Look at You Now (13 page)

In the thick accent, Helen gently responded, “Oh, Mrs. Pryor, I very much would like to bring her. I would be grateful for her company.” Imagine that, Helen wanted
me
to come. I put the knit beret on my head, smiled a sassy smile at my mom, and we set off for the Winnetka train station. Dorothy shouted as we left, “You're out of your
mind
, Helen!” The beautiful North Shore suburbs zoomed by as the train headed to downtown Chicago. There was a large crew of young sailors wearing crisp white sailor suits and hats in our train car. Several of them whistled loudly as Helen and I walked by. I looked over and one of them smiled at me.

“Why are they whistling, Helen?” I asked.

“Sailors whistle like that when they see beautiful little girls,” she said. And I believed her. I looked down at my white tights and
party shoes, smoothed my coat, and smiled to myself. We spent dozens of Saturdays together over the next few years, exploring different parts of the city around my home, places I didn't even know existed. Helen slowly took over a small corner of my heart that I knew would remain a part of me forever. I wondered what she'd think of me now.

• • • •

I jolted back to the present, in Ms. Graham's office.

“Large families are fascinating to me,” she was saying. “I am an only child.”

What? That was the first human-person thing I'd ever heard her say. I couldn't imagine Ms. Graham as a kid. She was one of those adults who had completely shed every trace of being young from every part of who she was.

“I bet you got to spend a lot of time with your mom,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you didn't have to share your mom with brothers and sisters. You got her all to yourself.”

“I suppose you're right. I never thought of that.” Something swooped over her face just for a moment—and then it was gone. I suddenly wanted to know more about Ms. Graham. Why did she wear such sad-looking suits every day? Why did the girls really dislike her so much? And why did she smile so rarely? I'd only seen two half smiles and maybe one full one in all the time I'd spent with her.

• • • •

It was killer, bitter, burning cold when I went outside after my session. The ground was still snowy from the blizzard a few days before. The wind was crushing. I could barely see a foot in front of me, but strangely, I liked the feeling. Only the cold could make everything disappear from my head, all the fears and worries. I walked and walked until my nose and fingers were numb. I'd taken
a shower late that morning, and my hair hadn't completely dried. I could feel it freezing up into clumps, like it did once on a family ski trip to Colorado. I slowly made my way back around the building and toward the entranceway. I hadn't lasted very long. I leaned my whole body on the red button, hoping Chief would be right there to buzz me in, and she was. There was a loud suctioning sound when the air met the cold and then the door slammed hard behind me.

Chief was sitting in her usual spot at the desk behind the fence, glued to a soap opera playing on the small-screen TV.

“I told you, crazy girl, it's a cold one out there.”

“Yeah, it's so cold it hurts.” I leaned against the fence between us and shook the snow off my coat and shoes. My hair had clumped into frozen heavy chunks.

“Ever seen icicle hair, Chief?”

She looked carefully at my frozen hair. “I never seen that before, must be a white girl thing.”

“I don't know. I think it's a go-out-in-the-cold-with-wet-hair thing.” She was about to say something but then she put her hand flat up against the fence and shushed me. She reached over and turned up the TV, scooched her chair closer, and leaned in about five inches from the blaring screen. She loved her soap opera. When a commercial finally came on, she turned around toward me.

“Chrrriiiisssstttt Almighty, Luke just might cheat on Laura. You know Laura, these two been meant for each other since the beginning of time. She loves him. He's her man. But she's been gone now for a long time. Her nosy bitch aunt made her leave Port Charles, trying to keep them apart, kill their love, you believe that? But real love is too strong, yes it is. Luke is dying inside, thinks she doesn't care anymore, but she does. And now the nasty slut neighbor woman is goin' after him.” Chief talked about them like real people she knew. The show came back on. The beautiful young woman on the tiny screen made her moves on the guy.

“Maybe he'll say no to the neighbor, Chief,” I said.

“He's a
man
, Liz, and that neighbor-skank knows her business.” She was shaking her head and twisting her hands, worried and nervous.

“Well, I'll see ya, Chief. You'll tell me what happens tomorrow.”

I headed down the hallway and a few seconds later heard her scream, “Don't do it,
Luke
!”

• • • •

Time felt like something different to me. I could actually feel the dragging of every minute, almost every second. Life had stopped all sense of moving from point A to point B. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to be. All there was to do was wait. My mom used to say being bored was a sign of low intelligence. Clearly I had very low intelligence. I was bored beyond reason. Bored out of my mind. And flabbergasted that the other girls weren't
more
bored. A day felt like two days, or even three. Five months would no doubt feel like three years. The slow passing of time was becoming the hardest part of all. That day I tried to nap some of the time away, but Tilly barreled into my room. Amy and Nellie trailed behind her.

“What the hell, where you been?” Tilly said.

“I went for a walk.”

“Must be nice to come and go as you please,” Tilly said. Amy picked up my guitar. Nellie poked her finger into one of my wet ringlets of hair and said, “There's a new girl in the lounge. . . . She's taking Elaine's spot. Amy has to room with her.”

“Poor Elaine,” Tilly said. “I can't stop thinking about her baby.” They all went quiet for a second.

Nellie turned to me. “Liz, did you go to see graham cracker lady?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Why the fuck do you even go there?”

“'Cause, I don't know, I kind of like her.”

“You like people asking all about your shit?”

“Sometimes.” They were all looking at me, so I changed the subject. “Does someone come get the laundry at some point? All my clothes are dirty.”

Nellie burst out laughing so hard she had to sit down.

“What?” I said.

Nellie imitated me. “‘Does anyone come and get the laundry?' Like fucking who? Cinderella?”

“Well, I don't know, how do our clothes get cleaned?”

“We clean 'em, dumbass, we put them in this thing called a
washing machine
and then in this other thing called a fucking dryer.”

“Very funny, I know what a washing machine is.”

“But you never actually used one!”

“Well, no,” I admitted. Tilly offered to show me how. I started to gather my dirty clothes. Tilly took the sheets off my bed and systematically stuffed them into the pillowcase. She knew what she was doing. She threw the case over her shoulder, Santa Claus–style. I took change from the cup on the dresser—Tilly told me to—and I followed her out of the room. Nellie and Amy straggled behind. In the lounge, we saw the new girl. She was short and really pregnant, with big dark round eyes. She kind of looked like a creepy porcelain doll. Nellie slowed down and pointed to the new girl, saying, “That's Gina.”

Tilly waved, and I said hi. Gina looked up and gave an uninterested nod, like a guy would give. We headed down to the basement and into a room with a few machines, a couple of folding chairs, and a table. Tilly took the coins out of my pocket and bought soap from a funky machine on the wall. She told me to separate the light clothes from the dark.

“Why?”

“'Cause you can't do them together.”

“Right. Why?”

“'Cause your dark clothes'll run all over your light clothes and ruin them.”

Nellie nodded. “She's a professional, listen to her.”

I separated the clothes and then loaded the washers. Tilly showed me which dials to turn and then closed the lids. “That's it?” I asked.

“Yeah, now we wait.”

Nellie stood up and circled the small room. “Attention people, Liz P. is doing her laundry. Yep, Liz P., from no one fucking knows where, is cleaning her goddamn clothes.” She had her hands cupped around her mouth. They laughed, and I rolled my eyes. Amy and Nellie eventually went next door to the cafeteria for dinner, and Tilly and I sat down in the folding chairs, waiting for the load of laundry to finish.

“So, where
are
you from?” Tilly said. “I mean I know it's all secret and stuff, but I won't tell anyone. I swear to God I won't.”

“Who told you I was hiding here?”

“Well, no one exactly. I mean Amy overheard Alice talking to graham cracker before you came, and then . . . well, they knew we knew, so they told us.”

“Told you what?”

“They said you would be coming to live here because you didn't want anyone to know where you were. And that we weren't to ask you
any
questions about yourself. It was Nellie who figured out the rich girl part. So are you from somewhere like California?”

“No.”

“Damn, I want to know what California is like. You ever been there?”

“No, I'm from Chicago.”

“Oh, that's pretty far away.”

“I guess.”

“Do you live in one of those big city buildings?”

“No, no, I'm from a suburb, we live in a house. What about you?”

“Oh, I lived in a lot of places, never a house. Always around here somewhere, never been anywhere else. Tell me about your life, Liz. What's it like?” Her eyes got big.

“It's just a life,” I said. I didn't know what to say, it was just normal to me.

“Come on, give me somethin'. What's your bedroom like?”

“A room with a bed.”

“Liz.”
Tilly was impatient. “What color is it? What does it have in it?”

“Okay. It's light blue and white, I guess, it has a brass bed, and a makeup table at the window. Eyelet curtains, the wallpaper has little flowers, there's a desk.”

“Jesus shit—I wish I could see it.”

“Yeah, it's nice.”

“Do you have a backyard at your house?”

“Uh-huh, a big one. We used to have a horse in it, actually.”

“What the hell, really? Do you live on a fucking farm?”

“No, just a regular house in a regular neighborhood, kinda weird that we had a horse. We moved into this house when my parents got divorced five years ago. My mom is the most
non
-animal person in the world, she can't even pet the dog. So she finds this great house with a big backyard, that has a pond, and swings and a barn and a
horse
. The house came with the horse.”

“The house came with a goddamn horse?”

“Yeah, and no one in my family knew anything about horses, I mean nothing. None of us knew shit!”

“So why'd she get a house with a horse, then?”

I'd never thought about that before. I was suddenly noticing a bunch of things about my life that had never seemed strange or remarkable before, but I saw now that they clearly were. “I have no idea. Maybe because she liked the house?”

“Is it a nice house?”

“Yeah, really nice.”

“What's the horse's name?”

“Scooter. He was brown with a long white line running down his nose. So we move in, and we're all excited about the barn and the horse but we have no idea what or how to do anything. So there's this neighbor girl we meet, Leann. She comes over one day and tells us she loves and knows everything about horses. I mean
she knew
everything
, how to bridle and saddle him and clean and feed him and take care of the barn. She was so good with the horse. But when she wasn't there, Scooter was feisty. It's like the horse knew when Leann wasn't around and he behaved badly . . . and mean.”

“It's because horses are smart and have to trust the people around them.”

“Really?”

“I mean, yeah, I know that from this show I watched on TV. If you're scared of the horse, the horse knows it, so then it takes over like
it's
the boss. I can't believe you had a fucking horse at your house. Why'd you get rid of it? 'Cause it was mean?”

“Kind of. After a while Scooter's barn was like knee-high in horse poop and old hay. We'd grown tired of it all, and Leann stopped coming by so much. So one morning at like five
A
.
M
., Scooter got out of the gate that kept him in the field and barn area and was eating the leaves off the tree between our house and the neighbor's house, just chomping away, walking around the yard.”

“Shit,” Tilly said. Her eyes went so wide they looked like they might pop out of her face. She'd cozied up close to me on the chair and was looking at me like she was watching a scary movie. I continued the story.

“So the old lady neighbor calls on the phone. She asks my mom to get the horse off her tree. My mom wakes us up and asks us to get Scooter back in the barn, but none of us wanted to do it, we were too scared. We were arguing, shouting at each other back and forth until my mom got so mad she said she'd just do it herself. She went outside in her little blue nightgown. She's a small lady, much littler than me, like five foot two. She's never been around a horse. So she's standing kind of behind Scooter, making the come-here-horsey sound, trying to get him back in the field. Then the horse picks up its hind leg and kicks my mom so hard in the chest she flies a few feet back and then lands on the ground. I thought she was dead.”

“HOLY SHIT.”

“My sisters and I screamed, like really screamed. We go running down the stairs and outside to help her. We were so freaked. We called our grandfather and he came right over, put Scooter in the barn, and took our mom to the hospital.”