It was irresistible: the almost. She almost put the keys in the ignition. She almost drove through the night, until she found the ocean. But the sight of the stick shift pushed the truth over Lavender, even more devastating now that she’d made it this far. She didn’t know how to drive. She didn’t know if the car had gas, and she wouldn’t know how to fill it either way. She wasn’t even wearing a shirt, and she couldn’t get a shirt without going into the room where Johnny slept. It was so desperate, too much. She could never.
Lavender bent over the steering wheel and let the sob overtake her. She cried for Ansel, for the chipmunk, for her own grumbling stomach. She cried for the things she had wanted, which she couldn’t even picture anymore. It was like she’d held her own desire too long in the palm of her hand and it was now just an object, devoid of meaning, useless and taking up space.
*
She woke the next morning to the smell of sizzling bacon.
Lavender was alone on Ansel’s bedroom floor, the blanket tangled at her feet, sun streaming through the window in sharp, doughy rays. She slipped into the bathrobe, discarded in a heap, and padded downstairs.
Johnny stood over the stove like always. That familiar hulking self. Lavender knew his body so well, it was like she had become a part of it—she felt silly now, remembering her thoughts of the highway. Johnny stretched a plate toward her. A pile of steaming eggs and two strips of the crunchy bacon they froze for special occasions. A quick glance told her: the cabinets had been locked again, the extra food cleared and tucked away.
Ansel sat at the table, happily gulping a glass of milk.
“Please,” Johnny said. Soft now. “Eat, my love.”
Lavender could no longer remember what Johnny had promised, but she recognized the sound of it. She let Johnny twist his fingers in her hair. She let him kiss the ridge of her hip. She let him whisper I’m sorry I’m sorry until the words sounded like a completely different language.
While Johnny napped, Lavender sat with Ansel in the rocking chair. The chain of the locket had left a faint green smudge around Ansel’s neck, and her fear dipped in a momentary panic at the resemblance to a bruise. They pulled all the books from the shelves—technical manuals and maps of the Philippines, Japan, Vietnam—until they found it. A cartographer’s map of the Adirondacks. Lavender jiggled Ansel in her lap, spread the paper over their legs.
“We are here,” Lavender whispered. She traced Ansel’s hand down the highway. Farmhouse to town to the edge of the page.
*
It was a specific violence, the white of her underwear. Four weeks late, then six: Lavender prayed for a spot of blood. Every morning, her body betrayed her, morphing slowly without her permission. She vomited into the crusty bowl of the toilet, the terror rising up with her insides—swelling tidal, petrified.
*
Dear Julie.
Do you remember how we loved the Manson girls? How we followed the trials like a television show? I dream about those girls now, how they reached that bloody end. I wonder if Susan Atkins ever felt like this. If there was a whispering voice in the dark of her head, saying: Go.
It’s growing, Julie. I can’t stop it.
*
Lavender found a burlap sack in the barn. Inside, she placed one meager can of corn—she’d stolen it when Johnny’s back was turned, a lump beneath her shirt, heart hammering with the recklessness. She stuck an old winter coat in the sack, and though it was too small for Ansel, it would keep him warm if necessary. Last, she added the rusty kitchen knife that had fallen behind the sink. She shoved the sack in the back of the closet in Ansel’s room, where Johnny would never look.
That night, Johnny snored like always and Lavender placed a hand on her stomach, which felt swollen, alien. She thought of the bag in the closet, beaming its promise. When she’d told Johnny about the baby, bracing for explosion, he had only smiled. Our little family. Bile, rising treacherous in her throat.
Lavender grew. As she expanded, she took up residence in the rocking chair by the back door—she sat first thing in the morning and often only moved for bathroom breaks. Her brain was a sieve, no longer hers. The new baby ate her thoughts as they came, and Lavender was just the shell, the zombie vessel.
Ansel crouched constantly at Lavender’s feet. He squished bugs between his fingers and presented them like gifts. He cracked acorns with his baby teeth and gave her the splintered halves. Johnny disappeared for days at a time, and Ansel fetched Lavender the cans of soup Johnny left on the counter. Their rations. They’d take turns licking the cold spoon. When Johnny returned, his mood was snarling—Lavender thought of the bag in the closet, the jacket, the knife. She had grown too big to walk up the stairs.