Lucy (30 page)

50

LUCY FLED ACROSS
the powdery waste among the stunted piñon trees. It was still dark when she caught a ride on the feeder ramp to Interstate 25 going north. It was a big eighteen-wheel rig carrying disposable diapers. The trucker’s name was Ned. He said he was from Kentucky. They shared a laugh about the diapers. He bought Lucy breakfast in Colorado at daybreak. She had eggs and hash browns. One of the things that Lucy liked best about America was ketchup. Ketchup and Tabasco sauce. He let Lucy out north of Denver, and she picked up a ride on I-80 from a periodontist who kept putting his hand on her thigh and telling Lucy how much he admired young male athletes. He drove her to a rest area, where he tried to take her pants off. She bit two of his fingers off and left him writhing in pain in the grass beside the parking lot, the taste of his blood sharp in her mouth.

The leaves had already fallen in Iowa. The wind was blowing on the highway, and the weather had turned cold. A van full of Christian women picked Lucy up and drove her all the way to Milwaukee. One of the dominant females took Lucy by her hands and said, “Son, please consider accepting Jesus as your personal savior. Just consider it.”

Once she reached Milwaukee, Lucy took a city bus to the zoo. She waited for sundown and slipped in the back way through the forest. The leaves were all down. She heard the bonobos begin to cry out as she drew close. The screaming grew to a crescendo, and after a time, Donna appeared by the back fence. Shivering with the cold, Lucy waved to her. Donna recognized Lucy immediately. She rushed into the forest and held her.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” she said. “Is that really you, Lucy?” She looked at her and said again, “Oh, dear … What did they do to you? Who got you?”

“I’m sorry. They cut me. They cut my hair off. They cut the whole top of my head off.” Lucy began to weep.

“Oh, no, poor thing.” Donna began leading her toward the building. “At least you made it. How are—” She hesitated. “Is Jenny okay?”

“Mom was okay when I left. They killed Amanda.”

“Oh, God. Oh, no,” Donna said, and stopped. “I’m so sorry. I knew they’d come. What happened?”

“They found me. When they operated on me, they put a tracking device under my skin. I didn’t know about it. They were looking for me, not Amanda. I’m sure it was meant for me. Amanda had long hair like me. And I look like a boy now. They must have thought it was me. I don’t know. They shot her. We never even saw them.”

“Oh, how horrible. I’m so sorry. I have to get you inside. Come on. Come quick. I’m ready for you. Come on. I’ve been waitin’.”

Donna led Lucy to the building and into her cluttered office and shut the door. “I want you to wash up. I have fresh clothes for you. Do I need to examine you? Are you injured?”

“No, I’m not injured.”

“What about the tracking device?”

“Mom took it out.”

Donna opened a door and said, “The shower’s in there. Wash up, I’ll get your clothes.”

Lucy showered quickly, gingerly washing her scalp. She dried off and Donna returned with a fresh pair of jeans, a work shirt, and sneakers. She gave Lucy a Milwaukee Brewers hat to cover her wound. When Lucy had dressed, Donna took a critical look at her.

“Good. Very good,” she said, taking a jacket from a hook and giving it to her. “Wear that. It’s cold outside.”

“Can I say goodbye?”

“What?”

“To the bonobos?”

“Yes, sure.”

They went to the back of the cages and the bonobos came quietly to the fence, putting their delicate fingers through the wire. Lucy walked along the fence touching each hand in turn. When she was finished she cried out and they cried out with her. She knew what it was like to be in there now.

“Come on, now. We have only one chance.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’re goin’ to cross the parking lot and go out to the street. There’s a bus stop there. Take the bus. It’s the number 151. Get off at the end of the line. I’ll meet you there. They can’t track you now. I’ll make sure no one is followin’ me just in case. You’ll be okay. Do you have any money?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’ll see you in about an hour.” She kissed Lucy on the forehead. “I am so sorry about Amanda. I know you’re grievin’ now.” Then she hurried out.

Lucy crossed the wooden walkway and went down past the penguins. She crossed the parking lot and went out to the street. Half an hour later she was on the bus.

51

JENNY AND HARRY
took the back roads, eating at little diners and taking their time about getting home. Neither one of them was sure what life would be like once they got there. They were both afraid to face it. So they dawdled at local museums in obscure towns. They wandered in the Cimarron National Grassland and saw the bones of the woolly mammoths that had once roamed there in herds.

As they looked at the mounds of bones, Harry said, “People killed them all.”

They drove through the Mark Twain National Forest and took a canoe trip at the Bass River Resort. They caught fish and fried them on the riverbank for dinner. That night in their room—for somehow it had seemed natural to economize and share a room—Jenny wept, thinking about the Boundary Waters. Harry held her until she had spent her tears.

She had showered and scrubbed but could not get Amanda’s blood out from under her fingernails. As Harry and Jenny embraced and wept together, all she could see through a sheet of tears was her hand, the darkness beneath her nails.

At Dubuque they rode the funicular railway and ate dinner at a quaint old restaurant with red leather booths and chandeliers. Back in their room, Jenny took a long hot shower. She came out wrapped in her chenille robe to find Harry standing there as if waiting for her. He pierced her with his eyes, and Jenny said, “What?” Harry just kept looking, and Jenny didn’t look away. Then he took her in his arms and held her for a long time.

“I miss the girls,” he said. “I really, really miss the girls.”

“I know.”

They had avoided the news because of all the stories of candlelight vigils being held for Amanda and Lucy. But that night Ruth called and told Jenny to turn on CNN. Jenny and Harry watched in the motel room. Police officers from the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department and the New Mexico State Police had located a suspect in the killing of Amanda Mather. When the suspect opened fire on them in a remote wilderness area, the police had shot him dead. His identity was being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

The next morning, as if a demon had been chasing them, they raced up Interstate 55 from St. Louis to Chicago, stopping only for gas. It was mid-afternoon when they reached Jenny’s house. Harry stepped down from the car and pulled her suitcase from the back. But Jenny just sat there looking at the ivy-covered house. Harry came around and opened her door.

“Harry, I’ve been living there alone with Amanda.”

Harry didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. He closed the door. He put her suitcase back in the car. Then he got in and drove Jenny home with him. There was nothing to discuss. With typical composure, Harry went to the refrigerator when they arrived, as if it were just another normal day. He took a container of vegetarian chili out of the freezer. Then they sat down and ate their dinner and began the process of trying to go about their lives.

Amanda had been buried by her mother while Harry and Jenny were on the road. Jenny didn’t think that it would be good to try to attend. She had the sense that Amanda’s mother would blame her almost as much as Jenny blamed herself. She didn’t think that she could look her in the eye.

Within a week of their return, the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department and the New Mexico State Police jointly released the identity of the slain suspect in Amanda’s murder. When the suspect’s face came on the television, Jenny realized that she had, in fact, seen him at the airport and in the crowds of protesters on more than one occasion. He was a sinister-looking young man with short hair and a drooping moustache. His arms were covered with tattoos. He was the one that the girls had seen holding a sign with the word “Euthanasia” and the number fourteen on it. As they sat watching the news, Harry said, “Bullshit.”

“What?”

“How would this loser know that you guys were at the Randalls’ ranch? I didn’t even know that.”

“Because either he didn’t really shoot Amanda or someone told him where we were?”

Harry said nothing.

In the coming weeks Jenny refused all requests for interviews and avoided the news. The suspect was dead. The rifle found by his body matched the bullet that killed Amanda. The case was closed. The government firmly maintained that it had no idea where the hybrid person known as Lucy Lowe had gone. The press had a difficult time finding new angles on the story, so it drifted farther and farther back in the news and then vanished altogether. And then people did what they always do. They began to forget.

52

IT WAS ABOUT TEN
in the morning on a cold bright day when Jenny stood in her kitchen and saw the sunlight illuminating the expensive stainless steel appliances that her mother had bought. Jenny thought, This is so not me. And instantly another thought came to her: That’s Amanda talking. I have Amanda’s voice inside me now. Amanda and Lucy. She knew from her scientific reading that when you repeat in your head the words that someone else has said, your vocal cords move just as that person’s moved when she said those words, a movement as unique as a fingerprint. Thus do those you love hold the strings as if you were a puppet. Even from beyond the grave.

As she moved from the kitchen to the front hall, Jenny could hear the girls. From the front door, she could see up the stairs and into their room. She heard them giggling now, talking in that way of theirs. Lucy teaching Amanda Spanish slang one cold winter night.

“‘Flipado,’” Lucy said.

“‘Flipado,’” Amanda repeated.

“Yeah, like flipped out. And ‘tranquilo.’”

“‘Tranquilo.’ What’s that? Tranquil?”

“Yeah, ‘chill.’”

“We don’t say ‘chill.’”

“Never do we say ‘chill.’” And they cracked up.

Jenny could hear their laughter. The girls inhabited the house like spirits now. Lucy had asked where your voice goes when you die, and Jenny thought she knew now: It goes into The Stream. Into the vocal cords and brains of those you love.

She looked into the living room and saw the couch where they’d sat to watch the video that changed everything. The African weaving above the fireplace. Two hyenas menacing the innocent deer. Could she live here now? Could she live with their spirits?

Jenny went upstairs and stood in the door to their room. The closet was open and from the doorway she could see Lucy’s sage-green prom dress. Thongs and bras and tube tops were scattered on the closet floor. Shoes of all sorts. The girls had teased Jenny, saying that she had a genetic defect. She didn’t have the shoe gene. Jenny put her face into Amanda’s bright red dress and smelled it, and it brought into her mind the ebb and flow of her own joy and tears. Who said that? Other voices, stilled long ago. Matthew Arnold. The turbid ebb and flow of human misery.

She turned and saw Amanda’s brush reflected in the dressing table mirror. She crossed the room and picked it up. It still had Amanda’s hair in it. Jenny pulled a long strand free from the bristles, careful not to break it. She held it in the light. It was dark and curly, and it shone reddish brown in the sunlight. Oh, Amanda. Dear Amanda.

She placed the hair back on the brush so as not to lose it. And as she did so, she felt how odd that was. What was she going to do with her hair, the brush, all of these things? She didn’t want to turn her life into a museum. Memory was museum enough.

She went down to her office to collect some things to take to Harry’s. She saw the wicker basket beside her desk. It was full of all the photos they had taken. She bent, picked up a folder of prints, and sat. Amanda and Lucy splashing in Flour Lake at the Boundary Waters. She picked up another. The three of them in the greenroom at some TV studio. Another set of prints showed Amanda and Matt and Lucy and Wes standing in front of the limousine on prom night. Then she saw herself with Harry, Lucy, and Amanda, toasting the new year with her mother. Their only New Year’s Eve together. Lucy wore a silver party hat and was laughing uproariously at the bad jokes that Harry was telling. “How can you tell the trombone player’s children on the playground?” he had asked her.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “How?”

“Because they don’t know how to use the slide and they can’t swing.”

“Oh, Harry,” Jenny had said. “That is so lame.” But Lucy laughed and laughed.

“Don’t encourage him,” Amanda said.

Jenny’s tears fell on the print in her hand. She put the folders back. She wasn’t ready for this. She thought of Luke Randall, endlessly fleeing his grief. If life is a museum of memories, then how do you live when you can no longer stand to visit the museum? She realized that she would never let go of the girls. Her girls. Her daughters. They inhabited her flesh. She could no longer live in this house.

The phone rang, and she looked at the caller ID. It was the hospital. She could picture Harry in his lab coat, sitting at a computer terminal at the nurses’ station, his hair messed up, pockets overflowing. She picked it up.

“Hello, Harry. I don’t think I can do this.”

“Well, you tried. That’s all you can do. Go back to the house, okay? I have surgery, but I’ll be back for dinner.”

“But what about all this stuff?” It wasn’t the stuff, she knew. It was the ghosts.

“I’ll help you. We’ll do it together. Don’t torture yourself. Just go back to the house now. Go back there and think about lemon-crusted Dover sole with an amusing little pinot. Robert Parker said that a light essence of smoke and rosemary rounds out the finish of succulent fruit.” For the first time that day, Jenny laughed.

During the winter months Harry and Jenny cleaned out the house. They moved her things to Harry’s. They threw a lot away. On a cold snowy night with the work almost done, they burned the last of her firewood and sat on the floor eating spinach lasagna from Piero’s. When the first warm weather arrived they had a house sale with folding tables set out in the front yard. The remaining furniture, appliances, lamps, went quickly. The clothing and CDs were picked over. Late in the afternoon, with yellow light angling down through the maple tree, a shy-looking girl with tattoos asked Jenny if she still had any of Lucy’s clothes. Jenny was jolted by hearing Lucy’s name. She pointed to a box and a rack. The girl browsed the clothing for a while and then came back holding jeans, some undergarments, and a pair of Italian sandals.

“Were these Lucy’s?” she asked.

“Yes, they were.”

She paid and stuffed the clothes in her bag and turned to go. Then she turned back and looked at Jenny. “I know she’s out there. She’s out there, and she’s coming back.”

“I hope you’re right.” Jenny watched the girl go. She could feel her sorrow and wondered what she’d been through. She reminded Jenny of the girls at the shelter.

The next week Jenny and Harry took everything that was left and gave it to charity. The house sold a month later. When it closed, Jenny tried to give her mother half the money but she refused, saying, “What am I going to do? Save it for my old age? Take Harry and go to Hawaii. Did you know that you were conceived in Hawaii?” Jenny hadn’t known. She was stunned that her mother would reveal such an intimate bit of information. Her first thought was: Alzheimer’s? Then she wondered if her mother still hoped for grandchildren.

Jenny and Harry didn’t discuss the fact that they were living together. Her house was gone, and that was that. He had told her to choose any room she liked for her study, and she chose the room that overlooked the upper deck through the French doors. She often sat there in the afternoon, watching the light change and remembering Lucy and Amanda in their bikinis, laughing so hard that they fell out of their chairs.

She still checked the ads on Craigslist. Since she had heard nothing from Donna, she had to assume that Lucy had made it safely to the zoo. That first year when she received no seasonal greeting card from Donna, she suspected that it was because she wanted no contact as a precaution.

On the anniversary of Amanda’s death, Jenny and Harry were in eastern Chad, treating children who’d been injured by unexploded bombs and grenades. It was one of the most intense experiences she’d ever had, working in the trauma unit as children came in with arms or legs blown off, then working on reconstruction, and later fitting their prosthetic limbs. The kids were unfailingly bright and cheerful, even in the face of ghastly injuries. Experiences like that kept Jenny sane.

She returned to working long hours with the girls at the shelter. Nights, at home, she would try to write about the amazing experience that she’d had, but she couldn’t. It was too raw. And she feared that she simply didn’t have the chops, as Amanda would have said. She wrote a small scientific paper about the eating habits of bonobos, but no one would accept it.

On a bright spring day at the Hope Shelter, a new girl arrived. Even from a distance, Jenny recognized her deep inner core of power. She was a beautiful girl, very tall and thin with brown hair held loosely in a ponytail that tumbled past her shoulders. Even though the weather was warm, she wore a woolen ski cap. Red woolen leggings descended into combat boots beneath her roughly cut-off blue jeans. One of her ears was pierced a dozen times.

Some benefactor of the shelter had rented an inflatable waterslide for the day to celebrate the first of the warm weather, and the younger kids had mobbed it, screaming and running around and gleefully climbing and sliding over and over.

The new girl stood off to the side wrapped in her thoughts. Watching. The staff was supposed to be briefed on each new resident but no one had told Jenny about this girl. Sometimes people came on such short notice that there wasn’t time for the paperwork to catch up. Their situations were too desperate. All Jenny knew was that she was sixteen years old.

Jenny observed her for a while as the girl stared intently at the smaller children and a few early teens, slick as seals and joyful in the sun. The girl didn’t move, didn’t smile. She stared. After a time she dug into her bag and came up with a cigarette. She lit it with a Bic lighter and continued watching. Smoking was against the rules, of course. But so was most of what had been done to these girls. Nina knew: Tell one of these girls not to smoke, and they’d say, “Sure.” And then they’d disappear.

Jenny wandered over to her. “Hey. I’m Jenny.”

“Hey, Jenny.” She had an open smile and easily met Jenny’s eyes. “I’m Elise. Want a cigarette?”

“No, thanks.” Elise continued watching the children. Had she been beaten? Raped? Why was she there? Jenny couldn’t see any evidence of bruises, though under all those clothes she might find some.

“You can go on the waterslide with the kids if you like. There’s a couple of older girls there, too.”

“I might do that later.”

“If you want I can show you where you’ll be staying.”

“Word.”

“Did you bring any stuff? Clothes or anything you want to put away?”

“No stuff,” Elise said.

“Come on, I’ll show you your room.”

Elise dropped the cigarette on the ground. She followed Jenny into the building and up to the second floor. The rooms were simple, almost monastic. As they entered, Elise glanced around at the single bed, small desk and chair, a framed print of a country scene, and a cross on the wall. She moved past Jenny and took the cross from the wall. “I won’t be needing this,” she said.

“Okay. No problem.”

Elise sat heavily on the bed and simply hung there as if she were tired.

“Do you want to talk at all? About why you’re here?”

“Sure, I guess. It was on the news.” Jenny sat beside her and waited. Elise sighed. Then she began, “Well, my mom, she got us up real early yesterday morning, me and my little brother Dave and the twins, Jill and Jolene. Mom said we were going to take a trip. And then she put us in the car and took us down to Hinckley and drove out onto the pier. It wasn’t quite light yet. Then she just kept on going right into the lake. I had Dave’s hand. I don’t know what happened. I lost him. I was the only one who got out.”

Jenny had heard all kinds of stories but this one left her completely speechless. She imagined that Elise had been watching those kids on the waterslide, thinking about her brother and sisters down at the bottom of the lake.

From her own experience, as well as that of the Randalls, Jenny had some ideas about how you might come back from something like that. She took Elise under her wing and over the next few months she began to come around. Elise befriended some of the younger girls. It turned out that she was an artist. Her father had been a commercial artist and taught her from an early age but he had left the family. As Elise came out of her shell, her talent became clear. She would sit at the cafeteria table and draw beautifully realistic portraits of the children—upside down so that the kids could see them take shape. Or she’d carve perfect bas relief faces using modeling clay and a butter knife from the lunch room. Jenny needed someone like Elise in her life. Elise had lost everyone in her family. Jenny could never feel self-pity when she was around her.

That’s why she returned to Chad to work with Harry in the hospital for another two months. She could not think of her own sorrow when she was face-to-face with an eight-year-old whose hands had been blown off.