“We should go somewhere,” she says to Jack.
He looks up at her, suspicious. She wonders if he can tell somehow what she’s thinking. “Annie,” she calls loudly, pretending that she doesn’t know how close she is. Annie comes to the entrance to Jack’s room.
“What’s up?”
“I think we need to get out of here.”
Annie holds the doorframe hard with her right hand and grabs hold of a wisp of hair come loose from her ponytail with her left.
“Sure,” she says.
Ellie has briefly lost her confidence, but she keeps talking. Either she’ll take Jack or she’ll go alone, but she has to get out.
“What do you think, Jack?” Annie asks.
He seems nervous. He has a beetle crawling over his hand and up onto his forearm. He places it carefully back in its jar and walks toward his mom. “We all go?”
Annie looks down at her watch. “I have to go in to work soon, baby.” She and Jeff usually pass the baton of watching Ellie watch Jack. Jeff comes home at three-fifteen and Annie leaves about twenty minutes after. She whispers something to Jack that Ellie strains to hear.
“Why don’t the two of you go?” She nods down at the book that Ellie’s been lugging around. “Why not Barnes & Noble? It’s close and you can get another book.”
“Me too?” Jack says. He has shelves across one wall of his room with the usual children’s picture books as well as piles and piles of species catalogues for all the bugs.
“If you’re very good,” his mom says.
She turns to Ellie, fishes twenty dollars from her pocket. “Only one,” she says to both of them. “And only if you’re nice to Ellie the whole time.”
The rain still comes down hard and Ellie can’t remember the last time she’s driven. She only got her license so she could drive when they’re down here. The wipers swish one-two as the water rushes to fill the windshield, and there are a couple seconds each time when Ellie can’t see the road at all. They have Jeffrey’s old Bronco. Ellie thinks she might smell weed, something smoky and illicit settled deep in the canvas seats. She thinks maybe when they get back, once Annie and Jack and Jeffrey are all safely in bed, she could search underneath the seats for some remnants. She wouldn’t smoke it. She just wants to know what’s available in case.
“You okay?” Ellie says, catching Jack’s eye in the rearview mirror. But Jack just looks down at the book he’s brought and doesn’t speak. He’s strapped into his booster and looks taller than he is.
She lets him go in front of her when they get there. She’s forgotten an umbrella and they run through the parking lot, Jack jumping through two massive puddles, water splashing up into Ellie’s face and covering Jack’s shorts, splattering the back of his shirt as they head toward the double doors. He seems so sure — so much surer than she’s ever been — she doesn’t think twice about letting him off alone. She heads to the literature section and searches for more Deborah Eisenberg. The book she has is the only one they carry, and she wanders farther through the alphabet, coming to Woolf. She opens To The Lighthouse. Her mother never leaves the house without this book, a book Ellie’s never read. She opens to a random page and begins reading. For a while, she sinks down deep:
They both smiled, standing there. They both felt a common hilarity, excited by the moving waves; and then by the swift cutting race of a sailing boat, which, having sliced a curve in the bay, stopped; shivered; let its sails drop down; and then, with a natural instinct to complete the picture, after this swift movement, both of them looked at the dunes far away, and instead of merriment felt come over them some sadness — because the thing was completed partly, and partly because distant views seem to outlast a million years (Lily thought) the gazer and to be communing already with a sky which beholds an earth entirely at rest.
She reaches for her cell phone in her pocket. She almost calls her mom. She wants to read this paragraph out loud to her. Her mom probably has it memorized, but she thinks maybe if Ellie calls to give it to her, it will be something both of them can keep.
She’s forgotten Jack until she remembers. It’s been half an hour. Briefly, on and off until she finds him, she feels a rush of tight hot panic through her shoulders, straight up to her teeth. But then he’s there in front of her. He’s cross-legged on the floor in the Science section, immersed in a book on scorpions. “You know, there’s a scorpion in Laos — my mom’s been there — it’s called the Heterometrus laoticus. It’s black in the daylight, but it glows blue under UV light.” Ellie nods. She’s so relieved to see him, she’s almost interested in whatever it is he’s babbling about. “Scientists don’t know if it’s sun protection or if it’s meant to alert them if the night’s too bright for them to go out without being eaten by some predator.”
“Sure,” Ellie says. She’s still thinking about the Woolf, her mom; her mind catches on the words night and predator.
“Come on.” She’s still holding the Woolf until she realizes she doesn’t have the money to pay for it. She has a credit card her mom gave her for emergencies and she fingers it inside her wallet, deciding if this counts. “We have to go.”
He seems surprised that she’s still standing there. He piles four books into his arms and stands. “I need all of these.”
Ellie still has the credit card between her fingers and thinks a minute that she should get them all for him, that maybe he’ll like her if she does. “No,” she says.
She puts down the Woolf. She’ll come back and get it with the money she’s meant to get from Jeff and Annie. She kneels close to Jack. “Pick one, okay?”
He clutches the stack to his chest and glares at her. His shoes don’t match. They’re those rubber clog things with little buttons stuck into them. One of them is green and one of them is blue.
“No,” he says.
It’s quiet at first, like he’s trying it out. Ellie stands up and tries to take the books from Jack.
“No,” he says again.
“Please, Jack,” she says. This isn’t right, she thinks. She shouldn’t plead with him. She reaches for the books again and he runs from her, squeals. “Noooo!” he yells as he bolts for the front door. They’re in a massive concrete shopping center and just outside is a broad expanse of parking lot, beyond which is a major road. Ellie’s quick behind him and grabs him up into her arms right before he’s out the door, but Jack is yelling now and she’s not sure what to do. He’s strong and heavier than he looked running in front of her; she’s afraid suddenly she’ll drop him on the tile floor. People stare from all sides of the store and Ellie almost starts to cry, she’s so afraid of what might happen. “Please,” she whispers now, as if the people will stop staring. Jack screams and she keeps hold of him so he doesn’t make it out the door. “Please,” she says again. He’s lost a clog in their scuffle and all the books have fallen. “We’ll get the books,” says Ellie. “Please.”
Winter 2013
The buzzer buzzes and Maya starts and almost drops her wine glass. She’s been crying. Caitlin hands her a paper towel and holds Maya’s arm up by her shoulder, briefly, before turning to buzz in whoever has arrived. Maya’s heart beats too quickly. She clutches her glass, which she has refilled once while telling Caitlin what her daughter’s done. “Sorry,” she says. She shakes her head and fixes her eyes on Caitlin’s green toenails.