If Only (2 page)

“I want you to wear your jacket, Pam,” Carol says. “And let's put on your runners.”

Carol takes the jacket from Danny. She has to struggle to get Pam into it; Pam's arms are rigid, and she doesn't try to help. While Carol is lacing her runners, Pam's eyes, red and rimmed with smeared makeup, meet Danny's. They're empty, staring at nothing. A chill runs up Danny's back.

He walks behind Pam and Carol, out of the woods and back to where there are houses. Every little sound—a garbage-can lid banging somewhere, a car backfiring out on the road—causes a spark of fear that tingles at the back of his neck. Carol says the man is gone, but how does she know? He could be anywhere, watching them right now.

Carol opens the gate in the chain-link fence behind the duplex. “I'll just grab my car keys and purse.” She hesitates. “You guys come inside with me.”

They climb the back stairs and wait in a small kitchen. Carol disappears down a dark hallway. Pam sinks onto the edge of a chair and bends over. Prince pads across the floor and rests his head on her lap.

Danny is still shocked by Pam's muddy, torn clothes. His stomach is ready to heave. He swallows. “Are you okay?”

It isn't what he wants to say. It sounds too casual, like he thinks it's no big deal, but they are the only words he can get out. He doesn't even know if Pam hears him. She doesn't answer. She's stroking Prince's head. Her fingernails are chewed off again. She started biting her nails when they left the farm and is always trying to stop.

Carol comes back, a huge brown purse on her shoulder. Danny clings to the way she takes control. She takes a set of keys off a hook by the door. “The car's out front. We'll leave Prince here. You'll have to give me directions to your house, Danny.” She touches Pam's shoulder. “Come on, sweetie.”

Carol's car, a red Volkswagen Beetle, is parked at the curb. Pam sits in the front passenger seat and Danny squeezes into the back.

“We live at fourteen sixty-seven Rendell Street,” Danny says.

“Got it,” Carol says. “That's just a few streets away.”

A few streets. They were so close to home. Maybe if they'd walked faster. Maybe if Pam hadn't stopped to change her stupid sandals.

Carol glances in the rearview mirror at Danny while she drives. “Will your mom and dad be home?”

“Uh…my dad will,” Danny says.

“Not at work?”

“A crate tipped over on him at the dockyard where he works. It smashed his shoulder. He won't be going back for at least another month.”

Danny shivers. There isn't a sliver of a chance that Dad won't be home.

“I was kind of hoping to see your mom,” Carol says.

Danny is silent. Their mom died when he and Pam were three years old, but he isn't about to tell Carol their life story.

After a moment Carol says, “Just you two and your dad, huh?”

“Yeah,” Danny says. He is surprised that Carol has figured it out so fast. He hopes she isn't going to ask a lot of questions. He needs to think, to plan what he is going to tell Dad.

“I was raised by a single parent too,” Carol says. “My mom. So which one of you is the oldest?”

“We're twins,” Danny mutters.

“Twins. Wow,” Carol says. “Lucky.”

Pam starts to cry again, softly. Carol reaches over and squeezes her hand. “It's going to be okay,” she says.

She turns onto Rendell Street.

“It's that brown house,” Danny says, his stomach tightening. He isn't ready. “With the blue car in the driveway.”

The car belongs to their housekeeper, Mrs. Glassen. She comes in during the week to vacuum and dust and make a few casseroles to put in the freezer. Danny has been praying that she will have already left.

Pam stirs suddenly, lifting her head and staring out the car window. “I don't want
her
to see me,” she cries, sounding panicky.

“She means our housekeeper,” Danny explains. He feels panicky too. Mrs. Glassen has a big mouth and doesn't know how to mind her own business. Her daughter, Julie, is in grade eleven at their school. The story will be all around the whole high school tomorrow.

Carol puts the car in park and turns off the ignition. “I need to talk to your dad,” she says.

Mrs. Glassen is in the front entrance, getting her coat. A cigarette dangles between her fingers, and her bleached blond hair looks frizzier than usual. Her mouth, bright red with lipstick, drops open. She stares wide-eyed at Pam. “What on earth happened to you?”

Carol sizes up Mrs. Glassen with a long look and then ignores her. “Where will I find your father, Danny?” she says.

Danny jerks his head to the entrance to the living room. He can hear the
TV
. “In there.”

Pam

Mrs. Glassen is staring at me like I'm some kind of freak. Probably planning what she's going to tell her daughter. She can go to hell. Tears drip onto my blouse, and when I wipe my cheeks, my fingers come away smeared with goopy black mascara.

Carol digs in her brown purse and pulls out handfuls of Kleenex. “It's going to be okay,” she says again. How does she know that?

And then Dad comes to the doorway of the living room and everything gets horrible, fast. He's wearing gray baggy pants, and he looks like he hasn't shaved for days. His arm is strapped in a black brace.

Dad looks confused. Then furious. “What is this?” he says.

“You must be the twins' father,” Carol says. I can't believe how calm she sounds. “I'm Carol Hinson. I live a few streets away, so we're almost neighbors. I've brought your kids home.”

“Home from where? What the hell is going on?” Dad's voice gets louder. “Danny?”

Danny doesn't say anything. I bury my face in the Kleenex.

“Danny and Pam were walking home along the railroad trail,” Carol says. “It goes right past my place too. I was out walking my dog. There was…a man. He had a ski mask or something on. He grabbed Pam. But Prince scared him away.”

Dad's eyes bore into me. A fragile glass ball in my chest is ready to shatter.
Please, Dad. Hug me. Make me safe
.

“You look like a slut.”

For a second, I can't hear anything. My head is full of a roaring noise.

“No wonder,” says Dad.

I lift my head and make myself look at him. There's anger in his eyes, but something else too. He looks afraid—but Dad's never afraid of anything.

Mrs. Glassen still hasn't put on her coat. She isn't going to miss this.

“You shouldn't say that,” Carol says. “It's not Pam's fault. She's just wearing what other young girls wear.“

I would never dare to talk to Dad like that. Dad gives her an icy look. Then he turns to Danny. “And what were you doing all this time?”

“He had a knife.” Danny stares at the floor. His face is white.

I can't listen to this. I pull away from Carol, who has slipped her arm around my shoulders. I stumble toward the hall.

Behind me, I hear Carol say, “I'll write down my name, address and phone number. You'll need to give that to the police.”

The police.

Oh God.

I barely make it to the bathroom. I lock the door and collapse on the tile floor in front of the toilet and barf.

I throw up everything. The chocolate milkshake, the red licorice and the popcorn from the movie. My stomach keeps heaving and wrenching even though there's nothing left inside me, and then, after a long time, it's over.

I roll onto my side on the floor, soaked with sweat, and curl into a ball, letting my head rest on the cold tile. I listen for noises from the rest of the house, but there's nothing, not even the
TV
.

After a while I get up stiffly and stare at myself in the mirror over the sink. My face is a mess of blurred makeup, and my eyes are red and swollen. There's vomit in my hair and on the front of Stacey's black blouse. The blouse is ruined anyway, because it's torn down one sleeve. And I don't know if the smears of dirt will ever come out of the skirt. Is it mud? I don't remember falling, but maybe I did. I can try washing the skirt, but I can never return the blouse to Stacey, never.

My whole body shakes, and my stomach clenches into a knot. I turn on the taps for the bathtub, making the water as hot as I can stand it, and fill the tub almost to the top. Then I strip off my dirty clothes and slip into the water. I splash the hot water over my face again and again, scrubbing at my cheeks until they sting, and then I slide down until the water is up to my chin. I close my eyes.

After a long time, I hear Dad bellowing down the hall. “Danny, get in here!”

I hold my breath as Danny's slow footsteps go past the bathroom door. The water in the tub has turned lukewarm. I pull the plug, stand up and turn on the shower, and let the hot water beat onto my back. I wash my hair three times, using tons of shampoo and rinsing it over and over.

I dry off, wrap my hair in a towel and put on my bathrobe. I scrunch the skirt and the blouse into a ball and stand for a moment by the door, listening. Not a sound.

I ease out into the hall and flee to my bedroom. I throw the clothes into the corner of my closet floor. I walk over to the window and look down at the street. A police car is parked in front of our house. I stare at it, my heart pounding.

I close the blinds. I try to put on my pajamas, but I'm shaking too hard. I pull on a baggy T-shirt instead and bury myself in my bed.

Why did I wear those stupid clothes? Why did I stop to put on my runners? Why didn't I run faster? It's all my fault.

Danny

Danny watches the police car pull up at their house from his bedroom window. A man in a blue uniform, short and muscular and weighted down with a heavy belt, steps out of the car. He slams the door and then disappears out of Danny's sight as he walks up to the house.

So Danny knows why Dad is calling him.

“Danny, get in here!”

What will happen if he refuses to come? He thinks about something called
obstructing a police investigation.
He's heard that on
TV
.
He drags his feet down the hall
.
He's been in his room since Carol and Mrs. Glassen left. All that time, Pam has been in the bathroom. He's heard her throwing up and then running the water for ages. If this were any other day, Dad would be yelling that hot water cost money.

But this isn't any other day.

The cop is standing by the living room window. Dad is facing him. It looks like Dad hasn't asked him to sit down. Maybe that's something you don't do. How would Danny know? They've never had a cop in their house before. Four empty beer cans are lined up on the coffee table in front of the
TV
, and Danny wonders what the cop thinks of that. Or if he even notices.

The cop looks at him. “I'm Constable Diggins,” he says.

Danny nods. His heart races. It's weird. He feels like he is the criminal.

“I want to ask you a few questions,” Constable Diggins says. “I've asked your dad to stay in here while we talk.”

“I don't know much,” Danny says. His voice shakes, and sweat trickles between his shoulder blades.

“Tell me what you do know. Try to be accurate.”

Danny stares at a spot on the wall while he talks. “We were
walking home along the railroad trail…Pam stopped to change into her runners…I didn't hear anyone coming. Nothing. I would have told Pam to run, but I didn't hear anything.”

His throat closes and tears burn behind his eyelids.

“Whose idea was it to take that trail?” Constable Diggins says.

What does that mean? Does he think Danny planned it or something? “We always go that way,” Danny mutters. “It's shorter than the road.”

“What happened next?”

“Someone grabbed me. It was a guy wearing a black mask.”

“Tell me what the mask looked like.”

“It covered his whole face. It had holes for eyes. They had red circles around them.”

“And a hole for the mouth?”

“I don't know. I think so.”

“A balaclava for skiing, probably.” Constable Diggins scribbles in a notebook. “What else can you tell me about the man? Was he tall, short, heavy, thin?”

“I don't know. He was just kind of ordinary.”

The cop frowns. “Nothing else? Any detail helps.”

Danny takes a big breath. “Strong, I think. Yeah, he was strong. He grabbed me really hard.”

“So he was muscular.”

“I guess so. I mean, I'm not sure. He was just…I don't know.” Everything is tangled up in his head. The problem is, this cop is paralyzing him, the way he keeps firing questions one after the other.

“What was he wearing?”

“A green jacket.” That much Danny can remember.

“What kind of green? Bright? Drab?”

Danny thinks. “Drab. It had a lot of pockets and something on the sleeve.”

“What on the sleeve?”

“Stripes,” says Danny. “Yeah. Stripes.”

“One? Two?”

“I don't know.”

“An army surplus jacket,” Constable Diggins says. He makes another note in his notebook. “What about his pants?”

“Maybe jeans,” Danny says.

“Shoes?”

“I didn't see them.”

Danny closes his eyes for a second. When he opens them, Constable Diggins is staring at him. His eyes are almost black. Danny looks away first. “He had a knife,” he says. “Some kind of hunting knife. He told me to put my arms around this tree and stay there and that no one would get hurt. So I stayed there until Carol and Prince came.”

He swallows. “I'm sorry,” he whispers. “I'm so sorry.”

“Who's Carol?” Constable Diggins says.

“She lives by the trail. In a duplex. I don't really know her, but I know her dog's called Prince.”

Dad produces a piece of paper and gives it to the cop. “Carol Hinson. Her address.”

“Okay. We'll see what we can do.” Constable Diggins pauses. “It's serious, but at least no one got hurt.”

Danny thinks about Pam throwing up and wonders what kind of hurt the cop is talking about. He fights back a jolt of anger. The cop turns to Dad, who has been standing there silently. “I'll drop by and see Miss Hinson. But first I'd like to talk to your daughter.”

Dad surprises Danny. “No,” he says. “Not tonight. I want you to leave her alone tonight.”

“Tomorrow, then,” Constable Diggins says. He closes his notebook and says to Dad, “I need to talk to you privately just for a minute.”

“You can go, Danny,” Dad says
.
His eyes are turned away, and Danny knows Dad can't stand to look at him.

Danny goes back to his bedroom, past the bathroom. The bathroom door is open. Wet towels are scattered across the floor. He doesn't want Pam to get into trouble. He grabs the towels and crams them in the laundry hamper. He picks up a facecloth covered in blue and black smudges and throws that on top of the towels.

Pam's bedroom door is closed. Danny goes into his room and lies on his bed and stares at the ceiling. Most nights Pam plays her Beatles records, and the sound comes right through the wall into his room. Sometimes it bugs Danny. Tonight there is no sound. He rolls over onto his side and watches the light outside the window fade.

Dad calls them for supper, but Danny ignores him. He strains to hear if Pam opens her door, but there is nothing.

It's dark when Danny's door creaks open. Dad fills the doorway, a giant in the shadows. Danny can smell beer. He doesn't move. Not one muscle.

“I just want to know one thing.” Dad's voice is slurred. “Why the hell didn't you protect your sister?”