At the far end of the lot, just above the 215, a white tent was erected. There was no parking nearby and she ended up in the parking structure where there were others directing incident parking upward. She ended up on the roof, and instead of waiting for the elevator, scrambled down the stairs where she ran into one of the mothers she saw each day when she picked up the girls from school.
“Aly, what the hell’s going on?” Dahlia asked, visibly shaken. She was a young mother of two, about thirty years old, with a narrow white face, her brown hair in a ponytail, her grey eyes large with fear.
Aly gave her a quick hug. “I don’t know.”
“The barricades…”
“I know." She had still not heard from Erika or Julio.
“Oh, my god…” Dahlia looked like she was going to have a panic attack so Aly put her arm around her and walked her down the stairs.
“It’s going to be okay. It’s probably nothing. Just precautions,” she said, as much for herself as for Dahlia. “They’re in hard lockdown. They’re safe. They’ve practiced. It’s a good school.”
They joined a stream of hurrying, worrying parents and guardians headed toward the open sided incident tent. Police officers were there, but no one with rank. They had no information. They seemed to be there only to keep order.
Rumors were flying. There was someone with a gun on the campus, in the school. There was a sniper. It was a bomb. Across the valley of the 215 helicopters buzzed the school, two unmarked that were probably police and one that was from a local television station. There was a television being set up in the tent.
Aly and Dahlia met with other parents, nannies, and mannies they knew from afternoon pick-ups. All were worried, some on the verge of panic, others angry. She called Thea, who had informed the courthouse. They told her they would get in touch with Erika, but just in case Thea sent a runner from the downtown office to find her as well. Thea believed Julio was on his way. He was at a meeting on the west side of the city, not far from Aly.
He arrived twenty minutes later, his face drawn, his eyes intense. He hugged Aly and she told him she had no information on the incident. She told him what she knew about Erika’s whereabouts. He stepped away to make phone calls. He had been in the prosecutor’s office for a while and had connections there and in the police department.
When the television was up, the bodies in the tent surged toward it. Aly couldn’t get close to hear or read the chyron, but the news rippled back. A bomb threat. There was a suspicious bag at the school gate or front entrance into the building. There were conflicting reports, but a threat had been called in.
Ten minutes later, Erika called. Her voice was tense. “I’m on my way. What’s going on?” Reluctantly, Aly told her. “Oh, my god.”
Aly remembered her once saying this was her worst nightmare. “They’re safe, Erika, they’re safe. They’re in hard lockdown. Just get here safely yourself. I’ll call you if there’s anything new.”
A half hour passed. Parents and guardians continued to arrive. Couples were united. But arrivals were down to a trickle. Julio didn’t learn anything that wasn’t on the news, which was repeating the same information over and over. He was pacing like a caged animal.
Aly stayed near the parking garage, looking out for Erika. She hoped she took the freeway. Surface streets from family court would take forever midday.
Finally, she saw her white Audi sedan turn and hailed her. She ran around to the driver’s side. “Go be with Julio. I’ll park it.”
Erika got out and without a word they hugged close. It was the first time they had touched since That Night. The memories conjured in Aly’s mind and body were stifled under fear and a strong urge to protect and comfort her. Still, she only just managed to not kiss her on the neck. When they broke apart she told her where to find Julio.
“Thank you." She had sunglasses on so Aly couldn’t read her eyes, but she could see her face was drawn and grey.
After parking the car, Aly hurried back to the tent. She felt better that Erika was there now, where she could watch over her. She found her at the western edge of the lot next to a brown steel fence lined with oleander and rosemary bushes. Like many parents, she was looking across the canyon of the 215 to the school. Her arms were folded across her chest. She still wore her sunglasses.
When Aly joined her she put a hand on Erika’s back and Erika surprised her by leaning into her. Aly felt grateful that she would let her comfort her.
Erika cleared her throat. “I have a song stuck in my head. I think it’s from one of the Hunger Games movies. The one that was nominated.”
She thought for a moment. “Taylor Swift? ‘Safe and Sound’?”
“That’s it.”
She put her arm around Erika’s shoulder. “When this is over you can sing it to them.”
Erika smiled wryly. “Oh, no one would want that.”
Aly squeezed her close. They stood for a long while that way, Erika, arms folded, leaning on her, sometimes looking at the ground, sometimes across to the school, and Aly with her arm across Erika’s shoulders. What horrible scenarios must be going through her mind. If anything happens to those girls she’ll survive, but she’ll never be happy again.
“I should call Bianca, just in case…” Erika said after a while.
The De Mateo-Binghams were on their honeymoon. “Aren’t they still in Australia? What time is it there?”
“I don’t know. Tomorrow.”
She tried to talk Erika out of it. Nothing was going to happen. Bianca will be anxious for nothing. But Erika said, “I’d want to know. I’d want to be prepared.”
“Either call will be a shock. Only this one will lead to worry for nothing.”
“If it was me I’d be angry I wasn’t given the opportunity to worry."
Aly let her go and she stepped away. As it turned out the call went to voicemail and she didn’t want to leave that kind of message. Bianca’s seeing she called would be enough to concern her.
Next, she thought of calling her parents, but it was easier to stop that call. Aly corralled Julio, who was still pacing behind them, to discuss it, and he said he would not call his mother. She had high blood pressure. This seemed to convince Erika to not call her own parents.
Eventually, staff from the hotel went across to Costco and came back with packs of bottled water and snacks for the anxious parents and guardians. Aly got water and energy bars for Erika, Julio, and herself. Julio took them gratefully, but Erika only took water. “I’ll throw up if I eat anything.”
Aly ate because she had to be strong for them, but the snack bar tasted and felt like paper on her tongue.
Some parents, mostly fathers, became belligerent as time passed and there was no news. All of these families were well off. Many of them had connections to politicians and ranking police or prosecutors. Some of them were in power themselves. But none of that helped, and they were left to their powerlessness and anger. They took it out on the uniformed officers, who projected calm fortitude and kept their cool.
Finally, after a couple of hours, the tension shifted in the crowd as they made out activity on the television. A remote controlled robot was being sent toward the school entrance. The news anchors indicated that it was capable of sensing the chemicals and materials used to make bombs.
Erika didn’t move from her view of the school. Aly had the sense she was willing herself over to comfort her girls. What were sensitive Whitney and young Lu going through? How would they come out of this? Aly didn’t entertain the thought that they wouldn’t come out okay physically. But emotionally, even if nothing happened, it had to take some toll.
The television was raised so everyone in the tent could see it. The view on the screen was from cameras on one of the helicopters. Aly stood back with Erika and could just make out what was going on. Erika leaned her right shoulder against her back as she told her what she was seeing.
In time, what looked like a backpack was pulled by the robot into the middle of
Charleston. That robot retreated as another approached, seemed to place something near or on the bag, and then retreated itself. The bag was blown. The crowd in the tent flinched and ducked as one. Shouts and moans of shock rippled through. The explosion was heard by them twice, live and on television. Smoke rose in the distance. It was not a large explosion. It may not have been a bomb after all.
This routine was repeated on another bag that was brought out from within the school grounds. Anger rippled through the crowd. How was there a bag on the grounds when everyone funneled through a check point to get past the gate?
Next, police and SWAT swarmed through the gate to search the grounds.
“I think it will be over soon,” Aly told Erika. Erika didn’t say anything, but instead Aly felt the ice cold fingers of Erika's right hand entwine with the fingers of her left hand. She gave a reassuring squeeze and they didn’t let go.
After searching the grounds the police went inside the school building. It was another forty five minutes before police cars came through both barricades and down the street to the tent. A police captain, a tall, white woman of about fifty with short salt and pepper hair, got out of one of the cars and told everyone what they had seen for themselves. She then told them how they could proceed to pick up their children.
Aly went to get Gigi. They would get the other cars later. She picked up Erika and Julio as she came out of the parking garage and followed a stream of cars up the hill. She parked beyond the school and Erika and Julio entered the school grounds to join other parents forming lines on either side of the school’s double doors. The youngest children were let out first and parents were to grab their children and leave. Julio stood on one side and Erika on the other. Erika was to get Lu and Julio, Whitney. When Erika came out with Lu and they headed up the hill to Aly, she could see that Lu was very animated. Erika had an arm around her and was focused on getting her to the car.
She got in, chatting away. Aly could see her energy was anxiety. She reached back and squeezed her arm. It was clear that for Lu today was not lit like the drills. It went on for too long and the adults were too tense. Everyone, staff, faculty, student body, was squeezed into the back classrooms, as far from the front of the school as possible.
Why weren’t they evacuated? she wondered. Perhaps they didn’t know where all the supposed bombs were. There were a lot of unanswered questions.
Erika held onto Lu’s arm and prompted her now and then, but other than that she was quiet. Aly could see in the rearview mirror that her jaw was set and her mouth was grim. She still wore her sunglasses.
A few minutes later Julio and Whitney emerged from the crowd and made their way to the car. Erika got out and pulled Whitney into a tight hug and took her face into her hands and looked closely into her eyes. Aly couldn’t hear what she said, but Whitney was nodding her head. They got into the vehicle, Erika between her girls. Julio sat up front with Aly. He reached back to touch Lu. And, finally, many hours after she received the text about the hard lockdown, Aly was taking the family home.
44
When they got home, Aly announced she’d get dinner. She wanted to give Erika and Julio time alone with their girls. And she needed time to reflect.
“You don’t need to do that,” Erika said. She was finally out of her sunglasses. Her eyes were weary.
“Does anyone feel like cooking?” Aly asked rhetorically as she went back toward the garage.
The 215 was open again and traffic was moving like normal for late rush hour. But she wasn’t certain if the Charleston off ramp was open from the north yet so she took the roundabout route she’d taken that morning to Costco. There, she bought a couple of cooked roast chickens, a salad mix, and some whole wheat rolls they all liked.
As she stood in line at the checkout she felt emotionally blasted. A large part of it was what the girls went through, of course. But there was more. She loved Erika and it wasn’t natural to her to hide it. It had been balm to her aching soul to comfort her. Each time in the last weeks that she refrained from an affectionate statement or gesture it was like another nick to her heart. What difference did it make, she realized, if Erika figured out she loved her now or she told her later? She would just be leaving earlier. The outcome was the same.
She was home in thirty minutes. When she came in Lu was showing Julio the swatches on the wall in the living room and Erika was emerging from the hall. She was still in her brown suit from work. “Lu, your mom’s on the phone with Whitney. She wants to talk to you.”
“How’s Whitney?” Aly asked after Lu passed. Whitney was quiet in the car, but she was a quiet girl. Aly had no sense of how this impacted her. Erika explained that she had been recruited to help distract and comfort the younger children and she thought this helped Whitney feel useful and less anxious.
Erika poured red wine for herself and Aly and rum for Julio. Aly mixed the salad and the adults discussed the day. They had learned the man responsible for the backpacks was involved in a custody dispute with his ex-wife and he was upset at the school for not letting him see his children the month before. He was a veteran of the Afghanistan War and claimed, plausibly, to have C4 explosives. But the backpacks were just full of trash. He was only looking to scare.
The school was going to have a lot to answer for. How did a bag get on campus? How long was it there? And, they all wondered, did they overreact? It was nothing in the end. “But that’s terrorism,” Julio said. “Our feelings were real even if there was no bomb.”
Then he said he did not want to be away from the girls that night. But if he stayed, would he only make them more anxious?
Aly knew that after a ‘flu in ’14 had ravaged the family, Erika and Julio kept toiletries and clothes at each other’s homes in case they had to stay over again.
“Stay,” Erika said. “The girls will like it.”
“Thank you. Dad needs comforting, too.”
The girls came out to eat and it was arranged that Lu would sleep with Erika and Julio would sleep in her pink and red bedroom. Over dinner, the adults got the girls to talk about the experience. Lu did most of the talking, of course. It was clear she found parts of it interesting, but was left rattled that a place where she had always felt secure was no longer certainly safe.
“That’s a lesson I was hoping she wouldn’t learn yet,” Erika said when the girls had gone to take their showers.
Later in the evening, when Aly came out to get her water for the night, she was surprised to see Erika standing outside looking at the view. It was mid-March and quite chilly outside. She was still in her suit.
Aly could tell by the set of her shoulders that she was tense. She wanted to go to her, but wondered if she wanted to be alone. Then she decided that if she wanted to be alone she would say so. As she headed toward the glass door she saw Erika lift a hand to her face. Was she crying? She grabbed a box of tissues off the table between the loungers.
When she opened the glass door Erika turned her head in profile and rested her chin on her shoulder. “Aren’t you cold?” she asked as she set down the tissues on the glass table.
“A little.” As she came level with Erika she could see she wasn’t crying. But her arms were folded across her chest, her face was grim.
Aly told her what she’d learned on the news. The perpetrator had asked a twelve year old boy to leave the backpack by the front door of the school for his son who, he told the boy, had forgotten it that morning. That explained how the bag got onto the campus, but not how it was missed by staff and security for the rest of the morning.
“His own children go there,” Erika spat out. Her voice was deep and tight in anger, a tone Aly had never heard before. “I know they weren’t there today. But what about the other kids? How could they not matter?”
Now there were tears in her eyes. Angry tears. She gets angry when she’s afraid. Aly rubbed her back and as the tears started to fall Erika batted them away. She leaned into Aly as she had in the tent that day and Aly pulled her into h
er arms. They each held on tight as she sobbed into Aly’s shoulder. Before that morning, Aly would have broken off as soon as she stopped crying. But now she was determined to hold on until Erika broke it off. And Erika held on for a while after the tears stopped, her head resting on her shoulder. Aly could have stayed that way all night.
When she finally did pull away, Aly retrieved some tissues from the box for her. She rubbed Erika’s back as she blew her nose and cleaned up her face.
“Thank you,” Erika said. “And thank you for being there today.”
“I wouldn’t have been anyplace else.”
“I don’t just mean for the girls. I mean for me.”
“I wouldn’t have been anyplace else,” she said again, but softly.
Erika looked at her. I love you so much, Aly thought, but did not say, as she returned the look. But there must have been something in her face. Erika’s eyebrows gave a small contraction and she cocked her head slightly as she searched Aly’s eyes. Then a look of wonder flashed across her face.
Aly leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “Goodnight,” she said quietly as she turned back to the house.
Julio was in the kitchen in blue plaid pajama bottoms, a grey T-shirt, and black socks. They exchanged goodnights. As she turned the corner into the alcove outside her room she heard Erika come into the house and ask Julio, “Do you think chamomile tea tastes like soap?”
“Soap! No. Like apples.”
She had trouble falling asleep as the day’s events churned in her mind. Yet, something else had relaxed in her. She felt such joy just loving Erika the consequences no longer mattered to her. Better to go out honestly loving her than to go on painfully concealing it.
◆◆◆
She didn’t run in the morning, but slept until six. When she emerged from her room after a shower everyone else was up and at breakfast. There was an overwhelming sickly sweet cloud of male cologne in the air. It was an unfamiliar aroma in that household, but Aly was sure the girls were used to it.
A Good Woman Page 22