She looked mystified then whispered, “No. I’m getting you the penny like you asked.”
Guilty, Michael said, “Well, you can’t be too careful.”
He held out his massive hands and she dropped the coin into his palm. He held it up behind her head. “What seven-letter word is on the penny?”
“I don’t know.”
“Guess,” he said petulantly.
She wrung her hands together. “E Pluribus Unum. In God We Trust. Legal Tender. No. United States. Oh, God, I can’t think!” Then, sotto voce, she began murmuring the Lord’s Prayer.
“It’s right behind seven-letter Abraham Lincoln.” Without looking at the coin he said, “The word is right behind him, seven letters, like the barrel of a gun pointed at his head.”
He poked her scalp with a blunt finger. She closed her eyes and whispered, “I don’t know.”
Michael said, “ ‘Liberty.’ ” He dropped the penny on the floor. “I’m pretty hungry. What’s to eat?”
She stopped crying. “You’re hungry?” She gazed at the kitchen. “I have some roast beef, some vegetarian chili… You’re welcome to it.”
He walked to the table and sat down, easing into the chair. He delicately opened a paper napkin. It covered only a part of his huge lap.
She asked, “Can I stand up?”
“How can you get me dinner if you don’t stand up?”
She hurtled into the kitchen and busied herself preparing a plate while Michael sang, “ ‘For I love the bonnie blue gal who gave her heart to me.’ ” He played with the pepper mill. “ ‘Her arms, her arms, are where I want to be!…’ ”
She returned, setting a tray in front of him. Michael roared, “ ‘For I love the bonnie blue gal who gave-’ ” He stopped abruptly, picked up the fork and cut a piece off the beef. This, together with a portion of Jell-O, he put on the pink saucer and placed it in front of her.
She glanced at the food then looked inquiringly at him.
“I want you to eat that!” he said.
“I’ve already… Oh, you think it’s poison.”
“I don’t think it’s poison,” he sneered. “I don’t think there’s a posse outside that window. I don’t think you’re a Pinkerton agent. But you can’t be too careful. Now come on. Quit being a shit.”
She ate. Then she smiled and went blank-faced again. He studied her for a moment and set his fork down. “Do you have some milk?”
“Milk? I have low-fat is all. Is that all right?”
“Some milk!” he blared, and she jumped to get it. When she returned he’d already started to eat. He drank the glass down, taking with it a mouthful of food. “I used to work in a dairy.”
“Well, yes.” She nodded politely. “That must be a nice place to work.”
“It was very nice. Dr. Richard got me the job.”
“Who is he?”
“He was my father.”
“Your father was a doctor?”
“Well,” he scoffed, “I don’t mean a father like that.”
“No,” she agreed quickly, seeing the darkness fall over his face. He stopped eating. She told him she liked his tweed cap. He touched it and smiled. “I like it too. I have hair but I cut it off.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“No, don’t tell me anything you don’t want to.”
“If I don’t want to, I won’t. You don’t have to give me permission.”
“I wasn’t giving you permission. I didn’t mean to sound like I was. You can do whatever you want.”
“Don’t I know it.” Michael cleaned his plate.
“Would you like some more?”
“Milk. I’d like more milk.” When she was in the kitchen he added, “Please.”
As he took the tall glass from her he intoned in an FM disc jockey’s voice, “A wholesome snack.”
She barked a laugh and he smiled. As he poured the milk down she asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m drinking milk,” he answered with exasperation.
“No. I mean, what are you doing out tonight? There’s supposed to be a storm like we haven’t seen in a donkey’s age.”
“What’s a donkey’s age?” He squinted.
She stared at him with a vacant face. “Uhm, now that you ask, I don’t exactly know. It means for a long time.”
“Is it like an expression? Is it like a cliché?”
“I guess so.”
He stared down, his eyes as empty and filmy as the glass in his hand. “Did you know that ‘anger’ is fivesixths of ‘danger’?”
“No, I didn’t. But it surely is. How about that?”
“So there.”
She broke the very dense silence by asking, “What did you do in the dairy?”
Michael’s erection had not gone away. His penis hurt and this was beginning to anger him. He reached into his pocket and squeezed himself then stood and walked to the window. He said, “What’s the biggest town near here that has a train station?”
“Well, Boyleston, I suppose. It’s south about forty, fifty miles.”
“How would I get there?”
“Go west to 315. It’ll take you right there. That becomes Hubert Street and it goes right past the train station. Amtrak.”
“In no time at all?”
“No time at all,” she agreed. “Why are you going there?”
“I told you,” he snapped. “I can’t say!”
Her hands went into her lap.
Michael began rummaging through his backpack. “I’m sorry, I’m very sorry,” he said to her. But he uttered these words, then repeated them, with such deep longing that it was clear he was apologizing not for being curt but rather for something else-something he was about to do, something far graver than bad manners. He sat down beside her, his thigh pressing hard against hers, and as she cried, he set a small white animal skull in her lap and, very gently, began stroking her hair.
Under clouds so fast and turbulent they seemed like special effects from a science-fiction movie, Portia L’Auberget inhaled the scents of decaying leaves and the musky lake. Several feet away her sister lifted the shovel and dropped a huge pile of gravel around the front wheels of the stranded car.
The young woman flexed her hands. They stung and she supposed the skin was starting to blister from the wet gloves. Her muscles were on fire. Her head ached from the pounding rain.
And she was troubled by something else, a vague thought-something other than the storm. At first she wondered if it might be the escape. Yet she’d never really believed that someone like Michael Hrubek could make it all the way to Ridgeton from the mental hospital, certainly not on a night like this.
No, some nebulous memory kept rising up disturbingly then vanishing. It seemed that it had something to do with this portion of the yard. She was picturing… what was it? Plants? Had there been a garden here of some sort? Ah, yes. It was here. The old vegetable garden.
Then she remembered Tom Wheeler.
How old had they been? Twelve or thirteen probably, both of them. One fall afternoon-maybe November, like tonight-the skinny red-haired boy had shown up in the yard. Portia strolled outside and they sat on the back steps. She managed simultaneously to both ignore and converse with him, teasing mercilessly. Finally he suggested that they go to the state park. “Why?” she asked. “I dunno,” he responded. “Hang out, you know. Got the new Jefferson Airplane.” He nodded lethargically at an eight-track-tape player at his feet. She told him no, she didn’t want to, but a moment later she disappeared into the house and returned with a blanket.
He started for the state park.
“Uh-uh,” Portia announced. “This way.”
And led him to the vegetable garden. Here she spread the blanket in partial view of the house and lay down, kicking off her Keds and stretching sumptuously. But somebody might see, he protested. Somebody could be watching right now! She placed his hand on her breast and he stopped worrying about voyeurs. Portia lay on her back, surrounded by slug-chewed pumpkins and short blond cornstalks. Tommy beside her, covering her hot mouth with his; she had to breathe for long stretches through her nose. She now recalled smelling this same scent of wet, late fall. Drowsy flies strafed them. Finally, confusing him by not protesting, she allowed his pale, freckled hand to pass the elastic barrier. He glanced at the windows of the house then jabbed with a shaking finger, leaving inside her a glow of pain and on her bare hip a large wet spot that matched the one spreading across the front of his dungarees.