Emilie Richards – No River Too Wide (страница 17)
The sidewalks seemed to undulate like ocean waves. It was unlikely there was any place in the Asheville area where she wouldn’t be walking either up or downhill, and for a while her legs were going to feel it. The terrain, like everything else here, would seem strange for some time to come.
She assessed her surroundings. To her right was a shop that sold chocolates. Across the street, beside the tattoo studio, was a café that looked to be closed, either already done for the day or not yet open for the evening. She trudged in the direction Taylor had suggested, to what looked like as major a street as she would find here. Some of the buildings were painted bright colors, and while she didn’t stop to investigate, the shops seemed filled with things she didn’t need. Jewelry, crafts, photographs and exotic statues.
By the time she got to the corner, she could feel unease turning into panic. The feeling was familiar, even if nothing else was. She had felt just this way on the evenings Rex was late coming home, not because she’d worried about his safety, but because trying to keep dinner warm had been nearly impossible. After an hour had passed, she had then been faced with trying to make something new, something quick that would still be fresh when he arrived. Nothing had made him angrier than walking through the door to find his dinner was dried out or just being prepared.
She told herself the kind of panic she had felt back then was finished. She told herself there was no reason to transfer those feelings to a simple shopping excursion. Unfortunately nobody knew better than she that telling herself something helped very little. Because for too many years at the beginning of her marriage she had told herself if she just learned to be a better wife, she would have a happy life.
She needed to sit down. Taylor had said something about a park. She saw a green space to her right and started in that direction.
The little triangular wedge was picturesque, with rocks that mimicked the surrounding mountains and a waterfall running over them. Cantilevered steps, or possibly seats, led to a flat area near the center. People were playing chess at one end, and not far from her a disheveled old man on one of the benches strummed a banjo. In between bursts of discordant music he fed a pointy-eared boxer bites of a sub sandwich.
Had she been snatched by aliens and deposited on Mars, she couldn’t have felt more like a stranger in a strange land.
She headed for a bench without an occupant and gratefully sat before her knees gave way. She closed her eyes. She knew fear. She understood fear. What she didn’t understand was why, now that the person she feared most was hundreds of miles away, she was still trembling.
“Got room here?”
The voice startled her, and her eyes flew open. A young man with dark hair covered by a colorful baseball cap didn’t wait for her reply. He sat on the other end of the bench and stuck his legs out in front of him.
“This is my favorite bench because of the sun,” he said.
She hadn’t chosen the bench for any reason except proximity, but now Jan noticed that she was sitting in a puddle of sunshine.
She wanted to move away. Her stomach was rebelling, and talking to a stranger seemed impossible. She had enough problems thinking of things to say to Taylor and Maddie. So many years had passed when simple conversation had been denied her that sometimes in Topeka, in the hours when she was home alone, she had pretended to be two people.
Nice to meet you, Janine. Tell me about yourself.
Well, thanks for asking. There’s not much to tell except that I hate my life and I can’t figure out how to have a better one and live to tell the story.
“Do you come here often?” the young man asked.
She ventured another glance. He was still sitting exactly where he’d flopped down, his face turned toward the sun and his eyes hidden by sunglasses. He had a strong profile with a nose like a hawk’s beak. Even seated he seemed tall and muscular.
“No,” she said.
“Been to the drum circle?”
“No.”
“You ought to give it a try. Crowd-watching’s a big part of the fun. Lots of different kinds of people come. Tourists... Are you just visiting?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s a good place to live if you’re looking for one.”
“Why?”
He opened his eyes and lifted an eyebrow. “Why is it a good place to live?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Not too many places where so many different kinds of people get along. Nobody stands out much here. You can be whoever you want to be, and nobody thinks you’re strange. At least most people don’t think so.”
“How do you figure out who you want to be?” she asked before she thought better of it.
He looked surprised. “Isn’t that the easy part?”
“No.”
“I guess you figure out who you admire, and you try to be like that.”
She admired people with courage, people who’d had dreams they’d pursued despite obstacles. People who had been able to protect their children.
She blinked back tears. “And if you fail?”
“Aren’t you too young to write off life that way?”
She wondered.
He stretched and stood, long arms reaching out as if to embrace the world. “I say go for whatever it is you haven’t done yet. You’ve got time right up until you draw your last breath.” He gave a quick, final wave, almost a salute, and strolled off.
She asked herself what she hadn’t done yet, and the answer was so overwhelming she could hardly breathe. If she took his advice, where would she start?
She gazed around the park, searching for a clue. Minutes passed and finally her heart rate began to slow. Then she saw the answer was simple.
“Blue jeans.”
It didn’t matter if she was frightened by everyday things that others took for granted. It didn’t matter if she felt alone in the world, something Rex had repeatedly warned her would happen if she ever tried to leave him. It didn’t matter that she no longer knew what a woman like her could actually achieve. Perhaps it didn’t even matter that she had failed at the things she had most hoped to accomplish and was still seeking forgiveness.
What mattered now were jeans. From what she could tell, she was the only person in Asheville who didn’t own a pair. If she didn’t want to stand out in the crowd, now was the time to remedy that.
She got to her feet, and her knees still trembled, but life was going to be like this. A pair of blue jeans. An afternoon alone in a strange—in more ways than one—city. Participating in a short conversation with someone she’d never met and wasn’t likely to see again.
Life. One step at a time with nobody blocking the way.
And if, for one moment after Taylor had dropped her off, she had yearned for Rex—who had all the answers as well as all the questions—then she supposed she could seek forgiveness for that, as well.
But first, one small thing. A pair of jeans.
This she could do.
From the audio journal of a forty-five-year-old woman, taped for the files of Moving On, an underground highway for abused women.
Some people believe violence comes directly from the traditional family, when one person is awarded all the power as well as the right, even obligation, to enforce his values or lack of them. Others believe domestic violence is caused by the disintegration of the traditional family. Neither view is true. Domestic violence is the result of one family member with sickness in his soul, and the desire to infect those who are weakest and most vulnerable. Sometimes fatally.
And yes, I’ve used the word he. The vast majority of batterers are men. Mine certainly was.
And yes, I’ve also used the word was. Now that I’ve left the Abuser, I have no doubt that if given the opportunity he’ll cause more and greater pain, perhaps ending our struggle once and for all, as happens too frequently. I’ve been warned that 70 percent of all women who die from domestic abuse die after they leave their abusers, as I left mine.
For now I’m free of him. I have dreams in which he finds me and exacts his final vengeance, but I believe that someday I may have just as many dreams in which I find him first.
* * *
Adam Pryor hadn’t known he could fly. He had spent most of his life on the ground, never realizing that if he flapped his wings he could soar with the eagles and vultures. Today he felt kinship with both, the eagles with their hooked beaks and lethal talons that tore the flesh from their prey, and the vultures, who fed on carrion, destroying evidence so the world could pretend death wasn’t an ugly business. Right now, though, he only wanted to get away, to rise above the clouds, up, up, just high enough that he didn’t lose consciousness and plunge back to earth.
He was especially careful about that. He never wanted to touch the ground again, particularly not the ground just below him. If he could gaze through the clouds, he knew exactly what he would see. A rural bazaar, a brief spot of color against a desolate landscape, with crude wooden sheds lining an unadorned village roadway. Sides of meat hanging from hooks. Yellow plastic jugs with labels in Arabic script. Shelves of cans, some which would have been perfectly at home in an army commissary and probably had been before they mysteriously disappeared.