Don't You Cry (6 page)

Alex

I wonder if she has any idea she's being watched.

I watch the girl twitch her hands, scratch her head. I watch her cross her legs this way—and then that way—on the park swing, trying to get comfortable. Then she uncrosses her legs and kicks at the sand. She looks left, right, and then peers upward and opens her mouth to catch droplets of rainwater falling from the sky.

I have no idea how long I stare. Long enough that my hands go numb from the cold and the rain.

It's after some time that the girl rises to her feet and stands. Her feet, in the chestnut-colored Uggs, sink into the sand as she moves through it and toward the beach. Closer and closer to the water. It's hard for her to move through the sand thanks to the density of it, for one, and the wind. It pushes her modest body this way and that, her arms out at her sides like the arms of a tightrope walker. One foot in front of the other. One step at a time.

And then three feet before the tide line, she stops.

And I stare.

And this is what happens. It starts with the boots first, which she draws from her feet with great balance, one foot, and then the other. She sets them side by side in the sand. The socks are next, and I think to myself,
Is she crazy?
Thinking she will dip her feet into the frigid waters of a November Lake Michigan. It can't be more than forty degrees. Ice cold. The kind of water that gives rise to hypothermia.

The socks get tucked into the shaft of the boot so they don't blow away. I watch and wait for the girl to totter to the lake's side and walk right on in, but she doesn't. There's a moment that passes—or many moments, maybe, I don't know, I've lost all sense of time—before she reaches for the buttons of the coat and starts to unbutton from top to bottom. And then the coat comes off. Set in the sand beside the boots and the socks. It's as she starts to remove the jeans from her legs that I think,
This can't be happening
. I peer around for another onlooker, someone, anyone, to tell me this is real and not only a figment of my imagination. Is this really happening? This can't be happening. This can't be real.

I've stood now and moved closer, two, maybe three feet, hidden behind the wooden columns that frame the picnic shelter. I wrap my hands around the columns and squint my eyes so that I can see the way Pearl unbuttons and unzips the jeans, the way she sets herself down in the wet sand and drags the denim from her legs, setting that, too, by the coat and the shoes. The rain has picked up its pace now and barrels down harder, blowing sideways in the wind. It sweeps through the orifices in the enclosed shelter space and soaks me through and through. The girl stands then, hands in the pockets of her blue hoodie, with nothing else on. Just the hoodie and a pair of underpants. And the hat and scarf.

But then the hoodie goes, too.

And it's then that she enters the water. In nothing more than her undergarments, her scarf and a hat. She walks right in, insouciant to the cold like an emperor penguin, diving right into arctic waters. She doesn't stop when she gets her feet wet. Or her ankles. Or her knees. She keeps going. I think she might walk right on to Chicago if she could, hands dragging along the surface of the water as the waves run up and splash her, soaking her head to toe with the lake's callous spray.

Without realizing it, I've moved from the picnic shelter and stand, myself, in the sand. How did I get here? I don't know. All common sense tells me that I should call someone for help. The police?
Dr. Giles?
How long does she have before the cold water leads to hypothermia? Fifteen minutes? Thirty minutes? I don't know. But I can't call someone because I'm completely dumbstruck and speechless, feet frozen to the sand, unable to lug my phone from the pocket of my pants. Because I can't get my eyes off Pearl, there in the water, swimming the sidestroke, long enough to call for help. Watching the way her unhurried arms rise up out of the water one at a time, and then drop back in. The gentle, rhythmic kicking of feet in water, proffering no splash at all. The way she goes and goes without turning her head for a breath, like a fish with gills and fins.

If I had something better to do with my time, I probably wouldn't be standing here watching her swim. But I don't and so I stand here and watch her swim.

And there, as I stand, gawking, the girl rises up to her feet and begins a retreat from the water. While any normal human being would sprint shivering from the water and into something warm and dry, she doesn't. Her steps are slow, calculated. She isn't in a hurry. She takes her time, emerging from the water soaking-wet, the little she wears now completely sheer. The sand clings to her feet, her ankles, grainy sand changing colors before my eyes. Turning darker.

I would avert my eyes. I
should
avert my eyes.

But I can't.

I can't be blamed for this. What eighteen-year-old would turn his head away, refuse to look? Not me, that's for sure. Not anyone I know.

Seems to me, anyway, that she wants to be seen.

And there she stands in the wet sand, the water likely freezing to her bare skin in the cold, autumn air. She makes no attempt to dry herself off or to get dressed. Her back is to the lake now and she takes in what's on the other side: the playground and carousel, the beach grass and a line of vacuous trees.

And me.

And that's when she turns to me and waves.

And I prove to the world that I really am a chickenshit when I turn and walk away, pretending I don't see.

Quinn

I rise to my feet and follow the ringing of the phone to the kitchen, fully expecting to see Esther's cell stashed there on the countertop beside canisters of flour, sugar and cookies. But no such luck. I'm not one to answer her phone or even notice its ring, but now I'm worried. Perhaps Esther
is
in trouble; perhaps she needs my help. Perhaps it's Esther on the other end of the line calling me for help on her phone. She's lost, doesn't have enough cash for a cab. Something along those lines.

But she could just call me on my phone, then. Of course she could. That would make more sense. But still. Maybe...

I flip on the stove light and continue to search, tracking the subdued ringtone as Hansel and Gretel tracked bread crumbs through the deep, dark woods. It sounds far away and hard to hear, as if there's cotton in my ears. I open and close the stove, the refrigerator, the cabinets, though it seems utterly absurd to do so. To look for a phone inside a refrigerator. But I do, anyway.

I continue on my search. The phone rings once, twice, three times. I'm nearly certain the call will go to voice mail and this will all be for naught, when I find it tucked away inside the pocket of a red zip-up hoodie that hangs from a hanger in our teeny-weeny coat closet.

I snatch up the phone, ousting the hoodie from its hanger as I do, watching it fall to the floor as I answer the call, the caller ID reading Unknown.

“Hello?” I ask, pressing the phone to my ear.

“Is this Esther Vaughan?” probes a voice on the other end of the line.

And then I utter the three words that in about thirteen seconds I'll regret having said. “No, it's not,” I say, wishing instantly that I would have said,
This is she
. But then again, why would I when my interest has yet to be piqued? It takes much more than a blocked phone number to get my attention. I get blocked calls all the time, mainly debt collectors calling to collect unpaid bills. Old credit cards with cringe-worthy balances I haven't made payments to in years. Student loans.

“Is she there?” asks the voice. It's a gruff voice, a male voice, that isn't going to fool around with any pleasantries or wisecracks or banter.

“No,” I say, and then, “Can I take a message?” I ask as my hand fumbles through the near-darkness for the dry-erase board and a marker. I drift across the room to the board that hangs aslant from a wall, fully prepared to jot down a name and phone number below the arcane message:
Ran out. Be home soon
,
a phrase that suddenly takes on an abundance of meaning.

Ran out. Be home soon.

Esther wrote that. I know she did. It's not my handwriting; it's hers. The fusion of cursive and print, upper-and lowercase words. Both feminine and masculine all at the same time.

But when did she leave the message, I wonder, and why?

Was it last week when she ran back to the bookshop to find her forgotten faux glasses? Or just a couple days ago when she hurried to the Edgewater branch of the Chicago Public Library on Broadway to return a book before closing time, so that it wouldn't be late? Esther is a stickler for returning books on time.

Or, I wonder then while waiting for the guy on the other end of the cell phone to decide whether or not he's going to leave a message, did she leave the annotation last night before she opened her bedroom window and climbed on out? That's it, then, I tell myself. There's no reason to be worried. Esther left me a note; she'll be home soon. It says so right there on the board.

Ran out. Be home soon.

And then to my dismay, the man on the other end of the line curtly replies, “It's a confidential matter.” His voice is ticked off. “We had an appointment this afternoon. She didn't show.”

Apparently
that
information—Esther's sloppy, negligent behavior—isn't quite as confidential as who he is or why he's calling. There are voices in the background that I try hard to decrypt: cars, the lapping sound of ocean waves, a blender. I can't be sure. It all fuses together until it is one thing and one thing alone: noise. Clamor. Racket. A whole hullabaloo.

“I can tell her you called,” I suggest, exploring for a name. A reason for calling.

“I'll call back,” he says instead, and the line goes dead. I stand there in the kitchen, my bare feet cold on the black-and-white checkerboard tile, watching as, in my hand, the cell phone screen fades to black. I press the home button and swipe my finger across the screen. The phone prompts me for Esther's password.
Password?
My heart starts to race.
Damn!

I start pressing digits at random until I'm locked out of the phone altogether, the device disabled, and I'm stuck waiting an entire minute—sixty long, maddening seconds—until I can do it again. And again. And again.

I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, nor the brightest crayon in the box. I've been told as much before. So it shouldn't surprise me in the least bit that I have no idea how to break into Esther's phone without her password or thumbprint. And yet it does.

I placate myself with the simple fact that he promised to call back. The gruff voice on the other end of the line said that he would call back.

I'll do better the next time, I tell myself. I will.

Alex

It's evening at my house. I'm cooking. Pops is watching TV, feet on the old coffee table, a bottle of beer in his hand. He's drunk, but he's not wasted. He still knows his left hand from his right, which is a big accomplishment some days. He was awake when I got home from work this evening. Also a big accomplishment. Seems he managed a shower, too. He'd changed out of his striped shirt and no longer reeked of the god-awful cologne or the rank morning breath as he did when I left for work that morning. Now he just reeks of booze.

On the TV is a football game. The Detroit Lions. He screams at the TV.

There are chicken nuggets in the oven and a can of green beans warming on the stove. Pops wanders through the kitchen for another beer and asks if I'd like one, too. I look him in the blasted eyes and say, “I'm eighteen,” though I'm not sure that means too much to him. On the fridge door is a picture I drew about a dozen years ago of outer space: the sun, the moon, the stars, Neptune and Jupiter, in Crayola crayons. Worn along the edges, a corner missing, having fallen from its magnet about a million times. The colors are faded. Everything, these days, seems like it's starting to fade.

Sharing the same magnet is a postcard from my mother. I threw it in the trash when it arrived in the mail, but Pops found it there, mixed up with lunch meat scraps and corn kernels, and pulled it back out again. This one's from San Antonio.
The Alamo
, it says.

You shouldn't be so hard on her
, he'd said to me when he found the postcard in the trash. And then that line was trailed by the same one it always was when Pops talked about my mom.
She did the best that she could do.

If you say so
,
was what I'd said before leaving the room. I wonder if it's possible to hate someone and feel sorry for them at the same time? I felt sorry for her, sure. She wasn't cut out to be a mother.

But I also hate her, too.

Pops is a lousy drunk, and the more he drinks, the more he thinks about my mother. About the way she left us all those years ago, without ever saying goodbye. About the fact that he still has their wedding photo framed and hung on the bedroom wall, about the fact that he still wears his wedding band, though she's been gone a whole thirteen years. Since I was five. A little boy with Legos and Star Wars toys. That's when she left.

If it was up to me I would have chucked that ring long ago. Not that I hold a grudge or anything, because I don't. I just think I would have tossed the ring. Or pawned it like he pawned my high school class ring for booze. Instead, it becomes a hot topic of conversation in the many botched dates Pops has with the single ladies around town—a reservoir that is drying up quickly and will soon be completely sapped. Chances are he's dated them all. Except for Ingrid, maybe, the agoraphobic, for reasons I don't need to explain. Pops spends his dates at the tavern in town, getting loaded and talking about how my mother left him and me when I was five years old. It's supposed to be a sympathy trigger, but instead he ends up looking like a patsy. Pops ends up crying and scaring the ladies away one by one, like old cans lined in a row for target practice.

He has no clue why he's still alone.

It's pathetic, really. But he's still my dad and I feel sorry for him, too.

I dish the nuggets and green beans onto a chipped dinner plate and call him to dinner, where he lumbers in—beer in hand—and takes his place at the head of the table, the only chair from which he can still see the TV. “Catch the fucking ball!” he screams, smacking the table hard with the palm of a sweaty hand, sending his fork spiraling into the air before it crashes down to the ground. As he reaches down to grab it, he smacks his head on the corner of the wood table and curses. And then he laughs as his forehead swells and turns bright red.

Just another night in our house.

Tonight we don't make small talk. Instead, I model good behavior, the way you're supposed to use a knife to spread butter, the way you're supposed to eat the beans with a fork and not your hands. I watch as Pops drags half of a dinner roll through the tub of margarine and think: no wonder this guy is still single. He had a lot more to offer my mother when he was young, employed and sober. Needless to say, he's no longer any of those things. But the reason she left had nothing to do with any of those things, anyway. The reason she left? Motherhood. Me.

I try not to let this go to my head.

“They're not French fries,” I say as he plucks the fancy-cut green beans up one at a time with a hand, drawing them to his mouth and chewing with his jaws open wide. “Use your fork.” He ignores me and screams at the TV, spittle flying out. Green spittle, like the beans.

He rises to his feet and hollers, “False start!” pointing a finger at the referees on TV as if they can hear. “What are you, asshole, are you blind? That was a
false start
.”

And then he sits back down.

I watch as he sits there at the table, eating his food. I note the way his hands shake. Pops has a tremor, whether or not he knows it exists. I know. His hands shake, the small, rapid movements when he's trying to use his hands for something: picking up his nuggets, snapping the top off another bottle of beer. They remind me of my grandpa's hands, though his only shook because he was old. There are times Pops's hands shake so badly I have to open up his beer for him. The incongruity of it? The more he drinks, the less his hands shake, like some sort of paradoxical reaction. The hands find placidity when he's completely tanked. Seems to me it should be the other way around, but still, the shaking hands are a good benchmark for me of how much he's had to drink. It's never worth asking how much he's had to drink; he's either too drunk to remember, otherwise he'll lie. Tonight, not enough.

He stands up again quickly to chastise the coach who decides to run it up the middle instead of a sweep play. And then back down. And then up again when the ball gets knocked out of the running back's hands and there's an interception—this time managing to overturn his chair as he does. He watches in dismay as the Giants trot down the field with the ball. I don't even have to turn my head to see the TV. He narrates it for me before tossing the other half of his dinner roll at the screen. And then he gets up to get another beer, damning to hell every Lions player on the field.

So it's really no wonder then that when he says, “Squatters,” I don't pay much attention. He's talking about the TV. It's someone's last name, or some epithet he's come up with for one of the coaches or players.
Fucking Squatters.

“Did you hear me?” he asks, and that's when I realize he
is
talking to me. His shirt is wet; at some point or other he managed to spill his beer. There's a piece of green bean stuck to his chin. Classy.

I notice that Pops isn't looking at me, and I turn in my chair, my eyes copying his line of vision, out the front window of our home and across the street.

And there I see it again, that light:
on, off
.

Like an involuntary muscle contraction. A charley horse. A twitch, a tic.

On, off.

And Pops says, “Damn squatters are living over there again,” about the school-bus-yellow home on the opposite side of the street from ours. The one with the story to tell, the kind of story no one ever talks about but everybody knows. It isn't the first time squatters have lived over there before. All sorts of vermin have inhabited the place at one time or another. The occasional drifter has been known to move into that house and live there for a while, scot-free. They usually leave on their own without any need to call the cops or anything, but it's unsettling nonetheless, knowing there's some bum in a vacant house right across the street from yours.

In the backyard hangs an abandoned tire swing from a fated oak tree, forgotten along with the home. Curtains hang from the window still, dated gossamer curtains, which were once white. They're yellowish now and sheared at odd angles as if someone took a pair of scissors to their ends. Instead, it's likely the mice eating their way through the lace. The concrete crumbles from around the house like cookie crumbs, breaking off in bits and littering the lawn. There are posted signs, which no one pays attention to, anyway: No Trespassing and Not Approved for Occupancy. They're black signs with a bright orange font. Hard to miss. And yet people do. They ignore the signs and go right in.

A bum is living over there or maybe... No. I shake my head. That's not it. I said it already. I don't believe in ghosts.

But that's just me. The rest of the people in town, they do.

Every single town in all of America has its own haunted house.

Ours just so happens to be right across the street from mine.

I never knew the family that lived inside that home. All it's ever referred to anymore is
that house
. It's been empty for years, since before I was born. I guess I never cared enough to ask who used to live there. In my mind, they're long gone, leaving behind trace memories of a once-happy family and a derelict home. The only inhabitant people speak of is the dead Genevieve, though she is only ever referred to as
her
,
or sometimes the even less humane
it
. There are claims that people see her, the ghost, moving throughout the home, her soul trapped inside for all of eternity.

But I know better than to believe those things. It's just a bunch of malarkey. There's no such thing as ghosts.

“Fucking squatters,” says Pops one last time as he rises from the table and stumbles to the fridge for another bottle of beer. He puts the cap on the countertop; he wanders into the family room to resume watching the football game. He leaves his dirty plate behind for me to clean, his napkin lobbed to the floor for me to retrieve.