Crazy Love You (4 page)

“If I see you out here again, I am going to call the police,” she said. She looked around, but everyone on the street just kept walking, staring at screens, listening to music. New York can be such a lonely, deserted place, even in a crowd.

She glanced back at me, exasperated. “I mean, who
does
things like this?”

“I just wanted to explain,” I said. I kept my distance. I wasn't trying to scare her. I couldn't believe how badly I had screwed up; I hated what she must have thought of me. I wanted to fix it. Somehow, I
had
to fix it.

“Okay, fine,” she said. “Explain.”

I really wanted to lie, tell her I got hit by a car or rescued a kid from a burning building. But I stammered over the truth. Told her that I had a friend, a lifelong friend, and whenever she was around bad things happened. I told her that we got high and I passed out. When I was done, Megan just looked at me, mouth open in awe, eyes wide.

“Did you just tell me that you stood me up because you got high with another girl?” she asked. “
This
is what you've stalked me for three days to tell me?”

She was incredulous, disappointed, but I could tell that she was also a little amused. Something glittered in those dark eyes. She wasn't a prude. She knew about life and what a mess it could be.

“Well, it's more complicated than that.”

“How is it more complicated?”

“I can explain that, too,” I told her. “But it's a longer story.”

She shook her head, looked at the sky above her. When she looked back at me, she didn't seem as angry.

“I don't even know your name,” she said.

“It's Ian. Ian Paine.”

She blinked, as though she might have recognized my name. She looked just geeky enough to know about my books. Especially tonight when she was wearing thick-framed, tortoiseshell glasses. I loved that look, the pretty girl hiding behind a dorky façade. I found myself wondering about her underpants. Were they plain cotton bikinis? No, I was betting that they were a little sexy . . . a bright color, maybe some lace.

“Well,
Ian Paine
,” she said. “You're an asshole.”

She started to walk away but I moved after her. I put a very gentle hand on her arm. She spun back toward me, looking a little afraid. I released her, feeling ashamed that I had touched her. It was a breach of her very clear boundaries. I took a step back.

“You're right,” I said when she didn't race off. “But not totally. I am not a
total
asshole, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. I am not that guy. I am not the guy who meets you in a park, begs you for a date, and then stands you up.”

“But you
are
,” she said. She couldn't keep the sadness out of her voice. “You
are precisely
that guy. But the joke's on me.
I
actually showed up.
I
even waited awhile. So what does that make me—desperate? Sad? Just really, really dumb?”

I lifted my palms in a gesture of surrender, supplication, then I put them to my chest in prayer hands. Which I hate. I hate people who do that.

“If you give me one more chance,” I said. “I swear I will never let you down again.”

It started to snow right at that second, and the lights on the cars around us seemed to glow brighter, and there was a crescendo of street noise. It was such a New York moment, so gritty and lovely, so discordant and musical all at once. We stood there looking at each other, and we both knew. Our lives were supposed to intertwine right then; we were supposed to wrap around each other, if not forever, then for a time. It was critical, unavoidable. Or maybe it was just me. There was something about her, something good and clean and smart. And I needed all of that in my bad, dirty, stupid life.

“There's a place on Madison,” she said. “Let's go right now. We'll have a coffee. And if after that I still think you're an asshole, I'll tell you so. And then you'll leave me alone, like, forever.”

I lifted my palms again. “It's a deal.”

I started talking as we walked toward the coffee shop.

•  •  •

I grew up in a town called The Hollows. It's about a hundred miles from New York City, but it might as well be another planet. It is its own floating orb, a complete system. Plenty of people in The Hollows have never left town, and they're happy about it. Both my parents were raised there. They each left to go to college, but for different reasons found their way back. Because, you see, The Hollows has a sucking vortex. You might try to leave. It might even let you go for a time, but eventually it forces you to return.

My mother went home because she couldn't get a job right away after college. She had to move in with her parents. She tried to write a novel and get a job as a journalist at a newspaper—any paper, anywhere in the country.

Eventually, she found work at
The Hollows Gazette
. It was supposed to be a placeholder job, something to do until she got the job she wanted at a place like the
New York Times,
the
Chicago Tribune,
or the
San Francisco Chronicle
. This was back when people still wanted to work at a newspaper, of course. She was good, too. She had a journalism degree from Columbia University. She could have worked anywhere, done anything. I'm not sure why it never happened for her.

I made the mistake of coming back here
, my mom said to me once, not too long ago.
Maybe this place doesn't let you leave twice.

While she was job-hunting, my mom met my father, Nick Paine, at Jake's Pub, the local bar—I know, how romantic. They fell in love, got married a year later.
Was he the right man? Was he what I had hoped for? Maybe what I liked about him was that he was there. He wasn't another dream that might or might not come true.

And to hear my mother tell it, a kind of inertia settled over them: they inherited the house after my paternal grandfather passed. My father was growing a contracting business: No Paine Construction. (Get it? Clever, right?) Then, the next thing she knew, my mom was pregnant with me.
And that's pretty much it. Once you're a mom, once you're in love with your kid, you don't have as much ambition for other things. At least I didn't.
But she wasn't bitter about it. I have always known my mother loved me. I was enough for her; I never thought otherwise. You'll think this is weird later, when you know more. But it's true.

And so I grew up in the house where my father grew up. It wasn't the very same house. My parents gutted the old place and remodeled it in 1980. But it was the same foundation, the same frame, the same twenty-acre tract of land. Some people think that's cool. I'm not one of them.

There was another structure on the property, too, an old cabin that sat out by the creek. I found it when I was out exploring. I was happy that afternoon, giddy with my newfound personal freedom. I hadn't been allowed out on my own before. But when my sister came along, some of the restrictions formerly placed on me suddenly lifted. My father was in charge of me more and more, and he wasn't one to sit down and read or play games or paint out in the garage.
Go out and play.
That was his parenting philosophy.
Find something to do with yourself.

At first I hung around the yard and rode my bike up and down the long drive. I remember not understanding what he'd meant by “finding something to do with myself.” My mother had always had some idea, an activity or craft. Or I'd spend hours poring over my comic books. But Dad wanted me to go outside; he didn't think reading for hours alone in your room was a good thing.
You need some exercise, kid. Get out of your head.
He wasn't bookish—he was about building things and sports and exploring. He didn't get my proclivity for art and story. He didn't get
me
.

So, at first I just drew on the walkway with big chalk—monsters and superheroes, men with guns, buildings on fire, and other images from the comic books that were my obsession. I played fetch with our dog, Butch, a tiny little Yorkie who had also suddenly found himself off Mom's lap.

And then one day, those woods just started talking to me. My mom was sitting on the porch nursing Ella, the dog at her feet. She got up and went inside, and the leaves in the trees started whispering. I was weeding the garden for her, a task I actually enjoyed for some reason. That was the first time I heard what I would later come to think of as the Whispers.

At first I thought it was the sound of voices out in the woods, light and airy, a crowd of kids playing. Then it just sounded like the wind rustling in the leaves. Then it was the echo of laughter, bright and magnetic. The sound pulled me to my feet and I walked to the edge of the woods. The trees—oak, sycamore, birch—were tall, their lush tops creating a thick canopy that cast the woods into semidarkness. I stood there listening, felt a smile creep over my face. I looked back at the house, and it seemed empty. Lonely. My mom hadn't returned to the porch. Only Butch stood there looking at me, his tail wagging uncertainly. He gave an uneasy bark, did a little shuffle with his feet.

And I just moved into the trees, the golden sun streaming through breaks in the canopy, and I walked and walked—jumping over puddles, turning rocks with a big stick, watching birds on the branches and squirrels scurrying up trunks. I had never been in the woods without my mother, and I felt grown up and brave. The Whispers had grown quiet and I had forgotten all about the sounds that had lured me.

I'm not sure how far I walked before I came upon a little gray house. I never knew it was there; no one had ever mentioned it, and I had never seen it when I'd been out with my mother. There was a rusted propane tank, clearly in disuse. And a water barrel was tipped over and covered with moss. The roof sagged and the windows were broken. It might have been white once; I could see streaks of old paint that had been weathered away to gray. It was a sterling discovery: a house in the woods, a fort, a secret hideaway! I still remember the excited jolt I felt, the disbelief that something so cool was just steps from my own home. Why had my dad never told me about it?

I walked the perimeter—finding an old cloth doll buried in leaves, one button eye missing, black with age and dirt. There was a rusted tricycle so decrepit that it looked like it might crumble with a touch. I heard the Whispers again, giddy with excitement. And then it sounded like a voice, someone singing. As I came around the side of the small structure, I realized that it
was
a real voice. Standing there in the doorway was a girl about my age. She was rail thin and pale, but with a wild head of red hair and the bluest eyes I'd ever seen. She wore a white dress printed with roses and a pair of soft leather sandals. I was too young to wonder what in the world a little girl was doing out in the woods alone. She was simply another kid, out exploring, just like me.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I answered.

I was already a bit of a pudgeball, already the butt of jokes at school. I didn't have any friends, couldn't climb the rope in gym class, was picked last for every team. The cliché kid loser. I wasn't quite Fatboy yet, but I was headed that way fast. So I braced myself against whatever insult the girl might hurl at me. Even to this day, I always steel myself on meeting someone. People are so thoughtless and cruel; you never know what offhand comment they might toss out.

“Want to play?” she asked, the way only a kid will ask another kid. That's something you lose as an adult, that ability to just hang out with whoever might happen to be around. But little people get it; love the one you're with.

“Sure,” I said. “What do you want to play?”

“Hide-and-seek,” she said.

And so we played—running, darting between trees, covering ourselves with leaves, crouching behind logs. She was a very good hider, quiet and not prone to giggling before found, as I was. I always laughed, giving myself away. I remember noticing how her hair changed color in the different shades of light, and thinking she was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. But these thoughts were fleeting. I was a kid, only about playing and having some company. She could have been anyone—boy, girl, skinny, fat, pretty, ugly. It wouldn't have mattered. When it came to friends, I had already learned not to look too closely, to just be grateful that anyone wanted to be with me. We ran around until the sky started to grow dark and I began to think my mother would worry.

“I have to go,” I told the girl.

“Come back tomorrow,” she said.

“I'll try.”

That was Priss. We were ten years old.

•  •  •

My mom was standing on the porch, calling my name, when I came back. I'd heard her from a distance, her voice thin and light on the air, and had started to run toward her. By the time I reached the porch I was breathless.

“Ian, where have you been?” she said. “Since when do you run off into the woods by yourself?”

“Dad said I could,” I answered, climbing the steps to the porch and letting her take me in her arms. I was already almost as tall as she was, and tended to pull away from her hugs. That day I wanted her to hold me—and she did, but her embrace was bony and weak. When I looked up at her, she seemed tired and gray. She hadn't showered and her hair was dirty, hanging in greasy strands around her face. Her eyes were glassy and her stare distant.

I started to tell her about Priss, but Ella cried out and my mother drifted away toward the sound. My dad pulled up in his big truck with take-out food—all we ever ate now—and called to me to help get things inside. I looked back at the dark doorway through which my mother had disappeared. That was the first day that I knew something was really wrong with my mother. Even now, I don't know what it was precisely. My father kept saying that she was just tired because of the baby, but that didn't seem right. It was as if she was shrinking, disappearing.