space. We even talked about what we would miss. “Double Delights,” Betsy said. (You could only get them from the ice-cream truck that drove through our neighborhood at dusk on summer evenings.)
“Chicken croquettes.” I nodded. My father made them, with thick creamy gravy.
“Smoking candy cigarettes on the train tracks.”
“Sugar on snow,” I said. (Sugar on snow is hot maple syrup on clean white snow. It makes a sort of sticky candy. You eat it followed by a dill pickle and then a plain doughnut. It’s one of the best things about spring in Vermont.)
“They’ve got that in Maine.”
“Oh,” I said. I’d forgotten for a minute about Maine.
“Spying on Mr. Lowe,” she said. She smiled a little wistfully. “My tree.”
The fire was burning low. I followed Betsy into the tent and accepted when she offered me half of her unzipped sleeping bag. We lay on our backs staring up at the roof of the tent, the edges of our bodies just touching: the sides of our hands, our hips, our ankles. The sleeping bag was heavy and warm. My skin, where it touched hers, felt electric.
“I’ll miss my dad, “she said softly.
“Um-hm,” I said, nodding in the darkness. I wanted to squeeze her hand, let her know that I was having second thoughts too, but I worried it would break the spell.
We lay there for a long time, and I waited for her to sit up, laugh, say, “It’s too cold. Let’s go home.” But it only got darker and quieter, and soon the cadence of her breathing changed. She was asleep. And I knew that we weren’t going home. We were running away. For real. I must have laid there for hours, listening to her breathe, trying to discern any restlessness, any fear. But remarkably, Betsy kept sleeping.
Soon I was cold, freezing cold, and I imagined Betsy (had she been awake) would have been cold too. My mother had also taught me the dangers of hypothermia, and so, in all my imagined chivalry, I crawled out of the tent into the almost absolute darkness and added another log to the fire. It took a while for it to catch, and I nearly hollered with joy when it finally did. I was thinking mostly about warmth, and maybe just a little about my mother’s instructions on how to make a signal with smoke.
I must have finally fallen asleep out there, because in the misty half-light of dawn, when I awoke to the distant sound of voices and crashing of branches, my face was pressed against the dirt. I was still brushing dried leaves out of my hair when my father and Mr. Parker emerged from behind a thick grove of trees and arrived at our clearing.
Nancy Butler (whose sister worked at the bank) had apparently come forward as soon as word got out that we were missing. She gave elaborate details as to how much money Betsy had stolen from her father’s pickle jar as well as her own suppositions as to where Betsy and I were headed. One theory was that we were headed to California, you know, like the pioneers. Our fathers set out to find us, and my little midnight campfire, just five miles outside of town, had been a virtual beacon.
Betsy never found out how it was that our fathers happened upon us in the woods. I never confessed. That would have been admitting that I had wanted to be found, and I could never admit that. I guess I knew that if it hadn’t been for that fire, we might have wound up in Maine after all. That even if it was uncertainty I had heard in the quiet conversation we had inside that tent, Betsy had made up her mind, and once she set out to do something, there was no turning back. The reality was that if she had been a bird, she would have flown right into that window, even if I told her it was glass instead of air.
Rain
I must have fallen asleep, because the screaming invaded my dreams. First it was the wind of a vicious storm, and then the howling of a wounded animal. By the time it woke me, it had become the cries of an infant. I sprung off the couch and raced to Shelly’s room, my heart beating so hard my chest ached. I turned on the light before I realized that the screaming was not coming from Shelly, who sat up in bed, startled and groggy.
“What’s the matter, Daddy?” she asked, her voice raspy.
“Nothing,” I said. “Go back to sleep.” I hurriedly tucked in her covers and turned out the light.
Another scream.
“That’s Maggie!” Shelly said, sitting up again.
“It’s okay, honey. I’ll go check on her. Stay here.”
I walked quickly down the short hallway to my own room and knocked before I pushed the door open.
The curtains were open. Outside, the streetlights reflected off the cool green of the swimming pool and illuminated the room, making it look like an aquarium. It was raining; water streamed down the windows in slow sheets. I could see only the suggestion of Marguerite’s body under the covers. Convinced that perhaps it had indeed only been the wind, or an animal, I turned and headed out the door, but just as I was pulling the door shut behind me, she screamed again. I opened the door and turned toward the bed.
Marguerite was sitting up, her arms thrashing as if she were fighting someone off. Her wild punches struck the air, and she wailed, “Noooo!”
“Marguerite,” I said softly.
“Nooo!” she wailed again. She was kneeling on the bed now, her eyes half open and staring out the window.
The shimmering green made the whole scene subaquatic, a watery dream, and Marguerite a wailing siren.
“Maggie!” I said, loudly this time, trying her nickname instead.
She turned to look at me. Her face was streaked with tears, her hair wet with sweat. She was trying to catch her breath, panting with exhaustion. She stared at me, still stunned, for several moments until sleep left her. Her breathing slowly returned to normal, and a look of recognition came across her face. “It’s raining,” she said.
I nodded. “Are you okay?”
I could hear Shelly’s feet padding softly down the hallway. I didn’t have to turn around to know she was standing in the doorway.
Marguerite pulled the sheets around herself as if suddenly embarrassed, and nodded quickly. “I’m fine. The thunder scared me.”
“Okay,” I said, deciding not to argue. There was no thunder. No lightning. Only the softest rain outside. “Let me know if you need anything.”
As I left the room, I put my arm around Shelly’s shoulders and steered her back to her own room. She climbed up into her bed and pulled the covers under her chin; she would likely not even remember all of this in the morning.
“Love you to the bottom of the ocean,” she whispered, our ritual.
“And back to the top,” I whispered, kissing her head.
For the rest of the night, I sat up reading in the living room, waiting. But there was only the tapping of rain, the ticking of the clock, and the sound of my own exasperated breaths when sleep would not come.
The next morning the rain had stopped, and the air was cooler. It was Saturday, so I went to the bakery for doughnuts and then to the drugstore to pick up a copy of the Free Press . The train wreck was on the front page. TRAIN DERAILS : 29 DEAD , 11 MISSING , PRESUMED DEAD . I read the paper as I walked back to my building, narrowly missing the fire hydrant, the broken sidewalk, and another pedestrian. The roster read like those published in the paper during the war. I pored over the names, searching for some sort of clue. And finally, I found among the missing, now presumed dead, Margaret Jones, 15, of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. A single ticket. No Mrs. Jones anywhere.
Inside my house, Marguerite, aka Maggie, née Margaret, was making pancakes. She was wearing a dress that was too young for her, and with her swollen belly looked even more so. The collar looked like a little girl’s dress. Her knees were exposed and bony.
Shelly was standing at the stove with a spatula, helping Marguerite flip the pancakes.
“I