Chapter 20 #2
Henrietta sat on the cabin's front porch, her hands resting on her pregnant stomach, her eyes closed as a soft breeze crept through the trees and swept across her face.
As strange as it was, she tried to communicate with the tiny baby inside her; she tried to ask Where should we go?
What should we do? But of course, the only answer came from within her own mind. She had to run.
She decided to plan her escape for the opening night of Larry’s exhibition.
It was perfect, as it would put her and Larry in Boulder, and it would distract Larry for long enough so she could slip away to the bus station and get out.
Throughout the winter and spring and early summer, she’d siphoned dollars here and there from Larry’s wallet, conscious that this day would come.
Now, she had one hundred and fifty dollars hidden in a little purse she kept strapped to her body at all times.
It wasn’t enough to start a life with—but it was enough to get away.
Henrietta was two months pregnant on the night of Larry’s opening exhibition.
She was so nervous and ill from the pregnancy that she spent all morning before they left throwing up in the bathroom.
When Larry demanded why she looked so pale, so sick, she told him simply that she’d eaten something strange. “But I’m almost ready to go,” she said.
“You better not ruin tonight,” Larry said, clenching his teeth. He muttered vaguely about her “still not giving me a baby,” and other ways she’d failed him as a wife. Henrietta kept her lips tightly shut. She had less than twenty-four hours left as his wife.
At two thirty that afternoon, Larry and Henrietta set off in Larry’s truck.
Because they planned to spend the night in Boulder after the opening party, Henrietta had packed a few changes of clothes, all her identification documents, and a few keepsakes from a childhood that now felt ancient.
Her parents were both gone, but they’d left her an ivory comb, a brooch, an old cigar case, and a few journals.
She clung to them like her life depended on it.
On the drive to Boulder, Larry spoke exclusively about the promise of his new life.
He spoke about how important the paintings were and how much money he’d bring in for them.
“And when you finally get pregnant,” he said, “we can get a different house, a bigger one, maybe in Boulder itself, or Denver, if I make enough.”
Henrietta felt her eyes flicker over to him. Curiosity filled her chest. It genuinely mystified her that he’d begun to think the paintings were really his. Had he forgotten that he’d never put his paintbrush to the canvas? Had he forgotten that he didn’t have a creative bone in his body?
And then, he offered her a surprise moment of tenderness.
“I know it hasn’t been easy, what with the surgery and still having no baby and all,” he said.
“But when this kicks off for us, I’d be happy to have you decorate the new house for us.
I’m especially looking forward to how you decorate the nursery. I know it’ll be something special.”
Henrietta didn’t know what to say. She clapped her hands over her mouth and told herself not to cry.
Thinking she was overcome with love for him, Larry smiled and gestured out the window at what had to be the most gorgeous view of the Rocky Mountains, which they were lucky to see nearly every day of their lives.
“This is our wonderful life together, Henrietta,” he said. “I thank my lucky stars every single day.”
When they reached Boulder, Larry parked the truck in the lot behind the exhibition space.
Henrietta slid from out of the truck, flinching to grab her bag but knowing it would look strange if she carried it with her now.
“Larry,” she asked, trying to sound meek and stupid, “what time were you thinking we’d check into the hotel? ”
Larry was already halfway between the truck and the exhibition space. He gave her a bug-eyed look. “I have things to do,” he said pointedly, as though he couldn’t busy himself with her.
But Henrietta had to figure out how to access her bag during the opening party without alerting Larry that she was headed on her way out of his life.
“Do you mind if I check in real quick?” Henrietta asked. “I want to shower and fix my makeup before the party.”
Larry flinched into an eye roll. “They have a room under my name.”
“Everything’s under your name, isn’t it?” Henrietta couldn’t stop herself from saying.
Larry took a step toward her. “What was that you said?”
But Henrietta cut him her most charming smile and said, “I said thank you, honey. I’ll see you in an hour or two, all right?”
Larry ruffled his hair and swaggered the rest of the way into the exhibition, leaving Henrietta in the parking lot alone, baking in the Boulder sun.
After that, Henrietta grabbed her bag, slung it over her shoulder, and skedaddled down the road.
She was headed for the hotel he’d booked, but only because she was frightened that he’d come back into the parking lot and see she was headed somewhere else.
She knew the bus station was located on the opposite side of the hotel, about a mile and a half from where she was now.
Now that she was shivering with panic, it felt like a monstrous distance, but she was strong and capable and had to make it work.
As she hurried, her bag slipping off her shoulder, sweat pouring down her forehead, she felt her life slip from between her fingers and melt across the sidewalk.
With each step, Larry Johannes, as a man, as a person, as a husband, felt more and more like a made-up concept.
A fiction. She laughed aloud to herself, then told herself to quiet down.
She hadn’t left Boulder yet. Larry was still so close behind.
But she sensed he was too arrogant to think she’d ever leave him.
When Henrietta reached the bus station, she asked to buy a ticket headed all the way to Los Angeles, California.
“It leaves in ten minutes,” the man behind the counter said, smiling.
She’d removed her wedding ring and probably looked like some kind of vagabond hippie, like one of those girls she’d read about in California. “What’s your name?” he asked.
Henrietta felt stumped at that. She certainly didn’t want to leave her real name or any record that she’d been here, that she’d escaped Larry.
But she was worried that the man behind the counter would ask for identification.
She put the money on the counter for the ticket and said a loud, brash, “Jasmine. Jasmine Lee.” She’d read the name in a book once and had always thought it sounded artistic and beautiful.
It sounded like the name of a woman who had an entirely different life from one called “Henrietta.”
The man behind the counter wrote her fake name on the ticket, took her money, and told her where to stand.
Together with fifteen other people, she boarded the bus and held her breath before it started to roll.
All the way through Colorado, she wept with fear, sure that Larry’s truck would appear on the horizon.
But when she finally reached Utah, she wept with joy, with understanding that she’d managed to do something impossible.
“We’re going to make it, baby,” she whispered, both to herself and to her unborn child. “We’re going to have the kind of life we really want.”