The Demeritts live next door; they are kind people. They brought brownies when we first moved in, about two years ago. Like us, they have two doors: one often-used, one hardly ever used. To reach the often-used one, we will have to descend a very dark dirt path into the dripping trees. We contemplate this. The door hardly ever used stands in a clearing, broadly lit by that one shining beacon on the pole. We can see the whole way there.
We approach the door hardly ever used. We knock. We punch it with our fists. We yell, we scream. We say things like My mother’s been stabbed. Things like There’s someone in my house. Things like Help me. But we are met by silence. We can hear how the rain is stealing our sound. We throw our body against the door, forearms braced for maximum impact, a knee slipping out of the flapping robe and hitting the unyielding metal. We are at war with the solidity of this house, with this door that will not rattle. We yell. We wait. We wait. More silence.
There is another house across the street. A large, white house, beautifully kept, with a nicely clipped lawn. We have never met the people who live there. It sits under the cast of that one streetlamp, shining like a lighthouse in the night. We turn from the Demeritts’ and run to that place, feel the soft, even grass under bare feet. The bathrobe flaps open a little, lets in rain.
There is a screened porch connected to the house, and we knock on the outer door first. Ring the little electric doorbell, another dim orange light. We yell. We wait. Try the screen door, find it unlocked. We hesitate, don’t want to enter without permission. Then plunge forward to the more substantial inner door, a hollow one that accepts our banging and rings out sound. We can hear how it fills the hallway just beyond this door. We repeat our pleas.
Somebody stabbed my mother.
Please, you have to help me.
There’s somebody in my house.
We wait. We wait. Silence. We conclude that everyone is dead.
We resolve to try every house on the sparsely populated road. We imagine doing this until we reach the center of town, where there are more houses, pushed together into the communal safety of neighborhoods. We will try each one until we find the living. Linda is closer to town. We imagine her sleeping, alive, unaware.
We turn around, passing our house on the way toward town. It takes maybe five minutes to get to the next house. We are running as best we can.
Somewhere in those five minutes, there is a moment of grace in which the second self, the strong one, gets distracted and allows another clear thought to cut through the darkness. I feel the precise moment in which my mother’s soul departs the earth. I feel this so strongly that I stop in my quick march along the double lines of the road. I stand there, one foot on a smooth, dull yellow line, one on the rough pavement. I feel no danger. I think of her leaving, of her sadly giving up on this night, on all the years to come. I mouth, “Goodbye.” But then the actual organ of my heart contracts suddenly and painfully, trying to draw itself inside its own chambers. It is a thick, collapsing feeling. So the second self reaches into that heart, sets emotion aside again, and walks the body on.
We come to the third house. This one is tough; sitting in deep darkness, down a steeply sloping driveway. It might be hard to get back up out of there. But we sort of know these people, have at least seen them outside: a family of four, plus a bounding yellow dog. We descend. Stand exposed in their porch light. We repeat the knocking, the yelling, the waiting. We try to yell things that are less scary, just in case. Remember to say “Please.”
Still, no one comes. No way to tell if they are dead or sleeping.
We turn back toward the road, see the lights of an approaching car. Hustle a few steps up the steep driveway, then stop short. It could be anyone. We are a live witness, and wish to remain so. We stay down in the darkness and come back up only when the lights have passed.
Next we are faced with a long stretch of woods and road, perhaps ten minutes’ worth, before we will reach the house of the Wilson family. We walk along the center of the road, the smoothness of the stripes a relief. The skipping lines of the passing lane are so much longer than they usually look. About halfway through, something makes us look back and we see, shining through the trees, the unmistakable gleam of a flashlight.
We must walk faster. But of course we have to stop at the Wilson house. This time, we barrel right through the screen door to the inner door of the porch, yelling and banging and trying not to think of that flashlight advancing.
But the Wilsons don’t come, either.
There is one more building before we reach the intersection with the larger two-lane state road, Route 302, where the town truly begins. This walk takes another five or ten minutes. It is impossible to tell exactly how long. We are thankful for the rain, which must be keeping the pavement from cutting our feet. We are concerned about that flashlight, which looks closer now.
Time bends and stretches and we are becoming convinced that the rest of our life will be spent walking along this road in the rain. We start thinking ahead. The tough one steps aside, trusting me to keep walking, propelled by fear of that bobbing flashlight. I wonder where I might live next. Maybe my friend Marie’s mom will take me in. Their house always smells like oil paints and cheesecake.
At the very end of the road lies the Venezia, an Italian restaurant. I’ve never been inside; it’s fancy. There’s a porch light and screen door at the back, next to a glowing square of yellow window. I step from the pavement. My footsteps are cool in the sandy ruts of tire treads, threaded through with uncut grass. I hold my breath tightly as I bang on the frame of the screen door. In the rain, the door makes a rhythmic, wet drumming sound, warping and thwapping against the threshold, wood hammering on wood. I call out, yelling over the sound of my own fists.
And a dark-haired man comes to the door. He squints at me. His hair is thick, his features small, and for a moment he reminds me of my father. I take a step back. Put my fist down at my side. I become more sharply aware of the rain, which is coming down harder now. An older woman, with the same cap of thick, dark hair, comes up behind the man.
The woman pushes him aside, unlatches the door. For a few moments they both stand in the doorway, looking down at me.
I tell them someone has stabbed my mother. I say, “I’ve never been so happy to see people!” Still, their faces look strange to me, seem miles away somehow, separated from me by a naked incredulity.
But they let me in to use the phone. I find myself sitting on a floral couch in a small apartment at the back of the restaurant. The woman gives me slippers while the man dials. Receiver in hand, he looks at me sideways, says, “I need the police up here right away.”
These words are so beautiful.
Then he says, “I have a girl here, claimed someone killed her mother. She’s a little girl running down the road from somewhere.”