In Her Skin

by Kim Savage

  Slade waits for the Lovecrafts to tell him what to do next, but the Lovecrafts are looking at me like I’m a fish in a tank again, and maybe they’ve forgotten him already. When Slade shifts and makes a small noise, Mr. Lovecraft comes to.

  “That’ll be all for now, Slade.”

  “I’ll be in my room, then,” Slade says, bounding up a set of stairs, and do all rich people have sleep-in bodyguards? We enter a room with a crystal chandelier dripping from a ceiling painted blue. Not the endless blue of the Florida sky, but mixed with streams of clouds. Where the walls meet the ceiling is trim like frosting, with fruit and baby angels in the corners made of the same white stuff, four of them, mouths open like they’re screaming.

  “We’ve redecorated a bit,” Mrs. Lovecraft says, spinning as if she’s new to it herself. It’s hard not to gape at this house I am supposed to know, even if it is changed.

  “Technically, she redecorated,” Mr. Lovecraft says, squeezing his wife’s skinny shoulders. They touch each other a lot. Momma’s boyfriends touched Momma a lot, and me sometimes, too, but I don’t remember liking it. Mostly it made me think about them bloated, dead on the ground.

  “This atrium has become my favorite room in the whole house,” Mrs. Lovecraft says about this room that is the center of everything. In one direction, a polished stair rail leads up; in another is a kitchen with lights over a shiny island, and in another, a cozy room with a fireplace and a standing mirror with a curlicue gold frame and a puckered turquoise couch. In the fourth direction is an office with a desk in the middle and a file cabinet beside it. The desk faces a barred window looking out onto that same restaurant. I wonder if it’s hard for whoever sits at that desk to look at that restaurant every day.

  “It’s been a long day for you. You must want a bath,” she says.

  I stiffen; maybe they are perverts. More importantly, do I care?

  My weirdness registers with her. She looks at Mr. Lovecraft again worriedly before saying, “Or not.”

  Mr. Lovecraft moves about the first floor, pulling closed the heavy drapes, shutting out the city, the restaurant, and the night. I like the way he gives us space when we’re talking about me bathing. It’s probably just good breeding, but it feels like respect.

  “No, it’s fine,” I say. “You want me clean. It’s okay.”

  She looks at me, puzzled. “That is, if you want to be clean. It’s up to you.” She looks over my body gently, imagining bad touches, and lowers her voice. “We can’t begin to understand what you’ve been through these last years. We know it’s going to take time for you to acclimate. That’s why we decided it would be better to wait for you to see Temple.”

  “You sent her away?” I ask.

  “No,” Mrs. Lovecraft says, looking up at the staircase as she says it. “She’s here. We just thought it would be a good idea to give you some space tonight. It’s late, and you should clean up and get some sleep.”

  “I just thought I’d meet everyone, you know, tonight.”

  “The truth is, this is hard on Temple, too. Not that she’s not thrilled that you’re back. We’re all thrilled. Your return changes our lives. The papers will want your story—‘The Return of Vivienne Weir’—so we’ll have to manage that. You’ll be going to school, sharing our home. It’s a lot for a teenager to adjust to.”

  “We were friends,” I say. “Sisters, basically.”

  “Well, of course. But that was when you were nine. Temple is sixteen. And you’re—”

  “Sixteen,” I say.

  “Sixteen. Time has passed. I’m sure you’ll be close again, but it might take a little while.”

  From the stairs comes a creak.

  We snap our heads. Temple Lovecraft is perched on the stairs, hugging her sharp flannel knees.

  “Darling!” Mr. Lovecraft exclaims. “Come down and say hello to Vivi.”

  You release your knees, unfold your long body, and walk down the stairs slow, slower than I know you have energy for, because I watched you before you knew I was watching. Your feet are bare and white, and bones rise under your camisole straps forming diamond caves. You stand in your pale cami and your hair braided at the temples (Temple!) and tucked behind your ears, so close I can see the pin-dot holes where the diamonds were and smell the black licorice you just ate on your breath. Your eyes start at the top of my head and work their way down: the crown of my forehead, eyes. A flick between both ears, down the nose and settling on my mouth. I twitch. To my chin and down my neck: chest, hands, waist, and knees, every part examined. I am not safe under plastic and your eyes are not my clumsy thumb. Years with Momma’s boyfriends have hardened me to stares, but by the time you get to my feet, my heart is pounding so loud I am sure you can hear it.

  Do you know me?

  In an instant, your mother is at my side. “You’re thinking it’s a miracle, aren’t you?” she says, hugging you at the shoulder.

  You only look at me.

  “Temple,” Mr. Lovecraft says. “Your mother asked you a question.”

  Mrs. Lovecraft waves it off. “Vivi’s been through so much. We have time to catch up. For now, sleep.”

  Your eyes flash over me one last time, wary. You aren’t sure. I tell myself it’s not that my eyes are hazel where Vivi’s were green. It’s not that my left front tooth crosses over my right, where Vivi’s teeth were strong and straight. It’s that you don’t want Vivi back. And I don’t blame you. Vivi was your friend from third grade. You had third-grade things in common: boy bands and glitter nail polish and diaries. I’m going to have to win you over as Vivi, when Jolene Chastain would talk to you about Emily Dickinson and books with coffee rings on their covers and in a book, this is called irony.

  Of course you’re iffy about me. You’re Miss Number One Everything. Vivi’s return takes the spotlight off you. Where I spent half my life trying to become invisible from Momma’s boyfriends and the cops, you’ve spent sixteen years as the center of boot-licking admiration. You and Vivi may have history, but Vivi’s reappearance could make your whole life go sideways. So yes, it is to be expected that you won’t embrace me.

  Yet.

  With a swish of flannel and hair you are gone. Mrs. Lovecraft puts her arm around my shoulder, just as she did with you, and I show her I like it with a weak smile.

  “You’re going to have to excuse Temple,” she says, steering me toward the stairs. “She has so many questions. In time, she’ll adjust to your being back.”

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “To your room,” Mrs. Lovecraft says.

  I never go to sleep this early. The less you sleep in Tent City, the less you lose. As if she reads my mind, she says, “Do you think you’ll be able to sleep? I imagine it must be hard to quiet your mind.”

  Ahh. Bad Shed Thoughts. I haven’t fully considered the explanations Vivi’s kidnapping will provide, from avoiding eye contact to keeping my clothes on to my crappy dental hygiene.

  “So hard,” I murmur.

  “I think I have something that will help,” she says, leading me up the stairs. Behind us, Mr. Lovecraft slips into his office and slides the pocket door closed. She leads me to the second floor, where a pretty window seat looks out across the Commonwealth Avenue mall to the Charles and the blinking lights of Cambridge. She points out the bedroom and bathroom she shares with Mr. Lovecraft, and a third room, its door shut.

  “This is where Slade stays,” she explains. “The surveillance we employ him for requires him to stay awake through the night and sleep during the day. I don’t want you to be surprised if you hear anything at odd hours.”

  “So, he protects the family while you sleep?”

  “That’s right.”

  The house gets narrow as we climb to the third floor, where, again, there are three doors. One leads to what will be my room, which is wallpapered royal blue with tiny gold lilies and contains a dresser, a nightstand, and a four-poster bed fit for a princess. The covers are pulled back at the corner; underneath,
the sheets are fresh-looking and tight. My body aches for that bed. The second door is yours, and it’s shut. A tiny bathroom is behind the third, with a tub perched on claw feet and a tufted rug. There is old-fancy and old-crappy, and this is the first. Mrs. Lovecraft feels for a plushy robe behind the door and hands it to me before twisting the gold faucet on. She straightens and digs her knuckles into her hips. I stare at the water pouring into the tub and I cannot get under that water fast enough.

  “Do you need help getting undressed?” she asks, pitchy. She hopes I’ll say no so she doesn’t have to see the stories Vivi’s naked body will tell her.

  “I’m good.”

  “Then may I give you something to relax?”

  I am a Popsicle on a summer day and Clarissa Lovecraft is the sun, and she is offering a soft, cool bed and hot water and now drugs, and I could make out with her, and where at first she was a woman who seemed less than her handsome husband, now she is a goddess, with her beginnings of a neck wattle and her noble beak-nose.

  I nod hard.

  She disappears and returns with two green pills. “Ativan. Perfectly safe if you don’t make a habit of it.” I want to tell her that if I didn’t make it a habit in Tent City, where one out of two residents is stoned out of their mind, and if I didn’t make it a habit in the years when Momma was using, I’m not going to make a habit of it in Back Bay.

  I accept the pills and toss them back. She hands me a paper cup of water, but I’ve already swallowed. Smiling softly from the side of her mouth, she leads me back to the bedroom, where I am finally alone. As I drop another street kid’s clothes, light bounces at the window. I pull on the robe, creep to the window, and look down. The story of Vivienne Weir’s return is making the eleven o’clock news. A woman stands before the Lovecrafts’ brownstone, holding a mic next to a News 5 truck with a spiral cable running up a pole. I shove the window up, sleeves flopping, and I hear her talking, but I can’t make out her words over cars zooming to beat the light at the corner of Dartmouth and Commonwealth. With luck, the reporters will move on, and I will be embraced by this over-the-top house and the arms of my new well-groomed parents who ooze love and maybe you, Temple, will come to love me, too. The edges grow soft, and I hear the water running across the hall, and it’s been a year since my baths didn’t involve a restroom and mealy paper towels, and you can’t pay for this kind of white noise. I tiptoe from my room. The Lovecrafts talk excitedly in their bedroom below, probably because they saw the news truck. I don’t want to wake you, who, as the drug moves through my bloodstream, seem less threatened by me and more curious. Catlike. I slip into the steamy bathroom, shut the door with a soft click, drop my robe and close the faucet.

  The water is heaven. Under these bubbles floats my own filth, but I don’t care, because the bubbles smell like apples and I am good. I didn’t know how tight my muscles were from sleeping on the cardboard box with the egg-crate pad, and then not sleeping, because some nights sleeping in Tent City isn’t the best idea, some nights it’s better for you to take turns sleeping while one person stays alert, listening—don’t think about Wolf—and sometimes instead of sleeping, you both get up and walk until the sun rises, across town, to the Charles and along it. Above your head, the tree branches hold moonlight, and underneath, the path sparkles, and in the river, the light from Cambridge shimmers across black ripples—don’t think about Wolf—and he rests his arm across your shoulder, and you wonder if he might be enough family for you.

  I hold my breath and slip below the water. Let my hair bloom, let the warmth loosen my jaw. Don’t choose to remember, Jolene. Choose to enjoy. After all, it may not last. Make the most of this tub and that bed and this drug.

  A mean thought cuts through my Ativan haze, straight out of a bad TV movie, of a hand holding my head under the water. I break the surface, gasping. I feel frantically for the robe on the floor and hold it over my face for a second, then two.

  When I drop the robe, the door is cracked open.

  I step from the tub covering my privates best I can and press the door shut with my elbow. Naked and dripping, I clear a circle in the mirror with my knuckles. Great black pupils. Slicked hair. Vulnerable. The girl in the mirror looks frightened by her own imagination. The girl in the mirror looks high. The girl in the mirror looks alone.

  I smile close-mouthed. “Pervert,” I whisper, in case the peeper was Slade and he’s still lurking.

  No matter. The Slades of the world do not concern me. I have a family, and that family has my back. I section the front of my wet hair and braid it, tucking the braids over my ears. Raise my shoulders until my collarbones make hollows. Lift my chin.

  As Vivi’s skin grows over mine, I will slip inside the Lovecrafts. I will slip inside the Lovecrafts. I will slip inside.

  Now the girl in the mirror doesn’t look so alone.

  * * *

  In Immokalee, a wren flew into our house and got itself trapped. Momma and I tiptoed around it for days, leaving it seeds and a Dixie cup of water. Here, I am the wren. It’s like the Lovecrafts think loud noises or too much bustling around might scare me away. I have been left nearly alone for my first full day, except for meals. Mr. Lovecraft talks on the phone in his office and Mrs. Lovecraft pretends to do things on her laptop in the kitchen, but her main job is running interference between you and me. The Lovecrafts have explained that “chilling” at home today is best, because we are “under a microscope.” This feels true and not true. Besides the reporter last night, the street is full of rushing people who don’t know us and don’t care.

  I shift to wake my legs, tucked underneath me in my hallway window seat high above Commonwealth Ave. The book on my lap crashes to the floor. The book is a prop, because Vivi would occupy herself by reading politely. I don’t read, because reading would distract me from hearing you and your parents—our parents—whisper.

  You laugh from below. Not a nice laugh: a “ha.” A challenge.

  More whispers; harsher tones. I grab a pillow and curl it into my chest.

  I do not like this strange quiet. I would rather be thrust into acting like Vivi than waiting for something to go down. A juicy snore echoes from behind Slade’s bedroom door, followed by a dreamy murmur that sounds like “more snacks.”

  I chuckle loudly.

  Downstairs goes quiet. Stupid Jolene. Girls kept in sheds do not spontaneously laugh, particularly when they are alone. To disguise the laugh, I cough, loud and over the top.

  Thirty seconds pass. A minute.

  The whispers start again.

  I exhale and press my hand against the glass. A homeless guy on the corner sells copies of Spare Change News. I’m not close enough to tell, but because I’ve been homeless I know that layers of street crust his pant cuffs. I know his work boots are heavy but not warm. I know his nose is chilled, because Boston gets cold when the sun drops. Momma always ran on the cold side, she said. I run my tongue over my crowded teeth and try not to think on Momma, because no good comes from thinking on the dead. Not Wolf neither, because no good comes from thinking on those you’ve left behind. There is only what lies ahead.

  My eyes fill with dumb tears.

  “Are you okay?”

  I yelp.

  You stand in the shadows on the landing, a plaid blanket wrapped against the wind that blows off the Charles. Your finger rises to your lips, dragging the blanket like a royal sleeve.

  “Shh,” you whisper.

  “Why?” I whisper back.

  “They don’t want me up here.”

  I force myself to sit still and let you run your eyes across me again, over forehead and nose, out to the ear, mouth, and back to the eyes.

  I can’t help how I look, but there are other tricks. I lift my voice a shade and speak from my belly, so my words come from a softer place. “Your parents don’t want you up here?”

  “They want me to take it slow,” you explain. “Give us both time to adjust.”

  I face the window, scrambling to get insid
e Vivi. “That’s probably a good idea.”

  “They’re worried. They always worry.”

  I crinkle my nose. “I know this turns your life upside down. And now I have to live here, which makes it doubly weird.”

  “It’s definitely weird.”

  “I don’t expect things to be the same. I’ll never be the girl I was.”

  “I don’t expect things to be the same either.” You move closer to share my view. “They say I’m not supposed to ask you what it was like.”

  Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Lovecraft. “Yeah. I’m not really ready to talk about it.”

  A gust from the Charles River passes through the pane. In a flash, you’re draping the blanket across my shoulders.

  “Thanks, but I don’t need this,” I say, trying not to notice your warmth on the blanket, or the care you’re taking to cover me with it.

  “Keep it. You’re cold.”

  “Temple!” Mrs. Lovecraft calls from the kitchen, and now her feet are on the stairs, light as a cat. Mrs. Lovecraft is light-footed, but her daughter is silent.

  You meet your mother before she reaches the landing. “I heard Vivi coughing. I thought she might need a blanket. You told me to give her anything she needs.” This leaves your mother with no response and you know this.

  “Of course,” your mother says shrilly. She turns to me. “You’re not coming down with something, are you?”

  Your navy eyes dance. We are in this together and this is what you wanted. “I’m not sick. I was—cold,” I say.

  Mrs. Lovecraft feels my forehead. “Henry keeps the thermostat at sixty-seven. We’re used to it, I suppose. I’ll speak with him. In the meantime, we’ve scheduled a physical for you tomorrow to make sure you’re well.”

  My stomach drops. I don’t need a doctor nosing around my parts, making comparisons between what was known about Vivi and what is visible on Jo. I open my mouth to say I’m not ready to have someone touch me, but Mrs. Lovecraft’s small back is already winding down the stairs. Your eyes settle on me for a second, and inside my chest, I feel a tiny spark. You turn to leave.