Dreamland (26 page)

“Fine,” my mother said, one hand fluttering to her mouth as she forced a smile. “Have fun.”

I was only half-listening to Rina as we drove out of the neighborhood and she kept up a constant chatter, talking about Jeff and her life, her voice floating out behind us. But all I could do was feel my dread building as I watched the road whisk by in the side mirror, miles and miles of it, each one taking me farther from home.

 

By the time we pulled onto the highway that passed Corinna's, there was a part of me I was afraid would explode. I kept thinking of Rogerson showing up at my house, beeping the horn. Waiting. And the penalty I'd pay, the hardest of fouls, when he found out I was gone.

“Rina,” I said quickly as Corinna's came into view, “turn in here.”

“What?” she said. I'd interrupted her in mid-story, something about Jeff's ex-girlfriend and a series of mysterious earrings she kept finding in his couch cushions. “Here?”

“Yes.”

She hung a hard left, spinning out gravel as we started down the dirt road to their driveway. Mingus was sitting on the porch, and he started barking when he saw us. I didn't see Corinna's car.

“What is this place?” Rina said, cutting off the engine. She glanced around, taking in the trailer next door and the huge field to our left that always smelled like manure.

“Just a friend of mine's,” I said, getting out of the car. “I'll be right back.”

I started up to the house, praying that Corinna was home. She would understand this, could get in touch with Rogerson or explain if he showed up there before coming to look for me. I was already planning what I'd say to her, how she'd shake those bracelets and fix everything, as I started up the stairs, glanced through the screen door and saw the living room.

It was mostly empty. The couch was still there, and the TV, but all the knickknacks—the blue glass in the windowsill, the framed Ansel Adams prints, the clock where the numbers were marked by steaming coffee cups—were gone. As were the afghan from the couch, all of Corinna's buttons from the coffee table, and the picture I'd taken of her sitting on the front porch with Mingus.

It was all just gone.

I stepped inside, letting the door fall softly shut behind me. Outside I could see Rina in the car, picking at her bangs impatiently, fingers drumming on the outside door.

I pushed the kitchen door open: it, too, was stripped of just about everything, even the velvet Elvis. Mingus's bowl was still there, on the cracked tile, and the sink was full of dishes, the window over the small table open, drapes blowing in the breeze.

“She's gone,” I heard Dave say behind me, and I turned around to see him standing there, in a pair of shorts, barefoot. He was holding a pack of cigarettes, his hair sticking up in all directions, a crease mark across his face from sleeping. “She left yesterday.”

“What?” I said. “Where did she go?”

He looked down at the cigarettes, shaking one out of the pack and sticking it in his mouth. “Home. California. I don't know. Anywhere away from me.” He laughed as he lit the cigarette, then coughed a couple of times, closing his eyes. “Had enough of my shit, I guess.”

Outside, Rina beeped the horn, and Dave glanced behind him, pushing the kitchen door open to glance out the front window at her.

“Um ... did she say anything?” I asked him. “I mean...”

“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. Then he smiled, kind of grimly, and flicked his ash into the sink. “It's been coming a while, I guess. I just didn't think she'd really go, you know?” He rubbed one hand over his head, his hair springing up underneath his palm. “I just—I didn't think she'd really go.” And then he laughed, like it was funny, but he wouldn't look at me.

All this time, Corinna had been the only one who just took me as I was, not caring about whether I wore primary colors, or stuck with cheerleading, or spent too much time with Rogerson. And now, she was gone.

Rina beeped the horn again, longer this time. She hated to wait.

“So,” Dave said, “you wanna smoke a bowl or something?” And then he smiled at me, and I felt strange, as if it was suddenly wrong for me to be there.

“No,” I said. “I mean, I have a friend waiting for me.”

“Tell her to come in,” he said.

“No, I should go.” I took a step forward and he didn't move, so I dodged around him, knocking my hipbone against the handle of the stove. I could smell him—like sweat and sleep—and I was suddenly disgusted with both of us.

“Come back later,” he called out as the kitchen door swung shut behind me. “I'll be here. Okay?”

I walked quickly through the living room, hitting the screen door hard with the palm of my hand. But just as I started to step out on the porch, I saw something sitting on the little table in a small glass dish where Corinna always kept her keys.

The bracelets. They were all there, stacked neatly, glinting in the small square of sunlight coming through the window above them, like a treasure, shining and waiting for me to find them.

I wasn't sure what I was thinking as I scooped them out of the dish, then slid them, one by one, onto my own wrist. I watched as they fell down my arm: clink, clink, clink, a sound I knew so well. I stepped onto the porch, wondering where Corinna was, and how she could leave them behind. But as I watched them catch the light on my own wrist, making her music, I knew the truth was that at home, or California, or anywhere in between, even Corinna couldn't help me now.

 

The first thing Rina did when we got to the lake house was put on her bikini and pop open a beer. We sat out on the front porch, overlooking the water, where she slathered Bain du Soleil all over her until she stank of coconut, and I sat in my dress—and jacket—chain-smoking, the cordless phone in my lap. I still couldn't get ahold of Rogerson, and I was starting to panic. If he showed up at Dave's and found out I'd been with Rina, and didn't tell him—no. I couldn't even think about it.

“Will you put that thing down, for God's sakes?” Rina snapped at me after I'd been dialing for a solid ten minutes, reaching over with one slippery hand to grab the phone away from me and dropping it onto the deck beside her chair, completely out of my reach. “Honestly, I have never seen anyone so co-dependent in my life. Why don't you go put on your suit, have a beer, and relax?”

“I'm fine like this.” I stretched my legs out to make my point, easing the hem of my dress over the fading bruise on my upper thigh. The truth was I was sweating under my jacket: It was unbearably hot. I turned my attention to the lake, where I could see someone waterskiing, the motor humming as a girl on skis cut a swath back and forth across the water.

“Caitlin.” She lifted up her sunglasses and looked at me. “What is the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Why?”

She kept her eyes on me, as if daring me to tell her, like I'd told her a million other secrets in this same place the summer before: my crush on Billy Bostwick, lifeguard at the community pool. That I secretly liked liver as a child. That I'd stolen Cass's pearl earrings, the ones she thought she'd lost at school. But this was too much for me to tell Rina. Even if I really wanted to.

“You're just not yourself,” she said softly. “You haven't been in a long time.”

I leaned back in my chair, closing my eyes, and reached my arm up to my face, letting Corinna's bracelets fall down my arm. I could still hear that motorboat, humming past, the girl on skis laughing as she cut across the waves. “I'm fine,” I said.

“It's like he's done something to you,” she said, and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter behind my sunglasses. “Like he's changed something in you. Hurt you or something.”

I opened my eyes and looked at her, my best friend, her face worried as she waited for me to respond. I hated to treat her this way. But her face, slowly, was replaced in my mind with a flash of Rogerson driving, looking for me, his face changing and eyes growing darker, angry, the way they looked right before impact. It was like the mean lady on her bicycle in
The Wizard of Oz
, the music building as she raced to find Dorothy: You knew she was coming, you just didn't know when.

“Caitlin,” Rina said softly. “Please. You can tell me anything. You know that.”

But I couldn't. Rogerson was somewhere, on his way, looking for me. I could feel it, the way Boo always said she could feel rain coming in her bad elbow. I just
knew.

I took a deep breath and sat up, grabbing my cigarettes. “I need to use the phone,” I blurted out, reaching over her to grab it. My hand brushed against her skin, damp and sticky and warm, as I started inside the house, pushing the sliding glass door open. When I looked back she was lying flat on her chair, one arm thrown across her face, having given up on me.

I called Rogerson at every number I knew, standing under those rows of stuffed fish. They stared back at me, bug-eyed and scared, as the phone rang on and on, endless, with nobody home.

 

It was late afternoon and I was
long
ready to go when Jeff showed up. He snuck around the side of the house, crept soundlessly behind our chairs, and expertly dropped an ice cube on the small of Rina's already pink back, scaring the crap out of both of us.

“Jeff!”
Rina squealed, sitting up quickly and slapping her top—which she'd untied to avoid strap marks—against her ample chest. “Jesus, you almost gave me a heart attack, you jerk.”

“Lighten up,” he said easily, sliding a hand around her leg as he sat down next to her. He waggled his fingers at me and did his signature move, flipping his hair out of his face with a snap of his neck. I could see myself reflected back—anxious, angry, glancing at my watch one more time—in his sunglasses.

“Rina,” I said, for at least the twentieth time, “I really need to go.” I'd been pressing her for what seemed like forever, while she kept drinking beers and waving me off.

“What's your rush?” Jeff said. “I brought some steaks, invited over some of the fellas. Thought we'd have us a little cookout.”

“Umm, that sounds good,” Rina murmured, rolling over onto her stomach again. “Who'd you invite?”

“Ed and Barrett,” he said. “Oh, and Scott from the store.”

“I can't stay,” I told him. “Rina was just about to take me home, actually.”

“I told you, I can't drive home right now,” she said in an irritated voice, scooping some more pimento cheese out of my mother's Tupperware container onto a cracker and popping it into her mouth. “I have to sober up first.”

“Rina,” I said, feeling panic rising in me, higher and higher, even as I tried to squash it down. I'd been circling like this madly for over an hour, like an animal about to gnaw its own leg off to get free. “I told my mother I'd be home by six-thirty, remember?”

“She doesn't care,” Rina said easily, as Jeff rubbed her leg, taking a sip of her beer. “She won't even notice if you're late. Have some dinner and then we'll go.”

I lowered my voice. “Rina. I have to go right now. Okay?”

“Caitlin, relax,” she said. “God, have a beer or something.” To Jeff she added, “She's been like this, like, all afternoon.”

Jeff looked at me, flipped his hair again, and I wanted to kill both of them.

“You promised you'd drive me home,” I said to Rina, and I could feel my throat getting tight. “You
promised.”

“Look, give me the phone,” she said, grabbing it sloppily from where it was lying on the deck between us. “I'll call Rogerson and explain everything. What's his number? Oh wait, I think I know—”

“No,” I said, yanking the phone out of her slippery hand. I could only imagine how Rogerson would react to hearing where I was from her. “Please, just take me home. It'll only take a second. Okay?”

“What is the matter with you?” she said angrily. “God, you'd think it was
killing
you to be here with me or something.” And then she looked at Jeff, raising her eyebrows in a can-you-believe-this kind of way.

For two hours I'd felt myself stretching tighter and tighter, like a rubber band pulled to the point of snapping. And now, I could feel the smaller, weaker parts of myself beginning to fray, tiny bits giving way before the big break.

Out on the lake the sun was hitting right by the dock, glittering across the water like diamonds.

“Fine,” I said, standing up. “I'll get there myself.” I walked off the porch, across the scrubby pine yard and out onto the road, which snaked ahead of me over a long bridge, around a bend and miles and miles into town. But I didn't care. Just walking would get me that much closer, give me the forward motion to feel that I could somehow fix this.

“Caitlin,” I heard Rina calling out behind me, her voice sun-baked and drunk. “Don't be ridiculous. Come back here!”

But I was already hitting my stride, sandal straps rubbing my feet and Corinna's bracelets clinking, playing her theme music, with every step I took.

 

I must have walked about a mile when a car pulled up behind me and beeped, quickly, three times. I walked closer to the edge of the road, eyes straight ahead, willing them to pass, but they didn't. Instead, the car rolled closer, slowing down to stop right beside me. It was Jeff.

“Would have been here sooner,” he explained, flipping his hair as I fastened my seat belt. “But Miss Rina threw a little fit about me leaving her. You understand.”

“Yeah,” I said, as he hit the gas and we sped toward town, his big convertible sucking up the road beneath us. “I do.”