by Holly Brown
I didn’t tell B. that I left the apartment for a while today. I didn’t really have a choice. I was going stir-crazy, and with my history, I can’t afford any kind of crazy. It wasn’t a big deal; no one saw me. But it would stress B. out, and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
I don’t have a key to the apartment so I left it unlocked. Then I had to prop open the back entrance with a piece of wood, but B. said he’s the only one who uses it anyway. There weren’t any neighbors around, or even any cars parked on the street. Kind of weird, how we never hear the neighbors either: no shoes on the stairs or overhead; no one’s TV or music; no laughter or fights. B. said that the building is just really well insulated. He told me that a bunch of artists rent studio space, and this one girl paints on huge canvases, the size of our living room. “What does she paint?” I asked. “Feet,” he said. I started to laugh but he told me it was sort of abstract and conceptual, and I’d understand if I saw her work. I hope I will one of these days. I’d like to meet an artist, even if she’s a foot painter.
Then I think of Hellma’s feet—her toes, to be specific—and I’m not in any rush.
Mostly, by now, the bus ride has receded. It feels like it happened to someone else, or like a movie I saw. But I try to avoid any reminders.
So I snuck out today, just for a little while. I wanted to go to the drugstore and buy some perfume. I figured that if I smelled good, B. might finally make a move. I didn’t know where the drugstore was, since I couldn’t go online to look it up, but I thought there would have to be one if I walked far enough. Which direction, though? There was no one to ask. Durham was dead at three in the afternoon, at least in this neighborhood.
It’s not a bad neighborhood, exactly. I didn’t feel like I was going to get grabbed. But it’s kind of desolate. A ghost town, for a ghost girl.
There were industrial buildings that looked deserted and industrial buildings that had probably been converted into apartments, based on the number of cars parked on the street. I walked for what seemed like a long time but was probably only ten or fifteen minutes. I was drenched in sweat. You know how they say it wasn’t so bad, it was a dry heat? Well, North Carolina is definitely wet heat. It completely sucks. I’m going to need a new wardrobe, as much as I hate to show my arms. They’re pale and flabby. I guess I could start doing push-ups in my free time, since I have so much of it. For sure, I need to get some flip-flops or sandals. My Uggs feel like a form of self-immolation.
This girl in an old Jeep was slowing down for a stop sign just as I reached the corner. She looked like she could be in college. Maybe B. even knows her, not that I can ask her that yet. She had blue streaks in her hair and piercings on her nose and lips. She stared out at me in a way that was unsmiling but not unfriendly.
“Do you know where the nearest drugstore is?” I panted.
“Do you even know where you are?” she said. Then she smiled. “Get in. I’m going that way.”
“Thanks.” I opened the door gratefully. “It’s not too far, is it?”
She started driving. “Not really.”
I was starting to worry about how I’d get back to B.’s, if there was a bus or I’d have to walk. I tried to memorize the route we took. She was right: It wasn’t so far. But I wasn’t 100 percent positive I’d be able to retrace it either. I felt a little panicked. If I didn’t pull this off, I’d have to text B. I’d have to explain myself.
It was funny, how I’d left the apartment because I was so eager for human contact, and now I couldn’t seem to find anything to say. She didn’t tell me her name or ask mine. That was convenient, given my legal situation, but not so great for the loneliness.
As she let me off in front of a CVS, she said, “Are you okay?” One of her lip rings was nearly blinding in the sunshine.
“It’s just so hot.”
“This is nothing compared to summer.” I’m not sure what vibe I was giving off, because she suddenly didn’t seem like she wanted to leave. “Do you know how to get home?”
Just take a bus across the country again. No, that’s not home anymore. “I’ll be okay.” I smiled at her, and she shrugged, like “It’s your life,” and then she drove off. I realized she didn’t have an accent. Not a Southern one, I mean. She could have been from California, for all I knew. I immediately regretted barely talking to her.
But if I’d liked her, what would I have done about it anyway? I couldn’t tell B., “Hey, I made a new friend today!” I don’t get to make new friends yet. First, I’ve got to shed my old identity and don a new one, like a superhero putting on her costume. Super . . . Vicky? No, that’s not it.
Inside CVS, I sniffed all the different perfume bottles. I don’t normally wear perfume, but there are a few on my dresser back home. They’re all from department stores, and they smell light and clean. Cheap perfumes smell cloying, like they’re made of dark purple flowers. None of them smell like me.
I wonder how long those bottles will sit on the dresser, how long my parents will keep my room the same waiting for me to come back. I can see my mom crying on my bed, hoping.
I wouldn’t mind her knowing that I’m alive. I didn’t leave to torture her. Not entirely. If I called, I could tell her that I’m alive but I’m not coming home. They can go ahead and clear out my room. They should know I haven’t changed my mind about them, and I’m not going to. A good-bye note followed by a good-bye phone call more than a week later—what could be more final?
I looked down at the phone in my hand. I could do it. There was no one to stop me. But what if the police somehow traced the call?
A saleswoman with poodle hair started dusting nearby. It was so obvious that she’d been told to do that. Management thought I was going to steal something. I hate that about being a teenager. You’re an instant suspect.
So much for human contact. This was reminding me why I mostly don’t need people. They’re a lot of work for not a lot of payoff.
To mess with the poodle, I moved over to the cosmetics. I picked up eye shadows and blushes and lipsticks, roamed a little, and then put them back on their racks. I didn’t plan to buy any of it, but it was kind of fun to waste her time. She trailed me for a while, and then a customer asked her where to find something, and that was the end of the game.
It was a stupid game for me to be playing anyway. What if they mistakenly thought I took something and hauled me in the back and asked for ID? What would I have done then?
I decided I’d buy a fruity body wash and matching lotion and get out of there. It’s probably not the smartest use of my finite resources, but at some point, when I can work under my new name, I’ll replenish them. Maybe I’ll work at CVS, and I’ll spend my time “dusting” next to people my age. No way I’d ever do that.
I started walking back to the apartment. It was nerve-wracking, because I kept thinking I’d made a right and should have made a left, or vice versa. It’s like when you take a multiple-choice test and find yourself debating whether to change the answers. It’s best to stick with your first instinct, they say. So I never doubled back, just kept going, and eventually, I was in the ghost town again. Trapped between worlds, like a soul in transition, that’s how it feels. Like I’m not in California anymore, but I haven’t fully materialized here yet either. Like I’m not fully me, I’m still just a bunch of molecules.
Being alone so much makes my thoughts weird.
I tried to explain that to B. tonight, and he nodded like he understood. His eyes have a lot of pain in them. I didn’t see it in his photos. It makes me want to stand by him no matter what. He needs proof that there are good people in the world.
B. wanted to read together, but I said tonight, it was my turn to do something I’d always wanted to do. I smelled sweet from the extra-long shower I took when I got home, and I was soft with lotion. I moved right next to him on the futon and gave him one of my earbuds. We listened to “To Be in Your Eyes.” All right, it was cheesy, especially since I’d done it pretty recently with
Kyle. But it had worked then.
I started singing along really softly: “And I’m waking to this aching / and it’s breaking me in two / all the space / all the waste / all the distance between me and you.” I cried a tiny bit, realizing B. was right here with me and not knowing what to do with it, whether he wanted me, if I should have come here at all. It was the first time I let myself really feel that this might have been a mistake.
I couldn’t wait anymore to find out the ending; I had to turn the page myself. I leaned in and kissed him. I was so happy, thinking, It’s happening, it’s finally happening! and we fit together really well. Our tongues did, I mean. Like, perfectly. I wanted to flatten myself against him so I could feel all his muscles. Every part of me wanted to connect with every part of him. It was getting more intense and I was so in love and so turned on, which has never happened before both at once, and then . . .
B. pulled away and said he needed to take a shower.
“Why?” I asked.
“It’s just”—he hesitated—“where’d you learn that headphone thing? And the way you kiss.” He didn’t sound accusing or mad. It was more like he ordered one kind of girl online, and this other kind of girl showed up at his door.
I’ve let him believe I’ve only kissed a couple of guys, because he seems to like that. Is that the same as lying?
I felt ashamed. I was acting like Trish, forward and full of myself, and that’s not who he wants to be with. And the headphones were a trick.
I couldn’t figure out what to say. I just stared down at my hands.
“It’s my job to kiss you,” he said. I guess he meant it’s the man’s job. He can be old-fashioned, which I like. He’s not a California guy, that’s for sure.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You don’t need to apologize.”
Hug me! Kiss me! Let’s try it again!
But instead he left the room, and I heard the shower start running.
This’ll get better and easier. I know it will. This is where I’m supposed to be.
I love him.
I do.
Day 9
“NOT YOUR TYPICAL RUNAWAY.” That was the title of the post Paul ran across all our different media. He meant it to be provocative and knew it might draw fire as well as support. It worked. We got an insane number of posts, reposts, hits, tweets, likes, comments, buzz—the whole Internet enchilada.
Paul talked about how Marley wasn’t a drug addict, wasn’t pregnant, wasn’t bullied, wasn’t failing school, wasn’t feeling unloved. She wasn’t a lesbian (or at least, wouldn’t be afraid to come out as one), wasn’t depressed, wasn’t cutting herself, didn’t hate the world, didn’t hate us. (How do you know? many screamed in answer, and Paul responded calmly to every single one about how he knew.) “Marley’s mother and I have a strong marriage,” he wrote, “and Marley has been given every advantage.”
Yet, he wrote, she had chosen to leave of her own accord. There were no absolute answers so far, only rule-outs, and not knowing is the hardest thing for any parent. He wrote about how your kids go to parties, and you can’t know for sure what happens; they date, and you can’t know; they Facebook and text and you can’t know. You try to have open communication, but in the end, you have to trust and hope. Trust, but monitor—the latter being our failing (the only failing he was prepared to admit, I noticed), and we don’t want others to make the same mistake.
But in our current situation, the uncertainty gives rise to all kinds of terrifying scenarios. With a child possibly out on the streets, he wrote, time is not on our side, and we need every last person reading to send this to everyone they know, in order to end the not-knowing.
It was well written and persuasive. It was even emotional, something I wouldn’t have expected him to achieve. (Candace might have had a hand in it.) And it seems to be working. Paul’s been invited to do TV shows in Chicago, New York, and Boston. I assume the invitation included me, and Paul and Candace decided to cut me out. I’m simultaneously relieved and insulted.
At the moment, I think I’m considered a liability. Even though I said practically nothing at the vigil—the new rule was “Let Paul do all the talking”—and overall remained composed and non-bizarre, there were some unflattering pictures posted to Instagram, among other sites, of me biting my lip and otherwise looking shifty. It’s disturbing, imagining people at the vigil surreptitiously snapping photo after photo of me, intent on making me look guilty of something.
Strickland was at the vigil, fixing me with hard, appraising stares. I’ve got the feeling I’ve become a person of interest, though he denied that when Paul asked him. Strickland said that Marley’s case didn’t fit the usual profile, so he was making more inquiries, doing follow-ups. Perfectly normal, he assured Paul. He said he’d talked to Marley’s classmates and teachers and her old friends and us; it didn’t add up. Marley “isn’t your typical runaway,” Strickland said, and that was when the lightbulb went off above Paul’s head. Paul cooked up the post, which he knew might anger the parents of typical runaways but would also hopefully hook the parents of potential atypical runaways. In essence, he was inviting parents of all teenagers to see themselves in us, and, like I said, it seems to be working.
A strong marriage. I think Paul really believed that when he wrote it. He’s not lying, though I tacitly lied by allowing him to “we” his way through and then sign both our names. I let him speak for me, as he has so often in our married life. But a number of our followers out there (well, Paul’s followers) don’t seem fooled. They caught the linguistic tells, like Paul saying “My wife and I.” The audience that’s speculating about me—why I’m so uninvolved in the FindMarley operation, whether I might be negligent or part of the reason Marley ran away or the one who did away with her—is still relatively small. But it seems to be growing.
I was negligent. For the past months, I’ve taken a lack of overt misery on Marley’s part for happiness. She was a car in neutral, and I called that being okay. I called it good enough. I told Paul, “Let’s not nag her about extracurriculars; let’s give her a break from the pressure and see how she does.” To my surprise, he actually agreed. And how was she doing? Obviously, rotten. What did I do about it? Nothing.
About a month ago, she wasn’t feeling well and stayed home from school. I took off from work, though I didn’t need to. It was an opportunity to baby her, and I hadn’t had many of those of late. I brought her soup, and lay across her bed, and stroked her forehead. Otherwise, she’s so hard to touch. It’s like, no matter how close she’s sitting, she’s too far for me to reach. I don’t know how it got to be this way with my own daughter. We used to cuddle all the time. It was one of my favorite things when she was young, and hers, too. Back when she wanted to climb in my hamper, when she wanted to climb all over me and breathe me in.
That day, she was in bed with quilts piled high. She wore men’s flannel pajamas, and her breathing was congested. I was lying next to her, trying not to exhale too loudly for fear that it would jar her and she’d reassert ATM distance. I didn’t want her to say, “I’m really tired now, Mom,” and I’d have to leave. Then the illness would pass, the spell would be broken, and there’d be this confounding, unbridgeable chasm again.
“Do you think about life without Dad?” Marley asked.
I thought for a long minute before I lied. “No.”
“Seriously?”
“We’ve been together almost twenty years.” Like that’s any kind of answer. I think back now, and she was trying to connect with me. She wanted to have a meaningful conversation, and I stopped it cold. I didn’t realize until now how rarely she showed a desire to talk to me, as opposed to mere tolerance.
Marley used to ask lots of questions when she was younger. She seemed infinitely curious about me and would request her favorite anecdotes from my life over and over, turning them into bedtime stories.
I never lied, but I did tell her a sanitized version. She knows my life wasn’t always so priv
ileged. She knows my dad died when I was little, that he had an accident on a job site, but she doesn’t know about the alcoholism. I probably should have told her. Maybe she wouldn’t have gone off and gotten drunk that weekend at Trish’s; she would have known how destructive alcohol can be. Addiction’s in our bloodline. Maybe I should think about that more myself.
My dad had no life insurance, so my mom had to go out and get a job. She only had a high school education, so she became a “sales associate” at a pet store. We had to move from a solidly middle-class neighborhood in Pittsburgh to a working-class one. Teen pregnancy and drugs were rampant. I always knew I needed to go to college. To her credit, my mother did hammer that into me, even if it was in her inimitable self-absorbed way, looking at me sadly: “Don’t be like me, Rachel.” Then she’d go back to reciting all the ills in her life, from the ones she experienced living with my dad to the rude customers that day at work. She wasn’t one to ever ask a question. I existed to listen to her travails, it seemed. I swore I’d never be that way with my daughter. Maybe I erred in the opposite direction.
I went away to college in DC. I was at a decent school with a good financial aid package; Paul was going to Georgetown, paid for by his parents. We met at a bar, of all places, and for a while, life got easier. First he bought me a drink and then dinner and then flowers and then jewelry. But I didn’t only love him because of the escalating gifts. I loved him because he let me know he’d always take care of me, and in a way, he has. I loved him because his mind was so different from mine. And he could be funny. Self-deprecating, even. I haven’t seen that side of him in a long time.
Once upon a time, we had chemistry. Or maybe it was evolutionary biology.
But is that what Marley wanted to hear? Did she want to hear the unvarnished truth? Did she want to know my present-day uncertainty? I thought it would only cause her more anxiety herself. But maybe it would have made whatever she was feeling seem normal. People struggle. People have to find their answers, and their happiness.
