The Castaways

DELILAH

S he drove and drove. She crossed the state line into New York. Now, she was officially kidnapping. At every exit she thought, I should turn around. But it felt too good to be headed away from Nantucket. It felt good to be putting miles between her and the site of her agony. After she drove through Albany, she had to decide if she wanted to cross the state on the throughway or via the southern tier. Which would be safer? She suspected the throughway would have more troopers. She chose the southern route. Leatherstocking land, the stomping grounds of James Fenimore Cooper. It was literary, the path they were taking. Literary? She was crazy. As long as she knew she was crazy, she was sane, right?

Delilah was monitoring herself for signs of exhaustion. She had awoken that morning at five when Jeffrey left for the farm; she had gotten out of bed at six to go to the grocery store. It seemed impossible that this was still the same day. Ten-thirty, eleven-fifteen. Her heartbeat was irregular. By now Jeffrey would realize she was gone. Her cell phone was in her purse, but she had shut it off, and she decided she would not check it to see what it contained. She was both giddy and profoundly terrified. Her actions were irresponsible, criminal even, but what could not be explained were the dual monsters of her grief and her guilt. She had to try to outrun them.

She had no idea where they were headed. She wanted to start over; she wanted another life. The life she’d been given, she had ruined. Where could she get a new life? The first place that popped into her head was Sayulita, Mexico. She would put the kids in school, they would learn to speak Espanol, they would learn to surf, they would become as brown as the natives. Four sophisticated expat children. Delilah would open a fish taco stand.

She would not take the kids to Mexico.

She would take them to… South Haven, Michigan, the town where she had grown up, the house where her parents still lived. Was that where she was headed? Could Delilah show up on the Victorian porch of the Ashby homestead with four kids, two of them not her own? Would her mother let them in? Would she bake cookies and show the kids the path down to the lake? Lake Michigan was as big as the ocean. They could pick blueberries, take day trips to Saugatuck and Holland. Delilah could sleep in her childhood bed with Chloe next to her and the boys on air mattresses on the floor, and Delilah would finally be safe to think.

Ironic that the place she had run away from as a teenager was the place she was now running to. But it made sense, right? In a circular kind of way?

There was a stirring in the back. Barney, of course. “Mom?” he said.

She would have to come up with a way to explain this. We’re going to visit your grandparents. We’re going on a road trip. It’s an American summertime tradition! She couldn’t frighten them. She had to pick her words so, so carefully.

“Yes?” Delilah said. “I’m right here, babe.”

There was a noise. A yelp, a bark, a splutter, a splash. A stink. A strangled cry. Delilah inhaled sharply. Oh no! No! Yes—again a retching sound, a spewing forth. Barney was sick. He was vomiting. He had thrown up all over the back of the car, all over his legs, all over Chloe’s legs. Oh God, the stench. He was gagging or choking—half a gallon of 7-Up or whatever toxic green elixir he’d ordered, two pounds of popcorn floating in coconut oil, chunks of red licorice. Delilah had long suspected that Twizzlers were made out of plastic and were therefore indigestible.

“Mom!” he cried out.

“I’m right here,” she said. “We’re stopping.” She pulled off at the next exit, where there was a Holiday Inn. They were in the town of Cobleskill. Delilah told herself this was okay. She would not panic.

She parked the car and turned around. Puke everywhere. Oh God, the minivan. It would never be the same. Barney was covered with radioactive goo; he was crying. She wanted to hug him, hold him, wash him, throw his clothes away, tuck him into a clean bed. But he had to wait. But he was only six. Could he wait?

“I have to leave you here. I’ll be right back. I am going in that door right there to get us a hotel room and then I’ll be back, okay?”

“No!” he howled. He was sobbing. Her baby. Her darling. She could not leave him even for the ten minutes it would take to check into the hotel.

Drew opened his eyes. He said, “Go ahead, Mom. You get us a room. I’ll stay here with Barn.”

Delilah did not wait to see if this offer was satisfactory to Barney. She hopped out of the car and hightailed it inside. She seemed to have brought the funky, underbelly-of-the-movie-house smell with her. Barney had puked in her hair.

It would be Murphy’s Law that during the times when you most needed a capable front-desk person to expedite your hotel check-in—at midnight, say, when you had a barfing child in the car—what you ended up with was an incompetent moron. The dude moved in slow motion, exactly like the fake-out trick the Vunderkids used against the villains. Delilah was so fatigued that for a second she became confused. Was this actually part of the movie she had just not-watched? The guy was lanky and had the wispy, flyaway hair of a mad professor. He was a sallow yellow color with even yellower teeth, and his nose was as big as a wedge of cheese. His name tag said “Lonnie,” a sad, outdated name that fit him.

Lonnie slid a form across the desk that Delilah was supposed to fill out. She had to get the kids in a room. Hurry!

After God knows what further processing, moving so slowly it was like going backward, Lonnie slid her key cards across the desk.

“Room 432, fourth floor, all the way in the back. The easiest way to access it is to—”

Yes, yes, she said. She could find it. Of course it sounded like Lonnie had just assigned her the room that was the farthest point away from the parking lot.

She hurried back out to the car (she had visions of some demented personality driving away with the kids while she was inside, kidnapping them from the kidnapper). She scooped up Barney, sacrificing her own clothes. She woke the other kids, and they trailed her like sheep. They marched the chilly halls of the Holiday Inn, which was sinister in its lack of character. Barney had his legs wrapped around Delilah’s waist and his hot, foul-smelling mouth agape against her neck. She had not had a spare hand for the overnight bag; she would have to retrace her steps the mile and a half back to the car. She would strip Barney first, put him in the shower (a nightmarish thought—the kid hated the shower), and pile him into bed with his brother.

She found Room 432, the last godforsaken room, but blessedly right across the hall from the ice machine and vending, and she tried to negotiate the key into its slot without being able to see her hands. Somehow she got the door open and stepped inside. There was a bathroom to the immediate left, a short hallway with an open closet, shelves for an iron and a dry cleaning bag, two double beds, a TV on the dresser, a desk, a table, two chairs, a pastel painting of a windmill and a couple of hounds, a window with long, heavy brocade curtains, and an air conditioner turned up full blast. The room was about thirty-five degrees.

“Okay!” Delilah said. Here was shelter.

“Auntie Dee?”

It was Finn. She turned around to address what sounded like panic in his voice, just in time to see him spew a great green wave of vomit in the vicinity of the brown plastic trash can, but really it splattered all over the dresser.

“Bathroom!” Delilah barked. She sounded unsympathetic, she knew. But Jesus, what was happening here? She laid Barney down and wheeled Finn into the bathroom, lifting the toilet seat and pushing his head down just in time for the next pulsing gush to splash into the bowl.

Chloe moved to the far bed, unaware or unimpressed, took off her shoes, and climbed in.

Teeth! Delilah thought. Chloe needed to brush her teeth, but Delilah had to deal with first things first, and besides that, the toothbrushes were in the overnight bag. Drew stood next to Delilah and said, “Mom?”

“Are you going to puke, too?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

“Okay, good.” She knew he wanted direction; he wanted to help. Eight years old and already a troubleshooter. Did she need to say it? He was just like his father.

Delilah said, “Are you capable of getting your brother out of his clothes?”

Drew nodded like a good soldier. “You bet.”

Delilah bent down to stroke Finn’s back. This was her fault. She could not take kids who were used to just-picked corn and organic free-range chickens and expect their systems to handle near-poisonous quantities of sugar and tallow.

If Jeffrey were watching this…

She tried to push this thought from her head.

... he would say she was getting what she deserved.

The minivan was covered with puke; the hotel room had been desecrated and they’d only been there ninety seconds. She, Delilah, was streaked with vomit; she had vomit in her hair. She heard a familiar tussling in the room, and she knew that although Barney was parched and dehydrated, or possibly brewing another bubbling batch of barf, he was also actively resisting his older brother’s stripping him down.

Drew insisted. “Mom said!”

Barney said, “Get off of me!”

Delilah left Finn moaning and groaning and separated her boys. She whipped off Barney’s clothes with no mercy while Drew complained.

“You said I could help!”

She threw the fouled clothes into a pile in the corner. What she needed was the overnight bag from the car. Could she in good conscience send Drew to go get it? He was strapping and athletic, he could deal with the car keys and the hotel key card, he could get the bag and trek all the way back here. But could he do it in the middle of the night, when—Delilah was sure—there were abductors and pedophiles lurking in the fields beyond the hotel parking lot?

No.

“I have to go get the overnight bag,” Delilah said. She wanted her toothbrush and the kids needed a change of clothes.

Delilah waited until Finn was strong enough to stand up, then she walked him to the bed where his sister was fast asleep, stripped him to his boxers, and got him under the covers. She adjusted the air conditioner. The room was starting to smell. Delilah threw a few of the thin hotel towels over the obvious places where Finn had vomited.

“I’ll be right back,” Delilah said to Drew. Barney was huddled under the covers.

“Can I watch TV?” Drew asked.

“No,” Delilah said. It was one in the morning. What would be on the hotel TV but pornography?

“Please?”

“No, Drew. Everyone else is asleep.”

He gave her a face. “This place sucks. I hate it here.”

Well, that made two of them, but Delilah couldn’t articulate this because the kids would take their cues from her. She had to be upbeat, no matter what. “I only pulled over because your brother was sick. This isn’t anyplace we’re staying.”

“Where are we staying?” Drew asked. “Where are we going?”

Michigan, she thought. The idea had taken root in her. The kids splashing in the lake, the kids picking blueberries.

“Someplace else,” she said.

She hiked down to the parking lot for the bag. She was exhausted. Really fucking tired. She just wanted to sleep.

When she got back to the room, she heard a noise she did not like. The door to the bathroom was shut. She pushed it open.

Drew was on his knees, puking into the bathtub.