Becoming Chloe (3 page)

It’s five or six days before I get in to see the doctor. But I’m feeling much better.

I’m feeling clean because I took a sponge bath in a public restroom. Chloe let me use her towel. Who knew she had a towel? She has a lot of stuff in that alcove that I haven’t seen yet.

The doctor has gray hair but looks too young to have it. He looks like a guy who really cares but now he’s worn out from it.

He’s small and mostly refined-looking, except for a full beard.

He’s attractive. I feel attracted to him the minute he walks into the room. Then I see a wedding ring on his finger and I feel ashamed. And I try to feel something else entirely.

“The famous Jordan,” he says.

It embarrasses me. “I’m not famous.”

“You are around here.”

He peels off the butterfly bandage and I try to not yell out. I don’t want to be a coward in front of him. I want to be brave.

“Your girlfriend really loves you,” he says.

“She’s not my girlfriend. Are you going to have to stitch that again?”

“No, it’s starting to heal. I’m just going to take out the old ones. It’ll hurt. I’m sorry.” He’s right. It hurts like hell. But I don’t make any noise. “Your sister?” he asks.

“No, she’s just a friend.”

“Damn good one,” he says. “She waited in line all night, and when we tried to lock up she sat down cross-legged on the floor and wouldn’t leave. We had to give her antibiotics and aspirin just to get her out the door.”

“Did she seem . . .” Then I don’t know how to finish that thought.

“What?”

“I’m not sure how to say it. Did she seem . . . smart?”

He thinks a minute. Shrugs. “Smart enough, I guess. Why?”

“I’m just having trouble figuring her out. Sometimes she’s . . .

Well, like when I met her, she’d just been raped. And she wasn’t even upset about it. She just said it happened all the time. I asked her if she ever said no, and she said it doesn’t matter what she says. It’s like she doesn’t even understand what a bad thing is. She doesn’t even know that what’s happening to her isn’t okay. Then when she needs to get something done, she seems a lot smarter.”

He has his hand on my shoulder now, but I wish he wouldn’t.

Because it makes me think things that I feel ashamed about.

And because I think he’ll see that I’m attracted to him. Like he’ll all of a sudden know me way too well.

“Maybe she doesn’t want to understand things that she doesn’t think she can change anyway. Maybe sometimes you just have a couple of rotten choices. Like you can fail to comprehend the world you’ve got, or you can see it as this ugly, evil, dangerous place and not be able to do a damn thing about it.”

“So you think it’s an emotional thing?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know enough about her. I just know the kinds of things I’ve seen over the years.” I look at his face and I see what he means. About the things he’s seen over the years. He’s seen too much. “I wouldn’t rule out severe trauma. Of course, it’s just a theory. But don’t rule it out. And don’t underestimate it.”

“So if that’s it, could she get better? I mean, if somebody made her feel safe and took care of her? Could she get better?”

“I don’t know how to answer that question. I can’t predict the future. I think a better question would be, Does she have anybody in her life who cares enough to do all that for her?”

He still has his hand on my shoulder, but now it doesn’t matter because I’m thinking about Chloe. “I’m not sure,” I say. “I guess I’d have to think about that.”

“Do you know the person who did this to your head, Jordan?”

I look down at the clinic floor, which is linoleum. Very old linoleum. I wonder what he’ll do if I don’t answer.

When he gets tired of waiting he says, “Okay, let me put it another way. Is this someone you still have to see on a regular basis?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. That’s mostly what I needed to know.”

On the way home I stop at Chloe’s old grade school. Okay, I’m lying. It’s not on the way home. It’s eleven blocks out of my way.

But I go there all the same. Because I just have to know about all this. I go into the office and a woman asks if she can help me.

She’s about fifty, with a round face. She seems nice, which makes me uneasy. Then I realize the doctor was nice, too.

This is my problem. I’m not used to people being nice to me.

Not lately, anyway. I’m not sure how to deal with that.

“Did Wanda Johnston used to go to school here?”

The woman looks her up on the computer. “You realize I can’t give out any of this information unless you’re family. I can’t show you her records.”

“I just want to know what she can do,” I say. “I want to know how bad it is.”

“How bad what is?”

“I mean, was she in, like, a special ed class? I’m only asking because I want to help her. Somebody has to. Help her.”

She sighs.

I say, “Look. If anybody else was trying to help her . . . If anybody else had ever tried to help her . . .” Then I give her a look that I hope is like the one Chloe gives me when she wants me to forgive her. All kind of big-eyed and sad. Because I know that’s a hard one to resist. “Maybe you could just tell me what it can’t do any harm to tell me?”

She sighs again and pulls up Chloe’s files from the computer.

“No special ed. Just the regular class, with everybody else. Look.

What I’m supposed to tell you is exactly nothing. I’m not allowed to tell you that she was here for first and second grade and part of third. And that her grades were normal. And then she was turned over to Child Protective Services. So you don’t know that. Because I didn’t tell you.”

“Can you also not tell me why?”

“That I don’t know. We’re talking about a big loop of secrecy now. And I’m not in it.”

She’s turned the monitor screen just a little bit toward me, which is how I happen to find out that Chloe was eighteen on the twelfth of May.

I don’t see Chloe once all day. I have no idea where she goes. All I see is the bird, fluttering around the cellar, apparently feeling like himself again. All dressed up with nowhere to go. I wonder how hard it will be to convince Chloe that we need to turn him loose.

Then I think maybe she’s gone, out of my life for good, and it doesn’t even matter. I can’t decide if that’s what I want or not.

I come back from the all-night restroom around midnight, and she’s back. I don’t ask from where.

“Careful,” she says as I come in through the window. “Don’t let the bird out.”

We sit and watch him fly in endless circles around the room.

It occurs to me that I never bothered to name him, but it seems like bad timing to do it now.

“Wow, he’s feeling good, huh?” I say.

“Yeah, but he doesn’t like for me to touch him now.”

“Well, he’s probably feeling more like a bird these days.”

“Want to go get something to eat? I have money.”

“Where did you get money?”

“Some old guy in the park said he felt sorry for me because I’m too skinny, and he gave me five dollars.”

“Great,” I say. “Because I’m starving.”

❃ ❃ ❃

We eat hot dogs and fries, and while we’re eating I feel so much better that I almost feel happy. Happy. This weird thing I’ve forgotten how to feel.

“That doctor was really nice,” I say.

“Yeah. I liked him okay. Did he say you were going to be okay?”

“Yeah. He thinks probably I’ll be okay.” And just for a minute I guess I do, too. The doctor and the food, and being clean, and having met people who were pretty nice to me, all in one day.

“Wow,” she says. “You’re really feeling better.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess I am.”

When we get home we lie down and try to sleep, but the bird is making such a racket. He’s flapping around in the dark, bouncing off the mattresses and banging into the windows. I feel bad for him. I feel bad for me because I figure this will go on all night and I’m tired.

Chloe says, “Jordy. Are you asleep?”

“How can I sleep with all that racket going on?”

“I have to talk to you about something. I know this is going to be hard for you to hear. Because he’s your first pet and all. But I really think we’re going to have to let the bird go now.”

It takes a long time to catch up with him, but I follow him around, and he’s getting tired. Wearing down. Finally I manage to get him into a corner, and I pick him up with my hand firmly around his body, holding down his wings. It’s extra hard because I can’t really use my left hand much. I can’t even move those fingers right now because it pulls into the muscles in my arm and hurts like hell. But I try not to make a big thing of that around Chloe. She feels bad enough as it is. When I get the bird, I put him up under my shirt and then tuck it in again. I think he’ll run around and scratch me, but something about that dark, confined space calms him. He holds still.

We climb up out of the cellar window, which, believe me, isn’t easy. Not with a pigeon in your shirt and only one working hand. But then I make it and we’re out into the night, which feels cool and open. It feels like being free.

I can feel the bird against my belly. Feel his soft feathers. He has his little talons wrapped around the waistband of my jeans.

For some reason this makes me feel close to him. Like he really is my pet now. Like we finally fit together, just as we’re about to come apart.

We cross the street and Chloe says, “Not here.”

“Okay,” I say, though I don’t know why. Ten blocks later I ask, “Where are we going?”

“The park.”

In a way it makes sense. In another way it doesn’t.

“But if we let him off here . . . wouldn’t he pretty much fly to the park anyway?”

“Maybe,” she says. “But he might bump into a building on the way. He’s just sort of still getting his wings back.”

We stand together in the park and I look around and breathe more consciously than usual.

“Do you feel bad?” Chloe asks.

“No. I feel good. Why?”

“Well. He’s your pet.”

“But it’s not like something bad was happening to him. This is a good thing for him.”

“And it’s not like he’s not going to be yours. He’s just going to be yours out there instead of in the cellar. You might not see him anymore, but wherever he is, he’s still yours.”

“I agree,” I say.

I take him out from under my shirt. He looks around at the night much the way I’ve been doing. I turn him around, open my hands. He doesn’t move.

He just sits there on my two open hands, facing out into the world.

Then he unfolds those wings but he still doesn’t fly away. It’s almost like he’s trying to believe he really can. The right wing still looks a little on the droopy side. Maybe it always will.

Maybe he’ll never be exactly as good as new again, but at least he can fly with it. That seems like the main thing. His wingspan looks so big to me, across my open hands. A foot, maybe. Or nearly. Big, capable, only slightly damaged wings.

I feel him push against my hands as he lifts away. I can feel the downdraft of his wings, the pressure of the evening air against my palms. He flaps almost horizontally toward a tree, gaining only a little bit of altitude. He sits on the branch for a while.

“Maybe he feels bad leaving you.”

“Maybe he’s tired from running into the cellar windows all day.”

I turn my head to look at a man with a big yellow dog, and when I turn back, my first and only bird has flown away.

❃ ❃ ❃

On the way back to the cellar, Chloe says, “Thanks for the new name. It’s like that other person whose name I’m not even saying is just gone.”

“Don’t you want another one?”

“No. Chloe is good.”

“I don’t mean instead of Chloe. I mean a last name.”

“No. I don’t even need one. Chloe is such a good name I don’t even need another one.”

I find it touching, almost enviable, that a person with so little feels she has all she needs.

Chloe says, “Wow. Raymond lives here?”

“Yeah, Chlo. Right up there.”

We’re standing with our backs to Central Park, looking up at his building.

“Raymond is rich,” she says.

“No,” I say. “Not rich. Just regular.”

“Who’s richer?”

“Lots of people, Chlo.”

“Do we know them?”

“No,” I say. “No, we don’t know them.”

“Oh,” she says. “Too bad.”

Raymond comes to the door in that paisley silk smoking jacket and those skinny pale legs sticking out underneath. He’s not a skinny guy, Raymond, not by a long shot. But he seems to have special places for holding fat, and his legs aren’t one of them. He is a lovely man. Just not on the outside. Just not in a very attractive package.

“Jordan,” he says. “Oh. I see you brought your friend.” He looks from me to Chloe, who curtsies. Chloe is having one of her princess days.

“She won’t be any trouble at all, Raymond, I promise.” I take Chloe’s hand and we sweep past him into his living room before he can say no. “Chloe is going to stay out of our way completely.

Chloe is going to take a nice hot bubble bath fit for a princess and not come in the bedroom once the whole time.” I shuffle her off into Raymond’s big master bath. “Did you bring clean underwear?” I say this last quietly, for only her to hear. I start the water running.

“You didn’t say to.”

“Damn it, Chlo, I did say to. I told you to.”

“Don’t be mad at me, Jordy. Maybe I wasn’t listening. I’m sorry.”

Chloe stands in the middle of Raymond’s big bathroom, looking all around and above her, the way people do in art museums and cathedrals. I should know. We spend a lot of time in art museums and cathedrals. Meanwhile, she’s taking off her jeans. I help her by pulling her big red sweatshirt inside out over the top of her head.

“Take your panties off and put them to soak in the sink,” I say, and then I go into Raymond’s bedroom to get a pair of his Jockey shorts.

He’s facing away from me, looking out the window, removing the smoking jacket. I like it better when he’s all tucked un der the covers when I get in. He glances over his shoulder, watches me take a pair of light-blue Jockeys out of his underwear drawer, but says nothing.