I ran for the bedroom door, screaming for my mother. I knew she had likely gone to bed, even though it was barely eight o’clock. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now except this.
“Mom! Mom! They found her! Hurry! We have to get down there!”
She came spilling out into the brightly lit hallway, the soft skin of her face lined from the pillow. She was wearing the most absurd pajamas. Loud and gaudy, with blindingly colorful tropical flowers on a black background.
“Oh dear,” she said. “Oh dear. I’ll have to get dressed. I’ll only slow you down. Just go. Don’t wait for me. I’ll take a cab and meet you there.”
I ran down the stairs two at a time. Then I realized my car keys were still up in my bedroom. In my purse. I flew up the stairs, only one at a time because my shin hurt. Grabbed the purse. Ran down again. Almost tumbled down in my haste.
I sprinted out into the driveway. Opened the door of my old car, whose driver’s door always made a discordant metal-on-metal sound when opened. Dropped into the driver’s seat. Scrambled for my keys. Found them. Dropped them in the dark at my feet. Found them again.
My hands trembled as I tried to fit the key into the ignition. It took about four tries to get it right.
I turned the key.
Nothing. Not a sound. Not even a grinding of the engine trying to turn over. Damn it, it wasn’t even trying! Not a click. Just perfect silence.
I did away with the silence.
I screamed at the car. Cursed it. Called it every name in the book. Pounded its dashboard. Got out and viciously kicked the tires with my good leg.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and nearly jumped out of my body.
“I’ll call a cab,” my mother said.
She was standing behind me in the driveway in those ridiculous pajamas. In the dark. Looking vulnerable and enormous.
“Too slow,” I said.
I ran out into the street and stuck my thumb out to passing cars.
At that moment it was my mother’s turn to lose it. We switched roles. I stood, fairly calmly, hitchhiking. She yelled at me the way I’d been yelling at the car.
“Oh, no you do not, little girl! You get back here this instant! If you don’t know by now what a dangerous world this is, then I don’t know what I can say to convince you. Your daughter needs you to get there in one piece, so you get back here and wait for that nice, safe cab!”
She paused her diatribe. Maybe to see if I would obey.
A car pulled over that I recognized as Mrs. Ellis’s from three doors down the street. I knew her by her dark-maroon BMW, with its custom plates. I have no idea what they were supposed to have said. It always looked like a random jumble of letters to me. But I guess Mrs. Ellis knew.
She powered down her passenger window.
“Darling, are you all right?” she asked me.
“My car won’t start and I have to get to the police station right away. They found Etta!”
“Found Etta?” Both words carried a distinct curiosity. “How on earth did you manage to lose her?”
But by then I had opened her passenger door. By then I was already in the car.
“Well, yes,” she said, probably accepting the inevitability of her next move. “By all means let’s get you there.”
As we sped away, her passenger window remained down. I could hear my mother still screaming at me.
Fortunately I could no longer make out the words.
“I think I just couldn’t bear that,” Mrs. Ellis said.
We were stopped at a stoplight. At the intersection of a palm-tree-lined boulevard. But there was nobody coming in either direction. I was wishing she would just run the light. Just brazenly run it. But I guess that wasn’t in her nature.
“You would bear it,” I said.
It was an answer that left no room for doubt. At least, not my doubt.
“I picture a situation like that with my own children, when they were so little like that. And I think I just couldn’t do it.”
I stared at the side of her face. Long enough that it made her nervous. I could tell.
“What would you do, then?” I asked.
“Well . . . fall apart, I suppose.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“I’m not sure I understand the question.”
The light changed. Finally, finally. We drove on.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is something I see very clearly from here. And maybe you don’t see it. Because it’s not happening to you. You have no choice but to live through whatever’s happening. I mean . . . as opposed to what? If you’re going to continue to live, then you’re going to deal with it. You have no choice. You can say, ‘I’m going to fall apart now.’ And you can do that. Whatever falling apart looks like to you. But when you’re done, it’s still right there to deal with. And then you look back and see that what you called falling apart was just another way of dealing with it. We deal with everything, because, short of actually deciding not to live anymore, we don’t have any other option. Not one damned option.”
I fell silent. The whole world fell silent, from the feel of it. I got the impression I’d said too much.
“I guess that might’ve sounded like a lot of gibberish,” I said.
“Not at all,” she said. “I hear what you’re saying.”
We turned the corner, and I saw the police station two blocks down. I wanted her to go faster. There was one stoplight between us and there. I didn’t want her to miss it.
She missed it. Almost purposely, from the feel of the thing. The light went yellow, and she could have sped up. It would’ve been a legal run. She was apparently just a very cautious driver.
I opened her car door and jumped out.
“Thank you,” I yelled, already slamming the door.
I ran the rest of
