I just got out and stood there on the street, with the door of her car open, kind of bent forward and looking back in at her like I wished I didn’t have to go. Because I wished I didn’t have to go. Out of the corners of my eyes I saw people stop to stare at her mother’s crazy half-yellow Mercedes, but they weren’t anybody I knew.
“Molly, Molly, Molly,” Etta sang from her car seat in the back. She was nervous because I was going, and I knew her well enough to be able to tell.
“I’ll come around and get you after I’ve talked to her,” Brooke said to me. It sounded like a nice, polite way to say “Go ahead and close the door and go now, so we can get on with this.” And then, to the baby, she said, “We’ll see Molly soon, honey. We’ll come back for her. She’s just going to get a coffee and then we’ll see her again.”
“Okay,” I said, but I didn’t close the door and we didn’t get on with anything.
“Oh,” she said. “You need a couple dollars for a coffee?”
“That would be very nice,” I said. “Thank you.”
But that wasn’t why I didn’t close the door. I actually hadn’t even thought of that yet. She handed me a five-dollar bill, and I said thank you again, but I still didn’t close her car door.
“Seriously,” she said. “I’d like to get this over with.”
That made a lot of sense to me, because it made me think of how much better I’d feel when we were driving out of town again and it was all over. I didn’t say anything, because my mouth wasn’t working very well right about then, but I did close her door and then I walked into the coffee place.
There was a clock hanging behind the counter, which I already knew because I knew the place, and it was around 11:30. I breathed a little more and a little deeper, because I figured everybody I knew would be at school. But the minute the door swung closed behind me I saw my science teacher sitting at a little round table right in front of me with his wife.
“Molly,” he said.
“Hey,” I said.
I put my head down and looked at the linoleum and tried to get around his table, but he just kept talking.
“Where’ve you been?” he asked me. He said, “We haven’t seen you for ages.”
I wondered if he knew and, if he knew, how much he knew. I wondered what kind of story had gone around about me since I’d left home. People must’ve noticed that my whole family still lived there in town. Well, not my whole family, but everybody except me. Did they think I ran away or something, or did they know the whole truth? Or did my family have some kind of story to make them look better than the actual truth would make them seem? I had no idea, so I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t want to say much anyway.
“LA.” That was all I said to him. And I tried to walk away again.
“Well, you look great,” he said. “You’ve lost a lot of weight, haven’t you?”
But he said that like it was a good thing, which felt weird to me, because it showed me how much he didn’t know. He was about forty or fifty pounds overweight, so I guess he just figured everybody has all the food they want anytime they want it, so if they get thinner it’s because they wanted to. Because they tried.
I didn’t answer, so he asked, “How did you get so slim?”
“Starving,” I said.
And this next part was weird, but they both smiled at me, like they still thought this was a really great thing to be able to say.
“Tell me about it,” his wife said, even though we had only ever seen each other from a distance and she’d never talked to me before. “It’s so hard to stay on a diet. I don’t know how you managed.”
I had no idea how to hack through all that distance between where their heads were and the way I’d been living, so I just smiled and walked away from them.
I walked up to the counter and ordered a latte, because that had a lot of milk in it, and I hadn’t eaten anything. Brooke would’ve bought me breakfast, but I’d been too queasy to eat any.
“Can I get the key to your bathroom?” I asked the girl behind the counter. Weirdly, I didn’t know her, so she must’ve been a new hire or something.
She gave me the key and I told her my name so she could write it on the cup. I had to walk right by my science teacher’s table to get to the bathroom.
“It was good to see you again, Molly,” he said.
And I completely decided right then that he didn’t know the real truth, because he wasn’t acting like any of this was a tragic thing. I stopped because I was confused about something, and all of a sudden I couldn’t walk and be confused at the same time.
“How come you’re not in school?” I asked him.
“It’s Sunday,” he said.
“Oh. Is it?”
Then I got a little embarrassed because most people know those simple things like what day it is.
I let myself into the bathroom with the key and looked at myself in the mirror, and what I saw was just a regular girl. Clean clothes, clean hair, clean face. Thin enough to look like I was trying to be a fashion model. But the look felt like a fake, because I knew that’s not who I really was at all. I felt like I was wearing a normal-girl costume. Like I was trying to fool everybody about my life.
I looked away from the mirror and used the bathroom and washed my hands.
And then I stepped out of the bathroom and ran right into Gail. I mean banged right into her hard enough to almost knock her off-balance.
“Molly,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“Nothing,” I said, which was a stupid answer.
My heart was hammering around in there, and I could feel my face getting hot and tingly, which meant it was turning red because I was embarrassed. And the redder it got, the more she would see how embarrassed I was, and I knew it, so that made me even more embarrassed. And I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. I mean, I was literally looking away, kind of desperate, like I had to do that to save my life. I could see her hair out of the corner of my eye so I knew she still wore it slicked back with product and, like, purposeful comb marks, but other than that I can’t even tell you if she looked good to me anymore, because I literally didn’t even look.
She had just been walking up to the counter, to order I guess, and she was with Jason Miller, which was just too weird for my brain to process.
“You look great,” she said. “You lost a lot of weight.”
That I decided I couldn’t forgive. I forgave my science teacher for saying it—in fact, there was nothing to forgive with him, because I never really blamed him for saying it, because he didn’t know. But Gail knew what I’d been through. Then again, I guess there were a lot of things I couldn’t forgive Gail for.
“I was just leaving,” I said.
And I walked out the door without my latte, which I had already paid for. I had no idea where I was going, but I had to get away.
Then, as I was walking along really fast with my head down, I realized that in a minute the new girl barista was going to call my name and say my drink was ready, and then Gail would know I’d walked out without it. And then she would know I hadn’t just been leaving at all.
My face burned hotter and hotter the more I thought about it, but, like everything else in my life, it was a done-deal disaster and there was nothing I could do to make it right.
Chapter Nineteen
Brooke: The Devil
I was taking Etta out of her car seat. To take her up to the house with me.
That’s when I noticed my hands were shaking.
It came as a surprise to me. Because, as my mother tended to say, I didn’t have a dog in this fight.
At first I wrote it off to the general stress of anticipating having words with a stranger. But, you know what? I’m pretty damned good at that. I’m no coward about such things. I’ll talk to anybody about anything, provided there’s no actual threat of physical violence.
I lifted Etta into my arms. She caught on to my worry. I could feel her take it into herself. Like a
contagion. Like a virus that needed no time at all to incubate.
“Where Molly?” she asked in a whiny voice.
“We’ll see her soon, honey.”
I started up the walkway.
The house was gray. Almost a dark gray, which seemed fitting somehow. Like some kind of statement from its occupants. Or from the house, regarding its occupants.
The window trim was white, but also filthy from years of weather. It was not a shabby or poor house. It was large and fairly new. But little if any pride showed through in the care that had been taken of it. The yard was overgrown, the windows streaked with months of old rain.
“Where Molly?” Etta asked again.
I almost snapped at her.
I didn’t. I stopped myself in time.
We were both nervous. And we had melded our nervousness into being nervous together. But we were nervous over two entirely different issues. And she could only tell me what was on her mind.
I stopped walking for a second or two. And it came over me. What was really at stake here. I had a lot of my worldview riding on this moment. I was about to find out if the world was really a place where a mother would put her child out on the street for no good reason.
The idea that I had almost snapped at my daughter when she was to blame for nothing . . . the pain at the thought of my almost hurting her in that small way . . . I guess it just brought it all together for me.
Being forcibly separated from my daughter had been the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Hands down. If Molly had done something horrible, that would be a bad thing to find out. Because I was traveling with her. But what if she hadn’t? That would be even worse. How would I fit that into my view of what was possible in the world? Where could I file it in my brain?
“We’re going to go talk to Molly’s mother,” I said to Etta.
Gently. Because she was my daughter. And that, after all, is a sacred trust.
I walked up onto the porch and knocked.
At first, no reply.
As I waited I was looking through the front window. Not peering in like a Peeping Tom. Just seeing what I could see from the doormat. The place was packed to overflowing with knickknacks and little bits of statuary. Vases and ornately framed photos. If the whole house held true to what I saw of the living room, I couldn’t imagine how a family of people would even fit in there.
I got a deep, sinking feeling at the idea that no one would answer the door. Then what would we do? It was an outcome I hadn’t thought to anticipate.
I knocked again, and at almost that exact same moment the door swung inward.
The woman who stood in the doorway looked nothing like Molly. She was small and slight, with perfectly straight blonde hair. Pinned up in the back, with every hair just so. She wore an apron over a polka-dot housedress. There was something pixie-like about her. She looked like an old photograph of a model housewife from a black-and-white 1950s laundry detergent ad, except in color. Well. Marginally in color. Her dress was gray, like the house.
She smiled at Etta, and then at me. It looked to be a genuine enough smile.
“Yes? Something I can do for you?”
It struck me suddenly that I had no idea what to call her. I didn’t know her name. I wanted to call her Mrs. Blank. Mrs. Molly’s Last Name. But I didn’t know Molly’s last name. It made me marvel at what I was doing here. Trying to help or defend this girl I didn’t even know.
“I’m a friend of your daughter Molly’s,” I said.
Her face changed.
I won’t say it went dark, or cold. That would be a bit of a stereotypical way for things to go. But it wasn’t like that. It’s hard to explain the change I witnessed. I think the best description would be to say she seemed to vacate herself in that moment. To leave the area, leaving her body in place. I looked into those same light-brown eyes and it seemed as though no one was at home inside.
She wasn’t answering. While I waited, my heart began to pound harder. I guess because I had a sense that this was not about to go well.
“You are Molly’s mother?” I asked. Just in case I had the wrong house or something.
She nodded. It was only the tiniest gesture. Nearly imperceptible. She offered no words to go with it.
“Molly’s been in a bad way since she left Utah. She’s been living on the street in LA. Sleeping in an old packing crate. In a very sketchy neighborhood. She’s lost too much weight. I don’t know if you know any of this.”
I waited. Again. At first, nothing happened at all.
Then she seemed to rouse herself to speak.
“And you know my daughter how?”
“We were thrown together in a strange way. I lost my little baby girl, Etta.” I indicated the girl in question with a flip of my chin. “We’d gotten separated. Molly found her and got her back to the police so she could be returned to me.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. In that moment, she seemed marginally at home behind those eyes.
“How do you go about losing a little girl?”
You’re a fine one to talk, I thought.
I didn’t say it. Blasting her with my anger would get me nowhere. Though I had plenty of ammunition.
“She was taken from me in a violent carjacking.”
“Oh,” she said. Her tone seemed to change. The look in her eyes softened. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
She looked past me and out to the street. I turned to see what she found so interesting. All I saw was my mother’s car parked at the curb. I wondered if she was looking to see if I had Molly with me.
“That your car?” she asked.
“Yes.”
It wasn’t worth explaining that I’d borrowed it from my mother.
“Why d’you drive around with it in that ridiculous shape? Why don’t you pick a color and get it painted that color all over?”
“Can we please get back to the subject at hand?” I tried to keep my voice even. But I was growing peeved. And I’m sure she knew it.
“You want me to feel guilty,” she said. “But I don’t.”
“You don’t.”
“No. Not at all. I told her she could come back anytime.”
I stood a moment. Silent. Reeling. My mind was going a dozen directions at once. I gave up trying to follow any of them. An overriding voice reminded me that I’d known to expect the unexpected. I’d seen something like this coming. Some big piece of information that Molly had neglected to tell me.
Still, I had no special confidence that this woman would prove to be a reliable narrator. No more than I had in Molly. I knew her even less. And something about her statement wasn’t adding up.
“Wait,” I said. “Let me get this straight. You put her out of your home. But then you told her she could come back anytime? That doesn’t make sense. If she can come back anytime, why put her out in the first place?”
“There’s no welcome in my home for the devil,” she said. Flatly. The words sounded almost rehearsed. I heard no emotion behind them whatsoever.
It was a stunning statement. To me, anyway. A bit of cool sureness had come into her presence. She had found some kind of firm foothold in this conversation.
“You think Molly is the devil?”
“I didn’t say that. But she brought the devil into my home.” Her voice sounded even more solid now. Like a wall, holding me back from wherever she thought I meant to go.
“So she could come back home anytime . . . how?”
“Just so long as she doesn’t bring the devil with her. I don’t see how that’s asking too much.”
I held Etta more closely against my chest. I’m not sure why. I guess I wanted to protect her. I wondered what she was making of all this. I knew she didn’t understand the words. But she must have felt the energy of the conflict on some level.
“Let me just get this straight,” I said. “Let me just make sure I understand you correctly. What you’re saying is that she could come home . . . I mean, what does that even mean?
She can come home if she doesn’t bring the devil? I don’t understand that.” Actually, I thought I might know what she meant. But it was such a wild theory. Still, I had to know. I had to get this clarified. “Do you mean you told her she could live with you again if she just stopped being gay?”
“Prayer can heal all things,” she said. Quiet and calm. Like it was a perfectly reasonable statement to end any discussion.
“That’s it?” I was raising my voice now. Trying not to, but failing. “And there was nothing else? That’s really the whole story? She wasn’t violent, or on drugs? She didn’t break the law? That was her only transgression against your values?”
“You get off my property now,” she said.
Her face didn’t change in the slightest as she said it. Neither did her voice. Which I found a little bit scary.
“You’re not even willing to discuss this?”
“I will not have a conversation with somebody who thinks that’s not plenty reason enough. Now you take your permissive ways and go back to California with them. They’re not needed here.”
And, with that, she slammed the door in my face.
Something strange happened as I was putting Etta back into her car seat. Her mood suddenly and utterly fell apart.
She waged a full-on tantrum.
I won’t say it had never happened before. She was a small child, after all. But it was rare for her. And when it did happen, it was usually for a very obvious reason. She was overtired, for example, and something stressed her to the breaking point. But she had slept almost all the way into Utah. And I was only asking her to sit still so I could buckle her in.
She resisted mightily. She stretched her legs out and locked her knees and used those straight limbs to push against the seat. To keep her upright. She would not relax into a sitting position so I could place the straps.
And she shrieked her displeasure.
At first I fought with her. I used my physical strength to try to overpower her. I was furious, but not with her. But I had no room for her tantrum in my current mood.
Brave Girl, Quiet Girl: A Novel Page 20
