Lisa Unger - Black Out

“I have no idea, but there’s someone else out there looking for you. I don’t know who he is or what he wants. It doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is, time’s up. You don’t help me, the next person to walk through that door or one just like it may not give you a choice at all.”

My whole body was shivering now.

“Put on some clothes,” he told me, moving toward the door. “You’ll catch a cold.” Before he left, he looked back and said, “Christ, kid, where are your parents?”

“She’s going to be okay,” my father says, bringing me back to the present. There was something grave about his tone, something off.

I turn to look at him. He is driving fast on the Long Island Expressway, headed for a small private airport where he says he has a friend with a plane who owes him a favor. He made a quick call at some point back at the shop that I didn’t hear, and the next thing I knew, we were on our way. I didn’t even know he had a car. Unbelievably, it’s a rather nice late-model Lincoln Town Car. There’s a lot I don’t know about my father, I guess.

“A guy I know, we used to ride together when we were kids,” he explained as we got ready to leave. “He went straight, got a job. Now he’s this big-time real-estate developer. He said anytime I need the plane day or night, it’s mine.”

“That’s a pretty big favor,” I said, skeptically.

“Trust me, it’s nothing compared to what I did for him.”

“Spare me the details.” I’m not in the mood for one of my father’s crazy stories. I don’t even know if there will be a plane waiting for us when we get to this supposed airport on Long Island. But I have no choice. My stomach is an acid brew; the image of my daughter bound and gagged is seared in my mind.

I look over at my father now. I can see he’s itching to tell me his story, but he manages to keep his mouth shut. I lean my head against the window and watch the trees whip past us. I wonder about the other cars on the road, envy them their mundane journeys-to a late shift or home from one, back from a party or a date. I never got to live a life like that, not really. Even my normal life as Annie was undercut by all my lies. You can hide from the things you’ve done, tamp them down, make them disappear from your day-to-day, but they’re always with you. I know that now, too late. You cannot cage the demons-they just rattle and scream and thrash until you can’t ignore them any longer. You must face them eventually. They demand it.

We pull off the highway and drive along a dark, empty access road. I see a field of hangars with small planes parked in neat rows. Off in the distance, there’s a small tower, then a line of lights that I imagine is a runway. I am relieved that there’s really an airport.

“He said that one of the gates would be open,” my father says, slowing down.

And so it is.

“How did you know I wasn’t really dead?” I ask my father as he turns off the road and drives through the open gate. I’m not sure why the question comes to me at the moment. Seems like there are other things to discuss. I can see lights up ahead, the figure of a man moving back and forth between a small craft and a hangar.

“Gray sent someone to let me know. Some kid. He gave me a note, explained everything that’s been happening. I guess he didn’t want me hearing about it some other way.”

It’s like Gray to cover all the bases that way. I wish he were here now, but at the same time it’s right that I’m on my own. My father comes to a stop, and we sit for a minute in the dark. The man by the plane quits what he’s doing to look at us.

My father stares straight ahead for a second, then lowers his head and releases a long, slow breath. We both know he’s not coming with me. I don’t know the reasons, but I know he’s not capable of going any further. He has always done only what he was able to do. Maybe that’s true of all of us. Maybe it’s just that when it’s your parents, their shortfalls are so much more heartbreaking.

“Look, kid,” he says, and then stops. I hope he’s not going to launch into some monologue about how he’s failed as a father and how sorry he is. I don’t have time, and I don’t want to hear it. We sit in silence while he seems to be striking up the courage to say something.

“It doesn’t have to be like this, you know?” he says finally. “How about we just call the cops?”

“They have my daughter.”

“Ophelia-” he says, then stops again. Whatever he wanted to say he has changed his mind. “I know. You’re right. Go get your girl. But be careful.”

I watch his face, the muscle working in his jaw, a vein throbbing at his temple. As ever, I am not privy to what kind of battle he’s fighting inside himself.

“I love you, Opie. Always have,” he says, not looking at me.

“I know that, Dad.” And I do. I really do.

There’s no embrace, no tearful good-bye, no words of wisdom or encouragement. I leave the car, and within fifteen minutes I’m in a Cirrus Design SR20 aircraft on my way back-of all places-to Frank’s ranch, where this journey began.

I sit in the rear of the plane, strapped into the harness with headphones around my ears. The pilot, a stocky guy with a crew cut, greeted me and gave me some safety instructions, but he has not said another word since he helped me strap in. He doesn’t seem interested in me or what my story is; he is a man who is paid to do what he was told and not ask questions. I noticed that he barely glanced at my face, as if he didn’t want to be able to identify it later.

The noise from the engines is oddly hypnotic, restful in its relentlessness. As the plane rockets down the runway and lifts into the air, I think about Victory.

I delivered her naturally, no drugs. I wanted to be present for her entry into this world, wanted to feel her pass through me. Those crashing waves of consciousness-altering pain, I allowed them to carry me to another place within myself. I let them take me moaning and sighing to motherhood. I felt my daughter move through my body and begin her life. Our eyes locked when I put her on my breast, and we knew each other. We’d known each other all along.

I’d never seen Gray cry before. But he did as he held her in his arms for the first time. In that moment she was his daughter. The fact that she had Marlowe’s blood running through her veins never occurred to him or me. She belonged to us. And even more than that, she belonged to herself. I could see her purity, her innocence, all the possibilities before her. She would be defined by our family, not by the evil deeds of Marlowe and his father. I swore to myself that she’d never be touched by them or by Ophelia and her shameful past.

“What do you want to name her?” Gray asked.

“I want to call her Victory,” I said, because the moment of her birth was a victory for all of us. I felt that Ophelia, Marlowe, Frank, and my mother were all far behind me now. I was Annie Powers, Gray’s wife, and, most important, I was Victory’s mother. I had thrown off my ugly past, forgotten it both literally and figuratively. My whole body was shaking from the effort of childbirth, the surge of hormones and emotion rattling through my frame.

“Victory,” he said with a wide smile. He was mesmerized by her, staring at her tiny face. “She’s perfect.”

He sat beside me with our daughter in his arms. “Victory,” he said again. And it was her name.

I’m trying to recapture the feeling I had that day, the power I felt in the knowledge that I was Victory’s mother, the certainty I had in my heart that I could protect her from every awful thing in my past. But the feeling is gone. As the plane takes off and the world below me gets smaller and smaller, I think that the path of my life has always been like this-an ugly, frightening maze. No matter how hard and fast I run, no matter how badly I want to escape its passages, ultimately they lead back to where I started.