“One.”
I leaped up and ran as hard as I could through the trees. Behind me, I could hear his laughter grow distant and mocking.
*
I had made a map of our small town, and on the map I had put tiny symbols to mark the houses of all the people I knew so I could see how we stood in relation to each other. I knew where everyone lived. I could have gone anywhere.
But where I ended up was Mr. Hunter’s house.
I just wanted to look. It was still before dawn, and all the streets were empty. People were asleep in their beds. And there I was, standing naked and unashamed in the middle of the street under a halo of lamplight, my body dirty and rent from my tangle with Blackhat Roy. I just stood and looked.
His house was so nice. It was a split-level, like so many in our neighborhood, with the bedroom up over the garage. His was painted white with green shutters. There were tall trees all around the sides and back of it. I knew he wasn’t married, and I wondered how all the various rooms in the house were outfitted. I imagined walls covered with bookshelves, broken-spined volumes piled to reckless heights. I imagined a little Formica table in the kitchen where he drank his black coffee in the morning.
I stood for a long time just looking at the house, until the black sky began to grow pink at its rim. All of a sudden the street lamps shut off on their automatic timers, and when the reflection of the lights was gone from the glass panes, I could see a figure standing there in a window on the second story, leaning against the frame, gazing down at me. It was Mr. Hunter. He stood still, his head crooked gently to the side, his hands in his pockets. He had not been asleep at all. How long had he been looking out the window—all night?—before I came along and wandered into his view?
I did not run. Aware as I was of my nakedness, I did not make any move to hide myself. Every one of us is a little calamity. That’s what I felt at that moment.
He must have known that I could see him now, because as I watched, he raised his left hand and placed his fingertips against the inside of the windowpane.
And me, I responded in kind. I raised my hand in a simple, meager salute. We were both travelers, and our destinations were—both of them—very far away.
*
It was the opening of garage doors down the block that made me suddenly aware of the time. The sun had risen. My father would be up soon.
I ran. I fled down the streets, feeling the tarmac cold and gristly under the soles of my feet. I leaped over fences and trotted through backyards, never minding the whip and cut of tree branches against my skin. I ran until my lungs burned.
And this was not the gallop of the free absconded from all chains—it was the panicked herding of the damned.
*
I was not in time.
When I came through the front door, my father was there. He saw me, and he was ashamed. There was no hiding my nakedness.
He looked down at the floor, pretending to have been walking from one room to another when I came in.
“Oh,” he said. “I was just—um. Making breakfast. How about waffles? Would you like waffles? Uh—right. Good morning.”
Without looking at me, he went to the door of the den and then remembered he was supposed to be going to the kitchen, so he backed out and fled down the hall.
Later, when I came downstairs dressed in the most modest outfit I could find, he was standing over the waffle maker. He stared intently at the steam.
“Ready for waffles?”
I could see him take a testing glance in my direction out of the corner of his eye, to make sure it was okay to look. Then he smiled widely at me—but he had trouble meeting my eyes.
“I was, um, going to use bananas,” he said, “but they’re still too green.”
“I don’t mind a green banana,” I said, trying to be helpful.
“No, neither do I. But for pancakes and waffles, riper is better. That’s a good rule of thumb.”
“Okay.”
“What kind of syrup? Maple or boysenberry?”
“Boysenberry,” I said. It’s the kind I preferred when I was little.
He always heated the syrup bottle in a saucepan of water. It was not right, he said, dousing a hot waffle with cold syrup.
He had rules for everything, my father, and the life he lived as a result was just a bit more vibrant, more true.
After we ate, I washed the dishes.
Behind me, I could hear him clearing his throat.
Then he said, “Are you okay?”
I didn’t look up from the sink. I scrubbed the plates until every last remnant of impurity was erased.
“I’m fine.”
“You know, you could—you could tell me if you weren’t.”
“I know.”
“Do you, um, need anything? A prescription or something?”
“No. I can take care of it.”
“Okay. All right.”
I thought he would tell me he loved me, but I hadn’t heard that from him in a long time. When I was a little girl, he would say it routinely. He seemed compelled to say it. But the declaration had gone the way of tall tale and myth.
As though the love between a father and daughter were only a childish thing. As though womanhood made obscene that which had previously been precious and perfect.
And so did we all fall—and in such a way were a million Edens lost.
*
I went to Peter’s house again, and this time he met me at the door. There was a thick wad of white bandage taped to his neck.
“Stitches,” he said. “Fourteen of them. Thanks for the note. I didn’t really want to see anyone.”
In his bedroom, I sat on the edge of his bed, and he swiveled his desk chair to face me.
“Did you go out last night?” I asked.
He chuckled a little. “Did you ever try not to?” he said.
“Where did you go?”
“Down to the railroad tracks. Watched trains go by. Thought about hopping one of them.”
“What stopped you?”
“I’m not afraid of running away,” he said. “But I won’t run away from him.”
I said nothing.
“And,” he continued, “also you.”
“Oh.”