The Girl in the Flammable Skirt_ Stories - Aimee Bender [46]
One afternoon my mother went on a walk and didn’t come back. By nine o’clock my father seemed confused because he kept asking me if the TV was on. An on TV was a sure sign that my mother was home. After a while I just turned it on anyway even though he could tell from his room that it was alone, blaring to an empty couch, a lamp turned off.
By eleven, I was worried and drove by the bookstore looking for her familiar turned-out walk. There was no one but people my age, weaving through the sidewalk, heads on shoulders, the taste of beer in their mouths. I imagined fast-lane Lonnie, out with her boyfriend, her hand calm on the small of his back; I imagined my mother in Niagara Falls, screaming and laughing into crashes of bluish water.
When I got home my father was nearly asleep. He heard the front door and called out from the darkness.
“Ellen,” he said.
“Celia.”
“Don’t worry, sweetie,” he said. “She just does these things sometimes. Tomorrow.”
“I should call the police,” I said.
“No,” he said firmly, “really. If by tomorrow this time we’ve no news, then okay. But she’ll call.”
I smiled. I knew he was wrong. But as a comfort, I stayed in the living room with the TV on all night, as she often did. I didn’t really watch much, but stared at the reflected silhouette of my body in the TV screen, twirling my ankle sometimes just to remind myself that I was there.
The next night after dinner we still hadn’t heard a word. I brought him milk and sat by his bed.
“She’ll call,” I said feebly.
“I know,” he said. “She just does this sometimes.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Really.” He looked at me for a moment, touched my hair with his forefinger. “You’re a pretty girl, my Celia,” he said. “You ought to go out sometimes. You must be so sick of taking care of me.”
“No,” I said, trying to think of something to say. “No.”
“Boys, any boys you like now?” he asked.
“No,” I said again. “No boys.” He looked at me and patted my head again. I could feel myself smile.
• • •
She called at ten. She was at a bar in Connecticut, on her way to D.C., to the museum, walking. She had a day or so more to go, and she wanted me to send my father on a train, bundled in blankets to keep him warm. She wanted him to meet her; they could go on the cattle cars together. She said her feet were already very blistered, and I imagined her relaxing into the cattle car, arm around my blanketed father as they prepared to experience simulated genocide.
“Put your father on the phone,” my mother told me.
“He’s asleep,” I said. “We were both really worried. You didn’t call. I was sure—we didn’t know where you were.”
“Is that Ellen?” I heard my father’s voice, oddly strong, from his room.
“Put him on,” my mom said.
“He’s tired,” I said.
“Celia,” she ordered. “Now.”
I brought him to the phone. He was delighted to hear her voice. I waited for him to be angry, to tell her how mad we were, but he didn’t sound angry at all. Instead, he curled up in his bed like a teenage girl, and cooed into the receiver. I walked, disgusted, into the living room, and watched my ankle in the TV again until I heard the click.
“She wants me to take a train and meet her in D.C.,” he said.
“Oh well,” I said.
“But if I’m bundled up and in a wheelchair I should be okay,” he said. “You know, we’ll explain it to the conductor. It’d be fun to go on a trip.”
“Are you kidding?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “no, it could work. It’s a little crazy, I know, but it could work. Your mother is walking to Washington—now that is crazy.”
I stared at him. “It’ll give you a break,” he said. “You can have a little vacation from us.”
I wasn’t sure if he’d suddenly lost his mind. He’d been in bed for several months. He hadn’t been outside for an entire season.
“Daddy?” I asked.
“I’ll take a lot of vitamin C,” he said. “It’ll be fine. I’ll go tomorrow. You’ll take me to the train station?”
I walked to the door frame