Russell Banks - Continental Drift

She knows now. She knows what he has done. She knows at last who he is. She pulls back in horror. Then an instant passes, and she comes quickly forward and cradles his head against her breast. “Oh, my God, Bob. My God.”

Suddenly, she pushes him violently away from her. His body flops back against the chair, and he says, “I … I don’t … I can’t …”

“Shut up! Just shut up! Don’t say anything!” Slowly, as if afraid she will break, she moves to the other side of the table and sits down opposite him. In silence, they sit there, staring at each other, husband and wife and the third person their marriage has made of them and who, at this moment, stands before them, a monster.

By noon, they have decided what to do. It comes out slowly, without argument or discussion, sentence by sentence, cell by cell, like a healing. First Bob quietly announces, “We should leave here.” Then, after several minutes, Elaine says they should go back to New Hampshire, where Bob has a trade and can find work.

A little while later, Bob says they should pack up and leave now, as soon as possible, before they spend all their money here in Florida. Elaine agrees. She should quit her job now, pick up her pay this afternoon and take from the bank the few hundred dollars they have left in the checking account.

For a long time, they say nothing more, until Elaine says that the money Bob took from the Haitians should not leave Florida with them. “It’s worse than drug money,” she says.

“No. You’re right. I don’t know what I should do with it, though. I can’t turn it in to the police. It’s a lot of money, though,” he adds.

They are silent for a while, then Elaine says, “Shouldn’t you give it over to Ave somehow? That’s where it belongs. It’s evil money. Or what’s-his-name, Tyrone.”

“No, what I should do is give it back to the Haitians. If I could figure out how.”

For the first time, as they make their plans, they are speaking of “should” and “should not,” and they do it stiffly, awkwardly, for these are words that make it difficult to mingle fantasy with hope. The sentences fit clumsily in their mouths and stumble over tongue, teeth and lips, as if either the words and grammar or the mouths were not their own. But Bob and Elaine struggle on, for they know now that this is the only way a new life can be made. And they must make a new life; the old one has died and is rotting. They are living on a corpse that has begun to stink.

They can’t afford to rent a U-Haul, so they decide to pack and carry north only their clothes, bedding, linens and kitchenware. They will leave the rest of their belongings — except for the baby’s crib and playpen, which can be tied to the roof of the car — in exchange for the rent they’ll owe for not giving a month’s notice to Horace. “Should we tell him what we’re doing?” Bob asks.

Elaine says, “No. We shouldn’t tell anyone. Once he sees the stuff we’ve left, he’ll be happy we’re gone.”

By the time the girls come home from school, Bob and Elaine have begun packing in earnest. When Ruthie and Emma learn that they are moving back to New Hampshire, and Daddy will get his old job back, and they’ll find a nice place to live, just like they used to have, the girls are visibly pleased, even Ruthie, and immediately they go to work packing their favorite toys, dolls, games and books into the boxes that Elaine brought back when she went out to close the bank account and pick up her paycheck at the Rusty Scupper.

For supper, because all the dishes, pots and pans have been wrapped and closed into boxes, Bob takes everyone out to McDonald’s in Key Largo, and though he still cannot eat — the very sight of the Big Macs and fries makes him suddenly nauseous — Bob enjoys his family’s pleasure in a way he has not for months. Their fussing and noisy delight, their impatience, their innocent, shining faces, make for him a world that, for once, is sufficient unto itself.

On the short drive back to the trailer, rain starts to fall, large, swollen drops that spatter against the windshield. Bob flips on the wipers and defogger and lights a cigarette. He’s thinking intently and has said nothing since leaving McDonald’s.

“You all right?” Elaine asks. “Want me to drive?” Robbie lies asleep on her lap.

“No. I’m okay.” The overcast sky and now the rain have brought on an early dusk, and Bob switches on the headlights.

“You should go to bed when we get home. Really, Bob. I’ll finish the packing.”

Bob exhales jets of smoke from his nostrils, and the windshield, despite the defogger fan, clouds over. Reaching one hand forward, he rubs away a square that lets him see the road directly before him. “No. I couldn’t sleep even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to.”

“You must be exhausted.”

“Yeah, sure. Of course.” He glances into the back seat. The girls are slumped in opposite corners, lost in their private thoughts. “Listen,” he says in a low voice, “I’m going to drop you and the kids at the trailer. I guess I’ve figured out what I should do with the money. And I have to do it tonight, if I’m going to do it at all. Okay?”

Elaine stares straight ahead at the windshield. After a few seconds, she reaches out with her free hand and wipes a head-sized circle clear.

Bob asks, “Don’t you want to know what I’m going to do?”

“No. Not especially, no. So long as you get rid of it, and we don’t take it with us away from here.”

“I’m going …”

“Bob, I don’t want to know. I don’t. Really. I don’t know why, but it feels … cleaner not to know. Better, for the future. Our future. Okay?”

“Okay. Good.”

She asks when he’ll be back, and he says he can’t be sure, by morning anyhow. Sooner, if he’s lucky. “And I feel lucky,” he says. “For once.”

They pull up and stop in front of the trailer, and the girls are alert as puppies again, complaining about the rain. “Just run inside. The door’s unlocked,” Elaine tells them, and they scramble from the car and splash through puddles to the trailer.

“Drive careful,” Elaine says, hefting the baby to her shoulder. “The roads are wet. I don’t want you dead.”

“You don’t?”

“Don’t joke about stuff like that, Bob. No, I feel like our life is over, though. The old life, I mean. The one we imagined when we were kids. That old me and that old you are dead already, I think. Maybe it’s good they are. I don’t know. No, I don’t want you dead, Bob. I want to grow old with you.”

“Didn’t you always want that?”

“I guess I didn’t. I just wanted to be young with you. You know? And that’s what I’ve been, until now.”

“Yeah. Me too. I feel so old now. Old as my father. It’s strange, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Be careful,” and she opens the door. She gets out of the car, grunting with the effort, slams the door closed and disappears behind the clouded glass. Stretching across the seat, Bob rubs the window clear and watches his wife climb the steps, where, as she opens the door, she shifts the baby to her hip, and then the door is closed, and she is gone.

An hour and a half later, Bob turns left in Key Largo at Blackwater Sound, crosses the bridge and leaves the Keys on the Route 1 causeway to the mainland. The rain has passed over, scudding northwest across the bay toward Naples and Fort Myers and on up the Gulf Coast, and now, ahead of Bob and slightly to his right, an egg-shaped moon droops in the purple sky over Miami. He follows the moon, its yellow light reflecting off the old canal alongside Route 1, through the Everglades to Florida City, where he picks up the Dixie Highway north through alternating suburbs and truck farms, until the suburbs take over altogether and the huge orange glow from the city, blotting out the moon and stars, fills the northern sky from east to west.