We Were Never Here (13 page)

They looked at each other. They had clearly talked about it on the way over, how to act, what to say, or what I might look or seem like, and here it was, upon them: me.

I closed my eyes. Suddenly I felt these people were strangers. Had I ever spent the night at Lydia's, slathering our faces with her mother's beauty packs, playing “light as a feather” and trying to contact the dead with Dee's old dusty Ouija board?

Was I different or were they? And I couldn't help but wonder, why did this not happen to one of them? Like, why was I here and why were they over there, all intact and shining and (tediously) the same?

I started to say it
. I met this boy.
It was on the tip of my tongue and then I stopped it. It was like talking about camp or summer—yeah, it was a lot like Danny and Sandy in
Grease
—and what I had with Connor just seemed so different and special and
otherworldly really. And now it seemed so over.

“I'm so tired, you guys.” I wasn't lying.

My mother came out of the study. “It was so great to see you two,” she said, walking down the stairs. My mother didn't use the banister. Just me. The old lady of the house. “Come visit again soon, okay? Lizzie doesn't head back to school for a few more weeks. Not exactly sure when yet.”

They both stood up. Did they do
anything
separately?

“I'll call my mom,” Lydia said.

“That long?” Dee-Dee looked at me. I saw her again, the girl she used to be, a tomboy with a bowl cut, dribbling a soccer ball, her tube socks pulled up high. She was there, inside, I could see down, down, down to it. I could tell she was thinking, she must be really sick. Me. I could feel myself soften toward her, toward my Dee-Dee from patrols and soccer and sneaking out through her sliding glass door.

I crossed my arms before anyone tried to hug me.

“I guess we'll wait outside,” Lydia said.

I was headed up the stairs again, slowly, slowly, when Dee-Dee said, “We'll come by again soon, Liz. We'll see you again soon!”

Here was my first assignment:

In three to five pages, please write a critical essay that examines one of the three topics listed below.

       
1.
  
Is Heathcliff's gradual decline the result of delusion, insanity, or a supernatural haunting?

       
2.
  
What are the features of older gothic novels that Emily Brontë adopts and/or reconfigures for her use?

       
3.
  
Does Heathcliff love Catherine Linton?

(Be sure you back up all your assertions with textual evidence! Also, work that is not double-spaced and paginated will not be accepted.)

Okay, option three: Does Heathcliff love Catherine Linton? Because Heathcliff, as repulsive as he is, and also as enthralling, clearly loves Catherine. His whole life is affected by her and by their love. By this time they had together when they were young.

But Heathcliff never says it. I looked through the whole book again, did an online search for the word “love,” and there was no evidence. All I could see clearly was that Catherine loved him. Here's what she once wrote in her journal:
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

He never says it, but we know. But how do you really know if someone loves you? Or loved you. Catherine dies before she ever knows for sure.

I decided against that essay and went with option two. The gothic novel. I thought it would be much easier to write about ghosts, but how can it be that ghosts are more of a sure thing than love?

Ghosts: the girl who died. Did she haunt Connor? I imagined this little girl in a green dress scratching at Connor's window. Was she covered in blood? Or was she the girl she was before she was killed?

Did he try to save her? Was he trying to save me? Would that make up for something? Could it have been anyone? It could have been anyone.

As I wrote my first essay for my junior year, I asked myself all
of this, and this is what I came up with: I was only there to help Connor with his guilt over not being able to help that little girl in the green dress. And maybe, just maybe, he was only there for me to get through that time with something sweet to, well, live for I guess.

But Connor, now, was gone. All I had was a turtle named Frog growing bigger every day, and a haunting message on my voice mail. The turtle needed a lot of taking care of. Sidebar: Who knew how much trouble turtles were?

Fake gold dangling hearts. No love and care needed there.

As I wrote about foggy full-mooned settings, about the wind along the moors, about ghosts and blood and the way we say the names of the dead, I took a break from Birdy and listened to Nora's CD.

The Ronettes: “The night we met I knew I needed you so, and if I had the chance I'd never let you go. So won't you say you love me?”

Say Lou Lou: “'Cause I nurtured the clouds in my eyes, and all of those times I lost myself in lies, it was you I was trying to find.”

TLC: “My outsides look cool, my insides are blue. Every time I think I'm through, it's because of you.”

Sleater-Kinney: “I'm your monster, I'm not like you (peel back the skin, see what's there), all your life is written for you (I'll never show you what's in here).”

Girls, the soft ones, the angry ones, the sweet, the cool, they all know how to say it.

In how many ways, how many ways?

The following weekend, after Dee and Lydia marched in and marched out, some kind of squadron, when I was finishing up my essay, my father knocked on my door.

“Can I come in?”

“Of course,” I said. “Enter!”

He cracked open the door à la Connor. But it was just my dad. “Mabel wants to go for a walk,” he said.

“Really?” My computer was on my lap, on my knees really, to avoid, like,
melting
the bag. “Mabel does?”

“Yes. Mabel does.”

“Okay, Dad.” I set my computer aside on my bed and went for my sneakers.

When I opened the front door, it was way colder outside than I'd thought, and so I took my father's jean jacket from the hook in the front hall closet.

My father put Mabel on her leather leash and we were off.

Which makes it sound easy. It took me a while to get down our stone steps. So it was more like: after ten minutes of my tottering down those and then finally reaching the driveway, then! we were off.

“You okay, honey?” he asked me as we made our way up our street.

“I mean—” I start.

“No, I know,” he interrupted. “I know you're not okay, but how not okay are you? How okay aren't you? How are you handling this, honey?”

I gulped, trying to get my swallowing done even though my throat felt blocked. “I don't know.”

He nodded and we kept walking, Mabel stopping to pee every five seconds, an excuse for me to secretly try to catch my uncatchable breath. One of the many charms of a girl dog.

“Why did we end up with Mabel anyway?” I asked after a period of silence.

“Why?” he asked.

“I mean, how did it end up being her? Why a breeder? Why a springer?”

“Well, your mother had done all this research on dogs, the best ones with kids, the ones who are adaptable. She and I went to some shelters. We didn't want to bring you and Zoe, because we knew you'd fall in love with every dog! And there were so many ones we wanted there. But in the end, it was always the springers that had our hearts. I had wanted one from the start. We had them when I was growing up.”

“You did?” I asked.

“We did. I had a springer named Daphne. Can you believe it?”

I looked at him. My father. He was graying, and I only noticed it then. I'd seen so many pictures of him young, with a mustache, wearing army pants and tie-dyes, and then when I was born.
Now he looked like a professor. Like a dad.

“That is hilarious.” I pictured him as a kid, calling
Daphne! Daphne
! and my mother in the form of a dog running up and licking his face. “I'd thought you rescued Mabel.”

My father shook his head. “No. That would have been nice, though.”

But then she wouldn't be Mabel.

“You okay?” He turned to look at me.

I nodded. “I just have this eye thing,” I said, touching the corner of my eye. “You know, Mabel is seven,” I said.

“She is.”

I stopped walking and turned to him. “Okay so, I really want to rescue this dog. She's like, part beagle, part border collie, a little Lab, I think. She came from North Carolina, from a batch of puppies just left in a Dumpster in the horrible heat. Her hair was matted and her skin was raw from hot spots, but she's doing really well now, with some of her siblings at a shelter. A kill shelter. In Manassas.”

“She needs to be rescued? I see.”

“She does.”

“I see,” he said again.

“It's a kill shelter. I don't know how much time she's got. She needs to be saved, Dad.”

“Okay,” he said. “Let's save her then.”

I was stunned because it's usually, let's talk to Mom, let's see, let's see if Zoe is comfortable with this,
blah blah
, but not today, apparently. Post-hospital rules.

“That's great.”

“It is,” my father said.

My dad stuck his hands in his pockets and I stuck my hands in mine. Well, his. There were some kind of strips of soft plastic, and I fingered them for a second and then took them out of his pocket to see what they were.

My hospital bracelets. The one that was handwritten and the typed-out one. The one Collette cut off only a week before.

I looked at them, flat on my open palm, and then I looked at my father.

“You know, when you were born, your mom wore a bracelet just like that. It said ‘Baby Stoller.' We hadn't named you yet. We were waiting to meet you. I have that one too.”

Mabel had her face in the bushes, sniffing deeply and loudly.

“So this first one I took because I was scared. Really, really scared. The second one I took because I wasn't, but you had worn it every day in there, and you had left it behind. All your bracelets,” he said.

I just rubbed my naked wrist as we made our old loop around the long, tree-lined blocks of my neighborhood.

“So when do you want to go get this puppy dog?” he said, as we turned the corner for home. He looked at his watch. “Don't know about you, but I'm free this afternoon.”

Next thing I knew we were all in the car, heading to Manassas for Greta. We were heading to her to save her.

“We're getting you a sister!” I said to Mabel, to explain why she wasn't coming with us, as we left her, stunned, behind.

In the car I stared out the window along the highway.

“Want to play I Spy?” my mother said from the front seat.

“Um, no?” Zoe put in her earbuds.

“How often are we all in the car together?” my father said, turning to us.

I peeked over at Zoe's phone.
Revolver.
I motioned her to give me a bud, and when she handed it over, we both leaned back: “I will be there and everywhere. Here, there and everywhere.”

“Play it again,” I said, and she did: “To lead a better life, I need my love to be here. . . .”

At the shelter Zoe and I knelt down and gripped the metal of her caged-in kennel and watched her. Greta. It means pearl. And that's what she was, once we got to her, pried her out of that sad, abused shell of hers. The eyes. Such sad, hoping, long-lashed eyes. She jumped and jumped and then she growled as the human at the kennel opened her cage.

“She just needs love and some training.” The human leaned down and scratched her on the neck. “Love, love, and then some more love,” she said.

“Well, we sure have that aplenty!” my mother said, and Zoe rolled her eyes.

They called the puppy Blue Eyes then, and I swear she bent her head and smiled.

Dog smiles. Like no other kinds of smile. It made me think of Verlaine. I would have liked to tell Connor about it.

I also wanted to tell him what I decided on our way back to the car, which was that I was going to take her to get her Canine Good Citizen certificate. So she could go into hospitals.
Like Verlaine. Because maybe Connor would come back and maybe Verlaine and Mabel and now lovely Greta, who wasn't a stranger to suffering either, and I could all go visiting—go candy striping—together. I would finally get the handbook! I would finally see all the secret instructions that were written inside.

Of course, there was no Connor, and it's not like I didn't know this when we got into the car, Greta freaking out in the backseat, Zoe on her knees leaning toward her, trying to calm her down. I knew all this. But it is still possible to unknow what you know.

“A new family member,” my father said.

“Perfect,” my mother said. “She's clearly gotten the memo about how being rabid is an important feature in our household.”

“We're not going to hurt you!” I placed my hand palm up for her to sniff and then petted her softly on her back, the way the handler had shown us.

“We're here to save you!” Zoe said.

Poor Greta. Even though it wasn't even an hour home, we had to stop at a rest station to let her get some energy out. Trucks were idling at the stop as she ran in the little stretch of grass. And she looked so beautiful, all her kinds of dogs inside her, her spotted fur, her pointed face. Watching her, I thought how maybe Connor hadn't left me. Because maybe, just by coming home and being with my family, by not being so sick anymore, so blue inside, maybe I had left Connor. He could feel that way. That he was the one who had been left behind.

That's when I decided I would try to find him. I would find Connor the way Connor had found me.

That's what I tried to do, anyway. I called his phone and only got a voice mail on the first ring, the kind of VM that is just a robot reciting a number: you've reached blah, blah, blah. Blah. I didn't even get to hear the sound of his voice—that old voice mail he'd left me in the hospital was getting a little stale. I didn't have an email address for him, and when I searched for him online again, this time, like,
hunting
, with places I knew he lived, with names I thought might be his parents', all I found was his mother. I'm pretty sure it was his mother, and she seemed to be a powerful lawyer. But nothing else. Connor was a ghost.

Or that's what I hoped, because it meant that he could return somehow, scratching at my window maybe, slipping out from my closet door,
Wuthering Heights
–style.

He could rise up behind me in any mirror, I thought, but still I avoided looking at myself in the mirror then. I only looked at myself in segments: here is my leg, here is my face, my arm—like a chicken cut up for frying maybe—because all of me, I couldn't. Sometimes, though, I would look in the near distance of the mirror to see if he was standing there maybe, leash wound around his hand, Verlaine smiling beside him.

Of course Connor was the one who found me. It was how it worked with us. He would always be lost and I would be found.

But it took a while.

It happened when I least expected it, just like when he showed up in the hospital unannounced. How random was that, how lucky, that in that big old horrible place this perfect person showed up? This time, I was already back at school. It felt like it had been forever, but really I had just missed six weeks. October 7, just in time for homecoming that weekend, which I found incredibly annoying. Also annoying? Dee-Dee and her Rizzo attire, her constant back against the locker, notebook at her chest, her boyfriend, who of course was playing Kenickie, panting at her side. It was all so 1955; I was surprised she didn't have a chiffon scarf around her neck, like the green one Nana gave me from her drawer when I was a kid. I loved the feel of it on my face, and the smell of her lingering perfume, but it did not, I repeat it did not, belong on a junior in high school. Also? Lydia was practically stitched to Dee's side. Also annoying.

I guess I was in costume too, though. That first day back at school I felt I could be anything I chose, but there were basically two options: (1) I could be dressed up now, lipstick, nice clothes. I could cover myself up that way, I guess. Or (2) I could match up my insides and outsides better, wear my father's old sweats, his T-shirts. Old ripped jeans and some Vans of my own. Never be seen.

I went with option two.

What's to report about returning? Mostly weirdness. I don't
know why I thought people wouldn't know. Or that they wouldn't know the specifics. But they did. They were either overly nice, smiling at me in the hallways the way I always smile when I see kids in wheelchairs or on those metal crutches with the arm grips. Teachers welcomed me back as if I'd been lost in space, and in homeroom I received a summons by the school nurse to let me know that she—her office—was my safe place should I need it. That was nice, I suppose. I didn't think I'd ever take her up on it though.

And Michael Lerner.

“Hey,” he said, like, sliding up beside me while I was at my locker.

“Hey!” We had been such good friends once. Now? Nothing really.

“Did you get my gift?”

I had totally forgotten about the necklace. “Yeah,” I said. “So sweet. Thank you.” It was nice to have his attention, I will admit.

“How you doing? Like, what was it
lik
e
?”

“What was what like?” I pretended to be looking for something important inside. But there was nothing in there. Nothing even hanging on the door.

“The hospital. Surgery. Now.”

I shook my head. He was saying: Like, what is it like, what are you like now? Now. Now. “It was fucking fantastic,” I said. He wasn't really interested in me. He was interested in what had happened to me.

He looked stricken. “God,” he said. “I was just asking.”

“And I was just telling you.” I slammed my locker closed.
You know the person who wants to be close to the sick person, the person whose mom died, the person who has seizures in the hallways? The one who will have all the inside info on this person's . . .
stuf
f
? That person was Michael L. And oh yeah, the sick person in this equation, that was me.

“You're welcome for the necklace!” Michael said as I shuffled away from him and down the hall.

Down the hall: flyers for the homecoming weekend hockey game. A color printout of everyone in their plaid skirts and polo shirts, their shin guards and cleats, two hockey sticks crossed in front of the first row. Correction: a color printout of everyone but me.

Anyway; Connor. I had just gotten in from my third day of school, a time that was always of note because of the mad relief I felt. Nora and I were trying to make a plan to actually see each other.

“Luv, luv,” she said, “you're like a little lag in there, never going out, after being all pent up with the gerries. Totally jammy for me to come. When works?”

We agreed on the weekend. She would take the train up.

“We'll meet you under the clock at the station!” I said to Nora. “Text me when you get off the train.”

“Under the clock,” she said. “Chirp chirp!”

Was that even British? No idea, but didn't have much time to think about it, because as soon as I'd hung up, my mother came up the stairs. It was sweet that she worked afternoons from home now, but it did always take me by surprise to see her.

“Mail call!” she said. Mail call, when it happened, usually involved a postcard from Nana or a letter from Tim for Zoe. He wrote her letters! That guy was so in love with Zoe; it was kind of sad but also kind of beautiful. I think Zoe actually loved him back. I'm sure of it.

My mother lifted her eyebrows and tilted her head as she sliced the air with an envelope.

Plain white, handwritten address.

Connor. It had to be.

How can I explain? The fluttery weird crazy in my chest. What
was
that?

I snatched it from her. I ran into my room. I closed the door. I brought Frog out from her aquarium and set her on the floor. I put Birdy on, “Fire and Rain.” I sat down, back against my bed, and closed my eyes to calm myself. I opened the letter and it was true. Finally it was news from Connor. He'd been found.