Mosquitoland (15 page)

I smile-slash-glare at him, and—bloody hell, there's my cute face again. Strangely, I'm not as frustrated as I
want
to be. What I
want
to be is Beck's straw for two minutes. I swallow my last bite of burger (hoping he doesn't notice it took all of twenty seconds to inhale), then say, “I have a plan, and it is this. Step one, get to Cleveland. Step two, figure shit out. This is my plan.”

“Flawless, if I may say so.”

“You may.”

Walt interrupts with a colossal snore. It tapers off a little, but still, how he fell asleep in that position is beyond me.

“What's his story?” asks Beck.

I give him a brief rundown of what little I know of Walt: dead mom, likes “the shiny,” New Chicago, et cetera. Honestly, I'm stalling a little, buying time to consider Beck's offer to drive us the rest of the way. It's attractive for a few reasons, the main one being—well, I've never driven on the highway. I haven't driven much at all, for that matter. With only one good eye, it makes for quite the Evel-Knievel-motocross-ass-grabbing-death-defying experience. The stuff of YouTube legends, really.

Beck clears his throat. “So there's probably something you should know.”

Here we go
. Without meaning to, I reposition myself in the seat. My curiosity about Beck is suffocating, and it's just—I want so badly for him to be real, to be good, to be a person of major fucking substance and despair.

He looks me directly in the eye, leans in, and says, “Uncle Phil is a perv.”

At this, my brain splits into two very distinct factions: the first encourages me to gasp, to throw my hand over my mouth, to say
No, not Uncle Phil! Beck, darling, say it ain't so!
; the second sits in silence, unmoving, thoroughly disappointed.

“Total degenerate,” he continues. “At the last family reunion, he told everyone his bald spot was a solar panel for his sex machine.”

I sit in silence. Unmoving. Thoroughly disappointed. (The second faction appears to be winning out.)

“What?” he says, noticing my less-than-enthusiastic response. “I'm kidding. I mean, I'm not, Uncle Phil
is
a perv, but—”

“Beck.” I sigh, and it's heavy, because even though I don't know anything about this guy, I'd bet all the cash in the can he's on Team Pizzazz. So what then? What's holding me back from going with my gut?

Walt's Rubik's Cube falls from his lap. I pick it up and reach to turn off the radio.

“. . . and year out, the Cubs seem to get these great young prospects, only to watch them fizzle out, or never really reach their potential.”

I pull my hand back, leaving the radio on.

In my entire life, I've never once felt anything akin to a maternal instinct. On the baby fever scale, I check in from the tundra. Pretty typical for a sixteen-year-old, probably. But something about Walt has stirred me up, brought out a protective side I never knew existed. More wolfish than motherly perhaps, but still. Something. The same something that's holding me back from going with my gut. And while I don't think Beck would harm us, or even hinder us . . .

“You okay?” says Beck, watching me work things out.

I look at the Rubik's Cube in my hands and wonder when
me
became
us.
“We don't need you to get us anywhere,” I say.

Beck doesn't respond, and for just a moment, I am reminded of my odyssey's opening scene—Mim of the Past, alone on an empty Greyhound, marveling at the madness of the world, listening to the rain stampede across the metal roof like a herd of buffalo. Opening scenes are funny, because you never know which elements will change over time and which will stay the same. The world was, and is, mad. The rain was, and is, pouring. Looking at Walt, and yes, even Beck, I know one of my elements has definitely changed.

I've gone from me to us.

“I'm a junior at LSU.” Beck leans his head against the back of the seat. “Or—I would've been.”

How old is a college junior?
This is immediately followed by
Holy hell, what's wrong with me?
I suppose the first faction of my brain won't go down without a fight.

“Long story or short?” he says, closing his eyes.

“Long.”

And he begins, never once raising his head, never once opening his eyes. Walt's snoring, the radio, the rain—all of it fades while Beck talks.

Three years into a poli-sci major, he realized a) he hated poli-sci and b) he hated college. After a summer course in photography (here, I choked down a gag reflex), he discovered his “true passion” (another gag). His parents, divorced, did not approve. He took what little savings he had and purchased a one-way Greyhound ticket from Baton Rouge to Burlington, Vermont. It was to be “a photography pilgrimage.” (And once more.)

“My parents think I'm at school,” he says. “Big state school like that, it'll be another week, probably, before anyone realizes.” Lifting his head, he smiles, but his heart isn't in it. He unzips his duffel bag, pulls out the camera. We sit in silence for a few seconds while Beck takes pictures of the rain against the windshield.

“And what about the shiner?” I point to his black eye. This, being a milder version of what I'd like to ask—
how did you end up in the Independence police station, hmmmmm?

He trains the camera on a bug trapped between the windshield and the wiper blade. “I punched a guy. Twice, actually. He got me once in between.”

“Jane's Diner,” I whisper.

He nods, and begins a new story. And as soon as he starts, I know exactly how it will end.

The Coming Together of Ways

THE DOOR TO
the men's room was locked.

Beck stood, waiting in the hallway, when a young Hispanic girl exited the ladies' room next to him.
(19A and B must be mother and daughter, a beautiful Hispanic duo . . .)
“Her eyes,” said Beck, “were puffy and red, and I thought it was odd, but she was probably thirteen, and with girls that age, you just never know.” Seconds later, Beck saw a grown man come out of the same ladies' room. “His eyes were strange, like glazed over or something . . .”
(I notice his eyes are wet and shiny, but it's not from crying or the rain.)
The man shrugged, pointed to the locked men's room, said, “It couldn't wait.” Minutes later, Beck entered the men's room, did his business, and, while washing his hands, peered into the mirror. Behind him was a single stall. He frowned, and stepped back into the hallway. When he knocked on the ladies' room, there was no answer. He poked his head inside, gave a faint, “Hello?” Still, nothing. Confident no one was inside, Beck entered the ladies' room, letting the door close behind him. “It just felt odd, you know?” said Beck, his camera dangling from his neck. “Like—dim, or something.”
(The bathroom dissolves into a reddish hue, the corners dimming like the vignette of an old art house film.)
Beck looked around, noted the single stall—
one stall.
He remembered the look on the face of the girl only minutes ago, puffy and red from crying, and he felt the blood rush from his face to his gut.
(His words are ice. They hit my gut first, then spread in all directions . . .)
Turning, Beck exited the ladies' room, walked down the hall, and into the main dining area. “I saw the girl first thing,” said Beck. “She was sitting in a booth with her mom and another couple. Her mom was chitchatting across the table, but the little girl—that girl wasn't saying a word. She looked shell-shocked.”
(We'd seen the footage of the hyena and the gazelle, and it always ended the same
.
)

When Beck scanned the room, he found the man sitting on a barstool, eating pie, “as if nothing had happened.”
(“Nothing will happen,” he says, his voice thick. “Nothing you don't want.”)

Beck walked calmly to the bar.

Tapped the man on the shoulder.

“AND I PUNCHED
him. Twice. In front of a cop.”

“What?”

Beck adjusts the focus of his camera, goes back to taking pictures while he talks. “It actually ended up turning out okay. The cop was this gung-ho idiot starved for action.”

“Randy. With the huge head?”

“Yeah, you know him?”

“Sort of. No, not really. It doesn't matter, go on.”

Beck raises an eyebrow and scans through the photos he just shot. He hasn't met my eyes for a while now, and I wonder if there's something he's not telling me. There are only so many angles a person can get of rain on a windshield.

“Officer Randy interrogated us,” he says, “and pretty much sorted it out. I got a lifetime ban from Greyhound for fighting, and spent my last few dollars at a Red Roof Inn in Union last night. They called me in this morning for some follow-up questions, then turned me loose.”

“And what about Poncho Man?”

Beck stops taking pictures, but doesn't look at me. “How'd you know he was wearing a poncho?”

I hear my mother's voice in my ear.
Tell him.
“I just—I remember him. I remember a creepy-looking guy, is all. In a poncho.”

Beck takes a second before he answers my question. “He's in jail.”

“They arrested him?”

“Had to. The little girl spoke up.”

I look out at the rain and think back to the flashing blue lights in the parking lot of Jane's Diner. I
knew
I wasn't his first. And if I'm honest with myself, I knew I wouldn't be his last.

But I could've been.

I could have said something. I could have saved that little girl myself, made it so it never happened. But my Objective had come first. And now—because of
me
—some little girl will never be the same.

I slip on Albert's aviators and let the tears come, hard and heavy. Life can be a real son of a bitch sometimes, bringing things back around long after you've said good-bye. Not only am I selfish, I'm a coward. That little girl spoke up. She did what I couldn't do.

She did what you
wouldn't
do, Mary.

“We should go,”
says Walt out of nowhere.

Honestly, I'd forgotten he was even here. I look at him—he's wide-awake, smiling like a kid on Christmas morning—and fight the urge to throw my arms around his neck, just kiss his cheeks for all of eternity.

Beck looks at me quizzically, then back at Walt. “Go where, buddy?”

“To the game,” Walt says, turning up the radio.

“. . . and now that the rain has finally stopped, I can't imagine a more perfect day at the ballpark. So once again, if any listeners are interested, we still have seven innings of baseball to play, and I'm being told there are plenty of tickets available.”

At that moment, the rain stops.

Walt looks up and points through the windshield. The entire city of Cincinnati is spread before us in a breathtaking panorama. I take in this new clearness of the day with my good eye, in absolute awe of the sudden and wonderful metamorphosis. It's a landscape worthy of documentation.

“Beck,” I whisper.

“On it,” he says, raising his camera, snapping away.

How strange—only minutes ago, Beck was aiming in the same direction, documenting something else altogether. The city, in all its grandeur, had been there the whole time, hidden by the storm.

Walt claps his hands, squeals, bounces in his seat. Before I have a chance to settle him down, Beck turns his camera from the Cincinnati skyline to Walt, and for just a moment, the scene eases into slow motion. Beck's smile is intense and sincere, a smile with, not a smile at. Mom used to say you could tell a lot by the way a person treats the innocent, and Walt is nothing if not innocence personified. Ricky was, too. I think about Ty Zarnstorff and all his little bully clones, united in their mutual disdain for kids who strayed from the pack. No matter that the stray was harmless, gullible, weak. No matter that Ricky eventually gave up trying to make friends and settled into a pathetic desire to be left alone. No matter that I was a friend to Ricky that one summer, then, God save me, ignored him on the playground, and in class, and in the cafeteria, and in the gym. Son of a bitch, I can't believe I did that. And my instincts are no better off now. Rather than join in the laughter, the unadulterated joy, as Beck did, my knee-jerk reaction to Walt's excitement was to calm him down. Minimize his embarrassment. Minimize my own.

I turn to look out the window, smiling my own smile, more timid than I'd like. And I cry. I cry thinking about the Rickys and Walts of the world, smiling in the face of all those Ty Zarnstorffs. I cry because I've never smiled like that, not once in my life.

I cry because I love. For some reason, I always have.

Our Only Color

September 3—late afternoonish

Dear Isabel,

“Your mother and I are getting divorced.”

Seven words. All it took to wash away the millions that came before. I'd heard them in movies, on TV, read them in books. I'd heard them probably dozens of times in my life, yet somehow, never . . .
in my life
, you know? Mom said a few words about “taking care of herself.” Dad nodded during that part. Ironically, this was the most evident display of unity I'd seen from them in years. After Mom's bit, Dad gave a little speech about doing what was right for our family, no matter how difficult, and they hadn't worked out all the specifics yet, but it didn't change how much they loved me, and blah, blah, blah. It was the kind of speech where the first line was the only one that mattered.
Your mother and I are getting divorced
.
Done. Ball game. That
is
the speech.

The night they told me, I barely slept. And when I did, it was uneasy. (This letter contains no Reasons, so if you'd like to skip it, Iz, go right ahead. Honestly, I'm not even sure who these words are for: you or me.)

In a dream, I sat on the edge of my parents' bed, alone in their room. My stomach burned. And my throat, too, like lava. I could feel my tongue forming words, and while I sensed their urgency, I couldn't hear them. Something fell from my hands, landed on the carpet with a dull thud. I looked down and noticed my bare feet—
how had they grown so old?
I wondered.

Rising from the bed, I saw those old feet sink into the carpet. I kept a close eye on them, because they weren't mine, and you just can't trust someone else's feet.

Like a rusty freighter on the Atlantic, I drifted across the room. It took hours, days, years even. By the time my hip nudged the edge of my mother's vanity, I'd come to terms with my old age. Raising my head by inches, I saw the red wood of the vanity's curved legs, the cabinets with those shiny brass handles, and resting on top, my mother's makeup tray. Normally, the tray was full of her favorite perfumes, blushes, eyeliners, and concealers. But just then, it held only one item: her lipstick. The very lipstick she'd used on my one and only makeover.

In the dream, I could feel the vanity's tall mirror looming.
I must look up
, I thought.
I've spent a lifetime, crossed an ocean to look up
.

I looked up.

I laughed, cried, laughed.

I am not me
, I said to the ocean, to the old feet, to the face in the mirror. And it was true. In the dream, the reflection staring back was not my own.

It was my mother's.

I raised my chin, my eyebrows and hands. I watched the chin, eyebrows, and hands of my mother in the mirror. I opened my mouth. Her mouth opened. I winked. She winked back. I spoke, she spoke.

Mary can't possibly understand what I'm trying to say
, we said.

Fine
, we replied.
She'll understand this
 . . .

We picked up the lipstick. Calmly, we removed the cap and drew on our face. A Ferris wheel. Fireworks. A diamond ring, a bottle, a record. As soon as we finished each one, the drawings disappeared. We drew faster, a thousand things, each one more indistinct than the last.

The final drawing was more methodical.

In the mirror, our hands and face came together to paint the sky. Left cheek first, one decisive stroke. We drew the two-sided arrow, brought it to a point at the bridge of our nose—then the line across our forehead. The third brushstroke mirrored the first: an arrow on the right cheek. We drew a thick line from forehead to chin, and finally, a dot inside both arrows.

It disappeared, so we drew it again. And again, and again, like some sad automaton, doomed to an existence of unvaried motion.

Finally, it stuck.

We dropped the lipstick to the floor, where it splashed between our old feet. Our face was old, too, all the blood drained away.

The war paint is our only color
, we said.

The next morning, I woke up in a sweat.

From my bedroom, I could hear Dad down the hall, talking in low tones. I got up, and without even bothering to put on pants, crept toward my parents' bedroom. Their door was cracked open just enough to see inside. Dad sat on the edge of his bed, talking on the phone. His voice sounded tired, and even from my limited vantage point, I could see the outlines of dark rings under his eyes. I could see that he was wearing the same clothes as yesterday. He said good-bye, then hung up and sat there for a second. I pushed open the door.

“Hi, honey,” he said, turning sideways. “I didn't know you were awake.”

“Dad,” I said simply. It was enough.

He began talking, using words that made no sense at all. “She had to leave.” I stood in the door, half-naked, holding my breath, rearranging what truths I thought I knew. “It'll only be for a while, until she figures things out.” His words were oblong, misshapen. They fit into none of my known boxes, so I was forced to create a new one. In red pen, it was labeled
G
R
O
W
U
P
. “She wanted to say good-bye, but this was for the best.” As he talked, I stepped inside this new box, pulled the lid shut over my head, hugged my knees to my chest, screamed my guts out, surrendered myself to all the worst things from all the worst places.

“Mim? You okay?”

My box melted. “Am I
okay
?” I stared at him for a second, unable to buy . . . any of it. Across the room, I saw Mom's vanity—the tall mirror, the red wood, the curved legs. My heart sank when I saw the makeup tray. I swept across the room, careful not to look at my feet. The dream was still too close.

“Mim, put on some clothes, let's talk about this.”

The makeup tray—usually full of her perfumes, blushes, eyeliners, concealers—was empty. All of it gone, save one item: the lipstick. It sat on the tray like unwanted leftovers.

“Mim,” said Dad.

I grabbed the lipstick off the tray and turned for the door.

“Mim.”

But I was gone.

Back in my room, I stood in front of my own rarely used mirror, recalled the war paint from my dream, and began.

And it felt good.

I do not know why.

For the next two months, we stayed in that house, during which time a number of things happened, including but not limited to (1) I found the words
ten easy steps to a ten-day divorce
left in the Google search bar of the family computer, and (2) my parents were divorced twelve days later, compelling me to wonder which of the “easy steps” my father had botched, and (3) Kathy, who had once waited on us at Denny's, started coming around the house, and (4) I received no less than one hollow-sounding letter a week from my mother, assuring me that all was well, that I would be seeing her soon, etc., etc., which led me to (5) beg Dad if I could live with Mom in Cleveland, to which he responded (6) Out of the question, to which I responded (7) What the hell is going on, to which he (8) married Kathy and moved us way the hell away from Mom, bringing us to (9) when Mom's letters stopped, her phone was disconnected, and I was left 110 percent alone in this world, an island unto myself, a sad, lost little person living in one mosquito-ridden sweat storm of an ass-backwards state.

My whole fucking world had fallen apart, Isabel, that's the long and short of it. And no matter where I turned, I got no answers. For a while, I was pissed at my mom. Honestly, I could have survived all of it, even the
BREAKING NEWS
, if I could've counted on that
one
letter—hollow-sounding or not—per week. Just one.

But I'm beginning to suspect something, and it's almost too awful for words. Among the reasons behind Dad's recent actions (and there are
many
), what if one of them—God, what if one of them is her disease?

What if Dad got rid of my mom
because
she's sick?

Signing off,

Mary Iris Malone,
An Island Unto Myself