Wonder When You’ll Miss Me (4 page)

“I tried pulling my boombox in the bath with me,” she whispered one night. “What a fucking idiot. It was battery operated. I ruined it.” She took a deep breath. “I didn't know it had to be plugged into the wall. I don't think Charlie even knows about that time.”

I liked to hear anything Starling had to say, but especially stories about her brother's rescues, the near misses, about this amazing elliptical closeness they shared. I liked to think of people so connected that one could sense when the other was about to self-destruct. And I liked when she talked about him, because her voice became giddy. I knew she trusted him more than herself, and I doubted she trusted anyone else.

“Don't you know how lucky you are?” I asked her once.

“Don't be ridiculous.”

“No, I'm serious.” I was. It was another evening, the anonymous darkness that gave me the courage to say it. “You have someone who cares about you that much. It must mean that deep down you're never lonely.”

She was quiet for a long time and I thought about how different my life would be if I'd had a brother or a sister, someone to take my side, someone to emulate.

“It's not that easy,” she said, and her voice was flat. “It doesn't mean the things you think.”

She was sitting up; I could see her outlined against the pale wall. “You're going to bust out of there someday,” she said, pointing at me. “I wish I'd be around to see it.”

“Oh, give me a break,” I said. “You're not going anywhere. Why don't you just accept the fact that you're going to live?” Silence. I tried to make
light of it. I smiled, but she didn't smile back. “I don't want you to go,” I said. “I'd be all alone again.”

But she didn't answer, and lay back down, a signal that the conversation was over.

 

I liked to hear Starling talk because she had a way of telling stories that made you want to hold your breath. It was something in the way she stacked her words, and it was the stories themselves, but most of all it was Starling's eyes and the way they squinted and got darker when she needed you to believe her.

“Do you think you're really crazy?” I asked her. I knew that what I really meant was,
Am I?
She pushed the chickens off her lap and scooted over and stretched across her bed so her hair dragged on the floor.

“Somewhat,” she said. “But all worthwhile people are. I'm not worried about that. I believe that everything happens for a reason. You were put in this room for a reason. You were saved from all your pills for a reason.” She paused for a moment and then sat up and faced me. “I know that God speaks to me for a reason.”

“God? You think it's God telling you to kill yourself?”

She nodded. “How can I not listen?” she said. There were tears in her eyes. “Since I know who it is, how can I not do whatever he asks?”

 

And then there was the week that Disco and Johnny fought over the TV, each running to the lounge as soon as Group was out, trying to get the remote first. It began as a simple disagreement over
Gomer Pyle
but intensified, day by day, until the whole ward had taken sides over control of the remote. Objectively—which no one was—the argument, the contest, was stupid. But it had escalated to a point of no return—beyond the hiding of the remote into the enlistment of others as decoys and obstacles in its pursuit. Beyond even the reason for the fight in the first place (as if there had been a reason other than we were all restless and medicated and in a loony bin). And one day, finally, Group let out and Disco and Johnny, who had been by the door, pacing and muttering, charged into the hall and tore down its smooth sterile length towards the TV.

But one of Johnny's sneakers was untied so he began to trip and threw himself into Disco, who stumbled and shrieked, grabbing Johnny's long blond ponytail on the way down, pulling as they fell and rolled. There
were cracks and thumps as their heads and bodies hit the ground, both too wrapped up in the mission of mutual destruction to break their own falls, and they began to pummel each other, rolling in an awful angry mess back and forth, back and forth.

We gathered and stood watching. I was with John Falk; I saw Starling near Nurse Claiborne. Another nurse lumbered up as quickly as she could, yelling
Hey, hey, hey, hey
but it was Nurse Claiborne who grabbed Disco first, his eyes wild and unfocused, and yanked him off of Johnny, whose head he had been banging into the linoleum floor. They were both bleeding and Johnny had a loose lower tooth that he moved back and forth with his finger, while trying to squeeze his nose shut to stop its flow. Disco had a long gash above one eye; another cut was a slice of pink along his dark cheek where the skin had split. They were panting and spent.

“Assholes,” Blade said, under his breath. Kate was whimpering quietly. Violence always set her off. Cookie wrapped one arm around her and Hilton pushed by them and headed to the TV room. Gina and Lauren followed. John Falk went, and then I went. Hilton already had the remote.

“Crazy motherfuckers,” he muttered, and found an old episode of
Bewitched,
his favorite. We all settled in to our customary places on the various worn couches and chairs. I had learned early on who sat where and how much trouble you made by stealing someone's seat. Everyone except Starling had a customary place. John Falk couldn't hear very well because of his missing left ear, so he always took the red chair nearest the television. Hilton liked the center of the pale green couch. Usually Disco sat on one side of him and Johnny on the other but today the nurses had taken them off for a “discussion,” which most likely meant solitary and we wouldn't be seeing them for a while. Cookie and Gina and Lauren liked the blue couch and Blade inevitably sat on the floor. I sat against the pale green wall on a gray couch—the least comfortable, but the one with the most room. Starling sat wherever she wanted because no one minded giving up their seat to her.

But that day Starling didn't come sit with us and I didn't really think about it. Sometimes she got dizzy and went back to our room, or had therapy or a visit with Dr. Stone, the physician. Maybe she was in the bathroom.

By dinner, though, when I still hadn't seen her and the retelling of Disco and Johnny's fight had become unbearable (one of Cookie's obsessive-compulsive habits was to tell a story over and over and over
again until you thought your head might explode), I got nervous. I had looked in our room after lunch and not seen her. Now a whisper of unease sent me back again. This time I paced the room slowly, listening for something.

Her bed was empty, except for her chickens—Starling was insane about her chickens. They had been a gift from her brother and she was exceptionally anal about leaving them on her bed and in the room and in a row and in a specific color order—pink, pale green, light blue—but now I noticed there were only two. The pink one was missing.

And then I saw a small blue smear by the foot of her bed and another and another. Something wiped up but not completely.

I found her under the bed. I knew the moment I pulled her out—she had thick blue liquid running down her cheeks and she was an awful pale gray color. I screamed and yelled and people came running and then she was being lifted onto a stretcher and wheeled away.

She drank nearly a gallon of cleaning fluid. After she was taken away I wasn't allowed to see her again. They stripped the room so thoroughly that it was as though she'd never been there at all. But news drifted back to the ward. Starling was in a coma for a day, two days, four days. And then her family turned off the machines.

Our routine never shifted, never changed. Our days lost their color, washed out to gray. And my nights stretched in infinite lonely directions, entirely empty now.

But I was angry with her for leaving. I was angry at her for being crazy enough to listen to that voice and though I fiercely missed her, I didn't forgive her desertion. After that, Berrybrook slid by, month by month, as though time had no viscosity at all. It seemed like minutes between my commitment to the game of getting well and my reentry into the tournament of high school.

T
ONY
walked fast and I skipped along to keep up. When we reached the parking lot it was mostly empty. Gravel crunched beneath our feet. A few solitary cars waited for someone to finish a makeup test or a yearbook meeting.

“I'm over there,” he said, pointing across the lot at the shiny blue MG sparkling in the corner space, but I already knew the car. Everyone did.

My mouth was dry, my cheeks flushed. “That's your car?” I said, and hoped I sounded surprised. Tony seemed to swell with pride the closer we got. When we reached the car he stood for a moment before opening the door, his hand resting lightly on the trunk, moving in slow loving circles.

“Rebuilt her myself,” he said, walking around the corner, his fingers tracing it lightly. “Took me almost a year. My cousin Enzo did the paint job. Originally she was, you know, green.”

“Does she have a name?”

He jerked his head up like he was angry, but didn't answer. He unlocked his door, climbed in and started the car, then leaned over and unlocked my door. I took a deep breath and sat down, pulling my purple backpack onto my knees. I was acutely aware of how near he was.

Tony lit another cigarette but didn't offer me one. I rolled down my window. The silence made me nervous.

“LilyAnn.”

He said it so quietly I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly.

“What?”

“LilyAnn,” he said. “The MG. She's called LilyAnn.”

He looked irritated, but I thought that was possibly the sweetest thing in the whole world.

“Can I have a cigarette?”

“Yeah.” He handed me one and the lighter and I surprised myself by lighting it on the first try. I put the lighter in the ashtray and we peeled out of the parking lot.

The wind blew through my hair and the noise prohibited any conversation, which was fine, because I had no idea what to say, though a thousand questions fluttered through my blood. Apart from my quick, awkward directions, we didn't speak. When we reached my driveway we sat for a minute with the engine idling.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said.

“No big,” he said. “Catch you later.”

I climbed out of the car, holding my backpack to my chest, and slammed the door. He gunned the motor and drove off. I stood there for a minute on our front lawn surveying the neighborhood. Everything seemed to shimmer in the afternoon sun. I'd been in Tony Giobambera's car! He'd given me cigarettes and driven me home! I'd sat next to him, like a normal person, like someone he wasn't embarrassed to know! I swung the backpack over one shoulder and turned to go inside.

“Not so fast,” she said.

The euphoria of the car ride spit out of me like air from a popped balloon. “Shit,” I whispered.

“I can't believe you're this stupid.” The fat girl sat on the front porch with a big spoon and a jar of chunky peanut butter. “Wake up, Faith,” she said, shaking the spoon at me. “Pay attention now.” Her voice was low and scary. I didn't move.

“You can't ride with him, okay? You can't talk to him, you can't know him
unless you want to do something about him
, understand. You saw that ring.”

“He could be anyone,” I said. “Half the guys at school have those rings.”

“Well, you better stay away from half the guys at school, then.” She was muttering now. “Like that isn't enough reason.”

“I'll hang out with whoever I want.”

“No,” she said. “You'll listen to me.”

We stood like that holding each other back with our eyes. Then I pushed past her and went into the house.

 

Inside it was cool and dark. There was a note on the table under the hall mirror.
Meeting after work. Dinner in fridge. Lv, M.

I crumpled the note and stuffed it in my pocket. I hadn't gotten the mail on my way in, and I didn't want to go back down the driveway because I knew the fat girl would be waiting for me. Instead I dragged my feet along the rug in the living room, dumped my backpack by the couch, and left my jacket hanging on the wooden chair by the doorway. I kicked my way into the kitchen and straight to the fridge. Inside, wrapped in tinfoil with a small note in neat letters, was my dinner.
Dinner,
it said in my mother's handwriting.
Enjoy!

I closed the fridge, turned, and sat on the floor with my back against its door. I knew what it probably was: turkey and peas, my mother's standard leftover package, but I wasn't hungry. Ever since Berrybrook, I only felt hungry in dreams. When I was awake, food made me nauseated or nervous or both.

I stared at the pattern of the linoleum and let myself imagine: what if…What if I had asked Tony Giobambera inside and he'd said,
Sure, Faith. Cool
, and followed me up the steps? But then my mind cut off, because I couldn't imagine what I would have done next. I tried to picture myself saying,
Would you like a glass of water, Tony?
I clenched my face to erase the thought.

“Oh, Faith.”

I didn't look up. I didn't look at her or say anything, just covered my ears with my hands and squeezed my shut eyes even tighter.

But I could still hear the fat girl. “Look, I realize you're pissed or whatever,” she said, chewing loudly. “But hear me out: we have to move on. There's more to look forward to than this.”

I tried to blot out her words but they came from all around me and inside.

“How about we do it, hon?” she said softly. “How about we take off?”

I raised my head. “Leave?”

“Leave. Vamoose. Get the hell out of Dodge. Go off and live a little.”

She sat at the table, her enormous legs spilling over the edges of the cane chairs. Against the yellow flowered wallpaper, she was a bright blue ball. “You have marshmallow on your chin,” I told her.

She wiped it with the back of her hand, a dismissive gesture, then cocked her head to the side. “There are a whole lot of places to go,” she said. “And all of them are new to us.”

I struggled to stand up. My feet had pins and needles and I shifted from
one to the other and back, shaking them out. Just take off? Just leave and run away?

The fat girl had a crafty look that made me nervous. “Go where? I'm only sixteen, remember, what about school? And I don't have any money or anywhere to go.” I ticked these things off on my fingers.

“Faith, sit down,” she said. I sat.

“Okay, school.” She brushed it away like the marshmallow, with a flick of her wrist. “Worry about that later. School sucks, and besides, you're screwing up, right?”

I nodded.

“So you're sixteen. A hundred years ago you'd be married with five kids by now. How are you ever going to grow up here? You have to leave to do that.”

She gathered her long straight hair with one hand and pulled it around to the side. Her face was a shining globe of flesh. “Now what was the other thing? Right, money.” She sighed and looked concerned. “That is true, we need money.” She pursed her lips. “It's easy enough,” she said brightly. “You'll get a job.”

I stood completely still. Everything she said made perfect sense to me. The idea of leaving was a firecracker in my stomach, fuse burning slowly. A job. Leave.

The fat girl brushed crumbs from the table into her big dimpled hand, then lumbered to the sink and tossed them in. She turned to face me and smiled, her whole face lit up. “Oh, Faith,” she said. “Aren't you excited?”

I smiled back and shoved my hands deep in the pockets of my jeans. My fingers closed around the knife. I looked around the kitchen and thought of leaving it again, going off to somewhere else only to dream longingly of its familiarity. Giving up my room and my front door and the comfy green couch in the living room where I could lie on my side and watch TV. Leaving my bed, so perfectly soft and worn in just right.

But then I thought of school. Of dinner with my mom. Of Fern and my great academic record. Of Andrea Dutton. And of driving away in a shiny car, my hair streaming behind me, nothing in my way but the open road and my untarnished future.

It didn't sound so bad, really.

“A job.” Already I was thinking about the savings bonds my grandmother had sent me when I was a kid, and of the way my mother sometimes left her wallet on her dresser, and of things I could sell: my
father's gold cuff links, for example. The fancy watch I'd gotten for a birthday.

“A job,” the fat girl said. The plan was hatched.

 

When I was young my mother and father fought a lot behind closed doors. I learned to tell when something was wrong by the meals my mother cooked. If she believed my father had lost an argument, or was absolutely wrong about something, she made Cauliflower Pie. If she was merely angry with him she made Salmon Loaf. I loved both and noted the dinnertime tension only in passing, my main concern being the creamy noodles or smooth pink fluff. These were my father's least favorite dishes, but when she made them and he ate, I knew everything was right with the world, his sad face stiff and resigned, our meal quiet and polite.

Please pass the peas, Faith,
he might say, though they rested by my mother's elbow. And I would.

My father was a quiet man, sad and solemn, but equipped with a terrifying temper: all hissed words and cold vows. When he wasn't angry—which was most of the time—he loved me unequivocally and I knew that, not only because he told me frequently, but also because it rose off of him in waves. I was his child and therefore was perfect (except for the occasional mistake). My father thought I was beautiful and sweet. He excused my size, dismissing my mother's critical comments about it with a wave of his hand. He was not a trim man himself and he often said we came from a large family: large in goals, generosity, and girth.

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he would say with a hand on my plump cheek. “You're my little muffin.”

My mother did not agree. She was slender, worked at it, and couldn't bear the sight of her chubby daughter. Beginning when I was in first or second grade she'd put me on diets and clucked her tongue at me when I asked for seconds. She packed me lunches with carrot sticks and no sweets, but still I swelled. Sometimes at home I caught her watching me from across the room, a distant, distracted look on her face, confused, as though she wasn't sure who I was or where I'd come from.

For several summers she lobbied to send me to Fat Camp. I heard hissed references to their disagreement on the subject. My mother thought it was important and my father thought it would give me a horrible complex. The idea of a camp full of fat kids made me uneasy and claustrophobic, but they never asked for my opinion and I had long ago
learned not to volunteer it. That was rude, in my father's eyes, and rudeness was one of the few things that would set him off. I had no intention of alienating my only ally.

My father was given to big hugs and emotional pronouncements. At supper out of the blue he might pop up with
I love you both so much
. Or:
I'm so happy
. Or:
Isn't this nice, all of us together?
And it was. We loved him, and when he said these things I felt my heart swell up and outward, filling with light and warmth. Later he'd grow quiet and remote, unable to listen to anything I said, though he'd mumble encouragingly,
mmhmm, mmhmm,
while I groped around the dark world of words trying to become more interesting before his eyes. Trying to rivet his attention to me,
I am here, I am here
, trying to make him care as much as he said he did.

He died unexpectedly when I was eleven. He wasn't sick or anything. One day he just put his head down on his desk and never woke up again. People then explained
aneurysm
to me like it was a bomb, but I thought of it more often as a small timer ticking inside of his brain—inside everyone's brain—that stopped with a loud pop when your time was up.

The funeral was held in the huge old church we'd attended when I was smaller. I had always loved its stained-glass windows and tall brown walls, the dark heavy beams that arched high above the pews. But what I remember most about the funeral are tiny things: the shininess of the casket, reflecting a light from above. Loose petals that fell to the floor. The touch of strangers. The way silence seemed to rise up like a sail, or a cloud, filling with air and smothering everything except the echoes of stifled coughs and throat clearing. The weight of the hymnal that I didn't open. The pastor saying
Richard Duckle, Richard Duckle
and me translating each time:
Daddy, Daddy.

My father had been a well-respected man. People I didn't know but recognized from the Gleryton community were there along with the familiar family friends. Relatives I couldn't place or had never met and old business partners of my father's flew in. Ladies from church. Clients. Neighbors who had moved away. And afterwards, after the ceremony, our house was thick with people, talking, laughing, clutching at me and pulling me close.

Mrs. Ibarista was there. Apparently my father had stopped by her bakery for a sweet roll every week for twelve years.

“Why don't you work for me, Faithy,” she'd said. “I could use a nice girl like you making some cakes and things. I teach you everything.”

And I heard her from a great distance, the way I heard everything that day, through a long foggy tunnel. “Okay,” I told her. “Sure.”

Someone whispered that my mother was lying down, that she'd taken something to help her sleep. I nodded as though I understood. After a while I slipped away to my bedroom where I listened to the muffled sounds of strangers, my stomach raw and empty. And then they left, one by one, and the silence arrived, dense and impenetrable.

Afterwards, things were never the same. I had never thought of our house as large before, but now it seemed to be made of endless rooms, each spilling into the other with a quiet that made me want to hold my breath. My mother slipped inside herself and I learned to spend hours in my room just so I would have a door to shut.