Augusta first began to wonder exactly what the hell she was doing by going
back to Silent Hill when she pulled off the Interstate just before 2:30 in
Frankfort, Kentucky to buy some lunch, refill her truck's gas tank, and pay
a desperately needed visit to the bathroom. She had, happily, found a gas
station attached to a Subway sandwich shop, and as she ate her sandwich,
she pensively stared at the traffic passing by outside.
Anyone could have sent the card, she thought. Anyone who knew about her past, even Joseph and though she didn't think him creative enough to do something like that, she knew better than to underestimate him. He always knew exactly where to salt her wounds to hurt her the most. When she had finally found the strength and the disgust for him and what she had done for him to leave him, he had laughed at her and only told her to hurry up and get going. Laughed at her, she remembered. Their final argument flared into a war that night; he learned, and didn't care, that she had only loved him once for a brief time long before, and she learned he had never much cared for her at all and didn't care now if she lived or died. And it goes without saying, he had spat at her, that I sure as fuck don't give a good goddamn about that little glob of shit that got flushed down the toilet back at that clinic you went to in Springfield. Stupid bitch, you should have remembered to take your birth-control pills.
Augusta felt the sting of tears and blinked them away. It probably wasn't Joseph, she thought; she doubted he would have spent the money it took to buy a card and a stamp. She certainly wasn't worth that much to him. But who else? She knew some churches sometimes sent out mailings to taunt local sinners, but surely a church wouldn't have spent money on a nice card and sent it all the way to her in North Carolina. She remembered once in Hot Springs a church had flooded the mailboxes of western Arkansas with lurid postcards, each with a verse of Scripture detailing the virtues of modest attire, depicting a promiscuous-looking woman in a bikini pretending to shy away from superimposed hellfire; as she recalled, the postcard protested the Crystal Falls water park at Magic Springs Amusement Park, because it was attracting scantily-clad men and women from all over the state, whose sinful public displays of flesh were compromising the community's morals. Furious letters to the editor, both for and against the mailing bounced insults off one another in the local paper for weeks afterward. But the postcards – thousands were sent – were mailed bulk rate, at only a few pennies apiece.
She really didn't know who could have sent it, she finally admitted to herself. Joseph cared so little about her he wouldn't have gone to the trouble of antagonizing her, especially not now, five years later. Anyone with a motive of self-righteous harassment wouldn't have spent the money or time to select a nice card, write the message inside, with a crayon in childlike printing, then send it with a first class stamp. Especially not if they were also harassing every woman who had gotten an abortion in central Illinois over the past five years.
So why was she here? More than six hours from home, staring at cars passing by, eating a sandwich that wasn't quite as good as the ones she could get at her favorite Subway restaurant in Asheville? She didn't know. Augusta knew better than to even hope by some miracle her daughter was alive. Babies were born prematurely, some of them by months, every day, but her pregnancy couldn't have been more than a month and a half along, and nothing survived at that stage. She didn't think fetuses even looked human yet at that stage of development.
She pulled the envelope out of her backpack and stared at it. Like the words written inside, her address and return address were of the same careful, childish printing. The return address, she read again now as she had more than six hours and three hundred miles ago at home, was on Lamb Avenue – she remembered that was in North Silent Hill, where the tightly packed brick buildings of downtown petered out and gave way to old row houses and townhouses along shady streets that backed up to and abruptly halted at the edge of the national park. There was something on Lamb Avenue, but she couldn't remember what, either a hospital or school, which would make sense, she thought and suddenly realized that was it. A school, Nathaniel Hawthorne Elementary, was located on Lamb Avenue in North Silent Hill. It was one of three elementary schools in town. The other public school, Borden Street Elementary, was in East Silent Hill, where the streets were lined with magnificent Victorian mansions the tourists were always taking pictures of. And Midwich Elementary was a tiny private school on Midwich Street in the oldest section of town.
Her daughter would have attended Nathaniel Hawthorne Elementary School, Augusta realized. She had lived with Joseph in a brownstone that looked as though it could have been transported straight from New York City, on St. Germaine Avenue, only three blocks away from the school. If Joseph had loved me and would have loved a child, she corrected quickly. Had she simply had the strength to walk away from him with her child growing safely inside, her daughter would have attended whichever school was closest to her apartment in Asheville, a thought she had always found so agonizing and immediately brimming with loss she had never been able to find the strength to ask which school that would be. It was painful enough to live so close to the library where she and her daughter would have read together.
She was wasting time, she suddenly decided. She put the envelope away in her backpack and finished her lunch, then got back in her truck and drove west, toward Illinois, and Silent Hill.
Anyone could have sent the card, she thought. Anyone who knew about her past, even Joseph and though she didn't think him creative enough to do something like that, she knew better than to underestimate him. He always knew exactly where to salt her wounds to hurt her the most. When she had finally found the strength and the disgust for him and what she had done for him to leave him, he had laughed at her and only told her to hurry up and get going. Laughed at her, she remembered. Their final argument flared into a war that night; he learned, and didn't care, that she had only loved him once for a brief time long before, and she learned he had never much cared for her at all and didn't care now if she lived or died. And it goes without saying, he had spat at her, that I sure as fuck don't give a good goddamn about that little glob of shit that got flushed down the toilet back at that clinic you went to in Springfield. Stupid bitch, you should have remembered to take your birth-control pills.
Augusta felt the sting of tears and blinked them away. It probably wasn't Joseph, she thought; she doubted he would have spent the money it took to buy a card and a stamp. She certainly wasn't worth that much to him. But who else? She knew some churches sometimes sent out mailings to taunt local sinners, but surely a church wouldn't have spent money on a nice card and sent it all the way to her in North Carolina. She remembered once in Hot Springs a church had flooded the mailboxes of western Arkansas with lurid postcards, each with a verse of Scripture detailing the virtues of modest attire, depicting a promiscuous-looking woman in a bikini pretending to shy away from superimposed hellfire; as she recalled, the postcard protested the Crystal Falls water park at Magic Springs Amusement Park, because it was attracting scantily-clad men and women from all over the state, whose sinful public displays of flesh were compromising the community's morals. Furious letters to the editor, both for and against the mailing bounced insults off one another in the local paper for weeks afterward. But the postcards – thousands were sent – were mailed bulk rate, at only a few pennies apiece.
She really didn't know who could have sent it, she finally admitted to herself. Joseph cared so little about her he wouldn't have gone to the trouble of antagonizing her, especially not now, five years later. Anyone with a motive of self-righteous harassment wouldn't have spent the money or time to select a nice card, write the message inside, with a crayon in childlike printing, then send it with a first class stamp. Especially not if they were also harassing every woman who had gotten an abortion in central Illinois over the past five years.
So why was she here? More than six hours from home, staring at cars passing by, eating a sandwich that wasn't quite as good as the ones she could get at her favorite Subway restaurant in Asheville? She didn't know. Augusta knew better than to even hope by some miracle her daughter was alive. Babies were born prematurely, some of them by months, every day, but her pregnancy couldn't have been more than a month and a half along, and nothing survived at that stage. She didn't think fetuses even looked human yet at that stage of development.
She pulled the envelope out of her backpack and stared at it. Like the words written inside, her address and return address were of the same careful, childish printing. The return address, she read again now as she had more than six hours and three hundred miles ago at home, was on Lamb Avenue – she remembered that was in North Silent Hill, where the tightly packed brick buildings of downtown petered out and gave way to old row houses and townhouses along shady streets that backed up to and abruptly halted at the edge of the national park. There was something on Lamb Avenue, but she couldn't remember what, either a hospital or school, which would make sense, she thought and suddenly realized that was it. A school, Nathaniel Hawthorne Elementary, was located on Lamb Avenue in North Silent Hill. It was one of three elementary schools in town. The other public school, Borden Street Elementary, was in East Silent Hill, where the streets were lined with magnificent Victorian mansions the tourists were always taking pictures of. And Midwich Elementary was a tiny private school on Midwich Street in the oldest section of town.
Her daughter would have attended Nathaniel Hawthorne Elementary School, Augusta realized. She had lived with Joseph in a brownstone that looked as though it could have been transported straight from New York City, on St. Germaine Avenue, only three blocks away from the school. If Joseph had loved me and would have loved a child, she corrected quickly. Had she simply had the strength to walk away from him with her child growing safely inside, her daughter would have attended whichever school was closest to her apartment in Asheville, a thought she had always found so agonizing and immediately brimming with loss she had never been able to find the strength to ask which school that would be. It was painful enough to live so close to the library where she and her daughter would have read together.
She was wasting time, she suddenly decided. She put the envelope away in her backpack and finished her lunch, then got back in her truck and drove west, toward Illinois, and Silent Hill.