This Must Be the Place: A Novel (40 page)

“This is what we’re doing.” Amy cleared her throat. “I’m running away to the shore, to Jersey. Ocean City. It’s easy to get to and it’s big but not too big, and it’s not runaway central, like New York. I won’t get lost but I won’t be found either. And I can make a ton of money waiting tables while I get bigger—” She circled her hands over her belly, which, now that Mona was looking at it, was larger than normal. And Amy had been wearing baggier clothes lately, oh
God
, how had she not seen—how had she not noticed—how
dare
she call herself a best friend?

“Then I’ll have enough money to go to LA. And that’s it.”

Mona’s mouth was so dry she couldn’t swallow. “But what are you going to do with the baby?”

Amy cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

“I mean . . . if you’re not going to get an abortion—Amy—you’re going to have a
baby
. A baby. It’s going to need you—”

“Do you think I’m stupid? I’m not going to keep it. Someone else can raise the thing,” Amy said. “I’m not
completely
nuts.”

“Have you been to a—you know, the doctor? To make sure everything’s—”

“Jones.” Amy patted her bed for Mona to sit. “After all the creatures I’ve made on my own, without instructions, you think I’m not going to know
exactly
how to make one more?”

Mona collapsed on the bed next to Amy, quaking under the weight of too much information. It felt like her entire body, not just her brain, was processing this. “OK,” she said. She cleared her throat. “Can I ask . . . who—?”

“Who do you think?” Amy said, and it was the only time that day Mona thought Amy might cry. But she didn’t: she got angry instead. “We were always careful, always used those mythical little things they can’t teach us about in health class. Except for one time. Remember when I threw my purse at your head?”

“At the—at the dance? What, was something in your purse?”

It seemed like such a childish question, stupid and naïve, and when
Amy didn’t answer, it seemed even more so. Mona blushed again, and covered her eyes with her hands, and when Amy said,
So in a way, this is kind of your fault,
Mona, at sixteen, didn’t stop to realize Amy was too terrified by her circumstances to accept responsibility and trust that, when asked for, a friend’s help would be given. All she could think to do was guilt Mona into sharing the burden of consequence.

Everything about this was wrong. They sat on the bed in silence.

“So you’re coming with me,” Amy said, her voice thin. “It’s a good chance to get out of Ruby Falls, anyway. You know we don’t belong here. We’re meant to go places. Faraway places. We’re supposed to send postcards
back
to Ruby Falls.”

“
Wish you were here
,” Mona said, more jauntily than she felt. “
Glad I’m not there
.” She swallowed. “When? How?”

“I have a plan,” Amy said, exactly as Mona knew she would. “I’ve saved up about five hundred dollars.” Amy leaned over and pulled a fat envelope from between her mattress and box spring. “I sold the camcorder my grandpa gave me for my birthday and that brought in another one-fifty. We can hitch a ride with one of the semis on their way into Syracuse and pick up a bus there. The Greyhound one-way is fifty bucks apiece, and we’re going to have to stay somewhere, but it’s off-season for motels right now and we can find someplace cheap once we’re down there. And food—we’ll figure that out later. But we need to go with eight or nine hundred, at least; otherwise we’re not going to be making any bank once we start working, we’ll just be treading water.”

“I have a college fund, but I can’t get to it without my parents,” Mona said. “Sorry, that wasn’t helpful. I’m thinking out loud.”

“Do you have anything else saved?”

“Maybe a hundred in cash. Babysitting jobs. Did some extra stuff around the house, and my parents paid me for it.”

“Do you have anything you can sell?” Amy’s eyes were large, her gaze sharp. She was getting at something specific, and suddenly Mona knew what it was: the cuff links. Amy wanted her to sell the diamond and gemstone cuff links that had belonged to William Fitchburg Jones himself; that had been given to him by Daniel Darby and been passed all the way down the Jones lineage to Mona’s father, and, as her parents had told her all her life, would one day belong to Mona. And to Mona’s
kids, and so on, and so on. It wasn’t that they were insanely valuable, even: though they were beautiful, made of red jasper with small diamond chips. They’d probably fetch a few hundred dollars at a pawnshop, which apparently was all Amy needed. It was just—God, they belonged to the
house
.

“They’re basically yours already,” Amy said quietly.

She wasn’t wrong. Mona’s ears rang. This was too much to decide in one afternoon, this was too much to learn, too much to have to handle, too much to—

“I just can’t—I can’t stay in Ruby Falls and be pregnant. It would be too depressing,” Amy said, in a voice Mona had never heard before but would hear from time to time that summer in New Jersey and, as an echo in her mind, on and off for the rest of her life: hollow and colorless and utterly convinced that there was no other choice but this. There was no other future but this. “I think I would kill myself, Mona.”

“What’s in Ocean City?” she asked.

Amy blinked. “A boardwalk, a beach, an amusement park. Movie theaters. Seagulls. Funnel cake.”

“Pawnshops?”

She smiled. “I’m sure. Somewhere.”

Mona was shivering but she stuck out her hand and Amy shook it—because Amy needed her help badly enough to ask for it. And because Mona knew, even then, that Amy didn’t have a clue what she was really getting into; not that Mona knew any better, but she hoped she did. Or she hoped she would, when the time came.

Mona opened her eyes and saw the woods that had been outside Amy Henderson’s window for the majority of her very short life. She felt even colder than before, and when she got back into her car she rolled all the windows up and blasted the heat.

Mona spent the rest of Friday at the Darby-Jones, sketching designs for a client (Rebecca Applewhite-soon-to-be-Gretsch) she was meeting the following week. She made herself grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch, discovered she had no appetite whatsoever, and took it upstairs to Arthur, who was so engrossed in assembling the Waters-Kessler
proofs in an album he would have skipped lunch otherwise. Oneida came home at 3:00 and stuck her head in the den, where Mona was sketching and half-watching an old Kate Hepburn movie on cable, to ask for a ride back to the high school at 6:30.

“Halloween carnival. Dance,” she said when Mona asked her why. “Eugene asked me. I can show you the flyer if you want.”

“I trust you,” Mona said.

They’d barely spoken since Sunday night, since that
sotto voce
“thank you.” Mona didn’t think they were purposely avoiding each other—which was some improvement, at least. Their lives were just running parallel where once they’d been on the exact same track. Mona wished she didn’t care as much as she did—she knew it was perfectly normal, that this was what happened when children (and parents) grew up—but she dreaded what it might mean if she ever told Oneida the truth: if her daughter would veer off her parallel course completely and irreparably. She couldn’t do anything about it now, other than choose her moments carefully and hope. And be grateful and excited that, for the first time since puberty, Oneida—her Oneida, her weird, wonderful, borderline-outcast of a daughter—was going to a social event at school. With a boyfriend. It was a miniature miracle, but a miracle nonetheless.

At 6:30, Mona and Oneida left the house, Mona with money for take-out and Oneida in her long winter coat. The coat seemed odd to Mona (it wasn’t that cold outside) but not odd enough to mention. During the car ride, Mona learned that Eugene’s older sister’s band was playing at the carnival and that Oneida was planning on getting a ride home from Eugene’s parents. Mona bit her lip.

“I’d prefer to pick you up myself,” she said.

“God, Mom, they’re not
morons
. They know the difference between the gas and the brake and everything.”

“I don’t appreciate that tone.”

There was a beat of silence and then mother and daughter laughed desperately.

“Oh my
God
, when did I become Bert?” Mona hooted. Oneida giggled and rubbed her right eye. They were both smiling when Mona pulled the station wagon into the circular drive of the high school.

“Just . . . call me if you need a ride, or if you don’t feel safe getting
into a car with someone,” Mona said to Oneida, who already had one leg on the pavement. Oneida turned back and nodded, lips pressed together. “Aye-aye, Mom,” she said, and slipped out of the car. Mona watched her daughter walk up the concrete path to the gymnasium entrance. From the back, Oneida was indistinguishable from a grown-up. Or a stranger.

She drove to the Milky Way Bar and Grill, picked up the food, and was back standing in her kitchen before she even knew time was passing. Anna, not bothering with a plate and tucking into the Styrofoam container, paused mid-bite to comment that Mona was acting weird. And was she just eating cereal for dinner?

“Not that hungry,” Mona said. “I think I might be coming down with a bug.”

She rinsed her cereal bowl, grabbed lemons, tequila, a knife, and a cutting board, and went up to her bedroom and closed the door. This was the only thing left to do: dull the edge and knock on Arthur’s door. She set the cutting board on the bathroom counter and cut up all three lemons before she realized she hadn’t remembered to bring a glass.

“Guess I’m drinking it straight,” she said, and sat down on the closed toilet lid. She tipped the bottle to her lips. It was full and heavy, and she hit her teeth on the first swig.

She’d also forgotten to bring up a salt shaker.
Well, this was poorly planned
, Mona thought, and laughed stupidly, even though she wasn’t even close to drunk yet. She took another swig, a long, gulping pull, set the bottle down, and jammed two slices of lemon into her teeth.

She shouldn’t be doing this in a bathroom. It was too easy to see that other bathroom, the bathroom in the Seahorse Motel, when she was a little buzzed. She grabbed a handful of lemons and took the bottle by the neck and sat cross-legged on her bed. Mona took another swig and sucked on a lemon; and another swig and another lemon. She held the bottle at arm’s length and estimated that, in less than five minutes, she’d reduced the level of liquid by about four inches.

“So why don’t I feel more drunk?” she said, fishing lemon pulp from between her teeth with her tongue.
I must be broken
, she thought, and took another deep gulp.

And then Mona was
astonishingly
drunk.

It hit like a brick. And it didn’t matter if she was standing in her own bathroom or not: she saw the bathroom at the Seahorse. Saw the streak of brown blood drying on the pink tile. Red blood glowing against the white porcelain tub.

Someone knocked on her door.

“Who?” she called.

“Arthur.”

Of course
, she thought, and took another gulp of tequila. This was perfect. Also: she wasn’t sure when she’d gotten a waterbed, but her mattress felt incredibly buoyant. “Come in!”

The sight of Arthur passing through her bedroom door made her extraordinarily happy and then extraordinarily sad. She felt her face brighten and crumple in the space of a single expression, which might’ve accounted for Arthur’s reaction.

“There’s something I should—tell you. What?” He quickly shut the door behind him. “What are you doing?”

“I have to tell
you
.” She slopped a little tequila on her quilt and muttered, “Fuckshitballs.” She had a fleeting sober thought:
This is so undignified. This is the wimp’s way out.

“What’s wrong?” Arthur came closer but didn’t make any attempt to take away the bottle. She wasn’t sure if she had the capacity to share at this point anyway. He was carrying—he was carrying the pink shoebox. Amy’s shoebox. Oh
God
. “Mona, this is—what is this?” And he kind of laughed.

“This is . . . the story of my life,” she said after a long pause, wherein her mind wandered far enough to realize that, even if Oneida did telephone (improbable), Mona would be too drunk to drive. Poorly planned, all around. “Lemon?” She threw a slice of fruit at him.

He caught it one-handed.

“That was
hot
,” Mona said. “Sorry, that’s not what I had to tell you. I have to tell you.” She thrust the bottle of tequila at him. “You can take this. I’m brave enough, I don’t need any more. I have to tell you.”

“What do you have to tell me?” Arthur took the bottle and put it safely on her dresser. Next to the picture of Mona and Oneida, wrapped up together in that blue blanket, right after they came home from New Jersey. Standing on the steps of the Darby-Jones, just daring the world
to say something. Anything. It was taken two weeks before Mona’s parents adopted Oneida.

“She’s legally my sister,” Mona said. It was as good a place to start as any. “Sit.” She pointed at the bed next to her, damp with tequila. “Please sit. I have to tell you.”