The light turned green and I spotted a fire station just up the block. A big American flag flying overhead. Freedom, that flag said. Safety. So I pulled in and started opening my car door, thinking I would run out. But I knew from the time we’d come down to donate to the pancake-breakfast fund drive that fire-station doors were locked up tight. If I ran for the door, and he pulled in and got out of the car, the kids would be alone.
I imagined ramming the big overhead doors. And then laughed. It was a single “Ha!” I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been. “Firefighters don’t even have guns!” I shouted.
The kids laughed, too, even though it wasn’t funny.
What the hell was I thinking a firefighter could do to save us? I had no idea why it had ever seemed like a good idea. He had pulled in behind us. I went around a handicapped parking sign and pulled around on the grass to get back on the road. I was headed for the police station, and wondering if arriving there would do me any more good than sitting in the small fire-station parking lot.
About the only thing that was clear to me was that I wasn’t thinking clearly. I wasn’t sure how to get to the police station. I wasn’t sure I could get back home. And Hamot, Arkansas, wasn’t exactly a bustling metropolis. The whole police force was around twenty-five cars and I was probably being generous.
I kept driving, and the fact that I was lost was most likely what saved us. Exactly what it saved us from was a mystery, but when I was making a three-point turn down a street I’d never seen before that was too far from town to be near a police or fire station, Hope said, “I’m pretty sure you lost him. I haven’t seen him for a while.”
“Me either,” Drew said. “I was just about to say the same. You lost him.”
“Who’s lost?” Jada asked.
From the rearview mirror, I could see the wheels spinning, her eyes wide with memories.
“Remember how Adam was having trouble thinking clearly?” I said. “I think today was a bad day for him. He got confused. We’ll all be okay though. Sophie is going to find him.” I had the urge to drive to Wisconsin, where my dad and grandparents lived. Home. We felt safe there. Nothing bad ever happened back home. Adam had never been there.
My phone rang. It was Ivana. I connected without saying anything. I didn’t trust it to not be Adam.
“Cara? Is that you? Can you hear me?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You haven’t called the police, have you?”
“Not yet. I was on my way there. To the police station,” and as I said this I wondered why in the world I hadn’t called them. I should have. Of course I should have. I had even said I was going to. I had meant to after hanging up with Sophie. I really had. The worst part was that I hadn’t avoided the call to save him, I had simply been so wrapped up in my fear and the idea of getting to the station that I had lost the train of thought that would have made me call. I had panicked.
“He’s home now. Adam’s here with me. I’m having a talk with him. We’ve got it all under control.”
I nodded, but I had started crying and couldn’t stop. Couldn’t speak. I had failed again. Failed to do exactly the right thing to save my kids.
“Are you still there? Don’t go to the police. He’s here and he knows he has to stay here. He isn’t going anywhere. I’ll sort this out with him. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, not even sure if the whole word got out before I had disconnected. I turned the ringer off and pulled into a parking lot, not even looking to see where we were.
“Pizza!” Jada yelled.
True enough. We were at a pizza joint. I handed my billfold to Hope. “Get two. Jada can go with you.” I was still crying and wasn’t sure I would ever stop.
I waved at the radio and Drew turned it on, starting with “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” which only made me cry harder. But that turned out to be the last outburst. I found a tissue package of questionable age in the back pocket of my seat and cleaned myself up.
Drew handed me a bottle of water, also of questionable age, that tasted like the hose water of my childhood. I smiled.
The pizza made it out in record time. No one had mentioned that they were hungry, but stomachs rumbled all the way back to the house.
I slowed at the end of the drive, planning to get the mail.
“I’ll walk down and get it,” Drew said. “Let’s get this pizza in before Jada’s stomach chews its way out to the box. I’ve never heard so much grumbling in my life!”
She kicked his seat. “We got the little packages of Parmesan cheese!”
I smiled back at her just in time to see her licking her lips. Who cared what chaos was brewing around us? A mini package of smelly old Parmesan cheese was enough to bring us around. We were too used to this. Too pliable from too many traumatic events.
We were also too deep to climb out. Too aware that sometimes the only safe place was behind a false smile.
–17–
Rise
What Is Down Must Go Up
Before we had boxed in the upstairs for good with plywood, we had enough sense to push the ceiling joists up through the studs. They were eighteen-foot two-by-tens and would have been difficult to get up the stairs and then turned to an open room where they could be fed up to the top of the walls. They sat in three stacks in my bedroom, and Roman had strict instructions to avoid them and the open windows, but otherwise he was finally free to run and play upstairs. I was relieved beyond words. The only thing we were missing to have the house in the dry was a roof.
Jada and I spent a Wednesday evening lifting the ceiling joists up to Drew, who straddled the middle of the wall between my bedroom and Roman’s. Since it turned out to be the best place in the house to feed them up, we decided to put them all up there and then disperse them along the length of the house later when we nailed them in place. It was getting dark, so the goal was just to get them up there. My dad had gone back to the house to rest, and we were anxious to join him. We worked by the car headlights for the final stretch. By the time we had the last board up and our muscles were screaming, the thunder and lightning started. I hated the idea of leaving all those expensive boards up there in the rain after working for so many months to keep them dry, but the framed house had survived dozens of storms. We congratulated ourselves on a job well done over a handful of beef jerky and headed downstairs.
Roman and Hope had swept up the downstairs, an endless chore with mud, leaves, and sawdust covering everything anew each day. Roman was bouncing a dozen quarter-size Super Balls in crazy patterns through the house. It was clearly driving Hope nuts, but he was giggling so hard that no one with a heart would ask him to stop.
Hershey was flat on her side in the dining room. A small patch of hair was permanently missing next to her spine, but no one ever mentioned it. A Super Ball bounced off her hindquarters and her eyes barely flickered. Good old dog, she was. No doubt about it.