Amity Gaige - Schroder

We remained there for another moment, him standing there beside the card table.

“ Außerdem ,” he said, shrugging. “Don’t you know it yet, Erik? There is no such thing as forgetting.”

Curious weather. A thunderstorm gathering down in the valley. The sky dark and roiling, even though it was morning, with patches of crucified daylight dazzling between. Leaves twisted in the wind. Weather vanes whined. The birds were silent. My skin felt different. My scalp, tight. I was sick with some kind of charge — a surge, a change in my fate, a redirection. Some kind of breaking up that I needed.

Despite the fact that you had secured yourself an excellent lawyer, a young, Cornell-minted go-getter, and all I had was Rick Thron and a damning child custody evaluation, somehow we got your side on the run. Due to the skipped visitations, a judge held you in contempt of court. I don’t know how he did it, but Thron somehow suppressed the child custody report, and without this key piece of evidence, your team panicked. A hasty move to appeal was thwarted when the judge reminded us that we already had an arrangement on the books — a hard-won parental agreement that had functioned well for Meadow for an entire year. We could still negotiate the conditions and limitations, but you had to let her visit me.

By then, I’d stopped caring about the legalities. I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d be found out. I was reckless, illogical, maybe even lacking moral character, but I was not crazy. I could tell how much better your lawyer was than mine. Mine hadn’t even checked out my bogus documents. The only thing I knew for certain was that I could not bear it anymore, the suspense of the way things were. I could imagine that someday, maybe, I would feel better, I would get accustomed to my new life, but today— this day — I couldn’t take it anymore, the way the wind went out of the world whenever my daughter left. When she left, the yards, the parks, the streets of Albany all seemed abandoned. The life went out of things. And until my life returned to its cycle of baked beans and sporadic couch sleep, I would experience a spasm of grief, a kind of spiritual lockjaw, that I stopped wanting to bear. No, I thought. Not today. I can’t do it. If you had told me I was going to die at the end of today, I would have said, Good .

The familiar black Chevy Tahoe pulled up to the curb.

I came out to the stoop, hands in pockets, and waited. My father-in-law gave me his trademark surprised smile, like Hey, you’re still you , and waved to me as if I were not actually locked in mortal conflict with his daughter. I waited for Meadow as she jogged across the spring grass carrying her backpack.

To the first question:

Did the accused premeditate the abduction?

The answer is no.

Or, not really.

Besides, the word abduction is all wrong. It was more like an adventure we both embarked upon in varying levels of ignorance and denial.

“Good morning, Butterscotch,” I said.

She looked up at me, her red-framed eyeglasses reflecting the several large willows that loomed over the ranch house from the backyard. The wind rose, lifting the ends of her long brown hair. She hoisted the backpack onto her shoulder.

“Morning, Daddy.”

After lunch, I told Meadow to wash up and get her backpack.

“We’re hitting the road!” I said.

She tilted her head. “We’re hitting the road? With what?”

“No, no, no,” I laughed. “We’re going driving. We’re going on a trip. A spontaneous trip. You and me. How does that sound?”

She slid off her stool, leaving the crusts of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the Mickey Mouse plate I kept around for her.

“OK,” she said. “Where’re we going?”

“Well. How’d you like to spend the day at Lake George?”

She clutched her hands in front of her chest. “Yes yes yes!”

“Who wants to sit around here all day? I think it’s plenty warm to swim, don’t you?”

“Yes!”

“Did you happen to pack a swimsuit?”

“No!”

“Not a problem!” I shouted back. “We’ll buy you a new one when we get up there.”

That morning, before her arrival, I had packed myself a small bag (swimming trunks, a toothbrush, some reading material), letting this small bag flirt with my own desire to flee, but not with the clarity of premeditation. It was more with a desperate flourish that the last thing to go into the bag — after a slight hesitation — was my passport. Just in case! You never know! We climbed into my Saturn and rolled down all the windows. Meadow sat in the backseat in an age-appropriate booster. The car was clean and impersonal, with CLEBUS & CO stenciled cheerfully on either side, for anyone to see.

We were mostly through the suburban bottleneck of Albany when I became aware of something in my rearview mirror. A big black shadow of a car that had been lurking along several lengths behind. I took a gratuitous left. The car followed. I took a random right. Again the car followed. I sped up. So did my counterpart. I stopped at a Stewart’s and idled in the parking lot. My counterpart moseyed past only to pull over to a roadside asparagus stand about fifty yards ahead. I shook my head heavily.

“What is it?” Meadow asked.

“Pop-Pop’s following us,” I said.

She craned her head forward to gawk.

I stilled her with my hand. “No. Don’t look.”

“Why’s Pop-Pop following us?”

“I don’t know. I’d better think.”

“Are we still going to Lake George?”

“Hush,” I said. “Let me think.”

Meadow sighed, folding her hands on her lap, muttering, “You said we were going to Lake George. You said we could go. You already said .”

I watched the Tahoe idling just ahead down the road. I could almost picture the poor man gripping the wheel, trying to retract his head into his torso. Did he really think I couldn’t see him?

“It’s so boring sitting at home.”

“Please, Meadow. Let Daddy think.”

“That’s all Mommy and Glen ever do. Sit around and talk talk talk.”

I raised my eyes to the rearview mirror. “Mommy and who?”

“Glen. Daddy, Glen talks forever . He’s boring. He’s a lawyer.”

“But Mommy’s lawyer is a woman, right? Or has she changed lawyers? Or is Glen just a friend who’s a lawyer? Oh, who cares. Right? Who cares? I don’t care. Do you care? I don’t.”

I looked back out at the passing traffic. I thought of my estranged wife confabulating with Glen, whoever the hell he was, toasting another legal victory over a homemade meal. And I almost laughed — a shrill, shattered laugh — thinking of the poor Papa Bear in the story who says, Who’s been eating my porridge? Who’s been sitting in my chair? I reached back and made sure Meadow’s seat belt was snug across her lap and gave her an inscrutable tap on the leg. Then I accelerated so quickly the tires shrieked. I nearly clipped the Pepsi deliveryman as I swerved around the side of the building and pulled out onto the two-lane road going the opposite direction, right in front of a huge Sysco truck. In my driver’s-side mirror, the Tahoe jerked forward, circling the asparagus stand and leaving the roadside pullover in a cloud of dust. This was just the goosing I needed; Grandpa was giving chase. Behind me, he kept trying and failing to pass the Sysco truck across the double yellow lines, the oncoming traffic wailing past. His willingness to drive at such risk was a thrill and made me want to see how far he’d go. At a congested intersection, I led him into the right-turn-only lane, toward the highway, only to cross two lanes at the last second before the light turned green to go left. I was heading north again, on Van Rensselaer Boulevard, and had lost sight of Pop-Pop in the bottleneck he created as he tried to avoid being shunted west onto the Thruway. A cantata of horn blowing. My jaw tingled. I suppressed a whoop of victory.