This Must Be the Place: A Novel (52 page)

It was Dani’s plan, of course; and it was brilliant (of course).

“You’ll feel better if you do something,” Dani said. “Nothing big, nothing that’s going to hurt anyone. This isn’t revenge, this is restitution. This is you saying you’re hurt and you’re angry and you need some time. Also: screw you, Mom.” Dani yanked open her desk drawer. “Just a little bit.”

Dani handed her a sheet of notebook paper and a pen, and a large hardback copy of
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
that Oneida balanced across her lap to write on. Oneida took off her glasses and cleaned them on the edge of her shirt. Then she wrote a note to Mona that she hoped said just enough.

Dani drove her over to the Darby-Jones and idled at the foot of the driveway while Oneida snuck up the front porch and hand-delivered her letter—her fake runaway letter, just vague enough to freak Mona out but nothing, Dani said, that Oneida could actually get in trouble for. Even if Mona flipped enough to call the state troopers, to report her as a missing person, there was nothing concrete, nothing to hold against her. “Kids run away all the time, anyway,” Dani said. “Nothing personal, but they wouldn’t do anything to find you, I bet. At least, not in the first twenty-four hours.” Dani’s plan included Oneida sleeping over at her house, on a school night, which Dani’s father—a self-employed designer who had a studio in the back of the house and brilliant blue eyes that Oneida couldn’t stop staring at—said was fine, so long as Oneida’s mother was OK with it too. Oneida called the movie theater at the mall in Syracuse, and the prerecorded movie times, predictably, thought it was
great
that she was staying over at a friend’s.

When she hopped back in the car, she and Dani howled in triumph and sped away. She was giddy, drunk on insurrection—justified insurrection, which was even more intoxicating. But as soon as it was done, she made herself forget about it. She forced herself not to imagine Mona’s face when she read the note, when she read between the words, and thought her thoughts and jumped to her conclusions. Oneida knew it would hurt Mona. She knew the implication that she’d run away would scare her. Hell—it was scary enough to
imagine
running away, let alone actually do it; and her mother knew precisely what there was to be afraid of. Which was what made this plan of Dani’s so brilliant—it was perfectly tailored to exploit Mona’s own fears, her own experiences: her own bed, once made, the covers drawn back by her own imagination.

Oneida told herself these things and tried to remember that Mona had brought it on herself. And then she imagined what it would feel like to go home after school tomorrow, the cool rush of relief as she hugged her mother, just wrapped her arms around her and smelled the vanilla in her hair and her skin, and then all this could end; and whatever happened after, whatever the world was going to be like from now on, could start happening.

Dani’s mother, who was some sort of surgeon, came home at 6:30 and brought two large pizzas with her. She said she was so glad to
finally meet Oneida, that Danielle had mentioned her frequently, and Oneida hoped nobody saw how that casual comment made her so happy she blushed. Dani had two younger brothers, Dylan and Duncan, twins in the sixth grade. They finished each other’s sentences and ate an entire pizza all by themselves. Dani, around her family, was the quiet one—her mother told stories about the patients she’d seen at work, the brains she’d poked around in; and her father asked them all questions about their days, including Oneida, who surprised herself by answering honestly.

“I spent most of the day contemplating my mortality,” she said.

Duncan Drake froze mid-chew.

“Then I took a geometry test.”

Mr. Drake laughed. Then they all laughed, all the Drakes, and Oneida, who hadn’t even been trying to be funny, saw that it
was
funny; saw that all of life was funny, precisely because it ended.

Dani was released from clearing the table because she had a friend over, and Oneida, again, felt a fresh burst of happiness, of pride, to be labeled so, especially by this clan of strange and brilliant people (Dani’s father had used the word
pedagogical
and hadn’t stopped to explain it, and nobody looked the least bit confused). “Your family is great,” Oneida said, once they were back in Dani’s room. “I really like your dad.”

“He’s OK.” Dani knelt to dig through a pile of clothes. “They were all on guest behavior tonight. My mother is usually a raving hag.”

“Oh.” Oneida wasn’t sure if that meant her initial assessment required an apology.

“Got ’em!” Dani triumphantly raised a bright orange plastic bag in one hand and a pair of wrinkled toothpaste-green scrubs in the other. “Are you ready for the plan?”

“I think so.” Oneida sat on Dani’s desk chair.

“This is how we’re going to get in to see Eugene. It’s just after Halloween, the hospital will still be nuts. No one’s going to look twice at an intern and a nurse.” Oneida guessed the scrubs were hand-me-downs from Dani’s mother, but the white nurse’s uniform that came out of the orange bag looked kind of short and still had tags from a costume shop. There was a heart, halved by a jagged crack, over one of the pockets. “Are you with me?”

Oneida chewed her lip.

“What?” Dani sounded impatient. “Come on, don’t you want to see him? Don’t you
miss
him?” The unspoken challenge, the barb—
do you love him enough, do you deserve him like I do?
—made Oneida feel queasy and guarded. Her faith teetered. “Look,” Dani continued, “I’m going to see him tonight whether you come or not, I just—”

“I don’t want to see his family. I don’t know what to say to them.”

“That’s what the costumes are for. We’ll just go in and, you know, check his vitals. Say hi.”

“Can I wear the scrubs?” Oneida asked.

“They’re my PJs.”

“Does that mean I can’t wear them?”

“I haven’t washed them in, like, a week.”

“I’d feel better in the scrubs.”

“Suit yourself.” Dani shrugged. “My boobs look great in the nurse outfit, just to warn you.” She shook her head. “Sorry. Sorry—I didn’t mean it like that. Wendy’s your boyfriend, and I know that. I’ll try to get better. I promise.”

Oneida’s faith buoyed. In this new world, in the second age of the life of Oneida Jones, a promise to try was enough.

Dani rolled her eyes and grinned, dipping her head sheepishly. “It’s true, though, they look . . . friggin’
spectacular
.”

“How else would we snap him out of a coma?” Oneida deadpanned. Dani looked a little sad and a little hopeful, and smiled at her. Oneida would remember that moment, years later, when Dani called with the news that she was moving to Africa, to Zimbabwe—she’d gotten her Peace Corps assignment—and she would remember the seed of doubt that had hung in the air between them; that they were so similar, competition would be inevitable. Could preclude friendship. Then she would think of the time they tried to drive Dani’s ancient Dodge Neon from Syracuse, where Dani was a sophomore, all the way down to New Orleans, but the car died before they got out of Pennsylvania and they spent spring break running around Pittsburgh, playing rummy, getting silly shitfaced in their motel. She would think of the time Dani came to visit her while she was studying abroad in England, eating fish and chips from a paper cone as they wandered along the Thames, and Dani confessing that she’d slept with her English professor, but only at the
end of the semester, after he’d given her the B-plus they both knew she deserved. Dani was the first person Oneida called when she landed her internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Oneida was the first person Dani called when her brother Duncan was killed in a car accident. She would picture Dani and her professor, Allen, eight years her senior but hiding his relative youth behind a mustache the color of carrots, showing up six hours early to help transform the Darby-Jones backyard into an appropriately festive venue—and she remembered Dani pulling her aside, asking her how she was doing; and Oneida remembered feeling so grateful that in all of the hustle, with all the responsibility of being both the daughter of the bride and the maid of honor, someone would think to ask—would think of her. She was doubly grateful the someone doing the asking was Dani Drake.

They were friends, good friends; had been for years.

25
Release the Kraken

Mona stood on her lawn and watched Arthur and Harryhausen and Max Morris (brother of Zack) drive away. She blew a kiss gently across her palm and lifted her hand in a high wave that chased the taillights of the rental car. As soon as the lights were gone, Mona turned away.

Her house had never felt so empty and Mona had never felt so full.

Full of anger. Of worry and love. Of ziti. This day, God—
this day
. This day when Oneida ran away, and someone came to take Arthur, and Mona hadn’t known what the hell to do other than chop a zillion carrots and boil a pot of salted water and bake a shitload of ziti and wait and wait and wait for the revolving door of the Darby-Jones to spin, for the people she loved to come and go out of her life just like that, just like they always had and always would. But Amy coming back—as a ghost, in Arthur—proved that the door spun all the way around, if only you had the patience to wait for it. There was comfort to be found in that. In that, and in the small plastic bag she’d slipped in Arthur’s pocket as they hugged good-bye, dried fondant petals sealed tight with a note that said
Leave a trail and find your way.

She shut the front door. As if the clicking of the lock were a cue, Anna stuck her head out of the kitchen into the hall, eyes wild and greedy. “Oh my God,” she said. “Mona. Spill.”

“Shut up, Anna,” Mona said, and climbed upstairs.

She put on a sweater—it was a little cool outside, and the auditorium wasn’t very well insulated—and brushed her teeth. She grabbed her car keys and, from the broom closet, a screwdriver. When she passed Arthur’s rooms (she would always think of them as Arthur’s rooms
now), she couldn’t bring herself to shut the door he’d left slightly ajar. She supposed he might have left bits and pieces of himself behind—she’d punted that shoebox but good—so she’d need to thoroughly clean the space for the next tenant. But that wouldn’t happen tonight. Tonight she finished her own business with Amy Henderson, and Amy Henderson alone.

Anna was washing dishes when Mona, wrapping a scarf around her neck, apologized for snapping at her. “I have my cell phone,” she said. “If the police call, tell them to call me on that. If Oneida calls, tell her I’m on my way. Wherever she is. I’m coming for her.”

“Where are you going?” Anna blew a puff of hair out of her eyes.

“To the school,” she said.

Anna didn’t ask why. She nodded and turned back to the dirty dishes.

The car radio offered her the company of Wilson Phillips. The high school was only a song’s length away from the Darby-Jones, but Mona felt herself remember her entire friendship with Amy on the drive. Her friend. Her horrible friend, the best she’d ever had. She thought about Ocean City, about David Danger. The delirium of independence. She turned on her headlights and remembered Amy making her plans and canvassing the boardwalk—all legs and long pale arms and her belly, high and round, full of a life other than her own. She remembered Amy lying on her bed at the Seahorse, pillow under her knees and bare feet kicked high in the air, shirt hiked up over her hard melon of a stomach, poking it with a finger and saying to Mona, Can you believe it? Can you freakin’
believe
what my body is doing? Her face drawn and astounded, the terror of comprehension throwing shadows under her eyes, shadows that grew longer as the days passed. She remembered Amy in third grade, in fourth grade. She saw them eating Kraft cheese slices on round crackers after school at Amy’s house, watching movies. Making movies, Amy and her Super 8 whirring away. Spending their high school study halls in shop building tiny wooden sets, and in home ec, stitching together furry sleeves for arms and legs and torsos. Building puppets. Making monsters.

And she thought of Oneida, of Amy’s daughter who was
her
daughter. Of the infant she’d been. She thought of her parents, who had raised
them both. Of Oneida as a toddler, a brilliant little brain, already old, wandering the same house Mona had wandered when she’d been that age. Playing with the grown-ups. Asking if anyone wanted in on a hand of Rook. A card game and the name of her real mother’s widower—how funny was that. She heard Oneida crying with fever and stomachache: Mona’s forearms burned from the memory of her daughter’s hot little body, and then she laughed, remembering how Oneida had finally vomited, explosively, demonically, all over her bed; and Mona, smoothing her sweaty bangs away from her face and murmuring
The power of Christ compels you!
, had made her poor sick daughter smile without understanding what was so funny. She felt herself coming home from her parents’ funerals, both times every bone in her body heavy and cold as granite, checking on Oneida in her room: folding down the old blue blanket to see her face, pink and warm, already looking like Mona’s disappeared friend in miniature. Both times Mona whispered into her sleeping ear a promise: that she wouldn’t leave her. That she belonged to Mona.
You are mine
, she’d said;
you are mine and I will always love you. I will never leave you. I will always need you.