“What are you doing here?”Dr. Marrigan asks.
“Um,” I say.
“Your name is Lia?” Elijah asks.
“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t come,” she says.
“Hold on.” Elijah raises his hand for attention. “You’re Lia, the friend Cassie was trying to call. Why didn’t you answer your phone that night?”
Dr. Marrigan scans him in a nanosecond. “Who is this?”
“This is my friend, Elijah. Elijah, my mother, Dr. Chloe Marrigan.”
She steps in between us. “Excuse us. I need to talk to my daughter.”
Elijah shivers and tries to hide it. “Why didn’t you tell me your real name?”
Along the road, cars are put into low gear for the slow ride down the hill.
“I’m sorry about that,” I say. “I can explain.”
“You have a lot of explaining to do,” Dr. Marrigan says.
“No, I don’t, Mother,” I snap. “Dr. Parker told me I could come, not that it’s any of your business. Nothing I do is your business anymore.”
Elijah winces at the razor blades in my voice.
Dr. Marrigan opens her mouth to say more, but a man and a woman call out her name. I don’t recognize them, but she does and turns away from me to talk to them.
“Okay, so she’s intense,” Elijah says quietly. “Not a psychopath, but a little wired.”
“She hates it when I think for myself,” I say.
Mom is wearing the friendly face, good for shaking hands after church and running into former patients at the grocery store. She does not introduce me.
“You look like her,” Elijah says. “Except for the color of your hair.”
“That is not a compliment.”
“She really pushes your buttons, doesn’t she?” he asks.
“She’s gifted that way.”
“And you deal with it by running away?”
“It worked for you.”
He crosses his arms over his chest. “Not really.”
I really should give him back his jacket, but I’ll freeze in an instant and she’ll say something awful and I’ll break into tiny pieces.
Elijah unfolds his arms and blows on his fingers. “Even if your mom is a nut job, she’s reaching out to you. You gotta respect that.”
“That’s not reaching out, that’s choking.”
The funeral director’s assistant is folding up the fake grass strips under the tent. A man in a red hunting jacket is driving a tiny backhoe to the grave. The wind blows the assistant’s hat off his head and he chases it.
As the couple walks away, Dr. Marrigan turns to us again. “I have to go to the hospital to check on a patient. You’ll be at the house when I get back, right?”
Elijah nudges my sneaker with his boot.
“Right,” I say, without thinking. “But I have to drop off Elijah first.”
She blinks rapidly, trying to recover her balance. She was bracing for a fight and didn’t get it.
“Okay, then,” she says, slightly uncertain. “I’ll see you there. Be careful driving.”
“Right.”
As she walks away, the assistant under the tent picks up a small remote and presses a button, sending Cassie’s casket into the ground.
033.00
Elijah and I walk back to the car without a word.
“Are you mad at me?” I finally ask as I unlock the car. “About the name thing?”
“I don’t think so,” he says.
“I can explain—” I start.
He holds up both hands to stop me. “Could we not talk for a while?” he says quietly. “My head’s a little crowded. Dead people and angry parents are not a good combination for me. I need to chill.”
“Okay.”
We are silent until we arrive at the Gateway. I park in front of his room and hand him his jacket.
“I really appreciate everything you did today.”
“No worries. Thanks for the ride.” He takes the jacket, gets out of the car, shuts the door, and walks away.
I roll down my window. “Wait. When can we talk again?”
“I don’t know.” He pulls his keys out of his pocket.
“I forgot to ask my dad about the junkyard,” I say. “I’ll call you when I find out where it is.”
“Thanks.” He disappears inside the darkness of his room.
I’m not sure why his mood shifted. Maybe there’s something in the air of graveyards, it penetrates the skin and infects. Maybe that’s why I suddenly feel sick, too. A wave of nausea bulldozes through my belly: sadmadbad-confused, everything gags me. I fight back the pictures in my head: roses shivering on her coffin, tears falling to the ground, clouds of sorrow racing toward us on the storm. I choke and cough. If I had eaten anything today, it’d be coming up right now.
A red warning light pops up next to my speedometer. I dig around in my purse for my phone so I can call Dad and ask him if the engine is going to explode, but I don’t have a phone anymore.
I crank the heat up to FULL and put my nose up to the vent. The air smells like Cassie and makes me choke again.
I hate eating.
I hate eating.
I love not-eating.
The red oil light blinks ON/OFF, ON/OFF, ON/OFF. I shift out of PARK and accelerate.
034.00
Briarwood Avenue is lined with made-to-order houses. There are no sidewalks here, no front porches. The lawns are trained to roll quietly from the front door down to the road, each blade of grass hand-trimmed to the regulation height. Usually the street is empty and swept clean.
Not today. Cars are parked along both sides of the road, wheels making muddy impressions on the fringes of the lawns. Metal doors slam, security systems chirp, black-coated people with frowns bend into the wind and shuffle to the house across the street from my mother’s.
They’re here to pay their dues, pay respects, pay the price of knowing a dead girl’s parents. They’re going to Cassie’s house.
I park in my mother’s driveway.
Mrs. Parrish’s rose garden has spread out along both sides of the house and taken over the front yard. The bushes are pruned down to thorny spikes for winter, wrapped in burlap sacks, summer dreams of fat blossoms pulled deep into the roots.
The first time I saw Cassie puke was in that garden. Her parents were having a Labor Day party, the last one before school started. The grown-ups were loud and drunk in the pool, the high-school couples had retreated home to the soft couches waiting in empty basements, and the little kids were in bed. We weren’t little anymore; we were eleven. We could stay up as long as we wanted if we didn’t bug our parents.
I ran across the street to my house to get a sweatshirt. When I came back, Cassie was gone. I hunted everywhere until I found her in the shadows of the rose garden, away from the torchlights and the sound of margarita blenders. She was gagging, finger shoved down her throat. Most everything she had eaten was splashed on the mulch: a bag of potato chips, most of a carton of onion dip, two fudge brownies, and a slice of strawberry shortcake.
“I’ll get your mom,” I said.
“No!” She grabbed me and explained in tight, cramped whispers. She was puking on purpose, so she wouldn’t get fat. She started to cry because she had waited too long and calories were leaking into her and making her feel bad.
“Why did you eat the brownies, if you don’t want to get fat?” my little elf-girl body asked.
“Because I was hungry!” Tears spilled down her cheeks and rolled into the nastiness on her chin.
I kicked mulch on the mess and snuck her up to the bathroom so she could wash her hair. I cleaned the puke off her shirt with the Dove soap in the sink, gagging the whole time. When she was in the shower, I stuck her shirt in the dryer. I used a butter knife to scrape off the nasty smell from the soap.
Buried in our sleeping bags later, she told me that every girl in her cabin at drama camp puked. When I asked why, she said it was because they were all fat-fat-
fatties and something had to be done. Camp taught Cassie way more than school.
By eighth grade she had turned pro, color-coding the beginning of her binges either Doritos orange or blueberry purple so she’d know when the job was done. Her favorite puking finger was lined with scratches that never healed. She told her mom they were from soccer/lacrosse practice or play practice/set construction. Or that the dog nipped her.
Cassie became the roller coaster in the theme park of middle school. I was the merry-go-round horse frozen in one position, eyes painted open, paint chipping off my eyes. . . .
I should dig up the Nearly Wild and take out Pinky’s matchstick bones still warm in the blue bandanna. I should knit them into a sweater or string them on a ribbon and wear it around my neck. If I still had the green see-glass, I would work it in, too. Whenever I was lost, I could hold it up to my eye. Much better than a spinning compass.
The empty-gas-tank warning pops up next to the blinking red light. No problem.
Dr. Marrigan pulls into the driveway. She looks at me through the glass in her window and the glass in mine while the garage door opens. Her nose is red and her eyes swollen, like she’s been crying. She turns her head away from me and drives into the garage.
I stay in the car for a few minutes, then follow her.
035.00
I’m sure she’s waiting for me in the family room, temperature at fifty-eight degrees, her lecture notes neatly arranged with my faults and mistakes listed in order of priority. She has charts to prove everything I do is wrong, and that my only hope is to allow them to insert her stem cells in my marrow so she can grow a new her dressed in my skin.
But, no. She’s not in the family room.
She’s waiting for me in the library, which normal people call the “living room.”
Nope. Miles of dusted bookshelves, cardiology journals stacked on the coffee table. No Dr. Marrigan.
Not in the kitchen.
Not on the treadmill in the basement. Not on the elliptical or lifting weights or working her abs.
“Mom?”
The pipes in the basement shudder and the hot-water tank fires up. She must be taking a shower.
I go up two flights and tiptoe across the polished floor of her bedroom, sloooooowly turn the doorknob, and open her bathroom door a crack. A breath of steam trickles out, filled with the sobs of a grown woman breaking into girl-sized pieces.
I close the door.
When she comes downstairs an hour later, coffee is brewing, orange juice is poured, and a place is set for her at the table with Nanna Marrigan’s bone china, the antique silver from the giant chest in the dining room, and a linen napkin the color of snow. The way she likes it—precise and neat. Just so.
The tears have been washed away, but her nose is still red. She looks around the kitchen, confused and off balance again, because I am not following the script.
I hand her the glass of juice. As she sips it, I crack open three eggs and turn on the burner under the frying pan to melt the butter.
Every step in a kitchen is a test—I am strong enough to pick up a stick of butter. I am strong enough to peel off the paper wrapper, drop a hunk in the pan, and watchlistensmell it melt. I wash the greasy smear off my fingertips without tasting it. I am passing all the tests today with flying colors.
“When did you learn to cook?” my mother asks.
“Jennifer showed me. Emma loves omelets.”
She sniffs the air. “Is there something in the oven?”
“I wanted to make carrot-raisin muffins—Emma likes those, too. But you didn’t have carrots or raisins, so those are nutmeg muffins.” I beat the eggs. “Your refrigerator is kind of empty. There’s only onion or spinach for your omelet.”
She studies the chopped veggies on the cutting board. “Just spinach.”
I pour her coffee into the china cup and give it to her. She sets it on the table, then pulls her phone and beeper out of her robe pocket and lines them up next to the fork. She drifts into the chair, eyes unfocused on her reflection in the empty plate.
“Who was it?” I ask.
She looks up. “Who was who?”
I slowly pour the eggs into the hot pan. “Which patient died?”
“How do you know a patient died?”
I lift the skin of the omelet to let wet egg slide underneath it. “The only time you cry in the shower like that is when you lose a patient.”
The pan sizzles. The oven timer dings.
Mom spreads the napkin in her lap. “She was a social worker who took in foster kids. Dilated cardiomyopathy, very advanced, had been on the transplant floor longer than anyone. I gave her a new heart on Thanksgiving. It failed today. She died before we could do anything.”
As she talks, I lay the spinach on the omelet, sprinkle cheese on top, fold it over, and slide it onto the plate that I set in front of her. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” She takes a bite, even though it just came out of the sizzling pan. “This tastes pretty good. I hope you’re making one for yourself.” She eats automatically, the same number of chews per bite, the same number of seconds between swallows until the omelet is gone and her gas tank is fueled.
We’re not yelling at each other. We’re not looking for the sharpest knives to hurt each other with. This is good.
There is no dancing around the question. I throw in it the hot pan to see what will happen.
“Did Cassie die like your patient?” I ask. “Did her heart fail?”
“I’d rather not talk about that with you,” Mom says. “Not right now.”
“But you saw the autopsy report, didn’t you?”
“I don’t think this is the right time—” Her beeper vibrates on the table. “Damn.” She reads the message, punches a number into the phone. “This is Doctor Marrigan.”
I burn my fingertips pulling the muffins out of the oven.
Dr. Marrigan gives orders about meds and drips and tests, then hangs up. “Are the muffins done?”
“A little hot.”
“That’s okay.”
I pick up the dirty omelet plate and set three muffins in front of her. “You said that you were going to explain the autopsy results to Mrs. Parrish.”
“I did.”
“So what happened?
“Aren’t you going to eat anything?”
I set the dirty plate in the sink. “I’m not hungry.”
Mom peels the pink paper skin off the muffin. “What did you have for lunch?”
“I haven’t eaten lunch yet.”
“It’s almost two o’clock. Have a muffin.”
“I don’t want one.”
“And eggs. You could use the protein.”
“I had milk in my cereal this morning.”
“You need to eat.” The Voice is back, giving orders, demanding obedience.
“Mom—”
The beeper signals again, bouncing around the table like an angry bee. “Dammit.” She makes the call. “Dr. Marrigan.”
I put the frying pan and the muffin tin in the sink, turn on the hot water and pour in the soap. The heat from the kitchen has fogged over the windows.
The real girl I was slips out and listens to the echovoices shouting ugly at each other in every room of this house. Mom vs. Dad. Dad vs. Mom. Dad vs. Mom’s job. Mom vs. Dad’s girlfriends. MomDad vs. Lia’s report cards, Lia’s recitals, Lia’s decision to quit again. Lia vs. everythingbody.
The voices slipped into this girl’s mouth when she wasn’t looking, like a bug on a summer’s night that claws at the inside of your throat right after you realize you swallowed it. The voices swam around her insides and multiplied—charred, tinny echovoices that made a permanent home inside the eggshell of her skull.
::Stupid/ugly/stupid/bitch/stupid/fat/
stupid/baby/stupid/loser/stupid/lost::
“I said, ‘Lia, look at me!’ ” Mom shouts, shaking my shoulders.
I blink. The dishes are done, but my hands are still in the sin
k. The bubbles are gone. The water is cold.
Momguides me to her chair, one arm around my shoulders, the other reaching to take my pulse. She kneels in front of me and makes me look up, to the side, then straight at the light shining out of her pen.
“I bet your blood sugar is in the toilet,” she mutters.
Three empty muffin papers are folded into triangles on her plate. A pale green pad of paper sits next to the plate, covered with her notes from the phone calls she took while I was in zombieland. Her juice glass and coffee cup are both empty. The water in the sink sucked time out of the room.
I lost ten minutes, maybe fifteen.
She pours me a glass of orange juice. “Drink this.”
If I don’t, there’s a good chance she’ll wrestle me to the floor, pry open my mouth, and pour it into me. Or drive me to the hospital and stick me with IVs until I inflate and bounce along the ceiling like a Thanksgiving Day parade balloon.
I gulp down the orange juice, pushing it to my stomach.
She sits, staring at me, as the fog clears from the windows and the battery acid spills into my veins.
“I’m okay,” I say. “I’m just sad about Cassie.”
Instead of answering, she gets up, slams the clean frying pan on the stove, turns on the heat, throws butter in the pan, yanks open the refrigerator door, takes out the eggs and milk, cracks two eggs in the pan, splashes milk on them, and beats it all with a fork.
“I’m not eating that,” I say.
She hunches over the stove, scrambling, scrambling.
“I can’t.”
No response. Scramblescramblescramble.
“You aren’t supposed to push me. I have to feel safe with food.”
“That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.” She dumps the cooked eggs on a clean plate along with two muffins, stalks across the kitchen and puts it in front of me.
The orange juice is a virus attacking my insides. “Forget it.”
She shakes her head. “You are not thinking clearly. You’re dizzy. And you lied to me about breakfast.”
Wintergirls Page 11
