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My stomach lurches at the sound of the bass voice that reverberates across the line. It needs no identification, but he gives one anyway.
“It’s Harley Jaines.”
The embroidery needle pierces my fist and a red droplet rises instantly on the knuckle.
“I’ve just come from the prison,” he says. “Lenora wants to see you.”
I watch the red drop swell on my hand. “I’d like to see her, but I don’t think I can.” I sound helpless as a child and hate it.
“I could drive you. I’ll come this afternoon. Or tomorrow, if that’s better.”
“No! No. I can drive myself.” But it’s a long way to Spokane, more than four hundred miles. “Maybe next week, if it doesn’t snow again.”
In the long pause that follows, I bring my knuckle to my lips and suck away the blood.
“You’ve got to help her, Bobbie. You have to come to the hearing.” His rumbling voice is gentle now; I am only imagining the menace behind his words.
“Maybe it would help you, too,” he says.
The house ticks its irregular heartbeat in the silence. I think of Lenora’s pale face in the sterile prison, then see her tanned and animated among the tangled vines of my childhood. I force deep breaths to stop the spinning in my head. “I’ll talk to Lenora about it.”
“When?”
“I don’t know!”
He waits a beat. “If you don’t come down by Monday, I’ll come to get you.”
“Don’t threaten me! And don’t come back here.”
I jab the button on the portable phone so hard it flies from my hands and clatters to the floor. My hands are shaking.
This won’t do—too much silence. I go to the living room and switch on the stereo. An old Elton John song floats through the house, a song Lenora used to love. I can hear it playing from her dusty radio on the sunporch, nestled among the leaves and loam on the potting table.
And suddenly I’m desperately homesick to see Lenora. I want to ask her if Harley Jaines has told me the truth. I’m slipping back toward that dark place where I’ve been before. Lenora is my anchor, but I abandoned her. I let her stay in prison all these years.
Could I really have changed that? Why didn’t I try?
I know I must drive to Spokane.
David will want to go with me. That’s okay. I could let him drive while I zone out, maybe sleep. Perhaps Lenora won’t look so pale and lonely this time. I could talk to her about finding my self pregnant, how wretched it is to know what I must do….
No. I mustn’t use her that way. I wipe my face on my sleeve and go back to the porch, wrap up in the afghan and stare out at the snow.
Lenora will ask questions that I can’t answer. Emotions could swamp me. I know the dangers, but the thought of seeing her is soothing and a longing grows in my chest.
So I rationalize: If I go, Harley Jaines won’t come here again. If I talk to her, Lenora will understand that I can’t testify at her hearing. That I cannot save her because it’s all I can do to save myself.
CHAPTER 6
In my earliest memory, I am lying in a bed with bars on the sides, a crib, and watching tiny speckles of light dance on the ceiling. I’m supposed to be sleeping. Instead, I listen to the music that seeps through the wall from the next room. I hear my mother’s voice, and my father’s and another man’s. I don’t know who he is but my mother does. I can tell by her voice, though I don’t understand the words.
The music feels happy. I hear my mother laugh and then the front door closes and her voice is gone. Only the low, rumbly sounds of Daddy and the stranger drift through the wall as I doze off.
Later something wakes me—a dream. A noise, maybe. I’m frightened but not enough to cry. The light has receded into a thin stripe around the door. The music is still playing in the next room but I don’t hear any voices. I throw one leg over the crib railing and hoist myself up—then I’m tumbling to the floor. I land on my big stuffed bear and roll off unhurt. I pick him up and get the door open and go out into the hall.
Daddy and the other man are sitting on the sofa in the living room with their backs toward me. Their heads are shadows in the lamplight.
“Daddy,” I say, and both faces turn toward me, surprised. More than surprised. Frightened?
Then they both smile and my father comes around the sofa, fast, and sweeps me up.
“Well, look at you! How did you get out of bed all by yourself?” He laughs and the other man, whose face I cannot remember except for a frame of reddish curly hair, laughs, too.
Carrying me back to bed, my father kisses the top of my head. “What a big girl you ‘re getting to be,” he says. “Daddy’s smart, big girl.” His voice sounds sad.
I was fifteen when my mother finally told me the truth about my father. She didn’t mean to. She meant to keep it secret forever. If she’d succeeded, it might have saved us all.
On Friday evening after dinner, I finally tell David about Harley Jaines. We argue about whether I should go to Spokane.
“You don’t know who this guy is. He could be some kook,” David insists. “We should have him checked out. I’ll call the prison, find out if Lenora’s had a regular visitor, if there’s really a hearing coming up.”
“David, I know who he is.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Don’t let him scare you into going down there if you’re not ready to see her. I don’t want you—” he pauses, choosing his words”—to make yourself sick again.”
Crazy again.
Pinpoints of light float through my vision and blackness gathers around the edges. I curse my inability to handle a normal household argument, or any stress at all. I take a deep breath and blow it out the way a sprinter does, the way Dr. Bannar showed me. Breathe and blow. Keep the oxygen flowing.
David paces between the kitchen table and the sink, numbering the reasons I should not make the trip, while I sit huddled on my chair staring at the half-eaten food congealing on my plate, hugging my knees. Suddenly I wonder whether it is I who have shut myself in this house like a recluse, or whether he’s keeping me here. Like a specimen in a jar. Homo sapiens insanitus.
I interrupt him. The confidence in my voice surprises us both.
“David. Regardless of Harley Jaines, I need to see Lenora. I want to see her. I don’t think I’ll ever be normal again—” was I ever normal? “—until I’ve done this.”
He looks at me as if I’ve already lost it. Worry and fear show in his eyes.
I spread my hands and state the obvious. “Hiding hasn’t worked.”
He shakes his head, defeated, then he comes to stand behind my chair. Without speaking, he places his hands on my shoulders and lays his cheek on the top of my head. I know he means it as a gesture of love, and it makes me feel like an unresponsive mother.
“I’ll drive you down on Sunday,” he says. “I’ll go in tomorrow and finish setting up the new exhibit so we can stay overnight in Spokane and drive back Monday.”
My muscles stiffen but he doesn’t seem to notice.
“It’ll be all right,” he says. “I’ll take care of you.”
I picture the two of us in the car those long hours, tension hovering over us like a back-seat driver.
On Saturday afternoon, when David goes to the museum, I pack my small suitcase and load it into the Honda. I put out extra food for the birds, and leave a note on the kitchen table.
David—I’m sorry, but I need to do this alone. Please don’t worry. I’ll call tonight. Love, Roberta.
When he reads it, he’ll be horrified.
I lock the house and stand for a moment on the shoveled driveway, my breath coming out in white puffs of worry. Breathe and blow.
What will I need that I didn’t pack? I haven’t taken even a weekend trip for so long I feel disoriented about sleeping somewhere else. I worry about toothpaste and contact lens solution. This is simpler than worrying about what will happen when I reach my destination, or the recurring images of my car drawn magnetically toward a snowy precipice like a jumper to the edge of abridge.
I climb in the car and start the engine. Should have warmed it up. I pull on gloves and fasten my seat belt, breathe and blow. At the bottom of the hill beside our mailbox, I turn left toward the main road.
The snow mounds high along the roadsides, but the sky is a bright, blinding blue. I fumble for my sunglasses. Ten hours to Spokane, maybe more, but I’ve made a plan: drive until dusk, get a cheap, safe room somewhere and sleep like a glacier. I’ve brought medication to make sure of it. Then I’ll finish the trip Sunday morning, find a room in Spokane and locate the prison. It’s been so many years since I visited Lenora there, I can’t remember where it is.
I should have called ahead. I think regular visiting hours at the prison are on Sunday afternoon—at least, that’s how it used to be. I may not get there in time for that, and I seem to remember every visitor’s name had to be on an approved list. It’s possible they won’t let me in.
Hope rises at this thought; I wouldn’t have to face her, and it wouldn’t be my fault. But if I don’t see her tomorrow, I’ll have to try again. Because what I told David was true. Though I’d never admitted it before even to myself, I must see Lenora again.
I keep driving, my fists stiff as stone on the wheel.
At the main road, instead of turning east toward Calgary to catch the superhighway south to the U.S. border, I turn right, toward the resort areas of Canmore and Banff, the scenic route. The trip will take a bit longer this way, which I recognize as avoidance behavior. But the route is beautiful, and I know the roads will be cleared of snow, for the ski traffic. Tourists uber alles.
David and I drove this road together when we moved to his inherited house, but I haven’t traveled it since. The scenery is even more spectacular than I remembered. Perhaps that’s because I’m seeing it alone, in captured glimpses like photographs, while I concentrate on the two-lane road. After an hour my hands cramp from gripping the wheel so hard. I slump back in the seat and will myself to relax, shaking out one hand and then the other.
Another two hours slip easily beneath my wheels; I’m beginning to enjoy the drive. Being on my own like this is scary, but heady, too.
David made waffles and eggs for our late Saturday breakfast, but by five o’clock I’m hungry again and desperately need to pee. Up ahead I see a roadside hotel where tables and chairs sit outdoors on a wooden deck with a view of snowy peaks. Today the tables are covered with snow and the deck deserted, but I like the looks of the place and pull into the parking lot.
The small dining room is cozy, with rose-colored tablecloths and a smoke-stained fireplace where yellow flames leap and crackle. I use the rest room first, then choose a table where it’s warm but not too close to the fire, and order a sandwich.
Only a few other diners come and go. I listen to their conversations while pretending to concentrate on my food. An old woman tells her younger companion whose face I cannot see, “You’re still looking for what you can get, honey. It isn’t what you get, it’s what you give.”
The sandwich is plain with store-bought potato chips on the side, but the bread is good and the chicken tastes fresh. I consider staying here for the night, but the food has restored my energy and I want more miles behind me. By five forty-five I’m back on the road, switching on my headlights in the early darkness of mountain shadows.
The route winds south through Kootenay National Park and finally joins a thin, Canadian version of the Columbia River just below its source in the Columbia Reach. I catch glimpses of it in the headlights.
I’m following the river that leads back to my childhood, the same waters where I once tried to drown. That history seems like a hundred years ago. And it seems like yesterday.
By the time I reach the outskirts of Cranbrook, my chest feels heavy and my contacts grate like sand in my eyes. I stop at the first motel that looks well lit. The room is spare and clean, uncomplicated, and suits me perfectly. I take my sleeping medicine first thing, a nice big dose, then a hot shower. I rush through the other bedtime rituals and fall into bed, asleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow.
At daybreak, in the peculiar blue light that filters through the motel curtains, I awake and think of David.
I forgot to call. Damn.
I roll over and switch on the bedside lamp, find my glasses and read the instructions for dialing long distance. David answers on the third ring, his voice husky from sleep though he sounds alert. “Roberta?” is the first thing he says.
“Yes, it’s me. Sorry I forgot to call last night. I was so tired….”
“Where are you?”
I can tell he’s both angry and worried. “Umm.” I try to remember the name on the map. “Cranbrook, I think. Yes, that’s it.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I enjoyed the drive, actually. The mountains—”
“Stay right there. I’ll come to you. I can be there before noon.”
“No, sweetheart. Don’t do that. I’m fine, really. I’m going to get some breakfast and get on the road so I’ll be in Spokane early.”
“Roberta—”
“I’ll try to see Lenora today, and get a room in Spokane for the night. I’ll call again this evening. Be sure the answering machine is turned on if you go out.” I pause for courage. “How is the exhibit coming along?”
I hear his sigh and the rustle of bedding and picture him sinking back onto his pillow. “What if you can’t see her today?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’ll let me come back on Monday. Meanwhile I’ll find a mall and window shop.”
“You hate shopping.”
“Not through windows.”
“What if you run into that Harley character?”
“What if I do? He’s not going to hurt me, David,” I say, feeling the irrational flutter in my stomach that betrays my confidence. “After all, I’m doing what he asked. So far, at least.”
“You’re scaring me, Roberta.”
“I know and I’m sorry. But right now, it can’t be helped.”
“I love you,” he says.
Why is it easier for him to say this over the phone than when I’m right in front of him? This small weakness endears him to me; my own flaws hang unfurled like tattered flags.
“I love you, too.” And when I say it from this distance, I realize it’s true.
Back on the road, I turn on the radio for company, find only static and switch it off. The snow along the roadsides thins and grays with decreasing latitude as I near the checkpoint at the U.S. border. It reminds me of Christmas morning when I was eleven, the Christmas of the shell necklace.
Shady River, Oregon, 1974
On my almost-new bike, I gasped and teetered up the slope to Rockhaven in the winter morning stillness. Whatever remorse I might have felt for abandoning my mother to her bottle on Christmas Day dried up with my tears in the freezing air. I left the bike in the driveway and rang the bell.
They greeted me at the door as cheerfully as if I’d remembered to call before I came.
“Merry Christmas, Sarsaparilla!” Cincy chirped.
“Merry Christmas,” Lenora said. “Come into this house!” Her smile made me feel like a real person instead of just a kid.
I stood red-nosed on the flat space of concrete that served as their porch, my lips thick and numb with the cold. “Come look at my new bike!”
