The Golden State

I drive around slowly with the window down calling Alice’s name with rain coming in sideways onto the door panel and dash. But then I imagine the horror of running over her prone in the tall grass and I stop and start honking the horn and screaming her name intermittently. Finally I think I have to get out so I look at Honey and I try to really get through to her and say “Mommy is getting out of the car, but she’s not leaving, okay. I’m going to be right back. Mommy’s coming right back.” I don’t know if she understands this but her face crumples once I unclick the seat belt and by the time I’ve gotten myself out of the car she is sobbing and I think five minutes, we can have five minutes. I sprint around the clearing holding my breasts with one arm and putting my hand over my eyes with the other. “ALLLLIIIIIIIIIICE” I scream and I stop panting under the eaves of one of the buildings to catch my breath. The rain is relentless and I think an insane thought what if she has just been rained away pounded into the earth by the deluge. I recover my breath and run a series of jagged loops around and between the buildings and then I run back to the car and Honey is crimson in the back seat and looks at me in furious reproach and I kiss her and I am crying too and I reach in the diaper bag for the halves of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and I say “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry” and “We’re gonna leave real soon” and then I am back out into the rain. I run to the stump and look helplessly at the evidence which tells me that she touched nothing but leaned her umbrella against the stump and I think maybe she went into the woods to get out of the rain which would make sense and I think I’m going to have to go in there and I walk a few feet in and look all around me but then I think This is madness I can’t leave the car I can’t leave Honey in the car you always read about how getting lost in the woods is the easiest thing you can do and the very thought of not being able to get back to Honey makes me panic and spring back to the stump which is where I think it should be and then I consider bringing Honey into the woods with me but the problem of being lost remains, it’s just that we would be lost together. I start to bawl. I don’t understand how all of this went south so quickly but I guess that is what I’ve told myself I was waiting for, things to go quickly south.