After Alice

Chapter 22: Escape

Alice

December 26, 1976

Dear Mary Ellen,

I don't want to make excuses for what I did on those two days in November 1946, but I hope these letters are helpful to you. If you inherited any of my maladies, maybe these stories will help you know where they came from.

After I walked out of that hotel, my memory goes blank. Somehow, I made my way back to Troy and back to our house.

After sunset, I went around to the backyard and checked the second floor. I hoped Robert's mother Rachel was back home, and when she went to bed, she would crack her window open, as I knew she liked to do. I just needed to hold out until she fell asleep.

To stay warm, I hid in the tool shed and plotted my approach.

You slept in the same room as Rachel. If I entered through her window, I would need to extract you from your crib without you crying or waking Rachel up. I contemplated first smothering the old lady with a pillow, but I quickly put that notion aside. I couldn't live with any more guilt.

Climbing back out the upstairs window would be impossible with you in my arms. Instead, I would need to slip down the stairs and exit out the back door, hoping you would stay quiet and the darkness would cover us until we could get to the bus station.

The time passed quickly as I planned, and before I knew it, I looked out and saw all the lights were out in the house, and Rachel had cracked her bedroom window open.

Half an hour later, I crept across the backyard and climbed the trellis that went up the side of the house, to the roof of the back porch. From there, it was easy to reach the window and push it up. I remember it shook a little and made a creaking sound. Rachel's snoring paused. I flattened myself against the outside wall. When her snores started up again, I slipped through as quietly as I could.

I resisted the urge to look into your crib. First, I went to my small bedroom down the hall. Even in the dark, I could see that they had turned my room upside down. Drawers were hanging out of the dresser and my clothes were strewn about on the bed. Pictures were off the wall. My closet was a mess as well, but luckily, they had ignored the hatbox in the back left corner of the upper shelf. I eased it down, removed the lid and lifted the pastel blue pillbox hat I had worn a year and a half before when I went to visit Leo in New York. That seemed like a different life.

Underneath the hat I had hidden a roll of money, a small photo of you, and a little vial of sleeping pills. I stuffed all of that in my brassiere. Then I put on a warm coat from my closet and packed a suitcase with supplies for our journey.

When I reentered your room, Rachel was snoring loudly. This was the moment of reckoning. In your crib, my hand met a cold mattress. I panicked and raced around the upstairs, turning on and off lights. My only reason for being there was to find you. Then I went downstairs, looking in the kitchen, dining room and living room. You weren't anywhere!

Rachel woke up and cried out in surprise. For a moment, I contemplated seizing the old woman and holding her hostage until she told me where you were, but then I saw a flash of blue lights outside the front curtains. I couldn't believe the cops would get there so soon. Perhaps they had expected I would come back to the house and had staked out on the street.

I dropped everything and ran out the back door, shooting through the backyards of our neighbors until I reached Frear Park, where I knew the terrain by heart. I hid out in an overgrown ditch and racked my brain about where you could be. Maybe the police still had you. Maybe they had arranged for you to stay with a neighbor, or worse yet, maybe they had figured out you weren't Robert's child and had given you up! That last scenario killed me.

Oh Mary Ellen, I was so lost, and so desperate to find you, I almost committed two murders and a kidnapping!

I don't want you to romanticize what kind of mother I would have been for you. Now, in hindsight, I think Robert and his mother did the right thing, keeping you from me. I was a mess, and in no state to take care of you. But now that you are older, perhaps you can relate to me. I can't defend my actions, but I also don't think it is right to bring these secrets to my grave.

I'm sorry. It kills me not knowing what happened to you.

Love,

Your mother