Opening the passenger door, she crawls in, keeping low, then twists like an eel to maneuver her legs into the driver’s seat. Her tailbone connects painfully with the emergency brake and she hisses in a breath, but keeps going. If he looks out of the window now, there’s no way he won’t see her.
She slips the end of the fob into the oversized slot provided for it. Yellow and red lights populate the dash, filled with the icons that should mean important things. Things like fastening a seat belt or closing that ajar rear door. She pushes the start button, her mind already ready to turn the wheel left beyond the gate.
Nothing happens. The red and yellow lights still warn her.
Is the car not starting because the door is ajar? Is it the seat belt? She twists in her seat and half falls between the seats, reaching for the door to pull it more securely closed. By the time she can reach it, she’s more in the back seat than the front, but it clicks with more authority after a firm tug.
Scrambling back into the front, she yanks the seatbelt down and jams it into the slot. Her foot on the brake, she hits start again. Again, nothing.
Slamming her hands onto the wheel, tears well in her eyes. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she asks the car in a panicky voice. She checks the shifter. Yes, it’s in park. What else? What else could be wrong?
Movement out of the corner of her eye makes her jerk her head up. Her stomach feels like it falls into a puddle on the floorboards. Tom is standing about halfway between the house and the car, a towel wrapped around his hips and the angry, red marks of his burns glistening with gel above the towel.
When she meets his gaze, he shakes his head slightly. He looks disappointed, not angry. Miranda, on the other hand, is angry. Angry all the way from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes.
Jerking open the door, she puts one foot on the ground and stands. “What did you do to it?” she yells. Then her voice rises to a scream. “What the fuck did you do to the car!”
He holds up some tiny thing. It looks like nothing. An insignificant nothing that shouldn’t matter, but does.
“I took out a fuse needed to start the car.”
Miranda is almost panting. The scream took so much out of her. She’s been so quiet for so long. “You knew?” she asks, her voice cracking.
He tucks the end of the towel more securely and she hates the movement. So prim. So exact. She hates him and his exactness.
Maybe he sees it, because he comes no closer and the hand holding the bit of plastic drops to his side. “No, I didn’t know.”
She understands then. Of course. He may not have suspected or known, but he couldn’t risk it. Not when he’s so close to getting his very own brain damaged doll in a world in which all the dolls are going away.
The tears falling from her eyes are tears of rage and sorrow and fear. They are hate tears and loss tears and tears for everything she might have experienced in life.
They are tears for all that will never happen.
“You’re going to cut up my brain! What gives you the right to do that?” she shouts.
If he’s surprised that she knows, it doesn’t show. Not really. It’s an irony. His unflappable calm is what helped her to feel safe in the beginning. Now, it feels cruel somehow. The calm of a monster in the face of his deeds.
He takes one step forward, then stops. “It’s the only way to be sure you’ll be safe. The only way that I can be absolutely sure you’ll live. Nothing else will work permanently. Do you want to stay in a basement forever?” Forgetting his towel for a moment, he spreads his arms wide, embracing the sunlight and the day. “You deserve this! You should have this! If we do this thing, then you can have it.”
Cold creeps up Miranda’s legs and down her spine. A winter chill before the winter even arrives. He really believes this. He believes his own hype.
“You’re a monster,” she says, her voice flat.
This time, he does flinch. “No, that’s not what this is about. It’s about you. It’s not about me. It’s about you and giving you back this. The world. A life!”
Miranda looks around at the world he’s made himself believe he’s returning to her, but only if she’s an automaton incapable of strong emotion. And Tom is only one man in a world of men. His solution is only one of many in this brave, new world of only men who will all have ideas about what is good for her. Maybe drugs to keep her dull. Maybe a secluded place where women can be tucked safely away in a group. Maybe something else.
Whatever it is, it will be their design and their force that makes it happen. She is meant only to suffer through it and be grateful.
No. This isn’t about her. But she can make it hers. One last time, it can be hers.
Stepping all the way out of the car, she leaves the door open. The door doesn’t matter. It’s a man’s thing now. The bag in the back with her underwear and clean clothes doesn’t matter. Nothing matters that isn’t her and isn’t of this moment. This moment, her mind, her body…they belong to her.
Perhaps the only thing that matters beyond the space her body takes up is her younger sister, her mother, her aunt. All of them far away in the United States. Endlessly far away. She wishes she could see them again. Perhaps, in some strange way, she will.
She walks toward the weedy beds that were once filled
