Wanted! (3 page)

But it was no state trooper. The driver rolled his window down and leaned out to yell at her. Alice was scarlet with shame, and weak with escape. What if she had totaled Dad’s Corvette?

Her mouth tasted awful, as if she’d thrown up and forgotten it.

She waved at the Crown Vic to apologize, but her fingers didn’t let go of the steering wheel after all and there was no wave. She crept forward, unable to solve this, leaving the driver’s furious voice behind.

There was the ice cream shack, centered on a parking lot of broken asphalt and the kind of pebbles that lodge in shoes and tires. The place seemed to have no name, just a big brightly painted wooden cone and scoop nailed to the gable. She wondered how they had a telephone listing without a name.

She circled around the back of the shack, riding the brake. Edging up the far side meant she faced frontward and wouldn’t have to back the car again.

Alice stopped.

Branches from pine trees relaxed onto the long scarlet hood. The engine would be hot, and the sap from the trees would make sticky spots hard to get off. Dad would be crazed.

But Alice could not drive another inch.

She turned the engine off and sat trembling. Waves of panic at all those near misses washed over her like ocean tides, as if now, now when she had gotten here, now she was going to drown.

It was several minutes before she was breathing like a person. She could see the road down which she’d come, and there were no dead squirrels on the pavement. That was good.

When would Dad get here? What were they going to do with two cars? She absolutely could not drive this Corvette again. She would have to drive the Blazer. No, they would have to abandon the Blazer, and somebody would have to come back for it another day, because Alice was ready to be the passenger again. Or forever.

Alice tilted the steering column, adjusted the seat, and fixed the rearview mirror. Now that she was done driving, she could see. Good job, Alice! she complimented herself sarcastically.

Only then did Alice remember the voice in her house. Herself under the car, hiding. Now a chilly ripple of fear traveled across her skin.

Driving had consumed her so completely that she in turn completely forgot what was making her drive so frantically.

Why hadn’t she called the police? Why hadn’t she called Dad? Why hadn’t she behaved like a sensible person? So that’s what panic was. It was one part stupidity, one part deafness, one part blind flight.

Chills in her bones ran down her fingers, and she found herself clenching and unclenching her fists.

And yet, the more she sat in the sun, the less likely it seemed that she, Alice, had hidden beneath a car from a vicious intruder who talked of killing. The memory dulled and became remote, like last week’s television show.

Alice shoved the heavy door open and got out of the car and stood in the sun, the welcome, normal, almost-hot sun of early spring.

She slammed the door of the Corvette. The solid chunk of metal going where it belonged soothed her. Her legs held her up. They seemed to have recovered from the stretching act of the dozen miles she’d driven.

The keys were hanging from the ignition, but here in the yellow sun it seemed okay to leave them. This was a normal place for normal people. Soon Dad would be here, and he would have a normal explanation.

Alice wanted to wait for Dad before she ordered, but she was too thirsty. She walked over to the little screened window and asked for a vanilla shake and a Coke. The Coke was handed to her right away, in a tall thin paper cup, completely different from the cups anybody else used, and that was part of the appeal; everything here had an old-time look and texture. She drank the Coke greedily, quenching her thirst, chewing on ice shards.

Through the screen she watched the boy mix that wonderful, heavy vanilla ice cream from the farm store down the road with milk from the farm itself. The world’s best shake.

She paid, stuck a straw into the thick white bubbles, and sucked hard to get it to rise to her mouth. Vanilla was such a friendly flavor. A family kind of taste.

There was a strange blankness in her head, as if she had had thoughts once, and would have them again, but wasn’t having them now. She could taste, and see, and be warm. But she could not think.

She went back to sit in the car and wait for her father.

He didn’t come.

She had finished her shake and finished her Coke and taken both cups to the trash and still Dad had not come.

The sun made the interior of the Vette hot in a cozy, afternoon nap kind of way. By now, Alice felt proud of her drive, proud of having pulled it off, eager to boast to Dad. Maybe he drove the Vette in part because everybody else on the road was envious.

She gave the key a quarter turn for power only and the radio came on. Dad listened to the station with the best traffic reports, which did not mean the best music. Alice had always wanted to be a traffic person, leaning out the window of the helicopter, spotting wrecks, and making snide remarks about people who could not drive, and rubberneckers who made it all worse, and recognizing cars by their roofs. From a copter, Dad’s Corvette would be the easiest car on the road to spot.

Alice leaned forward to tune the radio to a better station and saw her unfinished nails. She got out the polish. Its acrid, distinct smell filled the car.

The radio left off advertising and sports and moved to local news. Alice was surprised at how much time had passed. How long had it taken her to drive here? How long had she sat, mindless in the sun?

“Tragedy and mystery struck the Stratford Condominium complex earlier today,” said the announcer. His voice was completely happy.

Stratford? thought Alice. That’s where Dad lives.

“Thirty-nine-year-old Marc Robie was found murdered in his bedroom. Neighbors are shocked. This is the kind of place where you never dream such a thing could happen, they say.”

Dad?

That Marc Robie?

Murdered in his condo?

That was impossible.

Dad had not been home.

She
had been home.

Daddy!
thought Alice.

“Police are looking for Mr. Robie’s teenage daughter, Alice Robie, for questioning. Alice Robie was seen driving away from the condo in her father’s car before police arrived at the murder scene.”

Alice watched her fingers carefully screw the cap back onto the polish. She watched those same fingers open the bag, drop the polish back in and seal the plastic zipper. Her breath was not keeping her alive; she was turning blue. The plastic bag slid out of her fingers.

Murdered meant dead.

Her father.

No. She would not go along with that. It was impossible. She
needed
Daddy. She
loved
Daddy.

The reporter loved being in on the action and his voice rose several notches. “Incredibly,” cried the reporter, “police were called by the murder victim’s ex-wife, who received an E-mail message from their daughter Alice, confessing that she had killed her father. Alice Robie is described as five feet five inches, 115 pounds, long brown hair, brown eyes. She is driving a ʼ94 red Corvette, license 386 JEF.”

Alice wet her lips with a dry tongue. She got out of the Corvette and stumbled across the entire parking lot, suddenly a vast hideous stretch of pockmarked black and gray. Her feet and legs had not recovered from being stretched after all, because they could hardly lift themselves to travel forward. The public phone on the other side, under other pine trees, seemed as remote as another state.

Alice stared at the phone for a minute, trying to figure out its technology and what was required of her to use it. She tapped in eleven digits to get the long-distance carrier they used. Her fingernails got in the way. Then she tapped zero plus ten digits of her mother’s phone number. She tapped the same number a second time, and then the four-digit PIN number so it would charge.

Tears got in her way. She could not see. She made a mistake and had to start over.

It seemed incredibly cruel, to require rows and rows of pointless mean numbers, just so she could talk to her mother.

At last it rang.

Her heart was pounding so hard she could hear it in all her pulses. Her tears were drenching her face, she was raining on herself.

“Hello?” said her mother. The voice was half scream. It had a terrible texture.

Alice loved her mother. She believed that Dad had gone on loving Mom, even though Dad had announced a million times that this was not so. But Mom had certainly not gone on loving Dad. Mom spent time in divorce support groups, which occasionally met at the house so Alice was forced to listen: ten women saying vicious things about their former husbands.

And yet Alice had gone on loving her mother just as much, and this was something Alice had not figured out: How you could love a person you thought was so wrong, wrong, wrong.

“Mommy,” said Alice, and her voice broke. She clung to the heavy old-fashioned receiver of the pay phone. She wanted to cry:
Mommy, come get me; Mommy, say this isn’t true; Mommy, say Daddy is fine.

Her mother said, “Alice! Alice, the police are here! Alice, I can’t believe this!” Her mother was crying. Huge wrenching sobs broke up her words. “Ally, darling, I love you. No matter what you have done, I still love you.”

Alice stared at the phone. “Mom, you can’t—you can’t—” She could not find the end of her sentence. What had the radio said? What was Mom saying? What could it mean?

“Ally,
your father
!” Her mother’s voice was a stranger’s voice. “You must have been so angry! It’s my fault. I should never have let you stay with him.”

Alice’s brain felt sticky, like the hood of the Corvette from pine sap. “Angry?” she said.

Her mother was gasping with sobs, and her voice was thready from too little air. “Oh, Alice, how are we going to get through this? Ally, I can’t believe this!”

But she did believe it.

Alice moved as far away from the phone as the silver snake-metal cord would let her. She wet her lips with the same dry useless tongue. “Mom,” she began, and then she had nowhere to go. Alice’s brain stumbled away from her mother’s words.

Her mother regained some control. With a tremendous effort, she whispered, “Where are you, honey? You be a brave girl. I love you. The police and I will come for you.”

Alice pulled herself together. “Mom, what are you talking about? I didn’t do anything. There was this man. I never saw him—actually, I was hiding—and Dad wasn’t even there. I don’t know what message you’re talking about, but—”

“Alice, the police are on the phone, too. I don’t want you to say one more word until we have lawyers. We’re not going to make up stories about strange men. We’re going to tell the truth. I mean, Ally, we have your confession!” Her mother was sobbing again, but talking through it, as if she were two people. “Just tell me where you are, Alice, so that we can come and get you.”

Alice hung up.

She walked back to the car. She got in. Shut the heavy door.

Through the open window she listened to the river flowing over rocks. It was a peaceful, eternal sound.

Alice started the engine. It was not peaceful. People own Corvettes in order to disrupt the peace. Alice checked for traffic, dogs, and bikes. Drove away.

It was easier this time. The seat back supported her now, and her feet rested against the pedals, her heels correctly on the floor of the car. Memory of wrong decisions had stayed in her hands and feet, and she drove properly now, exactly centered on her side of the road, without problems at curves and stop signs. She was even getting used to the fingernails.

She had never driven any further down this road. She and Dad always ordered ice cream, turned around, and went home.

Here the road bordered Salmon River, and on her right the stream was wide and shallow and twinkly. There wasn’t much countryside left in this part of the world. In a few miles she was back among houses again, and then abruptly, on the edge of another city. The road got wider, and went from two lanes to four, and from four to six, and there were strip malls and superstores and factories and warehouses and Alice did not know where she was.

She was weeping.

For a moment the tears were so heavy and thick they were like gelatin, and she could not see, but the car was well-balanced and stayed on course, even when she took a hand off the steering wheel to wipe her eyes. She came to an entrance of a parkway.

The name of the parkway was familiar, but Alice had not done enough driving to learn the geography of her own state. She did not know where the parkway went.

It occurred to her that it did not matter where it went.

If Dad was dead—and she did not believe it. She could not have that be true; plus, Dad
had not been there
in order to be dead! Well, but if he was, then she did not have that plain gray-and-white tailored home anymore. And if Mom really believed that her only daughter, her only child, her Alice, her baby, was capable of killing somebody—and not just anybody, but Dad, whom Alice had defended through a million fights and arguments—then Alice did not have a home with Mom either.

Alice turned onto a ramp. East, it said. Alice truly did not know whether her own city was north, east, south, or west of where she was right now. But east felt distant, it felt like a going-away direction, not a going-to direction, and Alice merged with traffic, which was simply luck. She could not seem to turn her head to look for a space, nor use the side mirror. Her neck was a wooden post.

We already have your confession.
Confession of what? How could Alice have confessed anything? How could Mom believe it?

It was harder than she had expected to keep her speed steady. Her foot played with the accelerator, trying to learn the right amount of pressure, but the trouble was, going uphill or downhill or on the flat required different amounts of pressure.

I killed him good
, the almost-familiar voice had muttered.

What did “good” mean in that context? Thoroughly? Or with pleasure?

Alice needed cruise control. She could see buttons and dials with words on them, but she could not read. Was she crying too hard? Or could shock shut down the reading segment of your brain?