If I Knew You Were Going to Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go (15 page)

Liz mumbled, “Later, man,” and began walking to the opposite end of the station, where the buses were parked.

“I better get going,” I said. “So we don’t miss the bus.”

I could feel Mitch’s eyes watching me behind his sunglasses. He scratched the stubble on his chin. Finally, he asked, “There something you want to tell me, baby doll?”

“Like what?” I asked innocently.

“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why I asked. Everything all right
with you and Sister Morphine over there?” He jerked his head in Liz’s direction. “Not like her to be so quiet.”

“No, we’re cool,” I said. “She’s just not into being up this early. Thing is, we both have to be to work in the afternoon and we have to buy a—a birthday present for one of our friends from school, you wouldn’t know her, they’re having a surprise party for her next weekend and this was the only time—”

“Shine it on, darlin’,” he said softly. “I get the drift.”

I felt my insides relax a little. “Listen, don’t tell anyone you saw us, okay?”

Mitch nodded, watching me from behind his sunglasses.

“All right, later,” I said, but he pulled me back as I turned to go. He fumbled in his pocket and came up with a twenty-dollar bill and held it out. “Here,” he said. “Buy yourselves some lunch or something.”

“C’mon, man, I don’t want your money,” I said, but he shoved the bill into my hand, crumpling it between my fingers. “Take it,” he said, his voice low and steely.

You live over a bar
, I wanted to say.
You sleep on torn sheets. You wake up screaming in the night
. “Thanks,” I whispered instead. I could feel my throat begin to tremble. I kissed his cheek quickly and then turned and began walking toward Liz and the bus that would take us to Silverwood.

•   •   •

L
iz hadn’t said much on the way to the bus station and she wasn’t saying much as we rolled onto the Meadowbrook Parkway. She just kept lighting cigarettes, staring out the window. The bus wasn’t very crowded; most of the seats were empty but we were still sitting way in the back. It’s funny, but the people I hang out with, we always gravitate to the back of everything: classrooms, movie theaters, buses. There was a young
mother with four kids sitting near the middle, all redheads, and two of them looked like twins. They were keeping her pretty busy, climbing all over the seats, clamoring for juice and cookies, hitting each other. But outside of that, it was pretty quiet.

I thought about my own mother, the one who gave me up. I always pictured her brushing her long, black hair, staring out the window, waiting for someone. Sometimes, I pictured her sitting at a scarred brown vanity table, staring into the scratched mirror, dressed only in a bra and girdle with her flesh bulging between the elastic borders, a glass of something amber by her side. She looked sad like that, staring into the mirror. Had she thought about doing something like this? Had she gone for a two-hour bus ride alone or with her best friend and then chickened out halfway there? Or stood in an alley outside the doctor’s door and then fled before even knocking? Or made it as far as the table and then gotten so hysterical that the stern-faced, short-haired, thin-lipped doctor had thrown up her hands and said, “I can’t do this, here, take your money and go”? I never thought about my father, except when people told me I looked part Indian, especially in the summer when I tanned very dark. I thought maybe he’d been part of the Shinnecock tribe we’d studied in Local History at school. My mother had been a good Catholic girl. I’d been adopted through St. Joseph’s Sanctuary in Fog River, a home for unwed mothers behind a huge brick wall not far from the ferry. I thought about what would have happened if she’d kept me. Would she stand in the doorway of the bathroom while I put on my mascara, screaming that I’d end up living over a bar with six kids if I kept hanging around street corners? Sometimes lately when I looked in the mirror I wondered if she’d recognize me walking down the street, if there was enough of her in me for that to happen. But when I thought about her, it wasn’t a burning in my heart, the way it was when I thought about Luke. I wouldn’t be thinking about her now if I wasn’t on my way to an abortion doctor.

I was so into my thoughts I didn’t realize at first that my seat was
rocking. I thought something had broken loose and the seat needed adjusting. Then I realized it was Liz. She was shaking so bad that the seats were vibrating.

“Jesus, Liz,” I said. I thought maybe she had a fever and we would have to call the whole thing off. I put my hand on her arm, and she grabbed hold of me.

“Nanny’s right, I’m going to hell,” she said, speaking fast, in a low voice. “After this, it’s the only place for me. I’m going to hell and there’s nothing, not one Goddamned thing I can do to save myself.”

“Liz—”

“I know I did a lot of bad things in my life, but I always thought I could make it up later, you know, when we got older. But I can never make this up. I can never save my soul after this. Best thing that could happen, I die on the table, right in the middle—”

“Stop it!” I said, grabbing her shoulders. “Stop it right now! You’re not going to die, it’s a clean, safe place—”

“Yeah, yeah, so clean, you could eat off it, like my mother says,” she said bitterly. “Maybe we could have a dinner party after I—WILL YOU SHUT THAT FUCKING KID UP!” she screamed suddenly, jumping out of her seat. “SHUT HIM UP! SHUT HIM UP, GODDAMNIT!”

One of the red-haired kids had been crying, but now he stopped mid-wail, abruptly and completely. Everyone was looking at us, including the driver in his rearview mirror. Liz sat down, lit another cigarette, and went back to staring out the window. She had stopped shaking.

The mother of the crying kid was coming at us, snorting fire. I ran up the aisle before she could reach Liz, blocking her way.

“Out of my way,” she said, eyes blazing. “Just who the hell does she think she is, yelling about my kid like that?”

“Look, I’m sorry,” I said, talking fast, “she’s upset. She’s upset and—”

“Huh!” the mother said. “She don’t look too upset to me. She—”

“She’s—we’re on our way to a funeral,” I said. “It’s—it’s someone close to her, very close, and she’s just—she’s really not herself.” Now I
was glad we were dressed in black so the funeral story would be more believable.

“I don’t care what she is,” the mother said. “She’s got no right—”

“Her nephew,” I whispered. “It’s her favorite nephew. She can’t stand even being around—I mean, your kids, they remind her—”

The mother stared at Liz, her eyes narrowed.

“Since it happened, she’s been like—she has these outbursts . . .” I trailed off and raised my eyebrows, trying to make it sound like Liz was one step away from the county asylum.

“How old was the nephew?” the mother whispered.

“Four,” I said. “Only four years old. It was so tragic, it was—”

“My God, how did it happen?” the mother whispered.

But my imagination was suddenly exhausted. “I can’t talk about it,” I said, making my voice sound sorrowful. “I’m sorry, but it’s just too—I just can’t—”

“Sure, sure, I understand,” she said, patting my shoulder. “Well. We all have our days. Had a few myself. You can imagine, with this crowd.” She jerked her head toward the kids, who were watching her, openmouthed. “Tell your friend I’m sorry for her loss.” She turned and walked toward her children. She took the two smallest ones with the reddest hair on her lap and began talking softly to them. They were all quiet, listening, their eyes wandering back toward Liz, who was staring out the window.

I walked to my seat and sat down. I put my arm around Liz’s shoulders. For once, she didn’t flinch. She leaned against me and closed her eyes. We rode like that the rest of the way.

Right Now

The room was hidden from the rest of the house. It was the widow’s watch at the top, connected to a small staircase behind an oak closet in the bathroom, so small that it seemed made for children, not adults. “I
feel like Anne fucking Frank,” Liz muttered as we climbed into the space. I smiled. I was happy that Liz sounded like Liz again.

Prisms of light danced from the tiny triangular windows. Bottles of colored glass hung from the walls, casting violet shadows against wide, weathered planks that looked like whitewashed driftwood. In the center of the room was a narrow bed dressed in white. And above the bed, something we hadn’t been able to see from the street: a skylight.

There was a portable metal table against one wall, covered with a white cloth, and on the shelf above the table, a tape player; strains of Joni Mitchell singing “California” floated through the air. A woman younger than the doctor was standing by the table, assembling instruments, checking things over. She wore jeans, a white peasant top, and flip-flops. The doctor gestured toward her and said, “My assistant,” and I remembered: no names. When the woman turned toward us and smiled, my heart sank; she looked almost exactly like Marily Weiss, a girl at Elephant Beach High School who Liz hated with a passion because she had told Mrs. Jacovides, the home ec teacher, that Liz was trying to copy her answers on a quiz when Liz really wasn’t. One time, Marily came into the smoking bathroom by mistake—you could tell by looking at her that she’d never smoked a cigarette in her life—and Liz threatened to wrap her tongue around her tonsils for telling lies and started coming toward her, and Marily screamed and ran out of the bathroom without even taking a piss. I was hoping Liz wouldn’t notice the resemblance, but now she was lying on the bed while the doctor swabbed her arm with cotton, holding a needle in her hand. “Valium,” she explained. “Within five minutes or so it should be taking effect.” Liz was lying very still beneath the white sheet, staring with great interest at the skylight in the ceiling.

The doctor and her assistant slipped white coats on over their clothes, which made me feel better. It was still too quiet.

“Was that skylight always here?” I asked, staring at the slippery light pouring down.

The doctor turned toward me and smiled. “No, I had that put in when
I bought the house. It was much too dark in here because these windows are so small. I wanted natural light.”

I looked around at the colored bottles and the driftwood walls and suddenly I was wildly angry. I wanted to smash all the instruments on the metal table, smack the doctor hard and jolt that serene look out of her face, the calmness out of her eyes. It was great to talk about light and keeping women safe, but just because you covered it all up with candles and wind chimes and skylights didn’t mean nothing bad would ever happen. It didn’t mean that people wouldn’t get hurt or die. I heard a vague sound, like scratching in the walls, and I thought of the mice, mewling, hungry, waiting for everyone to go to bed so they could start scavenging. But maybe it wasn’t mice after all. Maybe it was the sound of the babies, little ghost babies huddled together for warmth, having no idea where they were. Frightened, crying for their mothers.

“Are you all right?” the doctor asked me, looking concerned.

“Just jim-fucking-dandy,” I said.

She looked at me for a long moment. Behind us, the assistant folded Liz’s clothes carefully and placed them on a shelf. I wondered if Liz noticed her resemblance to Marily Weiss and if she was too stoned to think about punching her in the face.

The doctor sighed, rolling up her sleeves, busying herself with the tray. “Women,” she said, shaking her head. “They’d rather you wrap it all up in dirty sheets and ribbons of blood. And we wonder why men treat us like dirt.” She spoke softly, her lips barely moving. But I heard every word. I started to speak, but then I heard Liz’s voice.

“Katie, where are you? Are you still here?” Her voice sounded loose, dreamy. The doctor and I walked toward the bed from opposite directions.

“You’re staying with me, right, Katie?” Liz turned her eyes on the doctor. “She can stay, can’t she?”

“Do you want to stay here with your friend or wait downstairs?” the doctor asked me. “There’s a small room, right across from the bathroom,
with books, magazines. One of us will come and get you when we’re done here.”

“She’s staying,” Liz said, closing her eyes. “Katie, man, tell her you’re staying here in the room with me. I love this room. I could live in this room. Katie, are you still here? Where are you?” I didn’t want to stay. I wanted to go home. I didn’t want to be in this room one more minute, but all day Liz had been slipping in and out of herself and I was afraid she might disappear completely if I left her.

“I’m here,” I said, so loudly the assistant looked up. She had almost the exact same snotty look on her face that Marily Weiss did most of the time. I hoped Liz wouldn’t open her eyes in the middle and see that look. “I’m here. What should I do?” I asked the doctor, feeling panicky. There weren’t any chairs in the room. I didn’t want to just stand there, watching. I wanted to close my eyes and when I opened them again, I wanted it to be over.

“You can stand behind her and massage her shoulders,” the doctor said briskly, moving down the length of the bed. “Help her relax, though she seems to be doing fine with the Valium. Yes, just like that. Just like that.”

I stood behind Liz, kneading her shoulders. Her flesh felt soft and light beneath my hands. In the background, Mick Jagger was singing “Wild Horses.” The first time I’d heard the song was at Liz’s house, in her bedroom, after we’d smoked a joint and she put the headphones over my ears and said, “Just listen, man, it’s like—like listening to a waterfall tripping over tiny stones in a stream.” I closed my eyes and started humming along to the music.

After

And then it was over almost before it began. I thought the whole thing would take hours. I thought everything would take hours; when I pictured Luke and me in his bed making love, his honey-colored skin
covering mine, it started out with golden light at the windows and ended with sunset colors crowding the sky. But then I remembered Liz telling us about her brief, passionate couplings with Cory McGill and how Nanny said her first time with Voodoo lasted as long as it took to drink an ice-cream soda. How long does it take to drink an ice-cream soda, even if you drag it out with a few cigarettes in between? A new thought occurred to me, that women had all this drama, all this waiting and hoping and crying over things we’d been told, raised on, warned about, these monumental milestones that ended up lasting only minutes in our lives and were never, ever as wonderful or horrible as you thought they would be.