“Are you okay?” Fish asked, putting his hand on my back.
“You know,” I said carefully, trying to keep my tears in check, “those are strong onions.”
“Go up to the big house and wash your face,” Heather said. “Sometimes that’s the only thing that will work.”
I ran up the hill, pushed the front door open, and ran into the bathroom to wash my face with cool water. My mascara ran and my hair got wet. I washed my makeup off with hand soap and wiped under my eyes with toilet paper so I wouldn’t get black smudges on the hand towel. My skin felt tight from the soap and my cheeks stung when the tears came on hard. I sat on the floor with my back against the tub and took deep breaths, trying to get myself under control.
I heard the door pop open, and Chip ambled into the room, pushing his big black nose into mine, licking my face with his great big tongue.
“Hey, buddy,” I said. He nudged his nose into my armpit and pushed at my side. I felt crazy, but it seemed like he was trying to get me to stand up, so I did. He walked to the door and looked back at me until I followed him and then walked halfway down the hall and looked back until I met up with him. He led me into the living room.
“I thought that was you,” Ernie said, from his armchair. I wondered if he’d sent Chip after me. “Are you okay? Sit.”
“Onions,” I said, sitting on the ottoman next to his feet.
“Did the onions call you names?” Ernie asked. “You look like you got your feelings trampled.”
“It’s hard,” I said slowly, “when you know things can’t be the way you want them to be.” I knew I was saying too much, but I couldn’t stop myself. I needed to confess to someone. I needed to give part of the weight of everything to someone else. “When you can’t be who you wish you were.”
“Nobody is ever who they want to be right off the bat. Sometimes we have to strip away who we thought we were. And that part really sucks.”
“I’m not—” I said, looking Ernie in the eyes, pleading for him to really hear my confession, but he cut me off.
“You’ll figure it out,” he said, smoothing my hair away from my face with the side of his shaky hand.
I nodded and bit my lip to keep from crying again.
“You’re a smart girl. It will all be okay.”
“Do you want to come outside?” I asked. “I could help you.”
“No,” Ernie said. “But could you help me move to the chair over by the window? I love watching all your faces in the firelight.”
I lent Ernie my arm to help him stand. Chip followed us closely, like he was ready to step in and help if I needed it.
“Maybe you could send Heather to bring me some food when it’s ready?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said.
When I went back outside, they were all seated around the campfire. Heather poked at the foil packets with a long stick, turning them to make sure both sides cooked evenly.
Fish patted the log next to him, and I sat down. He put his arm around me, and I snuggled into his chest, determined to soak it all up while it lasted. “Your dad put in his order for dinner,” I said. Karen was staring at me. I tried to ignore her and keep my face turned away.
“You’re so sweet to check on him,” Fish said, kissing me.
“Who the hell are you?” Karen shouted. The way the firelight cast shadows on her sharp brow and bony cheeks made her scowl even more ominous.
I looked at her, trying to think of something to say, but I was too stunned to form words.
“You and Fish?” she said, standing up and walking over to me. “Do you still think he’s a sad little puppy dog? Do you still think he’s pathetic? You used to joke about the way he followed you around all the time.” She let out a sad, sick laugh. “We made bets on whether you could get him to do things for you. And now you’re kissing him? You’re, like, together now?”
She looked at Fish. “Do you remember all the times you did her homework? That was a calculated thing. She wasn’t a damsel in distress. She was playing you.”
Fish’s arm stiffened, but he kept it around my shoulder.
Karen stood up on the log in front of me. Her voice was so loud that everyone could hear. “And you’re all chummy with Heather? You used to call her Half-Wit Heather. You used to laugh about her behind her back.”
I couldn’t even look at Heather
“Stop,” I said softly. “Please.”
“And the best part,” she said, spitting out the words. “You and Myra are BFFs now? Does she know you broke up her parents’ marriage?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, hoping the fact that I really didn’t know would show on my face and make her stop. That maybe she’d think she was wrong about whatever it was that had happened.
“You slept with her father, you fucking whore.” Karen’s eyes were bright and shining.
Myra gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth.
My throat tightened. I couldn’t breathe. The smoke from the fire made my lungs burn.
“I caught you. Right before graduation. You saw me.” She pointed at me. Tears streamed down her face. “Don’t pretend like you didn’t. Like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You saw me, and you just kept at it. Like you loved getting caught. And now you’re here, and I’m supposed to keep your secrets when you’re flaunting it in my face?”
Myra ran up the hill and into the house.
“Myra!” Fish called. He got up and followed her, slamming the door behind him. I started to get up, to follow him, but Karen grabbed my shoulder and pushed me back down. I thought she was going to hit me. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Karen!” Robbie said sharply. “Enough.” He put his arm around Heather and they walked up to the house together.
“I’m not—” I started to say.
“You’re not anything,” Karen said. And then she walked away too.
I ran back to Myra’s house. The shock of the pavement shot sparks through my shins. All I could feel were the sparks, the burning in my lungs, a stitch clenching my side in its claws. I kept running like every monster I’d ever imagined had come out from under the bed to chase me.
I let myself in with the Hide-A-Key, shoved all my stuff in my bags, and used the phone in the kitchen to call the Salish Lodge to reserve a room and arrange for the shuttle to pick me up.
Before I left, I took Fish’s sweater off. I let myself smell it one more time and then I folded it carefully and left it on the coffee table.
Then I ran down to the basement and took Jessie’s photo box. I couldn’t help myself.
I walked to the end of the street to meet the shuttle, in case anyone came back to look for me, so I wouldn’t have to see them and they wouldn’t have to see me. I don’t think anyone came after me anyway.
I lay in bed in the hotel room, staring at the television. There was a nature show on about a mama bear and her cub. She nudged his furry little butt over logs and rocks and taught him how to catch fish and which berries were good to eat. She was gentle and attentive and anytime he wandered off, all he had to do was cry out for her and she’d find him. It broke my heart. I flipped the channels, but my brain was in overload. I couldn’t make sense of anything on the screen, and eventually I got tired of holding the remote. I rolled over and buried my head in the pillow and cried until I thought I might suffocate. My head throbbed.
Someone on the TV said, “The great thing about this product? It’s all about what isn’t there. No germs! No bacteria! No—”
And then I had a thought. A brilliant, crazy thought that got me out of bed. I dug through my bags until I found the box of Jessie’s pictures.
This time I looked at the list she’d scribbled on the back of the envelope. I lined up the photos in the order of the names
. It wasn’t about the pictures that were there. It was about the pictures that were missing.
Jessie used the pictures as her portfolio for school. Maybe the ones in the box were the outtakes. The ones she didn’t use. So the best anagram portrait was the one she’d sent. The one that wasn’t there. I laid them out on the bed. All the faces of Jessie stared back at me. I matched each picture to a name on the envelope.
The only names without pictures were Ms. Rease Jigno and Maree Jigsons. I pulled out my laptop and searched for Rease. There were no results. But Maree Jigsons was on Facebook. Her profile picture was a dark silhouette of a person on the beach at sunset. There was no light on her face, but it had to be Jessie. Maree Jigsons wasn’t a real name.
Since we weren’t friends, I could only see the very basic details of her profile. She lived in Portland. She was a University of Oregon alum. She worked at a place called Morgan Studios. I found the website. Morgan Studios was a photography studio that appeared to specialize in portraits. It was owned by J. E. Morgan, but her bio only said that she was a University of Oregon alum and had studied abroad for a year after college as an assistant to a photographer I’d never heard of. She hadn’t posted a picture with her bio.
It wasn’t an airtight cover, but it’s not like she was in the witness-protection program. She just didn’t want to be found by her high school friends. There were enough J. E. Morgans in the world for her to stay lost. And her friends had stopped looking for her a long time ago. One of the girls I worked with used her mother’s maiden name on Facebook instead of her real last name, because she didn’t want her ex-boyfriend looking her up. It had to be more than coincidence linking Maree Jigsons to a photographer named J. E. Morgan.
I called down to the front desk. “I’m going to need to rent a car in the morning,” I said. “Can you help me with that?”
I watched her through the window for a long time. Morgan Studios had a small seating area and a reception desk in the storefront. Larger-than-life-sized portraits hung on the walls: A grandmother. A biker with a furry chest wearing a leather vest. A baby crying. A businessman with a spot the size of a tennis ball on his tie.
She walked around straightening magazines, threw an empty paper cup from a side table into the trash can behind the desk. She looked up at the portraits and studied them for a moment before walking over to straighten the one of the baby. She did look like me. Sort of. She was taller. She had more curves and honey-brown hair, with a few well-placed blond streaks, that fell in curls past her shoulders. She wore a plain black T-shirt, a gray cotton scarf wrapped loosely around her neck several times, and tall black boots, with tons of buckles, over ripped, faded jeans. She didn’t see me standing in the doorway outside, watching her through the glass. She was in her own world.
Jessie drummed on the desk. I wondered what song she had stuck in her head. I wondered if we actually had anything in common.
I waited for her to look up or notice me, but she didn’t. I finally worked up the courage to walk in. She looked up when the bell on the door jingled.
“I don’t do weddings,” she said, her voice was throaty and scratched. “I shoot babies, kids, portraits, corporate stuff, and other events. I even do bat mitzvahs.”
She smiled. “I don’t shoot babies,” she said, as if she thought that’s why I looked like I was about to go into shock. “I photograph them.” She hadn’t gotten a nose job. She had a thin gold hoop that curled into her nostril. Her smile was closemouthed but reckless. The wild look in her eyes and the matter-of-fact tone to her voice seemed to say that she’d done it all and seen it all, and, yes, it was fantastic. I could see why she’d gotten away with so much when she was younger.
There wasn’t a good way to lead into what I had to tell her. There was nothing I could say to soften it. It wasn’t like I could ask about her portrait rates and then casually say, “By the way, I’m a Jessie Morgan impersonator.”
“So,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I’ve been pretending to be you. I went to your high school reunion.” I handed her the photo box.
Her eyes widened. She took the box from me. Her hands were shaking. She gripped the box tightly to make them stop. Her knuckles turned white. Her lips tightened. She studied my face without saying anything.
“I fell into it,” I said. “It wasn’t planned. I was there for a conference, and Myra saw me and thought I was you.”
She smiled. It seemed like she was trying very hard to keep her shock to herself. “Yeah, I can see it,” she said, gesturing to my eyes. “In here. Maybe we have the same chin too.” She hugged the box to her chest and drummed the sides of it with her fingers.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Do they know?” she asked. Her voice was a raspy whisper. She cleared her throat. “That you’re not me?” She looked past me, out the window, like she was trying to pretend she didn’t really care about the answer. She blinked a few times.
“No, but Karen told them about the affair with Myra’s dad.”
“Shit,” she said softly. There was a hint of weariness, like an acknowledgment that things eventually catch up with a person. She put the box on the desk. She started to open it, looked at me, and then put the lid back on.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
She was really quiet for a moment. She looked at her hands. “Well, I’m assuming Karen told everyone because she was being bitchy to you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“At least she didn’t let that bomb drop because she was mad at Myra. She thought she was hurting me. That’s slightly better than if she was trying to hurt My. Right?” She pulled a pack of cigarettes from the desk drawer and gestured to me to follow her.
She was like the Pied Piper. It didn’t even occur to me to do anything other than follow her. The fact that she hadn’t really reacted much to my confession made me all the more fascinated. I think she knew that.
We walked through the studio, a big room with white walls and backdrops. With every step, the heels of her boots clacked against the floor. The buckles rattled. “With Karen,” she said, calling back to me over her shoulder, “all you can hope for is lesser shades of bitchy.”
She grabbed a leather jacket from a hook by the back door and put it on as she walked outside.
“It was going to come out eventually,” she said, sitting down on the back stoop. She pulled a cigarette out and stuck it in her mouth. “Mmph?” She grunted and held the box out to me.
I shook my head.
She cackled. “You can’t be my doppelgänger and not even smoke. It’s ridiculous. That!” she said, waving the cigarette box at me. “That is how they should have known.” She acted like she’d expected all along that there would be people out there who would want to be her. Like she’d seen it coming. The more we talked, the less I was sure if it was a ploy to hide her discomfort or sheer arrogance.
I decided not to tell her about me and Robbie and his last two cigarettes. I would keep that part for myself.
She lit her cigarette, took a deep drag, and blew smoke up to the sky. “I’m actually impressed Karen kept it a secret for so long. I assumed they already knew.” She got quiet again. “How are they?” she whispered. She cleared her throat. “Are they good?” Her eyes sparkled when she asked.
I told her about Myra and her store, and Robbie and Heather, and how Karen had two kids. It was hard. Like I was giving them back to her. Like I would fade completely once I did.
“And Fish?” she asked.
I didn’t want to tell her about Fish. He was the one I wanted to keep the most.
“He trains guide dogs,” I said. “Mr. Foster had a stroke.”
“Mr. Foster!” Jessie said, laughing. “That man hated me.”
“Really?”
She didn’t even react to the fact that he’d had a stroke.
“
Yeah. I get it now. I used to see him as this bad guy for not wanting Fish to hang around me. But he just loves his kid. I have a little boy. I totally get it.”
My jaw dropped.
“He’s four,” Jessie said. “God! He’s not like Myra’s half brother or anything.” She laughed. “He’s only four. But if a girl like me ever strings Eddie along, I’ll rip her to pieces.” She stubbed her cigarette out on the stoop, leaving a black mark behind, and flicked it across the alley, making it someone else’s problem.
We went back into the studio. She pulled a bottle of scotch out of the bottom drawer of her worktable. “My parents didn’t give a shit. Fish was lucky to have a dad who hated me.”
We sat on the floor, drinking from paper cups. I stopped after a few sips. She did not. I looked around at all the photography equipment. Everything looked shiny and new. There was a row of camera cases on one counter and an enormous computer monitor on a desk in the corner. She was doing well for herself.
“Did you really climb out the bathroom window after Fish told you he loved you?” I asked.
Jessie caught herself just before she spit a mouthful of booze. She swallowed with a loud gulp. “No! No!” She shook her head and laughed. “I said I had to go to the bathroom, but I really just went to the parking lot and drove away.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking of Fish in his graduation gown, heartbroken. “That’s totally different.”
“Hey, Fake Jessie,” she said, pointing her finger at me. “I don’t think you get to judge.”
“True,” I said.
“What was I supposed to do? I was sleeping with my best friend’s father. Fish was telling me he loved me. Myra’s mother threatened to tell Myra and my parents if she ever had to even look at me again.” She sniffed and wiped her nose with her hand. “I’d already made all the bad decisions. It’s not like I could fix anything. I didn’t crawl out the bathroom window, but if that was the only way out? I would have freaking crawled through the sewer if I had to. I was a caged animal.”
Why Can't I Be You (9781101602843) Page 21
