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She paused in the doorway. "I'm going home," she said. "It's time to go home. Call me later. Maybe we'll do something. I just hate thinking about all the homework that's piled up, but you'll help me withit, won't you, Zipporah?"
I didn't know what to say. I just stared at her. She was making no sense.
She smiled.
We watched her walk out and down the attic steps.
"Jesse," I said, squeezing his arm. "Do something. She's in a daze. It's all been too much, finally too much."
"Hey," he called down to her. "Don't you want a ride?"
She turned at the base of the attic steps and looked up at us. She was smiling again.
"In the new car?"
"Yeah, sure," Jesse said.
She stared a moment, holding her smile, and then shook her head.
"I don't think so, Jesse. Maybe tomorrow. I'd like to walk. I've been shut up indoors too much, and that's not very healthy. But thanks "
She continued down the hallway, down the stairway, to the front door. Jesse and I followed slowly and watched her walk out. I started to cry as she went down the driveway, glanced back to wave at us, and continued on the road to the village. In moments, she was gone. How many times had I wished for that? Now it was breaking my heart.
Jesse went to the phone and made the call Daddy had asked us to make. He quickly explained who he was and what was now happening. I saw him wait until someone else took the phone, and he went through it again.
"She's just walking down the road toward town," he told whoever had taken the call I imagined it to be Chief Keiser himself. "Just walking," he repeated, as if he had to convince himself as well.
Then he hung up and looked at me.
I turned and ran upstairs, ran all the way back to the attic and shut the door.
Epilogue
Somewhere. I read that this world, everything that happens, even everything that happens in the whole universe, could be God's dream, and the bad things that happen are just his nightmares. We don't exist, at least not in the sense we think we do. I thought if that were true, then maybe nothing was our fault. We were as Jesse said Shakespeare wrote, merely players on a stage.
I certainly hoped so. God would then snap his fingers and wake up, and this dream would pop like a bubble. He would start dreaming again, and we'd have another chance to be young and carefree. Darkness would no longer seem like a disease creeping in over us, and rain wouldn't feel like tears.
Funny, but what I feared the most was not the eternal anger and disappointment of our parents but the loneliness that could result from it. When you deeply hurt people you love and who love you, you push away from everything just enough to be out of sync with it all. You can't look at people straight on anymore, and when you walk, you think the world itself has tipped a little. Nothing, not flowers or trees, blue skies or dazzling stars, not music or laughter, nothing, brings you the joy it once did. It's as if you lost the right to be happy.
Of course, our parents wanted to forgive us, and I never doubted they tried with all their heart and soul, but we knew that in the end, even though they could find a way to turn us back into a family, they couldn't find a way to forget, What made all this particularly difficult was what some people call the dropping of the second shoe. When it fell, it fell with thunder and lightning and seemed to tear the earth below our feet. How we didn't both fall into the chasm and disappear is a mystery or a miracle I would not fully understand.
Soon after Jesse called the police that day, a police cruiser came by, and they took Karen away. As it turned out, Daddy was at the police station at the time of Jesse's call. Whatever influence Daddy and his associates had with the powers that be was enoug
h to keep me and Jesse from being charged with any crime. The district attorney took into consideration our youth and Jesse's having made the phone call. It didn't prevent the story from leaking out. Daddy always believed the two state detectives did much to make sure that it did. He told me it was part of the cost of being who he was. It was his nature to be a thorn in the side of bureaucrats.
For a while, our boat was rocking. We worried about the impact it would have on Daddy's career, and more than one night was taken up with a serious discussion about the wisdom of remaining in Sandburg. There were always other opportunities in other communities, and that was true for Mama and her nursing as well, if not more.
As it turned out, however, small towns proved to be more forgiving. The diminutive population, the nearly daily contact most inhabitants had with each other, made everyone a sort of extended family. All understood one another's struggle to make a living, survive, and do well, and most had empathy for the difficulties we all had.
Karen and I used to enjoy mocking the village and its inhabitants, but I began to see that all of the derision was mostly coming from her, from her own wounded self, her envy and longing to get off the emotional crutches and walk as proudly as any other girl her age, especially me.
When the older people in the village saw me, they would shake their heads, wag a finger of caution, and give me some sage advice, such as, "Remember, you are known by the friends you keep," or simply, "Make sure you help your parents."
The younger people had completely different reactions. At school, which was winding down to the end of the school year, I suddenly became infamous. Before, I was merely the friend of someone who had done a terrible thing, but now I was something of a folk hero. Everyone wanted to know how I had managed to keep such a secret. I began to feel as if I were a character in a movie who had suddenly stepped off the screen and started up the aisle. Invitations to parties, to sleepovers, and even for dates, started flowing my way. To some of the boys, I was dangerous, and that made me exciting. Even Dana Martin looked disappointed in himself for driving me away.
Of course, I did none of these things for a while. I could never get myself to ask my parents for anything and wondered if I ever would again. I worked hard to bring my final grades up, helped around the house more, and took great care not to get into any trouble. No teacher would even look at me with reproach, not that I was Miss Perfect or anything
I think I floated most of the time. At least, that was how it felt. Right afterward, I actually ran a fever and felt so numb all over that Mama took me to see Dr. Bloom, who studied me carefully and concluded I had no infections. I was deeply depressed. He spoke softly to my mother privately about it, and I know one of the things she and my father considered was a therapist, but I rallied soon afterward, and the problem just went away.
