Now She's Gone: A Novel (4 page)

‘Oh, come on, Liz! She’s my kid!’

‘She’s your kid? Huh? Well, why don’t you do something for her instead of living like a bum!’

‘Lizzie, come on—’

He tried to put his hand on her shoulder. She jerked around and slapped him right across the face. It looked like it hurt. The imprint of her hand was on his right cheek.

‘That’s for all those nights I cried myself to sleep!’

He looked so ashamed.

She turned to me and pointed in my face, ‘You get your ass in that that car, young miss, and I mean right now! You too, Kelsey!’

I defiantly stood by his side and refused to move. Mom grabbed for me but I grabbed onto his arm and wouldn’t let her tear me away from him. Daddy put his other arm around me as Mom tried to pull us apart.

She finally gave up and hissed, ‘You still gambling?’

‘
Gotta
eat.’

‘You still boozing?’

He looked uncomfortable but refused to let her get the best of him and said, ‘What’s it to you?’

She was so pissed off, she snorted. I winced. She looked so unattractive when she did that.

‘You still whoring around?’ she hissed. ‘Why don’t you tell your daughter about that?’

He looked embarrassed.

‘You’re only here to cause trouble. I know you better than you think. We’re doing fine. A lot better without you here.’

He looked at his shoes. And he moved away from me. I could feel it. It’s like something shifted between us, like a bond had been broken. I still feel it when I think of this.

‘Come on, Cassandra!’ she hissed.

‘No!’ I screamed as she reached over and grabbed me and this time she pulled me away from him. I screamed and sobbed all the way to the car as he stood there and looked at his shoes. I think he wiped at his eyes. He knew then he’d never be part of my life. She would never let him.

Later she told me, ‘Tomorrow you’ll feel better and forget about him, just like I did. It’s for your own good, baby. That man doesn’t know how to love anybody but himself.’

That was the last time I saw him alive. I hope she’s happy.”

I stared at the notebook. She’d never told me that. She only laughingly referred to her father as a sperm donor. I remembered when he died. She’d gotten a phone call from her friend Kelsey. I came home to see her on the floor, curled in a little ball, sobbing. She’d cried for what seemed like hours.

She still had that twenty dollar bill. She carried it around with her wherever she went. Once I asked her about it and all she said, “It’s just special to me. The first money I ever earned.” She didn’t tell me it was the only thing she’d ever gotten from her father and she couldn’t part with it because somehow that twenty dollar bill tied them together.

Wayne

“Dear Diary,

God, I just hate the way that sounds. It’s one of those words like ‘period.’ It just comes out of your mouth bad. I think I will switch it to ‘Hello, you’ or something. That sounds better.

Anyway. School dance. A song I really liked but can’t remember the name of was playing in the background and Kelsey and I were sitting on the bleachers bored out of our skulls. I don’t why I remember this, but we were discussing The Karate Kid.

It was funny. We both had on these ultra-tight designer jeans and these little button-up tops with fluffy sleeves. We were
stylin
’! I will never forget those jeans. I had to save my baby sitting money for eons to buy them but they were worth every dime. All the boys checked out my ass in those jeans.

We were both sixteen, almost seventeen, and thought we were the shit. Some of the boys did too, but, of course, none the boys we wanted to think we were the shit thought we were the shit. You know, the ‘popular’ boys with the letter jackets and the slicked back hair. The jocks wouldn’t give us a second look because we weren’t cheerleaders or some such shit.

The other boys thought we were pretty cool. Or so I like to imagine.

The other boys… Ah, yes. (I can feel a good memory coming on.) The other boys liked us. It was the other boys who worked on their parents’ dairy farms before and after school and drove these huge four-wheel drive pick-ups that were always mud-splattered. The ones who wore cowboy boots to dances and never tried out for any of the sports teams. The boys in the FFA (Future Farmers of America) who dressed for events in their little blue jackets with the yellow patches all over them.

Ah, the boys who had those awesome rippling shoulder muscles and that sun-bleached hair. The boys whose skin was so tight and tanned it made them look like Greek gods.

Wayne was one of those boys.

I didn’t even know he had a crush on me until the dance. All I know is Kelsey excused herself to the bathroom and suddenly he was sitting next to me, trying not to look at me. I ignored him and popped my gum.

Then he said, ‘Uh, Sandy, do you want to…uh, dance?’

‘Nah.’

He looked crushed. Not that I gave a shit. I was not looking to hook up with Wayne
Eberhart
. He was from this big German looking family. A big, big guy. I sometimes think that’s why I fell for Bruce so hard because he’s big, like Wayne was.”

I stopped reading and considered that. I decided to take it as a compliment.

“So, he’s sitting there like a bump on a log and I know he’s not going to leave me the hell alone until I dance with him, so I get up, hold out my hand and say, ‘One dance. And if you try to cop a feel, you’re gonna regret it.’

Well, you’d think I’d just told him he’d won the lottery. He jumped up and we danced, even though it was awkward as hell. He was a big guy and had two left feet. He kept stomping his big old brogan feet all over mine until I pushed him off me and told him I’d had enough.

He made me so sad when he said, ‘One day you will like me, Sandy.’

I ignored my feelings and said, ‘Oh, and when will that be, Wayne?’ The poor guy just dropped his head and wouldn’t look at me. I felt bad, so I said, ‘I like you, Wayne, but not like that.’

And I scoffed as if to say, ‘No one would ever like you like that.’ I was just so not nice to him.

‘I know, Sandy. I won’t bother you again.’

And that just broke my heart. He walked out of the gym with his head down and I could have burst into tears. I suddenly felt like my mother, hating all men for no reason other than I thought I should. I was tired of feeling like that, too.

I ran after him. He was nowhere to be seen. I ran to the parking lot and he was getting into his Ford pick-up. I waved at him to wait. He did. I told him I was sorry and he asked me if I wanted to go for a drive.

I grinned and said, ‘Let me find Kelsey.’

He grinned back and I went back inside and found her. She did not want to come with us.

‘Wayne
Eberhart
,’ she said as if I’d just told her we had a date with someone totally undesirable. ‘He always smells like cow shit!’

‘He doesn’t tonight,’ I said. ‘Now come with me!’

So, we went driving around with Wayne and had a really good time. I sat in the middle next to him and I remember trying to keep our legs from touching. It didn’t always work because he took us on all these pig trails and our legs would touch, or, rather, bump, whenever he ran over a rut in the road. And there were a lot of damned ruts in the road. His leg seemed so much larger than mine. So much more strong.

We had a lot of fun. Well, Kelsey and I did. I guess he did, too. He just sat there and grinned most of the time and even once said, ‘All the guys at school will be mad at me, driving around with two of the prettiest girls in school.’

His compliment made us beam with pride. We always thought we were the prettiest and we were just glad someone else thought so, too. Our assumptions were confirmed.

It was getting late when he took us back. My mom was waiting in the parking lot, so I told him to drive around back and Kelsey and I ducked down in the seat so she couldn’t see us. She would have killed me if she knew I’d been driving around with Wayne or anyone else. We said goodnight, hopped out, went back into the gym and then walked out like we’d been in there the whole time. That was the first time I had tried to pull anything over on my mother and when it worked, it made me want to do it more.

Later, Kelsey told me, ‘You know, that Wayne
Eberhart
isn’t too bad a looking guy.’

So I decided to give him a try.”

I stopped reading and thought,
Yup. That’s Sandy. Give him a try.

“Hey, you!

Yeah, that’s better. I guess. It still sounds a little stupid. ‘Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret.’ (Crack me up!) ‘Are you there God? It’s me, Sandy…’ I think I read that book a million times.

Hell, I’ll just go with it. If anyone ever reads this—”

I suddenly felt guilty as hell. It didn’t stop me from reading, though. It should have but it didn’t.

“—then they can give the obligatory eye roll and that will be fine with me. Who would read it? Who would want to?”

Oh, shit, guilt. No.
Yes
. I put the journal down and stared at it. Oh, fuck it. It wasn’t like she was coming home. It wasn’t like she cared about me anymore. I could read the damn thing if I wanted to. She wasn’t around, was she? No. And if she ever found out, so be it. She gave me no choice in the matter.

I picked it back up.

“Oh, Dr. Sweeney wanted to read my journal. But I decided not to see her anymore. She seems nice but this journal thing is helping me more than sitting in her office for an hour. Besides, I couldn’t get the nerve to tell her why I was really there. I don’t even know what it is. It’s just this little thing that comes up every once in a while to torture me. I live through it and hope it doesn’t return. It always does.”

What the hell was she talking about?

“Back to the good stuff.

So, me and Wayne sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g. And this boy could suck face, just let me tell you. Damn. He was one of the best kissers, but I might think that cause he was the first guy that I ever actually kissed. With tongue, I mean. Before Wayne, I was one-hundred percent virgin. I wouldn’t even touch myself!

The only problem with Wayne was he was just so shy. So backwards. Okay, that’s what everyone thought about him but once we were alone, he turned into this wild man. He was always all over me and I couldn’t keep him off. He always wanted to kiss and touch and do all that great stuff, but like I said, I was a little prig and I knew if my mother found out, my ass would have been grass.

And, yeah, I wanted him as much as he wanted me. But because of my mother, we had to pretend we weren’t seeing each other. I had offhandedly mentioned him one day and she snapped, ‘You better not be seeing that boy! Or any boy! You have to go to college!’

So, that was that.

But Wayne. God, I was so in love with this dude I could have eaten him alive. Every single inch of him. And I wanted to have sex with him, too. But I wouldn’t let him do that. I was so scared Mom would find out and kill me. She was terrified I’d get knocked up and would give me nightly lectures on teen pregnancy and the proverbial, ‘Don’t end up like me!’

But I wasn’t listening to her. I mean, come on. My teenage hormones were in overdrive and when you’ve got some guy like Wayne who is just oozing this intense sexuality, something is gonna happen. And, oh yeah, he oozed it. Ooze is another weird word. Like he had sores or something. He didn’t have sores.

This went on for about a year or so and I am more than sure poor Wayne had blue balls the size of a… I dunno. Something really large. Tractor tires, maybe?

Even though he wasn’t ‘popular,’ I’d see all the girls checking his ass out in the halls. Of course, I didn’t notice this before I started seeing him, but afterwards I was like, What the hell…? Chicks really dug him. And that really pissed me off.

It made me so mad. How dare they look at my man like that?! I almost got into a few fights over him. It’s embarrassing to me now but back then, I just couldn’t stand the thought of him looking at someone else.

Of course, there was one girl in particular that had a huge crush on him. Her name was Melinda and she was determined to have him. Oh, I hated her so much. She was just so icky. She wore those little white tops with a ribbon tied at the collar and she was… Ooooh, I still can’t stand her.

Wayne didn’t even know she existed. Bless his heart. All he saw was me. And I loved it. He was mine! Nah nah nah nah.

(I am humming You Ain’t Woman Enough (to Take My Man) by Loretta Lynn as I write this. The music of my youth! Who needs rock and roll when you got Loretta and Conway and Patsy? Small town country life…ahh, don’t you just love it?)

Anyway…

One day I saw Melinda checking him out and I told her, point blank, to keep her damned eyes to herself. And she was like, ‘What’s it to you? You’re not even going out with him!’

Oh, God! That just ran all over me and, without thinking, I went for her. I was country-assed mad and I had every intention of beating the shit out of her, but Kelsey held me back and told me she wasn’t worth it. Maybe not, but it would have made me feel a little better.

I don’t know why it is, but I always pick these men who I become insanely jealous over. After I started seeing Bruce, this chick in a bar came on to him while I was in the bathroom. I don’t even think he knew I saw it. And he just sat there and nodded, looking around for me. Well, she finally got the hint and left. I watched her for the rest of the night. When she went to the bathroom, I followed her and told her if she ever tried that shit again, we’d have some trouble.”

She did that?! I couldn’t believe she would do anything like that! It made me feel kinda good though, like she thought I was worth fighting over. I don’t know. Maybe I was an idiot.

“And of course, Bruce is Mr. Oblivious to everything. He never even knew. And the thing is, I feel terrible (and stupid!) after I do something like that. When I saw the girl again at the same bar, I went up to her and apologized. I told her if she wanted to give him a try she could. Of fucking course, I didn’t mean it and if she had done it, I would have died. But she was cool about it. One day I am going to run into some bitch that isn’t cool and she’ll probably end up kicking my ass. But I’ll give her her money’s worth. I’m a pretty good fighter. I’m very scrappy.