She's Not There (3 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

The smell was pungent—mothballs, dust, dime-store perfume, and a faint trace of body odor—and it was so familiar that Amelia was certain she had surely been inside a thrift store before. But she couldn’t remember, and she was a woman who wore Chanel dresses, wasn’t she?

She ignored the stare of the woman behind the counter and headed straight for the racks of women’s clothing.

Jeans . . . she needed some jeans. What size did she wear? She didn’t know. So she pulled out different pairs of blue jeans and held them up against her hips. Every pair she tried was too short until she decided to try the men’s racks where she found a pair of Levi’s. As she headed to the dressing room, she grabbed a faded blue oxford shirt and a floppy canvas hat.

In the hot cramped dressing room, she peeled off the black dress. When she turned to the mirror, she froze.

Back in the pawnshop she had seen only a soft-focus image of her face. But now, standing close to the full-length mirror, she saw herself clearly for the first time.

Naked. All angles and sharpness. Thin. Long legs, narrow hips. Small high breasts below a sharp shelf of collarbone. There were long, raw scrapes on both her arms and ugly purple bruises crossing her chest.

Dr. Haskins’s words came back to her.
You’re a little on the thin side.

And then other words, but she didn’t have the faintest idea who had said them to her—
I need to see your bones—
words that had made her cry.

She leaned closer and stared at her face.

It was a mosaic of yellow and blue bruises framed by long hanks of oily blonde hair. A large piece of gauze was taped to her chin. She reached up to touch her swollen lip.

An image came suddenly into her head. A painting hanging on a white wall—
was it
Picasso?—
a woman’s face chopped into shards of color.

“Hello?”

She jumped at the sound of the voice outside the dressing room curtain.

“Are you almost done in there? We’re getting ready to close now.”

“Yes . . . yes! I’ll be out in a minute,” she called. She turned away from the mirror and pulled on the jeans and shirt. The black dress was crumpled on the floor and as she picked it up, she saw the back was streaked with dried mud.

Rain . . . it had been raining, she remembered suddenly. But where had she been and what had happened?

No time to think about it now. She had to get out of there.

Outside the dressing room, she paused to stuff her hair up into the canvas hat. After a stop in the shoe racks to find a pair of black flats, she went up to the counter.

The woman looked at her over the top of her glasses but said nothing as she rang up the clothes, shoes, and hat.

“That’s twenty-two fifty,” she said.

Amelia started to pull two twenties from the Vuitton duffel and then paused. “Wait, do you sell glasses?”

“No,” the woman said. “But folks donate their old ones. They’re over there.”

The wire basket at the end of the counter held a tangle of frames. Amelia tried on ten pairs before she finally found the big purple plastic frames that allowed her to read the small print on the
N
O
R
ETURNS
sign behind the counter.

“Can you throw this away for me, please?” Amelia asked her, holding out the balled-up black dress.

The woman shook out the dress, pausing when she saw the label. “Is this real or a knockoff?”

Amelia had been rolling up the sleeves of the oxford shirt, and it took her a moment to come back to the woman. “What?”

“Is this real Chanel?”

“Yes, it’s real.”

“I’ll take it in trade for your clothes.”

Amelia’s head was starting to pound again. She managed a nod and headed to the door. She heard the woman lock it behind her, and then the lights in the thrift shop went out. The sun was gone now, and a stiff breeze was moving in, bringing the biting zing of a coming rain. A whining sound made her look up, and she watched a commercial jet circle and make its descent, disappearing into the darkness somewhere nearby. She looked across the street at the huge beige hospital. Silhouettes moved against the yellow windows on the upper floors.

For a moment she wanted nothing more than to go back inside the hospital and crawl into her bed, to feel the cool gentle press of the nurse’s hand on her forehead.

She was tired, so very very tired. And for the first time she could remember, she felt the scrape of hunger in her belly. But the voice in her head was clear, so clear this time it was almost like hearing her own voice.

Get away from here. Get away from him.

She looked to her left. A gas station’s lights beckoned. She could at least get a candy bar or something there.

Inside the station she bought Aleve, a bottle of water, a chicken sandwich wrapped in plastic, and an apple. At the last moment she grabbed a newspaper from the rack near the counter. She was heading out the door, newspaper tucked under her arm, biting into the apple, when she saw the police car pull up.

The cop got out and came toward her. She froze, fumbling with the plastic bag. Surely they were looking for her by now, maybe called the police. But they would be looking for a blonde woman in a black cocktail dress. She pulled the canvas hat down harder on her head and held her hand over the gauze on her chin as she passed the cop.

“Ma’am?”

She turned.

“You drop this?” He was holding out a newspaper.

She went to him and took the paper. “Thank you,” she said.

She could feel his eyes on her as she walked away. A horn blared, and she jumped. She was standing in the glare of headlights.

“Jesus, lady! Watch it!”

A man was leaning out from behind the wheel of a taxi.

She looked back at the gas station. The cop was standing at the door staring at her. She tossed the apple in the trash, jerked open the taxi’s back door and got in, struggling with the duffel.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“I gotta gas up first,” the driver said.

“Please. I need to go. Now.”

He leaned over the seat to look at her. Then with a glance at the cop, he put the taxi in gear and pulled out into traffic. She turned in the seat, but when she saw the cop wasn’t following, she sank back into the sticky plastic and closed her eyes.

The driver rolled up the windows and turned on the air. It flowed cold over her bare forearms, raising goose bumps. Maybe she should have bought a sweater back at the thrift shop, she thought.

“Where to?”

Amelia pushed the purple glasses up onto the bridge of her nose. “I . . . where are we now?”

“Andrews heading north.”

Andrews?
It meant nothing. No one had even told her what city she was in. The whine of the jet came back to her. The airport was somewhere near here. She could get a flight out. But that was impossible without ID. A train? Rent a car? No, there was no way to do any of that if you couldn’t prove who you were.

She sat forward in the seat. “Is there a bus station here?”

“What kind of bus?”

An animal . . . a bus with a running dog on the side. She had been on a bus like that before, and she had a flash of memory of seeing cornfields flying by outside the window. “Greyhound,” she said.

The taxi crossed a drawbridge and entered a downtown area, and Amelia tried to find something that would strike a chord in her memory. A towering blue glass riverfront condo, an old Woolworth’s converted into a nightclub, office buildings and banks, a big boxy library fronted by a small park filled with homeless men. The taxi turned left onto a busy street and the names flashed by—Starbucks, Subway, Whole Foods Market—signposts for everywhere and nowhere.

The newspaper . . .

She unfolded it.
The
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
. Was she in Miami? Then she noticed the headline—“Robbers Stab Lauderdale Valet.”

Fort Lauderdale
. Was this place her home? Did she and Alex Tobias live here? She glanced at the date at the top of the front page: “Sunday November 16, 2014.”

The date triggered nothing, but it made her feel better somehow. It was something tangible she could grab onto, something that anchored her in time at least.

The taxi pulled up to the Greyhound station, an old low-slung building in a rundown neighborhood. The lot reeked of exhaust fumes and urine. Inside the station, the only smell was of the disinfectant being used by a cleaning man mopping the tile floor. An old woman in rags, her arms looped with bulging plastic shopping bags, was banging on a candy machine, yelling profanities.

Clutching the fake Vuitton duffel, Amelia went to the window. The woman behind the glass didn’t look up.

“Do I need ID to buy a ticket?” she asked.

“Not if you pay cash.”

“Okay, one ticket, please,” Amelia said.

“Where to?”

Amelia hesitated. She felt the press of someone behind her and looked back into the face of an old black man holding a little boy’s hand. The man was wearing an old Army fatigue coat and he looked tired, yet he gave her a small smile. Amelia’s eyes moved beyond the man to the bus parked outside the doors. She looked back at the woman behind the glass.

“Is that bus leaving soon?” she asked.

“Ten minutes.”

“Where is it going?”

“Charlotte, North Carolina.”

“One way to Charlotte, please.”

“One fifty-six fifty.”

Amelia dug in the duffel and handed over eight twenties. Pocketing her change, she moved away from the ticket window and took a seat on a hard metal bench. She unwrapped the chicken sandwich. It was dry and hard, but she ate it anyway, washing it down with the bottled water and three Aleves.

The clock on the terminal wall read seven thirty when the call came to board. Amelia found a seat in the back and leaned against the window. The old black man and the little boy took seats on the aisle across from her.

The bus pulled out, and Amelia watched the lights of the downtown high-rises disappear as they headed away. She caught sight of the street sign—
B
ROWARD
B
OULEVARD
—as the bus swung onto a busy street lined with check cashing stores, auto repair shops, Laundromats, and liquor stores. When the bus passed the sprawling complex of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department, she turned away from the window.

It had begun to rain by the time the bus turned onto the freeway, and then there was nothing to see but the blur of billboards and white headlights and red taillights.

She closed her eyes. Did she sleep? For how long? She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t even sure what made her open her eyes. But when she did, she turned her head and looked into the face of the old man.

He was holding a thermos and pouring something carefully into a small paper cup. He looked over at her, and then held out the cup to her across the aisle.

“Would you like a sip, miss?” he asked.

“What?” She was so tired she could barely speak.

“You look like you could use a little of this,” he said.

In the dim beam of the overhead light she could barely make out his face. It was sad and deeply lined, like one of those old drama masks, the ones that represented tragedy and comedy.

What had made her think of that?

“What is it?” she asked.

“A little courage for the journey ahead,” he said. The mask creased up into a smile. “Go ahead. I’ve got more cups.”

She accepted the cup and took a sip.

It took a moment but then the taste registered on her tongue. Red wine. Sweet. The taste triggered something in her head, someone speaking a foreign language. And she could see a big open window with two oranges and a bottle of wine on the sill and a view of blue water beyond. She took another drink and let the wine flood down through her body. She finished the wine and passed the cup back to the man.

“Thank you,” she said.

He screwed the top back on the thermos and set it under the seat. Then he tucked the Army fatigue jacket over the shoulders of the sleeping boy. He leaned his head back against the seat and slanted his eyes toward her.

“Where you headed, miss?” he asked.

“North Carolina,” she said.

“Got family there?”

The feeling of floating in the blue-green bubble came back to her again, and she remembered that she had someone who had saved her from drowning and a mother who had told her about it. Was her mother still alive?

“Yes,” she said softly.
I hope so.

Her eyes went beyond the old man to the sleeping boy. With a start she realized she didn’t even know if she had children. If she had a child, how could she possibly be running away like this? How could she leave a child?

She shut her eyes and desperately tried to summon up a child’s face, a name, a smell, but there was nothing there, there was no one there. She felt that in her soul. She let out a long breath of relief.

“You all right, miss?”

She turned her head and gave the old man a nod. She looked again at the boy. “How old is your boy?” she asked softly.

“He’s seven,” the man said. “It’s been a long day for him. We started out in Miami this morning, but the bus broke down twenty minutes out and we had to wait two hours for the other bus to come, which took us backward instead of forward. So then we finally got on this bus in Fort Lauderdale and here we are.”

She nodded. It was getting hard to keep her eyes open. The rain had turned into heavy pelting drops that smacked against the window and turned the car lights beyond into red streaks in the black.

“Would you like a cookie, miss?”

When she turned back to the old man, he was holding out an open package of Fig Newtons. She started to reach across to take one but then drew her hand back. Another voice was there in her head.

You don’t need that. Put that back, Jelly-Belly.

“Go ahead. We got plenty,” the old man said.

She took a cookie but didn’t eat it, instead looking back out the window. She saw a flash of a sign in the darkness, an exit to some place called “Stuart.”