He turned around, his pale face burnt red as an apple. His eyes opened wide. “Aunt Rikki,” he mouthed. “What are— How did you—”
“Shh,” she mouthed back, following the group to the front of the white house and into the rose beds.
“Pull out everything that don’t look like a flower,” their leader commanded. He walked down the line with his wheelbarrow, passing out trowels and hoes.
“Excuse me—I don’t know you,” he said when he got to Erica. He didn’t look any older than Jared. Maybe he was on schedule A.
“I’m Mrs. Mary Brittaca,” she said, reaching for a hoe. “With the Agricultural Extension Service. I’m looking for invasive species.”
“They didn’t say nothing about that at the office,” the boy said, but his manner indicated he didn’t care much about what the office said. “The baby?” he inquired. “She looks like she’s boiling to death in there.”
“She’s all right. My childcare fell through.” Erica stroked Sophia, asleep under her sun hat.
“It’s all the same to me,” said the boy, shrugging. He continued down the line, giving instructions on how to effectively weed the flowers and plant a new set of dahlias.
Erica and Jared weeded for twenty minutes or so. The air smelled wet and rotting. Frogs ribbeted in a nearby pond. Gnats buzzed. She made a few perfunctory stabs with the hoe. Mainly she watched the kids listlessly raking their trowels along the red dirt, scraping up a dandelion or a blade of grass, exhibiting the minimum animation needed to avoid prodding by the boy supervisor, who periodically strolled down the line, muttering, “C’mon, look alive!” Sweat dripped into Erica’s eyes, creating a glazed tableau of dust and grass and flowers and bent backs. Sophia’s head lolled to the right. Her cheeks were bright red; a green clot of mucus smeared the corner of her right eye. As Erica wiped the mucus with the sleeve of her dress, Sophia opened her eyes and then turned her head, distracted by a sound in the distance. The boy supervisor stood up from his squat, also looking toward the source of the sound, and then Erica heard it too: gravel crunching. A garbage truck was driving up the road, spraying up dust. The driver got out and buzzed at the gate. Jared pawed at the dirt with his hoe . He looked exhausted. His allergies were obviously acting up; he sneezed and coughed and gagged. He had always detested yard work.
“Follow me,” Erica whispered, and because Jared had been raised to follow the rules, because he had been spending weeks taking orders in the extreme, he followed her without question.
“Ma’am, where are you headed?” called the boy supervisor.
“I’ll be right back,” Erica said.
“You’re not allowed to take residents away from the work area,” the kid said.
“I’ll be right back,” she repeated, grabbing hard onto Jared’s arm. The supervisory boy lunged at them, but them stalled, perhaps unwilling to leave his charges, perhaps disinclined to make unnecessary motion in the heat. His footsteps started up again, but then there was a sound, and Erica turned to see him brushing off his skinned knee—he might have tripped over a shovel handle—but after that she didn’t see anything else because, walking with assurance, like she deserved to be there, like she was Mrs. Mary Brittaca, of the Agricultural Extension Service, on official business, removing invasive species, she walked with Jared straight toward the metal gate as it opened and the garbage truck barreled in, sending up a spray of dust and pebbles.
She didn’t look down. She didn’t look back. Hidden by the shadow of the truck, she led Jared out of the gate and into the car. “Get down,” she told Jared, and he too had seen a lot of cop shows and obediently kneeled on the floor of the rear seat. Erica snapped Sophia into her car seat. Without removing the empty baby carrier from her chest or opening so much as a window to freshen the stultifying air, she floored the engine and fled down the gravel road to the turnoff by the creek.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Ashley scrambled up the hill, sticking her thumb out like a hitchhiker. Erica opened the door, leaving Vince’s engine running. The minute Ashley climbed in, Erica gunned the accelerator again.
“Jared!” Ashley shrieked, swinging her backpack over onto the floor of the car, covering his face with kisses.
“God, this is all so weird,” Jared said.
“It was sweltering by that stream. I thought I was going to pass out if you didn’t come back soon. And the bugs! Look at my face, Jared!”
“You’re all bitten up,” he agreed.
“There must be a zillion of these itchy monsters all over my face,” Ashley continued. Erica flashed on Debbie and her twenty-two mosquito bites at the New York World’s Fair. Ashley did look the worse for wear, swollen faced, with a smear of mud across her silk shirt.
“Where are we going?” Jared asked. His voice was oddly flat, as if Erica could have answered anything, like Houston or Tierra del Fuego, and he would have just sat in the back of the car and gone along for the ride.
“Out of here,” said Erica, making turns at random, passing endless churches and cows and gun stores and Feed and Seeds.
“My mom made me have an abortion, Jared,” Ashley said. “They killed our baby.”
“Huh?” Jared stared dazedly out the window.
“I said, they killed our baby.”
“It’s okay, Ash. It wasn’t really a baby yet. Just a clump of cells or something.”
Ashley uttered an odd sound, somewhere between a squeak and a cry. Erica expected her to pummel Jared in the face, or lapse into hysteria, or both. Instead, after a few moments of silence, she went into default chatter mode, filling Jared in on her boring summer school, her mother’s Buddhist conversion, and Hayden’s horror stories about the Pritima Center.
Erica kept looking in her rearview mirror, expecting to see Miss Peroxide barreling after her or, worse, security guards or cops. She turned onto a larger, two-lane highway. The land grew flatter, the trees scrubbier. They entered a more populous area, with townhome complexes and stoplights. At an antiques mall on her right, a pack of obese women waddled out of a minivan. She sensed they must be getting closer to the ocean. The air smelled like mud and salt.
“I can’t believe what’s happening,” Jared said, breaking his silence. “How did you get into the Pritima Center?”
“I pretended I knew what I was doing,” Erica said.
“Is my mom feeling all right?”
“Yeah, she’s okay, I guess. Same as ever.”
“Does she know you’re doing this?”
“Of course not.”
Stalled at one endless red light, they noticed a large wooden building with a wraparound porch and a neon sign blinking, “BBQ.” Shaded by canvas awnings, people sat at picnic tables, eating large plates of food.
“Can we stop here and eat?” Jared asked. “I’m starving. I haven’t eaten meat in weeks.”
Erica twisted her neck around, looking at Jared’s bony body, the way it looked like it had had all the air squished out of it.
“We can’t stay, but we can run in and get some sandwiches,” she said.
The restaurant was stuffed with families, hefty men and women accompanied by equally hefty red-faced offspring, all avidly chowing down on hearty plates of barbequed meat, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, and coleslaw. Jared ordered a super deluxe barbequed pork with two sides; Erica and Ashley were more circumspect. Ashley thought the food looked too fattening, and Erica wasn’t hungry. She wasn’t unhungry, just like she wasn’t untired. She’d entered a detached space where these physical needs were irrelevant. Nevertheless, her eyes were dry, and her butt ached. It felt good to be out of the car. The ceiling fan rotating directly above her sent a cooling waft of air directly down the back of her tank top. She imagined the four of them in the tropics, three rebels and a baby on the run from the law.
She sat Sophia in her lap and fed her a french fry, which she rejected,
swatting it and sending it tumbling toward Erica’s crotch. Erica opened a can of Enfamil and poured it into a bottle. Sophia took a few dispirited sips and turned her head away. Erica didn’t remember when she’d last drunk a full bottle. She didn’t remember when she’d last changed her diaper, either. She felt under Sophia’s flouncy shorts—not too wet, but she may as well change it. She needed a little visit to the restroom for her own purposes, anyway.
She transferred the last of the coke from her diaper bag to her purse. As a diminishing resource, it felt like a fine line standing between her and something unbelievably terrifying. She washed her hands, blotting some cool water on Sophia’s face and giving her another dose of baby Tylenol. As she tossed her paper towel in the trash, a woman, fortyish, well put together, blond, very much like Miss Peroxide, approached them, smiling tentatively. Erica ceased imagining herself in Barbados or Bali. Her legs shook of their own accord. Her eyebrow twitched. Her vision narrowed. Feeling unsteady on her feet, she leaned against the towel dispenser. The woman spoke to her in a thick yet aristocratic Southern drawl.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but you wouldn’t be from Wilton Acres, would you? Near Myrtle Beach?”
“No,” replied Erica, her voice trembling.
“No?” the woman answered. “Because you look just like a woman I know, from the garden club down there. She was from New Jersey, never quite got used to the pace of life down here. I thought she’d moved back, but then when I saw you, I thought, well, I may as well take a chance and ask.”
“It wasn’t me,” Erica said, managing a faint smile. “We’re on vacation.”
“Well, have a lovely time now,” the woman said, tweaking Sophia’s fingers. “Are you going to swim with the dolphins?”
“Maybe,” Erica said, extricating herself from the restroom. What was it with these folks around here always inserting themselves into your business? Always wanting to know your destination, where you ate, where you slept, how often you brushed your teeth? She picked up an extra large coffee on the way to the car.
: : :
“Thank you, Aunt Rikki,” Jared enthused through a mouthful of pulled pork. “This tastes so good! You wouldn’t believe the crap they gave us to eat at the center. Lots of beans, and white bread, and weird apple cider vinegar shakes every morning.”
“The central office looked pretty fancy,” Erica said. “The office manager was munching on a bowlful of chocolate mints.”
“They keep the central house looking nice for visitors,” Jared said. “I should know. They made me mop it and take out the garbage. They don’t let anyone back where we stayed. It’s disgusting. The roof leaks. There’s ants. The place where we slept, they don’t even have electric lights.” He hesitated. “Aren’t they going to come after us?”‘
“I doubt it,” Erica said. “I think we eluded them. I made a lot of turns. Tell me more about what the place was like.”
“There’s not much to say,” Jared said, but the words poured out of him. “We had to do all kinds of chores. Gardening, like you saw. We had to clean out the chicken coop—gross—and clip the chicken’s nails, even grosser. Every morning they made us do calisthenics, and we’d go on character-building hikes. Mom never let me go hiking because of my asthma, you know, but here, they made us keep walking, all these horrible walks, and not enough water. I had a couple asthma attacks, and my inhaler ran out, though they told me Mom was sending another one. Want some of this bread with sauce on it?”
“God, no.” Erica followed signs to North Carolina.
Jared chewed intently for a few minutes before continuing. “Plus, it wasn’t all exercise. There was lots of sitting around too. There were regular school subjects, like biology and math, all these worksheets and multiple choice tests but it wasn’t any more boring than regular school.”
“Didn’t you have therapy?” Ashley asked. “Hayden said there was tons of therapy.”
“Oh yeah.” Jared grabbed the last of Ashley’s broasted chicken. “Tons of therapy. Everybody laying into everybody else about their inadequacies. And these instructional films, like why you shouldn’t take drugs and shouldn’t talk back to your parents and all that crap. You had to take tests on them afterward, and if you didn’t pass, you had to watch them again. Oh yeah, and prayers in the morning and before therapy group and before meals. Plus hours of contemplation when you had to sit in a dark room and not say anything.”
“What kind of prayers?” The traffic thickened around them—rush hour in some strange town. On the ride south, she’d veered into the Smoky Mountains as the result of one wrong turn or many. Now they were driving north through rolling hills, populated with the familiar landmarks of garden apartments, office parks, and fast food restaurants. Still, their specific geography remained unfamiliar—each highway exit sign an invitation to a potential locale for living one’s life.
“It was all this junk about putting your life in the hands of a higher power,” Jared was saying. “It wasn’t any stupider than Hebrew school. Religion’s a scam. Say, do you want that pie?”
Erica’s banana cream pie, neon-yellow custard topped with several inches of whipped cream, sat half eaten on the center console.
“Man, this is good,” Jared said. “We weren’t allowed sweets.” He spoke rapidly, apparently gaining energy from each calorie ingested. “Oh man, all the rules. Rules about when you could eat, when you could sleep, when you could socialize with other kids in your pod.”
“Pod?” Erica asked. Nick had used that term in reference to the Pritima Center.
“Yeah, it was their dorky name for the kids in your group. The ones you saw. We were all gardening together. The guy in charge, he was on schedule A. Scheduled to be released in a few weeks. Do you have a cold, Aunt Rikki?”
“Oh no,” Erica said, blowing her nose with a napkin. “Allergies.” She scratched at her mosquito bites, all those blood-streaked scabs. She was feeling lightheaded and sweaty again.
“You look like you’ve lost weight too,” Jared said.
“Don’t I look better?” Erica asked, pleased that he noticed.
“Not really,” Jared said. “You look like you’ve been sick. Have you been to your doctor, for, I don’t know, tests?”
“I don’t do tests,” Erica said. “I leave that to your mother.”
“Are we driving back to New York now, Mrs. Richards?” Ashley asked.
“No way!” said Erica, startled, but she realized she was driving directly north, all journey and no destination. “Where to, Jared?”
“Someplace nowhere near New York. Someplace no one can find me, none of Dad’s private detectives, nobody,” Jared said. “And nowhere even resembling a farm.”
Erica wished she could magically transport him to that tropical place of her fantasies, one of those destinations on the airport screens: Rio de Janeiro, Casablanca, Sardinia.
“I have an aunt in Baltimore,” Ashley offered. She’d unbuttoned her seatbelt and was waggling the toy octopus in Sophia’s droopy face.
“Are you crazy?” Jared asked. “Like we’re really going to stay with your aunt.”
“We could stay somewhere else in Baltimore,” Ashley said. “It’s a pretty big city.”
“Maybe somewhere else in Maryland?” Erica suggested. Maryland sounded like a safe proposition, equidistant from South Carolina and New York.
“I know!” Ashley said. “How about Ocean City, Maryland? I’ve been there on vacation with my aunt. There’s a really cool boardwalk, and wild horses run free on the beach. Well, not exactly on the beach, but close to there.”
“That sounds kind of fun,” Jared agreed.
“Then we’re settled.” With one hand on the wheel and one eye on the road, Erica rummaged through Ethan’s atlas, looking for Maryland.
“I think I’m getting over the baby,” Ashley said.
: : :
Eventually, Jared, Ashley, and Sophia dozed off, while Erica kept driving. Unlike in the lonely Appalachians, many vehicles traveled this highway, even in the wee hours of the night, requiring plenty of lane changing and the occasional sudden slowdown. She’d played all her tapes at least twice through, and they bored her to distraction. To keep herself focused, she took note of the anonymous figures sharing the road with her: the twentysomething girl curling her eyelashes as she drove; the woman with the dog in her lap; the minivan with the “When the rapture comes, this car will be driverless” sticker. Gulls shrieked, and the wind rattled as she drove over the Bay Bridge.
The Eastern Shore of Maryland resembled South Carolina. The gray dawn light revealed clapboard houses, barbeque shacks, and evangelical churches with billboards warning the end was near. Her body felt as if it could go on forever, but her mind was numb and her eyes dry and burning. Her thighs ached. Sophia whimpered—maybe she was hungry. When had she last eaten? Erica didn’t remember. Erica was out of baby food, out of formula, almost out of diapers, but it was early Sunday morning, and the few stores she passed were closed. Ahead of them, a chain of cars turned right into a monstrously huge church, the size of West Meadow High School. A boy with an abnormally large head emerged from a car in the parking lot and swayed his awkwardly shaped body in the direction of the church, gesticulating at the sky.
“Remember that kid in Philadelphia with Down syndrome?” Jared asked, yawning. “Remember, Ash? He was on a stupid wheat-free diet like the one Mom put me on, but it wasn’t doing much good because the kid walked weird and kept wetting his pants.”
“Yeah, remember how Roger and Griffin made us entertain him for days at a time?” Ashley brushed back her hair and splashed toner on her face.
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