34 Pieces of You (11 page)

Again, I shift in my seat. I look just past her, out the window at the traffic rushing by, the people-filled cars that magically disappear from sight. “Nope. Not a thing.”

“Are you sure?” She glances at the clock. But I am silent. I am silent until finally she sighs and says, “Well, I guess we’re just about out of time.” She jots down a few more notes, grabs her desk calendar, and heads to the waiting room to discuss next week’s appointment with my mom.

I linger behind, continuing to watch the cars. I imagine myself inside one, hurtling blissfully into the great beyond.

BEFORE. MARCH.

We stood in the living room. Me with alcohol coating my lips, and Ellie’s stepdad with his carry-on suitcase teetering beside him. He had entered the house a minute earlier, and when he saw me standing near the liquor cabinet, he asked, “Where’s Ellie?” Then his eyes lowered to my skimpy nightshirt—the one I had worn specifically to catch Jake’s attention—and his face registered a familiar look of disappointment.

“Um . . .”
I moved closer to the wall, curling my shoulders inward. I was still completely buzzed from earlier, when Ellie had convinced me to dress up like a
Mad Men
character—our hair in French twists, Jackie O sunglasses on our faces—and drink
martini after martini while we danced to some Motown records her real dad had left behind.

“Oh, hey, Sargeant.” Ellie was beside me, dressed in a slinky red nightgown that belonged to her mother. She walked toward him, outstretched arms pulling him close like a long-lost lover. “You’re back early,” she said, her eyes glazed.

He stepped away, obviously uncomfortable. He glanced at the living room, running his stubby fingers through thin brown hair. Wrinkles washed over his forehead, creasing the sides of his cheeks. His eyes hesitated at the dirty dishes on a side table and traveled to an empty martini glass atop the open liquor cabinet.

“Come on, Ellie.” Weariness crept into his voice. “You’re almost seventeen now. It’s time to stop all this nonsense.”

Ellie brushed her bangs from her face and rubbed her hand across the space beneath her lips, her eyelids at half-mast, her voice seductive. “I’m just curious. Haven’t you ever been curious?”

“Ellie . . .” He shook his head and sighed, all the while repeating her name. “Ellie. Ellie, listen to me. I can’t keep going around in circles like this with you. I told you, if you keep on like this, I’m going to have to talk to your mom.” He held up his hands, and his face looked pained. “You’re not giving me any choices here—”

“You don’t need to tell her anything.” Her eyes narrowed. “Besides, there’s nothing to tell. Yet . . .” She trailed her hand down his chest, her finger tracing the buttons of his work shirt from his collar to his belt buckle.

“Stop! Okay? Just stop! I’m tired of this.” He shoved her away, and she stumbled backward, landing in a big heap on the sofa. She began to laugh, a loud cackling sound that made my skin crawl.

Suddenly, the room began to spin; the air seemed nearly sucked out of it. I pressed my palm to the wall, using it to steady me as I made my way toward Ellie’s bedroom. Inside, I slipped her window open and pushed my face against the screen. The night air was frigid, but I let it swirl around me until the coldness became unbearable. Then I started to gather my things while Ellie’s words, like intrusive thoughts, rammed against me:
Haven’t you ever been curious? Haven’t you ever been curious? Haven’t you ever been curious?

I stopped to rest my head against the windowsill—waiting, breathing—but my anxiety continued to grow. Ellie entered the room five minutes later and halted beside my overnight bag. “What? Are you leaving?”

I gazed at her blurry figure. I wanted to ask her what she was doing. Why she always got like this. But I knew how that conversation
would go, and I just couldn’t take a big scene, not right then. “I don’t feel well.”

“You don’t feel well?” Ellie repeated slowly. “You were fine, like, five minutes ago. Is it Sargeant?” She always called him by his last name, never his first, which was Gary. “Oh, come on. You know what a sucker he is. Please.” She took a sip from yet another martini glass. “I just don’t get what your deal is.”

“What are you doing?” I stood, my hand on the bedpost, and turned to face her.

She thrust her drink forward, and gin spilled onto the floor. “I’m drinking. I . . .” She tried to laugh, but the sound caught in her throat. “I don’t understand.” Again, she smiled. “Are you really sick?” The vacancy in her eyes started to be replaced with some form of comprehension, maybe even concern.

I watched the glass, the way the clear liquid swayed. There was so much I wanted to say, but all I could do was move my fingers across my lips as if I might communicate through sign language.

“I don’t understand,” Ellie repeated.

“It’s like you’re two different people sometimes,” I said, and grabbed my bag.

“What are you talking about?” She held on to my wrist, but
I squirmed free. I didn’t stop when she called my name, her footsteps chasing me through the hallway, or when I heard her say, “Sarah, you’re making a big deal out of nothing. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Nothing happened!” I kept moving, until the kitchen’s sliding glass doors shut firmly behind me, my body filled with a sudden sense of safety.

At the edge of the pool, I stopped to breathe. I gripped a tree, the bark scratching my skin. When I turned back, I saw Ellie through her kitchen window, standing over the sink, her eyes filled with confusion. I wanted to go back and say it would be all right, but I didn’t believe that anymore. Tears streamed down my face as the emotions settled across hers. And just for a minute, she seemed like that same little girl I met when we were twelve. But seconds later, she raised her drink, and I saw the grown-up Ellie, the one I secretly wanted to leave behind.

S
o
me days I want t
o
tell y
o
u that I can’t d
o
it
o
n my
o
wn.
B
ut even
o
n th
o
se days, I can’t
b
ring myself t
o
say these things t
o
s
o
me
o
ne wh
o
might n
o
t always
b
e here.

AFTER. FEBRUARY.

When we’re done, Amber pulls a half-full bottle of wine from her bag and says, “I had a rough childhood, you know.” She rubs my back, telling me every horrible story she can muster: bad baby-sitters, a dickhead dad who worked too much, an uncle who once popped her on the mouth for saying “shit.”

Hours later the bottle’s empty, and Amber, bleary-eyed, puts on her silvery boots, says “Fuck! The time!” and disappears.

After she’s gone, I spin her empty bottle and stare at Ellie’s box. For months now I’ve imagined myself going through the contents: sorting her letters, pictures, and sketch pads into evidence of who Ellie was, who she wanted to be, the things I never knew about her, the things I knew but didn’t want to see. I can
only take so much of these thoughts before that pain that I get sometimes overwhelms me, and then I’m grateful for any distraction, like when my cell phone rings.

“I just wanted to hear your voice,” Mom says when I answer. She sounds breathless. It’s how she talks these days. Sentences filled with urgency and air but also, conflictingly, hesitation and the threat of tears.

I sit on the edge of the bed, automatically falling into my routine performance of a caring son. I ask her how she is, and she responds positively. Then we chat about the fine Arizona weather, and that leads to yet another request for me to visit her. “You’ll see, the state is lovely,” she says, enduring my awkward silence before finally arriving at another story, another apology, another “aha moment” unearthed from the bowels of group therapy.

This is what residents of Full Circle Spa do. They practice warrior poses, seek enlightenment through meditative trances, pat a neighbor’s hand consolingly during group time, and reach out to their families for understanding. And we answer because we feel terrible if we don’t.

She begins her “aha moment.” As usual, I tune in and out, only catching fragments of this latest revelation: “I never really thought about how having an alcoholic father affected me. You
know, I just kept telling myself he had a temper and a rough job, and he was functional, so it was hard to think that he was just like other people’s drunk dads . . .”

We talk about her dad a lot lately. How he used to hit her when he was drunk, how he used to belittle her if she did poorly in school, how her brothers had it worse because her dad would
raise only strong men
. This image of my mom, helpless against her dad’s tirades, only increases my pain. So I tune out for an even greater period of time, still managing to fill the gaps between her sentences with “yes” and “okay” and “I see.”

When I tune back in, she’s saying, “I loved finding you there, but I never told you that. I’m sorry that I didn’t, Jake. You kept reading all those books by Mark Twain. Remember?”

Apparently, we’ve fast-forwarded past her childhood and into mine. She’s talking about the summer I was ten. I used to stay up long after Ellie fell asleep and wait for her to come home from work.

She launches into her remembrance of those tender late-night reunions. I also privately return to that time. For the most part my recollection is hazy, but I remember what I can: her grilled-cheese sandwiches with a side of chips; sitting at the edge of the pool, feet submerged in cold water, warm plates against our thighs; her wine spilling onto the grout between the
pavers. How I lied to make her feel better about her twelve-hour shifts, saying Ms. Sullivan made
terrible
dinners, even though Ms. Sullivan made
excellent
dinners. How, always, Mom’s cigarettes and wine wore the night away, leading us to the moment when she’d turn to me with glassy eyes and deliver a rant about my father.

This is a part I remember clearly: “Responsible men don’t run off to Florida with a coworker. Responsible men don’t leave a wife and children behind. Responsible men don’t break their vows. Jake—” She’d always freeze here, like a swimmer on a platform reconsidering a ten-meter dive. “Jake, promise me you’ll always be responsible. That you’ll never break your word. That you’ll never be like
him
.”

She’d put her hand over mine then, and nothing would loosen her grip but my pledge that I’d be
different
and
better
. I gave this pledge over and over again, until she slackened her hold, murmuring something like, “You love us. You love Ellie. You’ll never leave us.”

But I had left with false promises and reassurances, proving I was
no different
or
better
than my father.

Mom stops rambling. She asks, “Were those times just as special for you?”

The response is automatic. “Yes, Mom.”

“Good. Good.” The phone beeps, and she sighs apologetically. “I have to go now. Think about what I said, okay? It’s nice and warm here. A perfect weekend getaway.”

“Yeah, sure.” My voice is flattened by disinterest, and I hear the hurt in her good-bye.

Alone again, I slide down to the floor and rest my head on the mattress. I reach for Amber’s empty bottle until I feel it pressed against my skin: solid, cold, painfully empty of hope.

That Hell
o
Kitty sticker reminds me
o
f
b
eing eleven,
o
f
b
eing
o
kay,
o
f a time when my mind had less racing th
o
ughts. Y
o
u remind me
o
f these things t
oo
.

BEFORE. AUGUST.

Lola changed into her gray pajamas, pulling the bottoms up so quickly the elastic band snapped around the waist. “That’s bullshit,” she said, glancing at my backpack, which lay innocently in the corner of my bedroom. “You had to have found something. I mean, you searched her entire room, right?”

It was a Friday night, and until a few hours earlier, I had sat on my bed, tearing through the last novel on my summer reading list. To be honest, it was an act of desperation. For the past month, all I could think about was Ellie and our kiss. And the only thing that seemed to get my mind off it was reading. It was like my mom said:
Sometimes, the only way to get off one distraction is get on another. Just pick something that might do you a bit more good.

So far, all that my thinking about Ellie had done was create a lot of anxiety. At least with the reading, I’d be ahead in school. I was just about to reach the climax of the novel when Lola showed up. She was dressed entirely in black, her long brown hair twisted up into a tight bun. This was not her usual look. Lola preferred short skirts and loose curls.

“What’s up with the outfit? Aren’t you supposed to be at your dad’s?”

“He forgot. Again.” She sat on the edge of my bed and unloaded her overnight bag, which had two walkie-talkies, a flashlight, and a pair of binoculars. Then she explained her plan.