Now Mother Night swept wide her arm. “Do you see them all, Kate? Do you see how they go on and on? How the new candles burn out of the wax of the old?”
“Melissa,” Kate said. “I want to see Melissa’s candle. Show it to me.”
Mother Night pointed to a small red car. Unlike the others, it supported only one candle, a blue one set into an ornate silver holder perched in the center of the roof. The candle stood straight and fresh, brand new and burning brightly in the sun. “Oh God,” Kate breathed, “thank you.” Now she truly wanted to rush back to Melissa, so they could celebrate. And so she could escape the brutal vision of all these lives pushing against each other, and all the thousands snapping out of existence wherever she looked. But she knew she had no choice. She had to ask the other question. “Godmother,” she said, “show me my candle.”
Instead of answering, Mother Night began walking down the aisle between the nearest cars. Kate followed her gingerly, nervous that she might brush up against someone’s candle and either knock it over or burn her leg with someone else’s life. Her godmother stopped at the crossroads of two aisles. All around, candles burned in no particular pattern, but in the center of the intersection Kate saw a plain white candle pressed in its own wax on a small plate. Melted wax nearly covered the plate, and even ran over the edge onto the blacktop, for the candle had nearly burned out, with only a stub remaining. Already the flame had begun to flicker.
“No,” Kate said. “Don’t do this.” Mother Night said nothing. “How could you let all those others burn and not mine? I’m your goddaughter. I’m the one that’s supposed to matter to you.” Again no answer. “How could you give me back Melissa and then take me away from her? Give me another candle.” She glanced back at the stub. The flame had begun to leap up sporadically in its last moments before going out. “Hurry,” Kate said. “Give me another candle.”
Quietly, Mother Night said, “The only way I can do that is if I give you a candle from somebody else.”
“Then do it. Do it right now.”
Mother Night pointed to a fresh green candle burning on the hood of a car. “How about this one?”
“Yes.” Mother Night’s hand reached out. “No, wait,” Kate said. The old woman’s hand stayed suspended in the air. Laurie, Kate thought. What if that was Laurie’s candle? Or Mark’s, or Louise’s? “I don’t want that one,” she said. “I want—I want the candle of someone I don’t know. Someone I’ve never met.”
While Mother Night looked around, Kate watched her own struggling light. “Here,” Mother Night said, and Kate had to turn her head to see a thick, partly burned candle on the roof of a station wagon. “Will this do? It belongs to a poet. He has been working for many years on a poem concerning the secret history of creation. If I give you his candle he will never finish. Is that what you want?”
“Hurry,” Kate said. “There’s not much time.”
“Then I better bring your candle to the strong one.” Mother Night took a step back to the crossroads. As she bent down, however, she seemed to trip slightly. The forward motion of her body brought her toe against the candle, and before she could grab it, the stub, almost all liquid wax now, spilled out onto the parking lot.
Kate ran. Without a scream or a shout, she simply turned and dodged and leapt over people’s candles until she came to the wall of the hospital, where she didn’t bother to try the door but headed for the nearest corner. She only made a noise when she turned into cool air, and found herself in front of the building, twenty yards or so from the main entrance. Then she let a grunt explode out of her as she paused a moment to bend over and catch her breath. But only a moment, for even if she could no longer see the candles or feel their heat, she knew that her godmother—or the Motorcycle Girls—could come up and grab her at any moment. Longing to see Melissa cut through her. She knew she didn’t dare. Wouldn’t that be the first place they’d look? And so she ran away from the hospital, and when she reached the nearby streets she began making turns at random, trying to keep her mind blank of any plans or scheme.
She stopped several times, listening for motorcycles, before she finally allowed herself to slow down to a walk. She was in some kind of suburban neighborhood, she saw, with large lawns and big white houses with black shutters, and no one in sight, not in the windows or the driveways or walking or bicycling along the streets. Despite the clear wealth of the neighborhood everything looked dilapidated, the houses in need of paint, the lawns half taken over by weeds. Though the weather had turned warm several weeks ago the trees here hadn’t sprouted, so that the bare branches stuck out over the lawns like gawking skeletons.
She kept walking, block after block, until the blocks disappeared, and then the houses themselves, and she found herself on a narrow road walking past fields that may have been farms except that no one had woken up the ground after winter. She looked at the brown and lumpy fields, with their leavings of yellow stalks and shriveled-up blades of—something, some plant no one could recognize without its normal shape and color. For all she knew, the whole field could have contained her friend, Phytolacca Americana, and she never would have recognized it. Anyway, she thought, what good would it do her without the vodka to cure it in? And who would give it to her? Who would turn her bed around?
She stopped suddenly. On a cone-shaped hill across a field she saw what looked like a group of animals, cows or sheep, grazing together. The sight of them excited her and made her want to cry in some way she didn’t understand. She wanted to run over and—and pet them or something, whatever you did to the animals who gave us our food, day after day, life after life. But when she looked again she couldn’t tell for sure if they were animals or just rocks.
She tilted back her head to survey the sky, looking for birds. At first it all looked as empty as the dirt, but then she spotted a pair of birds flying high. Blackbirds, she thought, crows. She remembered that time in the balloon with Mother Night, rising so high they could stare down at the birds. And she remembered how she’d tried to tell her friend about it, and just ended up lying when she’d tried to tell the truth. Lying can become your basic instinct. When no one will ever believe you, what else can you do? Kate began to cry.
Stop, she told herself. She could cry later, when—when she’d figured out what to do. She found a tissue in her pocket and wiped her eyes. Laurie. She missed Laurie so much. She needed a phone. She would call Melissa, and then she would call her mother. And they would talk, and cry, and tell all their secrets.
She took a deep breath and looked around once more. The damn road just went on and on and on. Maybe if she cut across the fields she’d come to a farmhouse. She made a face. Better not, she thought. She was still wearing her interview clothes. Suppose she fell and got mud all over her linen pants, or tore her blazer? She could just imagine what some farmer would do if a disheveled woman banged on his door and asked to use the phone. Probably summon Mother Night with a blast of his shotgun. Just keep walking, she thought. Just keep moving.
Night came. She’d hardly even noticed it getting dark when suddenly there it was, all around her. With no streetlights or stores or houses, and only a sliver of moon, she could hardly see the ground or her own feet, let alone anything in front of her. If only she’d smoked cigarettes, she would have had some matches. She didn’t want to stop, but at least the darkness would hide her. She walked to the side with her arms out until some branches brushed her face. Reaching down, she found the roots and followed them back to the trunk. With a sigh, she sat down on the dirt and settled herself with her back against the tree.
Sleep. Sleep would give her strength for tomorrow. She closed her eyes, only to open them a few seconds later. She just didn’t feel tired, even after all those hours of walking. And what if they came for her? If she stayed awake she could see the headlights. Try to hide. And suppose they could track her by her dreams? She imagined her dreams broadcasting through the darkness, like radio waves. Maybe her godmother could tune her car radio to Kate’s
dreams. Or maybe Cara, or Lillian, or all of them, had tracking devices mounted on the handlebars of their bikes.
She would just have to wait. How long before it got light? Five o’clock? Maybe by four it would be light enough for walking. She pressed back against the tree and rotated her shoulders. She’d never done so much walking in her life. An image came to her, sharp as a photo. She and Melissa, eighty years old, walking on a beach. She smiled, happy for the first time since—since…She couldn’t seem to calculate time very clearly. No matter. She just thought about Melissa at eighty, her face written all over with delicate lines, like a manuscript of all their years together.
What must it be like, she thought, to lose someone after so many years? She could hardly imagine an agony more acute than the thought that Mother Night had almost taken Melissa that same day. But suppose time had allowed them to grow into each other, slowly becoming one body? How could you exist with half your body torn out? She thought about the old story of the first woman taken from the rib of the first man. It had always struck her as absurd, but maybe instead of the woman’s creation, the story described her death. Torn out of his side after their hundreds of years making babies to people the Earth. She imagined the woman eating some poisoned fruit, an apple from the Tree of Death. And then it occurred to her that she better not eat anything here in the woods. She knew so little about plants, how to recognize the good from the evil. Hell, she thought, she knew so little about anything. Just death, and loving Melissa.
The sky brightened, and she stood up, dusted herself off, and began walking again.
Hours later, the road began to widen, with fewer trees, and soon she came around a corner, and there stood a gas station, and outside the door of the small concrete building a shiny pay telephone. She took off running, but when she got within twenty feet she stopped. What could be more dangerous than a gas station? All they had to do was come rolling in for a tankful and there she’d be. But after ten minutes of standing there, unable to make up her mind, she knew she had no choice. She couldn’t bear not speaking to Melissa. She could keep an eye on the road, and if she saw them she could run behind the building, or hide in the ladies’ room. Shaking with excitement, she got to the phone—and discovered she couldn’t remember the number. She searched through her pockets until she found the piece of paper with the message from Jason. There were the numbers, but which one was the hospital? She felt like slamming the phone down against the box. Why couldn’t she think? She took a deep breath. Okay. Do it slowly, she told herself. She was just tired from staying up all night. Vaguely she remembered something about a group of people confused by the telephone, but when it wouldn’t come clearly she left the thought behind. She stared at the paper. The number on the top—that had to be Jason, right? Because she was supposed to call Jason first? In fact, the other number—that was her own handwriting, wasn’t it? Jason himself had given it to her.
A simple task. Transfer the numbers on the page to the buttons on the box. Slowly, with one false start after another, she hunted down the numbers one by one, all the while thinking of a man she’d known, a friend of Mark’s, who’d suffered a stroke and could never seem to find the right words for the thoughts jamming together in his head. Finally she’d done it and the phone began ringing on the other end. Nervously, she scanned the road. No cars or motorcycles. She’d done it. She was going to speak to Melissa. But instead of the hospital she just heard a machine voice asking for forty-five cents, repeating it over and over, and before Kate could get the change from her pocket and figure out the coins, the voice had given up on her and removed itself, returning her to the flat buzz of the dial tone.
Once more she traveled down the river of numbers, this time with her coins all laid out on top of the box. After she’d put in her money a voice came on. A voice and a horrible scratching, so loud it made it impossible for Kate to hear whatever it was the voice was saying. “Melissa Evans,” she half shouted into the phone. The voice said something else. The number, Kate thought. It needs the extension. Or the room number. She searched the memo paper, while all the time the scratching got louder and the voice farther and farther away. Finally, she heard a click, and though Kate shouted, “Don’t hang up!” she knew she had missed her chance.
Forcing herself not to cry, she marched into the building, where a gaunt boy about seventeen sat behind a counter stacked with newspapers, doughnuts, and lottery cards. “I need a phone,” Kate said. “The one outside is broken.”
“Right out past the air pump.”
“I just told you. That one is broken.”
The boy shrugged, and Kate wanted to strangle him. “Sorry,” he said, “’s only one.”
Kate asked, “What do you do if someone robs you? What do you do if they shoot you and you’ve got to call for an ambulance?” He shrugged. Kate might have screamed at him if she hadn’t heard a car pull into the lot, followed by the ping of a bell summoning the boy to service.
Kate spun around. It was okay. Just a station wagon, a long white thing with rust spots over the front wheel. A man in a suit sat behind the wheel. Safe or not, Kate decided she couldn’t stay there any longer, not even if this boy getting up meant she could search for his hidden telephone.
Twice more that day, as she passed through small towns, Kate tried to call the hospital. She tried from a pay phone but kept getting the wrong numbers, and she even asked a woman in an insurance office to dial it for her, saying she had arthritis. When that, too, failed, reaping nothing but busy signals, Kate knew the phone system had beaten her.
Everywhere she went along the town’s single shopping street she heard people talking about death. “Can you believe it? He jogged five miles a day. Skinny as Mickey Mouse and didn’t even drink coffee, and then a fucking blood clot smacks him in the brain.” “Sorry about the dinner. Michael’s brother died and we couldn’t reach everybody in time.” “The really sad thing is, we found that dog half starved. We had to give it saucers of milk like a kitten. Just so a brat in his father’s car can come and wipe it away.” “She was supposed to go speak at that gender rebels conference, the one they showed on TV? And then her lover starts spewing blood onto the bathroom mirror and the next morning she’s dead.” “I still can’t believe it. He got through the operation. It was just a simple cut. I can’t believe it.” “They’re calling it an accident. Yeah, right. In the back of the head?”
Kate wished she could protect herself. Maybe she could stain her clothes with blood. Or wear flowers around her neck. Or stuff her pockets with fingernail clippings. She remembered Alicia, sad Alicia, who’d tried to protect herself from death and the punishment she imagined would come after it. Avoiding cars and restaurants and high winds, only to have her own father surrender to the enemy.
The night found her out in the country again, this time by fields instead of hills. Just before the darkness settled on her, she spotted a trio of large rocks set in a semicircle and took a chance on crossing the field so that she could sit down with her back against the middle stone.
She dreamed that night, though she couldn’t remember feeling tired, or even closing her eyes. In the dream, Melissa came and sat in front of her, there in the field. She wore a dress of thick braids, every braid a different color. The material rippled against her body like an everlasting waterfall. Pictures fell from the sky. At first Kate thought they were rain but as they slid down Melissa’s face, Kate could see them more clearly—spirals and stars, and dancing sticks, and blue circles radiating light. Melissa touched Kate’s cheeks and shoulders, and stroked her eyebrows and the side of her neck, but when Melissa tried to kiss her, Kate turned her face away. Please, she told her lover. Listen. Nothing was more important now than listening.
She told Melissa about her godmother, and the Motorcycle Girls, about all the secret trips they took, and Dead Jimmy and the streetmarket, and Alicia Curran. She told her about Laurie, and how Kate had lied to Laurie all her life. “I don’t want to lie to you too,” she said. “Please don
’t let me do that. I want you to know.” Throughout the telling she held Melissa’s hands in each of hers, and when she finished she still held them, even though she leaned forward to kiss Melissa’s lips. “When you wake up,” she said finally, “promise me you’ll remember. Will you promise me that? Will you remember?”
“Yes,” Melissa said. “I promise.”
When morning came Kate got up, shook herself slightly, and once more started walking.
She had no idea how long she’d been going when she came to the edge of the woods. She recognized it, of course. She knew Thorny Woods better than anyone. Almost anyone. Better keep away, she thought. Wasn’t that the first place they would look for her? Maybe they were already waiting. She better run.
She had already turned and was trying to remember which way to go when she heard the crying. Sirenlike, it rose and fell, cutting through the trees. Kate looked all around, and when she saw no one she called out “Hello?” first stiffly, then louder. She glanced down the street, thinking maybe someone would hear, and wondering if she could bang on someone’s door. The street looked so deserted. Even the one car she could see in someone’s driveway looked all rusty and flat, as if it had stood there for years.
When she turned toward the woods again, the crying rose in volume and speed. “I can’t go in there,” she shouted. Even raising her voice like that made her nervous. She wanted to say “I’m sorry you’re hurt, or whatever it is, but I can’t go in there. I’ve got to keep moving. Can’t you understand that?” The crying rolled on and on. “Damn!” she said, and began running through the trees.
Kate didn’t worry about the tree branches, or even tracking the sound. She just headed for the clearing. Just before she got there the crying suddenly stopped, and when she burst into the small meadow she had to look around for a few seconds before she spotted the child crouched down tightly at the edge of the trees. “Hey, it’s all right,” Kate said. “It’s okay.” She patted the air, as if the waves would reach the child and soothe her terrified body.
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