The next day—Thursday it was—Barb spent her time trying to figure out what to take and what to leave. She couldn't take much, obviously, and she couldn't pack away things that Cal would notice were missing. She had to make it through Thursday evening and Friday morning.
Clothes. She decided to pack herself a pair of slacks, a dress, a white button down blouse, a nightgown, three pairs of underwear, a pair of socks, and a bra. For Sadie she packed a few more outfits (her clothes took up much less space in a suitcase). She also packed a pair of low heeled dress shoes for herself and a jacket in case it was cold where she'd be going.
The clothing was the easy part. Now she had to go through the other stuff.
Albums. Most of the albums she had were filled with photos of Cal. She physically cringed when she looked through the ones under the bed. The photos in the beginning showed them when they were first dating, Barb with long hair, Cal without a beard. His smile was shy and close-lipped, his arm always around her neck. Barb looked closely at these first photos. Would anyone looking at these ever be able to tell that this quiet, withdrawn boy could go on to beat and humiliate his wife?
There were a couple of photos in the most recent album of Sadie by herself that she ended up taking: as a newborn, as a baby, a toddler, and then at her 2nd birthday. Cal could have the others; he was in most of them, anyway.
Barb reached between the boxspring and the mattress of her bed and pulled out a worn white envelope. She reached inside of the envelope and pulled out three old photographs. She felt tears start to gather in her eyes when she looked at them: one of her and her mother the day she graduated from high school; one of her mother as a young woman leaning against her first car; and one of mother taken at some point in the last few years, at a restaurant somewhere.
They were the only photos Barb had left of her mother—the only ones she'd been able to rescue. About a year earlier, Barb had been having a particularly rough day. The sink had clogged, the car had started making a funny noise, Sadie had been trying her patience, and on top of that, she was getting sick. She struggled to get dinner ready in time. When Cal got home, he sat down in his chair, expecting his beer to be waiting for him. It wasn't. "Where's my beer?" he asked her.
"Why can't you get it yourself?" Barb snapped at him. "I'm busy!"
That set him off. He grabbed her family album—she'd had it sitting on the bookshelf by the mantle—and threw it into the fire. Barb screamed in horror and tried to get it out, but Cal deliberately took away the poker and the tongs to spite her. She struggled to retrieve it, burning her fingers in a few places, but she got it out. By then, however, most of the photos damaged beyond repair. Photos of her mother and father on their wedding day; photos of her as a baby and as a little girl; photos of her and her mother together in the years after her father had left them—all gone. Barb sobbed all night, even as a fever took hold of her. Cal did nothing to help, didn't even apologize. "That's what you get for giving me lip," he told her.
It was memories like this that made Barb wonder: why? Why had she stayed as long as she had?
She held these photos against her chest, then packed them into the cloth pocket of the suitcase with her clothes.
Jewelry. Barb wasn't a fancy, fashionable woman, but there were a few things she probably should take, if only to pass on to Sadie at some point. She looked into a wooden jewelry box on her vanity. Her mother's ruby brooch was a definite. Her grandmother's pearl necklace too. Most of the other stuff was just costume jewelry that wasn't worth much of anything; Barb could do without that. She lifted out the top compartment of the jewelry box, and lo and behold, she found a few photos. One of them was of her mother and her aunt when they were younger. Barb cried out in happiness. "Thank you," she said to no one in particular. There were a few more photos, but they were taken while Barb was in high school. They were photos she'd taken with her two best friends: Linda and Amelia.
Barb had gone to a fairly small high school—so small that there wasn't much room for cliques to form. The pretty, popular girls were just as likely to be friends with the unattractive girls as they were to be with other beauties. In their group, Linda was the pretty one, Amelia was the smart one, and Barb was the nice one. Barb watched Linda go from boyfriend to boyfriend throughout high school, and Amelia often got Linda's leftovers. But no one went after Barb. She was the tall, clumsy, awkward one, with her bony arms and legs, broad face, and voice almost as deep as some of the guys in their class.
It wasn't until after high school graduation, when Linda had convinced her and Amelia to go to her parents' lake house with her, that Barb finally met a guy. He and his friends were fishing off the pier not far from the house, and just like Barb, he appeared to be the awkward, homely one of his group. He was shy and introverted and moody, but he seemed to light up just a bit when Barb was around. He liked that she was interested in listening to what he had to say; she liked that he was actually taller than her. For once, Barb was the one straying away from her group, ditching her girls to spend time with a boy.
On the last day they were there, Cal kissed Barb and said he wanted to see her again, even after they'd left the lake. They figured out that they lived two hours away from each other, but Cal didn't care. "I'll drive the two hours if it means I get to kiss you good night," he told her.
And Cal kept his promise. He worked days at his uncle's lumberyard and then he'd drive the two hours just to spend a half an hour with Barb on her mother's living room sofa. On weekends he'd pick her up and drive her back to his house and then drop her off promptly at 5 so her mother wouldn't worry. After a whole year of doing this, Cal finally decided to ask Barb's mother permission to marry her.
Cal wanted to move to Keystone, where the cost of living was cheaper. And Barb, hopelessly in love, wanted nothing more to make him happy. But once she'd left home, Linda and Amelia didn't try to keep in contact with her. Barb had no idea where they were, but she wondered what they'd think of her now. She put the photos with the others she planned to take with her.
Keepsakes. Barb's grandmother had amassed a collection of glass and porcelain figurines over the course of her lifetime—little people and animals that were called Die Kleine. They'd been designed and sculpted hundreds of years ago and were worth a great deal to collectors in the know. Cal had broken many of them over the years, throwing them against walls, dropping them to the ground—once even tossing them out of window to shatter against the driveway. Barb had wept over their loss at first. Cal had laughed at her, saying that they were just material possessions, and that the most important thing was their life together and her being a good wife. Barb didn't have an argument for that. They were just material possessions—but now that she was leaving, they were all she had left to start over with.
She had two left: one wrapped in paper in her closet, and one sitting on the end table in the living room. She'd pack up the one in her closet that day, and hopefully remember to take the other one with her right before Blanca arrived.
"Mommy, what you doing?"
Barb turned to see Sadie standing in the doorway, her dolly hanging to the floor in her one little fist. Barb smiled as brightly as she could. She couldn't risk telling Sadie what she was doing; it was too likely that she'd let it slip to Cal. "Just doing some cleaning up, Baby," she told her. "Hey. Do you want to help Mommy run some errands?"
Barb bought a toiletry kit, extra sanitary pads, and some snacks for Sadie. Then she went to the ATM, and after much debate, withdrew $200. It was so little to start over with, but if she took out too much, the bank might get suspicious and call Cal. At least this wasn't the week he got paid, so he wasn't going to be going into the bank and getting the total balance for the accounts.
After they got home, Barb put Sadie down for a nap, and looked for a place to hide the suitcase she packed. She couldn't risk Cal finding it. Finally she settled on the laundry room, just behind the washtub. Cal never did any of the laundry, so short of the tub backing up or some other unexpected calamity, he most likely wasn't going to go back there.
Barb was a nervous wreck after Cal got home. Her hands trembled as she took the plates from the cabinets and she had to ball them into fists. You can do this, she told herself. You only have to make it through the next few hours.
"Barb! Where's dinner?" Cal called from the dining room.
She swallowed before she answered. "Coming, honey."
She ate slowly, trying to keep her stomach from revolting against her. She looked up just once and her eyes met Cal's. Barb managed a smile and looked away. Oh God, what if he figured it out somehow? What if he knows?
Hours later, after Barb had put Sadie to bed and she was tiptoeing out of the little girl's room, she found Cal waiting for her in the hallway. "Come with me," he told her, as he took her hand and led her to their bedroom.
It felt like the first time they'd slept together: Cal was sweet and tender and giving. He was everything Barb had always wanted him to be, all the time. After they were done and drifting off to sleep, Barb nearly forgot what the next day meant to her.
The next morning, Barb was the good wife once more: getting her husband up from bed, making a delicious breakfast (making sure not to eat any of it herself), packing a delicious lunch. Coffee in a thermos, jacket freshly pressed, kiss on the cheek. "See ya tonight!" Cal called from over his shoulder, as he got into his truck and drove off.
The house was quiet. Sadie was playing with her stuffed animals. Barb looked at the clock and tried to calculate the hours until Blanca was supposed to show up. About five of them.
Did Barb really want to do this? Give up her entire life with just some clothes, photos, and $200 to show for it? Did she really want to take her child away from her father? Cherry said that Cal would never find them, which meant that Sadie would never see him again. What if Sadie wasn't able to understand why she'd done this—and she ended up hating Barb?
She could just let it go. She could just stay in the house while Blanca drove by, and that would be the end of it. At a loss for something to do, Barb restlessly dusted the bookshelves. She dusted the photos, and realized that there was a photo just behind a larger one. It was a photo of Barb late into her pregnancy with Sadie, at her baby shower. She seemed to be wearing an awful lot of makeup; Barb wasn't the type to wear makeup at all.
Then she remembered why. Cal had slapped her hard across the face the night before for supposedly "mouthing off" to him (pregnancy hormones, most likely). Her cheek had become red. She'd had to put on a ton of foundation and rouge to cover the marks.
She was carrying his child, and Cal still couldn't stop himself from hitting her.
He'd never stop hitting her, Barb now realized. His shyness, protectiveness, dedication—all those things she'd loved in the beginning of their relationship—were just one half of his dual nature. The other half was impatience, possessiveness, and violence. It didn't matter that his career was taking off and that he all these great things planned; he'd always find a reason to hurt her.
Cherry told her that only she knew what she could live with. And Barb knew now: she couldn't live this life for one more day. Not when escape was so close.
Barb changed out of her housedress and apron, and put on a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a hooded jacket. She went downstairs and retrieved her suitcase, struggling with it all the way up the stairs. She placed it in the hallway along with her purse. She found the pink book that Cherry had given her and made sure she put it in her purse; she didn't want to leave any clues that Cal could use to find her. She went upstairs, just to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything and to use the bathroom one more time. As she washed her hands, she noticed her wedding rings. Carefully she removed them. She'd toyed with the idea of keeping them, perhaps passing them down to Sadie one day. Or perhaps pawning them for money once she'd settled into her new life.
With a cruel smile, she dumped them into the toilet. Cal could find them when he got home later.
Just a half an hour or so left. Barb found Sadie playing with her toys and brought her upstairs to change her clothes. "Nap time?"
"No, sweetie. Things are going to be a little different today. We're going on a trip."
"Where we going?"
"I'm…not sure about that. One of Mommy's friends will be coming to get us."
"You got friends, Mommy?"
Barb just stared at her daughter with a mirthless smile. "Yes, I do. Now, hold still while I put these socks on."
Once Sadie was dressed and Barb was leading her down the stairs, the girl asked, "Is Daddy coming with us?"
Barb felt her heart sink. "No." She wasn't going to lie to her daughter. To her relief, Sadie didn't ask why.
Fifteen minutes before Blanca was scheduled to arrive, Barb remembered that last Die Kleine in the living room. It was of a little boy, floating on a star. Quickly she wrapped it in a sheet of newspaper and stuffed it between the clothes in the suitcase.
Ten more minutes. Barb made Sadie in a chair near the front door, while she stood near the window and looked restlessly out of the curtains. Her stomach felt like it was tied in knots. "You can do this," she whispered to herself. "You can do this."
One o'clock came and went. At 1:05, Barb opened the front door and had Sadie sit on the steps. What if Blanca wasn't coming? What if it had been all a cruel joke? What if she'd mustered up all this courage and strength to be able to leave, and it was for nothing? She ducked her head back in, looking forlornly at her overstuffed suitcase.
When she turned back, a long, black towncar was just pulling up in front of the house. Blanca got out and looked up at her with a stiff nod.
"That your friend, Mommy?" Sadie asked.
"Yeah…that's one of them," Barb told her. "I'll get my suitcase," she called to Blanca.
"Very well. Is this your…offspring?"
"Yes, this is Sadie. Sadie, honey, this is Blanca." The little girl clung close to her mother, but she peaked out and waved her fingers softly to Blanca. Blanca stared at the child coolly for a moment, but then, surprisingly, mimicked the gesture back to her.
Barb dragged out the suitcase with a grunt. "Ugh! Sorry, it's kinda heavy. Maybe if we both take an end…"
But Blanca easily lifted the suitcase onto her shoulder and danced down the front steps. "No need. I'll be fine." Barb just gaped as Blanca opened the trunk and tossed it in.
After Barb and Sadie got into the backseat of the car, the little girl tugged on Barb's sleeve and said, "Mommy. What's wrong with her eye?"
"Sadie, don't talk about people. It's rude."
Blanca got in, then turned around to them. "Our drive will be brief. Do not touch the doors or the windows. Do not exit the car until I've instructed you to do so. Do you understand?" Barb just nodded.
"Very well."
As the car pulled away from the house, Barb stared up at it. She was leaving it behind—she was literally leaving her entire life behind. If all went according to plan, she'd never see this place or Cal ever again.
She felt a small hand slip into hers. Sadie was looking up at her. Smiling, Barb leaned down and kissed her snowy blonde hair. She was letting it all go—but at least she was holding on to the only thing that mattered.