26
JEREMY TO SEATTLE
1962
THOSE FIRST FEW DAYS in the car traveling across the country with her father, Vanessa couldn’t stop crying. Even in the small hotel rooms in the strange towns that quickly began to blur together, she clung to her edge of the bed and wept until sleep freed her from pain. The pain, both physical and emotional, was raw and tender and new to her. Nothing in her life had prepared her for it. Len, preoccupied with his own suffering, couldn’t even guess at the depth of his daughter’s anguish. If he’d known, he would have cared. He was not an unkind man. He was simply caught in the circle of his own dreams and disappointments.
When they were on the road, Vanessa waited for the police to stop them. Surely Mellie had alerted them to the fact that she was missing. But police cars passed them by as if her father were simply another parent out with his child. In the hotels at night, she waited for Mellie herself to show up and reclaim her daughter. No one came, though, and Vanessa struggled with the hurt and confusion. A good mother would try to find her daughter if she cared enough about her.
Len talked almost nonstop during those early days on the road, mainly about his fury toward Mellie. He said things about Mellie that Vanessa didn’t understand or believe or want to hear. He smoked cigarette after cigarette and punched the buttons on the radio, crying at times himself, almost like a child. And he was as helpless as a newborn on those nights when Vanessa awakened from sleep in their hotel room, wild-eyed and screaming in the throes of a nightmare. He would try to hold her, to talk her through it, but she would throw off his arms, leap from the bed, and race into the bathroom, where she would remain for the rest of the night. It might have been a mistake to bring her with him. He adored this little girl, but his decision to take her had been rooted more in revenge than in love.
They both grew calmer as the days and the miles put Jeremy far behind them. Vanessa gradually stopped crying. She tried not to think about Mellie, and she tried to forget what Claire had done. A few times she even sang along with the music on the radio, and Len talked about how he was going to “make a killing” on the West Coast. He talked about “investments” and meeting up with friends who had “big ideas.” He and she would have money, he told his daughter. Toys and clothes for her, cars and women for him. When he said the word “women,” he wore a smile Vanessa had never seen on his face before.
It wasn’t until they reached Seattle that he finally apologized to her. Seattle was in the midst of the World’s Fair, and Len took her up in the new revolving tower that stood high above the city. From there they could look down at the world below and practically map out their new life.
“I needed some of my family with me,” he said. “I would have taken both you and Claire, but the truth is, your sister—” he shook his head. “She’s too much like your mother. You got your mother’s looks, but Claire got her…” He threw up his hands, as though he could think of no words to describe what Claire had inherited from Mellie. “You’ve always been easier for me to get along with,” he continued. “I feel bad, though, that I pulled you and Claire apart.”
Far in the distance, Vanessa could see the hazy shape of mountains. “That’s all right, Daddy,” she said. She kept her eyes on the peaks so she wouldn’t see her father’s look of surprise. He thought he had stolen her from her family and the farm. He didn’t know that he had rescued her. And she would never tell him.