Mama expected a boy, lo and behold got me, called me Paddy, short for Patrick. She was like that, determined to have things her way, not caring about the troubles she was inflicting on me. As if the name wasn’t trouble enough, she sent me to school at age four. I was the runtiest runt in the class, the star target of taunts and bullies.
“Are you Pad-dy-Cake or Pat-ty-Cake?”
The school made me repeat the grade. Later, in high school, they put me in a special-education class. What did I care about school anyway—teachers blabbering about equations, fourteenth-century kings, electrodes, molecules, verb conjugation, periodic tables? They should’ve taught us how to escape from a rut, how to avoid a rude awakening.
One Saturday, I was riding my bike, ended up with a flat, and stopped at Flynn’s Garage.
The pump jockey, Ronny, fixed it, said, “No charge. Come anytime.”
The way he smiled, I could tell he liked me. A week later, I broke the bike’s chain, on purpose, headed to Flynn’s where Ronny fixed it for free, plus a few kisses and a feel. The rest went real fast. Four months later, I was already showing. My parents disowned me after the shotgun wedding between the sixteen-year-old bride and her groom, twenty. No white dress, best wishes, or cake. When I lost the baby, they wouldn’t let me return home no matter how hard I begged. I moved into Ronny’s parents’ basement apartment, she was hammering the floor overhead with her heavy feet, he, almost deaf, the TV so loud we could turn on the same channel, no sound, and follow along.
Once I got past the grief, I made up my mind I sure as hell wasn’t repeating grade ten. Ronny’s dad offered me a job at his grocery store. The old geezer paid me a dollar an hour less than minimum wage because I didn’t have a high-school diploma. Meanwhile, the best thing about stocking shelves was not having to talk to anyone. I’d turn on Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” on my Walkman, listened to it so often the tape broke and I had to splice it together, lost the part where she sings about having a plan to get somewhere.
I thought to myself, “I got to get me a plan.”
Like she was scheming along with me, Dorothy, the store’s only cashier, slipped on ice, hit her head, then announced her retirement. I offered to fill in. One week turned into two, two into twenty, until I was Paddy, full-time cashier. Inventory control, security cameras, computerized cash registers—we had nothing like that in those days. If a customer didn’t want their receipt, I voided the transaction, pocketed a five or a ten. The years piled up as did the dollars, noted in my bankbook, hidden in a suitcase jam-packed with unused baby clothes knit by Ronny’s mom, stored in a closet upstairs.
It was early in November 1989. The TV showed people escaping from behind the Berlin Wall, crying, rejoicing, free at last. The next day, I visited a travel agency, walked out with a one-way ticket to Mexico for December 28, the night of Ronny’s annual dart tournament. A few weeks before that, I decided to buy some pesos, went to get the suitcase, searched high and low. Turns out, Ronny’s mom had given it to the Salvation Army thrift store. The next morning, I hightailed it over on the bus to the Sally Ann.
“Check back in a few days,” the manager said after I demanded to speak with him.
He was more sympathetic when I pretended to be pregnant, claiming I needed the clothes, that losing them would be bad luck. They found the suitcase. Sure enough, my bankbook and plane ticket were inside the lining, baby clothes gone. The store workers were apologetic.
“It’s the thought that counts,” I said. “Thanks for trying.”
I left the empty suitcase on the bus. A knapsack would do me till I reached Mexico and bought summer clothes, maybe a dress with yellow polka dots. At the store, Ronny’s dad went on and on about me not showing up on time, said I could’ve had a ride with him if I wasn’t so lazy and woke up an hour earlier.
My mood was sky high. I didn’t give a hoot when he threatened to dock my pay. “Go ahead. See what I care,” I mumbled under my breath.
The next few weeks flew by. For Christmas, Ronny gave me a bottle of Anais Anais, had me smelling like honeysuckle. I gave him a Casio digital watch. He said he’d wear it on special occasions. I didn’t bother asking, “Such as?” I wasn’t going to miss him.
December 28 came, Ronny went off to darts, I grabbed my knapsack, closed the door behind me, headed to the taxi stand, said I needed a ride to the airport. The nosy driver asked if I was going somewhere interesting.
“Nope,” I said, not leaving a trail of information anyone could follow.
By the time Ronny got home, I’d be across the border. Adiós. The next morning, hung over, he’d discover my note, rub his crusty eyes, and scratch his sweaty groin.
Gone for good. Don’t bother looking for me. Nice knowing you. Paddy.
Next, he’d holler out to his parents. They’d shake their heads, scold him, saying he never should have hitched up with me in the first place.
At the airport, the lady behind the counter asked if I had any baggage besides my carry-on knapsack. I shook my head.
She smiled, said I was a smart woman. “Leave it all behind.”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s my plan.”
The plane took off, me staring at the stars, barely blinking, thinking about how some folks say, “Count your blessings.”
I’d tell ‘em “While you’re at it, keep track of your woes. They got a real sneaky way of adding up.”
Elizabeth Murphy is the author of the novel The Weather Diviner (Breakwater Books, 2024). Her short fiction has appeared in Free Flash Fiction, Nixes Mate Review, MoonPark Review, Jake, Crow & Cross Keys, Underscore Magazine, Tiny Molecules, and others. She is a retired academic originally from Newfoundland, now living in Nova Scotia, Canada.