by Amy Saia
I snuck into the house, careful not to let the front screen door rattle behind me. Then, with tiptoeing steps, I made my way toward the stairwell. Maybe I could get an hour or two of sleep. The cot seemed like a bed of feathers now, I was so tired.
“Good morning.”
I froze in place. Forced myself to turn around.
Grandmother Carrie stood at the kitchen doorway, black iron skillet in hand. She reached down to wipe a palm across an apron of light blue with white eyelet trim. Her eyes were filled with scrutiny.
The sun hadn’t even risen yet. It was only six-thirty, hardly a time for a person to be making breakfast.
“Good morning,” I said, defeated.
One eyebrow rose on her placid face, and she turned to head for the kitchen. I knew I was to follow.
I took a seat at the polished oak kitchen table I knew so well, dropping Grandpa Jack’s car keys down with a noisy rattle of metal. Someone had picked a fresh bundle of flowers and placed them in a vase of smoky violet glass. The back door stood open so a mild breeze could waft in.
“So,” she said, placing the skillet down on the stovetop, her back to me. I heard the sound of a gas flame hissing to life. “You went for a little ride?”
“Yes, but I—”
“And you thought it would be okay to borrow our car without asking?”
I tapped the table with my fingernails a few times. Of course Gran would get up early. “Yep.”
“How nice of you,” she replied, turning slightly.
“I’m sorry.”
She placed a few strips of bacon down into the pan. Overhead, a familiar cuckoo clock ticked away against a backdrop of yellow patterned wallpaper.
It was as if I’d never left.
They, the cult, had made me leave. Yes, I would have married William anyway, but they took away my right to visit Grandmother Carrie. And now she was gone. When I traveled back to my time, this woman standing before me would be gone.
Time was a thief, and sometimes I hated it.
She turned to me, light golden hair swinging in a soft circle around her face. “Are you hungry?”
I nodded. Right then, I couldn’t speak. My throat was so tight with things I wanted to say. To tell her. I knew she was mad at me, but if she knew, if she really knew, then it would all be okay. Then she would take me in her arms and I could tell her everything. William, the failed trip, the baby. Gran, how do you fix a marriage when the other person is never around? When they want a life that doesn’t fit you, but you love them so much you’ll do anything to make it work out?
“You’re awfully quiet. Didn’t you sleep at all?”
“Not really,” I said, watching her pluck an egg from a copper wire basket on the counter near the stove. I heard the sound of a chicken outside, clucking a funny rhythm. I glanced out the back door and saw it hobble by, head bobbing up and down in little jerks.
“You have chickens?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. Just a few. That’s my good layer, Miss Pettipot.”
“Oh.” I watched a tuft of feathers disappear behind a wall of tomato plants.
Chickens. She had her own chickens. And William said modern day was wild.
Gran smacked the egg onto the side of the skillet, then emptied its contents with a quick lift. “I’ll get you some orange juice in just a moment.”
“I can do that.” I left my chair and headed for the refrigerator, not the one I knew—this one was huge and had the same kind of steel and chrome makings as the Chevy out in the garage. I saw a crate of oranges near the bottom, grabbed a few, and shut the door with my hip. Then, I opened the glasses cabinet and reached inside for the old carafe.
She appeared surprised, and I realized I’d acted like someone who knew the kitchen inside and out. I made an attempt to cover my mistake. “This kitchen is a lot like the one I have at home,” I said, cutting into an orange and squeezing its juice into the carafe. I kept cutting and squeezing, my face shielded by a long sheath of tousled hair.
“Is it?”
“Sure.”
“Where is your home, Emma? If you don’t mind my asking.” She tended the egg with a metal spatula, careful, so the yolk didn’t break.
“I told you, with Ruby. My mother.”
“And out of nowhere, you decided to come visit us?”
“Yes.”
She asked her next question while transferring my egg to a plate alongside a triangular piece of toast. “Are you in any sort of . . . trouble?”
I hesitated a moment before handing her the carafe. When I did, she handed me a plate and then motioned for me to go to the table and sit down.
“Trouble?” I asked. “No, there’s been no trouble. I mean, life’s a little confusing right now. You understand how that is.”
“Do I?” Grandmother Carrie wiped her hands on her apron. “And where’s the boy you snuck out to see last night?”
I stammered for a second. So this was the trouble she was referring to. I guess back then, sneaking out to see a boy meant you were a certain kind of girl. The worst kind.
“Oh, don’t be so surprised. I knew it had to be something like that, for why else would a handsome girl like you sneak out in the middle of the night? Foolish to the core.”
I heard the sound of bacon being laid down into the hot skillet. “You can stay for a few days if you need, but I’ll ask you to refrain from those sorts of activities from now on, if you don’t mind. My Pauline, she’s a little boy-crazy herself right now. She thinks the whole world is the male species, and I’m afraid there might be one particular ‘specie’ on her mind.” She sighed. “Pauline won’t tell me about him, but I figured it out.”
I took a bite of toast and chewed fast. My stomach was really mad at me for not keeping up our usual schedule. I followed it with a huge bite of egg, and then bacon when she set it down on my plate. Delicious, fatty, salty bacon. The hunger quieted inside, eased off, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before it started up again. This baby was never satisfied. Holding up the toast, I said, “Have you ever thought perhaps Pauline should meet this boy?”
Her body grew rigid. “No. I most certainly haven’t.”
“She does seem old enough and capable of making her own decisions.”
Gran flipped the rest of the bacon, unsettling a chorus of spitting grease. “She’s always done things to spite me, which means sometimes I have to step in.”
“Maybe she’s doing the right thing,” I threw out.
Gran came over with another strip of bacon; grease dripped from its sides all the way to the floor. “I hardly think you are one to talk,” she said, dropping it onto the already cleared ceramic landscape of my plate. Her eyes lowered to my abdomen and then back up, and I knew she wasn’t thinking of bacon.
“Oh,” I said. My appetite quelled. I sat and watched her work. After a moment, I got up and cleaned my plate in the sink. “How’d you figure it out?” My hands weren’t careful enough when they scrubbed her delicate china with the soapy pad of steely mesh. She reached in to remove the plate from my hands.
“I just had a feeling,” she said.
“Like women’s intuition?”
“Something like that. And I’m never wrong.”
Our eyes met. I couldn’t tell her all of it yet. She wasn’t the Gran I knew and trusted. She, like William, was a different person inside a familiar body. Like the sci-fi movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I wanted to tell her, oh lord, how I wanted to. I wanted her to wrap her arms around me and squeeze me and say, “Congratulations, Emma! You will be a wonderful mother!” But she couldn’t, because I wasn’t anything more to her than a stranger. Loneliness filled me. I stood back to wipe my hands on my skirt. My rock-hard middle was concave under my warm and wet palms.
�
�Well, I think I’ll go take a bath,” I said. Sleep was impossible. I’d catch up later. Sleep was for fools.
My thoughts drifted to Marcus and the church. My real reasons for being here. Not to sleep, not to talk.
“Emma, dear,” Gran said with pity, “I didn’t mean . . .” She seemed remorseful. “I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything. All I ask is you keep your ‘activities’ away from Pauline. If you need help, I can assist you. You don’t have to be alone in this.” When she reached out to put an arm around me, I grew stiff. I backed away.
“Oh, but I do. I am alone. It’s my problem, and I have to fix it.”
“Fix it?” she said, lowering the dishtowel.
“Yes. But right now, I just need a bath.”
Her eyes were full of regret as I backed away and headed for the stairs.
¤ ¤ ¤
Upstairs, I found another problem to occupy my mind. The briefcase was missing. I searched under the cot where I’d stored my bag, but it wasn’t there. My pregnancy brain must have caused me to replace it, but where?
Mother passed by, ebony-handled bristle brush running through her hair, and I accosted her with an accusing voice. “Pauline, have you been messing with my things?”
She let out a guffaw, mid-stroke. “Why should I care about your stupid things?”
“Something’s missing.”
She plopped down on the edge of her bed and continued to brush her shining mass of golden bouffant hair. “Well, I don’t have it, whatever it is.”
I checked under the cot again, then under her bed, pushing her legs out of the way for a better inspection. A pair of black and white saddle oxfords knocked together and then nudged at my shoulder in irritation. “Hey!” When I stood up, she had a sore expression on her face.
“It’s got to be somewhere.”
“I don’t care where it is.”
The gun was in the briefcase, as were all of William’s things. But mostly it was the gun that had me worried. If it fell in the wrong hands . . .
Grandpa Jack had been the one to put them in the car. Maybe he’d misplaced it. Shoved it in the closet downstairs. I’d go ask him, and it would be there. It had to be.
I took a quick bath and dressed. Downstairs, the kitchen was already empty. I heard the sound of a television and found Grandmother Carrie and Grandpa Jack in the front den watching a Western. With a delicate needle suspended over an intricate piece of embroidery, Gran stopped to glance up at me. “Is everything all right, Emma?”
“Well, sort of. I think I’ve lost something—a leather briefcase. Do you remember bringing it in last night, Uncle Jack?”
John Wayne held his attention. He grumbled something into his chest, and then I heard him say, “There was only one bag. A pink one.”
“Only one? But I had two bags.”
“I grabbed what was there. I only saw one.” John Wayne ducked behind a boulder, and his eyes scanned the horizon for a tribe approaching on decorated horses. Grandpa Jack rustled in his chair.
“Then I need to go to town.”
“Oh?” Gran lowered her needle.
“If that’s okay. Would you mind if I borrowed the car?” The thought of climbing the steep slope of Walters Lane on foot had emboldened me.
Grandpa Jack twisted around. “Borrow the car? A girl like you can walk—”
“Jack.” Gran gave him a look which said not to speak. He obeyed and commenced to watching his movie with a slight scowl. “I think the question is,” she said, “is it just a bag you’re after in town? If it’s just the bag, then the answer is yes, you may borrow the car. If it’s anything else, then I’ll have to say no. It is just the bag, isn’t it, Emma?”
“Of course.” What did she think I would do, rob a bank? Actually, it wasn’t a bad idea. The Seekers needed money—without it, they’d wither into nothing. But to rob a bank, you had to have a gun. To do anything with the cult, you needed a gun. I had better hurry up and find the briefcase before someone else did.
Gran picked up her embroidery and, with careful stitches, created a silk pedal on a yellow rose. “Then you may borrow the car. But only for a few hours. And don’t leave town.”
“It needs a quart of oil,” Grandpa Jack added.
I ran to the front door, pulling my heels on with quick shoves, but stopped mid-left foot. Pauline was there in the foyer, and in her right hand dangled the keys to the car. She came off as smug as if she’d caught a rat with her bare hands. “I figured out what you’re up to,” she sang, quiet enough so no one in the next room would hear.
I wanted to rip them from her fingers and give her a good, hard smack. “Give me those keys, Pauline.”
“No, I don’t think so. Not until you promise you’ll help me get out of here.”
Why did she have to make things so complicated? Even before I was born, she was ruining things, making my life more difficult than it had to be. Gritting my teeth, I said, “I can’t promise you anything. But I’ll try. If you just give me those keys, I’ll try. All right, Pauline?”
She gripped her fingers around loose metal and squeezed tight. After a long moment of deliberation, she shoved them into my chest in such a harsh manner I had to fumble to catch them before they fell to the floor. “Fine. But I’m on to you.” Her eyes narrowed and her chin tilted up. “I know what your secret is. I figured it out.”
I gave a shrug, dropping the heel of my left foot into a black leather pump. “I don’t really care. I don’t have any secrets worth keeping.”
“Yes, you do,” she sang out again. Then she gave a giggle before leaving the foyer.
I stood for the longest time, staring at Gran’s gilded vase she once told me came from a Montgomery Ward catalog. I didn’t want Mother to know about the baby, if this was the secret she alluded to. It was precious to me, and she’d try to ruin it somehow. Grandmother Carrie could know, but not her.
¤ ¤ ¤
I pulled up to a row of storefronts on Main and careened my way into a diagonal parking space. Grandpa’s Chevrolet was like a Titanic on wheels; parking was similar to pulling into a dock. I moved the steering wheel shift into park, slid the keys from the ignition, then sat back with a heave. The day had grown so hot I had sweat running down my back and far below. Women were supposed to wear girdles? No, thanks. Although, watching the women who walked by the car’s open windows, I could see the appeal: perfect rear ends with no sign of cellulite or paunchy middles. Their waists were so tiny you could wrap your hands around them. Still, I liked breathing, and it might hurt the baby to wear a girdle. It was bad enough that I had to wear the pencil skirt, with its slim belt and no more grooves to make room for an expanding belly.
While checking myself in the rearview mirror to see if my chignon was still in place, I noticed a set of dark under-eye circles. “What am I really doing here?” I said to myself, then grabbed my handbag and slid out of the car.
A small crowd of people moved past with deliberate steps. It reminded me of the scene William had described in the dusty library, when I’d gotten my first glimpse of his world. Men wore trousers, summer shirts and felt hats; women were pretty in calf-length cotton dresses puffing out at the waist. And hats, always hats.
Fanning myself, I made my way to the town square. I checked the gazebo, but aside from a few spent bottle rockets and paper cups from last night’s festivities, it was empty, and the briefcase wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I checked park benches, under trees, by the water fountain. Nothing. A man selling balloons came walking by, and I stopped to ask if he’d seen it. He continued to walk without giving an answer.
A woman in a light green jumper headed toward me, holding a child’s hand.
“Excuse me, Miss, have you seen a brown leather briefcase around here? It’s just a regular old briefcase—about this big.” I held
my hands out.
She answered “no” quickly, and then ushered her little boy ahead.
“Someone has to know where it is,” I said to their retreating backs.
Was something wrong with me? I’d followed all the magazines, and William himself had said I looked good enough to fit in. I stopped to take a drink at the water fountain. Perhaps Springvale had always been this frigid and impenetrable. Or maybe the cult had already gotten their hooks into people’s minds. Whatever it was, I couldn’t get one person on the street to speak to me. Before long, I gave up altogether.
I tried the police station. They told me to check at the post office, and the post office told me to check the police station. Everyone was very rude, and by the time noon rolled around, the blisters on my feet were forming into bloody gobs of searing pain, and my patience was on its last fuse.
Handbag held over my eyes for a brief respite from the sun, I scanned the entire square in the hopes something might give me a clue where the briefcase could be located. If only I could access my intuition like the old days, this whole ordeal would be so much easier. I closed my eyes and tried to allow an image of the item to enter my brain. “Where are you?” I whispered. When I opened my eyes again, the first thing I saw was the Springvale Railway Station, a crumbling shack down by the filling station.
“Bingo.”
I headed straight for it, excited that I might have ended one problem in my life (because there were so many) and also because I had used my powers again. There was hope. I could do this!
Once inside, I stood by a ticket window and waited for a clerk. A young man with baby-fine hair sticking out from under a navy blue cap approached. He was gaunt and pimply, but I was very excited to see him. I knew the briefcase was nearby. I’d get it, the gun, and everything would work out right. William would see all his things and remember who he was, and who I was, and then we’d go home. Who cared about Marcus? Together, we were stronger than him. We could protect ourselves; prevent him from harming the baby. But we’d do it at home, in our time, together.