Someone Like You (18 page)

“These are all warning signs,” she went on. “I tell parents to watch out for them every day.”

“I'm not doing anything,” I said. “I was only twenty minutes late, Mom.”

“That's not the issue here, and you know it.” She got quiet as the waiter came by with more bread, then lowered her voice and continued. “He's not good for you.”

Like he was food. Not a green pepper or an orange, but a big sticky Snickers bar. “You don't even know him,” I said.

“That's because you refuse to discuss him!” She wadded up her napkin and threw it down on her plate. “I have given you endless chances to prove me wrong here. I have tried to dialog—”

“I don't want to dialog,'” I snapped. “You've already made up your mind anyway, you hate him. And this isn't about him, anyway.”

“This is what I know,” she said, leaning closer to me. “He drives like a maniac. He's not from Lakeview. And you are willing to do anything for him, including but probably not limited to lying to me and your father. What I
don't
know is what you're doing with him, how far things have gone—if there are drugs involved or God knows what else.”

“Drugs,” I repeated, and I laughed. “God, you always think everything is about
drugs.”

She wasn't laughing. “Your father and I,” she said, finally lowering her voice, “have discussed this thoroughly. And we've decided you cannot see him anymore.”

“What?”
I said. “You can't do that.” My stomach was tight and hot. “You can't just decide that.”

“Well, Halley, with your actions lately you've given us no other choice.” She sat back in her chair, crossing her arms. This wasn't going the way she wanted, I could tell. This wasn't her office and I wasn't a patient and she couldn't just tell me what to do. But I didn't know what she'd expected. That she was doing me a favor? “Halley, I don't think you understand how easy it is to make a mistake that will cost you forever. All it takes is one wrong choice, and ...”

“You're talking about Scarlett again,” I said, shaking my head. I was tired of this, tired of battling and putting up fronts, of having to think so hard about my next move.

“No,” she said. “I am talking about you falling in with the wrong crowd, getting influenced to do something you aren't ready to do. That you don't
want
to do. You don't know what Macon's involved in.”

I hated
the way she kept saying his name.

“There's a lot of dangerous stuff out there,” she said. “You're inexperienced. And you're like me, Halley. You have a tendency not to see people for what they really are.”

I sat there and looked at my mother, at the ease in her face as she told me how I felt, what I thought, everything. Like I was a puzzle, one she'd created, and she knew the solution every time. If she couldn't keep me close to her, she'd force me to be where she could always find me.

“That's not true,” I said to her slowly, and already I knew I'd say something ugly, something final, even as I stood up, pushing back my chair. “I'm not getting influenced, I'm not inexperienced, and
I am not like you.”

It was the last thing that did it. Her face went blank, shocked, like I'd reached out and slapped her.

You wanted distance,
I thought.
There you go.

She sat back in her chair, keeping her voice low, and said, “Sit down, Halley. Now.”

I just stood there, thinking of running out the door, losing myself in Macon's secret network of pizza parlors and arcades, side streets and alleys, riding up to that penthouse room and stowing away, forever.

“Sit
down,”
she said again. She was looking over my head, out to the parking lot. She was blinking, a lot, and I could hear her taking deep, deep breaths.

I sat down, pulling in my chair, while she dabbed at her mouth with a napkin and waved over the waiter. We got the check, paid, and went out to the car without a word between us. All the way home I stared out the window, watching the houses slip past and thinking back to the Grand Canyon, vast and uncrossable, like so many things were now.

 

When we pulled into our driveway we passed Steve, who was getting out of his Hyundai in front of Scarlett's house. He was carrying flowers, his usual, and wearing yet another tweedish, threadbare jacket with patches on the elbows. But this time I didn't need Scarlett to point out the newest sign of Vlad's emergence: boots. Not just regular boots either, but big, leather, clunky boots with a thick heel and buckles that I imagined must be clanking loudly with each step, although my window was up and I couldn't hear them. Warrior boots, poking out from beneath his pants leg as if they'd just walked over the heads of dead opponents. He waved cheerfully as we passed, and my mother, still irritated, lifted her hand with her fake neighborhood wave.

We still hadn't said a word to each other as we came into the kitchen where my father was on the phone, his back to us. As he turned around, I could tell instantly something was wrong.

“Hold on,” he said into the receiver, then covered it with his hand. “Julie. It's your mother.”

She put down her purse. “What? What is it?”

“She fell, in her house—she's hurt bad, honey. The neighbors found her. She'd been there for a while.”

“She fell?” My mother's voice was high, shaky.

“This is Dr. Robbins.” He handed her the phone, adding, “I'll use the other phone and start calling about flights.”

She took the phone from him, taking a deep breath as he squeezed her shoulder and headed down the hall, toward her office. I stood in the open doorway and held my breath.

“Hello, this is Julie Cooke.... Yes. Yes, my husband said ... I see. Do you know when this happened? Right. Right, sure.”

All this time, each word she said, she was looking right at me. Not like she was even aware of it or could see me at all. Just her eyes on me, steady, as if I was the only thing holding her up.

“My husband is calling about flights right now, so I'll be there as soon as I can. Is she in pain? ... Well, of course. So the surgery will be tomorrow at six, and I'll just—I'll get there as soon as I can. Okay. Thanks so much. Good-bye.” She hung up the phone, turning her back to me, and then just stood there, one hand still on the receiver. I could see her tense back, the shoulder blades poking out.

“Your grandmother's hurt,” she said in a low voice, still not turning around. “She fell and broke several ribs, and she'll have to have surgery on her hip in the morning. She was alone for a long time before anyone found her.” She choked on this last part, her voice wavering.

“Is she gonna be okay?” Down the hall I could hear my father's voice, asking questions about departures and arrivals, coach or first class, chances of standby. “Mom?”

I watched her shoulders fall and rise, one deep breath, before she turned around, her face composed and even. “I don't know, honey. We'll just have to see.”

“Mom—” I started, wanting to somehow fix this, whatever I'd opened between us by not wanting to share Macon with her. By not wanting to share
me
with her.

“Julie,” my father's voice came booming from down the hall, always too loud for small spaces, “there's a flight in an hour, but you have a long layover in Baltimore. It's the best we can do, I think.”

“That's fine,” she said evenly. “Go ahead and book it. I'll throw a bag together.”

“Mom,” I said, “I just—”

“Honey, there's no time,” she said quickly as she passed me, reaching to pat my shoulder, distracted. “I've got to go pack.”

So I sat on my bed, in my room, with my math homework in my lap and the door open. I heard the closet door opening and shutting, my mother packing, my father's low, soothing voice. But it was the silences that were the worst, when I craned my neck, hoping for just one word or sound. Anything would have been better than imagining what was happening when everything was muffled, and I knew she had to be crying.

She came in and hugged me, ruffling my hair like she always had when I was little; she said not to worry, she'd call later, everything was okay. She'd forgotten about what I'd said, about what had happened at dinner. Just like that, with one phone call, she was a daughter again.

With my mother gone, it was like I'd been handed a Get Out of Jail Free card. My father's morning show was still riding an Arbitron rating high, which meant he was busy almost every afternoon or evening with promotional events. In the past few months, he'd already lost an on-air bet with the traffic guy that resulted in him having to perform an embarrassing (and thank God, not complete) striptease at a local dance club, attended about a hundred contest-winner cocktail parties, and wrestled a man named the Dominator at the Hilton for charity. That one had left him bruised, battered, and with nose splints for a full week, which he'd loved. He'd discussed his drainage problems, complete with a million booger jokes, every morning while I cringed on the way to school.

The phone rang constantly, usually a nervous-sounding man named Lottie who organized my father's every waking moment, lining up another trip to the mall, meeting, or Wacky Stunt. My father, who my mother insisted was too old and too educated for any of this nonsense, hardly even saw me, much less kept careful track of what I was doing. At most, we passed each other late at night, as I walked past his bedroom to brush my teeth. We came to an unspoken understanding: I'd behave, show up when I was supposed to, and he wouldn't ask questions. It was only four days, after all.

Of course, I was always with Macon. Now he could pick me up for school and take me to work or home in the afternoons; Scarlett, who used to drive me, was as busy as my father. She was working extra shifts at Milton's so she could buy baby clothes and nursery items; plus, she was spending a lot of time with Cameron, who made her laugh and rubbed her feet. Finally, our guidance counselor, Mrs. Bagbie, had convinced her to join a fledgling Teen Mothers Support Group that met at school two afternoons a week. She hadn't wanted to go, but she said the other girls—some pregnant, some already with kids—made her feel a little less strange. And Scarlett, as I knew, could make friends anywhere.

Macon and I had fun. Monday we didn't go to school at all, spending the entire time just driving around, eating at Mc-Donald's, and hanging out by the river. When the school called that night my father wasn't home, and I easily explained that I'd been sick and my mother was out of town. Macon had already mastered her signature, signing with a flourish every note I needed.

She called every night and asked me the basic questions about school and work, whether my father was remembering to feed me. She said she missed me, that Grandma Halley was going to be all right. She said she was sorry we'd argued, and she knew it was hard for me to break it off with Macon, but someday I would understand it was the right thing. At the other end of the line, phone in hand, I agreed and watched him back out of the driveway, lights moving across me, then heard him beep as he drove away. I told myself I shouldn't feel guilty, that she'd played dirty, changing the rules to suit her. Sometimes it worked; sometimes not.

The night before my father and I were leaving to go to Buffalo for Thanksgiving, Macon brought me home from work. The house was dark when we pulled up.

“Where's your dad?” he said as he cut off the engine.

“I don't know.” I grabbed my backpack out of the back of the car and opened my door. “Doing radio stuff, probably.”

As I leaned over to kiss him good-bye, he pulled back a bit, his eyes still on my dark house. Across the street Scarlett's front porch light was already on, and I could see Marion in front of the TV in the living room, her shoes off, feet up on the coffee table. In the kitchen Scarlett was standing at the stove, stirring something.

“Well,” I said to Macon, sliding my hand around his neck. “I guess I'll see you when I get back.”

“Aren't you going to ask me to come in?”

“In?” I drew back. He'd never asked before. “Do you want to?”

“Sure.” He reached down and opened his door, and just like that we were walking up the driveway, past my mother's mums, to the front steps. The paper was on the porch and a few leaves were blowing around, making scraping noises. It was getting ready to rain.

I fished around in my backpack for my keys, then unlocked the door and pushed it open just as there was a loud rumbling overhead. Even without looking up I could feel the plane coming closer, the thin line of windowpanes on either side of the door already vibrating.

“Man,” Macon said. “That's loud.”

“It's bad around this time,” I told him. “There are lots of early evening flights.” The house was completely dark inside, and I felt across the wall for the light switch. Right as the light came on overhead there was a popping noise, a flash, and we were in the dark again.

“Hold on,” I said, dropping my backpack as he stepped in behind me, a few leaves blowing in across his feet. “I'll find another light.”

And then I felt his arms wrap around me from behind, his hand, cool, on my stomach, and in the dark of my parents' alcove he kissed me. He didn't seem to have any problem negotiating the dark of the empty house, walking me backwards to the living room and the couch, pushing me down across my mother's needlepoint pillows. I kissed him back, letting his hand slide up my shirt, feeling the warmth of his legs pressing against mine. Another plane was rumbling in the distance.