The Escape Diaries (7 page)

At the time, I
didn’t care because Kip was so much fun to be around. After the volleyball game,
we danced on a deck lit by Japanese lanterns. The moon rose over the lake,
magnified by the water, the stars poked out one by one, and the DJ cranked out hits
from the ’80s and ’90s. Kip was a terrific dancer: sexy, inventive, limber as a
gymnast. We were doing the dirty jerk when a woman cut in on me, a stunning
redhead with a silk scarf wrapped sarong-style around her hips and a bottle of
wine clutched in one hand. She twined herself pythonlike around Kip and began
gyrating. She was looped; her bottle slipped out of her hand, fell on Kip’s
instep and broke, slicing open a major vein as cleanly as a surgeon’s knife.

We all stared at
the spurting wound. Who would have thought a foot contained that much blood?
The redhead threw up, Kip collapsed into a deck chair, looking stunned, and
everyone else just stood there, goggling at Kip’s gushing foot as though they’d
never seen blood before. I was the only one who seemed capable of action.
Snatching a beach towel, I wrapped it around Kip’s foot. Then, when no one else
volunteered, I drove him to the emergency room.

After Kip was
stitched up, he was ordered to rest in a cubicle. I sat with him while we
waited for his doctor to okay his release. “Do you want me to call someone?” I
asked, handing Kip a glass of water, recalling that he’d told me his mother
lived in a Milwaukee suburb. “Your mom, maybe?”

“God, no. My rule
is never tell my mother anything.” He sipped the water. “You’ll understand when
you meet her.” He squeezed my hand. “Sorry I spoiled your evening.”

“You didn’t.”
Truth: at the moment I would rather have been sitting in a
disinfectant-smelling emergency room with Kip Vonnerjohn than anywhere else in
the world. He was pale beneath his beach tan, his hair was plastered sweatily
against his forehead, and his hands shook slightly as the local anaesthetic
began to wear off. He rubbed his eye sockets with his fists like a young kid.

That was the
moment I fell in love.

Females are not
all that impressed when males flex their biceps, fan out their tails, or pound
their chests. What makes us take leave of our senses is seeing a guy clumsily
holding a baby in his arms or sucking his thumb after he’s blasted it with a
hammer or squirming in embarrassment because he’s just discovered his
girlfriend is allergic to the bouquet of daisies he’s brought her. We can’t
resist a guy making an adorable dope of himself.

Kip and I shared
our first kiss on that emergency room cot.

We saw each other
nearly every day for the rest of the summer. Dates with Kip were always adventures.
We went sailing in his boat. Golfed on elaborate, expensive courses. Walked on
the beach and played catch-me-if-you-can with the surf. Hiked in state parks.
Took the train to Chicago and toured the Shedd Aquarium. Went to a lot of
parties.

We never discussed
money. Although I assumed that Kip was well-off, I didn’t associate Kip with
the
Vonnerjohns. It wasn’t until our ninth date that I learned Kip’s
great-grandfather had been Yost Vonnerjohn, the Dutch immigrant who’d started
the plumbing company now known around the world for bathroom fixtures. It
wasn’t until our twelfth
date that he
told me that he was first cousin to Stanford Brenner, who was running for
United States Senate.

           
We
went to the zoo on our fourteenth date. Kip produced a box of animal crackers
from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. The box was already open and I
figured he’d been nibbling on the crackers, which seemed odd; Kip wasn’t the
animal crackers type. We stopped to watch the giraffes while I munched on the
crackers, Kip watching me from the corners of his eyes. I ate a bear with a
broken leg, a headless zebra, and a blob that was either a horse or a hippo.
Then my scrabbling fingers touched a piece of paper. I pulled it out and saw
that it was a note in Kip’s handwriting. It said:
I’m crackers about you.
Will you marry me?
Taped to the back of the paper was a ten-carat diamond
ring.

           
Who
could have resisted a setup like that? Not schmaltzy, love-starved Mazie
Maguire. For the first time in my life I wasn’t being cautious and timid. I was
being wild and adventurous. I was following my heart. That’s what I told myself
and that’s what I allowed myself to believe. Of course I said yes. I wanted to
marry Kip Vonnerjohn; I wanted to share his life and toothbrush and head colds;
I wanted to have his babies. I was head over heels, giddy-gaga-dumbass in love
with him.

           
If
my parents had been there, they would have warned me that fourteen dates is not
enough time to get to know someone. Kip and I knew each other’s favorite songs,
most embarrassing moment from junior high school, and favorite sexual
positions, but we hadn’t asked the big questions. Such as:
Does this person
keep his promises?
Nor had we delved into the smaller questions:
joint
accounts or separate? Open presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas day? Who
controls the air-conditioning? We didn’t delve into them because we were too
busy delving into each other. Kip, nearly nine years older than I, was the
first guy I’d been with who knew his way around a woman’s body. As sexually
inexperienced as I was, I equated orgasms with love.

I should have
seen the warning signs. They were there, as clear as a ragged-edge mole
exhibiting the seven warning signs of melanoma: the fact that Kip kept putting
off introducing me to his mother. That he took off work whenever he felt like
it and spent money like a sailor on shore leave. That his eyes glazed over when
I brought up politics or social issues or anything more complicated than the
latest celebrity scandal.

Recent studies
have shown that the human brain doesn’t fully develop until age twenty-eight. I
had just turned twenty-four. That’s as good an explanation as any to explain
the stupidity of my decision. Driven by lust, blinded by hero worship, and too
immature to know better, I plunged into matrimony.

Escape tip #6:

If it’s crazy but it works,

it ain’t crazy.

           
Wanda’s
van came with all the bells and whistles. It had satellite radio, GPS, and
television sets mounted above the front and back seats. Given the hyperactivity
level of Wanda’s kids, it seemed a good idea to have some brain-numbing
entertainment available in the rear seats, but the driver-mounted set was
worrisome. Do you want Wanda Kronenwetter watching
Dancing with the Stars
while she’s hurtling toward you at seventy miles an hour?

           
Wanda’s
pimped-out van, with its Kung Fu Panda suction-cupped to the windows, wasn’t
exactly inconspicuous. She’d probably reported the van stolen by now. I’d been
driving it for more than an hour and was already pushing my luck. I needed to
ditch it, and soon.

A road sign
loomed.
Sheboygan 16 miles. Vonnerjohn 4 miles
.

Vonnerjohn?

Of course! This
was where Atticus had been guiding me all along. Suddenly I knew exactly where
I could dump the van and pick up a new set of wheels. Taking the next exit, I
turned onto a secondary road and drove into the town of Vonnerjohn, hoping
nothing had changed since I’d last been here about five years ago.

Three guesses who
the town is named for. This is the holy of holies—the site where the
first Vonnerjohn plumbing factory was erected over a century ago. The small
brick cottages that were once workers’ housing have been converted to shops,
galleries, and restaurants, but the town’s main attraction is the old plumbing
factory. It’s now the Vonnerjohn Design Center, a showroom for company
products. Weird as it sounds, the place is a tourist mecca, drawing thousands
of visitors a week.

           
 
I drove into the center’s parking lot, a
sea of expensive vans and SUVs, perfect protective coloration for Wanda’s van.
With luck it would remain unnoticed here among the other oversized gas hogs
until the lot emptied late that afternoon. Meanwhile, I needed to borrow
another car.

Borrow
sounds so much more polite than steal.

Ransacking the
litter on the floor of the van, I dredged up a pair of cheap sunglasses, two
plastic barrettes, three Band-Aids, a lipstick—not in my shade, but
soothing on my gnawed-to-shreds lips—and a packet of Easy-pleasy condoms
in glow-in-the-dark colors.
Why, Wanda Kronenwetter, you vixen!
I jammed
everything into my pants pockets, promising Atticus that I was keeping track
and would someday repay Wanda for everything I’d stolen.

Leaving the keys
in the ignition, I eased out of my French fry–smelling cave of safety. I
left the doors unlocked, debating whether to lipstick a
Please Steal Me
note on the window to attract the attention of car thieves, thus sending
Marshal Katz on a wild goose chase while I tootled off in a . . .

           
In
a
what
? Slinking around the parking lot, trying to appear to be a rich
ditz who couldn’t remember whether she’d driven the Porsche or the Lexus today,
I wrenched at door after door. No go—every vehicle was locked up tight
and nobody had left their keys in the ignition. People ought to be more
trusting.

           
A
silver BMW with Illinois plates zipped into a nearby parking space. Two women
and a boy emerged. The women looked like sisters—both tall, thin, and
blond, wearing designer jeans. The boy, about nine, was in his own world,
earbuds clamped to ears, jiving to music the rest of us couldn’t hear.

Leave the keys
in the ignition,
I silently willed the driver. She didn’t. She took them
out and chirped the doors locked with her remote. Maybe I could pull another
Wanda—filch the keys from the woman’s purse. I followed the trio into the
building, keeping a few lengths behind, hoping the tourists would be too
engrossed in toilet fixings to recognize the escaped felon in their midst.

The Vonnerjohn
Design Center is a cross between a plumbing fixtures store and
Potty World:
The Adventure.
Hundreds of mock-up bathrooms are displayed on the wide
balconies surrounding the ground floor. These are bathrooms that have taken a
header off the
Architectural Digest
diving board of reality. These are
bathrooms that don’t have panty hose hanging over towel racks, scummy shower
doors, nostril clippings in the sinks, toothpaste-spattered mirrors; nappies
soaking in diaper pails, plug-in room deodorizers, or dog-eared copies of
Jokes
for the John
sitting on the tank tops.

These are
bathrooms from a planet where humans do not dwell. On this planet, sofas,
lamps, and bookcases all coexist happily in the bathroom, which is the size of
a two-car garage.

On this planet
there is a geisha house bathroom with a gushing waterfall for a shower,
polished pebble floors, and a grove of live bamboo trees.

There is an Aztec
temple bathroom with a tub like an altar perched atop a marble platform and
where, instead of a priest slicing your heart out of your chest, vibrating
water jets massage your vertebrae.

There is a men’s
gym bathroom with a weight bag suspended from the ceiling and boxing gloves
strung up on the wall.

There is a
Jetsons-style bathroom with a television in the ceiling and a shower cubicle
with nozzles in places that would come in handy if you ever had to bathe a
giant squid.

Today being a Saturday, the design center
was swarming with sightseers. I spied my prey near a display of whirlpool baths
that arced jets of spray like dueling water pistols. The woman’s expensive
handbag was carelessly slung over her shoulder, with her cellphone nearly
falling out of a side pocket. This dame wouldn’t last a day in prison.

           
Feeling
like a stalker, I prowled closer until I was near enough to Ms. Illinois Plates
to smell her expensive perfume. She and Sis moved to the edge of the balcony,
with its dramatic view of the center’s most famous feature—The Great Wall
of Potties
.

Two stories high,
floor to ceiling, row upon row, column upon column, hung toilets in a rainbow
of blush pinks, dusty blues, sea-foam greens, and harvest golds. Bizarre yet
strangely compelling; this display gave new meaning to the expression
off
the wall.
It was the Kodak moment of the tour; everyone wanted their
picture taken with the Great Wall as backdrop.

Illinois Plates
was fumbling with her camera. She didn’t notice as I bumped against her purse,
pretending to be checking out the Great Wall. My right hand spidered toward her
cellphone pocket, where she’d stuffed her car keys.

“Hey!” Her kid
suddenly wheeled around and eyeballed me. Two thousand dollars’ worth of
orthodontic wire on his teeth and he was decked out like a street thug, his
pants artfully ripped, his shoes unlaced, his T-shirt sagging to his knees. He
held up the electronic gadget he’d been playing with, which appeared capable of
sending e-mail, running television programs, and launching the Space Shuttle. I
didn’t know what it was. Spend a few years locked away and you come out feeling
like Rip Van Winkle. The gizmo was tuned to a local news station running the
ever-popular escaped convict story.

“It’s her,” the
kid shrilled. “The serial killer! The axe murderer!”

           
Everyone
on the balcony swiveled around to gape. I stood there frozen, forcing a smile
and trying to look like an innocent tourist.