“Go on.” She jots something in her notebook. I bet it says Opening up. Good job!
I say with another big sigh, “Jake has a brown freckle in his left eye, just shy of his iris.”
“Uh-huh.” Concerned Therapist writes something else down. I bet it says Interesting! Then she looks back at me, waiting for me to continue, but I simply shrug and shut up. And here her face shifts from hope to disappointment. As it does, I think about that brown freckle in Jake’s eye, how I used to wonder about it sometimes, and it is this random, insignificant thought that creates the tiniest wormhole for the past to slide into the present.
“What are you thinking right now?” Concerned Therapist scoots closer, like she senses there are real secrets waiting. Her voice is firm. “Tell me. Tell me what you’re thinking right now.”
“I’m not thinking anything,” I say, but I’m thinking about Jake and Ellie, and everything in between. My mind is suddenly spinning back and forth until it settles on one distinct memory: a year ago, the time when Ellie’s parents were both out of town and I spent the night at her house. We thought we’d be alone for the whole weekend. Then her stepfather returned early from a business trip.
“Sarah?” Concerned Therapist moves to the edge of her seat. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
Again, I shift in my seat. I look just past her, out the window at the traffic rushing by, the people-filled cars that magically disappear from sight. “Nope. Not a thing.”
“Are you sure?” She glances at the clock. But I am silent. I am silent until finally she sighs and says, “Well, I guess we’re just about out of time.” She jots down a few more notes, grabs her desk calendar, and heads to the waiting room to discuss next week’s appointment with my mom.
I linger behind, continuing to watch the cars. I imagine myself inside one, hurtling blissfully into the great beyond.
BEFORE. MARCH.
We stood in the living room. Me with alcohol coating my lips, and Ellie’s stepdad with his carry-on suitcase teetering beside him. He had entered the house a minute earlier, and when he saw me standing near the liquor cabinet, he asked, “Where’s Ellie?” Then his eyes lowered to my skimpy nightshirt—the one I had worn specifically to catch Jake’s attention—and his face registered a familiar look of disappointment.
“Um . . .” I moved closer to the wall, curling my shoulders inward. I was still completely buzzed from earlier, when Ellie had convinced me to dress up like a Mad Men character—our hair in French twists, Jackie O sunglasses on our faces—and drink martini after martini while we danced to some Motown records her real dad had left behind.
“Oh, hey, Sargeant.” Ellie was beside me, dressed in a slinky red nightgown that belonged to her mother. She walked toward him, outstretched arms pulling him close like a long-lost lover. “You’re back early,” she said, her eyes glazed.
He stepped away, obviously uncomfortable. He glanced at the living room, running his stubby fingers through thin brown hair. Wrinkles washed over his forehead, creasing the sides of his cheeks. His eyes hesitated at the dirty dishes on a side table and traveled to an empty martini glass atop the open liquor cabinet.
“Come on, Ellie.” Weariness crept into his voice. “You’re almost seventeen now. It’s time to stop all this nonsense.”
Ellie brushed her bangs from her face and rubbed her hand across the space beneath her lips, her eyelids at half-mast, her voice seductive. “I’m just curious. Haven’t you ever been curious?”
“Ellie . . .” He shook his head and sighed, all the while repeating her name. “Ellie. Ellie, listen to me. I can’t keep going around in circles like this with you. I told you, if you keep on like this, I’m going to have to talk to your mom.” He held up his hands, and his face looked pained. “You’re not giving me any choices here—”
“You don’t need to tell her anything.” Her eyes narrowed. “Besides, there’s nothing to tell. Yet . . .” She trailed her hand down his chest, her finger tracing the buttons of his work shirt from his collar to his belt buckle.
“Stop! Okay? Just stop! I’m tired of this.” He shoved her away, and she stumbled backward, landing in a big heap on the sofa. She began to laugh, a loud cackling sound that made my skin crawl.
Suddenly, the room began to spin; the air seemed nearly sucked out of it. I pressed my palm to the wall, using it to steady me as I made my way toward Ellie’s bedroom. Inside, I slipped her window open and pushed my face against the screen. The night air was frigid, but I let it swirl around me until the coldness became unbearable. Then I started to gather my things while Ellie’s words, like intrusive thoughts, rammed against me: Haven’t you ever been curious? Haven’t you ever been curious? Haven’t you ever been curious?
I stopped to rest my head against the windowsill—waiting, breathing—but my anxiety continued to grow. Ellie entered the room five minutes later and halted beside my overnight bag. “What? Are you leaving?”
I gazed at her blurry figure. I wanted to ask her what she was doing. Why she always got like this. But I knew how that conversation would go, and I just couldn’t take a big scene, not right then. “I don’t feel well.”
“You don’t feel well?” Ellie repeated slowly. “You were fine, like, five minutes ago. Is it Sargeant?” She always called him by his last name, never his first, which was Gary. “Oh, come on. You know what a sucker he is. Please.” She took a sip from yet another martini glass. “I just don’t get what your deal is.”
“What are you doing?” I stood, my hand on the bedpost, and turned to face her.
She thrust her drink forward, and gin spilled onto the floor. “I’m drinking. I . . .” She tried to laugh, but the sound caught in her throat. “I don’t understand.” Again, she smiled. “Are you really sick?” The vacancy in her eyes started to be replaced with some form of comprehension, maybe even concern.
I watched the glass, the way the clear liquid swayed. There was so much I wanted to say, but all I could do was move my fingers across my lips as if I might communicate through sign language.
“I don’t understand,” Ellie repeated.
“It’s like you’re two different people sometimes,” I said, and grabbed my bag.
“What are you talking about?” She held on to my wrist, but I squirmed free. I didn’t stop when she called my name, her footsteps chasing me through the hallway, or when I heard her say, “Sarah, you’re making a big deal out of nothing. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Nothing happened!” I kept moving, until the kitchen’s sliding glass doors shut firmly behind me, my body filled with a sudden sense of safety.
At the edge of the pool, I stopped to breathe. I gripped a tree, the bark scratching my skin. When I turned back, I saw Ellie through her kitchen window, standing over the sink, her eyes filled with confusion. I wanted to go back and say it would be all right, but I didn’t believe that anymore. Tears streamed down my face as the emotions settled across hers. And just for a minute, she seemed like that same little girl I met when we were twelve. But seconds later, she raised her drink, and I saw the grown-up Ellie, the one I secretly wanted to leave behind.
14.
Some days I want to tell you that I can’t do it on my own. But even on those days, I can’t bring myself to say these things to someone who might not always be here.
Jake
AFTER. FEBRUARY.
When we’re done, Amber pulls a half-full bottle of wine from her bag and says, “I had a rough childhood, you know.” She rubs my back, telling me every horrible story she can muster: bad baby-sitters, a dickhead dad who worked too much, an uncle who once popped her on the mouth for saying “shit.”
Hours later the bottle’s empty, and Amber, bleary-eyed, puts on her silvery boots, says “Fuck! The time!” and disappears.
After she’s gone, I spin her empty bottle and stare at Ellie’s box. For months now I’ve imagined myself going through the contents: sorting her letters, pictures, and sketch pads into evidence of who
Ellie was, who she wanted to be, the things I never knew about her, the things I knew but didn’t want to see. I can only take so much of these thoughts before that pain that I get sometimes overwhelms me, and then I’m grateful for any distraction, like when my cell phone rings.
“I just wanted to hear your voice,” Mom says when I answer. She sounds breathless. It’s how she talks these days. Sentences filled with urgency and air but also, conflictingly, hesitation and the threat of tears.
I sit on the edge of the bed, automatically falling into my routine performance of a caring son. I ask her how she is, and she responds positively. Then we chat about the fine Arizona weather, and that leads to yet another request for me to visit her. “You’ll see, the state is lovely,” she says, enduring my awkward silence before finally arriving at another story, another apology, another “aha moment” unearthed from the bowels of group therapy.
This is what residents of Full Circle Spa do. They practice warrior poses, seek enlightenment through meditative trances, pat a neighbor’s hand consolingly during group time, and reach out to their families for understanding. And we answer because we feel terrible if we don’t.
She begins her “aha moment.” As usual, I tune in and out, only catching fragments of this latest revelation: “I never really thought about how having an alcoholic father affected me. You know, I just kept telling myself he had a temper and a rough job, and he was functional, so it was hard to think that he was just like other people’s drunk dads . . .”
We talk about her dad a lot lately. How he used to hit her when he was drunk, how he used to belittle her if she did poorly in school, how her brothers had it worse because her dad would raise only strong men. This image of my mom, helpless against her dad’s tirades, only increases my pain. So I tune out for an even greater period of time, still managing to fill the gaps between her sentences with “yes” and “okay” and “I see.”
When I tune back in, she’s saying, “I loved finding you there, but I never told you that. I’m sorry that I didn’t, Jake. You kept reading all those books by Mark Twain. Remember?”
Apparently, we’ve fast-forwarded past her childhood and into mine. She’s talking about the summer I was ten. I used to stay up long after Ellie fell asleep and wait for her to come home from work.
She launches into her remembrance of those tender late-night reunions. I also privately return to that time. For the most part my recollection is hazy, but I remember what I can: her grilled-cheese sandwiches with a side of chips; sitting at the edge of the pool, feet submerged in cold water, warm plates against our thighs; her wine spilling onto the grout between the pavers. How I lied to make her feel better about her twelve-hour shifts, saying Ms. Sullivan made terrible dinners, even though Ms. Sullivan made excellent dinners. How, always, Mom’s cigarettes and wine wore the night away, leading us to the moment when she’d turn to me with glassy eyes and deliver a rant about my father.
This is a part I remember clearly: “Responsible men don’t run off to Florida with a coworker. Responsible men don’t leave a wife and children behind. Responsible men don’t break their vows. Jake—” She’d always freeze here, like a swimmer on a platform reconsidering a ten-meter dive. “Jake, promise me you’ll always be responsible. That you’ll never break your word. That you’ll never be like him.”
She’d put her hand over mine then, and nothing would loosen her grip but my pledge that I’d be different and better. I gave this pledge over and over again, until she slackened her hold, murmuring something like, “You love us. You love Ellie. You’ll never leave us.”
But I had left with false promises and reassurances, proving I was no different or better than my father.
Mom stops rambling. She asks, “Were those times just as special for you?”
The response is automatic. “Yes, Mom.”
“Good. Good.” The phone beeps, and she sighs apologetically. “I have to go now. Think about what I said, okay? It’s nice and warm here. A perfect weekend getaway.”
“Yeah, sure.” My voice is flattened by disinterest, and I hear the hurt in her good-bye.
Alone again, I slide down to the floor and rest my head on the mattress. I reach for Amber’s empty bottle until I feel it pressed against my skin: solid, cold, painfully empty of hope.
15.
That Hello Kitty sticker reminds me of being eleven, of being okay, of a time when my mind had less racing thoughts. You remind me of these things too.
Jessie
BEFORE. AUGUST.
Lola changed into her gray pajamas, pulling the bottoms up so quickly the elastic band snapped around the waist. “That’s bullshit,” she said, glancing at my backpack, which lay innocently in the corner of my bedroom. “You had to have found something. I mean, you searched her entire room, right?”
It was a Friday night, and until a few hours earlier, I had sat on my bed, tearing through the last novel on my summer reading list. To be honest, it was an act of desperation. For the past month, all I could think about was Ellie and our kiss. And the only thing that seemed to get my mind off it was reading. It was like my mom said: Sometimes, the only way to get off one distraction is get on another. Just pick something that might do you a bit more good.
So far, all that my thinking about Ellie had done was create a lot of anxiety. At least with the reading, I’d be ahead in school. I was just about to reach the climax of the novel when Lola showed up. She was dressed entirely in black, her long brown hair twisted up into a tight bun. This was not her usual look. Lola preferred short skirts and loose curls.
“What’s up with the outfit? Aren’t you supposed to be at your dad’s?”
“He forgot. Again.” She sat on the edge of my bed and unloaded her overnight bag, which had two walkie-talkies, a flashlight, and a pair of binoculars. Then she explained her plan.
Afterward, she looked at me, her eyes intense, and said, “So, are you in or out?”
I stared at her blankly. I couldn’t tell if she was serious about breaking into Ellie’s house. But if she was, she had it all figured out. Somehow she knew that Ellie’s parents had left that afternoon to attend a medical conference in Baltimore. Your sister mentioned it at dinner two nights ago. That Tommy, Sarah, and Ellie would be at the movies. Again, at dinner. That the spare key to Ellie’s house was hidden beneath a faux frog in their yard. Remember? I saw Jake use it that one time he got locked out.
“I just need you to stand guard, and I’ll do the rest,” she said.
From what I gathered, “do the rest” meant her searching Ellie’s room for something that could potentially destroy her—a diary, incriminating photo, or medical proof she had some sort of STD.
“Have you been watching Gossip Girl again?” I asked.
“Very funny.” Her eyes narrowed. “She’s a bitch. And you want to know what? I asked Tommy today about what she said, and he said it wasn’t true. Not any of it.”
I watched a bit of pain shoot across her face. “Tommy’s a liar,” I said. “Besides, how would Ellie know about any of it if he hadn’t told her?”
She shrugged, unconcerned with the details, as if Tommy’s word was enough. “Maybe she was spying?”
“On you and Tommy?” I asked incredulously. She had really gone off the deep end if she even believed that was possible.
“We were spying on Tommy and Sarah. What’s the difference?” she said, as if this proved her point. “So are you going to help me or not?”
She was determined, and I knew that with or without me, she was going in. There was no time to warn Ellie, and the only other option was to tell my mom, but I couldn’t imagine ratting Lola out that way. I searched my mind for other possibilities and came up with only one.
“I’ll help you,” I said, “but only if I go in alone.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but I held up a hand to silence her. “Just wait. Okay? I know the house better than you do. I’ll be faster and have less of a chance of getting caught.”
I didn’t add that I wanted to go in. That the idea excited me more than I’d care to admit.
She considered this for a while, but still seemed reluctant.
“It’s the only way I’ll help you,” I said.
Twenty minutes later I stood inside Ellie’s room, flashlight in hand. It was weird standing there, dressed in Lola’s black leotard and leggings, running my hands freely across Ellie’s desk. I felt a series of conflicting emotions: guilty and happy, brave and cowardly. Mostly, I felt changed.
Until a month ago, I had never kissed anyone, I had never lied to Lola, and I had never broken the rules. Not like this. And now here I was, standing in Ellie’s bedroom, cataloging her life.
I stared at some of the photographs she had taped to the wall. Pictures of her with Jake, both smaller than the huge pumpkin behind them; with Sarah at her sweet-sixteen party; and with her dad, when she was about seven.
I picked up that photo and stared at it more closely. I had never seen her look so animated. I flipped it over. On the back, scrawled in masculine handwriting, was Me and my little Lee-Lee. I had never met her father, but I knew on rare occasions Ellie disappeared to Florida for long-weekend visits with his new family.
“What’s going on in there, Black Hawk?” Lola’s voice burst through my receiver, calling me by the stupid code name she insisted on using.
“Nothing.” I put the photo back and shifted my attention to the closet.
“Did you find anything?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, hurry up.”
“Okay,” I muttered, already lost in Ellie’s clothes—the soft fabrics, her favorite blue sweater. I found a scarf I’d seen her wear several times but not often enough to note its disappearance and slipped it into my backpack.
Then I stepped away from the closet, my foot connecting with something near her bed. I glanced down and saw them—a heap of black spiral notebooks now scattered on the floor. I sat eagerly on my heels and aimed my flashlight at notebook after notebook. They were all the same: dozens of sketches in charcoal, ink, and pencil. One, marked 2009, was of the creepy house on the corner, its telltale overgrown yard filling the page. Another was of the weird kid four houses over, the one with the big head and too-small eyes. One notebook had a series featuring Mr. Lumpnick’s dog as he transitioned from puppy to adult.
34 Pieces of You Page 8
