I keep driving, staying to the interstate, speeding but only moderately, staying with most of the traffic. Driving too slow, after all, would be as conspicuous as driving too fast. Hours go by, we pass into Ohio. The traffic signs look slightly different but otherwise it’s the same, just a wide ribbon of road endlessly churning under the car.
At last Connor speaks. “Where are we?” he says.
“Hey,” I say chirpily, “you’re back, huh? With me again? We’re in Ohio, sweetheart. We passed a place called Wheeling a while back.”
“Where’s that?”
“Well, it’s in Ohio. Other than that I don’t know.”
I glance at him in the mirror. He’s looking out the side window now, eyes dull, face pale. My hope that he was returning to normal was premature. Connor looks bad, as if all color had been drained from his face by some sort of vampire. The apple glow is long gone, unimaginable on this sallow husk of a child. He doesn’t ask why we’re in Ohio or where we’re going. He just stares uninterestedly out at the passing landscape.
“Where’s Kylie?” he says at last.
I frown, look at him.
“She’s not with us now, Connor.”
After a while he says, “Oh.” He doesn’t speak again for hours.
We stop at another McDonald’s for food and a bathroom. Connor doesn’t want to get out of the car so I pull at him, force him up gently, encourage him. “C’mon, sweetheart, c’mon, time for a bathroom break.”
“I don’t want a bathroom break.”
“Well, I do. C’mon. I want you to go in and use the bathroom.”
He’s passive about it, allows himself to be supported by my arm. We step into the McDonald’s. I’m worried about leaving him alone in the men’s room—I wonder if he’ll come back out—when I see a Godsend: one of those so-called “family” restrooms. I hustle him into it, lock the door behind us. If anyone wonders why I’m in the bathroom with a boy this age I’ll tell them he’s a special-needs child—God knows he’s acting like one. There’s a toilet, a sink, a baby-changing station. He allows me to pull his pants down, aim him at the bowclass="underline" “C’mon, sweetheart, time to go pee.” He doesn’t, he just stands there. After a while his body starts to shake. I try to comfort him but his shaking only seems to grow worse. Finally I arrange his clothes again, then use the toilet myself; Connor stares at me the whole time but doesn’t seem to actually see me. I wash my hands, open the door for us to step out, lay on supportive mother-talk: “Okay, sweetheart? Feel better now? Are you ready to get some food? Are you hungry? What do you think you want, honey?” He says nothing. I hold him close. His skin is cold. I get us more food, keep up the talk as I move us to the car. This time I put him in the front seat. I buckle his seat belt for him and we pull quickly back out onto the freeway.
We drive, drive for hours. I play the radio for a while but then shut it off. Connor eats nothing, drinks nothing. I can’t tell if he’s shaking now. Still ravenous, I end up eating his Big Mac for him once it’s gone cold and gluey. I watch the road-ribbon unfurl, unfurl. The sun skates across the sky and soon it’s growing dark.
Somewhere near the Indiana border I pull off the interstate and drive for a while on some little access road until I come upon a nondescript little town, hardly anything at all. But there’s a motel, “Big Ben’s.” It’s like any little motel in the middle of nowhere, interchangeable with dozens of others Connor and I have stayed in, just as the McDonalds’ we’ve been stopping at are interchangeable, as the miles of freeway we’ve crossed are interchangeable. A large-bellied man is behind the counter—Big Ben, I assume—and I sign us in while Connor waits in the car. “You’re in luck,” says the man who is probably Big Ben. “I can give you our suite. No extra charge.”
I thank him, ask about food, he directs me to some vending machines outside the office, I push in change and pull handles to get us cookies, candy bars, potato chips, sodas. I pull the car around to the side of the building, nearer the room Big Ben has given us, but also farther from the road. I back into the space so that no one from the street can see the car’s license plate. I guide Connor into the room. It’s like guiding a blind boy. Part of me wants to slip sunglasses over his blank, wide-staring eyes.
The “suite” turns out to be two somewhat rundown rooms with two beds—a queen-sized in the main room and a narrow double in the smaller side room. There’s a TV with, as the sign outside proudly proclaims, “Free Cable!” The rooms smell vaguely moldy. But the bathroom is clean enough, and includes a small tub. After I’m done investigating I return to the main room and find Connor sitting on the big bed, unresponsive. I feel his forehead. He’s frighteningly cold. It occurs to me that he’s in shock, some kind of shock, has been for many hours now. I try to remember my first aid training.
“Connor, honey, lie back, lie back on the bed.”
Using pillows I elevate his legs. I check his pulse, which seems normal—shock victims have rapid pulses, I think I remember. Having more or less exhausted what I recall about treating shock, I take a washcloth from the bathroom and soak it with warm water, apply it gently to his forehead.
“Connor, sweetheart, you’re going to be all right. Close your eyes. Try to sleep, honey.”
I hum to him, no particular tune, just hum, in part to comfort him, in part to keep silence from descending in this room. I reach to his eyelids gently, push them closed as one would a corpse’s. After a while I take a cup of water and try to dribble a little into his mouth, wet his lips. He just stays like that, seemingly asleep for all I can tell. But he’s not asleep. He’s something else, somewhere else. I don’t know where he is.
But after a long time his breathing slows and he does seem to have drifted off. I stay very quiet, watching him. His color is bad but his breathing is all right and he’s not shaking. It grows dark outside. I go to the window, glance out the curtain. The car is in total darkness, there’s no light on this part of the parking lot at all. No one will come for us tonight, I think. Most likely no one is looking within even hundreds of miles of where we are. And yet I know that someone will come, eventually. Someone will knock on some door somewhere or a highway patrolman or policeman or trooper will flash his lights behind us. But is that true? Aren’t there stories of people who vanish entirely from their own lives, take on new identities, live somewhere else for years, decades, make new families, new existences? Yes. People do it. I know they do.
After a long time Connor coughs suddenly and I go to him.
“Hey, baby,” I whisper in the semi-darkness of the room. “How you feeling?”
“I’m thirsty,” he says, not opening his eyes.
I tilt up his head, offer him some water from the cup. He drinks, coughs a little, swallows. Then again, and again. Finally the coughing stops and he’s able to drink without trouble. He opens his eyes and looks at me.
“Where are we, Mona?”
“I think we’re still in Ohio. But I’m not sure what this town is called. The middle of nowhere.”
“When are we going home?”
I think about how to answer this sleepy, sick boy. “Soon, sweetheart.”
“Where’s Kylie?”
I look at him. “She’s not with us on this trip, Connor.”
“Oh.” He swallows a little more water. “I thought she was.” His voice doesn’t rise above a whisper.
“No, sweetheart.”