Marrow

by Tarryn Fisher

  I rent the eating house to Sandy, who finally left Luis and is seeing a new guy she met in the vitamin aisle at Wal-Mart. He’s nice enough; I met them at a bar once, but soon after arriving, I felt like the awkward third wheel and said I had to go.

  I go to the library and print off a lease agreement I find online. Four hundred dollars a month, and she is responsible for the utilities. She says she is going to get a roommate and charge them six hundred dollars a month to live with her. I don’t care. I tell her so. This response seems to illicit excitement from her, and she rushes off to put an ad on Craigslist. I don’t know who Craig is, but as I toss my things into garbage bags, I pray he doesn’t send a psychopath to live in my mother’s house. Then I remember that I’m much worse than a psychopath, and that shuts up my mental fretting.

  I get a driver’s license, and then I open a bank account, depositing most of my mother’s money and a stack of my paychecks. I keep five thousand dollars in a rolled up sock in my purse. On an almost sunny day in late August, when the wild blackberries hang heavy and ripe on their branches, I climb into my Jeep and leave the Bone behind forever.

  HOW DO YOU JUST LEAVE the place you’ve always lived and not know where you’re going? HOW DO YOU JUST LEAVE THE PLACE YOU’VE ALWAYS LIVED AND NOT KNOW WHERE YOU’RE GOING?!

  I jerk my steering wheel to the right and cross two lanes of traffic, cutting off a Subaru and a semi before the Jeep groans to a stop on the shoulder of the highway. I flick on the Jeep’s emergency lights and hop out. This is crazy. What am I doing? The gravel crunches beneath my shoes as I race to the opposite side of the car and lean against the passenger side door, bending at the waist. I just need to … breathe … without … anyone … seeing me. I try to look calm, even as my heart rages. I am nothing. I have no one. The world is big, and this is all I’ve ever known. I cover my eyes with my hands and feel fear crushing what courage I worked so hard to cultivate over the last few weeks. I’m following signs to a city I’ve never even visited. I have no idea where I’m going to sleep tonight. God, I’m stupid. Following a pipe dream that Judah laid the foundation to. Before he left me.

  What makes me think I can live this fray?

  And then there is a voice that comes from deep inside me; it is what I imagine the eating house sounds like: rumbly and old. “You’ve killed people. What makes you think you can’t?”

  I say it out loud, with car engines roaring behind me, and suddenly I’m sober. Sober as the night I smashed Vola Fields’s head on the side of her dresser for beating her baby. Sober like the day I used Gassy the gas can to douse Lyndee Anthony in two dollars worth of premium before I tossed a match her way.

  Of course I can do this. I’m deranged. I am capable of murder. I’m like my grandmother who pushed my mother’s head under the murky bathwater and tried to drown her. Surely, somewhere inside of me dwells the ability to survive in a city larger than the Bone. I survived aloneness, I fed myself, I clothed myself, I graduated high school, I read books to make myself smarter. I’ll do it all again, because that’s what I do. Right? Right.

  I am almost put back together when a highway patrol car pulls up behind the Jeep. Fuck. Running my hands through my hair, my mind immediately goes to the contents of my car. Is there anything in here that can get me in trouble? I think of the knife set that I took from the kitchen when I was packing up, and the pink Zippo that I never gave back to Judah. No. I can’t get in trouble for having those. But Nevaeh’s bear sits on the passenger seat. The bear from the picture that was on every news station in America. The bear I took from Lyndee Anthony’s book bag before I burned it along with her.

  I straighten my spine.

  “Hello,” I say. I notice that his hand rests lightly on the hilt of his gun as he walks over. Something they teach them to do in the police academy? Just so you know, I have a gun! Hey there, I can blow your head off!

  “Ma’am,” he says. “Are you having car trouble?”

  “It’s overheating,” I say quickly. He bends down to peer into the Jeep, even though the removable top is off. “Are you headed somewhere?”

  “I’m moving,” I say flatly. “To Seattle.” I eye Bambi. Why didn’t I stuff it into one of the trash bags?

  He eyes the bags stuffed into my trunk in a hurry, then opens the driver’s side door.

  “Seattle,” he says. “Big ambitions. See your license and registration,” he says. I fumble in my wallet, then the glove box, and hand them over. I study him as he looks them over, carrying them back to his cruiser to run my plates. I consider putting the bear away, but if he’s already seen it, it will look suspicious.

  “Start her up,” he says. “Let’s see.”

  I walk past him, my hands clammy and shaking. You’re fine! I tell myself. He’s trying to help.

  I slide into the driver’s side and turn the key. The Jeep grumbles to life. The officer eyes the dashboard. “Seems to be fine now,” he says. “But you might want to turn around and head back into town to get it checked out.”

  I nod, pull my door closed, and grip the wheel ‘til my knuckles burn white.

  “Do you have children?”

  “What?”

  His eyes are on Bambi. I can’t read them because he’s wearing sunglasses. Big, reflective things like a fly’s eyes.

  “No,” I say. Just a childhood toy. Can’t bear to let it go, you know?”

  “My daughter has one of those,” he says. “She’s eight. Didn’t know they’ve been out that long.” Bambi has bulging eyes. I didn’t know that she was a type of toy that people could recognize. That was stupid to assume. I breathe a sigh of relief when he steps back, allowing me to pull forward and back onto the highway.

  “You have a nice day,” he calls over the engine. I wish I could see his eyes. I lift my hand in half a wave and pull away. My heart, my heart, my heart. When I look in the rearview mirror, he’s still watching me. People have looked at me like that before: Judah, Lyndee, even my own mother. Maybe there’s something about me that others can see. I try to imagine what they think when they look at me that way. A strange girl. Something about her … She creeps me out. I laugh at the last one.

  Now I am determined. I have to leave. I was stupid to think that I could stay. A town the size of Bone Harbor can’t hold what’s inside of me. I turn on the radio to drown out my thoughts and drive, drive, drive the speed limit all the way to Seattle.

  I DRIVE TO A MOTEL on the outskirts of Seattle and check in. The room is dingy, but it’s clean. At forty dollars a night, I am grateful for that at least. I lie quietly under the humorless fluorescent light on the ceiling and listen to a motorbike on the street. It grunts and farts probably as loudly as the middle-aged crisis who is driving it.

  My entire life is a crisis, and I am glad that no one has paid enough attention to it to notice that something is off about me. The bike revs loudly one last time and then guns off down the street. Tomorrow I will find a paper, or perhaps use the computers at the library, to find a place to live. Then I will have to find a job, preferably not one at a thrift shop. I switch off the light and roll onto my side so that I can see the flashing neon sign of the strip club next door. IRLS!

  I’ll be different. I’ll never go back to the Bone or the eating house. I have come this far, and I will go farther—running from who that place made me be. But before my eyes close and my mind drifts into sleep, I already know I’m lying to myself. The eating house will never stop calling to me, and I will never cease to answer.

  The city burns my eyes, glinting demon, like under the rare winter sun. It isn’t like the pictures I’ve seen of New York City. It is industrial, hard metal hanging over clear, crisp water. Shipyards and skyscrapers outlined by the blunt, graphite sky. My small town eyes are accustomed to space and squat, colorless buildings. People who look soft to the touch and clothe their bodies in faded cottons and fleece. Here, the women wear bright, gem-colored coats and glossy rain boots. Their bodies look hard and strong. I don’t know how t
o drive amongst cars that seamlessly weave and wedge themselves into small spaces of road. People honk at me, their horns loud accusations that I don’t know what I am doing.

  By the time I find the parking garage I am looking for, my shirt is damp with sweat and my hands are numb. I get lost in the garage, and during the twenty minutes it takes to make my way down to the street, I already doubt my ability to survive here. The apartment I am coming to see is on Sixth Avenue in a high rise. The website has pictures of a tiny kitchen and bathroom with black and white checkered tile, and a closet-sized bedroom. But it is affordable. I stand on the street, backed up against the window of a paperie, clutching my backpack to my chest. The people here don’t acknowledge the rain. They move through it like it’s a part of them—an extra leg or arm they’re used to working around. I am made breathless by the efficiency in their step, the impassivity on their faces. I can’t make myself move, because I can’t move like them.

  It’s a crow that puts me back into my skin. It lands on the sidewalk a few feet away from where I am cowering, and caws at me, tilting its head from side to side. I blink at the street, then back at the crow. I am the essence of evil. Most of these people who are passing me have not taken someone’s life. They have not planned a murder, or poured gasoline over a woman’s body and lit a match. They may have thought it, thought murder, but by acting on my impulses, I have separated myself from the rest of the world. Released a beast from its cage. And here I am, so paralyzed by fear that I can barely move.

  It is the crow’s caw that reminds me of who I am, and it sets my feet moving. Electric blue Docs and the splash of puddles. I make my way toward Sixth Avenue, imitating the facial expressions of the people around me. People I can never be because of what I’ve already done. But, I realize, I can watch them and pretend. I can buy a raincoat and learn my way around these streets. Piece of cake. I just have to get this apartment.

  The apartment isn’t as nice as it looked on the internet. I feel like a woman who’s arrived to a date with a man she met online, fooled by his outdated picture. I take it anyway, because the owner takes me. The longer I wait to find a place to live, the longer I’ll be sleeping in my car. We do everything right there, on the peeling Formica countertop of the outdated kitchen. It’s not worse than the eating house, I tell myself, as I sign the lease and hand over a year’s worth of rent. The year’s rent is the reason I get the place. No questions asked. I don’t have references or credit. I feel lucky he’s giving me a chance.

  The owner is a balding, thirty-something man, named Doyle, with a gut that nudges over the top of his pants. He smells of Old Spice. I walk the apartment one last time before we leave, taking in the familiar smell of cigarette smoke and the lingering stench of grease that clings to the wallpaper. The windows face other windows, but, from the living room, I can see a patch of sky, and that is enough. We make arrangements to meet at a coffee shop later, where he will bring me the keys and the sticker I’ll need to use the building’s parking garage. As I walk out of the building, I feel accomplished. I want to tell Judah what I’ve done, so I go to a store and buy a phone. They want my address. I give them the address of the eating house, and plan to change it later. I fill out the paperwork, pay them, and when I walk out and head down a deeply sloping street to the coffee shop, I have one of those fancy things that can do anything and everything.

  Finding a table near a window, I watch the people and the traffic, a growing sense of excitement bubbling in my chest. I wait for four hours in the coffee shop before I get up and ask the man making coffees behind the bar about Doyle. He looks at me with his eyebrow cocked, his pierced lip pulled up in impatience.

  “How am I supposed to know who Doyle is?” he says, sliding a beverage across the counter to a waiting customer.

  “Doesn’t he come in here?” I ask.

  “Sweetheart, do you know how many people come in here every day?” I glance around at the dinner crowd, people freshly clocked out of their jobs, stopping by for an espresso with their coworkers before they head home for supper. He eyes my clothes, the insecurity with which I cling to my backpack. “I don’t know where you’re from, but this is Seattle. We don’t know our neighbors.” I think about my neighbors, not nice, plaid-wearing folk, who make jam and bring you over a mason jar with a handmade label. My neighbors were druggies, thuggies, and murdering mothers. And their neighbor was me: a cold-blooded killer. Poor old country folk. I look at the pierced-lip barista and roll my eyes. We were a lot tougher than he thought. I don’t know where you’re from, but it sure ain’t the Bone.

  I back away from the counter and go stand by the window, convinced that I’ve done the wrong thing by coming here to this proud, undeterred city. I’m already sick of that thought, the back and forth of my decision. Judah would tell me to own it. My eyes blur in and out of focus as I watch for Doyle, unable to accept the deception. It’s a mistake. I’m at the wrong coffee shop. He was held up by something: a car accident, a family emergency. I am willing to entertain anything but the sad, stinging truth that I was scammed. I handed twelve thousand dollars over to a stranger without so much as asking his last name. A naive girl with a wad of cash—an easy target. As the sky darkens, I watch the pedestrians, imagining the spaces they are going home to—the warm kitchens and the sofas facing the televisions. The children throwing themselves at their daddy’s legs, the mothers wiping their hands on dishtowels to come fetch a kiss on the lips.

  I walk to the library and search for the ad on Craigslist with Doyle’s phone number. It’s gone; however, if my suspicions are correct, it shouldn’t be long before another pops up just like it. Probably with a new number that Doyle has acquired. A pay-by-the-minute phone bought at a gas station. There will be a new name on the ad. I find the number from the ad scrawled on a piece of paper in my wallet, but when I use my new phone to make the call, it rings and rings until I finally hang up. My situation becomes more discouraging as the library announces it will be closing in five minutes.

  Back into the rain, back into the march of people who know where they’re going. I make my way toward the apartment building eight blocks away. The cold is locking into my joints, and I have a headache. When I realize that I haven’t eaten all day, I buy a bowl of noodles from a food truck and carry it with me to the apartment building where Doyle stole my money. I sit on a bench across the street and watch the entrance. The food falls to my belly, but I don’t taste it. This is what happens; everything becomes black and white. I see only injustice. The man who chose the moniker Doyle, who will continue to prey on the innocent, must be held accountable. The building looks different without the glow of hope around it, dingy and mean-looking. I walk to the front of the building and stare up at the oppressive, little windows. Doyle had opened the main door with a keycard that he pulled out of his wallet. He had access to the building, which means he either already lives here, or he had pulled his scam before and somehow managed to get keys to the empty apartments. He can be anything from a maintenance man, to a friend of the real owner’s. I sit for a while longer to look up at what was almost mine. It’s all right. I’ll wait. When the time is right, Doyle will repay me—one way or another.

  THERE IS AN APARTMENT FOR RENT across the street from the building where I was supposed to live. The landlord takes me up four flights of stairs because the elevator is broken. The stairwell smells like piss, the rent is more expensive, the apartment more dingy, but the light is better. From my living room window, I have a straight on view of Doyle’s building. I take it. Not because I can afford it, but because I can’t afford not to have it. I can move in in a week. I sleep in my Jeep in the meantime, a sweatshirt rolled beneath my head, not wanting to waste money on a hotel. I sneak into a fitness center and use their shower a couple of times, promising myself that one day I’ll get a membership to make it up to them. During the day, I wander the streets of Seattle—Pike Place Market, the pier. I take the ferry to Bainbridge Island; I ride the elevator to the top of the Space
Needle. I eat in a restaurant that has thousands of oysters piled into icy silver bins. When I pour the silver meat into my mouth, I can taste the ocean. I’m instantly hooked. I’ve never seen the ocean, but on the banks of the Sound and in the exotic, salty meat of an oyster, I can taste it. I sit on the bench outside of Doyle’s building and watch for him. I write everything I spend in a notebook, so I know how much I have left.

  Loaf of bread and peanut butter: $4.76

  Socks and shampoo: $7.40

  Toilet wand: $3.49

  Coffee: $5.60

  Aspirin and milk: $6.89

  This week I spent 137.50. Try to spend less next week! I write in the margin of the notebook.

  I think of the places I’d take Judah if he were with me: to the market, and across the Sound on a ferry, a stroll on Bainbridge Island, a lunch at my favorite oyster bar. I call him once, but hang up when I hear his voice. I don’t know what to say to him, and I’m afraid he doesn’t miss me. When the day arrives for me to pick up my keys, I carry myself into the rental office, sure something will happen. They will decide I’m not good enough to live there, they’ll find out I killed a woman and burned her body, they’ll know what I am and send me to prison instead. When the landlord sees me, he exclaims, “It looks like you’re here to identify a body, not pick up your keys!” I laugh at the irony and relax. If he’s in this good of a mood, he’s not prepping to tell me that I won’t be moving in today. In the end, the landlord hands me my keys and shakes my hand, congratulating me on my new home.

  I carry my garbage bags of possessions up to the fourth floor and deposit them in my living room before I wander around. It’s beautiful. It’s mine. I want Judah to be here. I want my mother to be proud. I wipe both of those thoughts away quickly and pack my few possessions into the closet. A job, I think. A job, and Doyle, and life.