by Theresa Weir
My heart dropped in my chest and panic washed over me from head to foot, making me weak. “Really?”
“Why do you say it like that?”
Luckily he was watching the road and not me. “I dunno.” I told myself to calm down. “I kind of figured you’d eventually go back to California and Berkeley.”
“Really?” Now it was his turn to sound weird.
Here it comes, I thought. Before he could dive into the whole I want to stay with you, why would you think I’d leave, I reached across the space between the seats and grabbed his hand. “Let’s go back to the house.” I gave him a little smile.
The light turned green and he pulled through the intersection, then whipped the van around. But this wasn’t him saying, “Okay, let’s go back.” This was him mad.
“What am I to you?” he asked.
I started to say my boyfriend, but I couldn’t make the words come out. I couldn’t lie to him.
“Am I still that guy you attacked in the hotel room? Am I just a diversion? A fuck?”
“Jesus, Ian. I just said let’s go back to the house.”
It was happening. We’d gotten to the place where I could no longer fool him. So fast. Too fast.
“You didn’t want to talk about my application. I didn’t mention it earlier because I had the feeling you’d freak out. I don’t understand you. I’ve tried to give you space and tried to keep out of your business, and tried to just be here for you because your dad’s only been dead a couple of weeks. My mom died four years ago and I know how that messes with a person’s head. You think you’re okay because you don’t realize you aren’t. But you don’t need people around always patting your arm and asking how you are. Or pretty much avoiding you completely. I imagine you must have other friends since you’ve lived here your whole life, but nobody calls you and nobody comes over. I know how friends scatter when somebody dies, so I was just trying to be here. But I can’t keep my mouth shut anymore. Because what is this? You and me? Am I your therapy?”
He braked at an intersection, then squealed the tires taking a corner. He nodded as he contemplated being my therapy. “I’m okay with that. I am.”
He pulled to a stop in front of the house. My dad’s house. Ian’s house. Not our house. He shut off the ignition, draped his arm over the steering wheel, and turned to look at me. “I like you, Molly. I like you a lot. Maybe more than a lot. I’m not sure.”
“You don’t know me.”
“No, not very well. But I know you’re hiding. Maybe it’s your dad’s death, but maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s more than that. I have no idea. But I’m shut out. Completely shut out. And like I said, I’m okay with that. For now. For now. But not forever. I’m not okay with that forever. But I don’t think you’re worried about forever, are you? You want me to leave. You want me to go back to Berkeley.”
He was so mad. Mad and hurt. I was seeing a whole new side of him that I didn’t know existed. If I was shut off, he’d been shut off too. If I was hiding, so was he. Not for the same reasons, but because of me.
“I don’t like this.” Oh, the humiliation. My voice shook, and my lip quivered, and my eyes burned and my throat hurt. “Don’t yell at me.”
His face changed. All of the anger seemed to melt from his face. It hit his shoulders, pushing them down, and now he was just sad and hurt. Now he just wanted to make me feel better.
Behind us was the table. That stupid table. Just minutes ago we’d carried it to the van, and we’d laughed and I’d looked at the breathtaking beauty of orange maple leaves against a blue sky and felt it was one of the best days of my life. And now this.
I could see he was going to touch me and comfort me. I didn’t want him to. I would break. I would shatter. I would cry.
I grabbed the record I’d bought and turned the door handle, pushing it open with my shoulder as I baled out. On the sidewalk I pulled the Leonard Cohen vinyl from the sleeve, checked it for scratches. Mint. Then I tossed it. Hard. With my whole body. Like a Frisbee. Right at the house. It hit a porch pillar and broke in two pieces. Perfect. And now the new hurt I felt was about the album, about what I’d done to a vintage treasure. I was no longer hurting because of Ian.
I pounded into the house and up the stairs to my bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind me.
I wondered if he’d come and knock and tell me to open up and let him in, but he didn’t. I heard the sound of an engine followed by barking tires. I looked out the window in time see the van disappear around the corner.
Sometimes I think I’m more like a guy than a girl because I hate drama. I really do. And now I felt ashamed of myself for losing it. And the album. What a waste. What a stupid display.
I unlocked the bedroom door, went downstairs and outside, picked up the broken pieces, then circled around to the back of the house to toss them in the green plastic trash container next to the garage.
For so many years I’d wanted to get away from this house. Even when I was little I fantasized about running away and living with a new family. One time I even packed my school bag with pajamas and my stuffed elephant, along with my toothbrush and peanut butter sandwich. After school I told the bus driver I was staying the night with relatives, and I pointed to a home and told her to stop. She did. Amazingly, she did. The doors opened and I stepped off. While she waited, I walked up the sidewalk to the strange house, all the way to the door. Then I turned and waved. She pulled away and I watched until she was out of sight, then I left.
One block. Two. Three. My bag got heavy, and somewhere along the way I decided to stop and sit on the curb to eat my sandwich.
That’s when a cop stopped his car to see what I was doing.
“Are you lost, little lady?” That’s what he called me. “Little lady.”
I was worried that my dad would find out and I lied to the cop. I said I’d gotten off the bus on the wrong street. I knew my address, so he helped me pack my unfinished sandwich and then he took me home. Back to the house I’d tried to leave.
But now, when I knew I should go and nobody would stop me, I couldn’t make myself do it.
Chapter 17
My liberal arts class on Nirvana was held in Folwell Hall. Like a lot of the buildings on the U of M campus it was located in a vine-covered brick building with marble floors, creaky elevators, dark stairwells, and a lot of deeply stained wood. Inside, the marble steps to the second floor had been worn away in the center, and the wooden railing had been polished by a million hands. Ceilings were high, with caged light fixtures that looked Steampunk.
Yeah, that was it. The whole building felt like Victorian era invaded by kids in skinny jeans, backpacks, and iPhones. And I was one of them.
“Your paper was excellent.” This from the TA as I stepped into the room. He was young and earnest, dressed in khaki pants and white shirt, looking like he could work at CopyMax. “Professor Scott wondered if you’d be interested in reading it to the class.”
My stomach sank. Read it? I didn’t know if I wanted to be singled out like that. And I wasn’t even sure I was going to stay in the class. I’d dropped two already. I adjusted the strap on my messenger bag. “I’d really rather not.”
“Participation is a part of your grade.” He blinked and adjusted his thick black glasses. “Just thought it might be helpful. Three minutes of your life, that’s all.”
Professor Scott appeared beside him. He was maybe fifty, tan and fit, giving off the aura of someone who biked twenty miles a day. Short-sleeved plaid shirt and a skinny black tie. “Are you taking any journalism or creative writing classes?” he asked.
“No.”
“What’s your major?”
“I’m undecided.”
“You have a nice writing voice. Very descriptive but straight forward.”
I got the feeling he wanted to say more, came to a decision, then continued: “Your paper on the death of Kurt Cobain wasn’t quite what you were assigned to do, but I liked it so much I’m going to
overlook that. You’ve focused more on style and emotion rather than analysis. Which is why I mention writing classes. You seem like a natural.”
“Thanks, I’ll think about it.” Weird that he’d latch onto the writing thing. Not that I hadn’t thought about writing, fantasized about it, and okay, tried to write a few things over the years, but writing wasn’t anything I would have considered myself good at.
Ten minutes later I was standing in front of the class of about fifty students. I felt like an idiot. It was really out-of-body, and I almost felt like I was watching myself read from somewhere above my head.
My story was told from a studio intern’s point-of-view. I knew it didn’t fit the assignment, and I only wrote it because I figured I’d be dropping the class and I’d wanted to write something that gave me a sense of satisfaction. But now I felt ridiculous standing in front of everybody, the chairs filled with cool people and people who wanted to be cool. Hipsters and mods, more guys than girls. A few sporty-looking types. Not sure what they were doing in the room. Probably thought it would be an easy credit. My father had warned me about classes that looked easy.
“They can be some of the hardest,” he’d said as we sat at the kitchen table going over my choices.
I read.
February 1993
Pachyderm Recording Studio
It was her fault. All these theorists talk about how she hired a hit man. Some even say she pulled the trigger, but that’s bullshit. She poisoned him with herself, that’s what she did. That’s what I’m talking about.
The session was going great until she got here. She brought the poison with her. It was in her red nail polish and her smeared red lipstick. She left it on the rim of coffee mugs, and when she jumped in the pool an inky black question mark rose to the surface.
The studio is haunted. Everybody knows that. Before they ever came, before they unloaded their equipment, I heard crying in the hallway.
Somewhere in the middle of my reading I looked up and realized most of the people dressed in dark clothes were listening to me. And they seemed interested. I kept going, wondering how much time had passed. Was I reading too fast? Too slow?
I finally reached the last page:
Once they were gone her poison lingered. We turned on the exhaust fans and opened the windows until wood warped and strings went out of tune, but we couldn’t get rid of it. Thirteen years later I sometimes catch a whiff. I often wonder what music would be like if he hadn’t killed himself, because you know it wouldn’t be like this.
I finished with a few lines from a John Berryman poem, Dream Song #143:
He only, very early in the morning,
Rose with his gun and went outdoors,
By my window, and did what was needed.
I dropped my arms to my sides in defeat. Done. I thought about the bridge on campus where so many people had died, the bridge where John Berryman himself had jumped to his death. And I thought about how Kurt shot himself. That took guts. A gun? Why a gun? I mean, he had to have a lot of drugs around. Why not just overdose? A gun meant you hated yourself. A gun meant you wanted to make sure everybody knew this was no accident.
Something weird happened to me. Something totally unexpected. Standing there in front of those cool kids, I burst into tears. Like somebody flipped a switch. I hadn’t felt it coming. Not at all. Otherwise I would have moved. I would have sat down. But suddenly I felt overwhelmed, like this weight was pushing on me, smothering me, and I had nobody to turn to, nobody to confide in. It wasn’t just my secret that I carried hidden deep in my belly, but death. The idea of death. About someone being here one minute and gone the next.
Where did they go?
Nowhere?
Just gone?
Yes. That’s what I think. Just gone.
My thoughts were racing, and it felt like I was falling into this dark pit that I’d never get out of. The classroom was gone. The hipsters were gone. It was just me in my head.
Somebody said something to me.
Professor Scott. With a humiliating jolt, I realized I was still standing in front of the class, and I was still crying. Huge gulping sobs.
I dropped my papers on the floor, dove for my desk, and grabbed my things. Clutching books and notebooks to my chest, I ran from the room, passing a blurred line of faces with mouths hanging open.
Someone shouted. I looked over my shoulder and saw Prof Scott standing in the doorway. I gave him a jaunty wave. “I’m fine!” And I kept running.
At one point in my flight I stopped and sat on a bench long enough to stuff my stray books and papers into my bag. Then I ducked under the broad strap and took off again.
I should join the running team, I thought. Then I could just run and run all day long and I wouldn’t be running away from anything. I’d just be running.
Unable to go any longer, I slowed to a walk. Bent over, hands to knees, I struggled to catch my breath. When I straightened back up I saw the suicide bridge.
How do I keep ending up here?
I needed to talk to somebody, I thought as I walked toward the bridge. But who? Rose? Rose who didn’t like heavy subjects? Taylor? Who’d never said a word about my dad’s death? Taylor, who lived to get high? I thought about a shrink, but I couldn’t really see myself unloading on a stranger. But wasn’t everybody a stranger to me? Really? Ian had been right about shutting him out. He just didn’t realize I did that with everybody.
It was windy on the bridge. My hair and dress whipped around me, and my bare legs were cold. I wondered where John Berryman jumped. From the middle? A little to the side? They should put up a plaque but I guess that would be an invitation.
Oh, hey. Good idea. Was just on my way to class but now that you mention it suicide seems a better option.
Behind me, a bus shifted gears and shot a blast of diesel fumes my direction. Below, the Mississippi reflected the blue sky, and across the bank the trees were a flaming orange and red. Winter was coming. Ian had been excited about winter.
I wasn’t sure where he was, and I’d spent the past few days trying to find another place to live. So far I’d narrowed it down to a house in Uptown where four people lived. It was close to Mean Waitress, but the idea of moving in with a pack of strangers didn’t appeal to me.
My phone rang. Or rather my ringtone. I checked the display. Minneapolis number, no name. I let it go to voicemail as I walked back across the bridge, toward the Frank Gehry designed Weisman Art Museum where I found a little alcove so I could check the message without wind or traffic noise.
Professor Scott. “Hey, Molly. Just wanted to make sure you were okay. If you need to talk, today or anytime, you can always send me an email or stop by during my office hours, which are three to four-thirty. The next assignment is online—a ten-page essay on the impact of suicide on youth culture. I promise I won’t ask you to read yours in front of the class.” End of message.
How could I go back there and face all those kids? Jesus. I should drop everything, but at least school gave me a focus. What would I have right now if not for school? My waitress job. That’s all.
Before putting my phone away I sent Rose a text message. Let’s have a party at my dad’s place.
Rose replied almost instantly. When? She was always up for a party.
Tomorrow. It’s my birthday.
Rose: How many people?
Me: As many as you want. I’ll post it to a couple of message boards. See if any bands want to play.
Rose: Are you sure? Do you feel ready for this?
Me: I NEED a party.
Chapter 18
Ian heard the noise before he turned the corner. And when he got to the house—his house—he found the street so packed with cars he was forced to park two blocks away.
As he walked toward the party he noted that all the windows were open and all the lights were on. The porch was packed with people, and he even spotted a cluster upstairs in what was Molly’s room. He rounded the house and found the same congestio
n in the backyard. He’d never seen so many hipsters and hippies in one place.
Inside it was body-to-body and about a hundred degrees. In the dining room a band was playing—two girls on electric guitars and a guy on drums while people watched and bobbed to the music.
He kept moving.
Couches and chairs overflowed with partiers holding disposable cups and smoking cigarettes and pot, the music too loud for conversation. Why did he get the feeling this party was not about having a party, but about getting back at him? About trashing the place he and Molly had worked together to create?
He squeezed past the mob sitting on the stairs in order to get to the second floor. Same chaos. Hallway packed, Molly’s room with several people standing around talking. Down to his room. Two girls sitting on his bed, legs crossed, smoking while another girl braided a guy’s hair and took pictures of him.
“Want me to braid your hair?” the girl asked when she spotted Ian standing in the doorway.
“I’m looking for Molly.”
“I saw her earlier.” The girl frowned as she concentrated on the braiding. “Maybe an hour ago. Outside.”
Under normal conditions he would have considered the party pretty mellow. Not the typical college campus party, and most probably weren’t students at the U. Just didn’t have that feel. But he was exhausted, and he knew what this was all about.
He finally spotted Molly downstairs in the kitchen. Wearing a floral dress, those black boots, a cute little sweater. She had a daisy clipped to her shiny hair, and her face was flushed, her lips full and red.
She was wasted. Maybe as wasted as the night they’d met.
“Where’ve you been?” She handed him her cup, sloshing beer on his arm. He shook it off.
“I drove to Chicago to visit a friend.”
“Male or female?”
“Female. We went to Berkeley together.” In fact, they’d lived together for a year before breaking up, but they’d stayed friends. Not easy to do.
“I wasn’t sure if you were coming back so I decided to throw you a going-away party.” She made a lazy sweep with one hand. “Post-departure party.”
