In Her Skin

by Kim Savage

  “I’d like to see my mother now,” I whisper. It sounds weird coming from my mouth, because my mother is dead.

  As I remember this, my eyes fill with tears.

  “Sweetheart,” Ginny says, “I know this must be very hard. I’m going to make a promise to you. I’m going to make sure that you get every resource you need. A therapist to talk to. Maybe a stress animal. Do you know what those are? They’re pets specially trained to sense when your anxiety level goes up, and when they do, they give you comfort—”

  “No.”

  Ginny’s eyelids shoot up. “No you don’t know?”

  “No I don’t want one.” What kid doesn’t want a pet? Stupid Jo. “I mean, mostly, I’d like another doughnut.” I need Ginny to lay off and give me some time to work on the shed thing. I’ll have to soft-pedal Vivi’s lockup during those seven years. At a certain point, it’s easier for everyone, even a sourpuss like Curley, to think of a missing kid as dead than alive, because they don’t have to imagine what she must have gone through. We’ll talk about “moving on” and not giving my perpetrator one more minute of my life. Fuzzy details will be welcome. Therapy appointments will be made. A foster family will be assigned, as will a pet, funded by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Ginny might be mine, but if the cops don’t buy that I’m Missing Vivi, I’ll know right away by their headshaking disappointment, by how they back away a little. In that case, I’ll ask to go pee for the second time, in the bathroom where I’ve loosened the screws on the window grate. The back alley leads to the YMCA, and farther, down Huntington Avenue, where I can get lost in the sea of college kids from Northeastern.

  Detective Curley pops his head in and gives Ginny a questioning look.

  Ginny nods solemnly. “Make the call.”

  I try to sound excited. “You’re calling my parents?”

  The lines around Ginny’s mouth deepen and she looks away. I fake squinty confusion. Rule number one Momma taught me: stay in character, even when no one’s looking.

  “Vivi,” Ginny says, leaning forward and grasping my hand; it’s the first time she’s called me Vivi, and touching me is not police social worker protocol, since you don’t touch the Maybe Diddled. She’s going off book, which means she’s stuck. There are no guidelines for magically reappearing orphaned dead girls, at least not ones she’s read. “There was an accident. Your father was piloting a small chartered plane to Nantucket, like he sometimes did. And there was weather, and he and your mother—their plane, that is—crashed. And they are no longer. I’m terribly sorry.”

  There’s something crazy and wrong about this woman acting like a plane crash is the worst possible thing that can kill your mother. It’s the best possible thing that can happen, Ginny! Having your mother plunged into the Atlantic is better than having your mother’s cheekbones caved in by a fist. And Vivi never had to see any of it, and …

  And Ginny’s hugging me. She smells like lilac powder and BO, and I heave once for effect and peek over her arm to the floor where her bag gapes. Inside is a fat file, probably about Vivi. A fat file I can use.

  I peel away gently.

  “Your parents never gave up hope that they would find you,” Ginny says with feeling. “Before they died, they arranged for your neighbors to get custody of you if anything happened to them. Do you remember Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft?”

  I look up, blinking back tears. “The Lovecrafts?”

  She doesn’t miss a beat. “You remember! The parents of your friend. Her name is Temple. They live two doors down.”

  I choke.

  Ginny does a sad puppy face. “I’m deeply sorry.”

  I nod hard. “I know you are.”

  She looks at me strangely, like I am a wondrous creature, like I know she is awkward and I am making this easy on her and Ginny is hugging me again.

  “How soon until they get here?” I squeak.

  An angry rap on the half-open door. Detective Curley hears Ginny and wants her to stop talking to me. She’s giving away too much information, he thinks, but he’s already lost this one: Ginny’s on my side. I’m the success story that makes Ginny satisfied with a job that pays her less in one year than Momma made in one month of check kiting. And Temple Lovecraft, library Temple, fascinating Temple, is my new sister.

  Then the detective and Ginny do the unexpected. They leave me sitting alone for what only feels like hours because the conference room has no clock. There is someone on the other side of this who is researching child-welfare laws and checking wills and making phone calls and it feels out of my control. They leave me with the soggy cup of Coke and a stained travel pillow from Ginny’s car where I rest my cheek, and I want to think about Temple but instead I am thinking about Wolf and our tent, and it seems like a million years ago since last night, when I lay awake staring through the half-light at his delicate chin, a chin not made for lives like ours, and the shadows that line his nose, thinking about how his beauty will always be his enemy, attracting the paying men he doesn’t want to attract, and knowing, traitor that I am, that it would be our last night. Wolf and I have been together since we arrived at Tent City on the same day, me helping him survive, him helping me not get raped by attaching himself to me. He’s older than me, but younger in the head. He is bored by the books I crave. Still, he doesn’t mind my days spent at the library, when by rights I should be helping him panhandle and Dumpster dive and carry water up from the rain barrels instead of reading. Wolf accepts my cravings and I accept his, which leave raised red rings on his thighs, because cutting on the street means infection, but burning with cigarettes kills germs. And in this way, we work. Wolf is the closest I’ve come to having a boyfriend, but one boyfriend does not a family make.

  And this is where I leave him.

  * * *

  Remembering past lives isn’t my only skill. Long ago, I learned I was good at using the ones right in front of me. Momma had a name for it: said I was an intuit.

  Every time I switched schools, to avoid getting teased for my backwater accent or my short pants, I’d pick a certain girl—the girl whose laugh could leave you bleeding, the one who moved other kids around like chess pieces, the one teachers let get away with murder. I couldn’t copy clothes, or the smell of clean scalp, or a hard little chin. But I’d get good at the cool rhythm of her speech, her shuffle walk, her nonchalance. Eventually, it wasn’t enough to be on the outside: I wanted in. So I decided things. I thought she might be a late sleeper. That she liked salty over sweet. She tanned easy, and had a stripe of white underneath the woven bracelet on her ankle. The lines around both of us dissolved until I was looking through her eyes, and those eyes were fierce slits. When one of Momma’s boyfriends would block my way, I’d push past him, sweeping my shoulder like he’d shed something bad. If Momma limped from a kidney punch, I spat into the boyfriend’s scrambled eggs and coolly watched him eat. Momma’s scams were just games, games that I played along with because I wanted to, and I could stop at any time.

  Inside the girl’s ferocity, I hardened.

  * * *

  I must have slept. New faces crowd the door. In Tent City, cheeks thicken from weather and booze, and eyes flicker. These faces are strange in their delicateness and their concern. I pull my dirty sleeves over my hands and slip down in my chair. Under the stares of these people, everything feels wrong: the distance between my eyes, the shape of my lips, the width of my pelvis. The excitement of a few hours ago has evaporated and I am scared. I don’t have Vivi in the flesh to observe, to know what she would do next.

  Momma would tell me to remember when I was a soldier returning from battle. You’ve seen and done unspeakable things, she’d say, and now you are home.

  I make my cheeks sag with weariness and my eyes light up with relief. It’s not the easiest combination. Momma would be proud.

  A woman takes a careful step into the room, with Ginny and the detective behind. The woman’s face is unlined and her hair thins at the temples—she wouldn’t like that I notice t
his, is self-conscious about it—and her raincoat is tied at the waist, a plaid pattern that looks frumpy but means the coat is expensive and worth stealing. She has pale, wide-spaced eyes and a nose turned down at the tip, and the same hair as Temple, light-filled syrup, only shorter. Her mouth is tight, but there is movement underneath, like she’s turning thoughts over in it and finds them sour. She pinches her throat between two fingers, leaving pink. Taken together, these are not good signs. But I shouldn’t assume this is going to be easy. Hadn’t assumed it. Won’t assume it.

  A man comes behind her, more obviously beautiful. Not how Wolf is beautiful, which is the kind of beautiful you look away from. The kind that gets carved and eaten by hungry men. This is the man who does the eating. This man is ravenous, a man whose shoulders dip and rise as he walks, who uses his whole long body to speak, though he hasn’t yet. He has a neat new beard because it is trendy, and it will be gone next week. I can see his arms through the sports coat, and the coat has been cut to do that very thing. The kind of man who could bang the babysitter but maybe doesn’t. Not because of what she lacks—they are not equals, these two—but because it is beneath him.

  Ginny clears her throat. No one looks at her. She lumps her way forward, graceless against these people. Detective Curley hangs back, watching.

  “Vivi?” Ginny asks. Not a statement but a question. My only ally in the room maybe isn’t an ally.

  This was a mistake. I glance into the hallway, toward the bathroom: my escape to Huntington Avenue.

  “Vivi,” Ginny repeats.

  My head snaps. “Yes?”

  Detective Curley pushes into the room, holding up his hand to silence Ginny. He wants to see my face. He wants recognition; proof. Because Vivi was nine, and Vivi would remember these people. But I’m not going to give the detective a full reckoning, because I’ve been through a lot in that shed. Enough to wipe a memory near clean.

  I blink as if through fog.

  The woman comes forward in a sweeping rush. “Vivi!” she says, breathy, and crouches beside me, her forehead wrinkling in happy layers. Excitement works for her: she is prettified. The man joins her, still standing; this is not a man who crouches. She searches my face as I search hers. It feels like a violation, those pale eyes over my face, but to look away is suspicious.

  “Mrs. Lovecraft…,” Ginny starts.

  Mrs. Lovecraft’s eyes are not for Ginny. “May I touch your hand?” she asks.

  “Mrs. Lovecraft, we really don’t know the extent to which—the trauma…,” Ginny falters. Ginny is doing a terrible job setting boundaries, and the detective is getting madder. Even I’m mad at Ginny. Because none of this is by the book. It’s strange, to feel like a prize, a rare thing that a rich woman wants to touch.

  I nod.

  Mrs. Lovecraft places her cool hand on mine. “You are Vivi,” she whispers.

  Mr. Lovecraft turns to the detective. “We’d like to take her home now.”

  Detective Curley gets his back up. “That is not happening. We need to take statements. A rape k—”

  “Medical exam,” Ginny corrects.

  I look to Mrs. Lovecraft wildly. “I don’t want anyone touching me.”

  She looks to her husband, begging.

  He leans toward the detective. “The Weirs’ will states that we are Vivienne’s legal guardians. There is no reason we can’t just take her home right now.” He slips a white card into the detective’s hand. “That’s my attorney’s number, if there are any questions.”

  “Leaving so soon may not be in the best interests of the child,” Ginny warns. “There will be therapy. Grief counseling.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft, we don’t yet have a full statement from the victim. There’s a criminal out there to find,” Detective Curley says.

  I look only at Mrs. Lovecraft. Mr. Lovecraft has hardly looked at me. I should be relieved by this, since I don’t trust men much, but it pokes at me, messes with my performance. I refocus on her.

  “I want to leave this place,” I beg.

  Mrs. Lovecraft rises. “You said our coming here was for the purpose of identification. This is Vivienne Weir. She was like a daughter to me.” She turns her smile on me. “I would know her anywhere.”

  Ginny covers her mouth hard, thinking. She wants this win badly. Mr. Lovecraft and the detective glare at each other. Finally, Ginny drops her arms and turns to the detective. “It’s late. It wouldn’t hurt anyone if Vivienne went home with the Lovecrafts tonight and came back tomorrow. The police can take their statements then, and I can provide therapy referrals. Phone numbers, names. A plan. Will that work?”

  I look at Mr. Lovecraft full-on for the first time. He gazes at his wife and they smile at each other, not with their mouths but with their eyes. I won’t be coming back here tomorrow, and I am grinning like a dead pig in sunshine, which is inappropriate, so I stop.

  Mrs. Lovecraft takes a long look at my unshoweredness, at my body pouring from my too-small sweatshirt and ripped leggings, the ones I stole from the tent of a younger girl. I am dirt and sex, too, and maybe that’s why Mr. Lovecraft hasn’t looked at me yet, though I don’t think so.

  The station buzzes, an angry vibe, charged by the fact that we are leaving together, which is against the rules. Suited detectives and uniformed cops and the dispatcher who works the phone and even the hooker stare. Mr. Lovecraft is a tall glass of water, and it feels good to walk alongside him. We step outside into the night to their car at the curb. As I sink into the backseat of their huge SUV with its tinted windows, I almost don’t care what they do to me. Because the possibility that these people are perverts is low, but it’s still a possibility.

  Mrs. Lovecraft looks over her seat. “Are you tired, Vivi?”

  I nod. The relief of being out of the police station is overpowering. I try to say “very” but it gets caught in my throat.

  Mrs. Lovecraft’s face bunches up. “We don’t need to talk now. You should rest. Go ahead, lie down in the backseat. We don’t mind if you don’t wear your seat belt.”

  As if the worst thing that could happen to a girl who was held captive in a man’s backyard for seven years is getting whiplash in a car accident. I’m starting to see these announcements as the habits of people who live with roofs over their heads—pointing out the mildly unsafe to keep away the real horrors. The Lovecrafts are halfway right. Words have power, but you have to use them the correct way.

  My family. My family. Mine.

  Mr. Lovecraft presses a lit screen and fills the car with soft music. I have never seen Boston through the inside of a car window, and it’s a different city. People in light jackets huddle and rush and laugh, the women in shoes made from expensive animals walking with men who look like they smell good when the women lean in. The store displays are lit jewel boxes, and the sidewalks are even and clean, and inside this car you can’t smell the garbage and the pee, the exhaust and the sausages. As we turn off Newbury Street and take another right onto Commonwealth Avenue, the street is lined with newly budded trees strung with white lights. This is the Lovecrafts’ city, and it glows. I went to a buffet restaurant once and this is like that: food for miles, so many things to choose from, and I want to gobble it up.

  I touch the window.

  Mr. Lovecraft looks back. “Don’t worry about going back to the station. We would never put you through remembering. This is a new start for you, Vivi.”

  They murmur in the front seat, their words watering as I drift again. I catch the name Temple a lot, and there is worry in their voices, worry that relates to newspaper reporters and people who remember our case, but the city is beautiful tonight, because Henry and Clarissa Lovecraft are going to take care of me.

  We park a few blocks away from the Lovecrafts’ brownstone. Mrs. Lovecraft rubs her thin arms as we walk. “There’s nothing prettier than May in Boston,” she says. “When the dogwoods bloom. Though they hardly last.” We stop as Mr. Lovecraft slips off his scarf and wraps it around her neck. She li
fts her hair. They don’t speak: this is a practiced act, an expected one.

  “What Clarissa’s saying,” he says, tweaking the scarf, “is that you picked the perfect time to come back to us.”

  I smile weakly at the ground. I am from Boston. I am supposed to know that this city is pretty in May but pretty doesn’t last. On the street corner ahead, laughter trails from a group leaving a restaurant. This is the restaurant next door, maybe not exactly the same restaurant where the Lovecrafts sat when Vivi disappeared, but the same spot. Which seems totally wrong, now that I’m on this well-lit sidewalk on Commonwealth Avenue. This is a busy part of the city, a neighborhood for sure, but still busy, and suddenly I want to know the details of Vivi’s abduction. How did the kidnapper get in? How did he escape with Vivi without anyone seeing? Is there an alley in the back? How did Temple not hear anything?

  Mr. Lovecraft cups my shoulder and I jump.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he says. “We’re here.”

  “Right,” I say, stopping at a set of stairs leading to two huge front doors. I gaze up; the town house is three stories high. I start to ask if they live in this whole thing, but stop myself, because Vivi would know.

  A man meets us in the marbled entrance. They introduce him as Slade. Slade is at least six foot three and over two hundred pounds, fit but puffy, wearing a jacket and jeans, and that jacket indoors in May means he’s packing heat. The skin under Slade’s eyes is gray, and he makes a meaty-lipped smile while he tries not to look at my chest. I wonder if those under-eye circles mean he stays up late watching porn.

  Mr. Lovecraft explains that Slade “spent time in Iraq” and “recently transitioned” into “private client security.”

  Slade tongues his gum into his cheek. “Nice meeting you, Miss Weir,” he says as he holds out his hand. I shake it limply.

  “We’ve used security professionals like Slade for the last few years. Just a precaution. A lot of folks in our circles do it,” Mr. Lovecraft says.

  “In our circles” means income bracket and “the last few years” means since Vivi vanished, and who exactly are the Lovecrafts taking precautions against? Seven years later, are they still afraid someone will climb through a window and steal you?