Don't Look for Me(8)

It’s Alice who answers.

“His name is Mickey Mouse!” she says. Then she laughs.

The man smiles and I realize this is a little game they play. Alice gets to make up his name for strangers.

I play along, though I feel ill.

“Should I call you Mickey or Mr. Mouse?”

He laughs out loud but doesn’t answer.

The truck moves slowly through the storm. The storm moves quickly around us. Time and distance lose their calibration.

I cannot see beyond the headlights. The wind is powerful, rain blowing sideways. Falling hard. Turns and turns, avoiding fallen trees, the man tells me, though I can’t see them from the second row.

He does not make conversation. He does not ask the obvious questions, like who I am or where I’m from. I think then that he is just nervous about the storm, about getting Alice home safely.

I taste the blood on my lip from where I have bitten down too hard. I am warm now but I can’t stop shaking.

The truck slows again and this time stops fully. Alice perks up. She looks out and sees what I see—a tall metal fence. There is a gate with a lock and we are stopped in front of a dirt driveway.

The man gets out. Alice doesn’t ask why. He pulls up the hood of his jacket but it does little to keep him from getting drenched. He runs up to the gate and stops at a large chain that winds between two of the fence posts. It looks as though he’s turning a manual lock. One hand holds steady. The other twists, then pulls hard. He unwinds the chain and a section of the fence swings open.

I look at the lock on the car door which brushes against my right arm. It did not release when he left the truck, but still, I slide my hand to the handle and pull as softly as I can. It does not click open. A child lock must be on. I see through the console and wonder if my body will fit between the seats—if I can climb over into the driver’s side and make an escape through that door. Alice is too small to stop me. But loud enough to call to the man and, surely, he would catch me in fewer than a dozen strides.

Then I stop myself. We are at a house. A family lives here. Maybe there’s a wife, more children. Alice and her father were just out to get the gas in the cans which sit on the floor beside me. And some bottles of water. I see them in the front seat by Alice’s legs. They happened upon me. They offered me a ride.

Stop being so Molly, I tell myself. But Molly killed her child. Molly knows that unthinkable things can happen and now she has thoughts that are sometimes not realistic, that are hyperbolic, as John would say. Still, she thinks them. Because one time, they were real. And they did happen.

Molly.

I think about the log in the fireplace last night and wonder if that was a crazy, senseless thought. And Evan with his cruelty … and Nicole—does she really hate me?

Alice speaks now.

“We’re home!” She sounds victorious.

The man runs back. He gets in and closes the door.

“Wow! That’s some storm!” he says, shaking off the rain.

He pulls the drive shaft down and the truck moves through the open gate. On the other side, he stops again. Gets out. Runs to the fence to put back the chains. And locks us here, inside this property on this dirt driveway.

He gets back in and we drive. I pay close attention this time. I watch the speedometer hover at twenty-eight miles per hour. I count the seconds in my head. I count them like a school girl. One Mississippi … two Mississippi …

I count to twenty. That’s maybe a sixth of a mile—a sixth of a mile to get from the road to the house.

I try to store this information somewhere inside my scrambled mind. I try to picture what it means for this property and the house that I can see now in front of the truck when it comes to a stop.

The man shuts off the engine and removes the keys.

He gets out and runs to the passenger side. He opens my door, then Alice’s, and he scoops her up. She wraps her arms around his neck and squeals when the rain hits her face and her body. She presses herself against him the way a child does in the arms of her father, and a wave of relief takes me by surprise.

Alice loves this man and he loves her. Where there is love, there cannot be danger.

“Come on!” he calls to me now. I get out and follow behind them. I feel myself pull my inadequate but fashionable rain jacket up over my head as far as it will go and I laugh because I am overwhelmed now, with this relief. The laughter brings tears, which I stifle before I catch up to my rescuers.

I see little as we walk. Just the shadow of a large porch with posts and wide steps with no rail. I watch my feet as I climb. One, two, three, four …

Six steps bring us to the porch floor. Three steps bring us to the door, which opens without a key. A waft of dry air emerges, smelling of must and wood.

When the door closes again, we are all three inside, immersed in the darkness. The rain pounds on the roof but it is quieted by the walls which absorb the sound. The man sets Alice down and walks to a side table. The darkness is suddenly broken by the bright light of an electric lantern.

“I’m gonna try to start the generator,” he says. “I think there’s enough gas in there to last the night. Alice, why don’t you show Molly to the guest room. Get her a towel from the closet.”

He says my name so casually, like we’re old friends.

Towels and guest rooms and lanterns. There are no other family members here, but this will do. Yes, I think. This will do—until I can make the call.