When We Were Friends (15 page)

A repairman called later that afternoon, and told me it looked like there was water in my engine. He said they’d try and use a drying agent (I pictured a towel), and assuming the engine hadn’t been damaged, the car should be ready by tomorrow.

I didn’t ask him how much it would cost. Hopefully by tomorrow Sydney’s FedEx would have come, and it wouldn’t be an issue.

After hanging up, I pulled one of the baby books I’d bought out from the diaper bag. While Molly played on the floor beside me I began reading it aloud, cheered by the sound of her chattering, her attempt to keep up her end of the conversation.

There were things here I’d never even thought about: the perils of honey, the necessity of brushing her tiny teeth, the recommendation to introduce new foods slowly so I could check for allergies. But most important her development seemed to be okay, perhaps a tad behind schedule, but not abnormal. Soon she’d be pulling herself to her feet, then walking, talking and then potty training. I imagined it, the two of us swinging hands and chatting as we walked to a park or to nursery school.

But two years from now, assuming Sydney’s plan worked,
she’d
be the one holding Molly’s hand. I pictured myself back home reading this book month after month, learning the milestones that Molly was passing. I didn’t know how I could handle not being there for all of them.

•   •   •

Molly’s favorite activity seemed to be scanning the carpet for lint balls or pillow fluff, and cramming them into her mouth in an attempt to choke on them. Then, “Kaaack?” she’d say, looking dismayed. “Kaaack!” After which I’d scrape them off her tongue, and she’d be off to find more. I’d just saved her from swallowing what appeared to be the remnants of a spiderweb-wrapped bug, when I heard a stilted knock on the door. “Come in!” I said, expecting Muriel, but when the door opened it was Alex, holding a pizza box.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, “and I know I’m being presumptuous, but seeing as how your toe’s probably in no shape to go out, I thought maybe you could use dinner.” He held up a bottle of red wine. “And alcohol.”

“Alex!” I hurriedly tossed a dirty pair of panties under the bed, feeling a flush of pleasure. “What’re you doing here? Don’t you have somewhere better to be?”

“Actually, no. I mean I was supposed to be in Cincinnati by now, but by the time I got done helping you and then talking to Muriel, I was tired enough to realize I’d probably be a danger on the road. So when Muriel told me she had a free room, I decided to take it. Mind if I sit?”

I shook my head, trying to reconcile the presence of this man in my room with my preconceived notions of how men usually acted. Sure, he was just concerned after I’d imploded in his arms, but still, I couldn’t help feeling flattered.

He set the pizza box on the floor and sat down next to it, then fished into his pocket, pulled out a bottle of Advil and threw it to me. “Bought these too, because I thought you could use a painkiller that’s not expired.”

“Wow, thanks. Although actually I’m hardly hurting at all now.” Which was true; since he’d entered the room I’d completely forgotten I was supposed to be in pain.

Molly crawled toward the pizza box and waved her hands at it, then slapped it with both palms. “Molly!” I sat across from Alex and lifted her onto my lap. “Well
you
get the squashed pieces,” I said,
then turned to Alex. “So I didn’t realize you’re from Cincinnati. I assumed you lived around here.”

“Oh no, I’m not from here or Cincinnati, just passing through on my way up to New Hampshire. You saved me from a night at a Super 8 motel, so thank God I ran into you.”

I felt a flush of pleasure and bent to open the pizza box to keep him from seeing it. “Ooh, vegetables,” I said. “I haven’t seen a vegetable in days, other than macerated peas.”

“Yeah, pepper and mushroom pizza on the floor is just so classy. Feels like college with wine instead of illegal beer, and without the scratchy paper towels from the dorm men’s room.” He leaned back to look at me. “So. How about you? Where are you from?”

I thought fast. I couldn’t tell him I was from Virginia, I knew that. If he’d heard about the kidnapping, there was a chance he’d put two and two together. So here’s where the trajectory of that fast thinking led: from me, Leah the soap opera nurse, to the TV show
ER
. “I live in Chicago,” I said. “The heart of the city.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Well that’s the most southern Chicago accent I’ve ever heard.”

Oh crap. Damn Tidewater drawl, the dropped r’s and long ah’s and ay’s. “Well I’m originally from Atlanta, just moved up to Chicago a couple years ago.”

“A Georgia peach. That’s probably what I would’ve guessed.” He bit into his pizza and chewed, pausing as if deliberately choosing his next words. “So what brought you out to West Virginia?”

A beat of panic, then, “I was on my way to … Kansas?” I stared at my slice. It sounded so stupid, said aloud. Who the hell ever headed to Kansas? And what kind of dumbass would head to Kansas from Chicago by way of West Virginia?

But Alex just said, “Oh yeah? What’s in Kansas?”

“Just family.” I smiled quickly. “My uncle. Uncle Henry.” Yes, my Uncle Henry and Auntie Em, Cousin Dorothy and Toto too. “He has a farm.”

Alex raised his eyebrows, studying my face. I’d had no idea I was
such a staggeringly sucky liar. I ducked my head and said, “So how ’bout you? You said you’re from New Hampshire?”

“Yeah, the country. I mean
real
country like here except ten times more so, this hick town called Mendham in the White Mountains.”

“Never would’ve pegged you as a hick. Is it romantic being out in the middle of nowhere or just boring?”

“I really like it, actually; it gives me time to think. I just came from Miami, and the whole time I was there I was thinking, Why the heck would people choose to live here? The traffic, the obnoxiousness of just about everybody I met, and the flatness. I mean even the water’s flat.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t be my first choice of a vacation spot. The only people who want to be in Miami are in retirement communities or from Cuba.”

“I know.” He shrugged. “I was down there for my grandmother’s funeral.”

“Oh wow, I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be sorry. I mean her time had definitely come and gone. She was in a nursing home for ten years, couldn’t do much of anything except drool and grow a mustache.” He made a face. “I sound like a jerk, I know, but she wasn’t the nicest lady even when her mind was working right, and she only got worse when it stopped.”

I smiled. “And now she’s spinning in her grave.”

He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Don’t you get too dizzy.”

“You’re cruel, aren’t you. I never would’ve guessed.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m cruel, I’m just not sentimental about things that don’t deserve sentiment.” He reached for another slice of pizza. “Anyway, I’m not even a hundred percent sure how I ended up here. I got into Richmond and suddenly I decided to be impulsive and swing west. Because I’d never been to West Virginia, and I’d been getting Gauley River rafting brochures in the mail for years, so I decided why not?” He smiled at Molly. “ ’Course the reason why not turned out to be the water levels, they’re so low now that the only
trips are for people a lot more experienced than me. So I was heading back north when I ran into you. This morning I was pissed at driving all this way for nothing, but turned out it gave me a chance to meet the two of you, and you’re the best part of my trip so far. Which I guess isn’t saying much, but still.” He plucked a stray pepper from the pizza box. “And now you’re supposed to say,
Same here.
”

I smiled. “Same here,” I said, “totally.”

We spent the rest of the evening playing with Molly. Alex seemed to find deep delight in her quirks: the way she industriously studied every item she came across, then held it up to us with a questioning look as if expecting us to explain whatever she’d discovered; the way she alternated between pensive and deliriously happy, waving her arms squidlike for seemingly incomprehensible reasons.

“You can already tell so much about her personality,” he said.

“I know. I keep wondering how in a year she could’ve become such a complete, distinctive person. I already have a sense how cool she’ll be when she grows up, quick to laugh, she’ll be able to let hardships just roll off her back.”

“And curious about everything and wanting to share what she discovers.”

“She’ll be a scientist,” I said.

“Or a clergyman.”

“Forget the clergy, I think she may be the second coming.”

He tilted his head, smiling. “Then I guess we better get on her good side.”

It was almost nine when Molly finally fell asleep, and although I’d expected Alex to make a quick exit, instead he stayed well into the night, the two of us chatting, but not in the cocktail party way one chats with people one doesn’t know, those surface conversations about how pleased or displeased one is about the weather. Instead our conversation was much more intimate—in part, maybe, because
of the inescapable intimacy that comes when someone has seen you cry. But also because I wanted to give Alex as few details of my personal life as possible, anything that might allow him to later identify me definitively to the police. So that night felt like a strange mix of deep truths and evasions, discussing our philosophies of life without actually discussing our lives.

And the conversation was fascinating because
Alex
was fascinating, saw the world completely different than I was used to, with a contagious sort of optimism and faith in mankind. And although optimism and faith were not part of my everyday lexicon, talking with him made me feel, for the first time maybe ever,
hopeful
.

But there were also times, prompted by nothing that I could perceive, when his face would darken for just a beat before he became himself again. I found myself trying to interpret the reasons behind these pauses, studying the conversation leading up to them, actually finding myself pleased to see them, since one-dimensional cheer is both grating and semi-insane. The darkness made me want to know more about who he was.

It was almost midnight when Alex suddenly jumped up from his seat. “I’ve been awful keeping you awake! I was planning to just share the pizza and then scoot out to let you get some sleep.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. I’m not tired at all.”

“You want some Ambien? I’m an insomniac; I get these awful nightmares and it’s like my body tries to protect me from them by keeping me awake, but the Ambien works wonders.”

“You’re like my personal pharmacy,” I said, “but no, thanks, as soon as I said I wasn’t tired, I realized I was lying.”

He set a hand on Molly’s head. “I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow, then. This was great, Leah, it’s been awhile since I met someone I clicked so well with, who could carry on intelligent conversation.”

I smiled, my mind racing to find something wittily self-deprecating to say but coming up only with, “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

After he’d left I lay there in bed, feeling both little and huge, the
air in the room seeming changed, full somehow, like he’d left something of himself behind. And for the first time since seeing Sydney on TV three nights ago, I didn’t feel afraid.

I thought I’d have a hard time sleeping, that I might spend the night replaying every aspect of our conversation, too late conjuring cleverer responses and/or cringing at my lameness. This had always been my tendency. But one minute I was lying there in bed and the next I was waking up with a full bladder and sludgy teeth, the sky magenta with the rising sun.

I rose stiffly and knelt by Molly’s carrier. “Good morning!” I sang softly. “Good morning!”

Without opening her eyes, Molly brought both fists to her face and rubbed fitfully at her cheeks like she was brushing away flies, which made me laugh. I didn’t know why I felt so happy, I had no right to be, and the feeling was so unfamiliar I couldn’t tell if it was real or just a hallucinatory side effect of sleep deprivation.

Molly and I took our bath and then went back to the bedroom to play, waiting for sounds in the rest of the house. I kept up a constant stream of chatter as we worked a wooden puzzle, telling her about the animals on the pieces, the sounds they made, the food they liked to eat. And she listened with her head tilted, periodically interjecting a string of consonants that sounded like words in Greek or Arabic.

The
Toddler Years
book had said she understood much more than it seemed, and so I imagined we were having an actual conversation. She told me how pigs were her favorite, and I told her I agreed. She asked if I’d ever owned a dog and I told her how I’d always wanted one, had been angry at Star’s fear of claws and fleas. “Maybe we’ll get one someday,” I mused, imagining how it would be to bring one home for Christmas, the delight on Molly’s face.

But of course by Christmas, home for me would be back in Virginia. Or, in jail.

A little before eight
A.M
. the air started to fill with the salt-smoke of bacon, and sitting on the bed with Molly, my mind swam with vague memories of the mornings before Star got sick, when she could still stomach the idea of lighting a gas stove. I’d wake before school to the sizzle of eggs or griddle cakes, Star greeting me in her cheap, flowered apron with a mug of cocoa complete with whipped cream, singing while she jiggled a pan on the stove.
So embarrassing!
I’d told her then, which of course I now hated myself for.

But even back then she’d begun documenting tragedies and atrocities. “It’s a sign!” she said of everything: warring tribes in Africa and plagues in Southeast Asia, drive-by shootings and children stolen from front lawns. Hairline cracks that showed the world was on the verge of shattering completely, and she clipped out the articles and saved them in scrapbooks, like women store mementos from their children’s lost youth, things not to be forgotten. She pored over them incessantly, guarding us against them by watching the news and filling our closets with disinfecting wipes.

Until, when I was fifteen, it all became too much. I don’t know if it was the sheer volume of catastrophes or one mysterious, unspecified catastrophe in particular, but it was as if she all at once seemed to collapse inwardly, her world shrinking to the size of our block, and then the size of our house. “What is it?” I asked her again and again. “What happened? What’s going on?” But the questioning just made her cry, so soon I stopped asking. Maybe she’d always been this way deep down. Had held onto the pretense of sanity as long as possible, the way people hold onto intolerable marriages until their children are old enough to handle the end.