Chapter 30
I waited until he was snoring to slip out of bed and grab my clothes from the floor.
In the bathroom, I took out my diaphragm, ran a wet washcloth over my thighs, and dressed.
Out in the entry, even after my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I couldn’t find the keys to the truck.
I started to panic, then thought to feel my way to the living room, where I ran my hand along the cushion of the armchair.
My fingers fell on the leather key chain.
I lifted them in a fist so they wouldn’t jingle.
I left the front door open behind me and ran barefoot across the lawn, a pair of sandals tucked under my arm.
Once I’d climbed into the truck, I waited, too scared to even close the door.
Dolphin Drive was quiet. No traffic. No cicadas.
I was alone. It wasn’t like on the boat—nobody was cheering me on or giving me advice. And I hadn’t driven in years.
I scooched to the edge of the seat to reach the pedals, then tilted the rearview so I could see myself. I nodded once, then said aloud, “Okay.”
As soon as I turned the key, the radio came on playing “Shake, Rattle and Roll” at top volume.
It didn’t matter, as the engine was louder.
I slammed the door shut and backed out while looking over my shoulder, too afraid to even glance at the house.
When I shifted into drive and hit the gas, the tires screeched, and the smell of burnt rubber filled the cab.
I still have no idea if Russ heard me, or if any light in the house came on.
I clutched the steering wheel like I meant to kill it, and when I made the hard left onto Paradise Drive, the tools in the lockbox sounded like loose change poured into a glass.
Treasure Island had only one main drag, coming right off the causeway, so it wasn’t hard to find the pink diner, already closed for the night.
From the parking lot, I saw the neon-orange sign for the Starlight Motel, which turned out to be a U-shaped one-story.
Fifteen orange doors opened to a courtyard with a pool, lit up but quiet.
Leonard’s dented car was in the parking lot.
I parked the truck beside it, put on my sandals, and got out.
The breeze, warm and humid, carried the scent of chlorine, and more faintly, of the gardenia tree next to one of the motel’s floodlights.
I picked a door next to a window with the light still on, and I knocked twice.
A shirtless man who was definitely not Leonard flung open the printed curtain.
“I’m sorry, sir! Sorry! I’m looking for…”
The man glared.
“Never mind. I’m sorry.”
I turned around, and a door on the other side of the U opened. Leonard leaned out, just his head and one bare shoulder visible.
“Nora?” He was squinting because of the floodlight.
I stood there, taking him in. When I’d seen him at the Publix, when I was still full of venom, I’d told myself he no longer held any physical appeal for me. Sour grapes. If he turned me down now, if he didn’t feel the same, I wouldn’t let myself be sour. I’d at least be honest with myself.
—
His room smelled like greasy food, and he apologized for this, pointing to a paper bag from the diner on the nightstand. He said it was dinner he hadn’t been able to eat, a burger and fries. I asked if I could have it.
“Sure,” he said. When I first came in, he’d put on a shirt backward, and now he was turning it around. “But it has pickles.”
I had to laugh. He’d been gone for years, scared and starved and frozen, then thinking I’d forgotten him.
And the whole time, he’d kept in his brain that I hated pickles.
He took them off the burger before handing it to me.
It was the closest we’d been since I’d walked into the room, and we looked at each other for a moment.
He gestured for me to take the room’s one chair, and he sat on the edge of his bed, looking uneasy.
He didn’t yet understand what I was doing there.
“I need to eat this first,” I said. “Then I’ll explain.”
He said that was fine, to take my time. But I was nervous, worried about Russ’s truck.
He might have already reported it stolen.
I talked between bites, and explained that I was driving a stolen vehicle, and that Russ somehow knew we’d gone to the diner that morning.
I spoke in general terms about his anger, but Leonard looked alarmed.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded. I was. Or I would be. “I’m hoping I can leave his truck here, in the parking lot. And get a ride with you out of town.”
“Of course,” he said. No hesitation. “Where do you want to go?”
A reasonable question, but I was almost as scared as I’d been on the boat. I wanted to be honest. I had to be. I knew Leonard still cared about me. He’d made that clear. But it wasn’t just charity I wanted.
“I want to reassemble my life,” I said. “Action by action.”
This was some of the truth. He stayed quiet, waiting for me to say more.
I folded the burger’s wrapper and put it on the nightstand.
When I first saw him in the courtyard. I’d walked right up to him to say hello, not knowing if he’d be nice or not.
What had Mae called me? Bold and bright.
I’d grown dull, fearful, unsure of myself.
And I could see why. But I was the same person.
My mother named me Eleanor because she admired Mrs. Roosevelt’s courage.
“I want to be where you are.” I waited, watching his face. He grimaced and didn’t say anything. I told myself I’d be okay. I’d wanted to know. It was good that I’d asked, that I’d tried.
He raised his gaze to me, and the pained look left his face.
“I want that, too,” he said.
Exuberance. Oxygen in my lungs, in my brain.
I stood without effort, a jack-in-the-box sprung, and glided over the bed.
I sat next to him. He turned to me and put his hand against my cheek, and it was as if my skin and blood remembered him, everything in me stirring. But I took his hand and shook my head.
“Not just yet,” I said. “It’s what I want, but not yet.”
I didn’t want anyone touching me yet. I was still wearing the clothes that I’d grabbed from the bedroom floor, the clothes I’d been wearing on the boat.
Not even an hour before, I’d been under Russ, enduring him.
And just thinking of Russ made me think of his truck, bright red, in the motel’s parking lot.
“Would it be okay if we left soon? Like as soon as possible?” I was still holding his hand. “If you’re tired, I could drive.”
He said he could be ready in ten minutes.
He was actually ready in five, even using the bathroom, and he was the one who had the good idea of leaving the keys to the truck at the desk.
I felt ecstatic and alive, hardly able to believe what was happening.
What I’d made happen. And it occurred to me that our leaving town meant I had an opportunity to make something else happen.
Something I very much wanted to do. Yet I had no plan, no means of liberation.
I looked around the room, trying to think, and my gaze fell on the nightstand. I’d eaten all of the burger, but most of the fries were left.
“I should take the keys to the desk by myself.” Leonard held out his good hand. “I’ll say I found them by the pool.”
I looked down at Russ’s keys, still in my hand. One key on the chain was tiny, a third of the size of all the others. The key to the lockbox. It felt like a sign, like a nudge.
Leonard put his hand down and asked if I was okay.
I nodded. The lockbox was as wide as the truck bed. I didn’t know what was in there, but I could take a look.
“Can we make a quick stop in town?” I asked. I didn’t want him mixed up in it. He could wait in the car.
“Okay.” He looked at his watch. “But nothing’s open.”
“I know.”
“Oh,” he said, as if he now understood. “Your family. You need to tell them goodbye?”
I shook my head, though I already felt the ache of the loss, of all I would miss in the years to come.
They would be asleep—Mae and my father, Janet and Shirley.
They wouldn’t know how close I’d be to them tonight, and I didn’t know when I would see them, or Bobby, again.
But I didn’t want to worry about what my father would think of what I was doing, if I would embarrass and disappoint him again.
Mae might understand my leaving was really my way of coming back, or the beginning of it. If she didn’t, I’d write to tell her.
“I need something from the truck.” I jingled the keys and walked to the door. “Be right back.”
Leonard insisted on coming out to the truck with me. And good thing, because once he understood what I was aiming to do, he had a better sense of what tools we might need. I say “we” because even though he was at first unsure of my plan’s wisdom, he could tell I had my mind made up.
A half hour later, when he saw the situation for himself, our minds were one and the same.