurse his bruised ego with a few beers, and leave her alone. Guys like that would hate for anyone to know what a girl did to him. But if he did blow the whistle and go crying to the police, Alice would be screwed. Questions would be asked, her whereabouts documented, dots connected.
“Thanks,” the girl mumbled, barely a whisper.
Alice heard what the girl said, but chose to ignore it. A nasty headache was unfolding inside her skull.
“My name is Delilah,” the girl offered.
“Yeah. I heard.”
The girl chewed and chewed on her gum, still clutching her purse to her chest like her life depended on it. “You think he’ll get out? The guy?”
Alice let her head tilt fall against the headrest and shut her eyes. “Probably.”
“What do you think he’ll do?”
“Not my problem.”
The girl kept working on her gum. “You think I should go tell the conductor or something?”
“Don’t care. That’s up to you.”
The girl rubbed at her knees. “Maybe I should go tell someone.”
Alice finally turned her head and stared over at the young girl. “Look, Delilah, I don’t really care what you do. I’m done. I probably shouldn’t have even gotten involved in the first place, but I did. That pervert will leave you alone for a while, but there’s a hundred more from where he came from.”
Delilah nodded. She looked dangerously close to tears again.
“You’re not going to survive out here on your own. You’re not. If I were you, I’d take the next train home and fix whatever needs to be fixed.”
They rode in silence for a minute, and Alice thought that they were done.
“I can’t,” Delilah finally said. “I can’t go home.”
Alice didn’t bother asking why. She turned her attention out the window where the moon poked through a gap in the storm clouds overhead and the snow had been replaced by rain. Fat pellets of water slapped against the window, slow at first, then, with an unrelenting fury, a torrent of rain attacked the glass.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NOVEMBER 2005
ALICE ABSOLUTELY HATED riding alone in the car with her mother. Trapped together in the awful silence. Neither one speaking much. Neither one knowing what to say. Alice could feel her mother’s depression hang in the air like a noxious cloud. She could feel it in her bones, crawling all over her skin, filling every inch of the car. But a few weeks after the accident, her mother had insisted on dropping her off and picking her up from school every day, so they were trapped together for an agonizing twenty minutes each way.
And this was the very last thing Alice wanted to do right now—stop at Harris Teeter’s grocery shop with her mom. Her hair was still wet and smelled of chlorine from swimming practice, her clothes damp, and she felt cold. She just wanted to go home, take a hot bath, climb into her pajamas, and go straight to bed.
Today was a day worse than most. When her mother picked her up from school, and after Alice got in the car, her mom acted as if she wasn’t even there. Her mother just stared forward, both hands clutching the steering wheel like she was afraid to let go, never saying a word to Alice the entire time. Nothing. Not how was your day? Not how are you feeling? Not how’d you do in swimming practice? But her mother’s prolonged silences weren’t anything unusual lately. She barely spoke to anyone. Alice’s dad. Her own friends. Nobody.
Alice reached forward and flicked on the radio just to get some noise in the dead space. The stereo was set to a classic rock station. Some old song played, the singer screaming more than singing, screeching about going down some highway to hell. Alice had heard it before a thousand times. She didn’t really care for classic rock—especially heavy metal—but for some reason, this kind of music usually made her mom happy because it was the kind she used to listen to in high school. Her mother would always sing along until she couldn’t remember the words, then she would hum or whistle until the chorus returned and she would pick the lyrics back up once again. Alice acted like she hated when her mom sang to the radio, but she actually kinda liked it. It was goofy and embarrassing, but as long as she didn’t have any friends in the car, she’d put up with it. Now, she hoped that some music would shake her mom out of her despair.
It didn’t. Her mother’s expression remained unreadable as she reached forward and clicked off the radio. They pulled into the Harris Teeter parking lot and after her mother parked the car, she cut the engine, removed the keys, and just sat there for a few moments. Stared out the windshield with a dazed expression. Her hair was a mess—greasy and matted knots draped over her eyes.
Alice waited for her mother to do something, but she didn’t. She sat behind the wheel of the car like she was waiting for something to happen. Alice couldn’t take it anymore.
“Are you going in or what?”
“Hmmm?”
“Are you going in the store? I thought you needed to pick something up.”
Her mother nodded, her mind somewhere else. “Yeah.” She grabbed her purse from the back seat, swung open the door, then mumbled to Alice, “Come with me.” Not really a question or request.
The door slammed shut before Alice could respond. She let out a groan and watched her mother trudge toward the store in the same pink, faded sweat suit she’d been wearing every day for the last couple of weeks. There were stains all over the back of the pants. Yellow stains. Brown stains. From coffee or soup or whatever. She looked homeless.
As Alice reached for the door handle, her sleeve pulled up and she saw the slashes. The scabs on her forearm hadn’t yet healed; each of them about an inch long, right above the wrist, that would probably leave scars. She covered the cuts with adhesive pads during swimming practice and always wore long sleeves to school. Coach Houck didn’t know. Her teachers didn’t know. Not even Rhonda and Shelly knew. But at home, she chose not to conceal them—she wanted them to be seen.
She touched one of the scabs and thought about how her mother never even asked how they happened. The cuts were right there on Alice’s arm, plain as day, and either her mother had no idea that her own daughter had cut herself, or she didn’t care. Didn’t care that Alice might have scars for the rest of her life, scars that would be a constant reminder, like a battle line drawn, marking what life was like before Jason and after his death.
Alice pulled the sleeve down to cover the scabs, then opened the passenger door and followed her mother inside the store.
* * *
She caught up with her mom pushing a cart through the produce aisle, hunched over the handlebar, barely picking her feet up off the floor, her sneaker shoelaces untied and trailing after her. Nothing inside the cart except for her purse.
The store was crowded with late-afternoon shoppers. Everybody rushing around, picking up last-minute items for dinner, lost in their own worlds. Piano music pumped through the speakers, nothing but white noise.
Alice walked beside the cart, neither she nor her mother slowing or stopping to pick up any fruit or vegetables. Alice didn’t feel hungry. The thought of food made her queasy. She wondered if she would ever feel hungry again.
Then her mother stopped abruptly in the middle of the aisle and stared at a display of pineapples. She gazed over the selection of pineapples as if searching for the perfect piece of fruit, then she finally picked one up, turned it over in her hands, inspecting the bottom, the top, the sides, all the while taking up the entire aisle.
“Mom. You’re blocking people.
”
If her mother heard Alice, she ignored her. She ran her fingers over the sharp spines on the pineapple’s dimpled skin and kept turning it over and over in her hands.
Alice noticed that a few other shoppers were staring at her mother. Awkward stares. Uncomfortable looks. Impatient glances. Alice grabbed the pineapple from her mother and dropped it in the cart. “What else do you need?”
Her mother mumbled something and pointed down the aisle. Alice didn’t bother asking her mother to repeat herself. She rolled the cart down one aisle, then up another, her mom trailing after her like a distracted child.
Alice glanced over at her mother and felt a sudden surge of anger toward the woman. She hated how quiet and strange and withdrawn she was acting, even though she knew exactly why. People kept staring at them as they rolled past. Staring at her mother’s dirty hair and dirty clothes and zombie-like expression. Other people didn’t know what she just lost—they only saw a woman who looked unstable.
Alice didn’t want to be seen with her. Didn’t want other people to know this woman was her mother. She knew it was wrong to think like that. To care what other people thought, but she couldn’t help it. She wanted to grab her mother by the shoulders and shake her and tell her to snap out of it, to stop acting and looking so strange. No one else cared that Jason was dead.
Alice’s mother stopped abruptly in the middle of the aisle and clasped her hands to her face. “Oh, my God…”
“What? What’s the matter now?” Alice couldn’t mask her impatience.
Her mother didn’t answer. Instead, she pointed a trembling hand toward a woman and her small child, a young boy, maybe four or five years old. They walked hand in hand, chatting amongst themselves, a private moment between mother and son.
Alice’s mother continued to clutch at her face, then started to jog down the aisle and kept repeating, Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
Alice watched her mom push past other shoppers, slamming into their carts, bumping into shelves, and knocking cans and boxes all over the floor. “Baby?”
She chased after her mother, grabbed her by the wrist, and yanked her to a stop. “Mom. Stop it. What are you doing?”
Her mother’s head snapped toward Alice. Her eyes were wide and crazy and seemed to protrude from their sockets. “Let-me-go.” She ripped her arm free from Alice’s hand and snapped, “Don’t you touch me. Don’t you dare touch me.” She stared at Alice for a moment like her daughter was something repulsive, something vile, then took off running again and disappeared around the end of the aisle.
Alice felt the eyes of all the other shoppers. People looking at her and whispering to one another. What she wanted to do was turn around and march out of Harris Teeter, and start walking and keep walking until she was far away from this store—away from this humiliation.
But she didn’t. Instead, Alice turned down the next aisle and watched with horror as her mother finally caught up with the woman and her small child.
“Jason?” her mother screamed. Her voice, loud and shrill, carried across the store. “Jason? My boy.” She grabbed the little boy by the arm and tried to scoop him up in her arms.
“What are you doing?” the boy’s mother screeched. “Let him go!” She tried to remove her son, but Alice’s mother clung to the small boy, refusing to release him.
“My boy, my boy …” Alice’s mother stared at the child and ran her hands over his small face, caressing his chubby red cheeks. The little boy’s round eyes grew wide, then his face collapsed into terrified snorts and sobs.
The boy’s mother finally managed to yank him back to her bosom and cradled her wailing child. “What is the matter with you? You’re scaring him. You’re scaring him.”
Alice’s mother reached her arms out toward the little boy once again, her mouth opening and snapping shut, but unable to form any words.
“Leave us alone!” The boy’s mother lashed out and slapped Alice’s mother across the cheek. The impact made a sharp cracking sound that echoed through the store.
Alice’s mother cried out, half in shock, half in pain. She stumbled backwards, collapsing into a shelf. Bottles of ketchup crashed to the floor, glass shattering into dozens of jagged pieces. Red, thick sauce splattered across linoleum like a gunshot wound. Alice’s mother tried to stand, but slipped on a ketchup smear and tumbled back into the shelves.
The small boy howled louder, and his mother gripped him tighter, which only caused him to bawl even harder.
Alice stood frozen at the end of the aisle, her heart machine-gunning in her chest. Her cheeks felt hot. Her knees weak below her. She finally forced herself forward and looked toward the woman and her young son. “You don’t understand,” she whispered, barely audible.
Alice’s mother stumbled to her feet and stared at her daughter. Her breath hitched in her chest. Her face blossomed red, her hair standing on end and hanging every which way. “Alice?”
“It’s okay, Mom.”
“You …” She poked her finger toward Alice, then marched over and grabbed her by both shoulders. “You were supposed to be taking care of him. You were supposed to be watching him.”
Alice tried to back away. Tried to pull herself from her mother’s pinching hands. “Stop it!”
Everything fell dead in the store. Shoppers and employees stared at the two of them.
Alice’s mother released her daughter’s shoulders and slowly backed away. Pushed past the woman and her child. She shook her head at Alice, then her legs went out from under her, and she collapsed to the floor and buried her face in her hands and cried and screamed and kept repeating the same thing: No. No. No.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FEBRUARY 2011
THE CONDUCTOR’S GARBLED voice announced over the PA system the train’s pending arrival into Charlotte, right on schedule. The overhead lights flickered brighter in the train car, stirring passengers out of restless slumber. It was almost midnight and the city appeared fairly quiet. Glass towers all lit up but empty of nine-to-five office workers. Traffic lights blinked red, forcing the handful of cars and trucks on the city streets to four-way stops. A few intersections were active with women in short skirts smoking cigarettes, chatting with one another as they waited for their next client. Bouncers stood in front of bars, passively watching drunks stagger in and out. One street with closed-up storefronts had a large collection of the homeless, shopping carts filled with old jackets, bottles and cans, and cardboard shelters leaning askew.
The train shuttered to a stop, and a few passengers gathered their belongings and prepared to disembark. Alice’s head leaned up against the glass, her eyes heavy. Tired. Hungover. Muddled. A few more stops, then she would get to Wilmington. From there, she’d take the bus down to Shallotte in the morning. Just a little farther.
Her eyes started to close; sleep so needed. Then she heard a commotion outside on the platform. A raised voice. Other passengers waiting to get off the train all turned and stared out the window. She saw two Charlotte police officers hustle down the platform and move in the direction of the commotion. They moved quickly. Something or someone had their attention. Alice craned her head forward to get a better look. An Amtrak conductor was in a heated conversation with an irate passenger. The police officers approached the official and he gestured toward the train. Then Alice spotted the man with the ponytail. He was pacing the platform, swearing at the conductor. Then got into it with the cops.
Alice bolted upright, heart hitching in her chest. She should have known better. Problems don’t just go away. They only get worse. Should have just minded her own damn business. What did she really expect? That the guy would never get out of the bathroom? That he wouldn’t be pissed and expect some kind of payback? The cops would have questions—about breaking the guy’s nose, about tying him up in a bathroom. It wouldn’t matter what he had tried to do to the girl. Questions would be asked. Questions Alice didn’t want to answer.
Alice felt Delilah’s eyes on her again, watching
as she grabbed her duffel bag and readied herself to exit the train.
“You getting off here?”
“Yep.” Alice saw the disappointment in the young girl’s big blue eyes.
“You have family here or something?”
“Nope.”
“Oh. You live here?”
Alice took a quick glance out the window. The cops were still preoccupied with Buddy, trying to calm him down. Alice sighed, reached into the duffel bag, peeled five twenties from a stack. She grabbed the girl by the wrist and shoved the wad of twenties into her palm. “Go home, Delilah.”
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