Mallwalkers

by Jennifer Dickinson
from Appalachian Review

The subject of the email stood out like a neon sign. Call the office to schedule your vaccine appointment. My heart began to vibrate.

“Hello, this is Caroline Pembleton,” I said in a rush when Linda picked up. “I need to get the shot.”

“Dr. Giardello said you’d be calling. We want to get all our patients in the vulnerable category taken care of as soon as possible. You staying active?”

“Mostly,” I said. “I was walking. And then it got so cold, so I stopped. But I’m keeping up with my jumping jacks.”

Linda had been the one to show me how to do them right, keeping my hands straight and my legs strong.

“Great. First available appointment is next Tuesday.”

“Where do I go?”

“The old Dillard’s out on Landers Creek.”

My breath caught.

“Do you know where that is?” Linda asked.

Of course I did. The store is where I set fire to my life.

I steadied my breathing. “Is it being offered anywhere else?”

“No, and it won’t be for a while. Do you need transportation? I can arrange it.”

The world got fuzzy. I grabbed hold of the kitchen chair.

“No, that’s okay. I’ll go.”

“Ten a.m. And Dr. Giardello wants me to say that you may experience flu-like symptoms after you get the shot. Don’t be alarmed. Take Advil. Drink fluids.”

We hung up and I tapped my heart. Morse Code for: “I love you.” Dr. G. taught it to me after the surgery. He said I needed to give my heart positive reinforcement every day. I always thought he might have the hots for me and I only got more suspicious when he demonstrated the Morse code thing. But I did it every day.

* * *

The day of my appointment I watched an old episode of Anna’s show that I’d DVRed. My DVR was a sea of Loved and Lost, the soap opera Anna had been starring in for the last twenty years.

“You have to go, Heath!!” she sobbed, flinging herself across the fainting couch.

“Francesca, I’m in love with you.” He grabbed my daughter and pulled her in for a kiss. A long one with tongue.

“I’m never leaving you,” he whispered.

There were tears in both of their eyes.

Anna sobbed even more. “I’m terrified of dying alone.”

I turned off the television. I’d started to tear up, too, even though I knew Francesca would never die. She was the most talented person on the show, her sobs seemed real. They were so real, I believed, because Anna was remembering what happened between us.

Anna never gave many interviews and she’d only mentioned me once, saying we were estranged. When the reporter pressed her for details, Anna said it was an awful story she would take to her grave. That made two of us. The one man I’d told acted like it wasn’t a big deal but when we had our only fight, he told me only a broken person would’ve done what I did. I wanted to say screw you, but then I realized he was right. I didn’t date anyone else after that.

I opened my desk drawer and pulled out the yellowing letter that I’d started thirty years ago, at the direction of my therapist in rehab: “Apologize to your daughter. Make amends.”

I made amends with the manager at my job at the hospital, where I’d regularly snuck drinks in the bathroom. I made amends with my mother, whose car I’d wrecked. But Anna was a different story. I imagined her at her new school in LA telling her friends: “My mother died. I never knew her.” She was better off not hearing from me.

My therapist persisted, so I tried. Dear Anna, I’ve been thinking about writing you every day, but I was always afraid. Afraid didn’t cover the agony that gripped me imagining Anna trying to forget me. I never finished the letter.

Since my bypass surgery, I tried to write it again, but never finished. Time passed. Covid killed so many. And though my heart grew stronger, my courage got weaker. I didn’t know what I could say to make things right with my daughter, to erase the past. But I needed to stay alive if I ever wanted a chance at doing it.

* * *

At the entrance to the mall, I found a sign stuck to a stake, handwritten: Vaccines—Follow Arrows. Bird doo-doo all over the words. Definitely an omen.

There were no cars behind me, so I sat staring into the vast expanse of the shopping complex, disappearing into the past I’d fought for years to forget. There I was thumbing through Beatles records at Turtle’s, buying geraniums at Home Depot. And then there was the terrible memory, the one that gave me nightmares for years and years.

This was a bad idea.

A car honked behind me and I drove, swallowing the lump that grew more monumental with each second that passed. What had I done when I first got sober? Deep breaths. Oh yes. And picture a river. Feel the flutter of a bird’s wings against my cheek. Hear the gentle gurgle of a bubbling brook. I tried to picture these things and hear these sounds and feel these things but I couldn’t.

The news had been reporting the challenges of getting a vaccine and I’d imagined throngs of people waiting outside the door, but there was no one waiting. Somehow this seemed worse than seeing a bunch of people. If I was the only one in there besides a nurse, I’d be thinking about my daughter and I’d probably cry. In front of a stranger. And even if the person was trained to be around sad people, I didn’t want to lose it in front of a person I didn’t know. The last person I’d cried in front of was the man, Sam, who’d called me a tragic figure.

I was a dammed river. A dead bird. A kitten who’d fallen down a well.

I pushed open the door, my stomach churning. I followed more arrows to a desk where a man wearing an earring took my ID and scrawled my name on a small white card.

“Congratulations, Caroline,” he said, handing me the card. “You’re getting vaxxed.”

I took a seat in an area with some other grey-haired people. Loud music played. Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day.” A woman sitting beside me tapped her feet in time to the beat.

I stared down at the marble floors, remembering how I’d gotten my first training bra at the store back when it was called May Cohen’s. Robert had bought me a diamond pendant here for our first anniversary. A new song came on. “Sugar, Sugar.” The woman beside me hummed along.

I looked across the room at the empty space, but then the empty space became dresses. Racks and racks of them. And Anna was hiding playing hide-and-seek with me. I was chasing after her, dodging women, giggling along with my daughter.

“You are my candy girl,” the woman sang quietly beside me.

I clasped my chest. Anna. She was gone.

“Caroline Pembleton,” a woman wearing a nurse’s coat said.

I stood up.

The nurse led me to an area behind a curtain, back where the jewelry counter would’ve been. She gestured for me to take a seat on a vinyl chair.

“I’m Amanda. I’ll be giving you your shot today, Ms. Pembleton.”

She had a sweet Southern accent and it was a tonic to my nerves. I needed to get this over with and get the heck out.

“Hi,” I said.

“How are you doing today?” She took a syringe out of a box.

“I’m fine.”

“I’ll be quick.”

She was. She put a Band-Aid on my arm. “You’ll need to wait fifteen minutes so we can make sure you don’t have a reaction to the shot.”

“I can’t wait here.”

“You really should.”

“Thank you.”

I started back toward the door. There were more people in the seating area, and Elvis was playing “Love Me Tender.” My eyes darted back to where the dresses had been and what I saw stopped me. Anna. Robert. The salesgirl. Anna in Robert’s arms. Anna’s lips were blue.

I ran out of the store and to the other side of the mall. I tore off my mask and threw up in a patch of weeds littered with cigarette butts.

I threw up until I gagged, until my eyes were pools of water. I sank to the sidewalk.

“Did the shot make you sick?” a voice said.

I looked up to find a man with a thick head of white hair staring down at me, the lower half of his face covered by a mask.

I wiped my mouth, certain there was vomit on it. I didn’t want a stranger seeing me like this. I pulled my mask back up and stood. I nearly fell over. The man grabbed hold of my elbow. I yanked my arm away.

“I need to go home,” I said.

“You might should rest here a bit longer.”

Why was this man talking to me?

I started to leave, but my legs were jelly. I stopped. So did he.

“I’m Marvin. What’s your name?”

“Caroline,” I whispered.

“Caroline, do you want to hear a joke?”

I didn’t.

“This morning I decided to weigh myself and I said, Hey! I’ve lost ten pounds.” He paused. “Then I looked down and saw my stomach resting on the sink.”

He stared at me.

“Not too funny, I guess,” he said.

I started off again and he was on my tail.

“If you came here to shop, I’ve got bad news.”

Another joke. This time I felt the corners of my mouth turn up a little. I was grateful for my mask. I didn’t want to give Marvin the wrong idea.

I got back in my car.

Marvin waved as I drove away.

* * *

I woke up in a sweat. My forehead was burning. Chills wracked my body.

Anna, my baby. Her little button nose, her blue eyes. She cut a tooth earlier than any baby the doctor had ever seen. “That’s a sign of intelligence,” the nurse whispered, winking at me as I stood next to a mother holding a whining toddler. “I bet you’ll have no trouble with her.” There were only temper tantrums when we had to go to Robert’s mother’s and she wanted Anna to pose for pictures in the dresses she’d embroidered for her. “No like!” Anna had wailed and I’d leaned into her ear and said softly, “Me neither.”

I threw off the covers and put on my robe. I wanted a drink. Right now. One sip wouldn’t mean I’d completely screwed up, right? No one would ever have to know. I paced my kitchen. I had gone so long without it. Could I really do this to myself? Undo all the years when I’d made a better choice. But the taste of it, how it warmed my throat first, then my stomach, how it drowned my thoughts. One taste and I would feel like the universe had righted itself. The walls were so close. My breath was strangling me. I walked out the front door.

I eyed my car. I could drive to the store, but I knew I’d chicken out before I went in. There were trashcans lining the road. Trash night. Thank God. I ran outside and began throwing open lids, my hands reaching inside and searching for liquor—one drop and I could go inside and sleep again. I landed on a bottle and I knew what it was just by the shape of it. Myers’s Rum. I unscrewed the cap and inhaled the musky sweetness. My teeth chattered so much, it was like they were playing a song. I brought the bottle to my lips. Headlights flashed. The beams blinded me for a second and I saw what I was about to do.

I dropped the bottle and ran back into the house. I had Roxie on speed-dial, though we hadn’t spoken in a couple of years. The last time I’d come close to drinking was when the article came out where Anna said we were estranged.

“Caroline?” she said drowsily.

Tears choked my words.

“Are you okay?”

I couldn’t answer.

“Hold on.” I heard her mumbling to someone.

“What’s going on?” she asked a few seconds later.

I told her about the shot, seeing Anna in the store, how I’d gone searching for booze.

“I want you to take some deep breaths with me now,” she said when I finished talking.

“In through the nose, out through the mouth. Three times.”

I did it because she told me to. Loudly. My thoughts were still so mixed up, like they’d been put in a blender and turned to high.

“Let’s say the prayer,” she said. “God grant me the serenity…”

I said the words, but I was just going through the motions. My mind was still back outside, holding the bottle. I’d gotten so close.

“You are not your past, remember?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Have you been connecting with your HP?”

My Higher Power. Roxie and I had decided I would connect with Him through knitting. There were at least twenty sweaters now, in all different sizes and colors. I didn’t have anyone to give them to, and the pile got too big after a while, so I’d stopped.

“Kind of.”

I wiped my eyes. I needed to get a hold of myself.

“You know what comes next.”

I did. And I didn’t want to do it. Just like I didn’t want to knit another useless sweater.

“I need to be of service,” I said.

“Yes. Why don’t you go to a meeting tomorrow? Set up the chairs? Or bring one of your coffee cakes. You need to get out of your head. Stop thinking about number one.”

“Okay.”

“I’m proud of you for not drinking again. That is huge.”

“Thank you.”

“Remember. Take it one day at a time. And call me tomorrow, okay? I want you to check in with me every day for a week.”

“Okay.”

When I got up in the morning, my fever was gone, but I felt like my body and mind had been through a war. I wrapped myself in an afghan on the sofa. I watched Anna’s show.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I called Roxie every morning. I told her I’d brought my coffee cake to two meetings and that I’d given spare change to a homeless person and sent money to the Red Cross. I hadn’t left my house. She said she was proud of me and to get in touch if I needed any more help. I watched Anna’s show. I pressed my forehead against her face.

* * *

I got an email about my second vaccine appointment. 

“Make sure you remember to go,” Linda wrote. “Otherwise the vaccination won’t work.”

What did it matter now? It was as if by searching for a bottle, I’d actually taken a sip. But I hadn’t. I was still hanging on.

* * *

There were more people waiting this time. My pulse was racing and I did my best to not let my eyes wander around the store. The boy with the earring waved me over.

“Can I have your card, ma’am?” he asked.

Ma’am. That’s what the salesgirl said: “Ma’am, we were looking for you everywhere.” Robert had looked at me, his eyes bleary. “No more chances,” he’d said.

There was an exit behind the boy, an opening to the rest of the mall.

“I need a minute,” I told him.

I found a bench just outside the opening and I sat down.

A river. A stream. A brook. I closed my eyes.

“You’re back,” a voice said. I opened my eyes and saw the man, Marvin, who’d talked to me in the parking lot before. He wore shorts. It was twenty-five degrees outside.

“You want to take a walk?” he asked.

“It’s snowing.”

“I come inside the mall to get my steps in. I can’t walk outside in this shitfuck weather.”

I found myself smiling behind my mask. Shitfuck. I’d never heard anyone say that before.

“The mall’s closed,” I said.

“Not quite. Next to the old Sears there are still a couple of stores open.”

If I went home, I might drink.

“Alright,” I said.

“Okay, Caroline. Let’s get this thing done.”

I followed him to the escalators, which were stopped. The air smelled like musty papers and it took me a second to get my bearings and realize we were standing next to the old food court, but there were no tables or chairs. The signs for Sbarro and McDonald’s and Panda Express were gone, the metal gate doors shuttered. I imagined I saw Robert and Anna sitting at a table, drinking milkshakes and eating fries. I glanced back at the door, my breathing was tight, it felt like before the heart surgery, like there was an elephant sitting on my lungs.

“The store over there sells clothes for girls who want to look like ladies of the night,” Marvin said, pointing to a store where music spilled out, blaring. Mannequins stood outside. One wore a bright orange miniskirt and a white crop top. Another wore a sequined pink dress.

“Then there’s a store that’ll make you keys, and a jewelry store. Not much left.”

The fluorescent lights flickered. The mall had become a tomb.

“It’s strange here,” I said. “Kind of creepy.”

“I picture it like the Parthenon. A place that used to be magnificent a long time ago.”

“You couldn’t get pepperoni pizza at the Parthenon,” I said. A joke. It slipped out before I could think twice. It probably wasn’t funny. But Marvin laughed.

“I used to come here with my family,” he said. “A long time ago.”

“Me, too.”

Our eyes locked.

“I’m not much of a talker,” I said.

“Well, I can listen to my podcast,” Marvin said.

He put headphones on. We set off.

He walked briskly and so did I. I’d gotten up to two miles before it turned to winter and it felt good to move my legs again. I was never an athlete, but I always liked a lot of activity. Activity kept me from dwelling in the past.

We went in circles, around the perimeter of the mall, past empty stores. Stickers announcing half-price sales peeled off the murky glass windows. The lights were dimmer in certain areas and it felt like a war had taken place, like there should’ve been shrapnel on the floor instead of dust bunnies.

When Marvin stopped, I could’ve gone longer. My heart was clattering around my chest, but in a good way. The elephant was gone.

Marvin took off his headphones.

“I’ll be here tomorrow,” he said.

“Same time?” I asked.

He nodded. “You’re coming back?”

“Yes.”

His eyes crinkled. He was smiling.

Marvin walked me to my car, and waved again as I pulled away. A part of me wanted to stay with him and I didn’t understand why.

That night, I woke up thinking about Anna and her eyes and her nose and my legs hurt like the dickens. I tapped Morse code on my chest. I got up to take some ibuprofen. Then I wandered over to the cabinet.

When I first stopped drinking, I accomplished my weekly act of service by joining a church just so I could contribute to the fellowship time. At first the women badgered me about why I wasn’t in service with them, but then they tasted my brownies and never asked about it again.

The best part of baking for the church was that women talked to me while they ate. They opened up about things: one had emailed an ex and he’d told her to take a hike, one was furious at her cousin for blowing off their wedding reception. I gave advice: take deep breaths, connect to God any way they could—this came more easily for them than for me since I’d never been a believer. A woman told me, while inhaling my divinity, that she was a lesbian and she was terrified to come out to her family. Her father was the pastor. I hugged her and told her I was sorry and that maybe this wasn’t the right church for her. Last I heard she’d moved in with her aunt in Portland.

Maybe Marvin would like some cake. I dug past cans of tomato soup and tuna fish until I found a yellow box cake and one of those containers of chocolate frosting. I bought them a long time ago on sale. I checked the expiration dates. They were just under the wire. A few more weeks and they’d be trash.

I finished the cake and ate a slice at my kitchen table. I remembered baking cakes with my daughter, how she’d loved to lick the bowl. I went to my desk and got a fresh piece of paper and a pen.

Dear Anna, I am not the same woman I was. I hope you can forgive me.

I stared at the words until they blurred. They were even stupider than my first attempt. I crumpled up the paper and threw it in the trash.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I walked in at another entrance, so I wouldn’t have to go through Dillard’s. Marvin stood by the escalators, in shorts again. His calves were slender and shapely. I sucked in my breath. An old woman like me had no business thinking about an old man’s legs.

“I brought something,” I said. 

I opened my bag and pulled out a tin-foil wrapped plate.

“How did you know it’s my birthday?” he asked.

“It is?” 

“No,” he said. “Ha-ha.”

He pulled off his mask. He had a mustache as white as his hair. His smile made me smile. He took a bite of cake.

“Shit woman, this is great. I was feeling a bit blue this morning, and I’m not talking about my balls.”

I burst out laughing. Marvin could surprise me so easily. 

“You cheered me up,” he said.

I wondered why he needed cheering up, but I didn’t feel comfortable enough with him yet to ask.

He finished the cake and sighed. He put his mask back on.

“Now I really gotta get some exercise,” he said. “Shall we?”

* * *

The next day I stopped us walking just as we’d started and pointed to the store with clothes for ladies of the night. Marvin had made me laugh. More than a few times. I wanted to make him laugh. He took off his headphones.

“Let’s go in and buy something,” I said. 

He was quiet. Maybe my plan wouldn’t be funny. I kept going, anyway.

“We’ll say it’s for our friend,” I said.

His eyes lit up. Butterflies started a party in my stomach.

“Our granddaughter,” he said. “That’ll be funnier.”

The music was three times as blaring in the store. I wanted to cover my ears. A woman with long dark hair and long purple fingernails slouched on a stool behind the counter.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“We need something slutty,” Marvin said.

The girl didn’t hear.

“We need something for our granddaughter!” I shouted, stifling a giggle.

The girl raised an eyebrow.

“Hmmm,” she said, and we all studied the sequined tops and studded belts and shiny high heels. 

“What kind of stuff does she like?” the girl asked.

“Tight stuff,” Marvin said.

“Short stuff,” I said.

“Favorite color?” the girl asked.

“Purple,” Marvin said at the same time as I said: “Pink.”

“I have a pink and purple striped sweater over here,” the girl said.

“You have anything tighter?” Marvin asked.

The girl’s eyebrow shot up again.

“How old is your granddaughter?”

“Fifteen,” I told her.

I heard Marvin laugh. Our eyes met. I didn’t want to look away.

“What about this?”

The girl walked over to a rack and grabbed a purple swath of fabric. 

“It comes in pink, too. It’s really popular.”

I touched the material. It was scratchy and there was glitter sewn into the seams.

“What is it?” I asked.

“A bikini top?” Marvin guessed.

“A bandeau top,” the girl corrected. “She can wear it with jeans.”

Anna didn’t dress this tacky even on a show where her role was to have love affairs with all the available men. 

Marvin paid $13 for the $12.99 top, and told the girl to keep the extra penny as a tip. She rolled her eyes.

We left the store and Marvin high-fived me.

“That was fun,” he said.

“That was,” I said.

“You should keep this,” Marvin said, handing me the top when we reached our cars. “A memento.”

I felt my face get hot, a wildfire on my cheeks.

“I’ll be out of town for a few days,” he said. “Visiting my horse’s ass of a sister in Virginia.” 

I laughed but I wanted to ask him not to go. We had a routine. I pictured myself at home, thinking about doing my jumping jacks and not doing them, tapping Morse code on my chest. Calling Roxie again. It was a scene I didn’t want to live. 

“Do you know how to text?” Marvin asked, pulling out his phone.

“I’m younger than you.”

“Oh yeah?”

  We typed our numbers into each other’s phones and got into our cars. 

My phone pinged a few hours later.

A text from Marvin: “I like you.”

I dropped the phone like it was made of razorblades. I didn’t know what to say. But I kept re-reading the text. No one had liked me in a long time. Well, Dr. G., maybe.  But he had probably just taken pity on me because of my weak heart. 

The next day I didn’t do my jumping jacks and I kept thinking about Marvin’s text and how I hadn’t replied. I needed to run my body down so my mind would have a chance of quieting. Shitfuck, I thought and smiled. 

* * *

It was boring without Marvin to sneak looks at, but my muscles had gotten used to moving and woke up quickly. I’d made my last lap when a petite brunette waved to me. I didn’t recognize her. She came over.

“You walk with that man, right?” she asked. She seemed nervous, her eyes large above her mask.

I nodded.

“Where is he?”

“Visiting relatives in Virginia. Why?”

Was this woman after Marvin? If she was, I had news for her. He liked me.

“Phew,” she said. “He seems so fit, but when a person gets old you never know. I’m glad he has a friend. We’ve been worried about him.”

“Who was worried?”

“The other women that work with me. At the jewelry store.” The woman pointed behind her.

“Why?” 

“Because of his daughter. He came in once and told us. We were all so shocked.”

What was she talking about? 

“You know what happened, right?”

I shook my head, a pit growing in my stomach. News I wouldn’t like was on its way.

“You remember the shooting here? Like forever ago…the eighties maybe?”

The shooting. I remembered news stories about the mall. Kids killed. 

“His little girl died that day,” the woman said. “We couldn’t understand why he would ever want to come back here. Strange. Anyway, I’ve been meaning to talk to you two—our lease is up in a few weeks and soon the whole mall will be…”

The woman kept talking, but I’d gotten lost. Poor Marvin. To lose his daughter here. Awful.  

I texted Marvin later: The mall is shutting down soon.

Ain’t that some shit, he texted back and then a minute later: We better get our walks in. I’m home Tuesday. You want to go Wednesday?

Sure, I wrote back.

* * *

That night I Googled Landers Creek mall shooting and two articles popped up. I scanned the first. It happened on December 28, 1982. Three kids and two adults had been killed by a twenty-five-year old named Jim Purdy. Back then shootings in public places were an anomaly so there were no protocols in place to deal with such a tragedy. It took hours to apprehend Purdy as he’d hidden in various stores. The article talked about how the shooting was “unheard of.” Nowadays the shooting would be unremarkable.

The second article listed the victims’ names. There was only one little girl. Isabel Howard, age seven.

My eyes welled up. What would it have been like if Anna died that day?

        It nearly happened.  

“Mama is going to run one quick errand out to the car,” I’d told Anna when we got into the ladies’ lounge. “You stay right here like a good girl. Eat this lollipop and I’ll be right back.” 

She’d looked at me with her large blue eyes and taken the candy.

I’d been sober for thirty days. My sponsor at AA called me a champion. But I wasn’t a champion. I spent my nights sneaking a bottle of Stolichnaya out of the cabinet in the laundry room and staring at the liquid, wishing it was inside of me, rinsing away the memories I had of my past. 

I ran. The car was just outside the mall doors and the vodka was under the passenger side seat. One swig and I could breathe again without wanting to cry.

But it was more than one sip. It was a lot of sips. Raindrops pummeled the windshield.  I turned the car on and then the radio. A station was playing Carole King’s greatest hits. How absolutely perfect. I reclined the seat. I closed my eyes. 

I woke with a jump. Anna. I checked the clock. I’d been gone thirty minutes. I ran back into the store. I went to the ladies’ lounge but she wasn’t there. I tore through the dress department, checking under the racks, calling her name. Nothing. 

Customer Service. I ran there. “I’ve lost my daughter,” I told the girl at the counter.

“What does she look like?” she asked. I wanted to shake her.

“Ma’am,” a voice said. 

I turned around to find another girl staring at me. “Are you Caroline Pembleton?” she asked.

I nodded, my head throbbing.

“Ma’am, we were looking for you everywhere.”  

Robert appeared behind her. He held Anna in his arms. Her lips were the color of the sky on the summer days we loved so much. The whites of her eyes were speckled red. I touched her forehead. She smiled weakly.

I started to talk but he held up in his hand. “She choked on the candy you left her with. She almost died.”

I’d started crying then, desperate cries. People turned. Robert stared at me coldly.

“I told you. No more chances.”

I knew he was remembering all the crimes I’d committed. I’d forgotten Anna at pre-school so often that now another mother brought her home. The stove caught on fire when I forgot I was making her mac and cheese. The kitchen had to be remodeled. Anna wore a scar on her left hand from picking up scissors I’d left her with when she was barely three. 

After that day at the mall, Robert hired a lawyer who sent letters to me, threatening ones. One of the letters said: For Anna’s mental health, we need her to move on from you. I called and called until Robert changed his number. I was drinking again, living out of my car, eventually moving in with my mother who encouraged me to sign away my rights. “You’re not a mother,” she told me. “You’re a failure.” I didn’t have a fight in me to fight for my daughter. I never saw Anna again.

I wanted to tell Marvin I knew about Isabel and I was so sorry but when I saw him standing outside waving, I didn’t know if I’d be able to say anything. I wasn’t a brave person. I worked for decades as the bookkeeper at a hospital where I hid away in my office because I never wanted to get close to anyone. The only family I had was the one Anna had created on her soap opera. I knew about all of her marriages, her five children. I cried when she cried. 

My walks with Marvin were the best thing that had happened to me since I gave birth to my daughter. I didn’t want to risk losing them.

I got out of my car. With each step I took toward Marvin, my stomach buckled with nerves. When I reached him, I noticed his eyes. They seemed warmer than usual. 

“You want to hear a joke?” he asked.

I nodded. 

“A pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel coming out of his crotch…” he said. 

I laughed when he finished, though I hadn’t followed him to the punchline.

We went into the mall. It felt darker than usual. The music was off at the store for the ladies of the night.

“How was seeing your sister?” I asked.

“She’s still a horse’s ass,” he said. He put on his headphones. We started walking. My heart was full of regret, enough shitfuck to go around for a hundred people. I grabbed Marvin’s arm. He took off his headphones.

“You all right?” he asked.

“I know about your daughter,” I blurted out. “I’m sorry.”

Marvin didn’t say anything and I was certain I’d messed things up. Thinking about his past was probably the last thing he’d want to do. I started to leave. He touched my arm.

“Wanna get out of here?” he asked.

“Yes.”

* * *

Marvin lived a few miles away, in a one-story brick house at the rear of a cul-de-sac. A large maple tree took up the bulk of the yard. He parked in the carport and I parked behind him.

He stood at the open front door, waiting for me.

“Welcome,” he said and gestured for me to go ahead. I entered a living room, which was neat and spare. A sofa and a chair and a coffee table. A trumpet stood up against a stand in the corner. 

“Why don’t I get us some water?” Marvin asked. 

I took a seat on the sofa. There was a framed photo on the coffee table—a much younger Marvin with a red-haired woman standing beside a red-haired little girl.  They were on top of a mountain. My mouth went dry. The little girl must’ve been Isabel. Marvin and his family looked so relaxed. I had pictures like this of me and Anna and Robert, taken before drinking consumed my life. 

When Anna turned three, I started having nightmares of being in a dark room while a pair of hands I couldn’t see touched me in places the hands weren’t supposed to go. I’d wake up crying and I started sneaking to the kitchen and drinking tablespoons of vodka so I’d be able to sleep again. Robert caught me and begged me to tell him what was going on, but I couldn’t put into words what I didn’t understand. The memories started being all day and I couldn’t look at Anna without remembering the abuse, of seeing me as her. I did the only thing I could: I drank. 

“It’s been a while since I had a woman in here,” Marvin said, setting a glass of water down on coffee table in front of me. I removed my mask and took a sip. Marvin watched me. I wondered if he liked what he saw. Marvin removed his mask and took a sip. There was his smile again. He had a kind face, one I felt I could trust.

“What happened to your wife?” I covered my face again.

“Diana died three years ago,” he said, covering his. “She battled breast cancer for a long while.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What about you? Are you married? Were you married?”

“My husband left me when our daughter almost died…”

“What happened?” 

The question hung in the air. I didn’t know how to answer, where to start. If I told him about the awful day, I’d be conjuring Anna into the room and if I was going to do that to her, I had to tell about other things. Anna wasn’t just that day. She was so much more.

“My daughter loved the scarecrow,” I said.

Marvin studied me. It had been so long since I’d thought about things like this, happy things, and a warmth enveloped my chest.

“I read her a picture book of The Wizard of Oz and she kept pointing to him, saying: Mama, me love.” I smiled. “I got her a puppet and she was obsessed with him. Wanted to sleep with him at night.”

“What else did she love?” 

“Strawberry ice cream. And ladybugs. We used to have so many in our backyard. I remember one day I fell asleep on a blanket and I woke up to her putting a ladybug on my nose.”

I could still feel the tickle of the insect’s feet. Anna’s bright blue eyes staring into mine, inches away. Remembering these things was like opening up a cave inside of me, a cave of light. 

“What was your daughter’s name?” 

“Anna.” I took a deep breath. “We haven’t talked since she was four. I want to, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to make things right.”

I could hear the faint ticking of a clock. The heat turned on, a blast of warm air above my head.  

“My daughter was Isabel,” he said. “She wanted to be a famous drummer someday.”

“What else did she love?” 

“Football. Road trips.”

He looked down at his lap. I knew he was lost his past, and I knew about doing this. The past is where I’d stayed lost for the last thirty years. 

“You play?” I asked, gesturing toward the trumpet.

“Not very good,” he said.

“Will you play for me?”

He walked over to the instrument and picked it up and brought it to his lips. Marvin began to play softly, and then the sound filled up every inch of the room. It took a second for me to realize what he was playing. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” My hand found my heart. Tap, tap, tap.

“I don’t know why I keep this thing,” Marvin said, setting the trumpet back against the stand. “I can’t play for shit.”

“I like it. And I like you.” I took down my mask and smiled.  

“Oh no,” he said. “I think I’ve given you the wrong impression.”

His eyes sparkled. I walked over to him. There was electricity between us, so strong I felt like I might burst out of my skin. I touched his arm. I leaned in and pressed my lips against his. 

When we parted, we were breathless. 

“You’re good for me, woman,” he said. “You get me out of my head. I’ve been stuck there with Isabel these last few months. Missing her something fierce.”

I thought of Anna, how lost I’d been. Marvin had gotten me out of my head, too.

“I know what getting stuck is like,” I said.

He touched my cheek. A smile spread across his face.

“I’ve still got some of those little blue pills in the bathroom cabinet.”

My heart began to dance a wild dance. “Get them.”

He left. I turned over the picture of his family on the coffee table. I took off my shoes, and then my shirt and jeans. I looked down at my bare stomach. My skin was on fire.

He came back. He whistled. “Hot mama.”

“Come here,” I said, and he did.