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Authors: Drusilla Campbell

BOOK: Wildwood

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“Hannah?”

“It’s Angel.”

A moment of quiet and then, “Shit.”

“I thought Betts would have called you.”

“I’m still at the hospital.” A long moment of silence. “What have you done?”

She laughed. “Oh, God, Dan, I’ve been really stupid.”

“Do you want me to call her? Or do you want to tell me yourself?”

“I’ll give you the number. Tell her Angel’s safe.”

“Why wouldn’t she be?”

Hannah turned as Jeanne came through the kitchen door, her hair plastered to her head despite the umbrella she carried. As she rested the open umbrella on the floor on its spokes she looked from Hannah to Liz and Angel and back to Hannah and raised an eyebrow.

“Hannah,” Dan said, “why wouldn’t Angel be safe?”

Hannah sat down. “I lost it, Dan. I thought I could take her somewhere and get a job and . . . have a . . . life.”

“You have a life.”

“See, her mother—Shannon—she’s so young. She can’t . . .”

“Don’t go anywhere. Stay put. I’m coming home.”

“No, you don’t have to. I’m okay. Now. Liz and Jeanne are here and when the rain lets up they’ll take me back to San Jose.”

“Oh, Hannah.” The parched syllables blew through her head like the dust of old bones. “When’s this going to stop?”

“It’s not a disaster. Don’t make it sound like a disaster. I made a mistake but—”

“I’m coming home.”

“Please, don’t, Dan. I’m . . . too embarrassed to see you. I’m ashamed. Just call Betts for me. Please?” She started to hand the phone to Jeanne. “I love you, I love you so much and I’ve been such a . . . flake. Don’t give up on me. You won’t will you? Promise.”

“No. Never.”

She gave the phone to Jeanne who became instantly efficient.

“She’s all right, Dan. And so’s the baby.”

Hannah imagined her husband’s voice broken with concern and love and frustration. Breakdown. Kidnapping. Worryworryworry.

“We’ll do our best,” Jeanne said. She pressed the disconnect.

Hannah asked, “Is he coming?”

“Not unless someone calls him.”

“Thank goodness, I couldn’t stand it.” The look on his face, the brokenheartedness.

Angel’s screams rose up the scale, louder and shriekier. God, Hannah would be grateful for silence. She took the baby from Liz who looked relieved. “Go get the formula. It’s in cans in a grocery bag in the backseat.” Amazing how, in the midst of breakdown, kidnapping, worryworryworry she could still assume the role of mother. She should be handcuffed in a squad car; or on the bed, zombied by Valium. Instead she was ordering her friends about for Angel’s sake. Mothering. It was her gift. “Jeanne, I need the car seat too.”

“Jesus,” Jeanne muttered and headed out the door after Liz.

It took ten squalling minutes to get organized, but once Angel had the bottle in her mouth, the silence in the kitchen was profound. Hannah sat in the rocking chair, her feet propped up on the windowsill and looked out at the falling rain. Billowing and cloudy sometimes or lashing the window, other times plumb straight and almost solid like a sheet of aluminum. This was what she had dreamed of. Rain and rocking Angel in her own kitchen.

May as well enjoy. You’re going to pay for it.

Hannah felt a hand on her forehead and the touch of a damp cloth.

“You might need stitches,” Jeanne said as she dabbed at the wound. “Where’s the Bactine or whatever?”

It took a moment to focus. “In the linen closet. Top shelf. Will you bring me some aspirin too?”

She looked up at Jeanne and smiled.

Thank you, she thought, for not asking questions. Thank you for waiting until I can explain. Dan would have talked, but her friends knew when to be quiet. Their silence comforted her.

Liz brought her a glass of orange juice to take the aspirin. Jeanne sprayed Bactine on her forehead and blotted away the drops that rolled down her cheek like tears. Through all of it, Angel sucked contentedly.

After a while Hannah began to explain. “I wanted to take her away and live in a new town, be a new person. A mother again. I thought she wasn’t safe without me. That I was her only chance.” Angel’s dark eyes closed in ecstasy. Cherokee wandered over and sniffed the tiny feet, looked up at Hannah, and then went off into another part of the house.

“I had an accident on Mt. Madonna. There’s a housekeeping motel in the Carmel Valley. I was headed there.”

“Why didn’t you go down 101?”

“Are you sure you don’t want Dan?” Liz said. “There could be internal—”

“I’m going to be stiff. That’s the worst of it.”

“If you’d gone 101 you probably would have made it.”

“But I thought maybe Betts had called the police and they’d be looking for the Volvo.” Hannah felt herself droop. “I don’t know. I’m not cut out to be a crook.”

“You need to get some help,” Liz said. “When Angel’s taken care of. Just talk to someone.”

Hannah shook her head. “I need to talk to you two.”

“Maybe so, absolutely. But you need to see a therapist too. This isn’t going to go away, all these feelings you have.”

“Liz’s right,” Jeanne said. “There are times when . . . well, it’s not a sign of weakness to ask for help.”

Hannah snarled, “Traitor.”

She lifted Angel to her shoulder and patted her back. The baby burped and her little body relaxed. Hannah put her in the car seat with a blanket tucked around her. Her dark lashes fluttered like flags of farewell. Hannah watched her sleep and might have stood a long time staring and memorizing Angel’s features if Liz had not touched her arm.

“Sit, Hannah. She’s sleeping now.”

Hannah did as she was told. She looked around her at all the familiar objects in her kitchen and should have been comforted by them. She had made it home in one piece, somewhat battered but more or less whole. So why wasn’t she comforted by familiarity? Because she felt lost, separated from herself. She wasn’t Hannah anymore. Hannah had vanished in one extraordinary and incredibly insane afternoon. “When I was coming back, after the accident, it took forever the traffic was so slow. And I just kept asking myself why I’d done it, how I could have been so stupid.”

“You aren’t stupid,” Liz said. “You weren’t thinking clearly.”

“What made me think I could start all over again? She wore me out, the sound of her. In the car, crying.”

The phone rang.

“I wanted to belt her.”

The voice on the answering machine was Betts. “We’ve been frantic down here. But we didn’t call the police, Hannah. I knew you’d come back. Dan says you’re bringing her back and if she’s okay—I’m sure she is, I know you didn’t mean her any harm—I’m willing to just let this thing go. But you understand, I can’t have you here after this. I can’t trust . . . Hannah, I know you’re there and I want you to listen to me. You need to get help. That’s what I told your husband. There’s no shame in it, Hannah.” They listened to Betts’s breath on the answering machine. “I’ll expect to see you when this rain lets up. Okay? I know you’re listening to this. Just get Angel back here.”

Click.

Silence.

Liz said, “I need a drink.”

“Oh, what a dandy idea. Allow me.” Jeanne walked into the dining room. Hannah heard her open the door of the wet bar, the sounds of ice cubes and glassware. She returned a moment later with a shaker of Manhattans.

Hannah said, “I haven’t had one of those in years.”

Liz said, “Remember the time—” and stopped herself.

“I want to give a toast,” Jeanne said. She lifted her glass. “To the three of us. Coconspirators. Friends forever. The drunk, the kidnapper and the—” Jeanne looked at Liz. “You still having the abortion?”

Liz nodded.

“What a trio.”

Hannah drank the Manhattan fast and held out her glass for another. She watched her hand shaking. Something was growing in her, swelling up inside her, taking her over, filling her head, fattening her up like poor Hansel. She wasn’t herself anymore. The hand that shook . . . to whom did it belong?

She laughed.

Liz looked concerned. “Hannah?”

Jeanne poured another drink from the silver shaker. A drop of condensation fell on the back of Hannah’s hand and she watched it spread.

“While I was driving, trying not to hear Angel, I started thinking about Billy Phillips.”

“You don’t have to talk about this now,” Jeanne said.

“Yes, she does,” Liz said. “Go on.”

“You guys don’t know what happened.” These were the words Hannah had never spoken. This was a new language, terrifying to master. “He didn’t die right away.” She looked at them. Why weren’t they shocked? Well, she’d give them something . . . “And he asked me . . . asked . . .” She closed her eyes and bit her lip, saw him on the rocks, his wet red mouth opening-closing, making the words, begging her. She tasted blood on her tongue and giggled. “I let him. Die.”

“Don’t be ridic—”

“Shut up, Jeanne.” Liz crouched at Hannah’s feet and took her hands. “Go on, Hannah.”

She couldn’t stop giggling, which she knew was crazy and meant she was wacko, ready for the loony bin because she didn’t think it was funny, not the least little bit, so why was she laughing, so why couldn’t she stop?

Liz squeezed into the chair beside her and wrapped her arms around her.

Laughing now, crying a bit, laughing, crying. Sobs scraping the back of her throat like a dry shave. Hiccupping. “That’s it. I let him die. The same as if . . .” Right behind the sobs, a burning gagging sweetness, “. . . as if I killed him on purpose.”

“It’s not the same,” Liz said. “You were a frightened little girl and you did the only thing you knew to do.”

Swallowing down the bile, the tears, shaking her head, speaking through her hands clamped across her mouth. “I knew . . . but I couldn’t . . . stand to look at him.”

Jeanne sank into a chair and muttered, “All these years.”

Hannah rested her head on Liz’s shoulder. She heard Jeanne start to say something else and Liz’s irritated shush. The rain blew against the patio windows, waves of it driven by the wind. She imagined the trees in the wildwood thrashing and whipping against each other and the rush and swirl of the Bluegang waters. Over the pebbled shallows and around the boulders, the flood cutting out the soil under the roots of the oak saddle. One day the soil would give way, the roots would lift and the great tree would fall and turn to dust. But the boulder where Billy Phillips lay would remain and bear in its molecules forever the memory of his blood. The kitchen clock clicked over the seconds. Angel snuffled in her sleep and Cherokee came back into the room and rested her head on Hannah’s knee and gazed at her woefully.

Sicko. Wacko.
Looney Tunes.
Hannah didn’t think she was any of those things but she supposed she would have to find out now. Dan wouldn’t let her get through this experience without dragging her off to some kind of shrink. After the accident, with the Volvo facing into the embankment, a front fender deeply dented and rubbing against the tire, one headlight broken, all she could think of was to pray.
God get me through this and I’ll do anything.
A child’s prayer, a frightened child’s promise. But she supposed she would have to keep it now. She tried to imagine herself talking to a stranger about Bluegang and Angel. She could do it, supposed she would do it if forced.

Hannah knew Dan so well, knew exactly what he would say.

This isn’t all about you anymore, Hannah. It’s us too. And the kids. Our life together. If you want us to have one, you’ll do this.

She stood unsteadily and walked to where Angel lay in Eddie’s old car seat, fast asleep. Scrawny, Shannon had said and Hannah saw it now too. She watched the trembling of the tissue eyelids, the sucking movement of her lips.

“She’s dreaming of food,” Hannah said. The Manhattans made her head spin.

Jeanne and Liz came and stood beside her and together they watched Angel sleep and after a moment Hannah began to cry and in the silence, she reached for her friends’ hands.

Thursday

L
iz woke to rain and a silent house. The clock beside her bed glowed: 8:15. Not for years had she slept so late but then she hadn’t had many days like yesterday either. The urgency, the excitement, the crying and laughing. It was like being in high school again. No wonder they had all been so eager to grow up.

Hannah, Jeanne and Liz had sat in the kitchen all afternoon until around five when the rain eased off—no blue in the sky, just a break between storms. Jeanne made more Manhattans and Liz, seeing that no one would be sober enough to drive Hannah and Angel back to San Jose, switched to coffee. They turned on the Weather Channel and a pregnant broadcaster with a broad Midwestern accent showed them the radar picture of storms queued up over the Pacific, one after the other like women waiting for a stall in a public bathroom.

During the calm Jeanne had run up to the school for her car and they all piled in with Angel and Hannah in the backseat, Liz driving. Just beyond the Rinconada town limits the rain began again, harder and colder than before. They made it onto the freeway, but there the forward progress halted. Branches of trees from the suburban yards behind the freeway buffer walls littered the six-lane freeway, and in low places storm sewers had overflowed into lakes several inches deep. Cars and utility vehicles, even trucks and a school bus were stopped on the shoulders, and between Lark Avenue and Curtner they encountered half a dozen accidents. The lights of police and paramedics swam through the rain like red-eyed fish. Traffic lined up behind the accidents and rubber-neckers stalled and inched forward. Liz felt like she was in a civil defense movie demonstrating what not to do in an emergency.

They didn’t talk. What would they say even if they had been able to hear themselves over the tattoo of rain on the roof of Jeanne’s Mercedes? They were friends and they knew enough to keep quiet.

At Resurrection House finally, Liz asked, “Do you want me to come in with you?”

Hannah said no. “Park somewhere. Across the street. You can make a U-turn. This may take a while.”

Liz did as she was told. It was cold in the car and the windows steamed up. Jeanne retrieved from the trunk an ancient army blanket frayed at the edges. Liz remembered Gerard that night on the way back to Paris, the tenderness with which he had tucked the blanket around his sleeping father. She and Jeanne climbed into the backseat and wrapped themselves in the old blanket. The car reeked of sweet bourbon breath. Half an hour later Hannah ran across the street, dodging fallen branches and crashed into the backseat with them.

“Will somebody please just drive?”

Liz’s body ached from the continual tension of yesterday. She got out of bed and stretched for a few minutes, but the best way she knew to get the kinks out was exercise. She ran in the rain in Belize all the time. She supposed she could do it in Rinconada too so she dressed in tights and shorts and a double layer of shirts. In the hall closet she found a short snug slicker and a hat belonging to Dan. She carried these into the kitchen. On the counter she found a note written in thick Magic Marker, held in place by a framed photo of herself aged twenty.

Guess where Dan’s taken me? Fuck it. Dinner you, me, Jeanne, alone.

The signature was Francis Scott Key. Liz thought that was a good sign.

She made a cappuccino and spread Hannah’s homemade plum jam on a toasted English muffin. Even in tights, her legs were cold, her thighs especially. She checked the thermostat and upped it to seventy-five and in the cupboard under the window seat she found a wool throw and wrapped it around her and settled into the rocking chair to eat her breakfast.

Dan had been home when they returned from Resurrection House. When she saw his car Hannah had said only “Shit.” Jeanne had dropped them off. As they ran for the door Liz heard the grind of the Mercedes’ big tires grabbing for traction on the wet gravel and she imagined Jeanne was glad to get away. Dan and Eddie looked up from a dinner of eggs and bacon eaten at the counter.

“Ingrid’s staying over at Paco’s,” Dan said. “And yes, his parents are home.”

Hannah nodded. To Liz her smile looked tentative.

“Where were you, Ma? You think the bridge’ll go?”

“I don’t know, maybe. It’s made it through other storms.”

“If it washes out do I have to go to school?”

“I’ll take you up Overlook when I go to the hospital,” Dan said.

“The guy on the TV said this is the worst storm in fifty years.”

Hannah nodded.

“Where were you, Ma?”

Liz wondered now, as she watched the rain and drank her coffee, how much of the story Eddie would learn. In time, all of it probably. Ingrid too. Family secrets sifted down through the cracks in the silence, slowly reconstructed themselves a few degrees further from the truth. Would Eddie think his mother was loony? Liz imagined he would be sympathetic in a male sort of way. Ingrid less so. Her mother’s crackup would anger and frighten her—as Liz’s decision to have an abortion had done. But years from now she might understand both events. She would get how one day a switch went off in Hannah’s brain and she went crazy—not forever but suddenly and brilliantly like fireworks splashing the sky in the middle of an empty night.

Liz carried her cup and plate to the sink. She pulled the rain hat down over her head, zipped the slicker to the throat and peered outside. Cherokee padded up and stood beside her.

“Not you, girl.”

Only knowing how good she would feel afterwards made Liz step into the storm and pull the door behind her.

She ran down Casabella Road, over the Bluegang bridge, which might not hold if the rain continued to wash away the soil under the piers but looked safe enough for the time being. The road was awash and in minutes her feet were wet through the socks. She splashed for the pleasure of it and once her muscles had begun to warm up she enjoyed jumping the litter in the street, the rubble and fallen branches. On the ridge the elegant Victorians hunkered down glumly. She waved to a woman tying down an outside awning and a dog barked at her from the protection of a front veranda. She splashed down Queen Victoria’s Hill and saw another woman running on the road ahead of her in navy blue spandex tights and hooded jacket. Her form was good: her torso upright, shoulders relaxed and arms pumping close to her sides. She ran across the street and up the front steps of a house. Liz saw that it was Mitzi Sandler and the house was hers. Under cover of the veranda, Mitzi turned. Liz waved and Mitzi lifted her arm and gestured for Liz to come up on the porch. Liz crossed the street and took the steps two at a time.

“I thought I was the only maniac around here,” Mitzi said.

“I like to run in the rain.”

“Me too. Reminds me of back East.” She opened the screen door. “Want to come in? I’ve got something to show you.”

“I don’t want to get cold.”

“I’ll give you a jacket.” She looked at Liz. “And a hair dryer.”

“I’m in kind of a rush.” Liz looked at her watch and thought about her appointment with Dr. Reed Wallace in two hours. “I’ve got a doctor’s appointment.”

“Just come in for a minute. I’ve been hoping I’d see you.” Mitzi Sandler turned and headed down the hall toward the back of the house. She opened a cupboard door and handed Liz a red towel. She stood a moment vigorously drying her hair with a blue one.

The house was nothing like Liz remembered it. Her parents’ dark old Oriental carpets had been replaced with bright area rugs in geometric designs. The walls were painted in trendy shades of grape and burnt orange; the butler’s pantry, just glimpsed, was now a deep rose.

“We went mad with color,” Mitzi said. “The folks who bought it after your mom and dad had everything white. It was horrible. Like a hospital.” She opened the basement door. “One reason we bought this house was the basement. During the Loma Prieta earthquake the houses on either side slipped off their foundations but this old girl held solid.”

Liz’s father had predicted that would happen someday. She wished she could tell him he had been right.

Mitzi opened the basement door and turned on the light switch. “Watch your step. We haven’t replaced these stairs yet.”

“It had a dirt floor when my parents bought the house.” Liz recalled being told that her father had laid the cement floor himself.

“That’s what I figured. We were down here with the contractor when we found it.”

“Found what?”

Mitzi laughed. “You’re going to love this.”

Liz could not imagine loving anything in the basement. It was a part of the house she had always avoided.

“We’re going to put in a rec room for the kids so we had a contractor over to look at the place yesterday.” Mitzi flipped another light switch illuminating a large empty room. Cement walls and floor. No windows. Liz wished she hadn’t accepted Mitzi Sandler’s invitation. She was cold and felt her thighs tightening.

“This room was full of old stuff from when we moved in years ago, but we had to clear it out so the contractor could see what he had to work with. The whole room, you know?” In the corner she bent down and gestured for Liz to do the same. “Look at what we found.”

It was a footprint less than six inches long and beside it, a handprint small and finger-splayed.

Mitzi looked at her expectantly. “Read what it says.”

Neatly printed in the cement beside the foot- and handprints in a style Liz recognized as her mother’s, were the words
Our Precious Liz, aged two.

The three friends met for dinner Thursday night at Capretti’s, the only family-style Italian restaurant left in Rinconada. Jeanne remembered being taken there by Hannah and her parents to celebrate her eleventh or twelfth birthday and again when she was fifteen and had won a coveted speech and drama prize. It was the sort of place her own parents never went; come to think of it, she could not remember them ever dining out as a family. Certainly not in a restaurant where waiters in spaghetti-spattered aprons yelled to the cook across the small dining room in rapid-fire Sicilian and Calabrian dialects. At Jeanne’s house mealtime was a linen, silver and china, silent affair. By dinnertime her father had been nipping at the bottle all day and was virtually comatose, shoveling food in and swallowing it down by kinetic memory while Jeanne’s mother, seething silently, sipped her own drink and said nothing. Jeanne would happily have eaten anytime, anywhere with Hannah’s family, but Capretti’s held especially warm associations for her. On her birthday Hannah’s father ordered a pizza the size of a car tire and the waiter kept refilling the pitcher of root beer and telling her to
mange, mange
.

The restaurant was located where it had been for forty years, in a long narrow space between the Rinconada movie theater—an art house now, of course—and a bar called the Black Watch, another holdover from the days before boutiques and high-end import shops lined Santa Cruz Avenue. These days Capretti’s required reservations every night of the week. Hannah had asked especially for one of two tables snugged in the bay windows on either side of the entrance.

A good spot, Jeanne thought. The distraction of the passing parade might make what she had to say easier. Then again, maybe lightning would strike one of the trees lining Santa Cruz Avenue and cut the dinner short. She’d never have to tell Hannah the truth.

“How are you?” she asked Liz after she had ordered a martini up.

“Dilated. He inserted some kind of thing.”

“Can you feel it?”

“If I try.”

Jeanne sipped her drink. “Well, I’ve been thinking and I realize I can’t let you go to that place on your own. I’ll drive you.”

“You don’t have to,” Liz said. “I rented a very snazzy little Mustang. We drove it down here tonight.”

“But tomorrow you’re not going to feel like driving,” Hannah said.

“It’s settled, then,” Jeanne said. “We’ll both go with you.”

Liz sat back, looking shocked. “I thought you guys didn’t approve.”