Scarlet in Blue by Jennifer Murphy

Author:Jennifer Murphy [Murphy, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

Scarlet

Week 29.

HOPSCOTCH. BEACH. SMOKE. BOAT.

Those were the words I wrote before Blue and I moved to South Haven. Before we got on our most recent bus. Before the bus before that and the ones before that. The first time I wrote my graph, it had a different ending. It was a confrontation plan, not a murder plan. That was before HE found me that second time.

My daughter was five years old when I saw his black Cadillac drive by, the same age I was when he took me. I had no idea how he found me. We had changed our names, moved far away from Michigan. I was at my studio in Tribeca, the entire second floor of a high-ceilinged loft I shared with three other artists, where my daughter and I had been for the three years since we’d escaped him for good. My studio mates and I kept our windows open on nice days, often sat on the deep ledges, our backs against the frame. I couldn’t see through the darkened windows of the Cadillac, but I knew it was him. It was the way the vehicle slowed as it passed, then sped back up. Though I didn’t plan to tell Jeremy about him, I felt I had no choice. That’s when the running from town to town began. I’d see a black Cadillac with dark windows driving slowly by where we lived (a house or an apartment or a duplex or a room in a boardinghouse), then speeding back up. Generally he drove by at least three times before I was able to pack the two of us up and get to a bus station. I never had a destination in mind, until South Haven, that is.

“You don’t care where the bus is going?” the clerk would invariably ask.

“It doesn’t matter,” I’d say. “As long as it’s far away from here.”

Up until Henry, Jeremy was the only person I told about my abduction. Unlike Henry, Jeremy believed me immediately. Helped me pack. Took me to the bus station. When I told Henry that I’d been taken as a child, he’d narrowed his eyes in disbelief.

“Did he take you against your will?” he’d asked.

I was tempted to respond with something sarcastic, something that highlighted the asininity of that question, like, No, he asked my permission first. Or, What is it about the word take that you don’t understand? I was five, for god’s sake. What five-year-old even knows about free will? What five-year-old understands the continuum of space and time? What five-year-old would even consider fighting a grown man? Sometimes I couldn’t fathom how Henry ever became an analyst. If he weren’t so encumbered by his own crappy childhood, maybe he’d be quicker on the draw. I’d told him some, about the fires and whatnot, and I planned to tell him about the four subjects of this graph entry, hoping that would spark his memory—Henry, when are you going to put two and two together?—but I had no intention of telling him about what it was like those first few days.

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