by Ronald Malfi
“But we’ve been doing our blood tests,” she said. “They should know.”
“I don’t make the rules,” he said. “Now, put your hat back on.”
She tugged the ball cap onto her head.
Before climbing out of the car, David blotted the inky runnels of sweat from his forehead with a wad of Kleenex. Then he offered Ellie a sad little smile, hoping the girl would give him one in return.
She didn’t.
“You’re my son, not my daughter,” he reminded her before stepping out into the sunshine.
David was relieved to find that they were the only patrons in the place. The hostess, who also turned out to be their waitress, was middle-aged and portly. She sported a dismal expression that made David limit his eye contact with her. Which was for the best, anyway. She had a paper mask hanging from her neck, similar to the kind David had purchased earlier that morning from the sundries store, and a photograph of two small children pinned where her name tag should be. She led them to a booth and set two laminated menus on the table before departing, quite unceremoniously.
David picked his up, thumbed through its sticky pages. After a time, he glanced up at Ellie in the seat opposite him, who hadn’t moved a muscle since sitting down.
“They’ve got bacon cheeseburgers,” he told her.
“Don’t really care.”
“Honey, you’ve got to eat.”
“I told you I’m not hungry.”
“You’ll be hungry later.”
“Then I’ll eat later.”
There might not be time for that, he thought but did not say. Their situation was still too unreal to him: his daughter seated across from him with a short haircut, wearing a monster truck T-shirt and a blue baseball cap. Not to mention the hilt of the Glock poking into the small of his back. Yes, my friend, it is all too unreal. Like the plot of a movie. Or walking through a dream. For whatever reason, he realized at that moment that he was out the hundred bucks he’d left with the motel proprietor as a security deposit the night before. Shit.
“How about a salad, then?” he suggested. “Something light.”
“I’ll eat if I can call Mom first.”
David scratched a fingernail along a paper place mat. “The cell phone is in the car,” he said. He held his hands out, palms up—what can we do about it now? “We can call her later.”
“I won’t eat unless I can talk to her.”
His thumbnail scratched so hard he tore the place mat. Smoothing over the tear with his palm, he said, “Okay. I’ll get the phone and call. You wait here.”
“I want to talk to her myself,” she said.
“Yes, I know,” he said, sliding out of the booth. “I know, Ellie. Just wait here.”
He walked out of the diner at a quick clip and with his head down. Outside, the daylight seemed overly bright, and he shielded the sun from his eyes with one arm. Sunglasses would have been a good idea, too, he thought. Even better to hide my face. The Olds was parked across the lot, but as he climbed into the driver’s seat, he could see Ellie intently watching him through the diner’s plate-glass window. He waved at her, then held up the cell phone to show her that he was dialing.
He didn’t dial. Instead, he faked it, then held the phone up to his ear. It wasn’t even powered on; it was a cold black brick of plastic pressed against the side of his head. He thought about all the intricate little bits and pieces that made a cell phone work. When he inhaled, he could smell the plastic of the thing. For some strange reason, it brought tears to his eyes.
When he saw that Ellie’s gaze was still on him, he feigned a conversation with someone on the other end of the line. He found it impossible to know how to express himself while speaking nonsense—should he frown, smile, look concerned? He was a horrible actor. He recited a few lines from an old Bruce Springsteen song, then set the phone back down on the console and returned to the diner. Before he could sit down at the booth, Ellie was frowning at him.
“What’s the matter?” she said. “What about Mom? I wanted to talk to her.”
“She’s in treatment right now,” David said, sliding into his seat opposite her. The waitress had returned in his absence, leaving behind two tall plastic cups of ice water with accordion straws.
He thought Ellie’s eyes narrowed just the slightest bit.
“You folks made up your mind?” the waitress said, returning to the table. Her expression was no more pleasant than it had been when she had first shown them to their table. She held the paper mask up over her mouth as she spoke.
“Two bacon cheeseburgers,” David said, ordering for the both of them.
Without another word, the waitress collected the menus and performed her disappearing act once again.
Ellie turned her gaze from him. She plucked the straw from her ice water, her thumb pressed against the straw’s opening at the top. She proceeded to release droplets of water onto her place mat, lifting her thumb in quick little jerks. Whenever she looked up, it wasn’t to address David, but to glance at the television set mounted to the wall over his shoulder.
“You haven’t told me what you think of my new look,” he said.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Do you like it?”
“Not really.”
“Does it at least look natural?”
“No.”
“No?”
“I don’t know.” She still wouldn’t look at him.
When their food arrived, David went overboard saying how delicious the burgers looked, then proceeded to douse his in ketchup. Ellie said nothing, though he was pleased to see that after the first bite it didn’t take any coaxing to get her to finish her meal.
“Does Mom know about the quarantine back home?” Ellie asked.
He hesitated too long on the question, causing the girl’s eyes to narrow again. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Have you told her?”
“No, not yet. We can tell her when we talk to her.”
“Or maybe she saw it on the news,” Ellie said.
“Maybe,” David said.
Ellie opened her mouth to say something more, but no words came out. Instead, her mouth just widened as her chin sank lower. She had her gaze fixed on the TV above David’s head.
“What?” he said. “What is it?”
When she didn’t respond, he turned around and looked up at the TV.
There were two photos on the screen—one of him, one of Ellie. He recognized the photo of himself from a vacation in Ocean City two summers ago. Kathy had taken the picture. Beneath the photo was his full name, David James Arlen. They did that with criminals and presidential assassins—used their first, middle, and last names. So there would be no confusing him with all the other David Arlens there might be in the world.
The photo of Ellie was more recent. A school photo, with a fake woodsy backdrop. In it, she was bright, vivacious, and somehow cunning. Her smile was a thing of beauty. Beneath her photo was her own name, Eleanor Arlen. She was an innocent, so there would be no need for her middle name, which was Elizabeth.
The first thing that hit him was a jarring sense of disbelief. He was sitting here, looking at himself smiling in a photograph on a TV news broadcast. The second emotion that struck him, nearly instantaneous with the first, was pure fury at having been violated in such a fashion. Because they would have had to break in to their house to obtain those photos. There was no other way. Which also meant they had started looking for them sooner than he would have thought. Or hoped.
That white van . . .
He caught the final few words of the male newscaster, whose voice was superimposed over the photos: “. . . have issued an AMBER Alert for the pair, who are assumed to be driving a black Ford Bronco with Maryland tag number M-one-five-nine-seven-two. Arlen is being sought for questioning following the death of his wife, Kathleen Arlen. Police also advised that Arlen’s daughter, eight-year-old Eleanor Arlen, is in dire need of medical assistance. If anyone knows th
e whereabouts of David Arlen, police are requesting you contact . . .”
David turned back to face his daughter. Briefly, the whole diner seemed to tip to one side. His skin prickled with heat, yet at the very core of his body it felt like a solid rod of ice had formed, restricting his movement and freezing his guts.
A single tear spilled from Ellie’s eye. When she looked away from the broadcast and found her father’s face, David saw that his own vision had grown blurry and threatened to break apart.
Ellie mouthed, “Dad . . .” But only the slightest whisper of sound escaped her. Ellie’s lower lip quivered. A second tear burned down her cheek and pattered onto her plate.
He was already digging his wallet out of his pants before he knew what he was doing. He tossed a handful of bills onto the table, not bothering to count them, then reached out to his daughter with one hand. She did not move, did not recoil from him as he feared she might, and he was able to grasp her around one wrist. With his other hand, he stuffed the wallet back into the rear pocket of his jeans. Distantly—or seemingly so—there sounded a muted thunk, and it took him several seconds to realize that it was the sound of the handgun coming loose from his waistband and landing on the cushioned seat behind him.
“Shhhh,” he said. It was somewhere between a whisper and a moan. “Look at me, Ellie. Look at me. Don’t take your eyes from me.”
He released her wrist just long enough to tug the bill of the ball cap lower so that it obscured her eyes. With his other hand, he felt around the seat until he located the handgun. When he did, he stuffed it down the back of his pants again. The gun’s cool metal slid freely along the sweaty pocket of flesh at the small of his back.
Ellie groaned. It was a tiny sound, and it approximated the word “Mom.”
“Come on,” he whispered. “Let’s go. Let’s get up and go.”
He took her by the wrist and gave her a gentle yank out of the booth. She went limp and he caught her with an arm around her shoulders. He whispered nonsense into the side of her face, then begged her to keep it together, keep it together, they needed to get out of here without making a scene . . .
Their waitress studied them with a puzzled expression. She was wedged between two vinyl bar stools at the counter and thankfully didn’t approach.
“He doesn’t feel well,” David said.
His hand atop her head, he kept her facing the floor as he ushered her through the diner and out into the parking lot. He felt her go limp again and threaten to collapse to the ground, but he held her upright by the forearm and refused to let her go. He never slowed in his trek across the parking lot to the car. His shoes stirred up dusty white clouds.
“Shhhh,” he said.
“No, no, no,” she said, her voice choked with tears.
His grip on her arm tightened. “Let’s get to the car.”
She uttered something—a sound so pathetic and alien to him that it seemed impossible it had come from another human being, let alone his daughter.
He directed her around to the passenger side. It seemed to take forever to get the door open. And when he did, Ellie refused to move.
“Get in.” He squeezed the sweaty nape of her neck, though gently. “Please, baby. Get in the car. Get in the car.”
She turned and looked up at him. Beneath the brim of her ball cap, a faint crease formed between her eyebrows. Catching her breath, she said, “You’re a liar.”
“Honey . . .”
“You lied to me.”
“Ellie,” he said. He attempted to turn her around and shove her through the open door.
“No.” She pulled away from him.
“It’s not safe.” He looked back at the diner. The waitress was watching them through the glass now.
“You’re a liar!” she screamed at him . . . and then collapsed to the ground.
He dropped quickly to his knees and raised her head with a thumb beneath her chin. The pain on her face wounded him, but he refused to look away. Instead, he embraced her, squeezed her tight. She tensed up within his arms . . . but then sobbed against him as her whole body went limp.
“Shhh,” he said. “It’s okay. But we need to get in the car now. We need to get out of here, Ellie. Do you understand? It’s important we get out of here right now.” He kissed the hot, damp side of her face, and repeated the question in her ear: “Do you understand?”
She withdrew from his arms and slouched against the side of the car.
The waitress was still watching them from behind the diner’s plate-glass windows.
David said, “If you don’t get in the car, Ellie, I’m going to smash those bird eggs. Do you understand me?”
“No,” she sobbed. Then she hugged him again. He hugged her back with one arm, not taking his gaze from the waitress in the window.
Someone is going to call the police. This must look too fucked up not to call the police.
“I want to know what’s going on,” she cried.
Briefly, David closed his eyes. “Okay. I’ll tell you. I’ll explain it all. Just get in the car first so we can get out of here and get someplace safe. We need to get someplace safe first, Ellie. And then I’ll tell you.”
In the end, he wasn’t sure how long they remained like that, kneeling in the gravel parking lot of the 1950s-style diner, the waitress watching them through the wall of plate-glass windows, but by the time they ultimately climbed into the car and drove away, it seemed like an eternity had passed. His only hope was that the scene they had inadvertently caused had kept the waitress’s eyes off the television broadcast.
13
Sixteen months earlier
David poked his head into Ellie’s bedroom. Kathy and Ellie were propped up against a mountain of pillows, Ellie’s head in Kathy’s lap. David leaned against the door frame and watched them both in silence. After a time, Kathy looked up, found his eyes on her, and smiled wearily at him. She mouthed the words “Is she asleep?” to him, because she couldn’t see their daughter’s face. David nodded.
Without waking her, Kathy maneuvered Ellie’s head off her lap. She pulled the sheet up over the girl, kissed the side of her head, then joined David out in the hallway.
“How is she?” he asked.
“As good as she can be,” Kathy said. “Better than most, I would suspect.”
“She’s always been tough.”
“She has,” Kathy agreed. “She didn’t even want to talk about it. Do you think that’s bad?”
“Bad?”
“Like, should we be concerned?”
“I don’t know.”
Kathy began to cry, quietly and with a hand covering her mouth.
It was something she did so rarely that it was unexpected, and he stood there staring at her for several seconds before drawing her into an embrace. They hugged each other in the dark hallway for a time. He could feel her heartbeat against his chest.
“I think she should talk to a therapist,” Kathy said once she dried her eyes on his chest and separated herself from him. “A counselor or whatever.”
“If you think that’s best.”
“I’m just worried what she saw . . . what’s been going on . . . I don’t like that she’s not talking about it.”
“It just happened today, Kath. Let’s talk about it with her tomorrow. Maybe she’ll be ready tomorrow.”
Kathy nodded, swiping a thumb under one eye.
David reached out and quietly closed Ellie’s bedroom door. Then he nodded his head in the direction of the living room, where the TV was on with the volume turned low. Kathy followed him, her bare feet shushing along the floor. David suddenly felt exhausted, like he could shut his eyes and not open them for a month.
“I need a drink,” Kathy said, going through the living room and into the kitchen. “You want one?”
“All right,” he said, easing down onto the sofa. Anything to soothe his nerves. He glanced at the TV but had no interest in whatever was on.
Kathy returned with two glasses of
white wine. She handed one to him.
“Come here,” he said, patting the cushion beside him.
Kathy sat. She took a sip of her wine, made a smacking sound with her lips, then leaned her head against David’s shoulder.
“How much did she actually see?” he asked after a while.
“I’m not exactly sure. Her teacher said she was right there when it happened.”
“Any word on the girl?”
“None yet,” Kathy said. “The last bit of news was that she was still in critical condition. They took her to Hopkins.” She glanced up at him, her breath warm and already smelling of wine. “It’s the same thing that happened to those students of yours, isn’t it?”
“They weren’t my students,” he said. “They just attended the college. I didn’t even know them.”
“But it’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
“I’m not a doctor, Kath.”
“It’s what happened to Deke, too.” It wasn’t a question this time. She was running through all the incidents in her head now, he could tell, replaying them as if their sum would now total the blueprint to some terrible plan unleashed.
David had thought about Deke every day since that night he’d found him wandering down Columbus Court in his underwear. It was impossible not to, since Deke’s house—or what remained of Deke’s house, following the fire—could be seen from their front windows. Two days after the fire, David had spoken with a police detective about the incident—he told the detective about finding Deke in his underwear in the middle of the street, and about ushering him back into his home. He spoke of the disruptive condition of the house, the strange, detached way Deke had been speaking, and about the massive amounts of blood he’d discovered in Deke’s bathroom. The detective, a pock-faced fellow in his late thirties, jotted down notes without the slightest inkling of emotion. When David had finished his story, the detective set down his notepad and asked if anyone else on Columbus Court had exhibited any strange behavior lately. David said no, and asked what that had to do with anything. The detective shrugged and commented that he had been getting a lot of reports concerning strange behavior lately. More than the usual stuff, he’d said. When David asked him to elaborate, the detective was reluctant. When David pushed the issue, the detective told him it was nothing and that he shouldn’t have brought it up. It hadn’t been until later that evening, after speaking with the detective, as he’d lain in bed staring at the darkened ceiling while Kathy snored gently beside him, that David’s mind had returned to the ice cream man. It occurred to him that no one on Columbus Court had ever learned exactly what had happened to Gary, the ice cream man. The police had taken him away, the Freez-E-Friend truck had been towed, and that had been the end of it. As if it had never happened.