Dreamland (27 page)

We might have talked on the way home: I don't really remember. My mind was already working my defense, figuring the play, setting the pick and the run and shoot. As we got closer to town, the pine trees and flat fields giving way to asphalt and strip malls, I could feel the dread that had been building in me all afternoon finally fill me up. And by the time we got to my house, every muscle in my body was tight and I could hear my heart beating. I had a crazy thought to tell Jeff to just keep going, gunning past what was waiting for me, driving on and on to someplace safe. But I knew Rogerson would find me. He always did.

There were cars parked all up and down the street for the party, but I could see Rogerson right in front of the walk. The BMW was right by the mailbox, windows up, engine off.

“You know,” Jeff said in his slow drawl as he pulled into Boo and Stewart's driveway to turn around, “Rina was just a little tipsy is all. You shouldn't hold it against her.”

“I don't,” I said, opening my door before he'd even come to a full stop. The sight of Rogerson waiting for me, just like all those times at the turnaround, filled me with a fear that clenched hard in my chest, like a fist closing over something tightly. “Thanks for the ride, Jeff.”

“Looks like quite a party,” he said, nodding at my parents' backyard, where I could see the tent—still standing—all lit up, with people milling around beneath it. Someone was playing the piano, tinkling and sweet, and it was slowly getting dark. The perfect Fool's night.

“Yeah,” I said, already backing away from the car. “It always is.”

The grass was wet on my feet as I ran across it, with Jeff yelling good-bye behind me. My house was all lit up to my right, and I knew that inside it smelled like potpourri, all those dolls arranged in their intimate groups.

Rogerson's car was dark as I came up on it, with that eerie green glow from the dash lights coming from inside. I opened the passenger door and got in, shutting it quietly behind me. He didn't say anything.

I turned to face him, ready with my explanation, the defense I'd drawn out in the long walk and ride home:
I tried to call you, I couldn't get here, I'm sorry.

But I didn't even get a word out before he turned, with the face I'd never captured on film—wrenched and angry—and slapped me across the face.

It was hard enough to push me back against my door, which hadn't shut completely and so fell open just a bit. I reached out behind me to try and grab the handle, but he was already coming at me again.

“Where the hell have you
been?”
he said, moving so close that his breath was in my face, hot and smoky-smelling. He grabbed me by the front of my dress, yanking me even closer to him, the fabric bunching in his fist, bulging through his fingers. “I have been waiting for you for an
hour.
”

“Rina,” I said quickly, gasping, “Rina invited me to the lake, I tried to call you—”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he screamed, and then pushed me away from him, hard, so that I fell back against the door again and this time it swung open fully, making a loud, scraping noise against the sidewalk. I felt myself tumbling backward, losing balance even before I hit the pavement, my elbows grinding as I tried to catch myself. My face still stung, my dress bunched up at my chest, and then he was suddenly out of the car, standing over me.

“Get up,” he said, and behind me I could hear the party, the piano, now with voices singing along. “Get
up!
”

“Rogerson,” I said as I struggled to my feet. “Please—”

“Get up!” he yelled, and grabbed me by the arm, yanking me toward him. I tried to duck my head, to turn away, but he was too fast for me. I saw his fist coming and it hit me right over my left eye, sending a flurry of stars and colors across my vision. I slid down, out of his grasp, onto the grass: It was wet and slimy against my bare skin.

I lifted my head and he was standing over me, breathing hard. I knew I should get up before someone saw us but somehow I couldn't move, like those voices—all those voices—were suddenly shaking me awake, pulling me to the surface. It was the first time he'd done it out in the open, not inside the car or a room, and the vastness of everything, fresh air and space, made me pull myself tighter, smaller.

“Goddammit, Caitlin,” he said, glancing at the house, then back at me. “Get
up
right
now
.”

I tried to roll away from him onto my side, in the hopes of getting to my feet, but everything hurt all at once: my face, my fingers, the back of my head, my eye, my arms, my skin itself. Each place he'd ever struck me, like old war wounds on rainy days.

He nudged me with his toe, in the small of my back. “Come on,” he said quietly. And I remembered the first time he'd said it, when all this had started, standing by that open door: Come on.

“No,” I said into the grass, trying to tuck every bit of me in and hide, to sink into the cracks of the sidewalk beneath me.

“Get up,” he said again, a bit louder, and now the nudge was hard, more like a kick. I rolled a bit, curling tighter, and closed my eyes. Out in the tent, the song went on to the rousing finish, then a burst of laughter and applause.

“Get up, Caitlin,” he said, and I closed my eyes as tight as I could, clenching my teeth, thinking of anything else. Corinna, standing on a cliff in California with the blue, blue water stretched out ahead of her, with even Mexico in sight. Cass in New York, sitting in her window with a million lights spread out behind her. And then, finally me, left behind again. And look what I had become.

I jammed my hand in my jacket pocket, bracing myself for the next hit, and felt something. Something grainy and small, sticking to the tips of my fingers: the sand from Commons Park.

Oh, Cass,
I thought.
I miss you so, so much.

“Caitlin,” Rogerson said, and I snapped back to reality as he reached down and yanked at my jacket, trying to pull me up with it. But I just shook it off, letting it slide over my arms and away from me, keeping the sand in my hand. My bare skin was cool, exposed under the streetlight with the white of the dress and the green ivy almost glowing.

I was tired. Worn thin, my springs broken, spokes shattered. I felt old and brittle. I braced myself, waiting for the next kick, the next punch. I didn't care if it was the last thing I ever felt.

“Caitlin,” Rogerson said again, and I felt him draw his foot back, readying. “I told you to—”

And that was as far as he got before I heard it. The thumping of footsteps, running up the lawn toward me: It seemed like I could hear it through the grass, like leaning your ear to a railroad track and feeling the train coming, miles away. As the noise got closer I could hear ragged breaths, and then a voice.

It was my mother.

“Stop it!”
she said, her tone steady and loud. “You stop that
right now.”

“I didn't—” Rogerson said. And in the distance, suddenly, I could hear sirens. Rogerson stepped back from me: He heard them, too.

“Get away from her,” my mother said, crouching down beside me. “You lousy
bastard.
Caitlin. Caitlin, can you hear me?”

“No,” I said. “Wait—”

I could feel her smoothing my hair off my face, her own chest heaving against my shoulders. Then, suddenly, she said, “Oh, my God, Caitlin. Oh, my God.”

I turned to her, but she wasn't looking at my face. Her mouth was open, horrified, as her eyes traveled over my arms, shoulders, back, and legs. Under the white of the streetlight, my skin was ghostly pale, and each bruise, old and new, seemed dark and black against it. There were so many of them.

Rogerson was backing away now, even as my mother wrapped her arms around me, so gently, sobbing as she tried to find a spot that wasn't hurt. The sirens were coming closer, and I could see blue lights moving across the trees.

The front door slammed and I could hear voices gathering, getting closer. The piano music had stopped. It seemed like
everything
had stopped.

“Margaret?” I heard Boo call out. “What's going on?”

“What's happening out here?” I heard my father say, his voice choppy as he ran through the grass. “Caitlin? Are you all right?”

“It's over now,” my mother said, still crying softly as she rocked me back and forth, smoothing my hair. “It's okay, honey. I'm here. It's okay.”

“What happened?” my father said, but no one answered him. The police car pulled up and I heard a door slam, a voice garbled and hissing over the radio inside.

I looked up, trying to find Rogerson, but it seemed like the dark had somehow sucked him up and he'd disappeared. I could hear everything that was going on around me: the murmuring of the Fool's Party guests, my father talking to the policeman, Rogerson complaining angrily as the cuffs clicked shut. I could hear the streetlight buzzing and Boo crying onto Stewart's shoulder when she saw the bruises on my skin, the way she whimpered again and again,
I should have known. I should have known.

And all the while my mother was crouching over me, her voice steady, rocking me back and forth like she had the day Cass had cut my eye, saying everything would be all right. I couldn't even tell her I was sorry.

I was worn out, broken: He had taken almost everything. But he had been all I'd had, all this time. And when the police led him away, I pulled out of the hands of all these loved ones, sobbing, screaming, everything hurting, to try and make him stay.

Me

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Caitlin.”

I rolled across my pillow, turning away from the broad green hills outside my window. My roommate, Ginger, the bulimic, was standing in the doorway of our room. She had on overalls, her hair in braids, a pencil tucked behind her ear.

“Yeah?” I said.

“You have another visitor,” she said, cocking her head toward the other end of the hallway. “Lucky girl.”

I got up off the bed, grabbing my sweatjacket off the chair of my desk. As I shrugged it on, Ginger jumped onto her own bed, pulling a rolled-up crossword puzzle magazine out of her back pocket. She slid the pencil out from behind her ear, licked its tip, and flipped a few pages in the magazine until she found her current challenge.

I pulled my hair up in my hands as I started out of our room, up the hallway that was flanked with huge, double-glassed, floor-to-ceiling windows. It was so bright at midday I imagined it must be like what people see in near-death experiences, that long, bright walk that takes you right to God. Here, however, you opened the door at the end to find the visitors' room, where the real world was allowed to peek in every Sunday and Wednesday from three to five.

 

I'd been at Evergreen Care Center since the day after the Fool's Party. What had happened was a blur, punctuated by flashes of horrific moments: Rogerson's face so dark, yelling at me. My mother, sobbing, as she carefully turned my arms and legs, examining the bruises. And finally, my own screaming, terrible shame as I pulled away from everyone, trying to hold on to the one person who had hurt me the most.

Once the police had taken Rogerson away, my father had carried me inside, where I sat balled up in a kitchen chair, clutching my knees and rocking back and forth. My parents and Boo and Stewart conferred in the other room, made phone calls, and tried to figure out what had happened. Later, I'd find out that it was Mrs. Merchant, from the Ladies Auxiliary, who'd glanced out the front window and seen us. She'd told my mother, then called the police, which effectively broke up the party. All that night, the tent stood empty outside, with pounds of tempeh salad and shelled shrimp rotting away. It was all still there, crackers fanned out on pretty party dishes, punch bowl half-full, surrounded by abandoned glasses and crumpled napkins, when I left the next day.

Rogerson's car was there, too, parked right where he'd left it. Later, someone would come to pick it up. Maybe Dave. But the sight of it, sitting there, scared me all night long, as if he was still sitting in it, waiting for me so that we could replay that night again and again, like a movie where you can't even tell the end from the beginning.

I'd heard of Evergreen Care Center before. Cass and I had always made fun of the stupid ads they ran on TV, featuring some dragged-out woman with a limp perm and big, painted-on circles under her eyes, downing vodka and sobbing uncontrollably.
We can't heal you at Evergreen,
the very somber voiceover said.
But we can help you to heal yourself.
It had become our own running joke, applicable to almost anything.

“Hey, Cass,” I'd say, “hand me that toothpaste.”

“Caitlin,” she'd say, her voice dark and serious. “I can't hand you the toothpaste. But I
can
help you hand the toothpaste to yourself.” Which she would then do, passing it off to me with a pseudo-nurturing squeeze of my hand.

Ha, ha. It didn't seem quite so funny now.

Technically, I was admitted for drugs. This was because my mother had found a small bag of pot and my bowl in my jacket pocket, both of them coated with Commons Park sand. But everyone knew the bruises, Rogerson, what I had let happen to me—was the other reason I was here.

I wasn't able to tell my parents anything in that first twenty-four hours. I couldn't say I was sorry, or explain how I'd let this happen. I just sat in my room while my mother packed up my things, my knees pulled up tight and close to my chest. We left for Evergreen early in the morning, in the rain, and none of us spoke the entire way.

I suddenly realized, in that silent car ride, how long it had been since any of us had mentioned Cass out loud. It was like I'd finally done something to overshadow her completely, but not in the way I wanted to.