“Will you wait for me?”
In five minutes I was out the door, grabbing a motel washcloth and a sliver of soap and the bag my brother had brought.
“Not much in the way of amenities here,” the trucker said, looking at the pilfered items.
I stuffed the stolen goods into my bag. The guys who drove me from Ann Arbor to Dayton and from Dayton to Pittsburgh didn’t really want to know my name. The first one thought he might make out-teenage runaways were probably less discriminating and undoubtedly found themselves in situations where it was easier to just do the deed than to get beaten up and tossed out of a moving vehicle. But after a few feeble attempts to engage me in sexy chat, he dropped the idea and was just grateful to have a human to talk to on his long drive south, instead of simply singing along to oldies on the radio.
The next driver wanted to replay his own hitchhiking experiences or live vicariously through mine. He looked like an aging hippie, ten or so years past his Woodstock days, and he kept saying things were far-out, which I knew from an old boyfriend meant “good.” Up until that point my own travel anecdotes (the Upper Peninsula to visit grandparents and one class trip to Chicago) weren’t adventurous enough to keep him interested, so we soon fell into that silence that takes over on long drives when the rocking of the vehicle or the rhythm of the windshield wipers is all the sound you need and keeping quiet is more natural than saying anything. I rolled down my window to feel the nighttime breeze and to stay alert, just in case he tried anything.
In Pittsburgh I was picked up by a woman in a Volkswagen van. She said I looked like an Abigail, and I told her it was remarkable, but she’d guessed my name; so I was Abigail for a few days. I got shorter lifts across the endless state of Pennsylvania, and all the way I tried out various fictional autobiographies and names until I found the handful of story lines I was comfortable de livering. My parents were dead. I grew up with my grandmother, who was back home in Oregon. Oregon was a nice touch. I never met anyone who’d ever been there.
I had a lightweight nylon bag that contained everything my twenty-year- old brother thought I’d need: some clothes, dark glasses, one of the wigs our mother wore during her chemo sessions-I wasn’t sure I could wear it-a hat, my passport, and the entire contents of my brother’s college fund. Six hundred and forty dollars to start a new life.
Nine
The stranger we’d all known as Caroline Sturgis was named Monica Jane Weithorn. Why do all convicted felons have three names? And she wasn’t from Oregon, as we’d thought; she was from Michigan. Caroline/Monica had been convicted on a drug charge when she was eighteen years old and had been sentenced to twenty years in jail-a surprisingly draconian sentence given her age and the fact that it had been her first offense.
By that night, Caroline’s story was dribbling out on the local news channels. The following day it was all over the Internet. Springfield, Connecticut, was soon flooded with news media from every major market in the country who wanted to learn all they could about the woman they were calling the Fugitive Mom.
News trucks lined the streets around the Sturgis home. Reporters camped out at the Paradise Diner. It was impossible to buy a quart of milk without some overzealous helmet-haired reporter sticking a microphone in your face. And my best friend, Lucy Cavanaugh, came dangerously close to being one of them. As soon as she heard the story, she called me.
“Paula, this would make a great feature for sweeps week. If you can get us the story, Danielle might offer you a job.”
“You just spent an entire weekend telling me what a jerk your boss is-why would I ever want to work for her? Besides, you know the story,” I said. “Everyone knows it by now. She walked away from a work release program, hitchhiked out of town, changed her name, and started a new life.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “That’s like saying Moby-Dick is about a guy who goes fishing. This is a huge story and you know her. I met her. This could be big. I could write that screenplay I’ve always wanted to write. Meryl Streep-she’s from Connecticut, isn’t she? Or is it Maine? It’s one of those states up there. Maybe she’ll be interested. She could play Caroline. No, she’s too old. No, she can do anything.”
I could almost hear the wheels turning. She’d be planning her Oscar acceptance speech in a minute. “You are officially going off the reservation and I’m hanging up now.” And I did. Whatever last shreds of privacy Caroline and her family still had, I wasn’t going to be the one to tear them down. Hopefully someone was shielding her kids from the vultures that now circled the family.
Besides, appearances to the contrary, I didn’t know her. None of us did. Even her husband and her kids hadn’t known she wasn’t Caroline Sturgis.
I’d told Lucy everything I knew. It was unclear if anyone had helped her escape, but it seemed likely. That was all most of us knew because since her arrest Caroline hadn’t given a statement to anyone.
How do you live with something like that hanging over your head for twenty-five years? Constantly covering your steps and worrying about slipping up. Now it made more sense why a smart, creative woman like Caroline didn’t work but stayed home, doing her crafts and quietly numbing herself with alcohol. She was hiding, staying under the radar.
The story was like roadkilclass="underline" it was impossible not to pay attention. People in Springfield who barely knew Caroline were giving interviews, and the residents of her hometown in Michigan dug back decades to find the slimmest reminiscence. One of her second-grade classmates volunteered the significant factoid that Caroline/Monica always liked to make up stories. Which of course meant nothing but gave the talking heads copy to read while nodding gravely. Opinions were everywhere. With each day more snippets of the story leaked out and were rehashed mercilessly all over town, including at the Paradise Diner.
Babe wasn’t behind the counter when I arrived, so I grabbed a newspaper, slipped into my favorite booth in the back, and got the attention of one of the singing waitresses with the universal cup-drinking motion that said I needed coffee. Eyebrow Girl brought me a mug and a slice of cake.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Olive oil cake,” she said, bored. “Pete wants you to try it.” She dropped the plate on the table with a clatter. “Sorry.”
Sure she was.
Olive oil and cake are not two things I generally associated together, but for free, I was willing to give it a shot. It was delicious with a slightly nutty flavor, and I was shaving off another sliver of the dense cake with a spoon when Babe slid onto the banquette opposite me. She looked tired, but I was enough of a friend not to say so.
“What have you been up to?” I asked. “Neil back?”
“I wish. Putting in a new lock on the back door. I should be putting in a new door, but I’ll wait until Neil comes home. That the olive oil cake?” she said. I nodded, handing her the spoon. “Whodathunkit, right? Giada recipe. Not that that girl looks like she’s ever eaten a piece of cake in her life.”
Babe’s appearance brought the sullen waitress back with an automatic cup for Babe and a refill for me.
“Thanks, Terry. So what do you think?” she said when the girl left.
“I think you’re right: she’s probably never eaten an entire piece of this cake and I think the boobs are real,” I said.
“Not Giada. Caroline…Monica…whatever the hell her name is. Pretty wild, huh, federal marshals coming to take her away? The Main Street Moms must be having a field day with this one. They’ll be dining on this for a year. I guess now we know why Caroline was so hot to put the business in your name. She’s been invisible so long it was probably second nature to her not to put anything in her own name.”