Planning for Escape

by Sara Dillon

  Who loves you most?

  Mommy.

  How much?

  Emmet was trying to open the side door of a matchbox car.

  So much.

  Every single day?

  He nodded his head, then covered his face, suddenly shy.

  I hated leaving him there; he looked so trusting and so lost as he went running straight for the boxes of cars and train engines.

  Look, mama, look, he would say, Tay watchen me. Watchen me.

  At least in September we still walked in the evening, past the house I’d rented in July with Una, up as far as the now closed Lakeview Inn, its porch deserted. I thought of Aunt Olive and her weekly journey to Greensboro Bend from Hyde Park to teach. She always remembered the children in her class with a shake of her head, as if there were a few just completely beyond the pale. Hard country living, Daddy would say.

  Emmet wore the grey green sweater Una had made him and Madina wore her Cape Cod sweatshirt. The dark came earlier. The radio mentioned frost on higher elevations.

  I was never going to leave here. I would not do a PhD in Portuguese, rent a room over a courtyard in a small Portuguese seaside town, turning over another motif and finding a wall as white as the one Lily Briscoe so wanted to paint. The smell of fish, the games played in the evening by old men in the sandy dirt.

  I wouldn’t go anywhere, not a place. I would give this place to Emmet and Madina and hope it made them happy. From the time I came back from Ireland with Madina, I became agoraphobic, not about going outside, but about getting into planes and moving across different time zones. This despite being in international legal studies; oh, I guess it’s my agoraphobia acting up again, I would joke, as if it were lumbago or rheumatism. I had always lived out of a suitcase, but now I was finished. They couldn’t make me go anywhere.

  Bears in woods? asked Emmet apprehensively.

  No, Emmet, all the bears are gone away to the zoo.

  Gone zoo?

  Most of the houses around Greensboro were summer places now, so few lights were on; the rock gardens were drying up. The sky was renewed and dramatic, and darkness came down like the quickly folding wings of an angel.

  At Aunt Olive’s house in Hyde Park, Daddy had still seemed young, a boy, even at seventy.

  Walking now in the fall dusk, down past Willey’s and up the road towards the Greensboro Free Library and Grange Hall, with the first bats of the evening whipping past, it was as if nothing had ever happened. I hadn’t traveled at all, Japan didn’t exist, nor did Galway. I had never set foot inside a law school, and never read a statute. I was just starting out from here, and I would never go anywhere. It was a great relief.

  I left it to Sven to sort it out with the law school. He was a lawyer who liked being a lawyer; liked the clean shirts and the secretary putting people on hold. He liked making accusations of negligence and demanding reimbursements, and listening to someone to see if they would make exactly the right slip of the tongue.

  They gave me a year and a half’s salary, and I promised not to blame my breakdown on them.

  Madina ate everything on her plate, systematically, methodically; she slept soundly and ran fast across the grass. You could well imagine her riding a sturdy horse across the steppe. I sang Toora Loora, her request, and watched her drift into a deep healthy sleep, her cheeks a bright pink and her pretty mouth just slightly open.

  God bless you to be safe forever, I said, signed the cross on her forehead, and left the room. I poured myself a glass of white wine and sat down to read Anita Brookner.

  Emmet, more vigilant, cried out in his sleep. I went and tucked him in and he was off again, racing through his dream. My slightest touch was more directly magical than it had been with Madina. Mommy is here, I whispered, and I could see his small body relax all along its toddler length.

  Down by the station

  Early in the morning

  See the little pufferbellies

  All jub jub

  That not how it goes.

  See the little pufferbellies

  All jibazhee

  Not how it goes!

  Emmet sucked on his bottle of pediasure and his shallow eyelids closed. Madina stirred in her sleep. I wished she would forgive me for bringing someone else into our house. How wildly jealous she had been of Emmet.

  I was a little scared after dark in the rented house, but nothing like what it had been at Park Baun. The Hardwick police drove by every now and again; I remembered Una commenting that every year a contract dispute between Greensboro and the Hardwick police was being argued about on the front page of the Gazette. The contract appeared to be holding for now.

  I picked up the Anita Brookner novel. I’d read so many of her stories, the plots ran together. There was always a flat, an old dark family flat, and an unmarried woman, getting involved with an odd married couple or a chronically sick person, deceived in the end and back to the flat to consider the whole mess. On the page I opened to, she had written:

  I read the Blue Fairy Book, the Yellow Fairy Book, and the stories of Hans Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, and Charles Perrault. None of this was groundwork for success in worldly terms, for I was led to think, and indeed was minded to think, of the redeeming situation or presence which would put to rights the hardships and dilemmas under which the characters, and I myself, had been laboring. More dangerously, it seemed to me that I need make no decisions on my own behalf, for destiny or fate would always have the matter in hand.

  Wow, I thought.

  Although I was too sensible, even as a child, to believe in a fairy godmother I accepted as part of nature’s plan that after a lifetime of sweeping the kitchen floor I would go to the ball, that the slipper would fit, and that I would marry the prince. Even the cruel ordeals undergone by the little match girl, or by Hansel and Gretel, would be reversed by that same principle of inevitable justice which oversaw all activities, which guided some even if it defeated others. I knew that some humans were favored—by whom? By the gods? (this evidence was undeniable)—but I was willing to believe in the redeeming feature, the redeeming presence that would justify all of one’s vain striving, would dispel one’s disappointments, would in some mysterious way present one with a solution in which one would have no part, so that all one had to do was wait, in a condition of sinless passivity, for the transformation that would surely take place.

  This strikes me now as extremely dangerous, yet parts of this doctrine seemed overwhelmingly persuasive, principally because there were no stratagems to be undertaken. One had simply to exist, in a state of dreamy in direction, for the plot to work itself out. This was a moral obligation on the part of the plot: there would be no place for calculation, for scheming, for the sort of behavior I was to observe in the few people we knew and which I found menacing. . . .

  Hmm. How bizarre; was this how I had gone about things? If so, how obvious a fallacy on my part, stubborn and conceited though I’d been. As if fate would bend to my essence; not even—which would have been more logical—to my will.

  I had to remind myself that I wasn’t asking for anything any more.

  The first bats came out. The deer and the bears began to worry and sought out food closer to town. Foxes hurried past. The birds stopped singing. The last people cleared out of the cottages on the lake.

  The first serious frost was announced, and I realized we had almost no warm clothes.

  If I hadn’t left when I did, I would surely have been diagnosed with something awful. Faced with a whole year of dragging myself in front of classes to talk about extraterritorial jurisdiction and treaties, my cells were clamoring, Enough! There will be an end to this, and there would have been, one way or the other. A few would have sent me get-well cards. I would have been telling Una, Life was short, but nobody ever told me, and she would be saying, Don’t blame me. I would answer that I wasn’t. Oh, yes you are, in some way, you are, she would counter, insisting. And there would be that little element of blaming her. I was stubborn,
but had no real power of will; I was easy to convince on practical matters if not ever on the impractical ones.

  A halt would have been called one way or the other.

  It was stark; either I had to leave, or I was going to enter a steep decline, something I had dreaded ever since I was an adorable butterfly of a little girl. My hair would dry up, I would be confined to my bed, it would be time to say goodbye, a roundup. And I would have to lie there and consider how I had willfully wasted so much time; first one way, then another, as if just treading water until the end came.

  While I was tidying up the shelves at The Stars and Moon, wiping the dust off the books and reordering the section with guides to the Long Trail, I also thought about who would have come to that last room to see me off, to whisper goodbye. I would have wanted Kido, to ask him why he never showed up, though I waited twenty years or more; Miles Bradford was dead and gone, so therefore off the list. However odd and out of character it might seem, he would not be appearing. Good old Miles, he had always been good for an appearance.

  I so hated disappearing acts.

  Yukito would not come; he would send an e-mail, a brief one. I am so sorry to hear of your impending death. The doctor informs me that my cholesterol is very high and I am aware that I could also die at any time. That would be Yukito, my former husband, as Gramma now and then reminded me. Calvin Pini from Saint Theo’s might show up, amused, bringing flowers, not believing me when I told him that it would be fatal. But then again, I didn’t think Calvin would come after all.

  Una would come every day; it was hard to know whether she would be strict or indulgent with me. She might try to look on the bright side, and talk me into that as well. She would be wary of being blamed for having talked me into going to law school and thereby, once and for all, having ensured that I would never be happy.

  The children I didn’t like to consider saying goodbye to. I imagined Madina, her lovely angular face, her dark pony tail, and found it hard to proceed with the thought.

  But undoubtedly, even one more day lecturing on GATT Article XX and it would have been all over. One more meeting to review résumés of job candidates for their strengths in practical experience and scholarly promise, and I would be visited by some malign disease from which there would be no turning back.

  The highway to Vermont was nearly empty at that time in early September. It wasn’t even a real highway. I remember Daddy telling me about awards it had won for its beauty. The long, long hills beside which the road meandered reminded me of him; cruising down down down into the beautiful valleys that pleased him so much.

  It began to rain. I could be young again. On the first night in our rented house I had kissed the two children on their foreheads as they slept. I would never have to go anywhere again. There would be no slot for me at conferences. My house in East Galway would sink back into the earth and rot. Emmet and Madina would grow up in Vermont; they would know about snowshoes. I could go park the car and look at Daddy’s house on Elm Street and no one could make me go anywhere else.

  Book II

  El Puerto de Santa Maria; early 1970s

  You could say they sent me away, after all that business with Miles Bradford, but that would not be exactly true. I jumped on the idea; it became a project for my mother and me to plot and plan all that winter. I would go to Ireland to meet my mother’s relatives, her many first cousins. Brother Clement would collect me and help me get set up. I would stay for most of the next year, then come back and go to Daddy’s college.

  For the most part, I guess I wanted to do things just that way. It had a perfection to it. I began to think about Galway constantly; the part about Daddy’s college made me feel reassured. This was our creation; I would not venture out to where people were cold and dry and without the right feelings.

  But before going to Galway, I added a plan to stop in Spain and visit Jack and his wife. He, of course, had enlisted in the Navy during the Vietnam War and the young pair lived in a stark white apartment building overlooking a beach in southern Spain. After spending a month or so with them, I would take a train, all by myself, up through Spain, through France, and on to Ireland, where Brother Clement would be waiting for me.

  Clement would come and find me on a rainy night in Galway City, back when you could hear a pin drop there.

  Well.

  All that confirmed in me my view, started with the notes from Mr. Bradford, that I could have what I wanted, unquestionably. I don’t like to put it in such terms as “I could have everything,” as that sounds selfish or egotistical, and I don’t believe I was confident enough or indifferent enough to be either. But I did see myself as singled out, inhabiting a zone of wonder and love. It seemed that anyone I wanted, would also want me.

  It’s hard to believe that it’s the same life I now have, with a physical continuity, the same arms, the same face; that I am, that is, inhabiting the same self, as I now never really want anyone, and no one appears to especially long for me.

  All this was in the latter days of General Franco, the early 1970s. I arrived at a chaotic Madrid airport, and instantly loved everything. It was all smoky then, and everyone wore sunglasses. People ran from airline desk to airline desk, frantically making arrangements, shouting over the din.

  My parents must have been insane to let me go off by myself, not yet seventeen as I was, in a silly little dress that looked like it was made for a child, a high waist and short puffed sleeves. On the flight to Seville, a middle-aged man tried to teach me Spanish. Barrrcoooo, he said, pointing to a photo in his magazine. A boat, a boat.

  It was an odd mish mash of US navy culture, plunked down in what was at that time a still rather unspoiled Andalusia. It must have been annoying to my brother and his wife, as I was constantly dashing about with either young American fellows from the naval base, or my friend Pilar, a Spanish girl who worked as a maid in the apartments. I kissed a man who looked like a very young version of Hemingway—I called him Ernest and that is what I remember him as. I drove with boys I barely remember now, up to mountain towns where, more than anything, you would want to get hold of the tiny bottles of coca cola, so hot and dry and bright it was.

  At night, members of the Guardia Civil with their tricornio hats patrolled the beach. In the morning, I heard scissors grinders down below, and went to pull up the blinds. It was the most wonderful sight imaginable, the finest ever in my life, before or since; the beach far below, the view of distant Cádiz.

  I loved the smell of fried fish, and the smell of life in Puerto de Santa Maria, home town, I am quite sure, of the poet Rafael Alberti. I recall all that he wrote about the angels; but there’s nothing I can remember him having said about fish. I went there in the evenings with Pilar and danced on tables.

  After several weeks, I went to the travel office on the base and booked my train ticket all the way through to Dublin. The young man who helped me was a blond Spaniard, quiet in all his gestures. I could see he liked the idea of sending me alone on this long journey by train, across days and nights, and sleeping on pull-out cots.

  Somehow or other he got Jack’s address; he found me and showed up one evening at the door of the apartment, standing in the dark hallway, asking for Miss Catherine. Jack was furious at me, glaring and striding around the apartment. I remember that it was dusk, with candles burning in the living room behind me.

  If only I had known, I whispered to the visitor. We have plans for this evening. I am so sorry.

  I’m not sure why my brother was so angry. I was annoying, I suppose. Now, by contrast, I am merely harmless. After the Spanish lad had left, Jack lit into me, accusing our parents of not treating him as well as they treated Una and me, despite all he had done for them.

  I went out onto the nighttime balcony and watched the gauzy lights of Cádiz, imagined the little children up late in the side streets, clapping and shouting, the sound of their feet on stone. A few Civil Guards were going in and out of a small bar near the stairs that led to the beach. I wa
s, I remember, wearing a blue and white striped terry cloth outfit, shorts and a top. I was leaving soon, and on to the next zone of wonder, according to plan and as I saw it.

  As for that, they left me on my own as soon as the train pulled in.

  The station was small; I could hear the electric lights buzzing. Grass was blowing softly and happily in the dark, whispery all up and down along the track. The train came; it stopped. I climbed the high steps, and almost immediately we were off again.

  I probably waved heartlessly to my brother; I don’t remember.

  It was crowded, with Spanish soldiers mainly, and large families. I stood in the corridor by a window, not sure how the etiquette of finding a seat should work. One soldier with a comic tone of voice winked and nodded; disappeared for a moment, moving up and down the corridors until he found me a seat. Inside the compartment was an odd assortment of people; the lovers, the nun, the husband and wife with piles of provisions, bread, cheese and ham.

  All through the night, they fed me and tried to explain things to me. We arrived in Madrid in the early part of the next day. I camped out alone in a corner of the massive train station. The sunlight filtered through the high windows, moving and changing color. The announcements echoed across the vast space. Moroccan families with small children sat on blankets and waited all day, as I did.

  I met a young Frenchman with long fingernails, who criticized my French as being too formal. I even had a kiss from a Spanish man with glasses who, waiting for his regional train, tried to hurry up and tell me all about his life. He wrote his name and address on a piece of paper and implored me to contact him. He took me by the shoulders as he heard his train announced and kissed me on the cheek as if with an enormous sense of regret.

  After crossing the Pyrenees on a wonderful blue pullout bed, the train rocking me back and forth, lying on my stomach and watching the scenery, we finally arrived in Paris. A gendarme remarked on my jolis yeux bleus as I passed by.