Wrong Highway

by Wendy A. Gordon

  “Say,” Jared smiled slyly. “Have you seen Nick Stromboli lately?”

  “He got busted.” Erica tightened her grip on the wheel.

  “You’re kidding!” Jared said. “Is he in jail?”

  “No.” Erica passed a poky RV on the right. “I guess there’s going to be a trial.”

  “Wow,” Jared said. “Mr. Safe House. Mom really liked him, you know. She told me what a sweet man he was. How he really cared about young people. She’s so clueless.”

  “Unfortunately,” Erica said.

  “Say, Aunt Rikki.” He sounded very young, anything sly vanished from his tone. “Are you going to tell Mom where I am?”

  “I thought you didn’t want to be anywhere near New York.”

  “Well, yeah, but I don’t want Mom to worry, you know? You could tell her and not Dad.”

  “She tells your father everything, Jared, you know that. I would if I could, but I can’t. You don’t want me to tell her, believe me.”

  All that teenage bluster—it was such a lie, a lie much easier to profess when you were securely in the grasp of those you pretended to hate. Erica thought back on all the fun they’d had that spring: Lauren’s bat mitzvah, up until Ron’s food fight anyway; listening to REM; feeding Porky the Litter Eater; giggling through Sunday night family dinners; even the morning she’d found Jared and Ashley sleeping on her patio. It had been fun then because it was all a game, theoretical revolt. This adventure, this authentic revolt, was wearing thin; it had a script whose beginning she could no longer precisely recall, whose purpose she could not precisely delineate. All she knew was that she urgently needed to see it through.

  She gave up looking for a store. The slate blanket of metallic clouds above them exploded into thunder. Heavy rain beat across the windows in sheets. The road, thankfully, stayed free and clear, save the occasional eighteen-wheeler or station wagon crowded with kids and vacation paraphernalia. She played Bloody Tampax and Barf to block out Sophia’s insistent whimpering and gloppy coughing. She passed every vehicle she encountered, speeding up to eighty, ninety, ninety-five. She hadn’t realized cranky Vince was capable of such speed. He made no choking noises at all. The road looked like a blur of water and lights, beautiful, in its fashion. Ahead, a flash of lightning streaked down like the sky was splitting.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  By the time they reached Ocean City, the rain had stopped, leaving a steamy haze in its wake. Erica pulled into an angled space by the boardwalk. High, unbroken waves rolled onto a broad white beach, as tubular as a roll of paper towels. A few couples strolled along the storm-pounded sands, and families were tentatively setting up umbrellas and blankets. A teenage boy, around Jared’s age, ran into the water. You could see him framed in the wave, as if encased in glass, before the top of the wave curled over him and washed him ashore, leaving him gasping in the sand.

  “I wish we could go swimming,” Ashley said.

  “The water looks awfully rough,” said Jared. “Besides, we don’t have bathing suits. I don’t even have a change of clothes.”

  While the beach slowly filled up, the main action was taking place on the boardwalk where crowds of people drifted, licking snow cones, drinking beer even this early in the morning, shouting, laughing, visiting the arcades and salt water taffy stands. The town radiated a cheesy, cheery mood.

  Jared’s eyes darted around uncomfortably, as if he still expected Dr. Rafferty’s minions to swoop down and capture him; Ashley bounced about the boardwalk. Both seemed expectant, waiting for Erica to detail the next step in a plan she hadn’t formulated. Sophia had worn herself out from crying and slept slumped over in her stroller, waking only to cough up gooey green mucus. She couldn’t seem to shake whatever was ailing her. She perked up every time she took the Tylenol and then deteriorated again. It unnerved Erica to see her looking like this, without enough spirit to even cry. She stopped at a convenience store and bought more baby Tylenol, some sort of baby cold formulation, overpriced diapers, formula, and strained apricots and green beans.

  “Ooh, food,” Jared said, looking around at the elephant ear and salt water taffy stands. “I’m still starving.”

  They settled on fried shrimp baskets and then sat at the edge of the boardwalk, dangling their legs in the sand, eating the greasy food. Sophia ate a few bites of apricots but refused her formula. She spit back half her medicine but took in enough to do the job, Erica figured. The soft fishy breeze off the ocean mingled with a sweet scent of spun sugar and a faint overlay of rot.

  “You see all these restaurants?” Ashley pointed to a huge seafood emporium about five hundred feet down the walkway, complete with a blinking neon crab. “And the video arcades and everything. It’ll be easy to get a job.”

  “It’s already the middle of the summer,” Jared pointed out.

  “People quit all the time,” Ashley said. “I had this babysitter once, when I came here as a kid with my aunt, and she got a job at O’Donnell’s over there, right in the middle of July.”

  “Where will we stay?” Jared asked.

  “We can sleep on the beach,” Ashley said.

  “That sounds about as comfortable as the Pritima Center.” Jared traced his toe around a shard of glass on the sand.

  “Let’s go swimming,” said Ashley.

  “I told you, no suit.” Jared said.

  “I’ll buy us some,” Erica said, pointing to a swimwear and T-shirt store adjoining the salt water taffy stand.

  They changed into the suits right in the store. In the changing area, Erica pulled the cotton curtain around on its metal rod. Sophia’s stroller jutted out, making it impossible for the curtain to close completely. She’d bought a peach bikini, which, at least in the fluorescent light of the store, appeared to be a mistake. She looked thin, indeed, but also stretched and worn out, like the cashiers at Pathmark. Her hair was a grease fest. Her nose was swollen and red; there were blotches under her eyes. Her arms and neck were covered in picked mosquito scabs, and her weirdo rash seemed to have spread. She looked very, very, tired. She looked nothing like she had that day in South Beach. Maybe it was the light. She turned away from the mirror.

  Ashley dove headfirst into the waves while Jared hesitantly let the water wash over his ankles. Erica, clutching Sophia, waded out past him. The surf splashed up to her waist and onto Sophia’s legs, sharp and cold, with considerable force. Sophia squealed in fear, clinging to Erica’s shoulder. Her skin felt hot against Erica’s body. Maybe it was a mistake, taking her in the ocean. Erica retreated to where she’d put Sophia’s stroller and lay down in the sand.

  Now that she was no longer driving or walking, a deep weariness suffused her. She closed her eyes and, half asleep, caressed by the steamy breeze, dreamed soft swirly visions of the stuffed animals lining Sophia’s crib: the pink wooly hippopotamus, the bear with the heart embroidered on its chest, the lamb that played lullabies when you wound it. On the screen of her shut eyelids, she could see Sophia’s bird mobile of parrots and bluebirds jiggling gently up and down. She wondered what it would be like to be a baby, with nothing more pressing to do than lie there and watch the flickering of shapes. She missed nursing Sophia like a vacancy at her very heart. She missed her twins, the way they grabbed at her knees and pulled at her arms, filling her with questions and the sweet endlessness of their need. She missed Dylan, his intent intelligence, his nerdy enthusiasms, his sloppy, barely readable weekly letters from camp. She missed Ethan, viscerally, and longed to curve her body around him and press her breasts into his back. She wanted to lie in bed with her eyes closed and hear the gentle buzz of his morning sounds as he shaved and poured coffee out of his thermos. She wanted the soft brush of the cream carpet in their bedroom. She wanted her comfortable beautiful house, yet she wanted to stay in Ocean City and waitress at O’Donnell’s. She wanted Jared and Ashley’s baby to come back to life. She wanted to take Jared back in
time, to somewhere sunny and safe. She wanted to walk down this broad white beach all the way to where the wild horses ran and run and run and run with them, the wet sand squishing between her toes and her lungs gasping for air if she could only transcend the limits of her fallible body. She wanted all these things at once.

  A spray of sand jolted her awake. Jared, his new swim shorts barely damp, plopped down beside her.

  “The water is rough, like I thought.” He glanced over at Sophia, sleeping in an awkward position in her stroller, which Erica had forgotten to shift from the upright position. Her head hung down over her chest, one of her legs caught in the strap. Milky spittle, dotted with apricot, dripped from her mouth. “Is Sophia all right, Aunt Rikki?” he asked.

  Erica took a closer look, and no, Sophia was not all right. She was burning hot. She was sunburnt, mosquito-bitten, and caked in damp sand—sand in the corners of her eyes, between her toes, between the folds of her chubby thighs. She wasn’t totally asleep, but she wasn’t truly awake either. “Sophia! Sophie!” Erica jiggled her, trying to trigger a reaction, brushing a bottle of juice against her hot, dry lips. Sophia opened her eyes as if it took great effort, managing only a slitted, dull gaze. A giant black-and-white Newfoundland walked up, wagging his tail and then sniffing at Sophia.

  “Look, Sophie, doggie! Doggie! You love doggies!” Erica shook Sophia’s shoulders.

  Sophia did not respond. Her slitted eyes closed again. She breathed heavily.

  “Don’t you see the doggie, Sophia?”

  But Sophia lay there blankly, indifferent to the dog’s gentle tongue on her leg.

  “My God,” Erica cried softly. She’d been carrying around her precious little girl like she was so much luggage.

  “No, she’s sick, Jared. I have to take her to the doctor. I have to go home. I have to go home right now.”

  “But what about me?” Jared didn’t look so good himself, skinny, heavy lidded and grungy, blinking back the sun. Down the beach, Ashley was standing with a group of kids holding boogie boards and passing what appeared to be a jug of cheap wine. She seemed to have forgotten about her dead baby. Maybe Ashley had decided having an abortion was really like having her tonsils taken out. The wound bled for a while but healed quickly, allowing her to get on with the rest of her life. Erica didn’t doubt that Ashley’s sadness would catch up with her years later, when she’d long forgotten about it. Her submerged scars, visible to no one but her, would rip open, leaving a gaping, unfillable hole.

  But screw Ashley. Ashley wasn’t Erica’s problem anymore. Erica kept trying to get a reassuring reaction out of Sophia. She bounced her and tickled her. All she did in response was wiggle and moan a little without opening her eyes. Erica pried open her mouth and dropped apple juice on her tongue while Jared hovered foolishly over the two of them. She was tired of Jared being her problem too.

  “Why don’t you go join your girlfriend, Jared?” Erica said.

  Jared’s eyes filled with tears. “Aunt Rikki, please take me home, and I’ll face the music, whatever it is. At least I’ll see Mom.”

  “Jared, listen to me.” Erica tightened her free hand around his wrist. “You can’t go back to things the way they are. I rescued you from that boot camp, didn’t I? You’re free now.”

  “I know you love me, Aunt Rikki, but I’m scared.”

  Erica pressed Jared’s bony knuckles into her palm. “Listen to me. Stay here in Ocean City. Ashley’s right: it’s the middle of the summer, there’s tons of people, you’ll get a job.”

  Jared nodded assent, his wide, deep-set hazel eyes blinking, as Ashley ran toward them, dripping water. Alone among the four of them, she appeared physically untouched by the previous three days, sparkling in her new striped bikini, her hair hanging damp down the center of her back, her hands fluttering excitedly.

  “Hey, Jared,” Ashley said, “I found a place to crash.” She pointed to the circle of kids with the wine. “And leads on a job too. They need people at this fried fish place; they’re always looking for help. And Alvin over there”—she pointed at a tall boy with curly brown hair wearing an oversize pair of board shorts—“says I can use my fake ID and maybe get a job as a cocktail waitress. He says I could pass as twenty-one for sure. What do you think, Jared?” She struck a swimsuit model pose.

  “All right,” Jared said. “Ashley, Aunt Rikki has to leave. Sophia is sick.”

  Ashley looked at Sophia, lying limply against Erica’s damp and sandy breasts. “Oh, the poor little thing,” she said. “Well, I guess we’ll be okay, won’t we, Jared?”

  Jared swallowed and bit his lip like Dylan always did standing at home plate in Little League. “Yep,” he said.

  The late-afternoon sun, still strong, beat down on Erica’s head. She imagined it drilling down into Sophia’s fevered skull. All she could think of was getting her off the beach, sheltering her from that harsh sky.

  She pressed $500 into Jared’s hand and left them there, standing in the sand.

  Back at the car she forced another dose of Tylenol plus the cold medicine down Sophia’s throat, taking consolation in the fact that she swallowed the syrupy liquid rather than throwing it back up. Not that the Tylenol was doing any good anymore. Sophia felt hotter than ever. Her diaper was barely wet, even though she hadn’t changed it in, well, she didn’t remember. She didn’t think she’d changed it back on the boardwalk. Oh yeah, in the restaurant of that barbeque place with the nosy lady, way back in South Carolina. Surely a baby’s diaper typically needed changing more often, but she couldn’t recall precisely how often—she really wasn’t thinking straight.

  She turned on the air-conditioning. Vince’s engine knocked but, thankfully, still functioned. The traffic crept all the way to the Bay Bridge and beyond—hordes of oblivious vacationers crawling home to the DC area after the weekend. At every stall she turned her head to the backseat, rolled up on one knee to touch Sophia’s chest, to reassure herself with the soft in and out of her breath. She did not seem to be coughing as much, but Erica could not rouse her from sleep. By the time she reached the J. Millard Tawes Rest Area the sun was setting. She filled one of Sophia’s bottles at the water fountain, forcing lukewarm water between her parched lips. Sophia’s eyes opened, briefly, dully; she turned her head, and half the water dribbled out of her mouth. Erica took her into the restroom where she changed her diaper, even though it was only slightly wet with what looked to be fluorescent-yellow pee, almost orange. Every inch of her body was ablaze. The Tylenol wasn’t doing any good, but Erica forced some more down anyway. She splashed her all over with cool water in the bathroom sink, her naked tush bumping up against the metal faucet. She washed off the sand, revealing more bright-red mosquito bites with spreading round circles around them, but thank goodness, the coolness, or maybe the discomfort, made her open her eyes for a couple minutes. “Sophie, Sophie,” Erica murmured. She changed her into the last of the clean clothes she’d brought, a pastel-green stretchie with zebra appliques. She snorted the last of her coke, right there in the parking lot; it was dark and filled with oblivious truckers. Her rag doll arms steered her back on to the turnpike; her rag doll legs worked the accelerator. Her robot eyes guided her past the eighteen-wheelers, whipping in and out of the lanes with instinctive precision. The throb at the base of her head provided a bass line for Robert Palmer, the Clash, Barf, Bloody Tampax. Sophia slept through it all. Erica drove with her right hand on Sophia’s little chest, feeling her little heart pumping rapidly, her little chest rising and sinking. She kept her left hand on the wheel except once, when Sophia made a gravelly, choking noise, and Erica turned to check her throat with both hands, steering the car with her sandaled foot. The familiar moonscape of Elizabeth, New Jersey, shone metallic and incandescent. Through the mustard-yellow miasma, she made out the neon lights of a hospital emergency room and briefly considered stopping. But she couldn’t, because everything was crashing in on her, not j
ust Sophia but also Jesse and Jake, due back from Lisa’s in less than half a day and everyone else returning from where they’d gone, everyone looking for her. She drove over the Goebbels Bridge and through Staten Island and over the Verrazano in the waning hours of the perpetually lit New York night, down the Brooklyn Queens Expressway and past the graveyards and down the Grand Central to Northern Parkway. To the accompaniment of Dire Straits playing “Money for Nothing,” she roared into the North Shore Hospital parking lot, slammed on the brakes, and opened herself up to the mercy of the emergency room staff.

  Sophia looked tiny in the midst of the white-sheeted ER bed. Her heart beat visibly in her sunken chest, her breath short and fast. The nurse poked her all over with needles, trying to locate a vein robust enough to insert an IV catheter. All Sophia’s veins were thin and flat, blue streaks dotting her translucent infant skin. Finally the nurse plunged a needle into her carotid artery, in the hollow of her fragile neck.

  “You got her here just in time,” said the doctor. “Her kidneys were on the verge of shutting down. And her heart.”

  Erica watched the fluid flow into Sophia’s veins. She’d carted her baby around like baggage. She tried to answer the doctor’s questions.

  Her husband was away on a business trip. They’d been traveling, visiting relatives in Virginia. Sophia caught what she assumed was a cold: a stuffy nose, mild fever, poor appetite. She supposed she should have taken her to a doctor down there, but she kept figuring she would get better. And in fact her nasal congestion and coughing had almost disappeared, but she was so hot, so difficult to rouse. Yes, agreed the doctor, a 105 fever. When had she last eaten? Peed? Pooped? Erica couldn’t quite recall. She didn’t understand what possibly could have happened.

  Lots of potential things could be wrong, said the doctor. Meningitis, for one, given Sophia’s unresponsiveness and that puffy mosquito bite underneath her eye. They inserted another needle into the vulnerable hollow underneath her curls and took a spinal tap. Or she could have sunstroke, given her high fever and all those hours in ninety degree weather and on the beach. Or perhaps acetaminophen poisoning. How many doses of Tylenol had Erica given her over the past seventy-two hours? About every four hours, she guessed. She couldn’t precisely recall. Plus that cold medicine stuff. Or maybe pneumonia, added the doctor, though he couldn’t detect water in Sophia’s lungs. But sometimes pneumonia in babies could be deceptive.