“I can do one more thing. I’ll talk to the drivers. They may know something, and they may be able to help. They talk to each other over the CB all day long. If they spot him, they can stop him.”

The elastic in my belly snaps. Why didn’t I ask a trucker to do that before? Artie was on the CB constantly. If I’d just used my head. “He has a name, a handle. When he talks to other drivers, he calls himself ‘Rockin’ Roadie.’” I am almost embarrassed at saying that out loud. Artie wouldn’t tell me how he acquired such a nickname, just leered at me, implying a suggestive origin.

“That will help.”

I have three minutes to make my bus.

* * *

This time, I am alone, no curious seatmate to ask me innocuous but challenging questions about my life.

When I left Anthony, I really thought that he would come after me, apologize, make things better. But he didn’t, proving that he was relieved with my decision. At the very least, I thought that he would demand that I bring back his son. Instead, he was relieved to have dodged the responsibility of parenthood at age twenty-three. Maybe it was an accidental conception, but one I never regretted. Maybe ours was a forced marriage—a self-fulfilling prophesy, in my stepmother’s eyes—but one I intended to make perfect. But when lovelessness becomes betrayal, the answer for me is to move on.

When I left home, I had fifty bucks and a suitcase. When I left Anthony, I had a thousand dollars and our car. I drove off with Tony, a suitcase full of his little clothes and a duffel bag with my essentials.

Tony and I sang songs all the way down Route 95. Sesame Street songs, Raffi songs, silly made-up songs, just to keep him from asking questions. We were on the road, on an adventure. Another chapter in the story of me.

* * *

“Where’s Daddy?” Tony is in the back, in his car seat, playing with a magnetic puzzle that I’ve found in a rest stop convenience store.

I have rehearsed an answer for this inevitable question. “Daddy has sent us on a voyage like the old-time whalers. We’re out to make our fortune.”

“What’s a fortune?” He lisps the word, making it sound like four-thune. I laugh, a bubbling sensation forcing its way up into my mouth. I’m laughing because if I don’t, I’ll cry.

16

When I was a kid doing homework at the kitchen table, Adele would come up behind me and press one finger into my neck at the place where skull and vertebrae meet, forcing me to look down at my papers.

“Are you going to pass that mess in?”

I’d look at the math work sheet with the gray smears across the work space from the too-hard eraser at the end of my stubby pencil, testimony to my struggles with the subject.

“Use scrap paper if you can’t do it neatly.”