Local Girl Swept Away (23 page)

She pulled her hand away. “Crazy's not the worst thing. Not for the crazy person, anyway. Of course, eventually the rest of you will get totally sick of my bullshit. You'll wish I
had
drowned.”

“Stop it! You're nothing like your mother.”

She shrugged. “I guess we'll see.”

“You aren't. When Carla sees you're alive, maybe she'll straighten out a little bit too.”

A low growl rattled in Lorna's throat as though she thought I'd said an incredibly stupid thing. “You don't really believe that, do you?” She squared her jaw and I could see her fierce confidence return. In fact, she seemed tougher than ever—unbreakable. “I'd be happy if Carla never found out I was alive, but I suppose she has to. God, people are going to act like it's such a
big deal
, aren't they? Coming back from the dead is going to be a giant pain in the ass.”

There was a long silence while I tried to beat back the anger that flared in my chest. It was going to
irritate
Lorna to deal with everyone's happiness over her return? There was a taste in my mouth as if I'd been chewing on tin cans. I felt like my emotions had been squeezed into a spongy ball that Lorna kept lobbing into a wall with a tennis racket.

Finally I couldn't hold in the explosion any longer. “It
was
a big deal! How do you not get that?
You died!
And everybody who knew you was horrified and destroyed, including your mother. The entire town has been obsessed with your drowning.” My voice was getting louder and louder. “You can't just show up all of a sudden and expect people to pretend it didn't happen. ‘Oh, look, Lorna's back. Isn't that nice?' No. They
mourned
you. They'll be shocked, and some of them will be damn mad that you made fools of them!”

Lorna raised her eyebrows. “You sound like you're one of the damn mad ones.”

“Well, maybe I am, a little bit. How could you do this to us?”

Lorna kept her face blank as she closed up the cream cheese and cinched the plastic bag of rolls with a twist tie. “How could my father leave me when I was eight years old and never get in touch with me again? How could my mother be a drunken bitch who hates me? How could my baby's father want me to—” She looked up at me. “Shit happens, Jackie. I'm sorry if I made you
cry
or whatever, but I had to do it this way.”

I got up from the table and walked across the room, trying to calm down. “If that was an apology, it was a really crappy one.”

Only somebody looking at her as closely as I was would have seen Lorna's shoulders sag. “Is that what you want? An apology? You know me, Jackie, I'm not good at apologies.”

“Try.”

She took a deep breath and focused on a spot just over my head. “I'm sorry, okay? I know I probably should have told you or something, but I couldn't. You can barely keep my secret for a day—how would you have kept it for four months?”

“I could have helped you find another way—”

Lorna waved me off. “Okay, okay, whatever. Maybe I was wrong. And I apologize, but it's over now. And I need you to help me come back home.”

She'd finally said the right thing. She
needed
me. I couldn't let her down. “Okay. God, I can't believe you're back and we're
fighting
with each other. I don't want to argue with you.”

I would have gone to her and given her a hug then, but she walked away to stash the food in a cupboard. “Neither do I,” she said. “You can tell people soon. I promise. Maybe tomorrow.”

“After you talk to him? The . . . father?”

Her head bobbed, the briefest nod. “Then you can tell everybody. Announce it on the radio, put it in the newspaper. You can even tell my mother if you want to. Just don't expect me to go over there and give her a big kiss.”

“Okay. I'm sorry I got mad.”

“You're allowed to.” She smiled crookedly, then looked away. “So, give me some news. Tell me what went on while I was gone,” she said.

“What do you want to know?”

“Are you dating anybody? Are you madly in love by now?”

Was I
? “Sort of,” I said. “It's still kind of a secret, but I really like him.”

Lorna smirked. “Oh, so you're keeping secrets too? It's Finn, isn't it? You can tell me. I knew once I got out of the way the two of you would get together. You were always crazy about him.”

What?
I couldn't stop shaking my head. “No! Not Finn! No! I wouldn't . . .”
Oh, yes you
would
. “I mean, he wouldn't . . .”

“Oh, come on, Jackie. He cried on your shoulder and you loved it, didn't you? I don't blame you. You thought I was dead.”

I put my hands over my face. The shame of that afternoon under the pier crawled back under my skin. The moment I'd made a fool of myself
and
betrayed my best friend. “I, I did kiss him. Once. But he didn't kiss me back. It was terrible. It was stupid. I'm so sorry, Lorna!”

But when I looked up, she was smiling. “I don't know why you're apologizing. You saw an opportunity and you took it. I would have done the same thing.”

“No, you wouldn't.”

“Of course I would! And if I were Finn, I would have kissed you back.”

“He didn't though. He pushed me away.” I wanted to be sure Lorna believed me. Finn was blameless.

“Well, Finn doesn't always make the right choices,” she said. “He may live to regret that one.”

“I can't believe you slipped out while I was on the telephone,” Mom yelled the minute I walked in. She'd obviously been standing in the kitchen, waiting. “You fainted last night, Jackie! You shouldn't even be out of bed!”

“Mom, I'm fine. I told you, it was just because I forgot to eat yesterday.”

My mother's fists seemed to be planted permanently into her waistline, her elbows pointing in opposite directions. “Nobody ‘forgets to eat.' That's ridiculous. If you could have seen how pale you looked when Finn brought you home last night. Poor kid was so scared, I thought
he
was gonna pass out.”

“I was only unconscious for a few seconds.” I didn't want to dwell on the memory of Finn's arm around my waist, my heavy head resting against his shoulder. Even at the time I'd tried to pretend it wasn't happening.

“More like a minute is what he told me. He was so worried. He said you stood up and just fell over!”

“I know, Mom, but I'm fine now. Really.”

“What was so important you had to go out this morning, anyway?”

“I didn't
have to
go out. I wanted to take a walk. Get some fresh air.”

She smacked a cast-iron skillet on top of the stove. “Well, now I want you to go up to your room and get in bed and rest. Get some old, stale air. I'm making you lunch. Some
protein
.” Under her breath, she mumbled. “Forgot to eat, I never heard such a thing.”

I piled a few pillows against the headboard of my bed and climbed in under the covers. It was kind of nice to have Mom making a fuss over me today. I
was
tired, tired of thinking about what would happen next, who would be ecstatic and whose heart would be broken. I deserved some special care, if only for a few minutes. Once the truth came out and all hell broke loose, rest might be hard to come by for a while.

As I waited to hear Mom's footsteps on the stairs, my eyes fell on the small shrine in the corner of my room, the bookshelf where Lorna's old sneakers had waited for four months. But what had they been waiting for? Lorna didn't want the shoes she used to strut down the street in, the shoes she twirled and jumped and danced in.
I have kept your shoes/in case I need them.
When I wrote that line across the photograph, I wasn't sure what I meant by it. I still didn't know. Did I think the shoes, like the jacket, would turn me into Lorna? Maybe I just needed the shoes as a reminder of my amazing childhood that got lost in outrageous grief.

Mom came in with a tray and saw me looking at the sneakers.

“I wish you'd throw those smelly things away,” she said as she cleared a space on my bedside table. “Here. I made you a grilled cheese sandwich. And I want you to drink this whole glass of milk too.”

“Thanks, Mom.” The gooey, delicious sandwich was just what I needed.

She straightened up and glared at the shoes.

“Can't I just get rid of those?”

“No! If you want me to eat, don't touch those shoes.”

She sighed. “They're not magic, you know. They won't bring her back.”

Something did
. “Maybe I'll wear them someday,” I said.

“Don't be silly. They're not even your size. Your feet are much bigger than hers.”

It was true. Everything about Lorna was small and tight and measured. She didn't have accidents. She didn't faint or fall. She didn't have large, clumsy feet that didn't know where they were going or what to do when they got there.

Mom wandered over to the bookcase and picked up the photograph that stood guard over the shoes. “This is a good picture. You caught the real Lorna. She's looking at you, but at the same time, you can tell she wants to get away.”

“Let me see that.”

She brought the picture to my bedside and handed it over. “It's like she wants to walk out of the frame or something.”

I'd never been satisfied with that photograph. I didn't think I'd managed to capture Lorna, to frame her wildness, to nail down her rebellious spirit, but now I could see what my mother saw. This was why Lorna hadn't liked being photographed. Photos tried to contain the uncontainable, which Lorna couldn't bear. I would need to take a hundred pictures, a thousand to tell a story as complicated as hers. But my mother was right—this
was
the real Lorna, always on the move, always hidden, always trying to escape. The picture I'd wanted to take was of the person I wanted Lorna to be. The Lorna who would stop moving and wait for me.

• • •

“Jackie! Did you hear me?” Mom yelled from the bottom of the stairs.

“What?” There was drool on the pillow. I must have dozed off.

“Finn's here. He wants to see how you're doing.”

I swung out of bed fast. “Tell him I'll be there in a minute.”

I tried to calm down as I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. In a few more hours he'd know, I told myself, and then things would be the way they were before. Or at least, whatever way they were going to be from now on out. I decided not to brush any color onto my cheeks or change my shirt. Because it didn't matter whether I looked good or not. It didn't make any difference now.

Finn stood just inside the kitchen screen door, playing with the hook and eye, locking and unlocking it.

“Supper's in an hour,” Mom said, standing in her usual spot at the stove. “If you want to stick around, Finn, you're welcome to some fish stew.”

I was surprised Mom was being so nice to Finn. Because he escorted her feeble daughter home last night? Or because she went to the Center and saw for herself that the Rosenbergs were not pretentious snobs? Whatever it was, I was pleased about it. I couldn't, however, believe I'd passed up the chance to eat chicken pesto pasta at Ciro's last night when the only food that ever seemed to land on my own dinner table was fish.

“I can't stay, Mrs. Silva, but thanks. I just wanted to see if Jackie was well enough to take a short walk.”

Mom frowned at me. “She already went out once today when I thought she should stay in bed.”

“I'm fine,” I said. “I took a nap.”

“Don't worry, I'll have her back soon,” Finn said. He gave Teresa his knight-in-shining-armor smile.

My camera was lying on the kitchen counter and I picked it up before I went out the screen door. Not because I thought I'd be taking pictures on the walk, necessarily. I just felt more comfortable with it hanging around my neck. Like Elsie said, it was my protection.

“You sure you're feeling okay?” Finn asked as we started toward the bay beach.

“Yes. I don't know why everybody's making such a big deal out of this. You'd think I was the only person who ever fainted.”

“Easy for you to say—you didn't see it happen. You scared the crap out of me.”

I grimaced. “I can't believe I passed out in front of a whole restaurant full of people.”

“Well, they might not have noticed if they hadn't already been staring at Rudy and Cooper's pissing match.”

“That's right. I forgot Rudy and Cooper were arguing.”

“Yeah, it was quite a scene. The two of them kept tossing back martinis and poking each other with sticks. I was surprised Cooper did it in front of Mom. She got to see his dark side for a change.”

Obviously Finn was pointing it out to me too in case I'd been too sickly to notice. “I wasn't paying much attention,” I said, hoping to avoid an argument about Cooper. Was it really his fault? Rudy was pretty belligerent too.

“Of course, Cooper won with that line about his father shooting himself,” Finn said.

“Oh, my God, I forgot that!”

“It shut Rudy up, but later he said he didn't think it was even true. Apparently that's what happens in Cooper's book.”

All of a sudden I realized we were headed straight for Dugan's Cottages, and I stopped in my tracks. “Could we sit down a minute? I guess I'm not feeling as great as I thought I was.” Understatement. Just a glimpse of the cabin had made my stomach roll over.

“Sure.” Finn cleared away the seaweed from a sunny patch of sand and we sat down. I hugged my knees to my chest and rested my head on them. Could Lorna see us here if she looked out the bedroom window? I'd have to tell Finn I was tired so he'd walk me back home. There was no way I could sit here with Finn, practically in Lorna's shadow, and keep this enormous secret. I was afraid to tell him and I was afraid not to tell him.