I was so close to being on the bus. Another couple of minutes, and I would have been on already. And then I guess everything would have turned out different.
I was standing outside, where the buses are. In the boarding place, hearing that really familiar roar of the bus engine idling. It fills up your head in a special way. It's something you could almost get used to. And there's a smell to the exhaust from those big engines, also, but that's not as nice.
I had my duffel bag beside me. A guy was throwing people's bags into the space under the bus and I was waiting for him to help me. If it hadn't hurt so much to try to pick up that big bag, I'd have hauled it up to the front of the line myself. Then I would've been on that bus already, and then maybe I never would have heard this lady, this total stranger I'd never met before, calling my name.
That's not usually a good sign, when somebody yells your name. Usually, in my world, when nobody notices me at all that's the good news. When somebody calls me out, that makes my guts freeze up. Makes me want to go the other way. Fast.
But then I looked closer and I started to think it was Tony's mom.
See, I was looking out the window when Tony's mom first drove up. I was looking out because I heard a car come up the driveway, and that scared the crap out of me. I knew Carl could never really find me. But I still had to look.
And even though I hadn't seen her very close up, I saw just enough of what she looked like to be thinking this was probably her calling me.
So I said, “I'm Maria.”
And she came up to me and looked straight in my eyes. Or she tried anyway.
I'm not good at looking in people's eyes. Once in grade school I went trick-or-treating in my building, and I was wearing this Dracula costume, and there was no way anybody could tell who I was. Except three of my neighbors opened their doors and said, “Oh, hi Maria.” And when I asked them how they knew, they said they could tell because I always looked down a certain way.
But I don't mean to get off track.
“Come on,” she said. “Let's go.”
“I can't. I have to go get C.J.”
“I know. That's where we're going.”
She picked up my duffel bag and started walking, so I walked with her. Even though I totally still didn't get it.
She had a not-too-big SUV, real nice and new, and she threw my bag in the back.
I said, “Wait. We're going to New York to get C.J. in your car?”
“That's right,” she said.
“But I have a bus ticket. My sister, Stella, bought me a bus ticket.”
“Why don't you go inside and cash it in?” she said. “We can use the money for food and gas on the road.”
I'M NOT SO GOOD AT TALKING to strangers. I think it goes along with that thing about not looking in people's eyes. Anyway, it was about twenty miles or so before I said anything to her. Maybe thirty.
“Why are you doing this with me again?” I asked. Even though there was really no “again” about it. She hadn't even told me once. But with strangers it's easier to go the long way around a thing than it is to hit it dead on.
“Because it's a lot harder to kill two people than one.”
“So you get that this is probably really dangerous.”
“Oh, yeah.”
A few more quiet miles.
“But you don't even know me,” I said.
She didn't answer right away. Then after a while she said, “If you let go of the idea that I'm doing it just for you … and think of it as something I need to do for myself, too … then it might make more sense.”
It's a long drive from California to New York. So I figured I'd have time to work that one out in my head. And, truthfully, I had some sense of what she meant already.
WE WERE ON ROUTE 40, where you can drive really fast, when she talked to me again. We were close outside Kingman, Arizona. According to the signs, anyway. I had nothing better to do than read the signs.
She asked me if I drove.
“Oh,” I said. “No. I never learned to drive.” Silence. I wondered if she was asking just to make conversation. Probably not. Because we hadn't made much conversation so far. “You know. Growing up in the city and all. We never had a car.”
“Okay.”
“Sorry.” Even though I wasn't sure what I was being sorry for. But I tend to be, as sort of a default mood. “Why?”
“It's okay. It would just go faster, is all. With two drivers. But it just means we'll need to stop more. I'll need to sleep. I was just thinking we could save money on motels. You know, if you drove while I napped. But it's okay. So I run up my credit card a little. Motels on the road will be cheap enough. It's when we get to the city that I'm worried about. It's so expensive in the city.”
“We can stay at my sister Stella's.”
“Oh. That's good to know. That helps.”
Then we were all the way through Kingman before I got up the nerve to say, “Mrs…. Mundt? That's probably not your name anymore. Is it?”
“No. It's not.”
“So … what's your name?”
“Celia.”
“What should I call you?”
“Celia.”
“Isn't that sort of … disrespectful?”
“No. Not if that's what I say I want. What were you about to ask me?”
“Oh. Right.” I had almost forgotten. “You were going to let me drive your car?”
“Well, yeah. If you knew how to drive.”
“Wow,” I said.
That was all the talking we did for Arizona.
THAT WOMAN HAD SOME STAMINA for driving. We didn't stop to let her sleep until we got to Gallup, New Mexico.
Before we could settle in to go to sleep, we had to go find a store so she could buy a toothbrush and some underwear and stuff like that. I guess she hadn't bothered to have any of that with her when she took off to find me.
On the way to find a motel, I was staring at the side of her face. I'm not sure why. I was tired, that might have been part of it. And I guess I felt like I could get away with it because it was dark. I could only really see her when we passed a streetlight.
I was looking at the way she wore her hair back in a loose braid, even though it had a lot of gray in it. I never saw somebody wear their hair in a braid when it had so much gray. At least, not a big loose braid like that. Like the way somebody young would wear their hair. And I was looking at the little lines at the corners of her eyes.
I thought she didn't know I was staring. I don't know how she could tell.
“What?” she said.
I was so tired, I told her the truth. “I was just trying to picture what my mother would look like. If she hadn't died. She would have been so many years older now. I was just wondering how she would have looked.”
“I'm sorry you lost your mother,” she said.
I waited for her to ask me how she died. When she didn't, I was really relieved.
WE ONLY HAD ONE CONVERSATION that made me feel laid bare. On the way out east, that is. Most of the time we talked very small, or didn't even bother.
All of a sudden she looked over at me and said, “You get to know somebody pretty well when you're driving cross-country with them.”
I tried to hide the fact that a thing like that makes me nervous. “But we barely even talk.”
“It's not always about talking. Just watching the way a person functions night and day for three or four days running.”
I took a deep breath. “So what do you know about me?”
“That you're a lot like I was ten years ago. Even though ten years ago I was a lot older than you are now. But when I was just getting out of that horrible marriage, and I had a kid. I was a lot like you.”
“I'm not sure what you mean,” I said after a while. “Because I'm not sure what you think I'm like.”
“Scared. Willing to do anything to avoid a confrontation. Peace at any price.”
“Well. Peace is good. Right?”
“Real peace is great. But peace at any price is not real peace.”
I thought about that across maybe a few more miles of Ohio before I said, “How did you get from that to what you are now? Because you don't seem scared now at all.”
“I just handle fear differently.”
“Really? You don't seem scared at all.”
“Everybody's scared.”
“Really? I thought it was mostly me.”
“Everybody. If they say they're not, they're lying. Either to you or themselves.”
“You still didn't tell me how you got to here.”
“Just took a lot of time with myself, I guess. After I left that awful marriage. Learned to live with myself and learned something about myself instead of spending all my time figuring out how to live with somebody else.”
“Oh,” I said.
And I guess that was enough serious talking, because we went back to being two people who hardly know each other for the rest of the trip.
“YOU CAN'T DO THIS,” Stella said. “It's suicide.”
“I have to do this,” I said.
Celia said nothing at all.
We were sitting in Stella's living room. The light was starting to fade, and no one had bothered to turn on any lamps or anything. So we could only see each other a little bit, which made talking easier. I was holding Ferdy so he wouldn't rub all over Celia because Celia is allergic to cats. I felt really sorry for her. New York hotel rooms must be awful damned expensive to make a person who's allergic to cats stay at Stella's.
Stella said, “You can't. You have to go through the courts. I wouldn't even have bought you a bus ticket if I knew you were going to do this. It's crazy.”
We all ignored the fact that I obviously got here anyway. Without the bus ticket.
“I have to surprise him. If I just get an attorney and serve him with custody papers, he'll run away. He'll take C.J. and hide where I can't get to him. I'll never find them. And then I'll never have my chance.”
“And this way? You think you're going to beat him in a fistfight? He'll kill you for leaving him to run off with another man.”
I had to wait to answer while she went off to get a box of tissues for poor Celia.
As soon as she got back I said, “I'm thinking maybe he doesn't even know that yet. Because maybe he just watched your window the whole time I was away. And maybe he has no way of knowing I was even gone.”
Silence. Way too much silence.
“When he got out of jail,” Stella said, “we had a little … confrontation. I told him it served him right that you found somebody new.”
A big storm of tingling hit my brain and belly. My thoughts moved further away. Like a milky glass wall was forming between my thoughts and me. So I could hardly get to them when I reached out to try. I made sure to avoid Celia's eyes.
I loved my sister, Stella. She was my whole living family. But I had been counting heavily on Carl's not knowing I had ever been gone. It was my whole plan. My only plan. It just seemed too cruelly familiar, to find out that my one and only plan would never hold water.
I never answered Stella. I would never want to say anything unkind.
“I'm so sorry,” she said. “Oh, Maria. I'm so sorry. I thought you were gone and safe and it wouldn't matter. I just wanted to rub his face in it a little. I didn't think he could do anything to you now.”
“It doesn't matter,” I said. But it did. And we all three knew it.
“Don't go in.”
“I have to. If it doesn't work, at least C.J. will know I tried.”
“I don't want to lose you,” she said. She sounded like Stella at about sixteen years old. When we were losing everything. All our cornerstones, right and left.
“For one time in my whole life I need to do something brave. Besides. At least there'll be two of us.”
“No, there'll be three of us,” Stella said. “I'm going in with you. I dare that son of a bitch to kill all three of us at once.”
That was sort of a conversation stopper, so we didn't talk for a while, and then Stella fixed us some Swiss cheese–and–avocado sandwiches.
“I have to call Tony,” I said. “Stella, can I call Tony on your phone?”
“Yeah, but don't talk all night,” she said.
Celia said, “Who's Tony?”
“Oh. I mean Sebastian. I call him Tony.”
She didn't ask why, and I was kind of worried that she would take offense to that, because it might have been her idea to name him Sebastian in the first place.
I ended up having to call pretty much right in front of them. Because Stella still hadn't replaced the phone Carl smashed through the window. There was just the kitchen phone, and it only worked right if you kept it pretty close to the base. So we didn't say much. I just told him we made it to New York, and that I'd call him as soon as we had C.J. and were out safe. And he said to be careful about seven times.
And then, when I hung up the phone, my stomach felt weird, even more so than usual, and I couldn't figure out why.
I DIDN'T SLEEP MUCH, if I slept at all. But I think they might have thought I was asleep.
I was lying on the couch, which was my bed that night. So I could give Celia the spare room, so she could close the door and be away from the cats. But she was in the kitchen talking to Stella. Talking and blowing her nose. And I was just lying there, not really letting on that I was awake.
They were talking about what kind of guy Carl was. They had been for a while.
I heard Stella say, “More of a coward, really. You know, one of those bullies who are really just cowards at heart.”
Celia said, “Oh, yes. I know them.”
Then Stella said, “Cowards can be really dangerous, though.”
And Celia said, “Don't I know it.” Then, after a pause, she said, “We should just go pick C.J. up straight from school.”
Stella told her what I already knew. “School just let out for the summer. I'm afraid he'll be home with Carl all day.”
Then they didn't say much else, or maybe they just lowered their voices. Or maybe I even fell asleep for a minute or two. But I doubt it.
WHILE THE THREE OF US WERE WALKING up the stairs together, actually purposely headed in the direction of Carl, I said, “I think I finally get it.”
Stella said, “Get what?”
I tried to think of a way to explain what it is I got. But it was tricky.
Kind of everything. I think I finally got everything.
Then we were standing there in front of my old place, waiting to knock on the door, and it was like my whole life was falling into place. I could only hope this was not another example of my life flashing before my eyes.
It just seemed so clear, how every time I picked something in my life, there was a price. Like life is some big store. Most of my life I guess I thought I could only afford certain things. Like there were some things I just couldn't have. But now it seemed like maybe I could have had more.
Maybe the cheap stuff is cheap for a reason.
I guess most of the time I didn't pick at all. But now I could see that not picking is a type of picking. You're still choosing what you want, only in this case you're choosing to take the stuff you get by default when you don't choose.
Default merchandise is the worst.
I think you get a whole different set of stuff in life if you're brave.
I hope that makes any kind of sense at all. It did to me. But I didn't try to explain it. It wouldn't have come out right. And besides, everybody was all nervous and focused and not wanting to talk.
It's a strange experience to voluntarily walk into a situation where you could very likely get hurt or killed. Soldiers are the only ones I know who do it all the time. I guess a person has to have a really good reason. Something worth maybe dying for. I'm not sure what a soldier's good reason is. Because I've never been a soldier, so I don't know.
And I don't know what Celia and Stella's reasons were. I can only guess, because we hadn't been saying much all morning, and I wasn't inside their heads. Stella, I think it was because she hated Carl and she loved me. Celia, I think she felt really bad that she didn't go back for her own kid. So instead she was going to go back for mine. I didn't know if it would help her any. But I was happy to let her try.
For me, it was this: Whatever happened, C.J. would know he meant everything to me. If you can't get that much from your own mother, you start thinking it doesn't exist anywhere in the world. And that can really mess up a kid. Look what it did to poor Sebastian.
I called him Sebastian in my head. Not Tony. I'm not sure what that meant.
I said a quick prayer that I'd see him again.
I looked at the other two, like to make sure they were really ready. Then I raised my hand and knocked on the door. It was brave.
WHEN CARL OPENED THE DOOR I was shocked. Really shocked. He looked like he hadn't shaved in about a week. His hair wasn't combed. The clothes he was wearing didn't look ironed. In fact, they didn't even look clean. His eyes looked dead.
Until he saw me. Then his eyes just went all on fire and he came lunging in my direction, yelling, “I can't believe—”
But I never got to find out what it was he couldn't believe, because Celia threw herself right in between us. She just kept walking at Carl, and he kept stumbling back, and she was saying things to him that were quiet but sounded very strong. But I couldn't make them out because her mouth was about two inches from his nose. She walked him all the way backwards to the couch and pushed him down into a sit, which didn't look very hard. Then the three of us just stood there in front of him, and I could see him try to take us all in at once, like he was trying to figure out if he had any opening at all. But we outnumbered him. Even Carl wasn't stupid enough to miss that.
Celia said, “Now, you feel free to try to take one of us out, but remember, the minute you do you'll have the other two all over you. This isn't going to be easy like it used to be.”
He did nothing. He said nothing. He just sat there.
So Celia said, “Yeah, that's what I figured. I figured you for one of those bullies who just goes after the easy target. The one who doesn't ever dare fight you back.”
He still did nothing.
That's when I figured I better hurry up and get C.J. He was sitting in front of the TV, watching all this play out. I'd been watching him out of the corner of my eye, but I hadn't really dared take my eyes off Carl. But sooner or later I would have to.
I grabbed C.J. by the hand and pulled him to his feet.
“Ow,” he said. “Where have you been? Where's Nattie?”
“Come on.” I said it to him but also to Stella and Celia. “We're going.”
We all headed for the door. For about three beautiful seconds I thought that was it. I thought we were just home free. That it was over, and we had won, just that easily.
But then I heard Carl's mad voice, that full-on bellow, from behind us. “Hell, no! You're not taking C.J.!”
I picked up my pace, trying to get to the door, but it wasn't good enough.
Celia tried to wedge herself between Carl and me, but he threw her aside like an old sock doll. We all heard this big horrible thud as she hit the wall near the front door.
I turned, and just as I did Carl got hold of C.J. and tried to pull him away.
Now, Carl is stronger than me. Much stronger. But for a few seconds I managed to hang on in spite of my broken ribs. Probably because I wanted to so badly. Like one of those mothers who picks up a car because her kid is trapped under it. But then the pain got bigger than that rush of adrenaline, and I felt C.J. slipping away.
That was when Stella maced Carl right in the eyes. I heard the sound of the spray, and Carl's screaming, and we left him there on the entry-hall floor yelling and rubbing his eyes. He was yelling that he would get me for this, when he found me. But I didn't care, because I knew he would never find me. Celia grabbed my sleeve with her left hand and pulled me hard out the door and that was it. We were all out safe.
So far as we could tell, Carl couldn't even see well enough to follow.
NOT TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Celia and C.J. and I were driving over the bridge and headed west. We didn't even dare go back to Stella's, because that's the first place he would think to look. In fact, it was the only place he would know to look. So we were home free. Except Celia's shoulder was hurt. Her car was a standard shift, and she had hurt her right shoulder bad enough that I had to keep holding the steering wheel steady so she could shift with her left.
“Maybe we should stop at a hospital,” I said.
“I don't think it's that bad. I think it's just bruised.”
But I could tell she wasn't sure.
I looked around at C.J., buckled into the back seat. He was looking down at the car floor. I could tell he was upset. He clams up when he's upset.
“You okay, C.J.?”
He never answered. He was a terrible mess. His hair was greasy. He looked like he hadn't taken a bath for weeks. I'm not even sure he'd been brushing his teeth.
“We have to stop soon so I can call Tony,” I said. “I mean Sebastian.”
“Tell me why you call him Tony again?”
Aha. See? We were a little bit alike. She was going the long way around a thing. We both knew I had never told her even once. “So we could be Tony and Maria, like in West Side Story.” I waited to see if she would say anything. Then I said, “I thought I would die in there. Because it was getting to be more and more like West Side Story, and in that movie they don't get to be together because one of them dies.”
“Well, in Romeo and Juliet they both died.”
I had no idea what that had to do with what I'd just said. So I didn't answer.
“You know West Side Story is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet.”
“Oh. No. I didn't know that.”
“So they did a modern version of it in West Side Story, but only one of the lovers died. So I guess in your story nobody has to.”
“Thank God,” I said. “Since it's my story and all.”
Funny thing is, I didn't know that I thought I was going to die until after it was over. I guess that's not the kind of thing you dwell on at the time.
BY THE FOLLOWING MORNING, C.J. was talking again. And boy, was he pissed.
“Where are we going?” he kept asking. I'd tell him, but he'd still ask again. “Why didn't we bring Pops? When do I get to see Pops?”
He was clean, at least. We'd spent the night in a motel, where I'd made him take a bath, wash his hair, and brush his teeth. “Pops didn't make me do it if I didn't want.” That was all he'd had to say at the time. But in the light of day, he had more complaints.
“Do I have to go to a new school in the fall? A new school sucks. You have a new boyfriend, don't you? That sucks. That sucks that you did that. I hate him.”
“You don't even know him, C.J.”
“I don't care. I hate him.”
This went on—well, truthfully, off and on—for hours, until finally he complained himself right into a state of exhaustion and fell asleep. The silence was a beautiful thing.
Celia said, “Tell you a secret. It wouldn't have made sense if I told you any sooner. But I think you'll understand now. It wasn't just that I was afraid of Sebastian's father. I was afraid of Sebastian, too. I mean, not in general. But if I took him away.”
She was driving with her left hand, her right arm hanging straight down into her lap. I felt bad for her, because I knew she must be in pain. Then it hit me. I was in pain, too. I hadn't forgotten it, exactly. My ribs were always happy to remind me. I had just almost gotten used to it. I didn't think much about it. And I sure never thought to feel bad for myself because of it.
“I wish I could do what you did,” I said out of nowhere, surprising even me. “I wish I could spend years just living with myself.” Then I got this huge wash of shame, because this was Tony's mother. How much would she hate me for not wanting to move right in and spend the rest of my life with her son?
“Well … you can.”
“No, I can't.”
“Why can't you?”
“That would hurt him.”
“But if it's what you need to do …”
“But he did so much for me.”
“You don't have to spend the rest of your life with somebody just because they're nice to you. Or just because they want you to.”
“I don't?”
She laughed a little. “No. You don't.”
“How do you know all this stuff? Oh, never mind. I remember. You lived by yourself and figured it out. I feel like I could figure out some stuff, too, if I lived on my own. I'd still have the kids, though.”
“That's a little different.”
“I guess. What do you think I should do?”
“I don't know what you should do.”
Silence. I was disappointed. I guess I was hoping she would. Either that, or I wanted her to give me permission.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Yeah, me too.”
“Well, we're still about twenty-two hundred miles from home,” she said. “So at least you have plenty of time to think.”