Heft (28 page)

“Anytime you wanna talk about it,” said Yolanda finally, “you can.”

& she patted my hand as she stood up.

Don’t leave me
, I wanted to tell her,
don’t ever leave
. But in my heart I knew that this, also, was not fair.

• • •

I
am nobody’s. And I have no place to go. It is one in the afternoon
. I get into my car and put my head down on the steering wheel. I could turn the car on and sit there until the car runs out of gas. I could find a cliff and drive the car off it.

Instead I start the car and drive straight until I find a gas station, and then with twenty dollars of the hundred-dollar bill that I have I fill the tank almost halfway up. When I pay I buy the cheapest things I can find to eat: a pack of peanuts, a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, and a huge Arizona Iced Tea, each for ninety-nine cents. I open the peanuts while I’m pumping gas and I down them in three mouthfuls.

I get back in the car and blast the heat. This time the car is warm and I feel better, actually, I feel better about life. I have food and fuel and slowly my body is thawing. A great mystery has been solved for me. There is another in its place.

Halfway back, I stop at a McDonald’s drive-through because I still feel weak. This time I let myself get whatever I want: I get a Quarter Pounder, two Quarter Pounders, and a large fries, and a large Chicken McNuggets with honey and barbeque sauce, and a large vanilla shake, and a large Coke. I pull into a parking space and let the car keep running, the heat keep blasting, and I turn on the radio and there is my friend Charlie Rasco, talking about what’s been happening with those Giants. I’d call in but my phone is dead.

This is the most delicious food I’ve ever tasted in my life. I feel as if I’ve been off in a desert someplace. I feel as if I’ve been stranded until now. I eat it as slowly as I can, tasting everything, feeling everything, letting it in, and memories and memories, too: how McDonald’s was a special treat, how after baseball games we got McDonald’s. On sunny days.

By the time I decide to go to Lindsay’s my hands and feet have already made the decision for me. I’m turning down the road that goes to her house, the long wooded road with the nicest houses on it. They are tucked back there behind the trees, their chimneys and gables showing, sometimes a front door or a fancy car in the driveway. This is what my mother wanted for me, I think. Not baseball. This.

I see the garden down at the end of Lindsay’s driveway—bare, just a low scrubby plant left—and drive slowly past it. Field hockey’s over for the year. School ended an hour ago. If she’s not at a friend’s house she’ll be here.

There are no cars in the driveway, but hers could be in the garage. This is what I tell myself. Her parents won’t be home. I know their schedule now.

I drive up the road a little farther and pull over in a place that isn’t visible from Lindsay’s house. I don’t want to be presumptuous. In case she has told her parents. I can’t bring myself to park in the little spot reserved for me by her sisters, last time I was here—it is not mine anymore. I imagine that I am back in that time and that my mother is home, drunk but at home, waiting for me to return and feed her something. My mother, a baby bird.

Why I never took her anyplace I do not know.

I do know but I don’t want to know. It was that I was embarrassed of her, of the way she looked and acted.

But I could have said, Mom, do you want to go for a drive?

And then she could have said, OK.

Then I could have taken her to the secret places that I am fond of going to, the nooks and crannies along the Hudson that I have rooted out with my car.

I open the door and get out, avoiding my reflection in the car window. I’m still wearing the cotton shirt I put on to meet my father, who was not my father. I’m instantly freezing. I still smell bad. I find a wool winter hat under my front seat and put it on: it’s the best I can do. I walk back up the road to the driveway and then I walk up the driveway.

The Harpers’ house is big as ever. I keep waiting for alarms to sound, or for the front door to fly open.

I look up at the row of windows along the top. Again I wonder which is Lindsay’s. I walk onto the porch. An old wooden swing creaks over to my right. Its pillows are off for the winter. I ring the bell.

Let it be Lindsay who answers, let it be Lindsay, I think. I whisper it too, out of superstition.

I wait.

After one minute I ring it again.

But there is nobody there.

I sit on the naked swing over to the side of the porch. I am planless again, so I decide to stay.

After ten minutes there’s a crunch on the driveway and Lindsay’s Lexus comes rolling up the slight hill toward the house. I freeze. I do not know whether it is better to sit or stand. I’m shaking a little from cold. I have both arms wrapped around me. My breath is coming out in quick small puffs of gray cloud.

Lindsay is dressed for the weather, wearing a down vest. She hasn’t seen me yet. She shuts the door and grabs her backpack from the passenger’s seat, throws it roughly over her shoulder. She coughs. She does not know I’m there. I want to disappear. She slams the car door and walks toward the porch, swinging her keys on the end of a lanyard you can buy at the Pells merchandising table set up after school every day, in the gym wing. I have one too. I want to watch her forever from a distance, just like this. She swings them around and around until the lanyard is wrapping her hand.

Lindsay, I say, but it is too quiet.

Linds, I say.

She’s on the porch now, trying to let herself into the house.

She jumps backward, dropping her bookbag. Both of her hands fly to her chest.

Oh my God oh my God, she says. You scared me so much.

She looks at me.
Kel?
she says. Are you OK?

I shake my head. Not really, I say.

Where’s your coat?

I shrug.

Hang on, says Lindsay. Just hang on a second.

She fumbles with the door again and then it is open. I stand up.

She shuts the door behind her again. Oh.

But then she comes out, says, Sorry, I had to put in the alarm code, and gestures with her head for me to come inside.

Where’s your car? How’d you get here? she asks.

It’s parked on the road, I say.

Weird, says Lindsay, and it makes me almost laugh for the first time in almost forever.

I come inside. The house is warm and tight. Our voices bounce off the sides of things. It’s large but enclosed: it feels safe, a fortress.

Angelo and Maxie come bounding toward us and Lindsay kneels down beside them and says Hi, hi!

I have never been good with dogs so I stay back, but one of them sniffs at me and I pet him on his head.

C’mere, says Lindsay, and makes her way into the kitchen. Sit down, she says, pointing at a stool.

You want a smoothie? she asks, and I almost say yes until I see it is a little joke. She’s joking about her mother. Let me make you a smoothie, she says again, but in her mother’s voice.

Lindsay puts her elbows on the island and looks at me.

What happened to you, where have you been, she says. Everyone’s been talking about you.

She shakes her head. I can’t believe you punched Matt Barnaby, she says.

But I can see that she is laughing a little. I smile too, thinking of it. The look on his face: like
This is so unfair.

You know it wasn’t even him? she says. It wasn’t even him who told me.

It wasn’t? I say.

—Nope.

—Who was it?

Just some girl, says Lindsay. Some girl that Christy’s friends with from gymnastics. She was at the party you guys went to.

Shit, I say.

Poor Matt, says Lindsay, laughing. Then: Whatever. He probably deserved it. For something else.

She turns away from me, toward the fridge, and I look at the glossiness of her hair, her healthy girl hair, brown and straight, in a ponytail.

I’m starving, she says. She pulls pounds of food out of the refrigerator: cheese and apples and leftover pasta with tomatoes and olives in it. Then she goes to the pantry and gets chips and Oreos and peanut butter. She pours herself a glass of milk. She takes a spoon and heaps some peanut butter onto a cookie, then dunks the whole thing into a glass. She bites it. Yum, she says. Oh my God, I was so hungry.

She looks at me. Take something, she says. Whatever you want.

I feel the weight of her offer. I slide around the island and pass her. I open the fridge for myself.

Oh my God, you stink, she says, laughing. Where the hell have you been?

When I have made myself a sandwich we go into the living room and sit together on the same couch. But we’re both facing straight ahead. We’re not looking at each other.

I eat my sandwich slowly.

Kel, says Lindsay, I’m still mad at you.

I know, I say. I’m sorry.

Is it your mom? asks Lindsay.

Yes, I say.

All she knows about her is that she’s sick. Thinking about all that has happened in the past week makes me tired.

Do you want to tell me? asks Lindsay. I think you should tell me.

Yes, I say.

But I can’t find the words to begin with.

OK. Do you want to take a shower? asks Lindsay suddenly. Would that make you feel better?

It would. It does. Lindsay brings me upstairs and gives me a towel from her parents’ linen closet. It’s green and soft. You can shower in my bathroom, says Lindsay. Her bathroom is just off her bedroom, which we walk into together. It is just as I had imagined it, green and goodsmelling: a dark wooden desk against one wall, her laptop shut on top of it, a peace-sign sticker slapped over its logo. Yesterday’s shirt hanging over one post of her canopied bed. The heat in this house makes a low comforting hum, a rush of air.

The bathroom off of Lindsay’s bedroom looks like something I guess you would find at a fancy hotel. The shower has a bench in it. The showerhead is as wide as a sunflower.

OK, says Lindsay. All yours.

I shut the door behind me and unbutton my shirt. The smell of me. The sight. I’m a skeleton. My hip bones stick out over the tops of my jeans. I have a full beard.

I turn the shower on as hot as it will go and watch the water for a while, pulsing and turning, making patterns on the glass.

When I step into it my knees go weak and I have to sit down on the bench. I lower my head. I let it wash over me.

Lindsay only has girl things in here. Girl shampoo and conditioner, which smell exactly as she does, like lemons and winter. Some kind of lavender soap with little rough things sticking out of it. Girl shaving cream and a pink gummy razor. I use them all: I want to. I even shave my face while I’m in the shower, lathering up with the flowery shaving cream, cutting myself all over.

I don’t know how long I’m in there.

I smell like a girl when I emerge. The bathroom is full of steam. I wrap a towel around my waist, not wanting to get back into my badsmelling clothes.

I crack open the door. Lindsay’s lying on her bed, gazing up at the ceiling.

Linds,
I say. For some reason I’m whispering.
Do you have any clothes I can borrow?

For a minute she blanks. Then she says, Hang on, and leaves the room.

I come out of the bathroom. Just to be in her room without her. Just to pretend, for a moment, that I can be here whenever I like.

When she comes back she’s holding a T-shirt that says
PELLS LANDING HIGH SCHOOL
and sweatpants. They are boys’ clothes. But they are not mine. My stomach lurches at the thought that they might be Matt Barnaby’s, and I almost say his name, but I don’t.

Instead I say, Whose are these?

My brother’s, she says.

I have nothing to say to this. I want to touch her but I can’t.

You shaved, she says. You’re all cut up.

I touch my cheek and my fingers come away bloody.

Lindsay looks at the rest of me, standing there in her parents’ towel. Oh my God, she says, you’re so skinny.

I feel very embarrassed when she says this. I cover my skinny chest with my arms.

Here, says Lindsay, and hands me her dead brother’s clothing.

I go back into the bathroom to put it on. It only seems right. The pants are too big at the waist and too short and for the first time I imagine Lindsay’s brother as a person.

I sit on the bed. Lindsay sits on the bed. I feel warm and relaxed. I feel safe with her.

Tell me, Lindsay says, in a voice that sounds tired of asking.

So I do, and it feels like the reversal of a hundred-year-long spell. It feels like waking up. It feels like the shower did. I lie down on my side, facing her, and she lies down on her side. Facing me. When I cry my nose runs onto her comforter and I wipe it on the back of my wrist. Lindsay touches me again: a hand on my upper arm, a squeeze.

•

When I am done, I turn over, toward the wall, so she can’t see my face. I bring my knees up to my chest and I hold them.

Why didn’t you tell me before? asks Lindsay.

Because I didn’t want her to think of me as a bad kid. Because I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me. Because I was embarrassed. Because I wanted to be part of a club that she was in. Because I wanted her parents to like me. Because I didn’t want her to think I was complicated, that I would burden her.

I say, I don’t know.

What are you going to do? asks Lindsay.

I don’t know, I say again to the wall.

I can’t take care of you, she says. I’m too young.

I know this. I knew it to be true before I told her. But something in me hoped she would adopt me she and her parents, together, would decide that I was too good and worthy to be alone in the world, and they would take me in, and all of us could take a family photograph. I could be in the next photo on their wall. I could play soccer with her sisters in the yard. I could fix things around the house.

I know, I say to Lindsay.

Let’s talk to my dad, she says, and I say, No way.