“Just a little.”
“Well, let’s sprinkle some more baby powder under your cast this morning just in case.”
I looked around the room to make sure I had everything. Then we walked down the hall to the elevator. I was carrying my bag and Nathan’s over my shoulder and pushing him in the umbrella stroller. I had gotten a small suitcase with wheels for Sarah that she could pull herself, Sundae strapped on top of the suitcase with a bungee cord.
There was a teenage bellhop at the concierge’s stand by the door. “Need some help with the bags, sir?”
“No, we’re fine, thank you.” It was a stupid mistake. I should have gone out one of the back doors to the parking lot. Chances were the boy wouldn’t remember us. He probably saw hundreds of guests a day. Still, I had to be more careful. I hadn’t checked out of the room so it would seem like we were still staying at the hotel.
The kids asked for pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream at the IHOP. I said fine. Anything to keep them happy. This wasn’t the time to take a hard line on what they ate. There was a jar of crayons on the table and paper place mats for them to color. As we waited for our order, I kept chiding myself for that brief exchange with the bellhop. That was actually my second stupid mistake. I had told Lucy we would be going to a water park today. I was trying to sound casual, in no rush to get off the phone. From the hotel window, I happened to be looking down on the blue neon sign for Cleo’s Splashatarium, and the lie came slipping out. How could Sarah go to a water park with a cast on her arm? Fortunately—or, rather, true to form—Lucy didn’t pick up on it.
I parked the rental car in the regular lot at the airport and locked it. The agency would discover it eventually. I had made the decision to go to Memphis before I left Boston. I heard they had a good zoo, which would be nice for the kids and make them feel like they were still on vacation. My next stop was still unplanned. From Memphis, I could go in any direction. I had no specific route or destination in mind. I figured I’d make it up as I went along, as if the randomness of our journey would make us harder to find. When I booked the airline reservations on the phone last night, I had been worried about using our real names for the tickets. I had a fake Massachusetts driver’s license, but it didn’t match the name on my credit card if the agent at the airport asked for my ID. A single man with two small children paying cash for one-way tickets could raise a red flag with the airline. It wouldn’t matter if the authorities began their search in Orlando or Memphis. I’d just be spending a few more hours as Matthew Drobyshev.
It was strange watching myself turn into a criminal. All the stealth and paranoia. The last two and a half weeks in Boston had been incredibly stressful. I slept no more than two or three hours a night, wrote down almost nothing on paper. I had never been a good liar, and sometimes when I talked to Lucy, I was afraid she could see inside my head. The things that concerned me most were money and how I would go about changing our identities.
I actually had plenty of money. With some wise investment advice from Thorny, I’d managed to more than double my mother’s life insurance payout in five and a half years. I had nearly a quarter of a million dollars, and the divorce settlement let me keep it all. My investments were mostly in stocks and mutual funds. Once I made up my mind to run, I sold everything and transferred the money to my bank account. The trick was making sure I had access to it in my new life. I couldn’t convert the money into cashier’s checks or stock certificates because they had to be made out to a specific individual, and I didn’t know what name I’d be using. I considered asking Uncle Joe to hold the money, or my old friend Sandor, whom I didn’t see much anymore but still felt close to. I knew I could trust them, but doing so would put them in a compromising position if the police came around and started asking questions. Javi had become my best friend, but I couldn’t tell him I was abandoning DSC. I made sure the books were immaculate and left him with a schedule of upcoming trips and detailed client records.
In the end, I felt that it was best to have all my money in cash, but I didn’t want to risk carrying it all with me and having it get lost or stolen. On the Sunday before I left for Disney World, I drove up to Monadnock State Park in New Hampshire and buried four plastic watertight containers, each holding fifty thousand dollars, in separate locations, and made a carefully drawn map. The rest I took with me, almost thirty thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills.
I wasn’t quite sure how I’d go about creating new identities for the kids and me. I’d seen TV shows about people using some dead person’s name and birth date, but I didn’t have time to explore that angle. Besides, I needed to do it for all three of us. I tracked down a small-time criminal from my days as a cop. For a thousand dollars I bought a fake driver’s license and three blank Massachusetts birth certificates, complete with the state seal, knowing I could fill them in with any names I wanted.
The kids loved the Memphis zoo. We had dinner and stayed in a motel room nearby. Lucy wouldn’t know we’d gone missing yet, but I was already starting to look over my shoulder. Tuesday morning I bought bus tickets for Little Rock. I paid cash and didn’t have to give the clerk my name. Nathan and Sarah fell asleep sitting side by side on the bus, while I was across the aisle from them with an empty seat next to me. I looked out the window at the green fields of Arkansas, a state I had never been to. The man in the row in front of me was snoring loudly. I glanced down at my feet and noticed a brown leather wallet. I assumed it belonged to the snoring man and had slipped under his seat. I picked up the wallet and found it was stuffed with cash. The man went on snoring. Tucked among the business cards and credit cards was a Tennessee driver’s license. Unlike the licenses in most states, it had no photograph. The man’s name was Gerard Betz. I slipped the license into my pocket. Betz awoke and stretched his arms over his head.
I stood up and looked over the seat. “Excuse me, but I think you dropped this.” I handed him the wallet.
He gave it a quick glance to make sure the money was there. “Jesus, thanks, my friend. I woulda been up the shit’s creek without a paddle.” He pulled a fifty-dollar bill from the wallet. “Can I offer you a token for your honesty?”
“No, no. Please. You would’ve done the same for me.”
He didn’t ask twice. “’Course I would. That’s what makes this country great, right? People bein’ good neighbors. Doin’ the little things.” He offered his hand to shake. “Thanks again. What’s the name, friend?”
“Dan. Dan Roble.” My old pal from high school, the first name that popped into my head.
“I’m Gerry Betz.” He was forty-three according to his license but looked much older. Sun-tortured skin and huge veiny nose. “Where you headed, Dan?”
“Little Rock.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“Family.” I shook my head. “Definitely not pleasure. I have my two little ones with me.”
“Say no more, my friend. I got three ex-wives and doin’ my best to make it four. My problem is I’m a romantic. I just can’t do like these young people nowadays, takin’ all the good stuff without makin’ any promises.”
“Those promises can get expensive.”
“You’re tellin’ me.” He laughed. “I guess that’s why they sound like prayers. You feel so damn good when you’re sayin’ them. Then you just go back and do what you always done.”
“Daddy?” Sarah said. “My cast is itchy.”
I asked a man in the Little Rock bus station if he knew of any good used car dealers. He directed me to a Chevy dealer a short cab ride away. I had already decided to use Betz’s license for identification instead of my fake Massachusetts ID. It would probably be days before Betz missed it, and he wouldn’t think to ask if someone had used it to buy a car. It took me less than twenty minutes to pick out a blue 1977 Chevy Malibu, which cost six hundred fifty dollars. For an extra twenty the salesman said he could have all the paperwork back from
the registry in two hours.
“How’d you break your arm, sweet pea?” the salesman asked Sarah.
“I flew off the trampoline,” she said proudly.
“Awright! Does it hurt?”
“No, just itches.”
I took the kids to a small amusement park, and we spent the night at a motel in Arkadelphia. I doubted if Lucy would do anything more than shrug when I didn’t call that evening as I promised I would. She’d assume I forgot or was being spiteful. It wasn’t like she really wanted to talk to the kids. Asking me to call was just a way for her to act like she was being a good mother. She was too busy fucking Griffin to think about anything but herself.
The air conditioner in the motel didn’t work very well. It must have been over ninety even after the sun went down. I kept scratching my neck. I hadn’t shaved since Friday. My whiskers were flecked with gray. Legally, I still wasn’t a fugitive, but I looked like a bandito on the run. In the morning I shaved a distinct line under my chin to make it clear I was growing a beard.
Sarah picked up a brochure for the Arkadelphia Aquatic Park from the rack in the motel lobby. “This looks like fun, Daddy. Can we go there today?”
“We’ll see.”
The woman behind the desk said, “Whatcha do to your arm, punkin?”
I didn’t like the way the cast kept calling attention to Sarah.
We had a great time at the water park. Nathan was timid about most things, but he loved the water. I let Sarah get her cast wet so it would be easier for me to remove later that evening. The doctor said she’d have it on for a month. It had been three and a half weeks, but taking it off a few days early wouldn’t do her any harm.
When we got back on the road, I felt a strong pull south toward Mexico. But I figured that’s what Lucy would expect, so I headed west instead. I stopped at a motel outside of Norman, Oklahoma. The sun and water had tired the kids out, and they both fell asleep shortly after dinner. I cut off Sarah’s soggy cast with a pair of surgical scissors I’d bought at a pharmacy. I kissed her and rubbed some lotion on her dry, flaky skin. I could still hear Lucy dismissing the broken arm as the kind of thing that happens to kids every day. As if Griffin bouncing on the trampoline at the same time as Sarah wasn’t the cause. I watched television with the sound down low and reminded myself of all the reasons why she couldn’t be trusted with the children.
We spent one night in Wichita, another in Kansas City, where we went to see the Royals play the Twins. Sarah kept asking to talk to Lucy. I pretended to call and leave messages on the answering machine. I held the phone out and told the kids to say I love you, Mommy. Saturday morning I was keenly aware that I’d passed the deadline for returning. Lucy would have figured out there was a problem by now. I had no idea what she would do. Or could do. I doubted if she’d be able to convince the police to start looking for me immediately. They had bigger fish to fry, but my paranoia kicked in to high alert. I had purposely stayed off the interstates and stuck to the back roads, careful never to go over the speed limit. I didn’t want to get stopped for some routine traffic violation and have some local cop get suspicious.
After three days the car had taken on a lived-in quality—road maps on the dashboard, toys and trash scattered about, one of Nathan’s T-shirts, wet with drool from a recent nap, air-drying on the seat. My beard had begun to fill in. It definitely made me look older, maybe a bit more mysterious. In the late afternoon both kids were cranky and kept asking when we were going home. I stopped at a Dairy Queen in Bloomfield, Iowa. We got ice cream cones and went to the weedy picnic area around back. Three teenage girls were sitting at the next table feeding peanuts to a squirrel. The animal would scamper up close, hesitate, then quickly take the nut from their hands. When Nathan tried to say squirrel, it sounded like curly, and that became the animal’s name. One of the girls let Nathan take a turn feeding him. As Curly was about to snatch the peanut, Nathan got so excited he lunged forward and the squirrel scratched him on the finger. Nathan howled. The scratch was tiny, barely enough to draw blood. One of the girls ran into the Dairy Queen and came out with a first-aid kit. She put some antiseptic on the scratch and covered it with a Band-Aid. Another girl picked him up and started swinging him around to get him laughing again.
When the girls left, I said, “We’re lucky you only got a little scratch, Natey. Does it hurt?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve let you feed him.”
Sarah said, “It was an accident. Curly didn’t mean it.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Do you know what an accident is, Natey?”
“Bad.”
“Yes, accidents are bad. And they happen so fast, when you’re having fun and least expect it.”
“Like flying off the trampoline,” Sarah said.
“Exactly.” I’d been obsessing for the past three days, trying to come up with a context in which to frame my story for the kids. Now it began to unfold like it was telling itself. “That accident didn’t turn out so bad. Just a cracked wrist. But if you had fallen a different way, it could have been much worse. You could have hit your head on the swing set or broken your neck like that boy from Katydids who crashed into a tree with his sled. Now he’s paralyzed and can’t walk.”
“Christopher,” Sarah said. “His mother brought him to visit us in his wheelchair.”
“Yes, that’s so sad.” I didn’t know how much of this Nathan was taking in, but Sarah understood the gravity of the conversation. “Listen, kids, this is really, really hard to tell you. I’ve been worried because I couldn’t get in touch with your mother. Last night when you were sleeping, I made some phone calls and I found out there was a terrible accident. Your house in Jamaica Plain? The one where you live when you’re with Mommy? It caught on fire and burned down.”
Sarah’s eyes widened. “From smoking?” Her question reaffirmed my fears about Lucy.
“Yes, from smoking. I guess Mommy fell asleep and left a cigarette burning.” I pulled Sarah onto my knee. “Sometimes an ash drops, and it’s just a little tiny spark. Then suddenly it catches fire, and everything burns really fast. The firemen came but there was nothing they could do. No one could get out of the house…and Mommy died.”
“Nuh-uh,” Sarah said. “You’re telling a fib.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. It’s true. Mommy’s dead.”
“Don’t say that!” She tried to claw my face. I clutched her arms and held her tight. She stopped struggling and began to sob. Nathan looked confused. Then all three of us were crying and hugging. An elderly couple who were about to sit down at the next picnic table gave us a concerned look and walked away.
I got the key for the bathroom and took the kids in and wiped their faces.
Sarah said, “Did Griffin die in the fire too?”
I hadn’t thought about him until she asked. “Yes, he did.” I’d have lit the match myself.
“And Rory?”
“Yes, I’m afraid old Rory is gone too. It’s what they call a total loss, honey. Everything is gone. Pictures, toys, books, clothes. Good thing you brought Sundae on the trip with you.”
Nathan said, “I want Mommy.”
My heart was breaking. This was the cruelest thing I had ever done. Monstrous. Unforgivable. Necessary.
Sarah said to me, “Is Mommy up in heaven now?”
“Yes, Mommy’s in heaven with the angels, smiling down on us.”
We got in the car and drove on. Sarah whimpered. I touched her cheek, and she took my hand and squeezed my fingers.
From the backseat, Nathan said, “Play the radio, Daddy.”
I looked at Sarah with questioning eyes to ask if it was okay. She nodded, her lips pinched as she fought off the tears. I turned on the radio. “You pick, Sar.”
She scooched forward in her seat and pressed the buttons till she found a station she liked. Nathan seemed to love any kind of
music, but she was a rock ‘n’ roll girl. A song by The Police came on, “Every Breath You Take.” She knew all the words. Nathan tried to sing along too. I knew there would be more tears, but the two of them were already adjusting to life without their mother. I was living proof that a child could have a great upbringing with only one parent. Who knows what sort of father mine would have been? He might have been a bully or a bigot. One thing for certain, I didn’t spend my youth slouching around, bemoaning how miserable my life was without him.
Sarah said, “Are we going to go back home, Daddy?”
“No, sweetheart. Everything’s changed. Not like it was before. It would be too sad for us to go back to Boston.” It was the only true thing I’d said.
***
We spent another four days on the road. I took the kids to another amusement park, a carnival, and a county fair—busy places with lots of families where we wouldn’t stand out. The days tired them out, but the nights were harder. Sometimes they woke up and cried for their mother. Both of them began to wet the bed. I needed to find a place where we could stay for a while and settle into a routine. Small towns were out of the question. Too many people asking questions, wanting to know where you were from. The anonymity of a big city offered a much better chance to slip quietly into a new life. Next stop Chicago.
On the bulletin board at Loyola University, I saw an ad for a furnished apartment for six months starting July first, which was only a week away. The professor who was subletting the apartment had a wife and two small children, so the place was ideal for the kids and me. It was in a large building with lots of people coming and going. I could tell the professor was desperate to find a tenant. Perhaps he sensed a little desperation in me. We’d left Boston for Disney twelve days ago, but I felt like we had been on the run for months. I got a motel room while we waited for the apartment to be available. Not an hour went by when I didn’t worry about getting caught. It seemed remote, but I kept thinking the authorities might be able to trace me through the Chevy Malibu, so I put it in a covered parking lot and began using cabs and public transportation. The day before we moved into the new apartment, I drove to Milwaukee, removed the license plates, and left the car parked on the street with the keys in the ignition, no identifying papers in the glove compartment. The kids and I rode the train back to Chicago. Another adventure for us.
Lies You Wanted to Hear Page 22