Leaving Omaha
F
or the last three hours, Cindy Toland had maintained such a tight grip on the steering wheel that prickly waves of cold spread like dry ice up her wrists and elbows. The chilly numbness went deep, like a painful sickness, into her joints and bones. She alternately shook one hand, then the other. Leaning forward, she stared through the windshield at the rain-slick, black stretch of Interstate 80 as it unspooled in front of her. The wipers slapped back and forth with a steady, sloshy beat. The beams from her car’s headlights shot ahead of her, impotent translucent rays that did little to beat back the hot, pressing August night. Only the broken white lines of the passing lanes were in sharp focus, strobing like the steady flashes of runway landing lights.
Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I’m doing this
… She sawed her teeth back and forth over her lower lip. A hot stinging filled her eyes and a sour taste flooded the back of her throat. She wanted to cry—
had
to cry, but she couldn’t let herself do it. Not now. Not yet. Maybe once she was safe…
A slipstream of cool air whistled in through the narrow opening of the driver’s window. Through it, Cindy heard her car’s tires on the wet pavement. It sounded like the long, slow tearing of cloth. She was tired, and the unvarying noise made her feel even more tired, but she shook her head and forced her eyes to stay wide open.
She tensed at the lights of cars coming toward her or from behind. Her foot would snap up off the accelerator, and she would check the speedometer, making sure it wasn’t reading even one mile over the speed limit. She was convinced that every car on the Interstate tonight was an Iowa State Police cruiser. Any minute now, she was sure she’d see the sudden flicker of blue lights start up on the roof of a distant vehicle.
Cindy couldn’t stop wondering if she was going to have to face the rest of her life like this, living with a cold, hard knot in her stomach, always looking over her shoulder and up ahead. Would she ever feel normal again? Whatever the hell
normal
was!
A cold sheen of beaded moisture stood out on her face. Her throat was parched, but she had finished the last of the Citrus Cooler she’d bought at the rest stop outside of Des Moines more than an hour ago. Now her bladder was full, swelling with dull pressure in her abdomen. She didn’t dare take an exit to find a roadside rest area. Not yet. Not until she had at least another hour between her and Omaha. And even then, it might not be safe. In fact, she knew it might never be safe again…
Every now and then, her gaze would shift from the road ahead to the rearview mirror. Her pursed lips, cheekbones, and eyebrows were underlit by the eerie green of the dashboard lights. The dim reflection of her fear-rounded eyes stared back at her, unsettling her even more.
Those are the eves of a crazy woman
. A tiny whimper escaped from her—the sound of a small animal in pain.
She chanced looking longer into the rearview mirror, where she could barely discern other faces, small and round and ghastly white, floating in the darkness behind her back. They looked like sad, wrinkled balloons. A wave of chills rippled up her spine, and the flesh at the base of her neck turned slimy. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but the words—whatever they might have been—died in her throat, bottled up like a poison she dared not release.
The road continued to unroll in front of her, an eternal, straight black ribbon as shiny as black enamel in the glow of her headlights. At times, Cindy had the disorienting sensation that she wasn’t moving at all, that she was sitting perfectly still as the night washed over her like a cold, black river, and the darkness closed in behind her.
“I want to go home.”
The voice was faint, an almost inaudible gasp above the ripping sound of the tires. Cindy gripped the steering wheel even tighter, if that was possible, and her teeth sawed across her lower lip faster, almost drawing blood. She cleared her throat, about to say something, but couldn’t sort out the right words from the cascade of thoughts that filled her mind. She knew she should act with confidence, show no weakness, but the strain was finally getting to her. Now that she had
really
done it, she wasn’t at all sure she had the strength. She stared at the faces reflected in the rearview mirror, disoriented by the impression that they weren’t really there.
“Aunt Cindy… I want to go home.”
The voice almost light and airy, a little girl’s voice, but there was a terrified twist to it that cut Cindy to the quick.
“Yes, honey,” Cindy said, her own voice croaking like a frog.
“I—I want to go home now… Can we go home?”
Clenching her jaw, Cindy glanced into the rearview and shook her head. For a moment, the two faces hovering in the darkness behind her blurred as tears filled her eyes. She saw two pairs of eyes—scared and lonely, with tears glistening like the rain-slick road—staring back at her.
“No, honey,” Cindy said in a tight whisper. “I—I can’t take you back home. I—I’m sorry, but…”
“I’m hungry and I’m cold and I have to go pee,” said another voice.
Cindy’s gaze shifted back to the road for a second, then connected with the dim reflection of a boy’s face.
“Billy… honey, look, I just want to… to drive a little while longer, okay? I just want to make sure we… that we’re not being followed.”
“But why can’t we go back home with our father?”
The boy was obviously struggling to sound tough, and even through her panic and pain, Cindy had to admire him. “We just can’t, all right? We’re going someplace else.” She was struggling to control her voice. “We’re going someplace where we’ll all be safe and happy.”
“But I just wanna go home!” the boy said in a voice that perfectly mixed demand with frightened pleading.
“I’m sorry, but we just can’t,” Cindy said, but even before she had finished her statement, the sound of a heart-wrenching cry filled the car. The little girl’s frail voice fought through the hitching sobs that wracked her.
“I—I want to—want to see my
mo-o-o-m-m-m-my
!”
The last word rose and rose until it became a coyote-like howl that pierced like a cold, steel drill to the center of Cindy’s soul.
“Honey—” Cindy said. A hot, choking sensation filled her mouth. “Your mommy’s de—” Her voice suddenly cut off. Panicking, she stared at the road and corrected her steering. She blinked her eyes rapidly and wiped them with the back of her wrist so she could see what she was doing.
“You have to trust me—both of you,” she said. At least to her own ears, her voice sounded oddly like someone else’s. “I’m taking you to where we’ll all be happy… I mean
really
happy from now on.”
“But—but how … how
can
we be?” the little girl said between wrenching gasps. “How can we be… when even the… even she’s so sad?”
Cindy shifted her gaze to the rearview mirror again and let out a gasp. For a flickering instant, she thought she saw a third face, pale and translucent, floating above the children in the darkness behind her. But when she blinked her eyes, she realized that she was looking at her own reflection.
“Who’s sad?” Cindy asked even as a heavy pounding sound filled her ears.
“The blue lady,” said the little girl. “The blue lady’s sad. She’s crying all the time…
all
the time…”
ONE MONTH BEFORE
The Final Argument
D
ebbie Harris cringed when she heard the garage door roll down and then slam shut. It sounded like a mass of boulders, thundering down a hillside, stopping with a final rumbling shudder. She could tell, just by the way it sounded, that Alex was drunk on his ass; and now that he was home, she knew that it would all start up again, the same way it always started up.
Thank God, she thought, at least the kids are upstairs, asleep.
Just like nearly every other night of the week, Alex had gone out drinking with his buddies straight from work. Three or more nights out of five, he never even came home for supper. For better than a year, now, Debbie hadn’t even bothered to set a place for him at the dining room table. Why go through the agony? Why deal with the heart-breaking, unspoken questions on both Billy’s and Krissy’s faces?
Where’s Daddy? How come Daddy’s not home for supper?
Debbie guessed Alex had been out to the Eagle’s Nest, the bar at the airport, either that or else one of the strip joints in downtown Omaha. It was well after midnight now, and she knew with dread certainty that he would burst into the house, stewed to the gills. God, most nights he was lucky to make it home without getting stopped by a cop or killed in an accident.
No, wait a minute, that wasn’t luck!
She
would have been lucky if one of these nights he wrapped his car around a telephone pole. But she was tired of waiting for something like that, some divine intervention to get her out of her own, private hell. After months of agonizing over it, of talking to her sister and her minister, she had made up her mind. Now, if only she had the courage to follow through. But, like so many times before, she was afraid that when it came right down to saying the words
I’m leaving you and I’m taking the kids
, she would chicken out.
Lord knows, in the past he’d beat her for saying much less!
Sitting on the edge of her chair at the kitchen table, she focused on the open kitchen window, waiting to see his shadow slide across the screen as he made his way up the steps to the side door. She regretted that she hadn’t gone up to bed and at least faked being asleep, but she knew from painful experience that he would come upstairs and wake her up as soon as he didn’t find her downstairs. No, facing him here in the kitchen was best. At least the kids might not wake up once they started in with the yelling.
And, oh, yes—there would be yelling tonight!
Debbie folded her arms across her chest, heaved a deep sigh, and rubbed her biceps in an attempt to get rid of the spray of goose bumps that had covered her arms in spite of the pressing heat of the June night. No breeze came in through the open window; nothing to stir the air. That was early summer in Nebraska, for you. The curtains hung there, damp and limp from the humidity. From outside came the high, whining buzz of the cicadas, and below that, like the clopping of an axe, Debbie heard the erratic scuff of Alex’s shoes as he staggered up the concrete walkway.
Why does it have to be this way?
she wondered as she twined her fingers together in her lap.
Why in the name of Christ does it have to be this way?
Tears filled her eyes and threatened to spill, but she sniffed loudly and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands, fighting hard for composure. She thought back on what her minister had told her, that she was a vessel of God, and that she had an obligation to stop the suffering of one of God’s beautiful creatures.
Don’t cry! Just don’t cry! The time for crying is long past!
she told herself. She knew, if he saw her sitting here, bawling her eyes out, he might not even give her a chance to say what she had to say before he started in on her.
Debbie sniffed, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and shook her head tightly.
Christ, as if he needed an excuse to start in on her. She could be wearing the wrong color nightgown or the dishes for supper, which he hadn’t come home for, would still be in the sink, and
that
would be enough to set him off. She had learned over the last eleven years of marriage to this man that nothing—absolutely
nothing
she did would please him. And that’s why—tonight she had decided that she had to tell Alex that she was leaving him. She’d made up her mind. Upstairs, she had a suitcase packed for her and one for each of the kids, and she was going to spend a few days or weeks at her sister’s house until she figured out what she was going to do, but this was it. She was leaving! She had to if she wanted to hang onto whatever shreds of sanity and self-respect she still had. She
had
to if she wanted to spare Billy and Krissy any more of the agony of living in the same house with a man as violent as Alex.
She jumped when she saw the dark smear of his shadow shift across the screen. His foot stomped heavily on the first step, sounding like a gunshot in the night. Debbie jerked forward and almost stood up, but then eased back into the chair.
No, she told herself. Don’t go to the door to meet him. Don’t even stand up. Stay cool and calm, as detached as you can be, so you won’t be an easy target. Sit here and as rationally and as quietly as you can, say what you have to say. Don’t give him a chance to react, much less overreact. And maybe, if you’re lucky, if there truly is a God who watches over widows, orphans, and maybe even abused wives, maybe he’s so damned drunk he’ll pass out before he can beat the living shit out of you.
Maybe…
Just maybe…
2
“What the fuck’re you lookin’ at?”
Alex pulled the screen door open and braced it by leaning against it as he gripped both sides of the door jamb and glared into the house. The overhead kitchen light was much too bright. It stung his eyes, making them water. The whining sounds of the cicadas rose higher and higher, spiraling around him like the whine of those goddamned jet engines he worked on at the airport five fucking days a week. He couldn’t see Debbie’s face clearly; it was nothing more than a watery blur, looming at him from the glaring yellow room, but damned if it didn’t look like she was smiling at him.
Christ, the bitch was
laughing
at him!
“What’s so fuckin’ funny?”
“…nothing…” came the reply, but he could barely hear her voice over the buzzing cicada sounds and the high-pitched ringing inside his head. For several seconds, he thought that he might still be staring up into the spotlight, and that the woman he was looking at wasn’t his wife at all, but one of the dancers who would soon begin to gyrate to the heavy beat of the music and start taking off her clothes.
Breathing deeply and shaking his shoulders, Alex took a step into the room, letting the door swing shut behind him. When it hit with a bang, he noticed Debbie’s reaction: she jerked back quickly as if he had slapped her. And that—goddamnit!—was exactly what he was going to do if the bitch didn’t stop sitting there, smiling at him…
laughing
at him! The overhead light shadowed her eyes, and she looked like a raccoon—like a big-assed, fucking crazy, grinning raccoon.
“You got supper ready for me?” he asked.
He took a few lurching steps into the house toward the refrigerator, then tripped. He had to grab onto the door handle to keep from falling. The tile pattern on the floor spun around like the colored lights of a merry-go-round.
“I—there might be a few slices of left-over pizza,” she said. Her hand lifted and, trembling, pointed at the refrigerator.
“Pizza? Cold pizza? You expect me to eat fucking
cold
pizza?”
“I can put it in the microwave for you,” she said mildly, but he noticed that she made no motion to stand up. She just sat there, staring at him with that dumb-ass smile plastered across her face.
I’ll take care of that smile
, he thought.
I’ll wipe the goddamned floor with it if you don’t cut it out!
He moved toward her but tripped again on his own feet and banged into the table. Debbie let out a thin squeal and leaned back, but not fast enough to avoid his hand as he swung it around at her. The palm caught her squarely on the side of the face with a loud crack, and her head snapped back.
“Then get it for me!” he shouted, fumbling to pull out a chair. He sat down heavily and let loose a rumbling burp. “And get me a fuckin’ beer while you’re at it!”
He was satisfied by the expression of utter surprise in her eyes as she clamped both hands over her face and stared at him, trembling. He felt even better when she took her hand away and stood up, and he saw the wide, red welt blossoming like a flower on her cheek.
“That’ll teach you to just sit there like a fuckin’ stooge when I’m hungry.”
He cupped his face in his hands as he leaned forward onto the table. One elbow slipped off the edge, but he caught himself before he banged his head on the table.
“So what’d you do today?” he asked, watching like a hungry hawk as his wife took the cold pizza from the refrigerator, quietly spread three slices on a paper plate, covered them with a paper towel, and slipped them into the microwave oven. The beep-beeps the oven made as she set the timer felt like thin spikes were being driven into his ears. He glared at her, clenching his fists tightly.
“What’s with you tonight? Cat got your tongue? I asked you what the fuck you did today? You go shopping, or out to eat with your numb-nuts sister, or what?”
Debbie turned and looked at him, but she remained silent. Was that fucking irritating grin still on her face? God
damn
he was going to have to teach her a lesson if she kept that shit up!
“Noth—nothing,” Debbie finally replied with a quick shake of her head. She leaned back against the counter as though she needed it for support.
“Well I’d say you’re acting pretty damned peculiar,” Alex snarled. “What’d you do, total the car or something? Or did you blow the rest of this week’s grocery money on a fucking dress or something?”
“Well, I did do a little shopping,” she said. Her voice trembled terribly and was still almost too low for him to hear. “I—I had to get Billy some new sneakers.”
“Oh, yeah—and I suppose you had to buy him some of them fuckin’ designer sneakers, right? Nikes or Reeboks, right? Them kind that cost like a hundred dollars.”
“No. Actually, I got a pretty good deal at—”
She stopped talking when the sudden high-pitched alarm sounded from the microwave. Alex plugged his ears until the sound stopped, then sat back, hooked his thumbs through his belt loops, and watched her with slitted eyes as she slid the plate across the table to him. Was it his imagination, or was she still shying away from him, cringing, like she expected him to hit her again? Christ, didn’t she realize he only hit her when she irritated the shit out of him, when she
made
him do it?
He frowned as he looked down at the pizza in front of him. The cheese had turned into a thin, black crust, and watery tomato sauce ran onto the plate, threatening to soak through within seconds. Steam curled up like thin fog. The burned tomato smell almost made him gag.
“This is the best you can do?”
Debbie shrugged and went back to leaning against the counter. “I… had no idea when you’d be home.”
“You tryin’ to scald me or what?” Alex said, prodding the pizza with his forefinger. “And by the way, I thought I asked you to get me a beer, too.”
Debbie stayed where she was for a moment. Alex watched as her lips moved back and forth. She looked like she was trying like hell to say something, but she didn’t make a sound.
“Well… I’m waiting…”
“Alex,” she said at last, after clearing her throat. “I think we… we have to have a talk.”
“Oh, yeah? A talk? ’Bout what? Tell me the truth. You didn’t fuck up the car or anything, did you?”
Debbie was chewing on her lower lip as she shook her head in denial.
“Not about the car,” she said, barely a whisper. “About us.”
Alex licked his forefinger clean as he glared up at her. The light in the room was still much too bright for him. He had to squint to see her… to see if she was still
laughing
at him.
“And what do you want to say about
us
?” he asked, letting the words slur to show just how little he cared.
Debbie stood there, wringing her hands. Her eyes kept shifting around the room, from him to the door to the window and then back to him.
“I—uh, I don’t know quite how to put this,” she said, “but over the last few weeks, you know, I’ve been thinking… a lot, and I … I don’t like what’s happening between you and me, and I—”
“Don’t like
what
?” Alex shouted, so loud it hurt his throat. He was pleased to see her cringe away from him. She was getting the message. She knew who the luck was in charge around here!
“I… I don’t like how you’ve been acting,” she said. “How you’re never around and how you’re—”
“Never around?” he shouted. He clenched his fist and brought it down hard onto the table. “Never
around
! You mean I’m never around ’cause I’m out at the fucking airport ten or twelve fucking hours a day, bustin’ my goddamned knuckles, workin’ on that machinery? Is
that
why I’m never around?”