by K. L. Cook
Once they got to Houston, John planned to track down the bartender he had spoken to, the bald, bucktoothed one with a brother whose friend worked for Texaco. John would find out if there was a possibility of under-the-table money, work for skilled welders who didn’t necessarily want to be on the payroll. John also had contacted an old high school friend of his, who now lived in Louisiana, near Baton Rouge. This friend could create a fake ID for Laura, so there would be no questions until she turned eighteen.
Should they leave notes? She felt that she needed to leave her father something. She didn’t want to disappear the way her mother had, her father not knowing what happened to her, worried that she might be dead or kidnapped or something else terrible. It wouldn’t be right to leave her father completely in the dark. It would be hard enough as it was, leaving him, leaving Rich and Gene. John, on the other hand, was adamant that no clue should be left behind, not now. They could always send a letter in a week, after they were far away. John had a friend in Kansas City, someone he trusted to keep his mouth shut. They could send the letters first to this friend, and then he could send them to Anne and to Laura’s father from there. That way there would be little chance of their being tracked down. John was worried that her father, and perhaps Anne, too, would come after him if they weren’t careful.
“This is still dangerous,” he reminded her.
Yet she felt uneasy about this part of the plan. She didn’t want her father to worry. She remembered when her mother had left, how frantic he was, gone for several days searching for her. She’d never seen him that panicked. She didn’t want to put him through it again. At least Gloria had written. And what John and she were doing was more like what Gloria and Jerome had done than what her mother had done.
“Here’s what you do,” John said. “Tell your father that you are staying the weekend with one of your friends—Debbie or Marlene or whoever. Then you can drop a letter in the mail from Amarillo, and he’ll get it on Monday, so he won’t have to worry, but it will at least give us a head start. How would that be?”
“Okay,” she said, deflated. “I guess.”
On Monday she wrote out the letter to her father. She went through several drafts, including a long one in which she tried to explain what she was doing, and that it didn’t reflect badly on him at all. He was a good father, and she loved him, and she was sorry about this, but please don’t worry. She would be okay. Really she would. But the next day she read it to John, and it seemed too apologetic, too childish, with a whiff, John thought, of weakness that he believed Zeeke might interpret as a signal for him to come find her, to rescue her. She tore up the letter and wrote a shorter one, telling him simply that she had left town with John, that she was fine, he didn’t need to come looking for her or to worry, she would contact him later and would see him when the time was right.
She didn’t particularly like the letter. It seemed abrupt, cold, with too much left out, but John said it struck the right tone. He also wrote a letter to his wife, which he didn’t show Laura. She secretly felt it was unfair that she had shown him the letter she’d written, had even revised it at his request, but that she had no say in his letter to his wife. But after the first wave of resentment, she realized she was simply being selfish. Whatever was between John and his wife was private. It was harder for him. And he would have to cope, as her mother probably had, with the knowledge that he had abandoned his family. They would probably never forgive him. So she kept her distance and hoped that while he was writing the letter, John would not change his mind.
And she had her own secret from him. Without consulting John, she wrote a letter to Gloria. John still didn’t know that Gloria was aware of their relationship. But she was thankful that her sister knew. Because Gloria had left as well, under similar circumstances, Laura felt that only she could fully understand, even though she might not approve. She wrote a letter to that effect, and she held on to it. It needed special postage. She would try to send it before they left.
On Tuesday, after most of her clothes and things had been packed and smuggled to the barn, she felt suddenly unsure about whether she could go through with this. Had she set in motion something too dark and painful for others?
She could see people now only in terms of the effect her leaving would have on them. Rich, for instance, had a nightmare, woke up yelling, tears streaming down his face, pushed their father away, and wouldn’t be consoled until she held him. When she tried to lay him back in his bed, he clung to her and would not let go, as if he sensed that she would be gone for good if he released her. Finally she had to put him in her bed, and he held tightly to her, even after he fell asleep. Each time she tried to move him, he would startle awake and grab her tighter. And so they huddled together, Rich draped over her until morning, and then he followed her around as she made breakfast and dressed, and he looked forlornly out the window of Mrs. Ambling’s living room as Laura got on her bike to ride to school.
She went to her classes, knowing that these were her last days. She tried to concentrate, but instead she found herself staring at the other students and her teachers, watching their movements with a nostalgia that made her eyes cloudy all day. Debbie and Marlene told jokes, laughed, gossiped about the Jameson twins, boys they had crushes on. She smiled, tried to join in, but mostly she hung back and observed them, knowing that by Friday she would be gone and that there would be speculation, and then the news would break about what she’d done, and then there would be a flurry of rumors and gossip, and then, a month later, she would be old news. Debbie and Marlene would still talk about her, with a wistfulness she could imagine might last for months, and perhaps a sense of betrayal: Why didn’t she tell us? I thought she was our friend. But soon enough she would be history.
She felt insignificant. She didn’t count, and once she was gone, she would essentially be forgotten. That was how life was. It moved on, relentlessly, back into the ordinary rhythms, and if you fell away, then you…well, you didn’t really matter much to begin with.
That afternoon she saw Manny and Joannie in the old Ford. They were huddled close, laughing. Joannie pointed to her, and Manny called out, “Hey, Laura, you want to go with us to 4-D’s?”
It was the first time he’d asked her if she wanted to go anywhere with him since…she didn’t know when, and his smile suggested a genuine desire to be in her company, which shocked her.
She hesitated but then said, “Sure.”
At 4-D’s, he offered to buy her a chocolate shake.
She hesitated.
“Oh, come on. When’s the next time I’m gonna buy you a shake?”
He laughed at this, and she wondered for a panicked moment if he knew, if he had gone through her things, had found her letters to her father and to Gloria.
“Two chocolate shakes and one strawberry,” he told the waitress.
He smiled again, and it was clearly the smile of the unknowing. It was just a spurt of generosity. Why now? she wondered. He must know something. But he didn’t. As they sipped their shakes in the booth, Manny with his arm around Joannie, him telling a series of jokes, she again felt a sense of betrayal, how she would betray them. Her eyes glazed over, and she could feel the egg in her throat as she smiled through his jokes, tried to laugh. She would miss even Manny.
The days were getting shorter, and by the time they left 4-D’s the sun was almost down, casting the neighborhood in a golden shroud, and even this dusk, she felt, was designed to make her nostalgic. How could she leave this place, these people?
At home, her father reminded them that the first presidential debate was on that night, and so they ate dinner and cleaned up quickly, made popcorn, and sat huddled in front of the television, watching as Kennedy and Nixon squared off. They were civilized and proper, and she had trouble paying very close attention. She watched her father instead, leaning forward in his chair, concentrating hard, his head cocked to one side, his eyebrows knitted.
This was important to him, very important. He ha
d been saddened by Kennedy’s win at the convention. He believed that if the ticket was reversed, with Johnson in the top slot, then the Democrats stood a much better chance of winning back the White House. Johnson was the Majority Leader. He was maybe the most effective one ever, especially with a Republican White House, her father argued. He could easily whip Nixon. But Kennedy, with all his good looks and easy manner and Ivy League education, still seemed callow and young, too green, and an easy target for Nixon’s barbs about inexperience. And to top it off, the man was an Irish Catholic, which her father didn’t personally have any trouble with, except that it promised to alienate a lot of voters. “The senator from Mass” had assumed a new meaning, and Nixon knew how to take the gloves off. Her father recalled with anger the McCarthy hearings and Nixon’s nasty role in it all. Nixon was, her father said, a dirty little backstreet brawler when it came right down to it.
So as her father watched intently, she studied him, thinking too about how much she would miss him and how bad it would be when yet another woman from his house, the last one, disappeared. If the Democrats lost as well, there was no telling what might happen to him.
Every time Kennedy spoke, there was a hushed, tense silence in the house, as if they were waiting for him to make a mistake. But he was good, and he looked tan and confident, smiling, relaxed, smart. Nixon sounded good, too, said all the right things, but he looked awful—dark circles under his eyes, a five o’clock shadow, beads of sweat collecting on his upper lip and forehead so that he had to keep wiping his face with a handkerchief, his eyes unsure which camera to look into. He seemed sick. She was amazed that he sounded as calm and assured and intelligent as he did, because it looked like he might throw up at any moment. Manny and her father had made jokes earlier, but then they quieted down and just stared.
She felt sorry for Nixon. She felt more than sorry. She felt like she understood Nixon. The stakes were high for him; this was the most important moment in his life, and he couldn’t control his body. She knew that feeling. She had moved through the past few days constantly on the verge of tears, fearful that someone would discover what she was doing, expose her for the fraud that she was. She had thought, more than once, that she was going to throw up.
After the debate, her father seemed happy. He said he was going to the Armory for a beer and asked if Manny wanted to come along. He didn’t ask her, which hurt her feelings, especially since she had been the one following the election with him and talking to him about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, giving him daily updates on Mr. Sparling’s lectures. It was just expected that she would stay home and watch the little boys. They left, and she stood by the window for a few minutes and then turned back to Rich and Gene. She played a game of checkers with Rich and then read him a story, tucked him into bed.
Returning to the living room, she asked, “You want to play some canasta, Gene?”
“Huh?” he said, lifting his head, as if from sleep, from one of his Sherlock Holmes mysteries.
“You want to play some cards?”
“No,” he said and dropped his head back into the book.
“Oh, come on, Gene. Please play with me.”
“Not tonight,” he said.
“Please!” she insisted.
He looked at her, surprised by her intensity and a little skeptical.
“Please play with me.”
“Okay, sure.”
She almost forgot to meet John on Thursday. She had not slept much the whole week, and she felt weepy and weak from a constant headache. She was at the library when she looked at her watch. It was almost five-thirty. She jumped up, startled, knocking over the textbooks she’d been ignoring. She quickly gathered them into her satchel, ran to her bicycle, and pedaled hard to the warehouse. He was waiting for her. He got out and put her bike in the bed of the truck, and she climbed onto the floorboard, out of breath, panting hard.
“Where were you?” he asked, annoyed.
“I lost track of time. I’m sorry.”
“We don’t have much time, you know.”
“I know.”
“Are you ready?”
“Yes,” she said.
They drove the rest of the way in silence. At the barn, they gathered their things, and John went over the plan again, and she nodded, tried to focus. She said “yes” and “uh-huh,” though sometimes she wasn’t sure what exactly he had said. But she knew the plan.
“Are you listening, Laura?” he asked.
“Yes.” He looked at her strangely. “I am,” she assured him.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded.
“Okay, then.”
He kissed her on the forehead and then went over to his bags and opened one of them and sifted through it. He was all business. She lay on the pallet and watched him and then looked out the window, which was growing gray with the fading light. She felt very sad. She turned her head into the pillow and breathed deeply.
After a few minutes, she sat up and said, “John.” She wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. He was busy buckling something in the corner. They were going to take the pallet and the little table with them. It was their only furniture, and he didn’t want to leave it here since he had no idea when or if they were coming back. He’d also purchased a large black trunk that could be locked and would protect most of their things from rain or other bad weather during the drive.
“What is it?” he asked, still busy, his back to her.
She rose and went to him, stood behind him while he finished latching the trunk, and then gestured toward the pallet.
“We can’t. We don’t have time.”
“Please,” she implored him.
“Laura—”
“Hold me, then.”
“Okay,” he said and stood and pulled her into his chest. “Are you okay with this?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he said, “Because we’re on that train now. It’s pulling out of the station. You better tell me now.”
“I know.”
They stood there, still, for a few minutes. This is all she wanted, a moment of stillness before the rest happened.
“You with me?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’ve got to get home now. Willie’s got an earache.”
She winced.
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “Let’s go.”
That night she didn’t sleep at all. She listened to the house as it creaked and groaned, to her brothers breathing, their light snores, and to the breeze as it moved coolly through the window, billowing the thin curtains. She stared at the statue of the bird.
She thought about her mother, what she must have been thinking the night before she left. Did she have doubts, too? Did she feel this oscillation between a glassy-eyed nostalgia and hardened will? She must have thought for a long time about what she would do. Who knows how long? But maybe not. Maybe the possibility presented itself in a flash of intuition on that particular day. And rather than wait for the inspired moment to pass, she seized it and was gone before she could change her mind, the action carrying its own momentum.
Finally dawn arrived. While Manny and Gene were doing their morning chores, Laura stuffed her bag with a few more clothes, the statue, her diary, and her money, which she had hidden in her bottom drawer.
She scrambled eggs and made bacon and pancakes for them all. Her mother, she suddenly remembered, had made them a big breakfast, too—blueberry waffles and ham and eggs—a final meal. Laura cooked willingly, and they were all surprised to come into the kitchen and see the table set with plates of eggs, bacon, and pancakes as well as cups of orange juice, milk, and coffee.
“My, oh, my!” her father exclaimed, and kissed her on the forehead.
She couldn’t eat, but she sat down and watched them, knowing that this would be the last time she saw any of them for a long while—years, maybe, possibly never again. She felt the emotion rise in her. She had to stop these thoug
hts. She couldn’t let herself go to this place. Not today. She washed the dishes, and then she hurried Rich along, took him over to Mrs. Ambling’s house and was back in time to see her father and Gene and Manny leave.
Manny asked, “Do you want a ride to school?”
“No,” she said. “I’ll take my bike.”
“Suit yourself.”
Then they were off, her father’s truck and Manny’s car moving down the street and then out of sight. She was left alone in the house. She listened to the radio for half an hour as she walked through each room one last time. And then she went out into the backyard and whistled for Fay. The dog limped over, turned onto her back so she could have her stomach scratched. Laura obliged her. She rose, and Fay rose, too, and licked Laura and nuzzled her legs until Laura told her, “Enough.” Then she held the dog’s face in her hands.
“Good-bye,” she said. Fay was the only one she could actually say it to before she left.
She went inside and washed her hands. She grabbed her bag and school satchel, which had been emptied of books and filled with the last few things she was taking, and then she set off down the alley toward the abandoned warehouse.
She was supposed to meet him there at nine-thirty.
She arrived at nine-fifteen.
By nine forty-five, she began to worry.
And then, by ten-fifteen, she was sure he was not coming at all.
At eleven-thirty, she walked home quickly, the bag and her satchel heavy on her shoulders.
The house felt eerie and silent. She thought she’d never see it again, or at least not for years, so it seemed as if a long time had passed. She waited until noon before she picked up the phone and called the Letig house, but there was no answer. She hung up, dialed again, and let it ring twenty times. No one picked up.