Leaving Blythe River: A Novel (4 page)

Even a sense of how much time he’d been walking seemed beyond him.

He didn’t know exactly where he was—not because he didn’t know the area, or wasn’t capable of finding his way around in Manhattan, but because he didn’t bother to look. At anything. Street signs, familiar businesses. Nothing got in.

He remembered traffic noise. And cold. Not much else.

Now and then a thought would force its way through. For a minute or so he found himself unable to prevent replaying his lunch with Jennifer in this new light. Everything looked different. Everything felt reframed. Her enthusiasm at getting to know him seemed so obvious now, its meaning revealed. More the interest of a woman who hoped to be his stepmother. Or maybe she’d been told she could be at some point.

And that comment she’d made about how they were all looking forward to Ethan and his mother’s trip . . .

He forced the thoughts away again. Forced his brain to shutter itself, lock the door. Put out the lights. Admit nothing and no one.

It could have been two minutes later when he noticed the man across the street. It could have been two hours. Time had become a yardstick with no lines and no numbers. Something you could only stare at while feeling perplexed.

Two things about the man broke through. First, he was looking at Ethan. Not glancing. Looking. Second, Ethan thought this was not the first time he’d seen this guy. Ethan hadn’t been paying attention the first time, or the second time if there had been one. But in that slightly jolting moment, Ethan played back the tape in his brain and realized he had made eye contact with this man before.

Ethan stopped. He looked behind and around himself, searching for the assurance of others. Of someone else on this block with him. There was no one else.

The man didn’t stop walking, but neither did he take his eyes off Ethan. He veered diagonally in Ethan’s direction and began to cross the street.

Ethan broke into a run. He didn’t look around, but he could hear footsteps.

Ethan found himself level with an alley, and made a sudden right-hand turn into it. The minute he did, he knew he’d made a mistake. The man would see which way he’d gone. In theory it worked, to make a turn to throw someone off the trail. But the footsteps told him the man wasn’t far enough behind for it to work now.

Ethan couldn’t see if this new route was a dead end. He saw a delivery truck parked in the alley. It was impossible to see around it. Maybe he could run around the truck and keep going. Maybe he would be trapped there. Irreparably trapped.

Ethan could feel his heart pounding in his ears. He’d been afraid in his life—many times, in fact. He’d been afraid of being hit or taunted. Afraid of getting in trouble at home or at school. Afraid of humiliation, or losing something that mattered. But he had never thought he might be about to die. Until that moment.

The thought of a dead end was just too terrible, so Ethan made another huge mistake. He turned and tried to sprint back to the street.

Something big and dark blocked the light from the streetlamps, creating shadow, and then a hand grasped his throat. Ethan felt himself slammed up against the brick of a building, hard enough to knock the wind out of him.

He held very still, in a state of complete surrender. He could think of no other survival plan but to hope to survive.

The hand disappeared from his throat and Ethan swallowed desperately, still trying to restart his breathing. He felt the sharp tip of what could only be a knife pressed high on his throat, just firmly enough that Ethan could feel the sensation of its presence underneath the base of his tongue.

Ethan looked at the man’s face. It was reflexive. He didn’t really want to see it, but still his eyes went there. Flickered up for a second.

The man’s eyes looked dark and cold. Dead. Like no one lived behind them. Like nothing mattered. He wore a stubble of beard that he’d probably been growing for several days.

“What’re you looking at?” The man growled the words more than spoke them.

Ethan could smell the man’s rancid breath. He quickly averted his eyes.

The man’s other hand, the one that wasn’t holding a knife to Ethan’s throat, began exploring. Ethan was relieved to feel that his pockets were the target. Giving the man all the money he had was nothing. Easy. That was the least of his fears.

He felt his small wad of bills extracted. The man held the money close up under his face and peered at it in the dark.

“You better have more than just this.”

That’s when Ethan knew he was going to die. Because he didn’t. He didn’t have more. He had maybe twenty dollars. Maybe thirty. He had his passport in his jacket pocket. And nothing else. His mother had been holding everything else they would need.

Ethan desperately needed to swallow, but he couldn’t. Because he didn’t dare increase the pressure of his neck against the tip of the knife. The more he knew he couldn’t swallow, the more he needed to, and it was a panicky feeling, as if he were drowning. For a flash he wished it could be over. If he was going to die, better to die in that moment. Not have to endure the terror of waiting.

He felt his watch roughly pulled off his wrist. The expensive watch his father had given him as a gift when he turned sixteen.

“You better have more than just this,” the man said again, crushing Ethan’s hope that the watch would be enough.

He wanted to say that it was, that it should be. That it was worth a lot. But he couldn’t speak. Even if the knife had been withdrawn from that frighteningly vulnerable soft spot, Ethan could not have made so much as a squeak.

The man patted Ethan’s back jeans’ pockets for a wallet. He rummaged in Ethan’s jacket pockets. Pulled out the passport. Glanced at it. Threw it away on the filthy concrete.

The horrible face leaned in until its nose was just an inch from Ethan’s nose. Ethan felt a small trickle of blood, just a drop or two, as the knife nicked him. He pressed his eyes tightly shut.

“Bye . . . bye,” the man said.

Then the knife was gone. But Ethan fully expected it back. He was going to cut Ethan’s throat—that’s what Ethan thought. That’s how it felt. Ethan felt strangely sure it was his last moment on earth. He waited for it. Just for a split second he thought he knew what it felt like to be dead.

Still the moment dragged on.

He heard a light shuffling noise at the end of the alley, and instinctively opened his eyes.

He was alone.

His bones seemed to dissolve, and he slid down the rough brick and landed on his butt in the alley. He wrapped his arms around himself.

It took Ethan a minute or more to realize he was trembling. And that he was alive.

Chapter Four: Far

Seven weeks before his father disappeared

The phone woke him with a start. Ethan lay in bed feeling his heart pound.

His mother had picked it up on the first ring. But Ethan still couldn’t get back to sleep. Because the shock of the sudden sound had been replaced with a different, more concrete fear. It was dark outside his windows. His alarm clock said it was barely five.

Nobody calls at five in the morning with good news.

He could hear his mother talking from her bedroom on the other side of the wall, but faintly. Just a trace of voice. He couldn’t make out words.

He slid out of bed and padded quietly to their common wall. Pressed his ear there. But her voice was still nothing but a buzzy, garbled series of sounds. He slipped back into bed and waited. Waited to hear her hang up the phone. Or even to hear her voice go silent. Then he would go in and ask her what was wrong.

Ethan opened his eyes to see that it was after seven. He had fallen back asleep in spite of himself. In spite of everything.

He found his mom sitting at the kitchen table, her face in her hands.

“What happened?” he asked her. “What was that call?”

“Oh,” she said. Sudden and unbalanced, as if he’d wakened her. “Ethan. You’re up. It’s your grandmother.”

Ethan just stood a moment in his pajamas and bare feet, waiting for the jolt of her simple statement to settle. Ethan had assumed it would be about his dad. That all bad news tracked back to Dad.

“Did she die?”

“No. But it’s a bad situation. She had a stroke. A serious one.”

Ethan slumped into a chair without even meaning to.

“A stroke
on top of
the cancer? Does that mean she won’t even live as long as the doctors thought?”

“Not necessarily. But it does mean that she won’t be able to take care of herself in the meantime. And that means nobody to look after Grandpa, either. She was the only thing keeping him from leaving the stove on all day or wandering off.”

“I didn’t know he’d gotten that bad.”

Ethan waited for her to say more. To get to the part about what this really meant. What would have to happen now. She didn’t speak for a long time, and he didn’t ask her any questions. Because these were her parents. And he knew she was upset. So was he, but in that moment it seemed right to let it be more about her.

“When it rains, it pours,” she said at last. On a long sigh.

“I never did know what that meant.”

“It means everything happens at once. So, you know I have to go to Albany and stay with her, right?”

“Guess so,” he said. “When?”

“As soon as I can. She’s in the hospital but your grandpa’s alone.”

“So . . . do I go with you? Or do I stay here and keep going to school?”

“I’m thinking neither,” she said. She lifted her head away from her hands. Looked Ethan in the eye for the first time that morning. He winced inwardly at what he saw there. Something was coming. And he wasn’t going to like it. “I really can’t have you there, kiddo. I’m sorry. This is going to be so hard for me. I’ll be sleeping on the couch, and there’s no room for you, and I won’t have an ounce of energy left over to take care of anybody else. You know how I am when I’m under stress like this.”

He did.

“Fine. I’ll stay here.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m seventeen. I can stay alone.”

“I would have said so. Before what happened. But think about it, Ethan. On your own in Manhattan. Every time you have to go to school or go out for food . . . The way you’ve been since the mugging, it just doesn’t seem right.”

In the pause that followed, Ethan mulled the flavor of her words. “The way you’ve been . . .” She probably hadn’t meant to let on that it was a problem for her, the way he’d been. That she thought it was time he pulled himself together. But those sentiments had a way of bleeding through.

“So where do I go?”

“I think you should go stay with your dad until . . . you know. Until things are resolved with my parents. I’ll probably have to find some kind of home for Grandpa. I’ll stay with Grandma for as long as she’s got.”

Ethan opened his mouth to speak, but she stopped him with a raised hand. Like a stern crossing guard. Someone whose authority you don’t question.

“Please don’t, Ethan. I’m begging you. I know you don’t like the idea. I know this is hard for you. But it’s hard for me, too. So please, please . . . just do this. Just accept it. I’ll make it up to you ten times over when all this is past. You don’t have to forgive him. You don’t even have to speak to him. Please just go, so I can know you’re okay. And then I can give my energy to Mom and Dad.”

Ethan closed his mouth again.

He got up from the table. Found the cereal he liked best. Took it down from the counter. Pulled out a bowl and a spoon.

It didn’t seem right, not even letting him argue his side of the thing. Then again, she was right that he hadn’t been about to tell her anything that could be considered breaking news.

He sat down at the table again. Realized he hadn’t gotten milk out of the fridge. But it was too much trouble and he didn’t care. He wasn’t hungry anyway. Just going through a bunch of empty, shocked motions.

“Can I at least go see Grandma one more time before I go to Dad’s?”

Her eyes came up, and softened. “Of course. Of course you can.”

“I don’t even know where Dad’s living now,” he said. “He hasn’t even tried to call. Does he know I’m coming?”

“I called him.”

“And he doesn’t mind?”

“Mind? Are you kidding? He’d give his right arm for the chance to redeem himself with you.”

Ethan only shook his head. And kept shaking it for a long time. Too long. But he still never managed to process what she’d just said.

“So where is he living? Is he in a hotel in Midtown or something?”

“No. He needed to get farther away than that. He’s on a sort of . . . sabbatical.”

“Please don’t tell me he’s living way the hell far out of the city, like Yonkers or Flushing or upstate or something.”

He watched his mom’s face, but couldn’t quite interpret her expression. Something like a cross between dread and some dark amusement.

“It’s way outside the city all right,” she said. “But Yonkers or Flushing it’s not.”