Finally we skid into the motel parking lot and I leave the heat on and the blinkers and debate whether or not to get Honey out of the car and say a prayer and risk it since I’m just running in the front door, which I do, leaving her in a car for the only time in her life and contravening every horror article I’ve ever read and I feel sick as I tell the attendant who is white and scrawny and freckled and named Ivan what’s going on over on the interstate and I crane my neck to check the car is still there outside the door and he raises an eyebrow and as he starts to lift the phone from its cradle I put a hand on his arm and say “And the older lady I was with—she’s in Camp Cooville right now, I’m supposed to get her at one-thirty and I’m gonna try the other road but I’m already going to be half an hour late and she’s ninety-two and out there with no shelter” and he says “Uh, do you want me to tell the police that too” and I hesitate and first I say no then I do the math and think if I get there at 2:00 and I can’t find her or she’s hurt it’s another forty-five minutes before I’m back here so I say “Yes, please tell them, she’s ninety-two, we might need an ambulance, I’m going to go now.”
I am a little worried about how he is planning to present all this information to the cops and wonder idly what will happen to Cindy but I write down Camp Cooville and my name and my phone number even though my phone is useless and then I run outside jump back in the car where Honey is screaming bloody murder and I kneel by her in the back seat and wipe her face and give her kisses and find her sippy cup which has a few fingers of warm milk in it and give that to her and say “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry Mama’s so so so sorry.”
We go back the original way, the way I’m hoping will not be blocked by Cindy if as I imagine they have had to spread their sparse-ass movement across hundreds of state and county roads across hundreds of miles of territory. The rain has barely let up and I am driving slowly slowly and I creep around every corner in case of blockades and mercifully there are none which just makes me feel more furious that I lost all this time to have a fucking procedural argument with Cindy when it was a moot fucking point anyway since I could go five miles over and achieve my desired outcome and I almost want to turn around and tell her what a fucking moron she is but then I remember and I start a running prayer Please let Alice be okay Please let Alice be okay. Honey is doing a low moan in the back seat and I think about how long she has been in the car and how generally unenriched unstimulated and then I think Well she won’t remember any of this anyway, but that makes me oddly sad too.
When we pull onto the dirt road to Camp Cooville it’s 2:07 which isn’t that bad but I’m terrified of getting the Buick down that road which must be a mud river in this downpour but I tell myself it’s American-built, thousands of pounds, made for hard North State winters and we inch slowly down the road and when the road finally levels I race forward to Alice’s stump and she’s not there, just the cooler bag and the blanket and the sweatshirt slumped in a pool of water on the surface of the stump. I see the umbrella leaning neatly against the stump and I wonder what this can mean. I put my head on the steering wheel and yelp and then I get out of the car pulling my jacket over my head and peering through the rain for some sign and I can’t leave Honey in the car but I can’t take her out in this so I get back in and start driving bumpily slowly around the buildings praying not to hurdle us into a sinkhole or a stump. My eyes strain so hard to make out the navy skirt the white turtleneck and the gunmetal hair that I keep seeing apparitions through the trees, but none of them are her.
I drive around slowly with the window down calling Alice’s name with rain coming in sideways onto the door panel and dash. But then I imagine the horror of running over her prone in the tall grass and I stop and start honking the horn and screaming her name intermittently. Finally I think I have to get out so I look at Honey and I try to really get through to her and say “Mommy is getting out of the car, but she’s not leaving, okay. I’m going to be right back. Mommy’s coming right back.” I don’t know if she understands this but her face crumples once I unclick the seat belt and by the time I’ve gotten myself out of the car she is sobbing and I think five minutes, we can have five minutes. I sprint around the clearing holding my breasts with one arm and putting my hand over my eyes with the other. “ALLLLIIIIIIIIIICE” I scream and I stop panting under the eaves of one of the buildings to catch my breath. The rain is relentless and I think an insane thought what if she has just been rained away pounded into the earth by the deluge. I recover my breath and run a series of jagged loops around and between the buildings and then I run back to the car and Honey is crimson in the back seat and looks at me in furious reproach and I kiss her and I am crying too and I reach in the diaper bag for the halves of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and I say “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry” and “We’re gonna leave real soon” and then I am back out into the rain. I run to the stump and look helplessly at the evidence which tells me that she touched nothing but leaned her umbrella against the stump and I think maybe she went into the woods to get out of the rain which would make sense and I think I’m going to have to go in there and I walk a few feet in and look all around me but then I think This is madness I can’t leave the car I can’t leave Honey in the car you always read about how getting lost in the woods is the easiest thing you can do and the very thought of not being able to get back to Honey makes me panic and spring back to the stump which is where I think it should be and then I consider bringing Honey into the woods with me but the problem of being lost remains, it’s just that we would be lost together. I start to bawl. I don’t understand how all of this went south so quickly but I guess that is what I’ve told myself I was waiting for, things to go quickly south.
I think I will just have to get Honey and we will have to look together so I take the umbrella from the stump and run to the car squishing into the mud and open the door and Honey knows that things are weird and I say “Hi” brightly and “We’re just going to get out for a minute to look for Auntie Alice” and I unbuckle her and wrestle her out of the seat and pick up the umbrella and hold her in one arm to my hip, hitching her up to make sure of my grip and put the umbrella over both of us and enter the woods at the stump. I turn back to look at the car to try and orient myself and think hysterically that I need some kind of marker so that I can indicate our location because I’m irrationally terrified that we are going to be swallowed into the forest and never get out. I think we will just walk directly forward in a straight line and then after two minutes turn around and walk directly back and then we should I think get back to the stump or thereabouts, as long as we can get to the tree line at the edge of the clearing. The rain isn’t coming through too badly so I put Honey down on her feet and she clings to my shins and I close the umbrella and pick her back up and hold her tight with the umbrella sticking out perpendicular under my armpit and we walk forward and I look left and right and within a few yards we’ve climbed up a partially buried boulder which I think Good a landmark and then at the top I see on the other side Alice, Alice lying on the ground curled on her side with her head on her hand looking like a sleeping child. I cry out and say “Alice Alice Alice” and she doesn’t stir and I spring around the side of the rock and put Honey down as gently and quickly as I can and I put my hand on Alice’s neck like someone on a television show and I just feel cool soft papery skin and I put my head on her chest and try desperately to hear something beyond my own panting and I don’t but have no idea whether or not I would and I try to gently shake her shoulder and think she stirs but I’m not sure and I smooth her hair down with one hand the hair I’ve always wanted to touch and then I hear faintly a wailing through the rain and the wind in the trees and I pick up Honey and run back toward the clearing, straight back from the boulder where yes there is an ambulance barreling down the road and it appears Ivan from the safari motel has come through. It crosses the field and stops short just by the Buick and I run to it yelling “She’s back there” like a madwoman and it’s a man and a woman who emerge and they say “Calm down ma’am” and they go into the ambulance cab and say something into a walkie-talkie and then retrieve a stretcher and I point toward the woods and pant along beside them into the trees holding Honey who is absolutely silent and wide-eyed. Once they see Alice they drop to their knees and start their ministrations and I’m darting around saying “What’s happening is she okay is she okay” and the man says “Ma’am why don’t you take the baby and go on back to the car” and I turn tail with Honey and run back to the Buick and set her on the passenger seat next to me and I say “Fuck it” and “I’m sorry” and get out a cigarette and open the window all the way down but water comes in so I raise it up halfway and light the cigarette and she stares at me in quiet wonderment and starts to fiddle with the buttons on the passenger side seat and once I chuck the butt out the window I see the paramedics coming through the trees with something on their stretcher and the man looks at me and nods his head, one swift, grim motion.