David Bell - The Hiding Place

Ashleigh made a sound. Somewhere between a scream and a gag. She didn’t think it was very loud, so she made it again even louder.

But who would hear her in the shitty building with everyone staring at their TVs?

She dropped the paper and remembered something her grandpa had taught her: if someone grabs you from behind-

Ashleigh brought her right arm up as far as it would go, then swung it back, her elbow aimed for Nick’s gut like a missile. She connected, felt the rush of air that came out as Nick said, “ Ooof! ”

Ashleigh slipped away as he loosened his grip. She turned. Nick still stood between her and the door, but he was doubled over, his eyes closed tight. She swung her foot high and caught him in the chin. Her shoe against his face made a satisfying smack. She didn’t wait to see the damage done or how he reacted.

She didn’t care.

She ran. Her shoes pounded down the stairs. Pounded and pounded.

She ran and ran until she looked back over her shoulder and couldn’t see the building anymore.

Rose didn’t know Janet was coming. Janet went to call Michael before she left work, then realized he had never given her his cell phone number or even an e-mail address. She didn’t know what he did with his days. Maybe he looked for work in Dove Point, a thought that caused an unreasonable flutter of emotion to rise in Janet’s chest. He hadn’t said any such thing, but that didn’t stop Janet from hoping he might stay and settle down. In the immediate moment, she just wanted to talk to him, to hear his voice. She wanted to tell him about seeing the man again, this time on campus. And she wanted to tell Michael she wasn’t crazy-the man probably had been creeping around her house two nights earlier.

So when she couldn’t reach him by cell phone, she decided to just stop by. Rose’s number was in the phone book-she found it with no trouble-but Janet didn’t bother to call in advance.

Rose Bower lived north of Dove Point’s city limits. Everyone called the area Baileytown because the Bailey Foundry operated out there and most of the people who lived nearby had worked for the company. The foundry had closed when Janet was in high school, not long before Ashleigh was born, but the name Baileytown remained. The foundry still remained as well, its gates padlocked, its vacant and unused buildings slowly and inevitably crumbling.

As far as Janet knew, Rose had never worked for the foundry. She’d split from Michael’s father when Michael was fourteen, so she must have moved to Baileytown then because of the cheap rents that were available as the foundry’s workers moved out. Janet remembered going to Rose’s house in high school either to pick up or drop off Michael. Rose always showed a great deal of interest in Janet. She used to ask Janet about school as well as her future plans, and when Janet talked about going to college and having a career, Rose nodded affirmatively as though that was the exact right thing to do. Janet chalked Rose’s interest up to the woman’s overall benevolent nature, but also supposed that she saw Janet as a kind of surrogate daughter. Rose never had a daughter of her own, and with Janet’s mother gone, it seemed like a natural fit.

But Janet stopped going to Michael’s house once she became pregnant.

Janet dealt with the shame of her pregnancy at school about as well as could be expected. As her stomach grew, and as she faced the stares and occasional comments from her classmates and teachers, she allowed herself to feel a measure of pride in the pregnancy. She knew some of the other girls were jealous and wanted nothing more out of life than to begin having children, so Janet managed to convince herself that she was doing something special and unique.

But those thoughts-and years later, Janet knew they were just a defense mechanism, a form of self-preservation-didn’t carry over to facing Rose Bower. Of all the people in her life outside of her father, Janet hated the thought of letting Rose Bower down. A woman who’d always asked about Janet’s career ambitions, a woman who seemed to be pushing Janet to be better, wouldn’t understand how she’d managed to get herself knocked up. Janet didn’t know the answer to that question herself, so she simply avoided the Bower house from the day she learned she was pregnant.

Which is not to say Janet hadn’t seen Rose over the years. Dove Point was too small of a town to not occasionally run into somebody. As Janet drove away from campus and across town on Old Hanover Road, she tried to remember the last time she’d seen Rose. They’d run into each other once at the funeral of the former principal of Dove Point High, an event everyone in town seemed to have passed through. And Janet could recall a few encounters in the grocery store, most recently…was it five years ago? Ashleigh was still young enough to want to tag along to the store with her mother, and still young enough to answer an adult’s questions without rolling her eyes or sighing. Even then, five years earlier, Rose’s frailty had struck Janet as somewhat disturbing. The woman seemed to be diminishing into herself, becoming just a shell of what she once was. How much more diminished would she be now? Maybe some part of Janet needed to see Rose again, to let the woman know Janet was doing okay, that she was making it despite becoming a mother while still in high school. And Janet could see how Rose was doing too.

The streets of Baileytown looked even worse than Janet remembered. Plastic toys and junked cars littered the yards she drove past. Children played in the street under the suspicious eyes of parents who were smoking or drinking. Janet felt grateful to have a job, to have a life with future prospects. If she’d married Tony Bachus back in high school, would she be living on one of these streets? Would she have popped out more kids without regard for how to provide for them? One kid proved to be work enough…

Two window air-conditioning units stuck out from the side of the dirty white house. The paint was peeling in large chunks, and the house appeared not to have been painted in the fifteen years since Janet last visited. A neighbor’s dog barked from a fenced-in yard, its white teeth visible like angry knives. Janet knocked on the rickety screen door, which despite the heat was all that stood between the natural elements and Rose’s living room. The sun was still bright outside, but Janet leaned close to the screen in an attempt to see into the house. No lights were on, and the curtains looked to be drawn against the heat.

Janet knocked again. “Hello?”

“Yes?”

The voice sounded faint but close. Was she right in the living room hidden from Janet’s sight?

“Hello? Rose?”

“Yes?”

Janet heard a rustling, and then the woman appeared in the doorway. It took a moment, but a smile spread across her face.

“Do you remember me, Rose? It’s Janet Manning.”

“Of course, of course.” She unlatched the screen door’s eyehook lock and stepped back to let Janet in. “I know you, honey. Come in.”

While Janet looked at the furniture-which also hadn’t changed in fifteen years-Rose Bower scurried around opening the curtains and letting in daylight. Despite the furniture’s age, the house looked clean and well organized, as though someone took pride in its appearance.

“I’m sorry to just show up like this,” Janet said.

“I’m glad you did,” Rose said. “Sit, sit.”

Janet chose the end of the floral-patterned couch and took her first good look at Rose Bower in the daylight. She looked even thinner and more frail than the last time. Janet reminded herself that the woman standing before her was roughly the same age as her own parents-about sixty-because anyone else would have guessed she was closer to eighty. Deep lines creased her face-did she smoke? — and her hair looked thin and brittle, brushed back into place and held by a series of bobby pins. A gray housecoat hung loose on her body, and when Rose sat down-resuming her spot in a recliner near the couch-she let out a long breath, as though the effort of standing up and opening the door and the curtains had cost her a great deal. She didn’t offer to get Janet anything.