Eleanor (6 page)

Anchor Bend is small and sits on Oregon’s coastline like a burl on a redwood, knobby and hard. It is a postcard town, nestled into the pines, quiet and unassuming. Its sunsets are spectacular, its mornings gloomy and drenched with fog. The town was built to serve the sea, and during the second war, it thrived, coming into its own as a small-market port. Thousands of tons of machinery left America through the tiny keyhole of Anchor Bend. Engines for troop transports, windshields and doors for command vehicles—even the occasional wing structure for a bomber. Those were good years, and as the sea became a good customer, the fisheries and canneries followed. Working families flocked to the town, and it swelled from its original population of two thousand to nearly thirty-seven thousand in just two years.

These days the docks and warehouses are still there, battered and rusted but standing, though the fisheries are gone, moved up the coast into Washington. A fire had torn through the industrial district, reducing the two largest fisheries to ash and cinder. Management had opted not to rebuild, and their scorched lots stand empty even now.
 

Anchor Bend recalls its populous, profitable past, but has very little pride left. Entire suburbs stand empty. Street after street of unoccupied homes, some of them condemned, sag and grow old in small, unnoticeable ways. The herd has thinned, and fewer than twelve thousand people remain within the town’s borders. Most are simply holding on until a better life someplace else beckons.
 

It’s a strange town for a realtor. Nobody at Paul’s annual conference can tell him how to sell a home in a town where empty houses lie discarded on the side of the road like crushed cans.

Anchor Bend is no short distance from the Portland airport, where Paul’s plane has arrived unexpectedly early. The flight knocked him around like a tennis shoe in a dryer. Putting the plane on the ground safely was a terrific feat, and when Paul bumps into the pilot in the terminal, he surprises himself by congratulating the man.
 

“You have no idea how close we came,” the captain whispers, his white cap tucked under one arm, his collar loose. He shakes his head and grins. “Kidding, of course. Bit rough back in coach, I imagine.”

Paul looks at his watch. “I’ve got some time to kill,” he says. “Can I buy you a drink?”

They enjoy a couple of beers in an airport pub that fancies itself an old English drinking hole. It’s called the Peat & Pear, though there’s nothing earthy or particularly fruity about the place. Its walls are covered with illustrations of biplanes turning lazy circles over black-and-white meadows. The pub is little more than a hollowed-out nook in the concourse, with a few sticky tables and a short bar lined with bolted-on stools.

The captain’s name is Mark, and he regales Paul with stories of troublemaker passengers and bad-weather landings, and when the two men finish their first beer, Paul glances at the clock over the bar. It’s still early yet—his flight had been scheduled to land at four, and it’s now ten minutes till. Agnes and the girls should be here by four-fifteen. Time enough for a second beer.
 

At twenty minutes past, Paul and Captain Mark abandon their stools and walk slowly to the arrivals ramp. The sidewalk zone in front of the airport is strangely empty, and Agnes’s Subaru is nowhere to be seen. Paul leans out and watches the horizon, but the car doesn’t materialize. Agnes is not driving in slow circles around the airport waiting for him.
 

“Wife late?” Captain Mark asks.

“Little bit,” Paul says. He turns and looks back, spies a clock over the United desk. Four twenty-five now.
 

“Probably traffic,” says the captain. “Saw lots of it on approach.”

Outside, the world is gray and opaque. The large windows welcoming travelers into the airport are beginning to fog over, and water trickles down them in long, slow streams. He can barely make out planes on the distant runway, lining up, awaiting their turn to leave the Earth.

Paul nods. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

But his world sways a little on its axis.

“Can we stop?” Esmerelda asks from the back seat.
 

Eleanor doesn’t glance up. The scenery rushes by, wet and gray and chalky, and she hardly notices. She bites her lip as she draws, carefully threading a single gray line down the sheet of paper, then pairing another beside it. The entry tunnel. She pauses, studying it, seeing something taking shape on the page that nobody else would see if they were to look. She erases bits of pencil, making little notches in the pair of lines, unevenly spaced. Then she draws little angled lines forking away from the first two, flanking each of the gaps. Secondary tunnels.
 

This continues for a time as she builds the spine of her underground bunker. The primary tunnel is wider than the others, and will carve deeply into the graphite earth around it. This tunnel will be a distraction, a red herring. It will appear to be the important corridor, will appear to lead to the secret stash she’ll bury somewhere in the map, but in truth, one of the dozen forked paths will be the truly meaningful hallway.
 

“Can we stop?” Esmerelda asks again.

Eleanor looks up and sees the fog beginning to swamp the highway ahead of them. The trees become thin and faded, the fog tangled high in their branches, like some ghostly predator caught up in a green net.
 

“I like the fog,” she says to nobody in particular.

“Nobody cares,” Esmerelda retorts. “
Mo-oomm,
can we stop? I have to pee.”

“We’re almost through,” Agnes replies. Her hands are pale on the wheel. There hasn’t been a moment of sunlight during the drive; this is the first respite from the rain. “Let’s get to the airport and you can go there.”

“It’s so
far
,” Esmerelda complains.

Eleanor sighs at her sister’s childishness. “Grow up, Esme.”

“We’re the same age, dummy,” Esmerelda snaps. “
You
grow up.”
 

There’s a metallic
snick
as Esmerelda unfastens her seat belt and scoots to the middle. A moment later she pops up between the two front seats like a Jack-in-the-box, clutching at her mother’s sleeve.
 

“I really, really have to pee,” she moans.

Eleanor elbows Esmerelda in the shoulder. “Get out of the way!”
 

“
You
get out of the way,” Esmerelda retorts.

Which infuriates Eleanor, because how could she be in the way?
She’s
the one sitting in her seat, buckled up, exactly where
she’s
supposed to be. Esmerelda is the one tumbling around in the car like an escaped hedgehog.
 

“Sit
down
,” Agnes barks, and both girls recognize the fractured timbre of her voice. This is Agnes when the world seems to be closing in around her. Eleanor doesn’t know the word
stress
just yet, but if she did, she would recognize that her mother is very, very stressed out.
 

Esmerelda sits back, sullen. “If I pee the seat, it’s not my fault,” she mutters, but such is the mood in the car now that nobody replies.

Eleanor casts a furtive glance at her mother. Agnes’s jaw is clenched as tightly as her hands on the wheel, and it makes Eleanor think that driving must be very hard, because her mother looks as if she’s being crushed into a tiny ball.
 

In the back seat, Esmerelda crosses her arms and pouts. Eleanor turns around, leaning against her own seat belt, and says, “You’re gonna pee yourself.”

“
You’re
gonna pee yourself,” Esmerelda retorts. “You pee yourself all day every day. You’re peeing yourself right now.”

“Both of you,” Agnes says through gritted teeth. “Stop. Now.”

The fog crashes in like a wave then, and Eleanor returns to her map as the Subaru becomes a spaceship in some pale cosmic ocean.

Highway 26 curves inland from the Oregon coast, a narrow ribbon that winds through miles of tall trees and more miles of golden fields that roll away toward the mountains. It is, on its best days, a beautiful, scenic route—and on days like this, it is a tightrope strung into nothingness. Agnes feels like a circus performer on that rope, barely able to see the wire at her feet, two unruly monkeys perched on her shoulders.
 

Her hands are beginning to ache, so she opens them with her palms against the wheel. Her fingers crack like ice in warm water, which makes her feel a little better.
 

“Seriously,” Esmerelda says again.

Agnes takes a long, slow breath and lets it out before she responds. “You really can’t hold it?”

“I really, really can’t,” comes the reply.

Agnes glances up at the rearview mirror, then tilts it with one hand so she can see her daughter. Esmerelda’s knees are tucked up to her chin, arms tightly cinched around her legs.
 

“We’ve already passed most of the stops,” Agnes says. “Can you hold it? I’ll stop first place at the bottom of the hill.”

“Mom!” Eleanor shouts from the passenger seat, and Agnes feels a spike of fear in her heart and whips her attention back to the highway.

There’s nothing worth shouting about. The cars ahead of the Subaru are braking, a little river of red lights rising out of the fog. After a moment of deep breaths to calm back down, Agnes sees why.
 

The fog begins to shred, torn into floating gobs of cotton by the rain, which starts again in earnest. It’s as if a dam somewhere has given way. The water comes down in heavy sheets. The Subaru’s hood and roof thrum angrily beneath the downpour.
 

“Don’t do that,” Agnes says, feeling the rush of alarm and adrenaline fade. “You could make me have an accident.”

The rain robs her of sight once more. It’s impenetrable, and she loses the shape of the cars ahead. She can see the taillights of the one just before her, but little past that.
 

“Mom, I really have to—”

“Shut up,” Agnes says, her voice hard and heavy, and the girls both lapse into an aching silence.

Highway 26 weaves through Hillsboro and Beaverton on its path to Portland, eventually diving down a steep, winding grade, then finally pushing its way through a mountain tunnel. The grade is often jammed with drivers who seem unnerved by the sweeping curves, possibly confused by the trifecta of exits, by the enormous yellow sign that reads
SLOW
, festooned with blinking amber lights. In the lane beside the Subaru, a steady stream of vehicles drives by much too quickly. Their drivers seem oblivious to the signs that order them to remain in their designated lanes—
No passing for next 1 mile
—and this drives Agnes’s heart rate up considerably. She can hear the blood pounding in her ears, overtaking the sounds of the world, overtaking the angry march of the rain on the shell of the car.
 

Agnes guides the Subaru into the far left lane, which hugs a concrete barrier, and slows the car to almost nothing at all. She worries about the brakes on the grade—they’re wet, and they’ve been a little creaky lately, regardless—but finds herself distracted, a little, by the driver to her right. The woman is stunningly old, her skin a crumpled brown paper bag, her hair a pale robin’s nest. She drives a twenty-year-old Volvo and is riding her brakes, which Agnes can hear even above the rain. The Subaru’s own brakes may be in bad shape, but the Volvo’s sound like rusted nails on metal. The driver hugs the steering wheel to her chest. She’s so small she might not even be in her seat anymore. Agnes can almost imagine the woman standing in front of the wheel, both feet jammed forward on the brakes, so far from her that she can barely peer over the dashboard—

“
MOM
,” Eleanor says.

The car directly in front of them has corkscrewed to a stop, its rear end angled from a skid. Agnes lays into the brakes with everything she has. For the first time ever, they lock, and the Subaru slides down the steep road like a sled on ice.
 

“No,” Agnes says, her voice calmer than she might have expected. “No, no, no.”