“Don’t you remember? It was your idea to go downtown. You wanted to see the city of Providence; you asked at one point where the fucking city was.” She didn’t elaborate on how his question had been answered with her own silence.
Adam laughed. For an instant, it was like being home again, back in New York, with the old Adam. The old Adam laughed with his mouth turned down slightly at the corners. He seemed not to realize that Jan had been silent, brooding during their trip, that in her mind, she had destroyed everything—their past, their future, their entire relationship, negated by a toxic, hate-filled silence. The plastic whistle that had hung around his neck was gone now. For a second, she wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing, but then she noticed it on the floor beside Adam’s foot, discarded as it should have been back on Sheldon Street. What if he’d never picked the stupid thing up?
“I know what I was looking for the whole time. Remember how quiet we were, how it was like we were on some unspoken quest?” Adam asked. “It wasn’t the city of Providence really. I was looking for this.” Jan stared hard at him. Was everything somehow suddenly, impossibly okay?
“Yeah, it’s the Silver Top,” Jan said. “It does feel like we were looking for it the whole time. Funny thing is, I’ve been here before, but can never remember how to get here.”
“No, I mean, this, being with you without all the other people. Being with you not at college. I wanted to find the city because the city isn’t the school.” Jan thought about how the school was there, was everywhere in Providence. Roberto was there—he sat a few feet from them, in a booth with green vinyl seats. Jan even began to point him out to Adam, to relay the whole story of the semiotics class, the refrigerator, and Mr. Stainless. But it was at that moment, to Jan’s astonishment, that Adam began to cry.
“I’ve wasted thirty fucking grand on school. Thirty fucking grand.” His mouth was twisted into a childlike pout. There was a sob in his voice. He was breaking down.
“What do you mean, wasted, Adam? Do you know what a degree from Harvard is worth?”
“A degree? Jan, I haven’t been to a single class since the last week of September.”
Jan felt her stomach lurch. She suddenly felt high again, too high to cope with Adam.
“I’m such a loser,” Adam said. His head was in his hands. His skin now looked like the color of something edible, something fried. “I’m a loser. You should just forget about me.” He looked at her with eyes that held no sorrow, only blankness. His mouth was twisted in his effort to hold back tears. His eyes alone held any color, and they were too bright a blue. Jan couldn’t see beyond their brightness, to any message there. What did he want from her?
Yes, she thought to herself, I should. I should be done with you, Adam. I should walk away from here, from this mess, and feel no pity in my heart, just the strength in my limbs. She felt within her body a deep and rising disgust. That disgust was transforming itself into some newfound strength, and that strength was draining any sense of pity from her. She knew now what that silence had held. It was Adam’s weakness flooding her, but she had fought it back. It had been horrible, but she had withstood it. Adam was weak. He was sick. He needed something she was never going to be able to give him.
She gazed back across the diner where Roberto sat. He was wearing a plain white T-shirt, a thick red and black flannel, and tan cords. It was odd that someone so ordinary-seeming had a friend like Stainless, someone everyone knew. He was sitting with a pale girl in a yellow sweater who sat slumped in her seat, either drunk or, like Adam, just depressed. As though he felt her eyes on him, Roberto looked over and did not look away—his eyes, Jan thought, held hers, just like that night when he came to her room with Eliza.
10
It was only nine when Erika woke up and rolled out of bed. The sun shone through the raspberry-colored shade. The room still had Jan’s choice of colors—a deep aqua wall, the raspberry shade, the rug composed of multicolored remnants Mom had found at some store in Brooklyn. The only change Erika had made to the room was to move her collection of Japanese manga onto the bookshelf and to hang a poster by her favorite manga artist. The poster depicted two girls with oversized eyes riding a moped through an intersection that was supposed to be in New York—Broadway and Third Avenue, but of course no such intersection existed. It was part of what Erika liked about Japanese manga; it didn’t try very hard to be real.
Erika had discovered after attending a few parties with Binky and Morris that all parties were like costume parties, and usually nothing that happened at a party qualified as anything that had to be considered in the course of normal life. If Binky and Christopher Primrose disappeared for an hour, it didn’t mean Christopher would sit with Binky at lunch. If Morris didn’t speak to her all evening, it didn’t mean he wasn’t going to play chess with her Monday. Parties were like the recess yard when they were little. People seemed to be moving all around her, while she stayed put, and spoke to whoever spoke to her. But she tried not to think too much about what she saw or heard. About the confusion of bodies.
The problem was that now something had happened at a party that she was required to consider in daylight. Something real had happened last night. Something horrible had happened to Melanie.
And Melanie had threatened to kill her.
This threat on her life was not something Erika could contemplate with Melanie sleeping off her hangover in the next room. Staring at the wall that separated the two bedrooms, Erika felt, rather than saw, a kind of pulsing in what should have been an imperturbable surface. It was a creepy feeling, like in a story by Edgar Allan Poe. Melanie’s drunkenness, the incident with Gerald or whoever it might have been, and Melanie’s low-voiced threat to Erika all seemed to accumulate in the physical space of the apartment. Erika knew when she felt her emotions bleed out in this way, into innocent and geometric spaces, that it sometimes helped to temporarily leave wherever she was.
Erika got up, dressed, and put on a heavy sweater. She knew she had to leave the apartment and clear her head, but first she texted Jan. Jan might know what to do. When they were young, and Melanie pulled Erika’s hair or stole Erika’s clothes, Jan had been a good mediator. Melanie listened to Jan. She kept the text simple, just said “call me,” but she felt better even knowing that out there, somewhere, Jan was available to her, if not physically, at least in words. Words were not as soothing as colors could be, but Jan’s words were better than most. She could picture the way Jan would hold the phone in her small, warm hands, and type back with her thin, white fingers. Jan had the prettiest hands, Erika thought. They were delicate, and reminded Erika of a pair of small, white birds.
Erika finished getting dressed and waved a brief hello to Julia, who sat at the dining room table typing away on some article or another. Erika didn’t wish to disturb her mother, who, if she knew something was wrong, might want to talk, to detain Erika, when Erika knew what she needed was space and light, the rhythm of her own breath. Erika said she was going to go down to the Pain Quotidien to get a mocha, and she asked if Julia wanted anything. Julia declined a coffee, smiled distractedly, and asked Erika to take poor Max, the family’s aging Yorkie, with her, which she did. Erika was thankful for Julia’s businesslike manner, thankful she didn’t ask too many questions about how and when they’d gotten home. Mom on deadline was the opposite of Mom at other times. The majority of the time, Mom was up for a chat, a cup of coffee, a long walk. Mom on deadline was mechanical, monosyllabic, and even a bit impatient when interrupted. Erika thought of her mother at such times as having a kind of on/off switch. On this particular day, she was happy her mom was switched off.
Maxwell was a good, silent companion on a day like this, and she could tie him up outside the café and still see him from the counter when she ordered. His presence, the rapid tapping of his dog toes against the pavement outside, somehow gave Erika a sense of calm.
The dog had no idea Melanie wanted to kill her.
Even with the brisk wind, Erik
a headed out toward the path by the river, wind hitting her in the face and blowing Max’s fur straight back, ears and beard flattened, revealing his tiny mouth stretched into an oddly fixed canine grin.
The pedestrian walkway was uncrowded for a Sunday, probably because it was the day after Halloween and most people, like her sister, were still asleep. Erika thought about the party. For the most part, it had been fun. Christopher Primrose had held Binky’s hand right out in front of everyone, which made Erika happy. She hadn’t liked keeping Binky’s secrets when the two of them disappeared into side rooms at Morris’s. Morris had been funny. He drank a few beers, and when he did he reminded Erika of someone older, like his dad, who was fun to kid around with. She liked it when Morris’s breath smelled like beer; it was a bitter, wheaty smell that reminded Erika of a sunshiny yellow, a color at once thin and bright, an aura, something to move through, and not merely see.
But the fun had come abruptly to an end when Erika and Jess had found Melanie in that terrible room with the bearskin rug. Before she’d even caught sight of Melanie’s bare leg, she had seen that repulsive mouth—the frozen, wide-open mouth of death. She’d felt almost frightened to enter the room, afraid of what she might find. Then there was Melanie, so drunk she’d passed out, and her underwear pulled way down to her ankles. It was a pink, lacy thong, far fancier than any underwear she, herself, had ever owned. She had wondered even in that awful moment whether Melanie had bought it herself, or if Mom had gotten it for her.
Obviously, there’d been some sort of sex going on that maybe Melanie hadn’t been completely awake for. This was upsetting to Erika, in the way that a complicated calculation, whose solution eluded her, might disturb her. She replayed the memory again and again, and yet each time felt she was missing some central component of the event. Was Gerald the boy? This was not really in question. He’d been just down the hall, and no one else was around. And Melanie was vehement about not taking him home. How the whole thing came to pass was also not really in question. Melanie had been very drunk, and these sorts of things happened. There were rumors she had heard about other girls.
Erika walked along by the gray, white-capped Hudson, with Max now panting at her side. The sun had risen higher in the sky and the air had grown warmer. It was undeniable that something had happened to Melanie that was unsafe, and Erika, as her older sister, should tell someone, should report the fact. But there had been that moment. Melanie had eyed Erika, clearly struggling against her own drunkenness, struggling to regain a single moment of clarity in which to deliver that horrifying threat to Erika’s very existence; it was a moment that had frightened Erika more than any other moment of her life. Now she knew what people meant when they said “living in fear,” for a fear of Melanie, and her power to retaliate against her in unrealized ways, had overtaken a number of her senses, dulling her mind with worry.
Since they were very young, Melanie had physically bullied Erika. She’d pushed and stomped. She’d smacked and pulled hair. She’d once deliberately, Erika thought, poked her in the eye with the sharp little foot of her Polly Pocket. Melanie had been only five at the time, but Erika remembered it. Even back then, Erika could recall knowing that she, herself, was incapable of those acts of violence her sister engaged in. Melanie hit at preschool too. When they were at the Park Preschool together, only one year apart, Erika recalled Melanie being the girl whom the other girls both loved and feared.
Erika never thought of hurting anyone. Her long, fine limbs, her own fresh radiant skin, gave her great joy, not because others found her beautiful, but because she found herself to be a resplendent being. She marveled at the workings of her fingers. Her knee joint contained the subtlest bones she’d ever seen, tightly wrapped in smooth, never ashy skin. Erika had a talent for solving difficult math equations, and she had a beautiful body, as sleek as a panther’s. She couldn’t hurt another being with this gift she’d been given by the universe.
Melanie’s secret should be told for Melanie’s own good, but it would also feel good, for once, to not let Melanie intimidate her. It was a point Dad had often made, that she too often let Melanie push her around. Melanie was even bossy with Dad, making their father stop on his way home to buy her a particular brand of pen, taking the last bagel when she knew their father would want it. It’s what Dad would want Erika to do if he were home. Dad was always reminding Erika that she had to stand up for herself, had to use her words.
But words had often led Erika astray. She owed nothing to the world of words.
When Jan called, Erika was on the side street near the Latin café, and she quickly grabbed a table.
“What is it?” Jan asked. Her voice sounded cloudy, and Erika hesitated, but only for a minute, before launching into the whole story about the punch and the boy with the eye patch, about Melanie’s panties and Gerald all crooked and bent, puking in the glamorous little bathroom.
“Jesus,” Jan said. There was an uncomfortable silence, a blankness Erika could almost see. “What should I do?” Erika asked, her voice rising in panic.
“I’m not sure yet,” Jan said. “But if this only happened last night, I would stay out of Melanie’s way at least for today. Let her rest. Then maybe I’ll call her. Maybe I can get her to talk.” Erika found herself nodding her head in agreement, instead of actually saying anything back to Jan. Of course Jan was right. Melanie needed sleep. She was tired, hungover, not in any way dangerous.
“But you’ll call her right away?” Erika asked. “You’ll call her tomorrow?”
“Well, yeah, I guess,” said Jan. “The only thing is, Erika, she might not tell me anything. I can’t just get in her business. It has to come from her first. You don’t really know what happened, right?”
“But I do,” said Erika, almost whining. “It was obvious. From what we saw. Binky and Jess think so too.” It was difficult to hear every word Jan said. It was cold and windy. But there was something else about Jan’s voice. She sounded muffled, or distracted.
“Okay,” said Jan. “I still think it’s tricky if she doesn’t want to talk about it, Erika. Just let me process it, okay? I’ll call her sometime soon. Right now, I’ve got my own crap to deal with.”
There it was. Jan had something else going on. That was the way it was now with her family. Dad and Jan were away, leading their away lives. It wasn’t true, what people said, about computers and cell phones keeping people connected no matter where they were on the planet. Where you were mattered. Especially with people. The people right in front of you were always the important ones.
Erika put her phone back in her pocket and looked down at little Max, who lay close to sleep on the cold sidewalk. She wondered what Max thought when people went in and out of his life. A dog’s life, she thought, must be filled with panic.
When Erika got back to the apartment, Mom was on the phone in the kitchen talking to her editor. In fashion, they were already on to spring, and Mom had a great idea about what would be trendy in the warm months to come. Erika could hear her talking with bubbly excitement about pants—pants in every color, but especially pants that were yellow, gold, and sunflower, wide and flowing.
Erika let Maxwell off his leash and made her way back to her room, past Melanie’s open door. Melanie sat at her desk. She had showered, and had her wet hair coiled on top of her head. She was wearing sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She appeared to be doing her homework. Erika knew she should say something. She should at least ask how Melanie felt. But she was too much of a coward. Jan had let Erika down, basically saying whatever happened was Melanie’s own business. But a crime wasn’t one person’s business. If that were true, there would be no law at all, no justice. No one would ever be safe.
11
“I thought we could just study? I have some research to do over at the Rock, but then we could get something to eat?” Jan was surprised by the sound of her own voice. She was pleading with Adam, when the night before she’d wanted to be far away from him, to never see him aga
in, as if his depression or whatever it was that was causing his crack-up, were contagious.
Adam stopped stuffing his clothes into his backpack and looked up at Jan, a light wave of astonishment crossing his face. “Don’t you remember last night, Jan? I confessed? Right? How I’m a total fuckup? From that moment on you treated me like a leper. I mean, it was like you didn’t want me to breathe on you.”
“Adam, we were on ’shrooms. I got upset. I can’t explain it. It was like whatever dark mood you got into that made you feel like screwing up at Harvard. It was like I was there too, and I was just trying to get out. It wasn’t real. It’s not how I feel.”
“Or, possibly, it’s how you actually feel. And how you feel right now, in the cold light of day, is like you’re losing something. But it’s just an idea. It’s this idea you have of having a boyfriend and everything being all neat and tidy the way it’s always supposed to be for Jan Russell.”
Jan hugged her knees and contemplated Adam. It was hard to love him in that instant. His face had a sort of blurred appearance, like the mushrooms and exhaustion had removed the outline of his features, as though he were a drawing, partially erased, and she wondered if her own face had this quality.
“And I can’t really understand this whole hurt act right now. I can’t buy it. I feel like you hate me. You think I don’t see it? But now you’re the one crying. I don’t get it.”
“I never said anything like that to you. I never was critical of you.”
“No.” Adam sniffed. “No, you don’t do that. You don’t say anything.”
“Adam, I thought you were acting weird. I mean about money and everything. But now I understand. You were upset, because of the money—”
The Word for Yes Page 8
