I made my face blank, browsing the hip-hop racks, looking for the albums Ryan liked best. I slipped Stakes Is High into my messenger bag, peeled off the anti-theft sticker, reapplied it to 3 Feet High and Rising. I repeated this series of actions with EPMD’s Strictly Business and Public Enemy’s Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age.
There was a girl standing in the rock aisle who looked like a wonderfully relaxed cat with wide-set narrow eyes, a smattering of freckles across her flat nose, the corners of her mouth turned up at the sides in a sleepy half smile. She pushed her long silky hair away from her face with a languor that made me ashamed of my restlessness. I browsed alongside her, making sure Justine wasn’t looking before jamming my bag with a handful of Smiths CDs. Justine was moving toward the exit. As she went out, a cute little girl came in with a heart-shaped face and a dimpled chin, shoulder-length dirty-blonde hair that looked soft to the touch and like it tangled easily.
I saw Fiona Apple’s Tidal and grabbed it on my way out. I passed close by the girl with the dimpled chin. A diamond Star of David sparkled at her bony collarbone. Her neat little features strained at something behind me.
“Miss.” It was a woman’s voice.
My heart hammered. I sped up and didn’t look back. I pushed the door open.
“Miss.” The woman caught hold of the door. I stopped, watching Justine trot through the parking lot. She got into her car, started the ignition, and drove away. She left me.
I turned to face the woman. She was short and plump, with a broad face and close-cropped hair. A wide face wasn’t right for hair like that. She looked as scared as I felt.
Another employee had caught Chris a few aisles behind me. They took us back to the break room. We emptied our bags. They photocopied our licenses and pinned the printouts to a corkboard. I felt nauseous. We waited for the cops in metal folding chairs. Chris took out a copy of On the Road and paged through it as though he were simply relaxing at home. The woman flipped through a three-ring binder. She laid it on the table, open to a blurry black-and-white printout of Justine’s long face. She set a pen and a piece of loose-leaf next to it.
“We’ve seen her here before,” the woman said.
Chris kept his eyes on the book, turned a page.
I wrote down Justine’s name and number.
Chris looked up from his book, straight ahead, not at me. He tilted his head ever so slightly, fluttered his long black eyelashes.
*
The cops led us out through the store. People turned to watch. They put Chris and me in the back of a real police car and we sat as far apart as we could, looking out opposite windows: Bagel Boss, Bridal Elegance, Cancos Tile. We passed over the Long Island Expressway, rush hour commuters stuck in grid-lock below, two glittering strands of headlights in one lane, two blinking columns of brake lights in the other. The sky was an oppressive white.
The Suffolk County Police Department was headquartered in a low, wide concrete building, a huge American flag flapping out front. They put us in a cell. They gave us soda and candy from the vending machine. That surprised me. I ate a Twix bar, drank a regular Coke, and asked to use the bathroom. A cop led me through a row of cubicles. Was one of the men seated there Ryan’s dad?
The cop stood at the bathroom door while I went. I knelt at the toilet and stuck my pointer and middle fingers down my throat, like Justine showed me. After a few tries I coughed up a liquid cloud of caramel and chocolate. On the way back to the cell I tried to tell from the cop’s face whether he’d heard me.
Once the paperwork was processed, we were instructed to call our guardians. There was no way I could call Grandma. I called Dad. He got to the police station two hours later. He laughed with the cops when they released me, but too far out of range for me to hear what about. We climbed into his pickup truck. It was starting to get dark out. He didn’t put on his seat belt. He never did.
“So,” he said. “I guess it was about, what, ’75?” He paused. “’75. Man.” He whistled. “I had a date with a girl named . . . Valerie—beautiful, beautiful girl—but I had no car, right?” He looked over at me like we were thick as thieves. “So I took a walk down to Bay Avenue, hot-wired what I needed, and arrived to pick her up in a baby-blue Coupe de Ville.” He laughed, then glanced at me again. “Well, you look great,” he said.
I shrugged, suddenly embarrassed by the teased hair, the long earrings.
“Did I tell you about the time I was in for a few weeks out in Riverhead?”
“No.” Yes.
“We really pulled one over on this guy. What an asshole. He was down to four days left before parole.”
I nodded.
“We made copies of his papers, right? Changed the date from four days to four years. Ha!” he laughed. “The CO was in on it. You should’ve seen the poor kid—he started crying right then and there, this tough guy.” Dad shook his head, smiling. We passed the grade school. “Remember when we used to fly kites back there?”
“Yeah.”
He turned up the radio: WBAB. It was some man singing—Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, I didn’t know. Dad drummed his hands against the wheel. We drove over the Mill Pond bridge.
“Hey,” I said. “Remember when we used to fish here?”
He smiled.
“Remember that time your truck keys fell over the rail into the water?”
He laughed.
“And”—I squinted, trying to remember—“yeah, right, we were walking down to the other end of the bridge, to the pay phone, right?”
“Yep.”
“And the keys, they just shot up out of the pond and into the air. And you stuck your hand out just in time and the keys fell right into it!” The memory didn’t make sense. “How did that happen?” I asked. “Was it some kind of fountain?”
“No, no,” he said. “We just fished them out of the water with a stick.”
“Oh.”
“So your grandmother doesn’t know?” he asked as we turned onto my street.
I shook my head. He stopped out front, not pulling into the driveway.
“Well, give her my best,” he said. He squeezed then patted my knee. It felt like an approximation of my knee, the way he touched it.
I watched him drive away, turned, and saw Grandma there behind the lace in the window.
“What did he want?” she asked as I came in.
“Nothing.”
“Jävla fyllehund,” she said, though I was pretty sure he’d been sober for at least a year.
Marlena wasn’t curled up in her usual spot by my pillow. I looked for her on the La-Z-Boy, went out front and called for her. She didn’t come, though. I went to bed.
NINE
I woke to Grandma’s shouts from down the hall. “Fan också!” she exclaimed, then “Försvinn!” a few minutes later.
I found her standing fully clothed in the empty bathtub, scrubbing the tile grout with a toothbrush. Yellow light tunneled in from the window above the toilet. The ammonia smell was overwhelming. I crossed my arms, leaned against the doorframe.
“It’s not even dirty,” I said.
“Det är äckligt.” She shook her head. “Stubborn as a mule, too.” Her hair was wet with sweat.
I flipped on the ventilation fan. “Where’s the cat?”
“Vad?”
“Where is Marlena?” I said, overenunciating each syllable.
“How should I know where he goes?” She ran the toothbrush under the faucet before attacking the moldy grout again.
“She.”
“She, she.”
Maybe she’d gotten stuck in the garage rafters again. I went to look. There was a piece of folded loose-leaf taped to the screen door. It was labeled “Alison” in Justine’s small, neat capital letters. I unfolded it.
“You’re a rat whore,” the note said.
I crumpled it into my pocket. My eyes got wet. A van passed. The Daily News flew out, landing at the foot of the driveway. Our front lawn was covered with pizza, from the apple tree all
the way down to the rhododendron.
I got a handful of trash bags and went out barefoot, tiptoed across the pebbles, stepped through the cool wet grass. There were at least two dozen pizzas, maybe three, scattered across the lawn: plain, pepperoni, Buffalo chicken, fra diavolo, baked ziti. A squirrel shot off with a nugget of sausage. Crows picked at a white pie. I could tell by how big they were, and the rubbery cheese, that they were from Nina’s. Two had been pulled into the street and ravaged. Raccoons, probably.
I picked up a Sicilian pie by its thick crust and imagined having a bite—I was light-headed—before dropping it into a trash bag. I rushed through the cleanup, shoveling one pie after another into the bags, hoping to finish before Grandma saw. I hoisted the heavy sacks into the garbage cans at the curb. My fingers were oily with sauce. Wet cut grass stuck to my feet. Across the street, Vinny came out in only a robe, shuffling down his driveway. His breathing was labored. He’d had a heart attack a few months back. And just before that his wife had died, hadn’t she? Diabetes, I thought. I half waved.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” he said, barely able to bend over for his paper. I should have gotten it for him. “I just—” He had a few envelopes in his hand. “I didn’t see her, you know?” He made his way to his mailbox, sliding the envelopes inside, putting up the red flag. “I don’t know how she got there.” He rested his hand on the head of his little statue of a man holding a lantern. “I was backing out here.” He pointed at his driveway. “And I looked. I looked.” He shrugged and slumped. “She was right under my tire.” He shook his head. “I didn’t see her,” he repeated.
I secured the trash can lid, picked up our paper. His sprinkler hissed.
“Her legs, you know. They were—” He twirled his hand at the wrist. “Crushed.”
Crushed. I nodded. Those little legs. I felt dizzy. I needed a yogurt.
“Your grandmother was right to put her under,” Vinny muttered, padding back toward his house, out of breath now, robe sash swinging. “There was nothing else to be done,” he said, mostly to himself, as he went inside.
I washed my hands at the kitchen sink. Marlena’s food and water bowls weren’t on the floor anymore. Her Fancy Feast wasn’t in the cabinet. Grandma had already thrown it out.
The line connecting July 6 to July 7 was flat at 120 pounds. My right thigh measured twenty-one inches in circumference. I stripped and stood in front of the mirror screwed to the inside of my closet door. I pulled back the fat between my thighs. I released it and they shuddered. My pubic hair was bushy. I trimmed it with tiny scissors, then weighed myself again, but it didn’t make any difference, not even an ounce. I vacuumed the little hairs up with the Dustbuster.
I ate a yogurt in my room and did three sets of ten leg lifts on the bed. Marlena’s fur was matted on the fitted sheet next to my pillow. I always had to try to keep her from eating it. She was so small when we got her. I guess I was small then too.
*
I went out and drove around—past the Stop & Shop, past the Hess station, past Ryan’s house and Justine’s, the LeSabre there in the driveway. I drove past Nina’s Pizza and her family’s tall front gate and high square hedge, air heavy with the stink of low tide. I drove down Matt’s street: half modest two-bedrooms, half with second-story extensions that loomed over the road. Matt’s was one of the latter, the new front porch and balcony above it supported by fat white pillars. He was home, his F-150 out front, “Matthew & Son” on the door in big green letters. I went to the Walt Whitman Mall and wandered around Bloomingdale’s, spritzed each wrist and either side of my neck with Polo Sport, Happy, CK One, Obsession.
At home, Grandma stood over the stove, dropping pink turkey patties onto a hot frying pan with a slap.
“John and Gina made love in the submarine today,” she said, sliding a spatula under a patty. “So John stabbed Stefano.” She flipped it; oil splattered. “And Stefano threw him overboard!” She laughed. “You should’ve seen it.” The off-white cooked color crept up the patty sides, out of which oozed gray slime.
I slumped into the La-Z-Boy with a copy of Vogue. Milla Jovovich curled her fingers like talons around a bottle of Dior’s Hypnotic Poison. Maggie Rizer bounced across the page with pigtails and pom-poms for Clinique. Amber Valletta gazed up lazily from a sun-drenched daybed, light splashed across her chin, cheekbone, brow. JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette held hands at a black tie gala. Three women in full-length fur coats trudged across an arctic landscape, long blue shadows stretched across the snow. A satiny robin’s egg Louis Vuitton stiletto ground into the center of a splayed white hand.
Grandma set two plates on the coffee table and turned on Fox News. A series of red, blue, and purple concentric circles floated across the continent.
“Large-scale search and rescue operations are taking place across Oklahoma City as the casualty count climbs to thirty-six fatalities and 583 injuries,” the newscaster announced.
“Look at that hair,” Grandma said, mouth full of food. “It looks like a chicken scratched in it.”
I removed the bun and cut the turkey patty into nine little pieces. I doused my plate with ketchup, speared one piece of turkey with my fork, dipped it, slotted it into my mouth, and chewed it exactly thirty-three times. I felt the sugar and salt enter my bloodstream, rush through my body.
“President Bill Clinton is expected to sign a major disaster declaration, allowing the state to receive federal aid,” the newscaster continued.
“There’s a letter for you,” Grandma said, pushing an envelope along the coffee table with a thick yellow fingernail, past her knitting, the candy dish. She switched on the table lamp.
It was from the Suffolk County Police Department. I took my time, dipping and eating a second piece of turkey before reaching over to pick it up. The oscillating fan rattled. I opened it, careful to keep the contents angled toward me. It was a summons.
I sighed, shoving it into my magazine. “Station fundraiser.” I took my plate to the kitchen, tilting the bun and seven remaining turkey pieces into the trash.
“I made vanilla pudding,” Grandma called from the couch.
I shut myself into my room for the night. I sat on the floor and tore select pages from Vogue. I stood on my bed and taped the one of Amber Valletta to the place where the wall met the ceiling. I lined it up next to a picture of Karen Elson and Stella Tennant leaning against a graffiti-covered brick wall in long silk sleeveless gowns. Just a few more pages and I’d have created a border around my whole little room.
*
That night I dreamt of biology class. Justine was at my lab table, pulling at the ends of her black bob, shoving her hair into her mouth. I sat down next to her. She smiled at a spot slightly to the left of me. The sinews stuck out of her neck.
The teacher circulated through the classroom, placing graded test papers facedown in front of us. She adjusted her glasses and nodded at Justine and me as we both flipped our papers to reveal the letter A. I felt the sticky tap of Justine’s patent leather Mary Jane against my shoe. Warmth surged up my leg to my groin.
“You all know what today is.” The teacher smiled, sitting on her desk and swinging her legs. Her calves bulged in suntan nylons, her swollen feet ballooned from her low block pumps. She had a thickness that I could never tolerate in myself but that I found reassuring in her—a solidity, like Grandma had before she got so old.
Justine squeezed my shoulder and jumped up. She was the first to get a silver tray from the front of the room, like a baking sheet with a rubber bed, piled up with what we’d need for the dissection. She moved with a wiry efficiency, short hair swinging at her chin, lining up the scalpel and tweezers, counting the dissection pins with the seriousness of a surgeon.
I got safety equipment from the back of the room. Justine craned her long neck, and I lowered an apron over her head. She strapped on goggles and pulled gloves over her long hands, snapping the latex at her wrists. Her black hair bulged above the goggles strap. She picked up the scalpel and sl
iced open the plastic, dumping the scrawny cat onto the rubber. It landed with a light thud, stomach up, arms, legs, and tail outstretched. Fluid leaked from the plastic, drizzling onto the tray and over the cat, which was matted, flattened, and smelled fermented.
Justine swatted my arm with the back of her latex-covered hand. She grabbed the tweezers and pretended to pluck her eyebrows, eyes flashing behind the glare of her goggles.
“We’ll start by examining inside the oral cavity.” The teacher looked on, narrowing one eye and pressing her lips together. “Use your scalpel to cut the membrane that connects the hinges of the cat’s mouth and open it wide to examine the inside.”
Justine sliced open the cat’s mouth and tore the jaws apart.
“You should be able to see and label the esophagus,” the teacher continued, “which connects to the stomach, and the glottis, which connects to the lungs.”
Justine took hold of the cat’s tongue. It stretched at least three inches.
I labeled “tongue” on the lab report diagram, disgusted.
“We’ll use a basic X cut to open the specimen’s abdomen.” The teacher drew an X on the chalkboard. “Make one slice across each leg and connect them with a single cut up the girdle.”
Justine made the incisions, used the tweezers to lift the abdominal muscles. She peeled back the skin, affixed it to the rubber bed with the dissection pins. I labeled the lab report diagram: esophagus, glottis, stomach, lungs.
Late afternoon light came in through the half-drawn venetian blinds, striping Justine’s face, her long arms and fingers, wrapped around the stainless steel scalpel. The school day was almost over. She sliced the spiderweb-like peritoneum membrane. I wrote our names next to each other across the top of the lab report. She watched out of the corner of her eye, smiling slightly, and pulled the membrane loose. Horrible bright yellow tubes fell from the cat’s abdominal walls like little fish-tank plants.
Justine Page 6
