I step outside and join the women, carefully mimicking their steps. I keep my head down, my hands in the pockets of the scrubs from Vera’s house. If they were washed and pressed, it would be a dead giveaway, but there are stains across the front and they are wrinkled and I blend in. I’m one of them.
We take a breezeway between buildings and end up by a brick wall near the parking garage. I stand off to the side. The women’s hands are red from scrubbing and cleaning and polishing silver. I keep mine hidden in the pockets so my fresh Chanel Rose Caché nude manicure doesn’t show. The women chat away and eye me suspiciously but no one asks questions.
A vehicle approaches. It’s much larger than a van but not quite a bus, more reminiscent of an airport shuttle. I get in line and then step into the interior, the smell of pine needles and dankness overwhelming. A surge of panic—what if there aren’t enough seats for all of us?—but some remain empty. I don’t know if the driver takes count or if he relies on some sort of system but there doesn’t seem to be a method to all this. The sliding doors close.
I attempt to focus on what’s to come to get out of my own head but all I can do is sit tight and wait to see where the van is taking me. The driver turns on the radio. The noise level rises as if someone has given the women the go-ahead to come to life. They giggle and joke and there’s this overall cheerfulness filling the van.
As I’m twisting my diamond ring—it’s looser than it used to be and I fear it’ll slip off and get lost—I realize I absentmindedly put on a wide gold cuff bracelet when I visited Vera earlier. On my middle finger is a ring Edward gave me for an anniversary, a garnet surrounded by twenty small stones resembling the seeds of the pomegranate, Penelope’s birthstone. Don’t garnets bring misfortune to those who act improperly while wearing them? What an odd thought to have, I think, and slide the jewelry off and tuck everything into an interior pocket of my purse.
I fashion my behavior after the only other woman who isn’t talking—indifferent toward everyone, not making eye contact at all—and like her, I stare off into nothingness through the tinted windows. We sit and wait and then the van takes off down the long winding road leading away from Shadow Garden.
* * *
• • •
Leaving Shadow Garden behind, possibilities are opening up but I’m also reminded of my shortcomings. First, my vision is weak in dim light. How fast darkness has descended, how stubbornly my eyes fail to adapt, looking from the road up into a lit window my eyes don’t respond and for a few seconds I see nothing but vague floating spheres. Those sudden shifts from dark to light to dark, are those lights approaching cars or are they moving away? Secondly, as we pass street signs, names sound familiar, but I don’t recognize much else, not the roads, not the buildings, especially when we get into the city. I don’t put too much stock into this, not yet, I have always been directionally challenged.
A realization grows astronomically with every passing second: all this newfound confidence isn’t worth anything knowing I’m about to be confronted with my old life. All those months at Shadow Garden I have become invested in the past and maybe I’ve lost myself in memories that can’t be true? They can’t be true because—
A dip in the road sends me off my seat. The van’s movements rock me side to side, the driver brakes and the front dives, he accelerates and the rear end squats. I take long deep breaths and plant my feet on the floor of the van, where they stick to soda spills and popcorn remnants, but still my heart is whopping in my chest.
I sit paralyzed, want time to stop to get my thoughts together but that’s not going to happen. I can’t imagine what’s about to happen, there’s no way of knowing—I keep repeating it to myself I can do this I can do this I can do this—but I have hardly any time to figure anything out because the van merges onto the highway. Two exits and we turn into a grocery store parking lot. The doors open and two women get off. As quickly as the doors have opened, they shut and we merge back onto the freeway.
If I had been dropped in the middle of a foreign city, I couldn’t feel more disoriented. There’s no stopping this ride, there’s no getting out, and nothing I can do but hold on to my purse. Some street names seem familiar, but I can’t be sure. Memory can be faulty; as a matter of fact, memory is faulty, I know that much.
17
DONNA
I’m going back to Hawthorne Court. I repeat it to myself to make it sound real, I’m going back to Hawthorne Court. But there’s a feeling of paranoia accompanying me like some talisman I’m carrying in my pocket. I can’t resolve the memories, like two columns never adding up; regardless how often I go over the numbers, they just won’t reconcile. The gaps that need filling are like hollows, about what happened before I left the Tudor mansion. I didn’t trust myself then and I don’t quite trust myself now because there’s this sharp and clear understanding of a lack of credibility on my part.
Blurred trails of light zip by, the springs of the seat whine with every dip in the road. The exits and street signs mean nothing to me until I spot a white building with a dainty lace appearance—but the closer we get, the less familiar it looks. We take an exit and the traffic slows, so many cars, at times I feel as if the van is slowly inching its way backward but that can’t be. Lights move like tracers through my field of vision, one second I’m in a dark tunnel, the next in a brightly lit area. Nothing feels right. Before I know it, we have left upmarket stores and smooth black glass exteriors behind and we come to a halt at a gas station where two women exit and get into a car idling in the parking lot.
By now the women have begun to whisper, one of them turns around and looks at me, all the while they speak fast and furiously. One of them eyes my purse. Though there’s an aisle separating us, there’s no doubt she has recognized it for what it is. Though I have picked the most unassuming bag in my closet, an inconspicuous and ordinary black hobo bag, it’s a Valentino Garavani for $2,500. I’m clutching the softest calfskin money can buy.
I stuff the purse between my body and the window and close my eyes. Just for a minute, I tell myself. Images are painted on my eyelids, images of Penelope’s face, smeared with blood. Fear shoots through my body, my lungs panic for air. My arms flail and I’m reaching for something to hold on to. When I rip open my eyes I find my Garavani hobo bag in the aisle, its contents scattered across the grimy floor. My rings and the gold bracelet have come to rest on the dingy carpet for everyone to see.
“Hector,” a woman calls out to the driver. She speaks rhythmically, melodic words strung together, one laced through the next, robato and bolsa and what are the odds that the only sentence in Spanish I recall is cuántos libros hay en la bolsa? I don’t know the word robato but it’s self-explanatory, and the women are shouting and carrying on, pointing at the jewelry, at my purse, at me.