After Dakota (26 page)

“Did you hear the Russians are boycotting the Olympics?” Bryce asks Claire on the way to school.

“So what?”

This would’ve been the day to fake another illness – or better yet, to get a real one. Otherwise she’s eventually going to have to face Ricky. She’d pay all the money in her bank account – $433 as of last month – for the school year to be declared finished immediately.

“Have you taken that coat off since Christmas?” Bryce asks, trying a new conversational tactic.

She looks over at him, her miniature brother like a kid driving one of those coin-operated cars that tilt back and forth outside the grocery store. This is all so stupid, she can’t help but laugh.

Bryce shakes his head and turns up the radio for the German song about 99 balloons.

Claire skips the makeup in the bathroom, instead going directly to the locker hall. She loads up her backpack, but when she unzips her jacket the zipper jams halfway. She tries jerking it up and down but succeeds only in jamming it tighter, turning it into a straitjacket. The first bell rings. She can’t go to class looking like a spaz who doesn’t know how to dress herself, she can’t get the coat off, she can’t stay at her locker and be busted by a hall monitor.

She’s trying to fix the coat and breathe and can’t do either of them. She bangs her head against the locker. Her calm-down list is Nancy Drew:
The Hidden Staircase, The Mystery at Lilac Inn, The Clue of the Broken Locket, The Haunted –

The tardy bell rings.

That illness seems like the best idea of all time.

She walks toward English, then toward the parking lot, head swiveling a 360 the whole time. An alarm screams and Claire freezes, but it’s not for her – it’s the disaster drill again, third one this year.

She runs.

It’s too hot and home is too far away. She’s out of breath by the time she passes Circle K, and wants to ditch her backpack on the sidewalk. The coat seems to be constricting tighter with each step. Up the alley, up the next cul-de-sac, and to hers before she slows to a walk past the REAGAN/BUSH ’84 lawn sign at the Swansons’.

At home she battles with the coat until she can slip it up over her sweaty head. Claire turns her radio up loud, loud enough to hear in the shower, peels off the rest of her clothes and gets in. The water runs ice cold and feels so good.

She pads into the kitchen with her plaid pajamas on. She eats a handful of Honeycombs, a Pop Tart, puts a Hot Pocket in the microwave but doesn’t want it by the time the timer dings. Above the oven is the cabinet where her dad’s liquor has been relegated; Claire climbs up on the counter to reach his bottle of Johnny Walker. How many times has her mom reached for this or one just like it, like a slave, whenever his glass runs empty?

This life is ridiculous.

The brown liquor is so nasty that most of it dribbles down her chin as she drinks from the bottle. The next sip isn’t so bad. She drinks and drinks some more.

What a great day so far – why can’t they all be like this?

Half the bottle and two pills later, mouth sticky and head swimming, Claire stares at herself in the bathroom mirror. Pajamas, wet hair going every direction, those damn freckles.

Claire Eleanor Rollins of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“Al-buh-ker-kee,” she says to her reflection. What a funny word.

She doesn’t want to be Claire Eleanor Rollins of Albuquerque, New Mexico anymore.

All those times Bryce has been in here, battling his cowlick with the scissors before leaving for school. Claire starts laughing as she takes them from the drawer, keeps on laughing as she chops the first strand of hair. It twirls to the sink, a dead brown slug against the white porcelain.

The DJ’s voice from her room says, “Got some Stones for you on this mellow morning, from
Sticky Fingers
.”

Claire screams when she hears the first chords, then sing-yells along with Mick Jagger, about childhood living and graceless lady.

If she hadn’t left school, she wouldn’t have heard it. Message received. Thanks, Dakota.

More drinking. More singing. More scissors. Chop-drink-chop-drink-chop-drink. Baloo scrapes back and forth against her shins.

Later, the bottle empty, the sink coated in fur like an animal. Claire’s hands got less steady as she went, resulting in strands of varying lengths around her head. She finds it a challenge to even stand steady at the moment. The person looking back at her is still recognizably Claire.

Not good enough.

She pulls her coat back on over her pajamas, makes it halfway down the driveway on her bike before losing her balance and wiping out on the grass. She picks it up and tries again, swiping the street with her feet until she gets some momentum.

A weekday afternoon means few people at Grand Central, the shoppers outnumbered by employees. She wanders around, knocking over a rack of blouses in the women’s department, until she finds hair supplies. All those glamorous women on the dye boxes must have great lives. She takes a box of the blackest black, opens it and sticks the bottle in her coat pocket. A red one sounds good, too. She puts the empty boxes back on the shelf.

A creepy mustachioed man in a windbreaker stands right outside the store, staring at her when she exits. She makes a hard left turn toward the bike rack. A hand on her shoulder. She screams. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do if a guy attacks you?

The hand spins Claire around and now there are three of them: mustache and two others in tight polo shirts. “Store security,” mustache says. They’re all seven feet tall, it seems; they surround her like bodyguards for the walk back inside, up some stairs she never noticed before. She loses her balance twice. “Someone’s been drinking,” one of them says; the others agree. Claire isn’t nervous, because she knows what the routine will be; she’s heard it from other people at school who got caught swiping from stores. They threaten to call the cops, then send you on your way.

They lead her to a cold office, populated only by a gunmetal gray desk and some plastic chairs. One of the walls is transparent, a magic mirror looking down over the shopping floor. “You have anything hidden on you?” mustache asks.

She shakes her head.

He sighs. “Look, you can tell us or we’ll pat you down. You want that?”

These guys are sure into their parts. She pulls the bottles from her pocket, hands them over. Mustache says, “It’ll take a lot more than hair dye to fix you up. You look like you broke out of a nut house.”

One of the polo shirts pulls out a sheet of paper and asks for her name, address, phone, and date of birth. He then pushes it and a pen across to her. “Read and initial each line.”

It looks like a quiz, but on this quiz each question has only one answer and you’re guaranteed to be wrong.

1. I HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT.

2. I HAVE THE RIGHT TO AN ATTORNEY.

“Can I go now?” she asks after initialing.

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t even look at her. Just dials the phone. “Mrs. Rollins?” Claire’s thoughts stop, her breathing stops. “My name is Art Barker, in charge of security at Grand Central. I’ve got Claire sitting here with me…” Her mom’s voice comes through the receiver, some exclamation of shock. Does this guy have any idea the lecture he’s set Claire up for at home? Asshole.

She can feel her pulse work overtime on the side of her neck; she starts a calm-down list of Saturn’s moons but stops halfway. Maybe they’d let her go if she fainted.

She doesn’t faint. She gets to ride home in an actual police car, in the back like a criminal.

Her parents wait on the front porch, both dressed in their office clothes. It’s not even lunchtime – neither of them should be home. The dark-skinned policeman unloads Claire’s bike from the trunk, then opens the passenger door. “Oh, Lord, look at you” are the first words her mom says. “Go to your room and do not come out” are the next. Her dad shuts the front door after she goes through, sealing the juvenile delinquent safely inside while the adults converse.

Several minutes pass before the police car’s engine starts back up. Claire’s mom steps into the bedroom soon after, standing with her arms crossed. A hieroglyphic forms in the furrow between her brows.

“I stopped home from work for a minute this afternoon and found your radio playing loud enough to wake the dead. Not to mention an empty bottle of liquor and hair all over the bathroom. I thought someone had broken into our house!” Claire and the dolls in the case engage in a staring contest. “Then I got two calls – one was the attendance office from your school, you know the second one.”

Her mom walks out. That wasn’t so bad.

She returns a minute later carrying the blue trash bin from the kitchen. “What are you doing?” Claire asks as the dresser drawers get opened and searched, one by one.

“Sit there and be quiet.”

“Let me save you some trouble.” Claire opens the top desk drawer, removes the Trapper Keepers to reveal the hidden contents underneath. “Here’s all the makeup I wear at school every day.”

Next drawer, full of unopened and half-eaten treats from the pharmacy. “Here’s all my candy, so I can get really fat and make you embarrassed of me.”

Bottom drawer. “Here’s a comic book I stole.”

Her mom drops the makeup and candy into the trash, sets Tim Boo Ba atop the dresser.

“I’m sure you wanna search the closet,” Claire says.

Her mom tosses aside the envelope full of all the Ricky photos without opening it. She gasps – actually gasps – and Claire knows. She spins around and the Tarot cards break free of their silk, helicoptering across the bed and the floor.

The Lovers, The Knight of Pentacles, The Magician.

“Careful with those. They belonged to – ”

“You were told,” her mom says, stepping on the cards, “That these are not. Allowed. In. This. House.” She finishes the sentence inches away from Claire, who flinches from the expected slap that never comes. Her mom gathers handful after handful of cards like a thresher machine, dropping them in the garbage.

“Here, don’t forget this.” Claire pulls the plastic baggie from under her mattress; all that’s left inside are the mushroom remnants. “This had my drugs in it. I sit in here and get high because I can’t stand this stupid house!”

Now it’s her mom who flinches, looking like she’s been slapped. Without another word, she walks out of the room. Let her go read her Dr. Spock book for advice.

Claire can hear the murmur of both parents’ voices from downstairs, no doubt wondering what they did wrong, how they raised such a horrible child. She pulls the card from under her pillow, the one card she managed to save because it landed closest to her. The High Priestess: in robes and horned helmet, seated on her throne between black and white pillars, crescent moon at her feet.

She turns the High Priestess over in her fingers, wishing she knew what it means.

Bryce sits in the doctor’s office waiting room. The only other person is a mom with a little boy, who keeps whining and squirming out of her grip. The play area in the corner is empty, its wooden blocks and toy trucks still and lonely.
Highlights
magazines are fanned out chaotically across the short table. The three walls that have looked the same since Bryce was younger than the squirmer – one jungle, one ocean, one outer space – look drab today.

He’d rather be here than home, hiding down in the basement while World War Two-and-a-Half unfolds upstairs. Claire and their mom have the tendency to fight in the kitchen for some reason, which is right above him, which insures he stays up to date on the latest. Things he knows: Claire is grounded until further notice; her bike lives in the trunk of their dad’s car until further notice; they have to go see a judge; Claire has to come home directly after school every day; their mom will call every afternoon to make sure.

The skinny young nurse steps into the waiting room and calls his name. Bryce thinks he may not be able to stand up. He can’t even summon the attention to check out her body.

In the exam room she asks what he’s here for. He says, or whispers, “I have something on my…” She nods and walks out.

Bryce stares at the white walls. How many exam rooms still to come after this? X-rays? Stern-looking doctors, shaking their heads about tragedy striking someone so young, with so much potential? He doesn’t know what he’ll say if they offer him surgery to remove a ball. He shivers, wishing for a blanket.

Dr. Pederson comes in. Once upon a time, he had black hair but now it’s the same color as his doctor coat. He shakes Bryce’s hand, says, “Tell your old man I need to win back some of my money on the golf course.” He looks at the clipboard. “Got a little problem down south, do we?”

“It’s a lump.”

“Do you know which girl you got it from?”

“No, it’s not… I mean, I haven’t ever… I think it’s…”

“Is this lump on your penis?”

Bryce shakes his head.

“Testicle?”

Bryce nods. Dr. Pederson snaps on a rubber glove. Bryce says, “I noticed it a couple months ago. A few months ago. Like in the fall sometime. I should have come in here then. ”

“Lie back and let’s have a look.”

Bryce looks at the ceiling, crinkly sheet of white paper beneath him, while latex fingers fondle his balls. This, then a death notice. How humiliating.

“You can sit up.” Dr. Pederson rolls off the glove. “What you’ve got there, my friend, is a good old fashioned cyst.” He tosses the glove in the wastebasket, writes something on the chart. “Harmless.”

Bryce wants to ask for a repeat, but also doesn’t want to ask – better to live in the reality where
harmless
was indeed uttered.

Harmless.

“What are your plans for next year?” Dr. Pederson asks, oblivious to what has transpired.

“I’m going to art school.” Almost shouted.

In the waiting room, he takes a yellow lollipop from the glass jar. It may be the most succulent thing he’s ever eaten. Stepping out of the office and into the afternoon heat, he leans against the building to keep himself from collapsing. The sound he makes is a choked sob that comes out as a laugh.