Did I Say You Could Go

by Melanie Gideon

  Gemma insisted Marley sleep in her bed so she could keep an eye on her. Marley, so deprived of physical affection, spooned her, her hand around Gemma’s waist all night long, as if she was afraid Gemma would vanish. That love would vanish.

  In the mornings, she’d wake weeping and Gemma would hold her in her arms until she’d cried herself out.

  “I’m so sorry,” Marley repeated, over and over again, like a mantra.

  “You’ve done nothing wrong. This has nothing to do with you, Marls, nothing,” Gemma told her.

  Marley’s shame was the most painful thing for Gemma to witness. She hated Ruth the most for this, forcing her daughter to carry the burden of her sins.

  “She’s doing really well,” Gemma says to Ed. “Stronger. She gets a little more of herself back every day.”

  “I just can’t believe all this. It’s so hard to fathom what Ruth did to Bee.” His voice breaks. “I didn’t know it was so bad for Marley. She didn’t tell me. She kept so much from me.”

  Suspecting Ruth’s claims that Ed was a sex addict were lies, she’d asked Ed about it. He was horrified at the rumors she’d been spreading about him—none of them true.

  “I should have sensed what was going on. I should have gotten her out of there years ago,” he says.

  “It’s not your fault, Ed. Ruth was a master at deception. At making you feel like you were the one who was crazy.”

  Thank God she hadn’t told Ruth about her father’s diagnosis. Gemma can only imagine how Ruth would have weaponized that information to make her even more helpless and dependent.

  “Whatever attention I gave her, it was never enough,” says Gemma.

  “And it never would have been. I hope you’re not blaming yourself for any of this,” Ed says.

  But something set Ruth off. Something triggered her, pushed her over the edge. Was it Simon?

  Simon has been texting Gemma. Messages of support. Concern. And an invitation for coffee this very morning that she hasn’t yet responded to.

  There are things you don’t know. Things that have happened, he’d said. Had Ruth tried to ruin Simon’s life? Had she tried to destroy him, too?

  “So, she’ll be on the one p.m.?” Ed confirms.

  “I wish she’d let me drive her.”

  “She wants to take the bus. She said it makes her feel independent. It’s important to her that she leave Oakland on her own terms.”

  “It’s due in at two thirty-five,” she says.

  “Great. We’re all ready for her.”

  “We’re going to miss her terribly,” says Gemma.

  * * *

  Gemma texts Simon. I’ll be there in twenty. If you still want me.

  Corner of Thirty-eighth and Iverson, number 201, he texts back immediately.

  She grabs her keys and purse. “Girls!” she yells. “I’m going out for breakfast. There’s cereal and Eggos. I’ll be back in a little bit.”

  “Wait,” shouts Bee. She and Marley tear down the stairs.

  Bee throws her arms around Gemma. “Where are you going, Mummery?”

  Gemma hesitates, then says, “Simon’s.”

  “Really?” Bee wags her eyebrows at Gemma. “You haven’t seen him in ages. Does he know you’re coming?”

  “Yes, sweetheart, I was invited.”

  Gemma asks Marley, “Are you all packed?”

  Marley couldn’t bear to go back to her house, so Gemma had taken her to H&M to get some new clothes. At first, she’d asked Gemma’s permission about everything. Is this top okay? How about these jeans?

  “It’s your choice,” Gemma had said. “It’s totally up to you.”

  That’s when she realized Marley had not been allowed to choose her own clothes. That explained all the Eileen Fisher. Poor Marley never stood a chance.

  When they got home, Bee had played stylist and Marley put on a fashion show. Marley was so beautiful, looking her age in a high-waisted skirt and cropped sweater. Bee and Gemma had applauded for her, and Marley practically levitated she was so happy.

  “I’m all set,” says Marley.

  “And you’re sure you want to take the bus? You can change your mind. I can drive you.”

  “I’m sure.”

  * * *

  “Come in,” says Simon.

  Simon’s place is eclectic and cozy. A well-worn leather couch. A collection of vinyl records arranged alphabetically in a refurbished 1970s credenza. Framed posters from the Fillmore: Jimi Hendrix, the Yardbirds and Country Joe, The Grateful Dead and Big Mama Thornton.

  A gangly teenage boy sits at the kitchen table, a bagel on a plate in front of him, cut neatly into four sections.

  “Gemma, this is my son, Tom.”

  Gemma can see the resemblance. He and Simon have the same square jaw. The same dark curls. But Simon’s got thirty pounds easy on Tom, and Tom’s cheekbones jut out from his face like twin buttes.

  “Hello,” he says rather formally.

  “Hi, Tom.” Gemma feels a rush of affection for him. “I’m so glad to finally meet you.”

  Tom doesn’t answer her. “Can I start?” he asks his father.

  “Of course,” says Simon.

  Tom tucks in. His manners are impeccable. He wipes his lips after each small bite. He eats the pieces of the bagel clockwise.

  “Coffee?” asks Simon.

  “Yes, please.”

  Simon pours them both a cup and they sit on the couch in the living room.

  “Okay if I turn on some music, buddy?” Simon asks.

  “Yo-Yo Ma’s Bach Cello Suites,” requests Tom.

  “You got it,” says Simon.

  “Impressive taste for a sixteen-year-old,” says Gemma.

  The sound of the cello fills the room and Tom closes his eyes. His fingers pluck the air. One-two-three. One-two-three.

  “He’s not your usual sixteen-year-old,” says Simon proudly.

  “I’m neurodiverse,” says Tom, his eyes still closed. “I’m an autistic person, not a person who has autism. There’s a difference. Autism isn’t an affliction. It’s who I am. I don’t need fixing. I was born this way.”

  “That’s right, bud,” says Simon.

  Tom’s eyes snap open as a car rumbles by. “Subaru WRX with a boxer motor.” He folds his napkin. “Can I play Fortnite?”

  Simon glances at the clock. “Go ahead.”

  Tom walks past them, sniffing the air. “She doesn’t smell like anything.” He goes to his room and shuts the door.

  There’s complete silence for a minute or two and then Gemma, stunned, whispers, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tom isn’t a strong test-taker,” confesses Simon. “If he attends college he’ll have to go to a test-optional school.”

  “But you brought him to Study Right. He got five hundreds on his PSATs.”

  “He’s never taken his PSATs.”

  “You lied about that?”

  Simon nods miserably.

  “You said he went to Athenian. Was the life of the party. Gets invited everywhere. Did you lie about that, too?”

  Simon grimaces. “I guess that’s what I’m hoping will happen. He doesn’t go to Athenian, he goes to Jupiter Academy in Berkeley. It’s a school for neurodiverse kids. He has a hard time making friends, but things are getting a little better on that front. He actually went bowling a few weeks ago with some kids from anime club. It’s a great school. Besides academics, they work on social interactions, time management, transition skills. The whole goal is to prepare the kids for independent lives. That’s what we’re working toward.”

  His gaze drifts across the room and lands on the mantel. A photo of Tom as a toddler, sitting on Simon’s lap.

  “But why did you lie about him? Did you think I couldn’t deal with it? That I’d dump you?”

  “You wouldn’t have been the first.”

  “His mother?”

  “She left when he was three.”

  I feel your pain. Gemma despises that cliché, it’s
so maudlin and hollow, but in this moment it’s true. She actually feels Simon’s pain. It pierces her skin and burrows down into her.

  “And you thought I’d leave, too? You thought I was that shallow?”

  “It’s more complicated than that.” Simon blows out a breath. “I answered a Craigslist ad for an acting job.”

  “An acting job? You’re an actor?”

  “Yeah, or I used to be.”

  “What kind of an acting job?” Gemma’s mind reels. She’s truly going down the rabbit hole.

  “Hold on.” Simon grabs his computer, opens a tab, and hands her the laptop.

  Seeking male actor for the role of X-ray technician/single dad. Must be over six feet. Age 35 to 50. You are fit, handsome, charming, funny, educated, and erudite. If you have to look up the definition of erudite you need not apply. Pay EXCELLENT if you meet all the qualifications.

  “Ruth placed the ad. I answered it. I fit the part, I guess.”

  Gemma’s brain contracts. Labor pains, she thinks. The struggle to push the truth out. To make sense of it. She presses her fingers to her temples, trying to relieve the pressure. “So you’re not an X-ray technician?”

  “No.” Simon’s eyes pool with shame. “Gem, you have to understand I was desperate. Tom’s school is so expensive and I hadn’t booked a job in months. We have a wonderful sitter, Clyde, who takes care of Tom when I’m not here.” He gulps. “It all adds up. And sometimes, it’s just overwhelming.”

  “You’re an actor,” Gemma says flatly.

  “Ruth offered so much money. I couldn’t turn it down.”

  “And what was the acting job she hired you for?”

  “I tried to give the money back. I told her I couldn’t do it any longer and our deal was over. I hadn’t counted on what happened. That I’d like you so much.”

  “What was the job, Simon? Tell me,” Gemma demands.

  He exhales audibly. “To meet her best friend, make her fall for me, then dump her. Break her heart.”

  Gemma gasps.

  “She threatened to expose me if I told you the truth. I wanted to come clean so many times, but I didn’t see how it would work. If you found out she’d hired me, that I’d taken money from her, that’d be the end of me. The end of us.”

  So Simon was a practice run for Cam. First Ruth tried the boyfriend hoax on Gemma. Sent a fake, but real, potential boyfriend her way. Had that boyfriend lure her in, gain her trust, and make her fall for him. But something went wrong. He fell for her, too, and he refused to dump her. So when Ruth decided to run the same con on Bee, she’d learned her lesson. She didn’t hire a real boyfriend, instead she invented a boyfriend who could be easily erased with a simple tap of the delete key.

  Goddamned Ruth.

  Gemma is not unaware of her shortcomings. She has a history of trusting the wrong people. Being seduced by money and class. She’s easily persuaded. Easily duped. Okay, let’s just say it, she’s a mark. Julie Winters and Ruth Thorne are fine examples of that. But she’s no angel. She’s also capable of cruelty. Of turning her back on others and walking away without a second thought. A protective device that only grew stronger with Ash’s death. A bulwark against the pain she knows is coming for her. But that’s no way to live, is it? Waiting for the next catastrophe?

  “When were you going to tell me?”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you for weeks. Since Bee’s—” He drifts off.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  He shrugs. “Forgive me?”

  Tom’s door opens and he pops his head out. “Tesla Model S. Normally silent, but occasionally you can hear the compressor releasing air to regenerate the humidifier. Did you hear it?”

  “Sorry, I missed it. We were talking,” says Simon.

  “Is she going to be here for lunch? Because I’m not sure we have enough hot dogs for lunch. Does she eat other things?”

  “Yeah, buddy, she eats other things. Like steak burritos, and tea leaf salad, and soy lattes with two pumps of vanilla.” He gives her a sad smile.

  Tom shuts the door.

  “We were in trouble and I panicked. I’d do anything for my son, anything. But I understand if you move on. I do. I would. I’m an asshole. I’ve deceived you and betrayed you. Could you ever trust me again?”

  Gemma has been betrayed. By Ruth. By Simon. By life. Ash had been taken from her, and she almost lost Bee. And since then, she’s been living in this sort of in-between place, unsure if it was safe to return. But now she has a decision to make. She can continue to keep her distance or she can rejoin this messy, flawed, and exquisite world. Embrace its dizzying ascendances and jaw-dropping plummets. Its swerves and curves. Its open road.

  Simon gestures to her coffee. “Can I top that off for you?”

  She hesitates a moment and then hands him her cup.

  RUTH

  Ruth watches Gemma and Simon through the picture glass window and feels nothing. She exists both inside and outside of herself. She’s the actor and the audience in a police procedural. Hiding out in her car, a bag of almonds on the passenger seat beside her, a cooler on the floor.

  She’s been surveilling Gemma for a week now. Following her at a safe distance on her daily errands and hoping for a Marley sighting. Finally, she was rewarded a few days ago. Gemma had taken Marley to the Emeryville mall. To H&M. Crap, disposable shit, but Marley was practically leaping around with joy.

  Oh, the look on her face! Like she’d just been granted clemency and had been released into the world after years of unjust captivity. Marley had blocked her. Marley had canceled her. She might never speak to her darling daughter again.

  HappilyEverAfter—that backstabbing bitch. I don’t think you want to make any more enemies than you already have, Mr. Nunez had said to her at back-to-school night. Any number of people could have wanted to take her out.

  And just how had HappilyEverAfter done it? How had she accessed her computer? That gif. That link that she’d been stupid enough to click on. The intruder was on her front step, and Ruth had just flung open the door and let her in.

  A daughter is the happy memories of the past, the joyful moments of the present, and the hope and promise of the future. Hahahahaha.

  Gemma’s Camry is parked a few car lengths in front of her. Ruth grips the steering wheel, fighting her urge to ram into it.

  After that reunion dinner at Ruth’s house last August, after the apologies, the pleas for forgiveness, the pledges of loyalty, the Mango Lime Chiffon Cake, Ruth did some google searches, watched some YouTube videos, and went to Target, where she purchased a disposable foil turkey pan, a headlamp, and a wrench.

  Then she drove to Gemma’s. She tiptoed up her driveway and kneeled next to her Toyota Camry. She put the wrench in the turkey pan and slid it under the car. Then she switched on her headlamp, lay on her back, and slid under the car, too.

  She loosened the drain plug with the wrench. At first the oil just dribbled into the pan, but within seconds it became a steady stream. When she’d drained most of the oil, she tightened the plug again, but not all the way, so it would look like the oil had been leaking for a while.

  Ruth felt proud of herself. One video on how to change your oil would have sufficed, but she watched five, just to be sure. She dumped the full tray of oil at the base of the magnolia tree in Gemma’s yard. She watched, fascinated, as the grass absorbed the oil. It made a sucking sort of sound.

  The next morning when Gemma called, I think I just blew the head gasket in my car! Ruth suggested maybe it was time to buy a car.

  “I can’t afford a new car,” Gemma had said.

  Ruth had paused, as if she were thinking, as if she hadn’t already priced out the latest Camrys. “I can,” she told her, indebting Gemma to her once again.

  She hadn’t known that would be one of the few high spots of their eight-month-long renewed friendship. After that it was a slow descent to the bottom. To this very moment. Abandoned by everybody. On the run, living in her car
like a poor, homeless person.

  Well, not quite poor. And not quite living in her car: she’s taken a suite at the Four Seasons in San Francisco. Ruth retrieves an open bottle of Les Belles Vignes from her cooler, pulls out the cork, and takes a long draught. She doesn’t taste the gooseberry and flint notes. She’s drinking for volume, not palate.

  Goodbye Gemma. Goodbye Bee. Goodbye Marley, who thinks she’s finally free.

  She eats seven almonds then drifts down the street in her Model S.

  BEE

  Bee and Marley climb into the backseat.

  “It’s like the old days,” says her mother, smiling at them in the rearview mirror. “When you were both in booster seats.”

  Bee’s wearing the Hello Kitty sweatshirt that Marley gave her. She feels like the little girl she once was, back when she and Marley were bessies, before backs were turned and doors were closed and friendships severed.

  How shallow she was. How loathsome she’d acted. Would Marley ever truly forgive her?

  Her mother punches Concord Trailways Station into her GPS.

  “You’re sure you don’t want me to drive you?” she asks Marley. “I just checked. There’s no traffic. I could have you there in a jiff.”

  Marley shakes her head.

  “The bus station it is, then.”

  Bee won’t be going back to Hillside in the fall; she’ll be attending Oakland Tech. She can’t wait. It’s way bigger than Hillside, more than five hundred kids in each class. Hopefully, her history won’t follow her there. Everybody at Hillside knows she’s the so-called unidentified daughter who was catfished and cyberbullied into trying to kill herself. Tech will be a new start.

  “I wish you could stay. Come to Tech with me. Move in with us,” Bee whispers to Marley.

  She’s broached this idea with Marley nearly every day she’s been with them but knows it’ll never happen. Of course she’s going to live in Sacramento with her father. That doesn’t stop Bee from wishing for it, though.

  Marley gives her a sad face.