Chapter 3 #2
“I’m going to the bathroom again,” Daphne said. Now she knew the drill so she didn’t have to sit around thinking about it. She got up carefully. One of her legs had been at a weird angle and had fallen asleep. She wiggled her toes until she felt it coming back to life, then swung into the backseat.
“Sing, please,” she said.
Eddie had less energy now. “Lambs, lambs, lambs, lambs, poor and lost, easily tossed, gone away, gone astray.”
“Baa, baa, baa.”
Tights up, onto the armrest for the window crank, turn the crank, and then the block of accumulated snow came straight down on her head, snow down the back of her neck, down the front of her sweater. She shook like a dog.
“Careful!” Eddie said. He could feel the vibration in his leg.
“Sorry. It surprised me.”
“How much is there?”
Daphne went back to get her cup of urine then, stepping onto the armrest again, stuck her head into the snowy morning. She dispensed with the urine first.
“Hand me the cup,” Eddie said. “You can give me the weather report while I’m busy.”
She brought him the cup, then went back up, popping herself out into the cold winter wonderland. “Lots of snow.” Snow everywhere. Snow blown around and stuck to the sides of trees.
“More than six inches?”
“Maybe?” She didn’t know how to tell.
“Is it snowing now?”
“Yes.” Big fat flakes were wafting onto her sock hat. She remembered the cut on her face. Her face felt stiff.
“Can you see anything?”
“Trees.”
“Any houses?”
“Somewhere,” Daphne said. “Nothing I can see.”
“Can you tell if we’re near the bottom of a hill or near the top?” Eddie tried to phrase this one carefully, because what he wanted to ask was how well anchored the car appeared to be and did they have further to fall?
Daphne put a hand on either side of the window frame and pulled herself up farther to look.
“Jesus,” Eddie said, watching her dangle there. “Be careful.” From where he sat, she appeared to be weightless, boneless, her infinitely flexible self rising up through the window like smoke. Then she came down.
“About halfway? It looks straight going up and straight going down.”
None of this struck him as good news. “Okay, come get the cup and we’ll talk about it.”
Down she came to take the Coke cup in her mittened hand and was gone again, dispensing with his waste.
Now he could see it snowing into the car.
If they survived, he was going to talk to Abigail about signing Daphne up for gymnastics or ballet.
He would pay for the lessons himself. This talent she had, something should come of it.
Never had he seen a human being so assured in her own body.
She cranked the window closed and slowly worked her way back into the front seat, sitting in the wheel well on the passenger side.
“Don’t you want to get under the blanket?” he asked.
“I’m all wet from the snow.” She ran her mitten over her hat, flicking away the flakes.
If the car had opened up a break in the woods, the snow had closed it.
If someone was looking for them, they were now harder to find.
But no one was looking for them. Abigail and Leda would be waking up at the hospital now.
Abigail might possibly call the house again, but when he didn’t answer for the second time, she would be annoyed, not concerned.
She would decide that in the future, he would have to call her.
With everything she had to deal with, she would still be a good way away from worrying about the two of them. “So I’m thinking,” he began.
“I’m going to have to find somebody to help us,” Daphne said.
Eddie smiled at her, this remarkable, bloody-faced child. He was almost too moved to speak. “Yes.”
“You can’t go,” she said. “And no one’s going to find us down here.
We could wait awhile, see if maybe it gets warmer, but it could also snow more, and that would make it harder to walk.
Hey, do you think we could turn the car on for a little while to run the heater? ” It had only now occurred to her.
“I tried,” he said. “The car’s dead.” This wasn’t true, of course. He hadn’t tried, but lying was preferable to explaining his fear of fire. Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice. What was it with Frost poems and car accidents?
“So what am I going to do?”
As if he knew. “You’re going to pull yourself out of the window and go to the top of the hill.
Check and see if anyone’s in the farmhouse.
Look there first. If no one’s there, then you need to find the road.
There are two roads, one on either side of the hill, and either one you walk down is going to bring you to a house in less than a mile.
When you see a house, you knock on the door.
If nobody answers, go to the next house.
If a car passes you, wave at it like crazy so they’ll stop. ”
All this time, Daphne hadn’t been afraid.
She was with Eddie, who might well have been her favorite person after her sister, and they were having a huge adventure.
They were spending time together, solving problems, singing songs.
She knew she could get out of the car. She could get up the hill.
The rest of it she wasn’t so sure about.
“What?” Eddie asked.
“I’m not supposed to go inside people’s houses or get in their cars if I don’t know them.”
Ah, that. Sure. A lifetime of purposefully imprinted fear.
“That’s right,” he said. “Everybody is always going to tell you that because there’s a tiny percentage of bad people in the world, and the bad people get all the publicity.
Everybody’s got to be vigilant against the bad people.
I get that. But there are so many more people who are going to want to help you.
I mean so, so many more good people that you couldn’t begin to count them.
If I thought somebody out there was going to hurt you, I’d say we were better off taking our chances waiting it out in the car.
But I swear to you, it’s mostly good people out there, with a few bad people around the edges.
I’m more worried about you falling in the snow than I’m worried about you running into a bad person. ”
“I’m not going to fall in the snow,” Daphne said.
“Then I think you’re going to save the day.”
Her departure was slowed by the argument they had about the space blanket. Eddie insisted she take it with her. The blanket would keep her warm and dry and make her easier to see from a distance. “You’ll be a walking reflective blob,” he said. “Everybody slows down for those.”
But Daphne refused. “I’ve got my teddy bear coat, my hat, scarf, mittens, tights, boots, sweater, jumper. All you’ve got is your stupid jacket.”
“I didn’t think I’d be sleeping in a car,” he said, though she was right. He had dressed for work. He was still dressed for work.
“So you have to keep the blanket.”
“You’re going outside in the snow. You’re the one who has to brave the elements, find civilization and save us. All I have to do is wait in the car.”
Daphne turned her head away, refusing to look at him. Abigail did the same thing when she was mad. “I’m not taking the blanket.”
“Your father put it in the car for your safety, not mine.”
“Dad would want you to have it,” she said. This was probably true, as Buddy would weigh out each party’s potential for survival and then award the blanket to whoever was weaker.
“Okay, Daphne, okay, I didn’t want to do this.”
“Then don’t,” Daphne said.
“I’m the grown-up here. I’m telling you.”
It was a terrible breach of the trust between them, but it also made Daphne realize that all she had to do was leave without the blanket.
She didn’t have to win the argument. What was he going to do about it?
Follow her? Make her take it? She rested the cup of ice and the bucket of disgusting chicken and their pee cup up against him.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving.” When she’d climbed into the backseat, she leaned over and gave him a hard kiss on the top of the head. The space blanket discussion was finished. “I love you,” she said.
“I love you, Duck.”
She climbed up and cranked the window open, leaning back as the shelf of new accumulation dumped into the car. “I’m not going to be able to close this behind me.”
“That’s okay,” he said.
She lifted her torso through the window with the strength in her arms. For a moment her lower half dangled there, coat, tights, boots. He knew she was taking in the enormity of the forest. “Daphne?”
“Yeah,” she called.
“When you find someone to help us, tell them I’m your father, okay?”
They both knew what he was saying. “Okay!” she called.
“Be careful!”
One leg pulled up and then the other. Then, after another second, her face appeared in the open frame. “I’m coming back to save you,” she said.
“Whistler,” he said, and waved. Oh, he was terrified. He didn’t want her to leave. He wanted to hold her again, the two of them curled up together. Come back. Don’t go, don’t go.
Daphne smiled hugely, like the hard job had already been finished. Then she was gone.