A Matter of Mercy (24 page)

* * * * 

Caroline cleaned up Rid’s kitchen, wiping the counter with enough pressure to make her shoulder ache and then throwing the sponge in the sink as if it were a grenade. “You asshole,” she muttered. She went into the living room and finished repairing the cage she’d been working on when he’d come home, then fixed another one she’d already brought up from the basement, all the while listening for Rid’s truck in the driveway. “Like this is so damn hard,” she muttered to his ghost in the room. “You were just about to blast me for doing it, weren’t you? Couldn’t
imagine
I could
possibly
do it right, not leave the tiniest hole for a crab to get in. You think I can’t watch and learn? You think nobody can possibly do it right but almighty you?”

As the light in the room began to gray and the chill deepened, Caroline’s anger became edged with fear. It was snowing again, and she missed having Lizzie beside her. At first she’d thought he’d taken Lizzie with him for meanness, just to deny her company and comfort, but what if Rid didn’t intend to come back tonight? The old house moans started to bother her. The wood stove had gone out—her fault—and she didn’t think she should push the thermostat up, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to start up the wood stove again. She wouldn’t leave a fire burning if she didn’t stay. And the longer he was gone, the more she wanted not to be there whenever he did return. Still, she was cold, especially every time she peed, which, it seemed was at twenty minute intervals. She paced in front of the television for distraction, then couldn’t bear to be distracted while she was trying to think, still arguing out loud. She could see nothing beyond the windows; the snow was a white drape, as if she’d been snatched from the familiar world and deposited in another. A foreign world where she didn’t know the customs or speak the language.
Where was he?

“I have to take charge of myself. That’s what Mom would say.” Her hand was on her abdomen, rubbing a circle, taking stock of its swell. She’d felt something yesterday, and again this morning, but it was nothing like a kick. More like a gas bubble, and it was too low to be the baby. She was afraid to go home, but too mad to wait for Rid. No telling when he was going to show up. Besides, they’d probably get into again anyway. Why couldn’t they have a decent conversation without it devolving into a shouting match? Why couldn’t he trust her? Why couldn’t—“This is ridiculous,” she said finally.

She went upstairs and started stuffing her things into the two bags she had. In the downstairs bathroom, she dumped her toiletries on top where there was space, not bothering to organize them in their neat kit, which she tossed on top. “I look like a homeless person. This is pathetic. All I’m missing is the shopping cart,” she muttered, fanning the coals of her anger, which kept her much warmer and more functional than fear. She already had on her heaviest sweater—or, more accurately, her father’s heaviest sweater. It had been Eleanor’s favorite, a pure red, and one Eleanor had never been able to part with. She struggled into her mother’s goose down jacket and pulled the hood up while she slid her sock-clad feet into boots and hands into the thick gloves crammed in the pockets.

She pushed aside worry which kept drifting in like the snow piling up outside, and when the thought of leaving a note came to her, she said “
Fuck you, Rid
.” She thought of her mother, then, first thinking how she’d disapprove, and then thinking
the hell she would
.

At least her car started right up. A good sign. She made it out of Rid’s road, and onto Cove so smoothly she began to relax. She’d overestimated the problem and underestimated the amount of gas she in her tank. “See? It’ll be all right. I can do this all by myself,” she said out loud.

The visibility was terrible, though. The storm had seemed to be ending when she’d first left the house, but as she turned onto Route 6, it was obvious it had only been a lull. Now it thickened, the flakes like white dimes repaving the highway and landscape into one, blurring the boundaries of land and sky as Caroline’s headlights, the snow, and the high streetlights combined in a frothy twilight of white and shadow.

She slowed to a crawl. There was no traffic, which was good, although she wished for a set of taillights to follow.
Presuming someone else can see the road better than I can
. She hadn’t gone more than a couple of miles on Route 6 when her engine coughed. “No. No, no, no. NO!” The engine coughed once, twice, and then stalled. Caroline shifted into neutral and tried the ignition. It sputtered, tried to catch, but wouldn’t. “Oh God, no. No.
Shit.
” She steered toward the side of the road in neutral, wondering
where
exactly the side of the road was. The cushion of snow obscured the feel of the road, and she couldn’t tell what was underneath her tires. She felt a bump, and took it as the road’s edge, so when the driver’s side tires hit it too, she eased on and off her brakes and put the car in park. She banged her hand on the steering wheel, tears coming to her eyes. “Now what, goddammit.” Fumbling, she felt for hazard lights, and had to put on the overhead light to find them. She turned off the headlights.
Don’t run down the battery
, and sat in the car for a few minutes, telling herself to stay calm and trying to ignore the voice berating her.
You didn’t get gas, and you didn’t buy a cell phone, the two things you promised you’d do to take care of yourself and the baby. What kind of mother are you going to be? You don’t deserve this baby
. Finally another voice came in to argue as she began to shiver, saying,
You’re wasting time with this. You’ll freeze if you sit here. There’s not enough traffic to think someone’s going to stop to help you. Take your wallet and start walking. Try to flag down any car. Leave a note on the driver’s seat, in case a cop looks in the car.

It was that voice—her mother’s—that got her moving.

* * * * 

This time, of course, Rid was traveling east on 6, so he came on the disabled car from behind where, thanks to the snow covered hazard lights, it looked like an igloo from outer space. There was no telling the make or model, though by general outline, yes, it could be Caroline’s Honda. The license plate was buried, not that he’d bothered to learn hers. He’d do it now if he got the chance.

He pulled up behind the car and put his truck in park, leaving the motor running and the headlights on. Somebody might be in the car; it might not be hers at all, of course. If it were, though, he might be able to tell by what was inside. Maybe some of that baby stuff would be there. The thought clutched at his gut.

He wiped a swath of snow from the driver’s side window with the sleeve of his parka and peered in. Empty. He opened the car door, setting off a small avalanche from the roof. The wind was in his face, so when he ducked down to stick his head in the car, he had an immediate eerie sensation of stillness and silence. One glance in the back seat told him it was CiCi’s car. Among the packages and bags stacked there, which he’d have recognized anyway, was the teddy bear he’d given the baby. “Goddamn,” he said, and again, “Goddamn. “ He put his forehead on the seat back for perhaps ten seconds, willing himself to breathe. “God
damn
,” he whispered, swiped his face twice with his glove, and stood again.

A note was on the driver’s side seat. “Out of gas. Started walking (east) to Chevron Station at 7:45. Would appreciate any help. Caroline Marcum.” Some errant part of Rid’s mind noticed the handwriting—every letter rounded and perfectly formed—how it looked like a penmanship chart hung over a third-grade blackboard compared to his. Stuffing the note in his pocket, he slammed the door of the Honda, loosening another avalanche, and ran against the wind to his truck.

* * * * 

Caroline had made it perhaps a mile and a half from the car, maybe a little less. When Rid’s headlights picked her out of the scene, a small forward-laboring figure, head bent, she swung around and started trying to wave the truck down. He knew she couldn’t recognize the truck. She’d be blinded by the lights, and the wind was blowing the snow right into her face. She had a gloved hand up partly shielding her eyes even as the other one was signaling. She must be trying to stop any vehicle on the road to ask for help. The thought made Rid crazy. He pulled to the side of the road behind her and got out. Caroline was half running, backtracking toward him, lumbering, awkward and bear-like in her boots and winter gear. She still didn’t know who he was.

To get her off the road—not that anything was coming at the moment, but still, it was treacherous—Rid swung his left arm in a giant arc and ran in front of the truck to the passenger side. He had the door open by the time she was close enough to know who he was. He could see the surprise register on her features, and her hesitation.

Skirting the open door, he went to grab her arm, and pull her to the truck. “Come on,” he said, raising his voice over the engine and the wind. “Don’t be stupid. Get in.” It was relief roughening his voice, but the words came out wrong. Even he knew it.

She did. He closed the door after her, ran around and got in the driver’s side.

Once inside, Rid took a deep breath, then another. He didn’t look at Caroline, but straight ahead, at the darkness and accumulating, blowing snow through which she’d been walking, still several miles from the Chevron station. “What were you thinking?” he demanded finally, still staring into the white. A blinking wetness that could have been from the snow and wind but wasn’t shone on his face. He wanted to touch her, make sure she was all right, and was sitting tight, gathering the nerve.

“About the same thing as you when you stormed off, probably,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Which word didn’t you understand?” Talking down to him again.

He could give it right back to her. “Try speaking plain English. What are you talking about?”

“You obviously wanted to get away from me—”

“You’re the one who wanted to get away from me! So you take off with no gas in the middle of the worst storm we’ve had all winter? At night? And pregnant? To learn moves like this you went to college?”

“I don’t answer to you.” At this, Caroline turned her head and looked out the passenger window, refusing to let him see her face any longer.

“And I wasn’t trying to get away from you,” Rid argued, regardless of how right she was. “You only
think
you know what I’m thinking, but you don’t
know
what I’m thinking.” His words were filled with righteousness fueled by the panic and guilt he’d felt just moments earlier.

“Whatever,” Caroline sighed, still looking intently out the window, where the visibility was zero. A black forest edged the highway here. The berm was a narrow shoulder with an uphill slope and a ground cover of browned needles and old fallen cones. A cottage colony, boarded up for the winter, was perhaps a hundred yards down the road, but tonight you’d have to be on the porch of one of them to know it was there, tucked in the pines as they were.

“See, there you go again. Why’d ya have to say that? I was scared to death when you weren’t there.”

Caroline kept her jaw set and her face averted.

“Scared to death,” he repeated softly after a few moments of silence. He gave up then on the idea she would talk to him, so he took the truck out of Park and gave it some gas. The wipers thudded into pads of snow on each side of their arc. He turned the heater back to the defrost setting. Only then did he feel Caroline’s head move until he sensed her eyes on him.

“Where are you going?” she demanded.

He knew his face was wet and hoped she couldn’t tell. It made him feel like he was back in high school, that much a loser. “Back to my house. The roads are terrible. I’ll get your car for you first thing in the morning. It’s the safest thing to do.”

“I want my car tonight.” She put time between each word, conveying that this was not negotiable. “Either you take me to get the gas or I will walk.”

Rid didn’t answer. He pulled onto the highway and rather than take the next exit off Route 6, he continued east down to the Chevron station, where he borrowed Sam Preston’s five gallon can, arranging his face before he went in. “I’ll drop it off tomorrow or the next day,” Rid told Sam, with whom he’d regularly cut General Math in tenth grade.

“You’re supposed to leave me a deposit. Can’t you read the sign?” Sam mock complained from behind the counter. Florescent light made the scars from his acne look like craters. Tormented with zits through adolescence, Sam had been caught shoplifting Clearasil at fourteen. The store manager had taken one look at him, paid for the Clearasil himself, and let Sam go. At least that was the story Rid set loose around school, and it was pretty close to the truth.

“Aren’t you worried what I might deposit on the can, though?” Rid leered. “If you ain’t, you should be.”

“Kiss my ass, you pervert, and get the hell outta here. Bring my goddamn can back tomorrow,” Sam laughed.

“Or the next day,” Rid called over his shoulder, pushing open the glass door and hunching into the snowstorm. He headed to the gas pump where his truck was parked, Caroline huddled inside. Her face was a pale unmoving moon in the starless sky of the windshield.

Before he was back in the truck, though, Rid’s grin died. He got in and headed back west on Route 6, neither of them saying a word. As the wipers thwacked back and forth, the blower of the defroster kept up its white noise and so their silence did not sound as utterly strained and unnatural as it really was. He pulled over, climbed out, and put the gas in Caroline’s Honda, then replaced the empty can in his truck bed.