“Well, hers is the death that will result in his death, right? That’s the one he’s going to die for.”
“Right.” Maude had been killed in Maryland, which kept capital punishment on the books but was increasingly disinclined to use it. Holly Tackett had been killed in Virginia, which apparently suffered from no such qualms. “But why would he write the Tacketts, what would he say?”
“He might confess, for once. That’s not so much to ask for, is it?”
Eliza thought, but did not say: For Walter, that’s huge. Walter never said anything that he didn’t want to say. He hated, more than anything, to be forced into saying he was wrong, no matter how small the matter. The first time he had hit Eliza was when she had corrected him on the facts of the War of 1812. It had been a strange hit—a punch, direct to the stomach, something a boy might have done to another boy, and it had knocked the wind out of her. But she never corrected him again, no matter how wrong he was, and he was often wrong. On history, on math, on picayune matters of grammar and usage. And, frequently, about people. Eliza had never known anyone who was more wrong about people, women in particular.
“Look, Eliza.” Vonnie had softened her tone. “You’re too nice for your own good. Forget Walter. Not forget—I know that’s impossible—”
“You’d be surprised. I’d barely thought of him, particularly in the past few months.”
“Hmmphf.”
Eliza knew how to change the subject with her sister. “What’s new with you?”
“Nothing. Everything. I was online at this godforsaken hour because I want to check on events in the Middle East in real time. I can’t wait for the morning paper anymore, or even CNN. I hate how swiftly the world moves now, how glib everyone has become. We need to think more, not more quickly. Someone—the secretary of state, administration officials—will be on all the news programs tomorrow, delivering up these great gobs of sound bites, and people will be blogging like mad. It’s not productive. Foreign policy is too nuanced, too steeped in centuries of history to be reduced to banal homilies. This isn’t a partisan position,” she said, almost as if rehearsing her own talking points. “It’s an intellectual one. These issues must be addressed with gravitas.”
Eliza didn’t disagree. She felt the same way, only her concerns were domestic. The world was moving too swiftly, although it was strange to hear that complaint from caffeinated Vonnie. Iso and Albie were growing up too fast, Peter’s new job gobbled up twelve, fourteen hours a day, in exchange for promises that they might be rich, truly rich, within a year or two.
Her own days, however, were molasses slow. They were full, with places to go and things to do, and she was exhausted at the end of them. But they trundled along like dinosaurs. The sauropod or the stegosaurus, which, according to Albie, were the slowest of the dinosaurs.
After listening sympathetically to her sister for another fifteen minutes, agreeing with virtually everything she said, Eliza begged off, saying she was tired. Yet she remained at the computer, writing. She was self-aware enough to realize that it was not incidental that she suddenly found the words she wanted to write to Walter. She was still at the computer when Peter returned an hour later, although she quickly closed the file, reluctant to discuss the matter again this evening, even with his sympathetic ear. She was, she decided, Waltered-out.
10
1985
SHE HAD NEVER GONE to the bathroom outside before. She knew it was an odd point on which to fixate, given what was happening to her, but it was embarrassing. She tried to persuade the man that she would behave if he would allow her to use a restroom at a gas station or fast-food place, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He wasn’t harsh or cruel. He simply shook his head and said, “No, that won’t work.”
They had been in the truck about three hours at this point. He had stopped and gassed up, but he had pumped his own gas and told her beforehand that it would be a bad idea for her to try to get out. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, as if she were in control, as if her behavior would determine what he did. He pulled the passenger side of the truck very close to the pump; if she opened the door, there would barely be room for her to squeeze out, and even then, she would be between the door and the hose. Of course, she could go out the other way, the driver’s side. As the gas pump clicked away—it was an older pump, at a dusty, no-name place, and the dollars mounted slowly, cent by cent—she tested his reactions, leaning slowly toward the left. He was at the driver’s-side door faster than she would have thought possible.
“You need something?”
“I was going to change the radio station.”
“It isn’t on,” he pointed out. “I don’t leave the key in the ignition when I pump gas. I knew a guy, once, he left his key in the ignition and the car blew up. He was a fireball, running in circles.”
“I was going to change it for later,” she said, almost apologetically. Why did she feel guilty about switching a radio station? He had kidnapped her. But the odd thing about this man was that he didn’t act as if he were doing anything wrong. He reminded her a little of Vonnie in that way, especially when they were younger. Vonnie would do something cruel, then profess amazement at Elizabeth’s reaction, focusing on some small misdeed by Elizabeth to excuse her behavior. When Elizabeth was three, Vonnie had tied her to a tree in the backyard and left her there all afternoon. Admonished by their parents, Vonnie had said: “She was playing with my Spirograph and she wouldn’t stop putting pieces in her mouth. I just wanted to keep her from choking.” One April Fools’ Day, she had volunteered to fix Elizabeth milk with Oval-tine, then given her a vile concoction with cough syrup and cayenne pepper hidden beneath the pale brown milk. As Elizabeth had coughed and retched, Vonnie had said: “You spilled a little.” As if the stains from the drink were more damning than the devious imagination of the person who had prepared it.
“You don’t like my music?”
She weighed her answer. They had been listening to country music, which was uncool according to most people she knew. “It’s okay,” she said. “But I like other stuff, too.”
“What do you listen to?”
“C-c-c-current stuff.”
“Madonna,” he said, looking at her fingerless lace mitts. “I’m guessing Madonna.”
“Well, yeah,” she said. “But also—” She racked her mind for the music she liked. “Whitney Houston. Scritti Politti. Kate Bush.”
Except for the first name, these were Vonnie’s musical choices, and Elizabeth wasn’t sure why she was appropriating them. Because they made her seem older, wiser? Or because she sensed that the man wouldn’t know most of them and that would give her some sort of power?
“She’s a bad girl,” he said.
“Kate Bush?”
“Whitney Houston. ‘Saving all my love for you,’ right? She’s having an affair with a married man. That’s wrong.”
“But she loves him. And isn’t what he’s doing more wrong?”
“Women are better than men. Most, anyway. Men are weak, so women need to be strong.” He reached in and punched a button on the radio, returning it to his station, although she had never touched it. The gas pump clicked off, and she hoped he might have to go inside to pay the attendant and then she would—she looked around. What would she do? It was surprising how quickly the landscape had turned into out-and-out country, real hicksville. If she had the chance to jump from the truck, where would she go? Later, when he pulled into a drive-through to buy her a hamburger, she had tried to announce to the attendant that she had been kidnapped, but he had placed his hand over hers, squeezing hard, and said: “Don’t make jokes about things like that, Elizabeth.” (She had given him her name at his insistence, but he had yet to share his.) The cashier, a teenager not much older than Elizabeth, had looked bored, as if she saw such things every day. She even seemed a little resentful, tired of couples playing out their dramas and private jokes in front of her. The girl had bad acne and frizzy hair, and her uniform pulled tightly across her broad torso. Elizabeth wanted to say: “He’s not my boyfriend! I’ve never had a boyfriend! I’m more like you than you think, except I’m not old enough to work or drive a car.”